A HYPOTHESIS OF EVERYTHING pt 1: YOU ARE HERE

CHAPTER 4

Your Highest Ideal

ideal: noun

1: a standard of perfection, beauty, or excellence

2: one regarded as exemplifying an ideal and often taken as a model for imitation

3: an ultimate object or aim of endeavor

Here is an example of what I mean by ideals. The final trilogy of the Star Wars saga introduced a gritty Force-sensitive scavenger girl named Rey – just Rey. She sought out the Jedi Master, Luke Skywalker, to not only return his lightsaber but also get trained in the ways of the Force. In the following episode, after Luke’s battle with Kylo Ren and sacrificing himself so that Rey and the others had time to escape, Rey turned to Luke’s sister, General (Princess) Leia, to continue her training.

Before being a General, Princess Leia and Han Solo had a son named Ben. After submitting to the Dark Side, Ben’s name became Kylo Ren as a shift of his ideal from the light side of the Force to the dark side. However, Ben was also the last of the Skywalker lineage.

In one of Kylo Ren and Rey’s confrontations, Kylo Ren told Rey that her parents abandoned her on a desert planet and sacrificed their lives to protect her from her grandfather, Emperor Palpatine, who founded the Empire. Rey was destined to carry the curse of the Palpatine name as the apparent source of the Force’s malicious, chaotic dark side. But it was clear that for Rey, the highest ideal in the universe resided in the name “Skywalker”.

After the destruction of the Emperor with the aid of the resurrected Ben Solo, Rey returned to her home world. When a local citizen asked, “What is your name?”

Rey answered, “My name is Rey.”

“Rey, who?” inquired the citizen.

An image of the ghosts or Luke and Leia appeared above the horizon of the desert, and Rey responded, “Rey SKYWALKER.” Thus, the title “The Rise of Skywalker” – the highest ideal adopted as a declaration of chosen identity.

Ideals as a distinction:

Let’s take a look at some of the things that are ideals for humans in random order:

Royalty positions are ideals – Queen, King, Prince, Princess, etc.

The Dalai Lama – as a title and name change.

Most tattoos represent ideals or memories of ideals.

The Buddha – as a title and name change from Siddhartha Gautama.

Money is an ideal. It is the most shared ideal on the planet.

Christ incarnate – self as the archetype of the Christ ideal.

Zodiac signs are ideals.

Monuments are symbols of ideals.

Patron Saints – more than 10,000 embodiments of ideals.

Religious titles – Priests, Cardinals, Bishops, Pope, etc.

Every Military Rank represents an ideal

Creating a possibility is creating an ideal.

Most artistic expressions reveal profound ideals.

Every job title is an ideal.

Any education/vocation degree/certificate is an ideal.

Hindu Gods are ideals – 33 million of them.

The Judaeo Christian God – name too sacred to speak and many other names to describe God.

Every god is an archetype of an ideal or set of ideals. 

New Year’s resolutions represent ideals of transformation.

“Professional” status – sports, music, acting, etc.

EVERY Superhero and Villain in books, movies, and comics are archetypes of ideals.

Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, etc. are titles for ideals.

The changing of names in the moment of enlightenment – Bible: Sarai becomes Sarah, Saul becomes Paul, Simon becomes Peter, Jacob becomes Israel plus similar representations in nearly every culture.

Every tribal initiation or coming of age celebration is a passage toward an ideal.

EVERY FEELING OR NOTION OF REGRET AND INSUFFICIENCY IS AGAINST A BACKDROP OF A DESIRED OR EXPECTED IDEAL

Books are ideals.

We turn some of our memories into ideals.

Fear structures/phobias are ideals for some people.

Everything we do and avoid doing may be concerning ideals or the exchange of ideals.

As babies, we are wired to develop by emulating whatever is presented as the ideal. The same is present in all of child development, such as language, walking, bantering, and socializing – everything.

Humanity cannot get enough of ideals. Ideals are pervasive in every age, class, and culture on the planet. It’s the essence of being human.

Your WORLD VIEW is an ideal – good or bad.

