I used to be afraid to look at myself with humility and honesty. I was terrified that what I'd see would be shameful, horrible. I couldn't get past my fear that what was inside me was awful, as if the creature from the black lagoon lived inside me and would reach out and pull me down. I was also afraid that if I admitted one little chink in my armor, the whole facade would collapse - I would be annihilated.
Because I couldn't get past the fear of what I'd discover inside, I had no chance to change. It didn't occur to me that there was any path beyond the fear and that kept me in prison, too terrified even to start the process of getting out. I used to think of myself as a student, eager to learn everything I could, but I was afraid to learn anything about myself.
The many ways I suffered from that fear and the effect it had on my life finally brought me to my knees. I came to a fork in the road. One path led to more of the same or even worse; the other led to survival which had what I thought of as a great cost - I would have to be willing to face what I felt as my terror of the truth. In a moment of clarity, I moved toward survival.
What helped me be willing to face my fear and learn how to find the path beyond it? What helped me take the risk of learning something new about myself, when I so completely believed that anything I would see would be shameful? I think about that very often; if I'm interested in something, I always want to explain it to myself in words.
It wasn't words that led me to the willingness to look inside. Instead, it was a spiritual experience, an awakening to a connection with the world that was so much greater than myself. I felt that oneness mystics describe. I had feared annihilation and had kept myself defended, encased in a block of ice. But now I felt the paradoxical freedom that comes from surrender to a power greater than myself. I was at one with the universe, merged into it, and felt an energy flow in and out of me. There were no words for it but I didn't need them. I didn't have to explain to myself what had happened. I had had an experience of energy and freedom, a vision of something powerful, which was both inside and outside me, and without my realizing it, I began moving up the path.
It's not possible for me to be completely without defenses and without fear of what's inside me. Sometimes a friend will tell me something about myself and my instant reaction is a stab of fear; does she see something about me that I can't see, something bad? This is true even when she's only agreeing with something I've already said. My fear of exposure will never entirely go away. But more and more, I want to see and understand whatever is inside, keeping me from good-feeling and a sense of growth, so that I can get free of it, free enough so that it doesn't run me.
For some reason, I'm thinking of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid leaping off the cliff into the raging river below. Suffering is the motivator. It gave me no choice but to take the risk of leaping off. What I discovered was that the river below wouldn't drown me. In fact, it would be support me and help me float toward freedom.
Monday, February 29, 2016
Friday, February 26, 2016
THE REFUGE INSIDE
I used to look to things outside myself to give me a sense of security. Even though most of the time I wouldn't admit it, I felt a deep anxiety about who I was, what I could do, who would love me. I thought a person could fix me, or accomplishments - many of the ones I dreamed about were grandiose - so that I could have the world's acknowledgement. Surely love and success would shore me up, make me feel whole, make it so I'd never have to feel anxious or alone.
Like most people, my life has been a mixed bag. There have been good times and bad times and all the levels between. I worried the good times would never last while the bad ones seemed to go on forever, and the in betweens felt dull and boring.
It took a lot of suffering to make me understand that no person, place or thing was going to transform me into someone who felt no anxiety. Sooner or later, everyone and everything would sooner let me down, or leave me humming, "Is that all there is?" I began to see that if I was ever going to feel a sense of security deep inside me, it would have to come from changes inside me. No one could give me freedom from fear. It was up to me learn how to create a refuge inside, a place where I could go no matter what was happening in my life.
I have found that refuge, although sometimes it takes a while for me to find it. That makes it sound like it really is a place, but now I think that refuge is an action; I feel its presence when I'm surrendering, accepting that I'm powerless over my fears, when I become willing to search for a connection to whatever is greater than myself. Those actions don't so much lead to a refuge inside; those actions are the refuge.
Like most people, my life has been a mixed bag. There have been good times and bad times and all the levels between. I worried the good times would never last while the bad ones seemed to go on forever, and the in betweens felt dull and boring.
It took a lot of suffering to make me understand that no person, place or thing was going to transform me into someone who felt no anxiety. Sooner or later, everyone and everything would sooner let me down, or leave me humming, "Is that all there is?" I began to see that if I was ever going to feel a sense of security deep inside me, it would have to come from changes inside me. No one could give me freedom from fear. It was up to me learn how to create a refuge inside, a place where I could go no matter what was happening in my life.
