Game on!

The “Through-line Thread” to IT ALL!

Paradoxical Practice #1: Don’t Care (about how things turn out).

Paradoxical Practice #2: Doubt (Question even your own firmly held beliefs for what they are—beliefs).

Paradoxical Practice #3: Have No Hope (Cultivate actionable faith and “response-ability.” Living hope-free!)

These have been my intentional practices of late—paradoxicals because they tend to run counter to everything we’ve been taught about how to be cheery, optimistic, caring people. I mean, who would really want to be close friends with someone who doesn’t care, doubts everything, and has no hope? Because we are polite people (well, okay, your point taken about who we USED to be as a people) who want ultimately to belong, we council others and raise our own children to have pride by caring how things turn out; by believing in the values and tenets of “our in-group/our unshakeable beliefs” even if doing so creates an “out-group;” and by always, always maintaining hope for brighter futures.

As humans, we are also creatures of habits which makes paradoxes what they are:

Seeing the “true” nature of any paradox means we need a way, counter to habit, of seeing its “well-foundedness.” As I was encountering, then exploring, and ultimately incorporating these three practices into my life, I was fortunate to be given a way to “do them” that made everything make total sense.

It was the essential thread I needed for my life that seamlessly wove each paradoxical strand into a meaningful and profound mosaic of color, texture, nuance, beauty, truth, goodness, and wholeness. And turns out it is the simplest, most difficult thing, to consistently do.

But it requires we do something we don’t like to do.

The Through-line Thread

Photo by Grégoire Hervé-Bazin on Unsplash

I guess all spiritual teachings, from all of our historical exemplars (Lao Tzu, Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus, etc.), boils down to helping us become the best versions of ourselves that we can be. This is why we have The Tao Te Ching, The Koran, The Talmud, The Bible, The Heart Sutra, The Zen Precepts, The Ten Commandments, The Beatitudes, and on and on and on. So many different threads to get us to the same place. Each, and many more, point the way to what the authors of those texts intended for us to realize: ie, the “better angels of our nature.” They try to do so by using these millions of words, these thousands of threads, handed down to us as “Their Way.”

I credit the contemporary teacher Michael Singer for giving me the through line I needed that wove everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, together into a simple weave. In fact, Singer reduces ALL of spirituality, all of spiritual growth, to this one Way of Being—simple in its phrasing; profound in its meaning; complex enough to take a lifetime to master:

“Bring your best game to this moment.”

Singer teaches:

It is always the highest thing you can do, to harmonize with the moment that is unfolding in front of you. This goes for business, it goes for relationships, it goes for sports, it goes for [marriages and parenting and education and driving down the highway and buying groceries and growing a garden and walking and cooking]. It’s the most natural thing in the world, be present in the moment and bring your best game to raise that moment to the best of your ability. That’s all you can do; that’s the highest thing you can do and it will end up with the highest results that can possibly happen. You don’t need to worry about it, you don’t need to think about it, you don’t need to feel guilt or shame…nothing. You just, in the current moment, you bring your best game. What’s your best game? It starts with honoring and respecting the moment that’s in front of you, period. Not just accepting, that’s not even enough. Loving. Gratitude. Grateful that I get to have this experience, and be that way with every single moment of my life. THAT’s the highest life you can live.

As a former competitive athlete, this immediately resonated. The best coaches teach how to be excellent at one’s craft. Not for the goal of winning the competition, or being first, or coming out on top by defeating all others (note I said “best” coaches—those who coach to win don’t fully get it, nor are they necessarily included among “the best.”). No. The wins, if they come, are happy consequences of bringing one’s best game. The best coaches teach excellence, not perfection mind you, but EXCELLENCE—to be the best version of themselves they can be REGARDLESS of outcomes. Outcomes always take care of themselves (see paradoxical practice #1!), that’s the nature of life and reality. You’ll hear this every now and then from a coach: “If we play like we are capable of playing, if we do our job, the game will take care of itself.”

