تمرین ششم

THE SIXTH PRACTICE

Rule Number 6

Two prime ministers are sitting in a room discussing affairs of state. Suddenly a man bursts in, apoplectic with fury, shouting and stamping and banging his fist on the desk. The resident prime minister admonishes him: “Peter,” he says, “kindly remember Rule Number 6,” whereupon Peter is instantly restored to complete calm, apologizes, and withdraws. The politicians return to their conversation, only to be interrupted yet again twenty minutes later by an hysterical woman gesticulating wildly, her hair flying. Again the intruder is greeted with the words: “Marie, please remember Rule Number 6.” Complete calm descends once more, and she too withdraws with a bow and an apology. When the scene is repeated for a third time, the visiting prime minister addresses his colleague: “My dear friend, I’ve seen many things in my life, but never anything as remarkable as this. Would you be willing to share with me the secret of Rule Number 6?” “Very simple,” replies the resident prime minister. “Rule Number 6 is ‘Don’t take yourself so goddamn seriously.’” “Ah,” says his visitor, “that is a fine rule.” After a moment of pondering, he inquires, “And what, may I ask, are the other rules?” “There aren’t any.”

BEN: I am often invited to give talks on leadership in various settings, and in one instance, I told the Rule Number 6 story to a group of executives at a company in Europe. Several months later, when I returned to that city, I dropped by their headquarters and was invited into the president’s office. There I was very surprised to see on the desk a plaque facing toward the president’s chair, inscribed with the words, Remember Rule Number 6.

The president then informed me that a similar plaque now stood on the desks of every manager in the company, with the inscription facing both ways. He said that the climate of cooperation and collegiality that had resulted from this one simple act had transformed the corporate culture.

THE PRACTICE OF this chapter is to lighten up, which may well light up those around you.

It is not about telling other people not to take themselves so seriously, unless your whole group, like the company above, has voluntarily adopted the practice. But you can tell this joke, or any other, in the midst of a tense situation as an invitation to camaraderie. Humor and laughter are perhaps the best way we can “get over ourselves.” Humor can bring us together around our inescapable foibles, confusions, and miscommunications, and especially over the ways in which we find ourselves acting entitled and demanding, or putting other people down, or flying at each other’s throats.

Dear Ben,

You’ve taught me the different roles humor can play in working with people, relaxing, empowering, freshening. I can remember one rehearsal, close to a December concert, when we were trying to prepare Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra for the performance. It was not going well. I think that many of us, including myself, had taken some standardized test earlier that day, in addition to other rehearsals and coachings in the afternoon. I know that I was mentally exhausted, and we all kept missing notes and entrances. “Take it straight through the second movement,” you said to us, “and NO MISTAKES.” I don’t know about anyone else, but all my muscles tensed, and I wanted nothing more than to run away and crawl into a hole. You must have sensed this, because you thought a moment and then said, “If you make a mistake … a five-hundred-pound cow will fall on your head.” Partly from the image, and partly from the complete surprise of hearing that word out of your mouth, we all began to laugh, and everything was better, including the Bartok. I don’t think anything could have relaxed or empowered me more at that moment than the word “cow.” —Kate Bennett, from her final white sheet as a graduating member of the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra REMEMBERING Rule Number 6 can help us distinguish (and hold at some remove) the part of ourselves that developed in the competitive environment of the “measurement world.” For the sake of discussion, we’ll call it our calculating self. One of its chief characteristics, as we shall see, is that it lobbies to be taken very seriously indeed. When we practice Rule Number 6, we coax this calculating self to lighten up, and by doing so we break its hold on us.

THE CALCULATING SELF

This calculating self is concerned for its survival in a world of scarcity. Its voice, the voice of Peter or Marie, is a version of the one that announced our arrival here on earth with wails and cries, and then learned to smile coyly or stamp its foot to say, “Take note of me.” A child is an exquisite attention-getting device, designed to sound an alarm at the first indication that he will be forgotten or relegated to a position where he does not count. He needs the care and attention of strong, competent people to make it through, and nature obliges by endowing him with enough fear and aggression to stimulate him to hold on fiercely to sources of viability. His education in the ways of relationship sets him the primary task of understanding hierarchy, assessing where the power is, and learning what he must do to be accepted. A child’s ability to control his position and the attention of others is critical, much more important than control is for the average adult on an average day.