I have found that refuge, although sometimes it takes a while for me to find it. That makes it sound like it really is a place, but now I think that refuge is an action; I feel its presence when I'm surrendering, accepting that I'm powerless over my fears, when I become willing to search for a connection to whatever is greater than myself. Those actions don't so much lead to a refuge inside; those actions are the refuge.
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
THE BONDAGE OF SELF, AGAIN
I've been thinking all day about the bondage of self. It's been one of those days when I believe what the voices in my head are telling me. One of those days when I am nothing but resistance, against all the things I need to do, against moving in any way, internally and externally. One of those days when I can't seem to fight against shame and the spectre of a hundred failures. One of those days, despite my believing so deeply that I'm constructing a prison of my own making. I alone confer meaning on my experience. I know this in my bones and still I have days when I let my harshest thoughts become "real," as if they are beyond my control.
The bondage of self...sometimes I feel I can break the chains I bind myself up in. I imagine soaring like an eagle, riding on gentle breezes that will never fail to keep me aloft. I imagine that freedom will last forever. I imagine I won't have to work for the only freedom I will ever feel.
I know better. I, very few of us, will walk into another dimension where all will be free and easy. So I remind myself that the eagle must look for food, as I must look for ways to chip at my chains. Sometimes I feel like a rabbit in a burrow, pushing a rock forward inch by inch, unable to see around it. Then the rock falls away and I find myself exactly where I want to be, or maybe it's better to say I want to be exactly where I find myself.
Then the cycle begins again. I build another prison and work to break free. Even on days like today, when I'm nothing but resistance, I know great wheels are turning inside me and I'll be willing to push the rock again. Not like Sisyphus, as a punishment, but as a woman who knows from direct experience that the rock will fall away, that moments of freedom are possible for me.
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
ENDURANCE
A few years ago, I was obsessed with reading survivor memoirs and stories - people lost at sea or in the desert or jungle or up a mountain at 22000 feet. After a while I began to see certain traits and actions survivors have in common and when I read Laurence Gonzales' wonderful book, Deep Survival, about the psychology of survival, it confirmed what I had thought.
Survivors stay calm. They have an ability to come quickly into the moment, to take stock of where they and what they have and to begin to act. They may think it would be great if someone came to save me, but that idea goes quickly into the background. They are responsible, look to no one but themselves. Their senses sharpen and even in the midst of crisis many survivors talk about looking out at the natural world, its beauty, with a sense of wonder.
A survivor doesn't say, "I have to crawl three miles down the mountain - how can I do it with a broken leg?" She says, "I only have to make it to that rock over there." Coming into the moment and not looking beyond it, breaking things down into small possible goals - along with some luck, of course - don't guarantee survival, but they do increase the odds.
Of course, I asked myself why I was so obsessed with these stories. I realized that what most amazed me was how survivors keep going, even when they're perfectly aware the odds are against them. Some of the survivors I read about talked about the body taking over; if for instance they had to crawl down that mountain, the repetitive motion of step after step put them in a kind of trance in which pain seemed beside the point. There was no thought except to take the next step.
I couldn't help but ask how I would do in that situation. Once I asked that question, I saw what I was after in these stories. I wanted to know about endurance, the ability to keep on taking step after step. Most people, I think, imagine themselves as the hero, as the one who will come out alive. But I wanted to know because I wasn't at all sure I could do it, not at all sure I had the right stuff. I remembered the many times I'd given up trying, sometimes small things that didn't have much consequence, but also some big things as well. I was looking for inspiration, for hope that it might turn out that in a crisis I might be able to survive.
Evidently, you can't predict beforehand who will survive. There are many surprises. But now I have those stories in my head and I know some of the things that help people endure. It isn't hard to see that those qualities aren't about only physical survival; they're as much a help to emotional and spiritual survival as well. They're a kind of blueprint deep inside me. Now I can at least imagine that I wouldn't give up trying to survive.
