Wake Up from the Trance of Scarcity
by Victoria Castle
Trances Are Sneaky
A trance is a semi-conscious state that operates in our lives without question or discernment. It becomes our way of living, directing our actions according to whatever programming is featured in the trance. Living entranced is the opposite of living in sovereignty, of being self-governing. Stage hypnotists are famous for inducing trance states in which people act in ways they would be unlikely to act when fully awake. A trance can be a source of entertainment, or a source of suffering.
The Trance of Scarcity
The unexamined predisposition that lack, struggle, and separation are our defining reality.
Every day we are offered increasingly sophisticated strategies for surviving in a world of scarcity. No one questions whether scarcity exists. All such survival strategies share the same starting point: They accept scarcity (lack of self-worth and lack of resources) as a fact of life, as the only proper orientation in response to the evidence. But what if the truth were actually the other way around? What if our default way of thinking—maintaining the idea that scarcity is real—is the source of the conditions producing the “evidence”? Which one’s the chicken and which one’s the egg?
People only see what they are prepared to see.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Many years ago Albert Einstein pointed to the limitations of the mind, saying that we can’t seek to solve problems within the same mindset that created them. To defeat this way of seeking, we must become a little bit radical and impertinent. I say radical because when we try to crack an illusion, our denial often intensifies in order to protect our familiar reality. It takes courage not to sit with folded hands at our desks and accept that red is actually green—especially when everyone else in class is pointing to the fire engine and saying, “Of course it’s green. What are you, crazy ?!”
In an atmosphere like that, it takes courage even to allow ourselves to get curious about the persistent predisposition. So at this point I’m not asking you to accept that a Trance of Scarcity exists. For now I’m just inviting you to join me in considering the possibility.
What if there is a Trance of Scarcity? What if that Trance is the source of much of the world’s suffering? What are the ramifications? What are the possibilities? Most of us have never considered scarcity as a kind of trance—something we think without really thinking. I realized then that this Trance is sneaky, that it has been flying under the radar. For this reason, very few of us have even considered its existence and impact on humanity, much less how to break free from it.
The most suppressive forces are the ones no one knows are at work.
—Ken Anbender
Our Stories Create Our World
Is the Trance a newcomer in our lifetime? Hardly. It’s the result of multiple messages and interpretations over time. Here are some of the prime influences on our current experience in Western civilization. Notice how they have contributed to the Trance of Scarcity remaining unquestioned.
• When humans sustain fear or anxiety for long periods of time, we lose access to our higher brain functions—our capacity to create and collaborate, to be curious or compassionate. Unable to respond spontaneously in the present moment, we continue responding based on whatever past conditioning remains lodged in our system. And the result is not pretty. As well as eroding our physical well-being, sustained fear creates a petri dish of conditions in which prejudice, suspicion, hoarding, isolation, and self-justification flourish.
• Human beings are storytellers. The instant decree of “This is the way it is, and this is how we’re going to deal with it” both ensures our survival and fosters our limitations. Just for a moment, think about dogs. You have an instant response. You like dogs or you don’t like them, or maybe they scare you. You think they’re a nuisance or they’re cute, and so on. Some earlier decree made by you or your family is already well in place; all you had to do was turn your attention to that area of your conditioning, and you knew exactly how to feel about dogs. Ta da! Instant story.
• The Greek civilization (600 BCE–300 BCE) profoundly shaped Western culture. The virtues revered by the Greeks included being a good citizen and living a refined life. This was the approved way to live. Those who did not adopt this way of being were assigned less power and status.
• By the 17th century, Descartes’ Rationalism and Newtonian physics had separated spirit from matter and explained life as mechanistic. Cartesian thinking taught that the mind mattered most, and urged us to ignore emotions and sensations. Things were black or white, one way or another—the world became binary. As we studied the great thoughts of others, we moved away from attending to and trusting our firsthand experience, having accepted that everything worth knowing, everything true and real, was found outside us.
• The Puritans and Calvinists who settled the early American colonies endeavored relentlessly to be good enough due to their belief that we were inherently flawed and insufficient.
• Adam Smith defined modern economics as a way of allocating scarce resources through the mechanism of individual, personal greed. From his observations, he deduced that greed and scarcity were the operating principles of all “civilized” societies.
• In a capitalist culture, competition is encouraged, but with the caveat that not everyone can win. Advertising and the media send us a consistent message: We are lacking and we must constantly do more and acquire more in order to erase this lack. Darwin’s theory of evolution confirmed our biological imperative to strive constantly, to eat or be eaten.
At this juncture in history our daily lives continue to be dictated, in large part, by these ideas––they live unquestioned. Yes, we are biological beings, always alert to getting our needs met. Yes, we are storytellers, and what we tell ourselves creates our world. And yes, we share the world with other human beings, many of whom have internalized a similar story about not being enough. So it’s likely we will continue to encounter struggles for power and control. As satisfying as it might be to track down the culprit who started the nasty story of scarcity, it’s not as though the Trance was created maliciously. And even if we did identify the source, it doesn’t change anything. What’s most important is finding the leverage point that will free us to make our unique contributions and to live in the world with ease. Not all cultures have a prevailing story about scarcity. That fact lends hope to our cause. We can disperse the fog that blurs our vision and cramps our style.
The world is made up of stories, not atoms.
—Muriel Rukeyser
(c) 2008 Victoria Castle. From The Trance of Scarcity. Reprinted
by arrangement with Shambhala Publications. www.shambhala.com
Victoria Castle, Master Somatic Coach, has been consulting with Fortune 500 leaders and social entrepreneurs for 20 years as well as teaching and speaking internationally. Her book, The Trance of Scarcity, addresses the cultural pre-disposition of lack, struggle, and separation and offers practices for embodying, not just conceptualizing, greater fulfillment and contribution.
Victoria Castle will be co-leading a module with Bernard Lietaer, Shifting the Money Paradigm: Embodying a Culture of Sufficiency, at the Authentic Leadership in Action Summer Institute, June 22-28, 2008, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