Frank Sulloway, a former research scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, suggests that we think of “personality” as a strategy for “getting out of childhood alive.” 1 Each child in a family stakes out her own territory of attention and importance by developing certain aspects of her character into “winning ways.” One child may be sociable and outgoing, another may be quiet and thoughtful, but both are aimed at the same thing: to find a safe and identifiable niche in the family and the community and to position themselves to survive. Anxiety regulates behavior and alerts the child to the dangers of being one-down, unattended to, or at a loss.

The survival mechanisms of the child have a great deal in common with those of the young of other species, save for the fact that children learn to know themselves. They grow up in a medium of language and have a long, long time to think. A child comes to think of himself as the personality he gets recognition for or, in other words, as the set of patterns of action and habits of thought that get him out of childhood in one piece. That set, raised to adulthood, is what we are calling the calculating self. The prolonged nature of human childhood may contribute to the persistence of these habits long after their usefulness has passed.

No matter how confident or well-positioned this adult self appears, underneath the surface it is weak and sees itself as marginal, at risk for losing everything. The alertness to position that was adaptive at an earlier time in an individual’s life—and in the history of our species—is still conceptually operative in later years and keeps signaling to the self that it must try to climb higher, get more control, displace others, and find a way in. Fortunately, the perception of what “in” is, and where it is located, is likely to vary between individuals and groups. Long after any real vestiges of childhood threats remain, this built-in alarm system exaggerates danger in order to insure its life.

In our talks, we portray the calculating self as a ladder with a downward spiral. The ladder refers to the worldview that life is about making progress, striving for success, and positioning oneself in the hierarchy. The downward spiral represents, among other things, the slippage that occurs when we try to control people and circumstances to give ourselves a boost. When this leads to conflict, we are likely to think that we have run up against difficult people and have learned an important lesson. We become more hard-headed and practical. Inevitably our relationships spiral downward. As the calculating self tumbles out of control, it intensifies its efforts to climb back up and get in charge, and the cycle goes round and round.

How do we learn to recognize the often-charming, always-scheming, sometimes-anxious, frequently conniving calculating self? One good way is to ask ourselves, What would have to change for me to be completely fulfilled?

The answer to this question will clue us in to the conditions our calculating self finds threatening or even intolerable, and we may see that our zeal to bring about change may benefit from a lighter touch. The intolerable condition may be a place or a situation, but very often it is another person.

THE BEST SEX EVER

ROZ: For several years I have been running an “accomplishment program,” where people meet regularly in groups for coaching on the completion of individual projects. The nature of these projects can vary widely, from starting a business, to designing a complex Web site, to working through a difficult relationship. But the intent of the accomplishment program is larger than the achievement of specific goals. It is about living life in the realm of possibility.

Over the course of each week, the participants define and follow through on three steps that will take them toward their goals. They can adjust the steps to any size as they go along, so it is virtually impossible to fail. In addition, the whole group is invited to play a common game designed to awaken creativity and highlight the obstructive nature of the calculating self. People often discover that the lessons they learn while playing the games are the very tools they use to make their projects, and their lives, leap ahead.

One game I frequently assign comes in the form of “Have the Best___Ever.” This is to encourage people to create an experience that is extraordinarily satisfying regardless of the circumstances around them. So, for example, if the game is “Have the Best Meal Ever,” it does not say to eat a lot, or to go to an expensive restaurant. It does not say “Do the things that you think are the most likely to get you to your goal.” The instructions say, “Have it. Be fulfilled.” Often, that means becoming aware of the fears, opinions, and positions your calculating self has adopted that stand in the way of simple fulfillment. If you can remember Rule Number 6 during the game, you may have a straighter run at ventures that will really make a difference in your life.