Survivors stay calm. They have an ability to come quickly into the moment, to take stock of where they and what they have and to begin to act. They may think it would be great if someone came to save me, but that idea goes quickly into the background. They are responsible, look to no one but themselves. Their senses sharpen and even in the midst of crisis many survivors talk about looking out at the natural world, its beauty, with a sense of wonder.
A survivor doesn't say, "I have to crawl three miles down the mountain - how can I do it with a broken leg?" She says, "I only have to make it to that rock over there." Coming into the moment and not looking beyond it, breaking things down into small possible goals - along with some luck, of course - don't guarantee survival, but they do increase the odds.
Of course, I asked myself why I was so obsessed with these stories. I realized that what most amazed me was how survivors keep going, even when they're perfectly aware the odds are against them. Some of the survivors I read about talked about the body taking over; if for instance they had to crawl down that mountain, the repetitive motion of step after step put them in a kind of trance in which pain seemed beside the point. There was no thought except to take the next step.
I couldn't help but ask how I would do in that situation. Once I asked that question, I saw what I was after in these stories. I wanted to know about endurance, the ability to keep on taking step after step. Most people, I think, imagine themselves as the hero, as the one who will come out alive. But I wanted to know because I wasn't at all sure I could do it, not at all sure I had the right stuff. I remembered the many times I'd given up trying, sometimes small things that didn't have much consequence, but also some big things as well. I was looking for inspiration, for hope that it might turn out that in a crisis I might be able to survive.
Evidently, you can't predict beforehand who will survive. There are many surprises. But now I have those stories in my head and I know some of the things that help people endure. It isn't hard to see that those qualities aren't about only physical survival; they're as much a help to emotional and spiritual survival as well. They're a kind of blueprint deep inside me. Now I can at least imagine that I wouldn't give up trying to survive.
Monday, February 22, 2016
COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS
"Out of my experience, such as it is (and it is limited enough) one fixed conclusion dogmatically emerges, and that is this, that we with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves...But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom. Just so there is a continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea..." -- William James
Human history is filled with paradigm shifts, those insights that change forever our sense of who we are in the universe. The earth revolves around the sun and not the other way round. Humans are the result of eons of evolution. Time and space are relative. We have a sub-conscious.It seems impossible that another shift won't come along. The desire for discovery and insight, our burning need to know, is part of our DNA.
I usually sneer at all the people walking around texting, talking on their phones, checking in. But lately I've been wondering if what I'm seeing is the beginning of the cosmic consciousness James is talking about. Most of the world is now connected, communities form almost instantly, everything travels by and through us. Maybe I shouldn't shake my head at the woman in the market who is choosing a tomato at the same time she's discussing a bus schedule with the person at the other end of the line or the man on the street who nearly runs me down because his head is bent low over his phone, at all the people who have grown up with social media and smart phones and have a need to be in constant touch. Maybe that need is the first sign of the birth of a single organic human consciousness, a vibrating net of points of light that are both individual and strung together. I'm thinking of a game theorist I read about somewhere. She talked about some of the problems humanity is facing and how it may be possible that if thousands of people turned on their computers and worked at a particular problem, they would together find an answer, one that may be greater than any one of them could achieve on her own.
Another way to look at human history is to see the slow march to valuing the individual, recognizing every individual's right to dignity - each person's freedom to create his own life, to know liberty and to pursue happiness. It's been such a long slog to any sense of individual dignity and there are so many examples of the ease with which collectivization slips into fascism. Well, none of us can see the future so I think I'll choose to be optimistic, despite everything I know about the dark side of the web and the problems we all face. Why not choose optimism. It certainly a more creative attitude than pessimism.
I'm sure all this is very old hat to futurists around the world. But I'm going to listen for the foghorns that sound between James's islands and the rustle of the trees' leaves as the wind blows through. Those are comforting sounds. They let me know I'm not alone.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
RAGE
I've always been angry at my parents, at my mother for her neglect, inability to see me and the anxiety she transferred into me. At my father, for being weak and unwilling or unable to make up for her. As a child, I didn't understand any of that but I think now it shut me down, and that I made myself numb, convincing myself that I didn't need anyone or anything. As I got older, I knew they didn't see who I was and what I valued - it was good I got As in school but a girl is only to get married to a rich man, have children and live two doors from them. But I was rebellious and went my own way. At least I did on the surface; underneath I carried all those childhood hurts with me and they were the source of more than a little self-sabotage and self-destruction.
