Snicholsblog readers have long grokked that whether Snichols fully understands them or not, she runs with those ideas as if she does. One of those ideas I’ve run with for years is the concept of “Havingness” (taught to me years ago by the Berkeley Psychic Institute of Sacramento).
The “havingness diagnostic” looks at this:
we claim we want the perfect partner, a healthier body, to travel the globe, “a world that works for everyone,” and “peace now,” but to what degree are we actually willing to “have” that?
So here’s how I use it. Let’s see, what do I actually want right now?
Oh, I know, a publisher for my book.
I picture this “havingness gauge” above (like a gas gauge–in an old-fashioned out-of-date internal combustion engine car–but with 0% havingness on the left and 100% havingness on the right) in my mind’s eye and I ask a question.
In this instance, “what percentage am I willing to have a publisher for my book?”
Wow, I just did it and got 100%! I have done this exercise a lot and never get 100%.
Now I need a new example: “What percentage am I willing to be paid to speak before an audience of 1,000?”
Okay, I thought I might get 100% again, but I got “only” 80%, so we’re on.
Then I ask, “What would it take for me to go from 80% willingness to be paid to speak before 1,000 people to 100% willingness?” and then I just imagine that gauge moving from 80% to 100% and see what else I picture or think while that’s happening?
I see, “letting go of the need for validation, letting go of the compelled need for someone to ask me to do this…”
Okay, this then is my/our spiritual work. My havingness of being paid to speak to 1,000 people depends on my letting go of those ideas. In fact, I find, havingness almost always depends on letting go of old ideas.
Which, as usual, leads me to muse, “What would it take for me/us to clock 100% havingness for a world that truly works for everyone?”
What would I need to let go of to be 100% willing to have this manifest? Maybe I need to let go of my idea of what it would look like and how we get there. I don’t know what such a world looks like. I don’t know how to get there.
But I do know what it might feel like. I doubt if it would feel groovy kumbaya all the time. It might involve way more conversations with more different people than I imagine I want to have.
Let’s move the needle to 100% and see what happens anyway…