inclusiveness

These days the word inclusiveness is a buzz word for proper outward behavior. We like to set up discrete environments safe enough in their shared agenda that everyone involved can practice inclusiveness toward everyone else. There's nothing wrong with this arrangement. It's actually a fine model for how the world might some day work.

The thing is, the world will never work that way unless we practice inclusiveness inwardly first. It doesn't matter how much you honor outer inclusiveness, and it doesn't matter how much you accept your neighbor, if you're relying on an outward rule as your moral compass. That's only the starting point. You have to internalize the rule for yourself. It has to go inward.

That's how rules become freedom and transcendence of the need for rules. That's how the outward behavior of inclusiveness becomes true inclusiveness without any buzz around the word itself, without any self-congratulating hype that inclusiveness is going on. Are we aiming for the real thing here or are we indulging our vanity?

Let's start with the latter possibility for the sake of demonstrating the former, shall we? Let's say we are, for better or worse, on one or two occasions, indulging ourselves, that we overly like it how inclusive we are. Let's say we're vain. Good gravy! Can it really be true? Are we able to admit that sometimes our openness is narcissistic?

It may not be that way on every occasion. Of course it isn't. And it may not be that way, in total, when narcissism creeps into the mix at all. But let's go ahead and admit that narcissism creeps in now and then, to some small degree, on some rare occasion, and at those times we take a secret hint of pride in our lovely reflection as agents of morally-savory inclusiveness.

If you can do that, if you can admit it, especially as the twinge of narcissism is occurring, but also any time afterwards, even now, then you are no longer practicing outward rule-bound inclusiveness, but real inclusiveness, the internalized kind. You are going from a follower of rules to a free spirit and a lover of wisdom. You are practicing what you preach. You are walking the talk.

For real inclusiveness to occur you have to begin with yourself. You have to turn the spiritual eye inward and acceptingly observe everything that eye sees. The more you let it see, the wider you open it, the more inclusive you are. Period. So include everything. Look right and left, near and far. Leave no inner stone unturned.

On this page I have noted narcissistic lapses as an example of something you might dislike seeing when you look inward, but narcissistic lapses are only the tip of the iceberg. You have to keep that spiritual eye open and aware as the entire parade of unwanted and disowned inner material goes by. That is, if you aspire to be inclusive. Do you? You do, right?

What might that inner eye see? Frankly, it will need to see everything. There won't be anything it doesn't see if you really keep it open. How could there be? Your humanity derives from the same bedrock as everyone's, and everything anyone can think or feel, ever, the good and the bad, the bad and the bad, the bad and the worst, it's all your inheritance too. In full. Every bit of it. Every single bit. No exceptions. Inclusiveness. Yes!

Of course, there are things you won't like to see. There are things you will try to see without entitlement to them. There are things you will repeatedly run away from. There are things you will blame on other people. However you respond becomes the next call to true inclusiveness. Did you blame someone for something? Now include that sometimes you blame.

That's how true inclusiveness works. If, in the example of blaming others, you practice true inclusiveness, seeing and accepting about yourself that you're that human, that you lapse into the blame game in spite of yourself, at least now and then, like everyone else, the most wonderful thing happens: you don't lapse that way as often. Your inclusiveness spontaneously externalizes.

Afterwards someone might do something truly blameworthy to you and you won't feel as much resentment or affront on account of it. You may not feel any. Maybe never again. Why? Because you own your own capacity and tendency to behave the same way as the blamer. You have included that tendency, first internally, and now somewhat effortlessly on the outside as well. That part takes care of itself, and graces you. You don't need a rule for it.

But only if you commit yourself to the inner work of true inclusiveness, only if you turn the spiritual eye inward whenever you need to, as often as you can, and try your best not to blanch at the view. I tell you from direct experience your response to hard material inside you will become the opposite of blanching. It will turn into satisfaction and you won't hate it so much that your inner world presents regular, sometimes repeated inconveniences in the name of true inclusiveness. You'll grow to like those inconveniences as growth moments. You'll participate in them more and more promptly until you never put them off, not to elude them anyway.

This transformation won't occur overnight, but it will occur—overnight. You won't change right away, but you will change—right away. On the outside you might continue to practice inclusiveness as you have been, or as you wanted to all along, but it won't be a practice anymore. You won't be practicing in the sense of getting ready for the real thing. You'll be the real thing. Your inclusiveness will be second nature. As long as you turn inward with it. If you do, it will grow on the outside without the need for buzzing about it, fanfare, particular effort, or rules.