Along the way I was told that I needed to forgive my parents, that "they did the best they could." I understood that kind of thinking in my head - isn't it noble to forgive? Isn't it time to move past the anger?
But you can't pay lip service to rage and even now all this time later much of that rage still lies buried inside me. No amount of analyzing or meditation or turning it over to the mystery of the universe has helped me get it out. In fact, I'm afraid to let it out; I'm reminded again of the Wicked Witch - felt rage, that overpowering emotion, will annihilate me and I'll melt away. And my fear is tied up with shame, that I still am driven by what's hidden inside, that I haven't found a way to transcend it.
What then am I to do? How do I create a space safe enough to feel it, to know that I'm justified in feeling it, that I can let it out because I don't have to protect them, above all that I don't have to feel shame that I was damaged and a big part of me has never healed?
Well, there is also another part of me. It has worked to survive and be resilient, and has never stopped trying to understand myself and to get as free as I can. It's the part of me that feels compassion for the world and sometimes even for myself. It's as much me as the part that feels rage. And it's in that part that I can clear a space, a safe space, to feel all the hurt and anger that's still inside. I believe that my spirit is deeper and wider than any emotion my body can experience, that my spirit can absorb it all. This belief can help me over the obstacles to that space, the voices that tell me I'm too weak, there's no point, nothing will make a difference, it's too late to change.
Those voices are the blanket of despair I've clung to, to keep myself from feeling the truth inside, though saying that is one more version of blaming myself. Courage is going forward, not from the absence of fear, but despite the fear. I'm going to focus on gathering that courage until, with faith, I'm brave enough to make the leap into truth.
Along the way I was told that I needed to forgive my parents, that "they did the best they could." I understood that kind of thinking in my head - isn't it noble to forgive? Isn't it time to move past the anger?
But you can't pay lip service to rage and even now all this time later much of that rage still lies buried inside me. No amount of analyzing or meditation or turning it over to the mystery of the universe has helped me get it out. In fact, I'm afraid to let it out; I'm reminded again of the Wicked Witch - felt rage, that overpowering emotion, will annihilate me and I'll melt away. And my fear is tied up with shame, that I still am driven by what's hidden inside, that I haven't found a way to transcend it.
What then am I to do? How do I create a space safe enough to feel it, to know that I'm justified in feeling it, that I can let it out because I don't have to protect them, above all that I don't have to feel shame that I was damaged and a big part of me has never healed?
Well, there is also another part of me. It has worked to survive and be resilient, and has never stopped trying to understand myself and to get as free as I can. It's the part of me that feels compassion for the world and sometimes even for myself. It's as much me as the part that feels rage. And it's in that part that I can clear a space, a safe space, to feel all the hurt and anger that's still inside. I believe that my spirit is deeper and wider than any emotion my body can experience, that my spirit can absorb it all. This belief can help me over the obstacles to that space, the voices that tell me I'm too weak, there's no point, nothing will make a difference, it's too late to change.
Those voices are the blanket of despair I've clung to, to keep myself from feeling the truth inside, though saying that is one more version of blaming myself. Courage is going forward, not from the absence of fear, but despite the fear. I'm going to focus on gathering that courage until, with faith, I'm brave enough to make the leap into truth.
Saturday, February 20, 2016
RUMI AND FAUST
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense. -- Rumi
Rumi was a 13th century Persian poet and that's one of his most famous poems. I come back to it again and again because I need to be reminded that out past my ego with all its judgments and opinions, all my defenses, all the ways I separate myself from other people - out beyond all that is a place of total acceptance and unconditional love, a place for me to give and receive both. Only beyond all my views and opinions am I able to meet another person without defensively maintaining a separation between I and thou. In that field I can truly embrace another person, see the same humanity in them I feel in myself. In that field, ideas, concepts, all the ordinary things I put between me and the world no longer exist.