I presented this game to one of the accomplishment groups after we had been working together for several months, and I gave them the choice, collectively, to fill out the phrase, so they could set the ante for themselves. Together they decided that “sex” was the only word in the entire English language worth putting in the blank. So, “Have the Best Sex Ever” became the game of the week.

One member of the group was not happy about the choice, although she went along with the others. June had left her husband, Mark, earlier in the year after a long struggle to change him. She had found it necessary to erect strong boundaries between herself and this charismatic, energetic, and self-absorbed man, and she wasn’t about to back down. “Mark’s not going to change,” she kept telling us, but it was she we were interested in. We reminded her that she could interpret the instructions any way she wanted. In the absence of an intimate partner, perhaps a metaphorical interpretation of “sex” was a way to move ahead. After all, the instructions said, “Have the Best Sex Ever,” not, “Have a miserable time against your will with a raging narcissist.” June was meticulous enough about her participation in the group to want to give the game a try, though none of us had a clue as to how she would proceed. What would she discover about herself? We had learned to trust the mysterious power of play.

And, of course, I wouldn’t be telling this tale if June hadn’t appeared the next week looking radiant. This is her story: June went on a three-day business retreat and, as is the practice in our group, gave another member, Ann, permission to coach her by telephone as she tackled the assignment. Ann was warming to the game in her relationship with Joe, while June described herself as a royal pain, protesting that the instruction to “Have the Best Sex Ever” was both immoral and entirely unsuitable for a woman in her position.

“But Ann kept reminding me that our agreement was at the very least to give the game a try, whether we were successful or not. I hadn’t yet imagined who would be my partner, because I thought my husband was the last man on earth I would go near. But I was shocked to discover that as soon as I really let myself think about it, I knew he would be the one.” The group got very quiet, as though any careless gesture would topple this fragile construction.

“And then I remembered Rule Number 6 and I asked myself, ‘What would have to change to make this possible?’ And, of course, I came up with the usual answer that he would have to change, he would have to stop being so self-centered.” June looked around, with a mischievous smile, “We’re all in agreement, aren’t we, that Mark has a narcissistic personality disorder, and will never change?” No one knew what to say. June laughed.

I realized I had been taking myself pretty goddamn seriously. “Why can’t you have the Best Sex Ever with a self-centered guy?” I said to myself. “Lighten up.” It was strange. Suddenly Mark’s self-absorption got disentangled from the idea of making love. I realized that I’d always been enormously attracted to guys who are self-absorbed and passionate about what they do. I had this sense, in that fraction of a moment, that it was possible … making love, fully making love with such a man was of course possible. After all, it had been once. This realization in itself was so interesting, so new, that for a moment I felt daring enough to go to a pay phone … I called him, and this was very difficult because it was like saying I was wrong and he was right. My pride kept flaring up, I felt very nervous, and a little crazy because I didn’t recognize myself. I was hoping he wouldn’t be home, but of course he was. And it turned out that it was easy to talk to him, even though we hadn’t spoken for quite a while. I told him about the game. And after an awkward silence, I added the other half of the invitation. “I do think it would be a good idea if we made love.” He was so quiet that I got frightened the other way. I didn’t want to be rejected. And then he said, “This call must have taken a lot of courage to make.” I was at a loss for words. Where had this sensitivity come from, this empathy—in my self-centered mate? We agreed to have dinner at his place on Friday when I returned.

And then things began to change … I remember walking down a country road and being aware of everything … the smell of the grass, the shape of the riverbank … everything was sensual; it was as though nature was conspiring with the game. On the way into town I stopped at a fruit stand to buy dessert, and my eye was caught by flowers in a pail. I found myself arriving at the house Friday night carrying flowers in my hand! Through all my nervousness I had to laugh. Here I was, a once-decisive woman who had had the courage of her convictions to leave her husband—a man beyond repair—now bringing flowers to the scoundrel’s door. What a drama! Then we were both laughing and throwing caution to the winds. The evening we spent together was like a week’s vacation, but it was also like coming home.

