With my awareness focused on noticing indications that I was
struggling, it quickly became evident how pervasive my tendency
to struggle was—even related to everyday events. Although I did
discover that lying down temporarily ended the struggle, I found
myself lying down in places where I would rather not do so. After
lying down on city sidewalks several times, I made the radical deci-
sion to go home and lie in bed to have cleaner and more comfort-
able surroundings.
At first the urges to “get up and do something” were almost
overwhelming. I saw these as counterproductive to my desire to give
up struggle and stayed put. I left the bed only to attend to essential
hygiene functions for a short period each day. After a day or so,
waves of helplessness came to my awareness. These feelings were
unusual to me; obviously they were related to my self-imposed limi-
tations on action. I saw that my past struggle was actually a strategy I
had designed unconsciously to prevent me from experiencing feel-
ings of helplessness. These helpless feelings were now coming to my
awareness because I was intentionally preventing myself from tak-
ing any action.
I realized that I used to ask myself, “How could you be helpless?
Look at how busy you are!” As the days wore on, it also came to my
awareness that the world seemed to operate as well as it had before
I stopped participating. The utilities still provided service, people
collected the garbage and cleaned the streets without any intention
from me.
Then I was beset by a dilemma. The prospect of spending the
rest of my life in bed did not appeal to me. “How will I know that I
am done with struggle?” or “How can I be sure that I won’t revert to
struggle when I do get out of bed?” I wondered.
I concluded that there really could be no way to know whether I
had succeeded completely until after I got out of bed. Additionally,
I realized that the expectation of complete success was related to
perfectionist tendencies that probably had contributed to the strug-
gle in the first place. “I don’t need to be perfect in my quest to give
up struggle. Instead I can declare that a significant reduction in
struggle is sufficient to constitute success.”
So I began to review the past situations where I had struggled.
My self-imposed limitation on action quickly put me in touch with
the underlying helplessness associated with each of these situations.
By allowing the feeling of helplessness to be OK, I found I could
eliminate my previously impulsive reaction to avoid this feeling by
From Struggle to Flow 111