Once, after I'd run a group session, someone mailed in and said,
“I find you funny in a kind of irreverent way, is this intentional on your part? This helps me to not take these things so seriously.”
And in a separate scenario—a 1:1 coaching session, where we were looking at a real, heavy problem that had been bugging this person for ages—they visibly relaxed and said,
"I suddenly have the urge to laugh hysterically!"
(And I certainly didn’t dissuade them.)
What’s more, I’m always referring to my work using words like ‘lighthearted’ and ‘fun’ and I wonder, do you—and when I say ‘you’, I mean the Reader Ego Construct 📦—see this as a good thing, or a bad thing?
👍/👎
Because aren’t these situations, like mental health problems, difficult relationship problems, money problems, traumatic past problems, supposed to be serious? Isn’t that the whole deal with them?
Well, yes, and no.
So first things first: I’m not belittling the situations themselves, by any means. There’s some truly awful stuff going down (working with other humans, I hear about it all the time) and on this level, yes, they’re serious.
Nobody chooses challenging/catastrophic life circumstances. They just happen, we get what we’re given, and my heart goes out to every single one of you, struggling with the hand you’ve been dealt
💝
And then there’s the ‘problem’ aspect of it…
[Cover your 📦 ears]
Which is mind-created.
That’s where the lightness comes in.
Because when we see what the mind is doing: chopping our experience up into little discrete parcels, comparing them all against each other, making rules up that it insists determine whether or not we should feel ok, or happy, or sad, or frustrated, or desperate; throwing its weight around, creating meaning and hierarchies and time and stories and identities out of thin air; then pretending that all of this is The Truth™…
…well, then it all starts to look faintly ridiculous.
And we might want to laugh with relief when we catch it, up to its tricks.
And whenever we do catch it, we too will probably start to “not take these things so seriously.”
Intent or no?
So, to answer the question at the top of this post honestly: No, it’s not intentional.
One of the first things I share with groups and with individuals when I'm working through my 4-step programme with them, is this, from the FOUNDATIONS:
…and that includes all of my behaviours too.
The more layers of misunderstanding that fall away as I continue to explore and have insights, the more humour I see in this cosmic joke that we call the human experience; the less seriously I find myself taking the machinations of the mind.
And the more irreverent I may appear.
My mind 📦 is completely bonkers, just like yours, and as I heard Syd Banks once say (on an old recording I can’t bring to hand right now, so I’m paraphrasing),
“If you’re playing the piano, you can either play it seriously, or you can really enjoy playing and have fun with it.”
Same thing. Two perspectives. No rules.
Why not choose irreverence?
😁
Giles
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Giles P Croft
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