GOING ALL THE WAY IN 2023
Personal Growth: How Mistakes and Going All the Way Reveals the Middle Way. This blog is for any seeker with a tendency towards extremism, addiction, or perfectionism.
In my four-decade path of personal growth and self-discovery, going all the way has paved the way for much healing and revelation. But not in the way that you might think. Sometimes I’ve needed to go all the way to learn lessons the hard way. By going all the way or being extreme in my pursuits, it has led to many long, painful downward spirals. This has not been the most efficient or easy path nor is it recommended if you are looking for a shorter path to freedom. These difficult life choices, full of implosions/explosions have had a few upsides next to the many downsides.
Rock bottom is one of the many dramatic ways that a life lesson can stick. Ultimately, a mistake is an opportunity to learn a better way forward. Do you ever notice how you pay attention to your life trajectory if the mistake is big enough and then start to make choices to find balance? On the personal growth path, our work is to learn from our mistakes and to constantly ask the question: Is this taking me towards the personal development I seek?
We become complacent when life is going well and deceive ourselves into believing there won’t be a chaotic event waiting around the corner to test our integrity and challenge us to prove that the lesson has been learned. There is a saying, my dad used to say, “a smart person learns from their mistakes while a wise person learns from the mistakes of others”. It’s easier to learn from other people’s mistakes but the lesson does not usually make it to the memory bank of consciousness.
In the spring of 1988, I was 17 years old, lounging in the parking lot of my high school sucking on a Marlboro cigarette contemplating the meaning of life. In my teen years, I was a daydreamer and a western philosophy neophyte. I questioned…what is a meaningful life worth living?... as far back as I can remember. I contemplated an ever-present notion of living a life of excess and wondered if the meaning of life was to pursue as much pleasure as possible. My observation of human behaviour at that point was that most people chased pleasure and comfort in its various forms and ran from pain. It seemed simple and logical to a young mind that one must avoid discomfort at all costs and create the supporting circumstances for a ‘good time’. In that decisive moment, as the school bell rang, I made a profound choice. I was going to chase pleasure to the extreme. What did I choose? Sex, drugs, travel, high intensity experiences like skydiving, gourmet food and to surround myself with exotic people. What happened after ten years? I crashed and burned into a blazing rubble of confusion, remorse, and shame. I went all the way and can say with much conviction that the pursuit of incessant pleasure is the path of woe – aka, misery.
In those hedonistic years I left a blazing inferno of destruction, broken hearts, and broken promises. As I picked up the pieces, I went all the way in the opposite direction: Tibetan Buddhism, Meditation, Embodiment Practices, Being Overly Nice, Financial Astuteness and Conscious Loving Relationships. Because of my extreme nature and perfectionist attitude, there was a rigidity in my pursuit of these wholesome endeavors. I would often break under pressure and fall back into my destructive ways (because that’s what happens when one is extreme) but over the years I learned to recover quickly. It was an up and down see-saw that lasted until the age of 39.
I was committed to going all the way in terms of becoming an honorable person, but I didn’t know exactly what being an honorable person meant in the modern world nor did I understand how to make it my modus operandi. George Bailey from “It’s a Wonderful Life” comes to mind as an example of honor. He is a hero because he does not obsess about his own desires, but rather serves something larger than his ego — his fellow human beings. Trying to be a “great human” and being performance driven is still ego obsession and a tricky, deceptive form of self-absorption…It is layered with a cloud of false nice-ness. A disease of the modern masculine.
Whether you go all the way being “holy” or “unholy”, you will eventually discover the beauty of the middle path. Both are positions of imbalance based on pleasing the self or pleasing the world. There is a difference between pleasing the world and serving the world. Investigating the difference is the fast path to personal development.
Is living like a selfless renunciate saint the answer? Well…yes, sometimes it is advantageous to go all the way with modesty, hard work and selflessness. The key word is sometimes but not always. As soon as the word “always” enters your lexicon, you are on a dangerous path of extremism.
I am my father’s son, and I was built for joy, wine, creativity, celebration, travel, and music. It’s in my DNA. It’s the Dionysian principle. These qualities aren’t necessarily negative, but they can be when you go all the way, all the time. Apollo, his opposite, represents discipline, order, progress, clarity, logic, and the principle of individuation, whereas Dionysus represents disorder, intoxication, emotion, ecstasy, and unity. They both need to be balanced and respected. I know people that smoke and drink and are the kindest people around. I know people that don’t smoke and drink and can be vicious and tyrannical. It’s a simplistic example but you get the point. Who would you rather spend a weekend with?