Now, in sports, it just so happens there’s another team or individual on the other side doing their best to be their best too. So, most of the time, someone will win and someone will lose. What does a great team do when they lose even when they did their best? They don’t throw a tantrum or blame the referees or consider the other side cheated. They won’t even get sad or depressed for long after a hard-fought loss (if they really did play at their best!). The best players or teams, with a standard of personal excellence, analyze what went well, what didn’t go well, learn from both, and then make effort to do better the next time. Singer himself makes a sports analogy of a golfer. The golfer goes up to the tee expecting to hit a long, straight drive right down the middle of the fairway. That would be the result of being the best tee shot golfer they could be—or so it’s thought. That happens, sometimes (though rarely for me when I played). Here’s where the teaching becomes real: A golfer who brings their best game to the moment won’t, therefore, throw a tantrum or throw their club when the drive is shanked and sliced into the rough amidst a stand of trees six inches from being out of bounds. Instead, they become the best “in the rough, out of the trees” golfer they can be in that moment, the one that happened to follow the “at the tee” moment. So each swing, each play, each serve, each down, each race, each at bat, can bring a tremendous amount of joy because each becomes the next moment to bring your best game, no matter how the previous one went. The previous one is no longer—it’s gone, it’s in the past. It has no bearing (other than the one the mind and ego might want to bring) to this next moment.

This isn’t a subtle or insignificant thing, because this, obviously, transcends athletics. It’s about doing the best you can for the pure enjoyment of doing the best you can, period. Everything else takes care of itself. Because even when an outcome is not desired, or a hope is not fulfilled, or you lose, you simply bring your very best to that next moment.

Period.

Why would you ask anything more or different of yourself?

Consider your own game

Play along with me here—even though I’m no one’s guru and you should always consider everything you read or learn through your own experience. So why not pick one of your experiences? Choose a role you want to be good at: Parent? Grandparent? Daughter or son? Sibling? Spouse? Activist? Colleague? Teacher? Boss? Employee? Health care provider? First responder? Custodian? Front desk clerk? Small business owner? Substack blogger? Volunteer? Neighbor? Retiree? American citizen? Choose them all if you want.

How can you be the best THAT that you can be? And what would that do for you, and all those in your world, if you brought your best game to each moment?

Singer extends this thinking, practically, to the role of being a parent:

So many people make it so anxious to bring up a child. “Oh my god, what do I do [in this specific situation: toileting, in the face of tantrums, teething, colicking, adolescenting…].” Oh it’s the most natural thing in the world: be present in the moment with each stage the child is going through and bring your best game. NOT for you: “Oh I wanted him to be a lawyer because I was never…” Oh, don’t you dare do that. You just come into the moment with your child, try to hear what they’re saying [either verbally or by their behavior], you try to see what they’re going through, and you try to see how you can raise that moment to the best of your ability. That’s all you can do; that’s the highest thing you can do and it will end up with the highest results that can happen. It can’t not. That’s how reality works.

The same applies to each and every other role we play, in each and every moment we have in front of us. No matter the role or the moment or the context in which the moment comes (peacetime, wartime, post-election time, job interview time, contract negotiation time, time to decide on dinner time, teacher/parent conference time, babysitting time, budgeting time, staff meeting time, zoom meeting time…ANY time.), do the best you can in the moment that arises, then be done with it, because the next moment is already here. In fact, get rid of all the roles you play, and the exact same applies! When I strip away all my roles (because we are NOT our roles!), I’m left with just being human. BEING human. What is my best game for Just Being Human?

For me, I think about this, now, all the time. When I get up in the pre-dawn morning, I think about how to bring my best to that quiet and dark moment upon waking. When I’m making our morning lattes, I think about bringing my best “making our morning latte” game to that moment. When I’m gardening, mowing the lawn, driving to the grocery store, paying for the groceries, cooking meals, reading, writing, texting with friends or family, scrolling the internet, passing a neighbor, being physically present to the people, places and things in each of my moments, if I’m at my best in the midst of those moments, I’m bringing my best. This has helped me deepen another important practice in my life concerning the sacredness of the approach as taught by a dear teacher of mine, John O’Donohue:

“What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practiced careful rituals of approach. And encounter and spirit was preceded by careful preparation.

“When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.”

~ From John O’donohue’s “Beauty: The Invisible Embrace”

That’s a wonderful O’Donohue definition of “bringing your best game to this moment.”

So…paradoxes?

Turns out then, in the end, there are no paradoxes in this time of Now, this place of Here. How can there be? Bringing my best game, doing the best I can in each moment to elevate the moment, makes everything else—all desires, all hopes, all potential futures, all worries about the past, all attachments—irrelevant. If I know in any given situation I did the best I could, I have no right, despite what my ego might tell me otherwise, to any other better, predetermined, “hoped for,” or desired outcome or more ideal future moment. I will always get the outcome that comes. How do I know this? Because this is all that’s ever happened. So why NOT bring one’s best game to each moment? Well…about that…

I said the following at the start: “And turns out it is the simplest, most difficult thing, to consistently do.”