We all looked at each other in disbelief. June had become so much more expressive, so much more human than we had ever seen her. Soon came the inevitable question. Someone asked, “But isn’t it important to make some decisions about people’s behavior, to set boundaries and stand firm for what you believe?” I answered, “Of course, but do you think that is what June was doing? I think she was hurt, plain and simple, as Mark overlooked her time and time again. And instead of revealing her hurt, she built up a case that Mark was dangerous, although he wasn’t a danger in any real sense at all. I think she felt more powerful as the judge, but the diagnosis she assigned to him stuck, and from there arose a story of a guy no one in their right mind could tolerate. When she asked herself, “What would have to change for me to be completely fulfilled?” June recognized her own calculating self in action. She stopped taking herself and her story so seriously, and suddenly was able to distinguish her husband from the diagnosis she had given him.” June added, “You know, I realized after that one amazing evening I could have walked away from the marriage, and Mark and I would have stayed the best of friends. I could have said, ‘I’d rather not,’ without feeling resigned or embattled. I finally had a choice.” BRINGING DREAMS TO NEWCASTLE

BEN: One summer I taught a master class at a festival in Newcastle, which was filmed by the BBC. One of the students in the class was a young tenor who had just landed a job at the prestigious La Scala Opera Company in Milan and everything about his demeanor said that we were to take his recent success very seriously indeed.

He was to sing “Spring Dream” (“Frülingstraum”), from Schubert’s Die Winterreise, a song cycle that describes the yearning depressive journey of a jilted lover through the cold days of the soul. In this song, the hero is dreaming of the flowers and meadows of a springtime past when he delighted in the warm embraces of his beloved. The gently lilting music conjures up blissful joy, blissful fulfillment. Suddenly a crow screams from the rooftops—he awakens and discovers it is dark and cold. Half in a dream, he mistakes the frost patterns on the window for flowers and asks, “Who painted those flowers there—when will they turn to green?” The answer comes to him: “When I have my loved one in my arms again.” But, despite the major key, we know from the dynamic markings and the shape of the phrasing that he will never get her back.

This music is some of the most intimate, soft, subtle, and delicate in the repertoire. It depends for its expression on an understanding of the nuances of sadness, vulnerability, and never-ending loss. But when Jeffrey began to sing, there was no trace of melancholy. Out poured a glorious stream of rich, resonant, Italianate sound. Pure Jeffrey, taking himself very seriously. How could I induce him to look past himself in order to become a conduit for the expressive passion of the music?

I began by asking him if he was willing to be coached. “Oh, I love to be coached,” he said breezily, though I doubt he had any idea of what was to follow. For forty-five minutes, I engaged in a battle royal, not with Jeffrey but with his pride, his vocal training, his need to look good, and the years of applause he had received for his extraordinary voice. As each layer was peeled away and he got closer and closer to the raw vulnerability of Schubert’s distraught lover, his voice lost its patina and began to reveal the human soul beneath. His body, too, began to take on a softened and rounded turn. At the final words, “When will I have my lover in my arms again?” Jeffrey’s voice, now almost inaudible, seemed to reach us through some other channel than sound. Nobody stirred—the audience, the players, the BBC crew—all of us were unified in silence. Then, finally, tremendous applause.

I thanked Jeffrey publicly for his willingness to give up his pride, his training, and his vocal accomplishment, and explained that our applause was for the sacrifice he had made to bring us to a place of understanding. “Whenever somebody gives up their pride to reveal a truth to others,” I told him, “we find it incredibly moving; in fact, we are all so moved that even the cameraman is crying.” I hadn’t actually looked in the direction of the camera; I was simply expressing my conviction that no one in the room could be left unmoved.

Later that evening, in the pub, the cameraman came up to me and asked how I had known he had been crying. He confessed that he hadn’t been able to see through his lens for his tears. “When I was sent on this job from London,” he said, shaking his head, “I had no idea that this music shit was about my life.” WHEN ONE PERSON peels away layers of opinion, entitlement, pride, and inflated self-description, others instantly feel the connection. As one person has the grace to practice the secret of Rule Number 6, others often follow. Now, with the calculating self revealed and humored, the central self shines through.