I was in my last year of wearing braces when I was a freshman in high school. The orthodontist’s office was in Dodge City, Kansas. The small town where I lived was about 55 miles directly east. My appointment in February of that year was on a school day. Although we were warned about wind gusts blowing across the snow-packed highway, Mom made a judgment call that we could get to my appointment if we left more than an hour early and drove slowly. Kansas is as flat as the movies let you imagine, and all of the roads are predictably straight and boring. There is a slight direction change about 15 miles before Dodge City, where the road curves right toward the northwest and then corrects itself westward about a half-mile further.

As our large, 15-passenger white van entered the curve, mom compensated for allowing more room for a passing farm tractor with a snowplow blade attached. One of the grooves left in the road by heavy semi-trucks threw us back into our lane and directly toward the snowplow. We hit the snowplow at an angle, but the added obtuse angle of the blade pushed us into a perpendicular trajectory toward the opposite guard rail.

Our van predated federal requirements for shoulder belts and legal requirements to wear any seatbelt. I don’t know if we even attached our lap belts. Upon impact with the guard rail, mom flew through the front windshield breaking her right leg and multiple ribs and badly bruising the rest of her body. I was sitting shotgun in the passenger seat and ducked. The right side of my head was fractured by hitting the passenger door near the handle when we glanced off the snowplow. And the impact of the guard rail resulted in a lot of swelling on the back of my skull. My sister Susan was lying down in the back bench seat and ended up on the floorboard in front of the driver seat with a badly sprained ankle.

I passed out but was choking on my tongue. Susan was aware enough to crawl over to me and reach into my mouth to dislodge my tongue so that I could breathe. Of course, I bit down hard on her fingers and nearly broke them.

 The ambulance from 15 miles away took us back to the Dodge City emergency room. Fortunately, one of the best doctors in Kansas for the injuries that Mom sustained was also there at the hospital. Because my injuries required a skilled neurologist, I was prepped for transport 150 miles away to Wesley Hospital in Wichita, Kansas.

I don’t remember anything about that day. Everything about this story is details that others have told me. My memory picks up again about two weeks later. The bits and pieces I remember were a gift of a tennis racket anticipating my first tennis season in high school. And I definitely remember when my urinary catheter being pulled out.

Mom was in the Dodge City hospital many days, and Dad stayed and attended to her as he could. I think that my sisters took turns to see me as well. I was released a couple of weeks after the accident to go home.

As I remember it, a generous individual gave us a hospital bed so that mom could spend her time in a body cast at home. Mom’s right femur shattered and required a plate and ten screws. She was in and out of the body cast for a year and a half as she kept dislodging pins trying to get back to normal too soon. Mom almost died in the accident. There were times that she begged for death under the excruciating pain. This wasn’t a perfect alternative by any stretch of the imagination. But it was an alternative that was effective to make us a strong and solid family and a mother that was alive and still with us. Mom learned to walk again and resumed teaching for three more years.

My mind seemed fuzzy for several weeks after being released from Wesley Hospital, and the part of my brain that processed math, which I loved, took years to return. My algebra teacher spent many hours with me after school, but I think the passing grade I received at the end of the semester was out of mercy. My sisters said that the neurologist’s prognosis of the damage to my head was that if I didn’t die, I would be mentally retarded the rest of my life – whatever “retarded” means today in the PC culture. Well, the good news is that I didn’t die. 😛

My family was part of a large community that believed in the power of prayer. You know the stereotypical little old ladies who have their prayer lists. Well, I was on their list. I know that I was on my mom’s list too. I’ve witnessed her suffer severely on several occasions, but she never missed a day of praying for each of her children – ever.

I’m not sure that anyone remembers every detail of their life four decades ago, but in my memory, the rest of my 16th year is spotty at best. Teresa told me that after school, members of my family would ask me what I had learned or remembered from the day, and it was rare for me to recall anything. My short term memory took a beating in the accident. My brain was doing its best to rebuild neural pathways, and I worked on having a positive attitude. I needed to create as much stress-free space for healing as possible.

