THE REALITY OF THE LADDER of selves can also be discovered by noticing our language. The way we speak to each other reveals its existence.
“Rise above it,” we say. And most people can identify with what it feels like to rise above something that is bothering them.
Something bothers me only when I am down on the emotional rungs of my ladder. When I rise above it, I see the bigger picture. The bigger the picture I see, the smaller my troubles look. The more possibilities I see, the more the world is suddenly full of solutions. It always feels great to see the world from 10,000 feet.
And the more I rise above something, the more I can see the hidden connections between things, just as flying in an airplane shows me how beautifully patterned the cities and farmlands are. Civilization looks like a work of art when I am at my window seat, because I have risen above it. A smile comes over my face as I look at the world below, feeling, “I’m on top of it now . . . all this beauty and creativity.”
“I’m feeling down” is also something we say, revealing our subconscious knowledge of the ladder inside.
“When I heard your tone of voice, I got that sinking feeling and I knew something was wrong.”
I might go to the kitchen to brew some tea or do some deep breathing for a little “pick-me-up” so I can return to my work higher up the ladder than I now am. I talk about a phone call to an optimistic and funny friend of mine that “picked up my spirits.” Picked UP my spirits.
When I’m in love, I’m liable not only to be as corny as Kansas in August but also as “high as a kite on the Fourth of July.”
When my negative emotions have hijacked my thinking, I might say that I am “down.” I’m really down. How can you laugh when you know I’m down?
All the great feelings of passion and control have to do with rising, climbing higher, flying, and soaring until I am “above it all.” All the weakest feelings of failure and lack of control have to do with sinking low, falling down, slipping, sliding, descending until I’ve “hit bottom.” That is why we speak so darkly of the slippery slope.
Songwriter Richard Farina called his alternately funny and depressing autobiographical novel Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me, whereas the song in Space Jam, written to honor the talent of Michael Jordan, was called “I Believe I Can Fly.”
Great relationships don’t come from down low in the organs. They come from high up the ladder in the imagination, as in, “Imagine me and you. I do. I think about you day and night.” When both people are up in their minds and imaginations, they are happy together. The trick is to “stay up” and not get down.
When Sophia Loren was in her 60s, she was still glowing with vitality and sexuality on the movie screen. She described her formula for success by saying, “There is a fountain of youth—it is your mind, your talents, and the creativity you bring to life and the lives of people you love.”
Sophia Loren’s “mind, talents, and creativity” prescription makes no mention of clinging to someone emotionally from the heart (or any bodily organs). She had no such pre–Liz Taylor concept of using deadly grips of dependency to lock a mate into.
Seeing on the screen how great Sophia Loren looked at the end of her film career showed the proof that her system was in tune with the spirit that pervades the universe.
Your life will get better the minute you begin making it a practice to be aware of exactly where on the ladder you are coming from. Practice is the most important discovery in the history of human achievement, but in our culture, we ridicule it. We minimize its power; we try to avoid it, even though it’s only practice that will give us the life we want.
The ladder is like a piano. The rungs are like keys. And practice leads to mastery.
If you can remember the ladder is there, if you can see it, then it will calm you. When you calmly see the ladder inside, you will always know which rung you are on when you are communicating or thinking.
If you notice that you are “coming from” a lower rung, such as guilt, when you are about to say something, you can step back and breathe. If you realize you are coming from anger or shame, you can take a walk and let your spirit gather the necessary lightness to ascend. Going up the ladder is much easier after deep, inspired breathing. It makes you lighter in mood, so that you can ascend more easily. (Some people claim to completely change who they are by going for a run.)
When you are hurt by what someone says, you will soon get in the habit of taking a deep breath and noticing the dynamic of it. The old habit, you’ll notice, was to stop breathing and feel something about it. This shortness of breath always took you down the ladder, not up.
Once you see where you are coming from, you can then ask yourself where you want to come from. Who do you want to be? You invent yourself anyway, so why not reinvent upward? And if you want to create a better relationship and feel happier inside, you will want to come from higher up the ladder. You will want to come from your imagination, not your fear. You’ll want to come from spirit and thoughtfulness.
With practice, you can rise up your ladder more and more often. Imagination does it. Meditation and contemplative prayer do it. And there are some physical things that can get you headed upward, too.
I like to think of LSD. It’s a formula I use. “LSD” to me (now) stands for laughing, singing, and dancing. All three take you up your ladder. Laughing always gets you high on your ladder in rapid, explosive ways. (And remember to stay up. Don’t laugh and come down. The higher you are, the funnier it gets. Stay with it.)
Singing, as leaders of religions know, gets you up there, too. So sing a lot. When American psychologist and religious philosopher William James realized, “We don’t sing because we’re happy, we’re happy because we sing,” he had learned the secret of the ladder. And you can dance. Dance across the planet. That’s what distance runners do. They dance. That’s what kids in a playground do. That’s what racquetball players do, too. And notice the faces of people on the real dance floor, no matter what age! They can be the happy faces of the kids at the junior high prom dancing to Drake or Beyonce, or of the people at a senior center dancing to Paul McCartney. They are the faces of people on top of the world, on top of the ladder.
Laughing, singing, and dancing can be added to every day you live. In fact, count each day that you don’t do all three as a lost day. Be strict with yourself about this. Reinvent yourself as a laugher, a singer, and a dancer. Insist on learning to live fully.
The happier you let yourself be, the easier life is on you.
The three activities of the LSD formula have something in common: extra breathing (the spirit drawn in). All three require an instant surge of breath. Laughing, singing, and dancing all take extra oxygen. To be happy? All you need is the air that you breathe. You don’t have to travel with dark glasses into an inner-city crack house to score your oxygen. It’s all around you.