THE CENTRAL SELF

Inscribed on five of the six pillars in the Holocaust Memorial at Quincy Market in Boston are stories that speak of the cruelty and suffering in the camps. The sixth pillar presents a tale of a different sort, about a little girl named Ilse, a childhood friend of Guerda Weissman Kline, in Auschwitz. Guerda remembers that Ilse, who was about six years old at the time, found one morning a single raspberry somewhere in the camp. Ilse carried it all day long in a protected place in her pocket, and in the evening, her eyes shining with happiness, she presented it to her friend Guerda on a leaf. “Imagine a world,” writes Guerda, “in which your entire possession is one raspberry, and you give it to your friend.” Such is the nature of the central self, a term we use to embrace the remarkably generative, prolific, and creative nature of ourselves and the world.

If we were to design a new voyage to carry us from our endless childhood into the bright realm of possibility, we might want to steer away from a hierarchical environment and aim for the openness and reciprocity of a level playing field—away from a mind-set of scarcity and deficiency and toward an attitude of wholeness and sufficiency. We might even describe human development as the ongoing reconstruction of the calculating self toward the rich, free, compassionate, and expressive world of the central self.

Resolving Conflict through the Central Self

Since the calculating self is designed to look out for Number One, we are apt to find it in the driver’s seat wherever people are at an impasse, whether in politics, personal relationships (as in June’s story), or in the business world.

The practice of Rule Number 6 gives the facilitator in a negotiation a unique perspective. For the facilitator versed in this practice, conflict resolution is the art of paving the way for the parties’ central selves to take charge of the discussion. In other words, the role of the facilitator is to promote human development and transformation rather than to find a solution that satisfies the demands of the ever-present calculating selves. In the story that follows, the assumption was made that the two men’s calculating selves would each be plotting to win out over the other, pulling the conversation into the downward spiral, while their central selves would know a more direct route to a productive and collaborative solution.

THE INVENTOR AND THE MONEY MAN

ROZ: Two major partners of a medical research firm were deadlocked over their contract with each other, and every hour was bringing them closer to their financial demise. The younger of the partners, a man in his forties, happened to be sitting next to Ben on a flight from Boston to Dallas, and told him the story. Full of enthusiasm, Ben reached for the phone in the seatback ahead of him and dialed me up. “Oh good, I got you!” he said. “I’m sitting next to a wonderful man who has a problem, and I promised him you could solve it. Here, let me put him on.” The next thing I knew Ben had handed the phone to his new friend, and he and I were discussing our next step.

We met at the company’s offices at 9:30 the next Monday morning. It was obvious that the senior partner—a man in his early eighties and the company’s founder—was not happy to see me, and disinclined to submit this in-house matter to a consultant. He was demanding that the junior partner sign a contract agreeing to goals that the younger man thought were impossible to accomplish. The situation had turned into an ultimatum—sign the contract, or get out and lose your investment. No changes, no negotiation, no compromises. The senior partner told me in a dismissive tone that he had an important meeting at eleven o’clock. An hour and a half was all the time he would spend on the matter.

I took as my premise that each man recognized in his heart of hearts the exact way in which he was being adversarial, uncooperative, childish, bent on revenge, and out to save his own skin. At the same time I was pretty sure that each man was feeling entirely justified in such behavior given his partner’s actions. In other words, I operated under the assumption that each partner’s central self knew the workings of his calculating self. I intended to speak only to their two central selves.

Since it was the younger man who had asked for the consultation, I assumed that he felt he was losing the battle. So, relying on his trust and on the stake he had in the matter, I turned to the senior partner to tell me just what kind of a jerk—I might have used an even more colloquial term—his partner had been. The question was framed to draw out a description of the younger man’s calculating self in action, so we could see all the ways that the older man felt obstructed. The colloquial appellation I used was intended to indicate, however, that in line with Rule Number 6, this behavior was not to be taken too seriously.