I used to put great store in my mind. I still do; it certainly keeps me from being bored. But knowing things, no matter how wide a net that knowing cast, never satisfied a yearning I barely knew I had. Only suffering, the search for relief of suffering, brought me to surrender, to that point when I could experience directly the yearning inside me and come fully into the moment beyond all judgment and separation. Then there is no "I" and no "you" - my spirit is one with all that is. There isn't even any "my spirit."
In the beginning of Goethe's Faust, Faust has been insatiable in the search for knowledge. but now he's in despair because he's mastered all branches of learning and there is nothing left for him. He makes his pact with Lucifer (who first appears as a poodle!) because the Devil promises him endless new experience. But there's a condition: the moment that Faust says, "Stay, moment, thou art so fair" the Devil will claim his soul. Of course that moment comes - for the first time in his life, Faust is satisfied, full, in the moment. The Devil doesn't win, however - in the end, in a sort of deus ex machina, the heavens open and Faust is drawn up. He's worthy of being saved because he's turned away from hollow experience and embraced a spiritual connection to the universe.
Stay moment, thou art so fair - in that grass, the world is too full to talk about...I will wait patiently for for those moments and do what I can to make it easier for them to happen.
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense. -- Rumi
Rumi was a 13th century Persian poet and that's one of his most famous poems. I come back to it again and again because I need to be reminded that out past my ego with all its judgments and opinions, all my defenses, all the ways I separate myself from other people - out beyond all that is a place of total acceptance and unconditional love, a place for me to give and receive both. Only beyond all my views and opinions am I able to meet another person without defensively maintaining a separation between I and thou. In that field I can truly embrace another person, see the same humanity in them I feel in myself. In that field, ideas, concepts, all the ordinary things I put between me and the world no longer exist.
I used to put great store in my mind. I still do; it certainly keeps me from being bored. But knowing things, no matter how wide a net that knowing cast, never satisfied a yearning I barely knew I had. Only suffering, the search for relief of suffering, brought me to surrender, to that point when I could experience directly the yearning inside me and come fully into the moment beyond all judgment and separation. Then there is no "I" and no "you" - my spirit is one with all that is. There isn't even any "my spirit."
In the beginning of Goethe's Faust, Faust has been insatiable in the search for knowledge. but now he's in despair because he's mastered all branches of learning and there is nothing left for him. He makes his pact with Lucifer (who first appears as a poodle!) because the Devil promises him endless new experience. But there's a condition: the moment that Faust says, "Stay, moment, thou art so fair" the Devil will claim his soul. Of course that moment comes - for the first time in his life, Faust is satisfied, full, in the moment. The Devil doesn't win, however - in the end, in a sort of deus ex machina, the heavens open and Faust is drawn up. He's worthy of being saved because he's turned away from hollow experience and embraced a spiritual connection to the universe.
Stay moment, thou art so fair - in that grass, the world is too full to talk about...I will wait patiently for for those moments and do what I can to make it easier for them to happen.
Thursday, February 18, 2016
NO TRUTH
I believe as deeply as I believe anything that there is no Truth, only perspective. What I think is reality is only one possible interpretation of what is, what could be. I have vivid examples of how, over time, my opinion has changed. My memories are altered by how I and life change over time. Nothing is fixed, unalterable. The ability to revise, awaken, evolve, to change, is the glory of human consciousness, human spirit.
And yet over and over again I fall away from those beliefs and buy into the "reality" of whatever is in front of me. I hear the negative voices in my head as speaking the Truth. I censor my opportunities and then believe that censorship. When my mind says, why bother, or, what's the point, I think that's the truth so in fact why bother, there is no point.
Of course, we couldn't function if we didn't accept there are "really real realities" we live in and by. We need a certain clarity of vision that depends on fixed ideas and things. But that vision is only useful if it enables us to live more fully and productively. We need guideposts and landmarks to navigate the world.
But there is a world of perception that isn't useful or productive. That world is filled with every no I say to myself, every habit that defeats me before I begin, every negative story I tell myself about who I am and who I can be. This is the world that imprisons me and limits all that I am capable of doing.
I keep coming back to this idea - there is no Truth, only perspective - because I need to remind myself again and again that the negative world in my head isn't the true one, that my thoughts have no other reality but the reality I confer upon them, that there are limitless potentialities in me. When I remember this I feel the possibility of freedom, and though I have to keep reminding myself of it, it's there for me to find again and again.