We are only human, and as humans, we fail to live up to even our own standards at times. So bringing our best requires commitment, intentionality, energy, mindfulness, and awareness of all situations that require we bring our best. Which means, again, EACH moment that arises in front of us! Can you name a moment not worthy of your best? I choose not to have moments like that—I’m wanting to believe I’m better than that. Even when no one else is around to watch and judge, one person always is…me.

I also said this: “But it requires we do something we don’t like to do.”

This “bringing our best game to each moment” requires honest, sometimes raw, self-reflection. And human nature has taught me humans are not prone naturally to self-reflect in an honest way. We certainly don’t like it pointed out to us by others when we’ve not met a standard of “satisfactory,” let alone “excellence.” And it’s too easy to deceive ourselves when attempting to be honest with ourselves about our own conduct. Most of us don’t like the feeling of not meeting our own standards of behavior—so we compromise, justify, blame, and explain away why we couldn’t be at our best. “It wasn’t our fault anyway.” [Note to self: it is NEVER anyone else’s responsibility!]

When I’m at my worst, I know I didn’t bring my best game. And sometimes the darker angels of my nature surface all too quickly. When they do, if I’m committed to bringing my best, I MUST reflect upon those moments and ask myself: “Was that my best?” “What should I do differently the next time to be even better?” “How can I learn to do that?”

How I know when I’m not bringing my best game to a moment (my red flags):

I…

• Get upset about something

• Worry

• Worry forward

• Have regret

• Get annoyed

• Multitask

• Am not fully present

• Blame

• Complain

• Wish something was different

• Am unprepared

• Suffer

• Am insincere

• Am closed-hearted

• Am selfish

• Am too focused on doing

• Rush

• Become scatter-brained

• Gasp

• Panic

• Am Unsympathetic

• Am rigid

• Am Ungrateful

• Am Unkind

• Am Disingenuous

• Am Dishonest

• Forget that me at my best means to bring my best to this moment

Perhaps you get the picture.

I’m more likely to be on my best game when I’m:

• Happy

• Joyful

• Kind

• Calm

• Friendly

• Compassionate

• Serving others

• Courteous

• Deliberate

• Intentional

• Mindful and aware

• Breathing

• Open-hearted

• Focused on Being

• Grateful

• Generous

• Teaching

• Practicing

• Prepared

• Spacious

Perhaps you get the picture here too.

The Moral of the Story?

Well…t’s my story. How relevant this is to yours is your own Alchemy. We are endowed with will and agency, we humans are. We have the power to choose our way in life. And I’ve found bringing my best game to each moment is simply a way of Being. It’s a choice. I’m not so sure it’s a practice anymore. It’s not something I’m “doing” anymore—it’s more aspirational than that. Bringing my best game is not about “doing anything.” It’s something I’m trying to Be: an incarnated Soul on this planet with the mission of being the absolute best Kert that Kert can be in each moment that arises in front of him.

When you commit to living a life in which you bring your best game to each moment, all practices, let alone the paradoxical ones, take care of themselves. In essence then, there are no paradoxes and therefore no paradoxical practices. This is why Michael Singer calls this “the entire ballgame! Bringing your best game to each moment IS the highest calling in any spiritual endeavor. In fact, it’s the ALL of spirituality.”

But…

There is a provocative aspect to this and I’m wondering if it’s popped into your mind as it has mine. I won’t take time to explore this now, but I think it to be an essential component of relationships, especially our post-election relationships with each other, that really calls into play the nature of Truth and a shared, common understandings of what is truly true, beautiful, and good. At one point in our history, maybe not all that long ago (maybe as close as 9 years ago), I thought we held some semblance of commonality on the nature of such essential things. Now, I’m not so sure. But we need to—we cannot come back together in unity without it. It can be summed up, I think, in one question:

“Is my best game the same as yours?”

I have an answer. But now is not the time.

---

I am here now, living this authentic life of excellence by bringing my best game to this moment.

Where are you?

Live, Laugh, and Love—with Clear Eyes and Full Hearts,

Always and Ubuntu,

~ kert

And with Ahimsa!

🙏🏼

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you are so inclined, you can hear Michael Singer himself give two brief teachings on this, and a little more. This one just over 6 minutes here; and this one just over 21 minutes here. Both are wonderful and I listen to both on a regular basis—the best teachings deserve to be learned multiple times over the course of multiple moments. That’s also an example of bringing my best game.