And it poured out, how the younger partner had repeatedly promised and failed to raise a certain amount of money, how devious he had been, how he had falsified and shifted his story to suit his own needs. The senior partner suspected him of double-dealing, and he feared that his life’s work, his research on the product, was about to go down the drain because, so far, they lacked the funds to manufacture it in time to beat the competition to the market. It was a survival issue for the older man, because he identified himself so completely with the product of his labors.

Of course the younger man protested that these allegations were all untrue, and with each word he sent the senior partner into a fit of renewed exasperation.

In order to identify the primary issue blocking the older man’s cooperation, I asked him what irritated him most in his dealings with his partner. He gave me a straight answer, “That he lies to himself and to me.” I seized the opening to establish agreement between them about what had actually happened.

“Have you raised the money you said you would?” I asked the junior partner. He started to explain, and I stopped him.

“Yes or no?”

“No, but—”

“Look,” I said, “I have no doubt that you have all sorts of plans lined up, and that the money may be about to flow in. I don’t have any judgment about this. I only want to ascertain whether the money is in the bank now.” “No.”

“So on the surface, your partner, a man whose work you respect enormously, has reason to be apprehensive.” I was leaning toward him and speaking directly and intimately to the central self of the younger man. “This is his life’s work. He does not want it to disappear.” “Yes, I know.”

A common truth was told. The storm of combative energy subsided.

The next thing I wanted to find out was whether the central self of the older man thought it was best for the company that the junior partner stay or go. The central self always appraises the truth of the whole situation without guile or agenda.

“Is your partner capable of raising the necessary money?” I asked him.

“Yes,” was the answer, “if he would only stop lying to himself.”

We had a deal in the making, I was certain now, since both men wanted to see the business succeed, and each felt the other was capable of doing his part.

My assumption was that both aspects of the senior partner, his collaborative central self and his strategic calculating self, had had a hand in writing the contract. The task was to separate the voices so that the older man would have a choice to draft a more effective document.

I asked him whether he had any sons—had he ever become exasperated enough with their teenage arrogance to secretly hope they would fail? He replied that his sons had never caused him any trouble comparable to the headaches this man had given him. Could he perhaps understand that sometimes a person’s good will is so challenged that a part of him (the calculating self) wants to see the other person stumble and fall? He nodded. I asked him if that part of him had had a hand in writing the contract.

“Probably.”

“My guess is that you know precisely what your friend here can accomplish under the best of circumstances, and what he can’t. So you know that if the part of you that is angered and wants to see him fail prevails, he will fail, and of course the business will go with him.” He nodded, then curtly complimented his partner on having hired me.

My sense was that the younger man would now be in a more cooperative place, because he had witnessed the senior partner virtually admitting to sabotage. When you look to people’s central selves and conduct an honest conversation, a culture forms that is hard to resist. For the calculating self to emerge in this culture is as difficult as trying to hum a tune in B minor while the chorus around you is singing in C major.

Now the idea was that the two men should work together to modify the contract to provide the greatest possible support for their joint venture. For that, I asked the senior partner to interview the junior partner to find out which parts of the contract seemed unrealistic to him.

When tension arose over any particular item and the calculating selves stepped in, I was there to give full existence to the fears. This is different than allowing the negotiations to be run by the fears. For instance, when the junior partner said, “I feel this is unfair because you get all the upside here, and I take all the downside,” I reminded him that his senior partner was fearful because he had much more to lose than money. “Why don’t you make sure that the contract reflects your capabilities,” I said, “and put a little less attention on what will happen if it doesn’t work out?” The younger man heard my warning not to argue this point because it would increase his partner’s fear. He recognized that his job was to earn the confidence of his senior partner.

The older man was relieved to have the junior partner’s attention diverted from his own survival and toward the work at hand; in turn, he became more flexible in his conditions.

The conversation became increasingly buoyant and energized. Perhaps the light of their original vision for the company began to filter back through. Both men were now using the strategic skills that had been so fine-tuned by their calculating selves for a constructive purpose: to design a contract that would permit the business to thrive. So when the junior partner said, “I can’t agree to having that much money in hand by the end of November, but I will have a deal in the works by then. The money will be in the bank by January 1,” the senior partner had confidence in his prediction.