One memory is still very vivid. Enough time passed after the accident for me to get the impact of Mom’s injuries. All of the energy and effort that our family could muster was required to ease her pain and help her heal. It was the evening of a chilly school day that one of my sisters informed me that the doctor found a cancerous lump on one of Mom’s breasts. It was dark outside and late enough that there was no traffic on our street in the town of 600 people. We lived across from the high school. The K-8 building was about 100 yards to the north and a baseball field 100 yards beyond that. I don’t know how many times I paced down to the end of that street and back, sobbing in confusion/frustration/anger that my saintly mother would be afflicted with cancer. Beyond all odds, she barely survived the brutal accident, and now she’s going to die of something like cancer? “GOD! How can you let this happen?!” It was all I could utter through my tears, over and over again.

The biopsy of the lump proved benign, but the trauma on my soul did something big.

I created my worldview. Yes, the refining fire of struggle and suffering brought my entire family closer together. But that fire also gave me three of my deepest values. 

1. YOU HARVEST WHAT YOU PLANT (reap what you sow) – always. That might have been my teenage Christian take on karma. Whatever you put into the world, that’s what you’ll get in return. I think that it is irrefutable. It’s the same with what we consume physically, emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually. “Garbage in, garbage out.” “Good in, good out.” There’s an illustrative verse in the New Testament of the Bible. Luke 6:45 “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good, and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.”

2. BE CONSISTENT. My missionary kid upbringing conflated the words “integrity” and “morality.” The term “consistent” was the best I could come up with to meet the definition of what I now understand as the correct meaning of “integrity.” Live life consistently. I didn’t have to be predictable, but I had to be true to my values in a way that people around me knew that I wouldn’t waver from those values. Have I been consistent all my life? Hell no. I’ve messed up a lot and often. But I still know who I am and what I believe. It is a standard or ideal that I can restore when I fall or take myself out of the picture.

3. “NO ONE IS IMMUNE” – Be careful when you think you have it all together and when you feel you are more “right” than others. Being humble as in knowing who you are, being alert, and not asserting entitlement out of arrogance, will save your life.

The language around these values has changed and expanded, but the core world view has remained the same for decades. And adding a practice of gratitude has made life more fulfilling and fun.

So, what is the lesson? You’re surrounded by values and ideals. Pick one or two or three. Make them your own. Create your world view and have something solid on which to stand. Your age doesn’t matter. I know people who are late in life and still don’t know what to believe. I was 16.

What I see universally in the pattern of ideals is that we respond in one of three ways when we lose or abuse it.

I’m using the Genesis serpent event and the Cain and Abel story in Chapters Two through Four as an illustration of it, but nearly every story and myth in our world has these elements as related to an ideal.

1. You are confronted with the loss of the ideal and refuse to be responsible for self-marginalizing. Such as Adam and Eve – “It’s HER fault.” “It’s the serpent’s fault.” Not only is the avoidance of responsibility evident, but the result is also identifying a community to which you can find validation for marginalizing like Adam+Eve=identity group of outcasts. A victim mentality is present, and your life opens up to whatever hell comes with it.

How do we see that today? New letters/symbols added to our gender ID chain, but this is one of the thousands of new groups created as we marginalize from our ideal. Note that I don’t use the word “acceptance” into the formed identity group because I don’t see evidence that true acceptance is essential but validation? Definitely.

2. You can do what Cain did. Cain didn’t make an excuse. He flat out lied about killing Abel. The distance of self-marginalizing from your highest ideal is profound when confronted by shame. The “Cain” response is to kill or destroy “being” itself, but if you can’t kill others, the only alternative is to kill yourself.

3. You can RESTORE your ideal. The only practical instruction on how to do that from what I see is stated in 2 Chronicles 7:14 of the Bible. “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” 

You can filter out your “personal God” opinion, paradigm, or myth and apply this to your highest ideal. At one point, you have identified yourself with your highest ideal in such a way that you are the embodiment of that ideal, if my people, which are called by my name,” ie. “Skywalker”. The mandate is to humble yourself, pray, and seek again your highest ideal. Quit doing all of the things that are distracting you, such as your coping mechanisms for managing the pain of your shame. Your ideal will return to you and restore you and heal the entire context of your life.

