Authoring (Designing) Your Life

Author and Authority

Author - the person who creates a narrative/story; The author determines what something is (definition) and what it means to the human beings involved (evaluation). He creates the "defeval" (short for definition/evaluation system) through which we experience the events of the story.

Authority - The authority in any context is the person/philosophy who sets the defeval to be used: The "official" or "good" or "right" defeval.

The essence of spiritual development is the realization that we are the authors and the authority in our own lives; in everything in our experience. In reverse, it is to realize that no other person, tradition, or aspect of our experience has any authority over the defevals/narratives/meanings we use; the staging/frames through which we interpret and evaluate our lives. Our parents, preachers, and professors, our lovers, friends and gurus - all only offer possible defevals for us to try on and integrate into our own worldview (overall interrelated and integrated set of defevals).

If we ever allow something other than our own consciousness to choose our defevals for us, if we ever default our responsibility for thinking to another, - to that degree we are abandoning our own spirit and living a hand-me-down life. We are worshipping carcass, trying to force our unlimited and unique being into another's fantasy/ideal. We are living a street lamp life, where we are trying to look good in someone else's light. We are selling our soul to the person we gave our "authority" to.

This can include a preacher/guru/moralist who tells you the values by which you "should" live your life and who you "should" live it for, or a friend/lover who tells you how you "should" feel about them and how you "should" acknowledge them. It includes the social theorist who says how the aggregate wealth of the individuals who make up a society "should" be "distributed," or an internal voice that tells you that you "should" be more successful/respected/loved/intelligent/"together"/spiritual. It includes the prophets and philosophers of the ages/history, the enlightened sages of the East, the beings channeled from other dimensions, as well as the personal development and life coaches of 21st century transformative seminars. It includes people of prestige, people of the cloth, people with "experience", people of great learning, and people who "know you better than you know yourself."

The truth is that you are the author/authority in every aspect and experience of your life. Other people's opinions, emotions, insights, and "coaching" are only information to be understood, assessed for their accuracy and validity, and integrated into the most honest worldview you can put together. You may attempt to give away such authority to another, but your authority is inalienable. The choice to allow someone else to determine your values is still YOUR choice, and the consequences of that choice are still YOUR responsibility.

The irony of your reading this is that you might accept what is written here as an authoritative treatise about how to approach your life experience, your Self. Of course, it is not authoritative in any sense when it comes to Your life, your Self. It is merely a possible defeval/worldview for you to consider and integrate into your own world view.

At the same time, if there is some truth and accuracy in the ideas here (which I believe is "self-evident"), it is perhaps one of the most important and valuable things you can to do apply this lens, this set of filters, this defeval systematically in each area of your experience, each area of your life. To do so would be an example of lived rationality: consciously choosing the way you understand any situation in alignment with your deepest values (or more technically: systematically and creatively choosing the defeval you will apply in any experience according to a hierarchically kept context chain of core values.) Although this writing is not authoritative in your life, perhaps it can serve as a stimulation, a reminder, and an encouragement to try on and explore the worldspace it creates/reveals.

Again, I ask you to imagine a world populated with people living in such a world space; the freedoms it would enable; the games it would make possible; the creativity it would unleash. That vision is, from yet one more angle, The Game I Want To Play.

Mark Michael Lewis