They managed to write up the terms of the contract in a format that was ready to be reviewed by their lawyers in time for the senior partner to make his eleven o’clock meeting.

“Good,” said the founding partner sternly, “we finished on time.” I looked up sharply and saw the glint of humor in his eye, and realized that he had absorbed Rule Number 6. The younger partner, feigning innocence, joked, “Yes, but why did it take us so long?” Possibility was in the air.

UNLIKE THE calculating self, the central self is neither a pattern of action nor a set of strategies. It does not need an identity; it is its own pure expression. It is what a person who has survived—and knows it—looks like. The central self smiles at the calculating self’s perceptions, understanding that they are the relics of our ancestry, the necessary illusions of childhood. Fine, if the child thinks there is such a thing as “not belonging,” so he can shriek and wail at the first hint of being forgotten at the grocery store. Fine, if he should think that he needs to be stronger or smarter than others to stay alive, so he will exercise mind and body, resist drowning, and get to the food first.

However, the central self knows that “not belonging” and “being insufficient” are thoughts both as native to us and as illusory as Santa Claus. It understands that the threatening aspects of what we encounter are often illusions that do not bear taking seriously. It sees that human beings are social animals; we move in a dance with each other, we are all fundamentally immeasurable, we all belong. What freedom! Unencumbered by the obstacles that the calculating self tackles daily, the central self can listen in innocence for who we are, listen for the whole of it, inquire into what is here. The calculating self will never hear the whispers of compassion between people on a busy street, never feel the complex rhythms of our breathing against the swaying of trees and the oscillations of the tide, never attune itself to the long rhythms that give us meaning. Its attention is on its own comparisons and schemes. But the central self is open and aware because it need only be the unique voice that it is, an expression that transcends the personality that got it out of childhood alive.

Transformation, for our central selves, is a description of the mode through which we move through life. A transformation is a shift in how we experience the world, and these shifts happen continually, often just beyond our notice. As soon as a person sets out on an adventure, or falls in love, or starts a new job, she is likely to find herself feeling and thinking and talking like a new person, curious as to how she could have felt the way she had just days earlier. From the perspective of the central self, life moves with fluidity like a constantly varying river, and so do we. Confident that it can deal with whatever comes its way, it sees itself as permeable rather than vulnerable, and stays open to influence, to the new and the unknown. Under no illusion that it can control the movement of the river, it joins rather than resists its bountiful flow.

Vikram Savkar, a friend of ours, told us the story of an experience that had become for him an icon for the openness and generosity of the central self. Yet the story he tells depicts his own central self emerging into a cooperative universe, inviting us to join him in play.

Last night, I visited one of my old college haunts, a seedy diner located south of the campus. I took a place at the counter next to a man who appeared, on a second look, to be homeless. Before him, meticulously laid out, were three dollar bills and some change, apparently all he had in the world. When the waitress appeared, I ordered a hamburger—but the man put out his hand as if to slow me down. With a grand gesture, he announced, “It’s on me. You can have anything you want tonight, and you won’t pay a penny. It’s all on me.” I protested that I could not possibly do that. He was offering me the whole of his worldly possessions, and I certainly could not accept such a gift. But he was determined to have his moment. “You are going to have what you want, and it’s on me.” He pushed all his money toward the indifferent woman behind the counter.

I was aware of every delicious bite of that hamburger, every sip of coffee. With a mere three dollars and fifty-odd cents, this man had created a humane world brimming over with charity and abundance. This momentary universe teemed with delicious smells from the grill, while voices of happiness emanated from a couple chatting at a booth. And I, I had the deeply satisfying experience of being there while all this took place. I thanked him for everything.

“Oh, no,” he said, winking at my last-ditch efforts to find some parity. “The pleasure’s all mine.” WHEN WE FOLLOW Rule Number 6 and lighten up over our childish demands and entitlements, we are instantly transported into a remarkable universe. This new universe is cooperative in nature, and pulls for the realization of all our cooperative desires. For the most part it lies a bit above our heads. Angels can fly there because, as you may have heard, they take themselves lightly. But now with the help of a single rule, so can we.