In Star Wars, Kylo Ren killed his father, Han Solo, and his Jedi Master uncle Luke Skywalker. Rey and Kilo Ren were in a passionate battle to the death when the presence of his mother, Leia, vanished into the force as she died. Stricken with emptiness and sadness in the moment of his mother’s passing, Rey took the opportunity to inflict a fatal wound. In a rare moment of clarity between them, Rey infused her healing force into Kilo Ren and saved him from death. After Rey rushed away to return to her friends, a manifestation of Han Solo appeared to Kilo Ren. 

Han: “Hey, kid.” Long pause. “I miss you, son.”

Kylo Ren: “Your son is dead.”

Han: “No. (pause) Kylo Ren is dead. My son is alive.”

Kylo Ren: “You’re just a memory.”

Han: “YOUR memory. (pause) Come home.”

Kylo Ren: “It’s too late. (pause) She’s gone.”

Han: “Your MOTHER is gone. But what she stood for, what she fought for – that’s not gone. (pause) Ben.”

Kylo Ren: “I don’t want to have to do it. I don’t know if I have the strength to do it.”

Han reaches out with his left hand and puts it on his son’s cheek. “You do.”

Ben grasps his lightsaber and raises it a little. “Dad.”

Han: “I know.”

Ben turns and throws his lightsaber as far as he can into the abyss of the stormy sea. He turns again to see that his father has vanished yet appears resolutely restored as the son of Skywalker.

Adam and Eve could have done that, but ENTITLEMENT took over. That’s why I say that entitlement is a fucking life stealer. As much as we sugar-coat it, I promise you that the feeling of being entitled or the perceived fact of entitlement will never be a source of inner happiness. I am serious about this. I firmly believe that entitlement is the poison of the cosmos and the curse of humanity. It will always keep you just out of reach from your highest ideal.

But there’s a risk in following your ideal with all of your heart. People will want to destroy you or kill you. And it’s usually the people in the second response category that want to kill their own ideal that you represent as Cain did to Abel, and the masses did to Jesus.

Notice the villain archetype of familiar stories. The hero represents the ideal that was once belonged to the villain, but it got lost and now the hero is the one who must be destroyed like the Green Goblin in his quest to kill Spiderman. In ordinary life, you do kill the hero, and the ideal dies with it, but that’s not the ending you want. You want your ideal to win and live forever. These are my favorite stories. I don’t watch any other kinds of movies. I still gasp with emotion at the moment of redemption and reconnecting, especially when even the villain comes to their senses and turns from evil to embrace the good, like Kylo Ren or Harry Osborn in Spiderman 3. It’s the most popular story in the world. How do I know this? We spend the most money at the box office for this storyline. These movies are the most watched on streaming video services.

In this model of consideration, you can reverse engineer it as well. Your coping mechanism or addiction is in response to a loss of your highest ideal. What victim conversations are you using to avoid responsibility for being the one that initiated the separation from your ideal? What entitlement is in place to keep you separated? That same entitlement convinces you that it is the IDEAL that cast YOU away, and you will never be more than a victim of it. If you can identify your highest ideal, humble yourself. Deny your entitlement. Use your language to make an effort for restoration. Seek it. Lean into it. Begin to push away the structures you have in place to make you feel comfortable, justified, and distracted from your highest ideal. I promise you, something big will happen. It will occur to you that your ideal has heard you and forgiven you. It will restore you to itself, and you will see how the context of your life heals and thrives.

Take a good look. What is your highest ideal? Start there.

You may not have a clue about your highest ideal. That’s OK. Pick SOMETHING. Add it to your conversations. Take deliberate actions. If it is not your highest ideal, your highest ideal will begin to surface. Search for what calls your inner hero into action. There will be evidence of contribution and passion and will include noticeable elements of love and truth. When it is in clear view, embrace it, and keep going forward with your conversations and actions.