We all live a “crabbing” life to some extent. We drift, as if on a boat, from the highest ideals we can imagine to the harsh realities of life and hope we can make our way to the safe edge of the dry dock land of some kind of certainty.
We hear the word “crabbing” and it elicits certain reactions. Just yesterday when technology failed me again twice, I was in a miserable stupor and complained like my father would and my sister called it out. This is not what I’m talking about, though. When I refer to the concept of “crabbing,” I’m referring to the term used in aviation and boating.
In aviation, “crabbing” is the act of compensating for crosswinds by pointing the nose up. If you want to arrive at a certain destination, you need to know where to point the plane and figure out how to get there based on the winds. Although there are many ways to do this in aviation, by reaching for a northern destination, you will arrive at the place where you need to be. This can also be said for boaters as well when docking a boat. You have to consider the drift of the current to know where you need to be.
I learned this concept from the great psychologist Viktor Frankl. Frankl became an aviator in his later years. During one of his talks, he mentioned that “Idealists have it right.” He said, “If you want to get your aircraft to a particular destination, you need to aim higher than you expect. You will, at least, arrive where you need to be.” When he learned this concept from his flight instructor, he immediately went to the romantic writer Goethe.
“When we treat man as he is we make him worse than he is.
When we treat him as if he already was what he potentially could be
We make him what he should be.” Goethe
Frankl said, “We have to be an idealist to become the realist.” Basically, what he’s saying is you have to reach for the stars if you want to get to the moon.
My sense is that the great ones already know this. This is why Jesus taught his disciples the principles for arriving at Christ consciousness and the Buddha teaching his disciples to arrive at Buddha consciousness.
When we meet the ragtag disciples in scriptures, we meet brazen men who lack direction. Peter is wise enough to know this, but he is a reactionary. When Jesus realistically tells people what they need to do in order to attain salvation, they abandon him. When he asks the twelve if they want to leave, Peter says he would like to go, but “Where can we go? You have the words of everlasting life.”
Peter’s the one who fights and cuts off the servant’s ear when the soldiers come to take Jesus away. Peter is the one who denies Jesus three times. When Jesus dies, there is no denying him. We see a different Peter in the Acts of the Apostles. He becomes the leader Jesus always saw in him.
Saul of Tarses had his own hang ups as well. He was a zealot Pharisee who put Christians like Stephen to death due to their faith. He saw that Christianity was a threat to his way of being. When he saw something more and aspired to serve in a greater way for a greater cause, he attained a level of consciousness that allowed him to conquer feats the average person would never have the courage to achieve. He traveled the world at his own peril to spread the word and inspire others to see beyond themselves.
In Buddhist scripture it is the cousin, brother-in-law of Guatama Siddartha who was jealous of the Buddha and angled for ways to usurp power so he could be the leader of the sangha, or religious community. His name was Devadatta. This character is an evil foil to the wise Buddha, as he became known for his worldliness and “psychic powers.” He even goes so far as to try and kill the Buddha. As the story goes, each person Devadatta hired to kill the Buddha couldn’t do it and eventually became disciples.
Devadatta eventually tried to kill the Buddha himself by throwing a rock at him. The rock splintered and hit the Buddha in the foot, eliciting a note of pity from the great Master. Devadatta’s last attempt to kill the Buddha came from getting a violent elephant drunk and sending it to trample the Buddha. When the gigantic beast raged and came into the Buddha’s presence, it stopped, bowed and laid at the Master’s feet.
Devadatta’s ill will toward the Buddha proved to be his undoing and he repented. His recognition of worldliness, his repentance and his noble work in the first part of life would save him in the end, and he would be revered as a noble and Buddha in his own right in another incarnation.
Viktor Frankl said, Goethe’s quote is the “most apt maxim and motto for any psychotherapeutic activity.” He said when you stifle and “don’t recognize a young person’s will to meaning, you make him worse; you make him dull, you make him frustrated and contribute to his frustration… If you presuppose in this man, a criminal, a drug abuser, that there is something great and inspire a spark in the search for meaning; if you presuppose it, you will elicit in him what he is capable of becoming.”
Each of us has the capability of doing remarkable things. There are people who have risen out of horrific circumstances to achieve a place in life of enlightenment and fundamentally changed the world due to being fearless in attaining a consciousness of infinite possibility.
Idealism is the key to realism. Realism compliments idealism in seeing what is and attaining more through the triumph of will and identifying with the idea of hope that there is more.
spirit beat 