If you go all the way to the left or all the way to the right, eventually you’ll end up in the middle of the circle of life. The problem with the left-hand path of excess, is that it can kill you, while the right-hand path of excess is much safer (but it can lead to dullness, judgment, and rigidity).
Look at all the rock n roll stars who have died around the age of 27 or 28. They could have used some more of the Apollo energy in their life. Look at all the people who live like overly moral goody two-shoes and have erratic mid-life crises after the age of 40. They start to rebel against their own conformity because it’s so artificial and constricting. All humans are built for wild adventures. My personal motto is explore, learn the lesson, integrate, transcend it, and finally move on to something better and more meaningful. We are wired to do something greater than just indulging ourselves.
Going all the way means exploring and learning until it exhausts you. In my pursuit of being an honorable person, I also went all the way with educating myself. I have been studying, learning, and educating myself constantly since the age of five. It’s been my saving grace. Of all my extreme behavior this is what has paid off the most. I have gone all the way with meditation, dharma, conscious movement, healthy intimacy, as well as learning to resource myself from a purposefully driven career.
What has made all the difference and kept me sane? Education – research – investigation and never settling for truths or facts that are not personally examined. Go all the way! If you are a person who others have described as extreme, then use that extreme life force to study why you are extreme with almost everything. By studying the nature of your extremist, addictive, and perfectionist nature, you will eventually find the middle way. Go all the way in studying what, who, how, when, where and why you go all the way.
The reason for going all the way, upon reflection, is and always was to find peace in my heart and a connection to source. It sounds like soft Italian cheese but it’s the cold hard truth. By going all the way, the self is constantly looking for a way to soothe the lifelong restlessness that can only be tempered with a connection to source. You are loving self-awareness. You can’t seek what you already are. The work is to remove the obstructions to loving self-awareness not to add more in there that cloud the mind.
All extreme, perfectionist, addictive behaviour is a misguided attempt to create a bridge with the mystery of universal awakening. It doesn’t work because you are already the bridge, the mystery, and the golden thread of divinity.
The world’s endless super cool props are deceiving you into forgetting that you are already part of life’s great mystery. You don’t need to be perfect or extreme or have a big wow experience. This moment is full of awe if you are open to it. You are already a miracle, fully loved and connected to an entire universe constantly sending gifts. You live in an infinite gift economy. The path is to realize what you already are…Did you know that you are the far edges of the human experience and the center point and everything in between?
If you keep studying how you are built through teachings, teachers, books, spiritual practice, long retreats, and contemplation, eventually there is a click in the psyche that snaps you into a healthy balance. It isn’t perfect balance because that doesn’t exist for more than a few seconds. It is a manageable balance with a wide forgiving center. When you go all the way with on the path of wisdom and understanding, you end up finding the middle way. Don’t expect to discover it, by playing it safe in the middle of mediocrity. This is dullsville or deads-ville or smalls-ville.
Younger people are overly obsessed with safety and don’t challenge and lean into their edges enough. They also fail to go all the way with their personal growth studies, simply settling for soundbites. They get snippets of info and get locked in a frozen center that has no flexibility to understand that life has extremes, non-extremes and an array of viewpoints. You are built for heroic journeys. Look at your body and mind. It is your spaceship for learning and craves to be used in every way possible. When you courageously visit the edge of fear and discomfort, that sincere looking produces the utmost contentment and tranquility of mind. The internet cannot fully offer this transcendent experience exclusively. It is a combination of study – teachings by professional psychonaughts (explorers and researchers of consciousness), direct experience as well as trial and error that produce lasting states of radiance and confidence.
Go all the way with learning about yourself and take a multi-pronged approach! Go all the way with scrutinizing your struggles and addictions. By ‘all the way’ we mean at least 10 years. At that point if you don’t make radical lifestyle changes, it means you are stubborn and derive pleasure from pain. Any path that leads to a state of ego-intoxication and short-term object gratification eventually leads to an out-of-control existence followed by, in some instances, a shortened life span. Remember life is a precious opportunity to unravel your secret code. Remember what you came to earth to do!
Now in my fifties I am learning to live the middle path with occasional visits to the extremes. I am OK with being imperfect. I am still an idiot, but my wife describes me as a lovable idiot. I no longer beat myself up for visiting the exaggerated edges of my being. I come back to center very quickly. My body speaks to me: It clearly says, enough!
Through determination, self-reflection, compassion, and curiosity, I have gone a long way into living a worthy precious life. There is still a lot of work to do. It's the small things now that bring the most pleasure, like a nice tea, a smile, watching cats and dogs play or simply writing a blog that may never be read by anyone…and I am totally OK with that.
Written by Evangelos Diavolitsis