And yet over and over again I fall away from those beliefs and buy into the "reality" of whatever is in front of me. I hear the negative voices in my head as speaking the Truth. I censor my opportunities and then believe that censorship. When my mind says, why bother, or, what's the point, I think that's the truth so in fact why bother, there is no point.
Of course, we couldn't function if we didn't accept there are "really real realities" we live in and by. We need a certain clarity of vision that depends on fixed ideas and things. But that vision is only useful if it enables us to live more fully and productively. We need guideposts and landmarks to navigate the world.
But there is a world of perception that isn't useful or productive. That world is filled with every no I say to myself, every habit that defeats me before I begin, every negative story I tell myself about who I am and who I can be. This is the world that imprisons me and limits all that I am capable of doing.
I keep coming back to this idea - there is no Truth, only perspective - because I need to remind myself again and again that the negative world in my head isn't the true one, that my thoughts have no other reality but the reality I confer upon them, that there are limitless potentialities in me. When I remember this I feel the possibility of freedom, and though I have to keep reminding myself of it, it's there for me to find again and again.
Monday, February 15, 2016
NOT YET
There's a famous section in St. Augustine's Confessions. He's had a wild youth - drink, women, and other things. Now, he's slowly coming to his God. But some part of him is still resisting. He finds himself praying: I most wretched in my early youth had begged chastity of Thee and said, "Give me chastity and continency, only not yet." He doesn't want God to cure him too soon; he still wants what he calls "the disease of concupiscence" to be satisfied rather than extinguished.
I so understand that "not yet." Any addict (and others) knows that terrible ambivalence - the desire to change and the fear of change. Who will I be without my old habits, whatever it is I lean upon? How will I get through? I'm the one who...how will I give up that story I tell myself? These questions come even when we sincerely want to change.
What takes us across? I wish I knew and could bottle it and hand out free samples. Some people spend their lives without having gotten across while others do; it's a mystery why that should be. I used to think it had something to do with intelligence or temperament or something else bred in the bone. But when I look around at people who have left ambivalence behind and managed to surrender, I see very few common denominators. There is probably the same percentage of good guys and bad guys as in the rest of the population. That's just the way it is.
Some people never come to the bottom of their self-destruction but some people do and they're the lucky ones. Surrender, the admission of powerlessness, is the moment when "I can't do this anymore" reverberates through your being. There's nothing else to do but to give up and turn forward, even when the hope that there is another way is faint and flickering.
Why for some and not others? Some would call it grace. Whatever it is, it's happened for me and I don't take any credit for it. All I did was pay attention and let the path unfold. Of course, that's not "all." At every significant turning, I was willing to surrender. Why? Well, that's the mystery.
I so understand that "not yet." Any addict (and others) knows that terrible ambivalence - the desire to change and the fear of change. Who will I be without my old habits, whatever it is I lean upon? How will I get through? I'm the one who...how will I give up that story I tell myself? These questions come even when we sincerely want to change.
What takes us across? I wish I knew and could bottle it and hand out free samples. Some people spend their lives without having gotten across while others do; it's a mystery why that should be. I used to think it had something to do with intelligence or temperament or something else bred in the bone. But when I look around at people who have left ambivalence behind and managed to surrender, I see very few common denominators. There is probably the same percentage of good guys and bad guys as in the rest of the population. That's just the way it is.
Some people never come to the bottom of their self-destruction but some people do and they're the lucky ones. Surrender, the admission of powerlessness, is the moment when "I can't do this anymore" reverberates through your being. There's nothing else to do but to give up and turn forward, even when the hope that there is another way is faint and flickering.
Why for some and not others? Some would call it grace. Whatever it is, it's happened for me and I don't take any credit for it. All I did was pay attention and let the path unfold. Of course, that's not "all." At every significant turning, I was willing to surrender. Why? Well, that's the mystery.
Sunday, February 14, 2016
LAO TZU
To bear and not to own;
To act and not lay claim;
To do the work and let it go:
For just letting go is what
makes it stay. -- Lao Tzu
To act without demand or expectation. To do whatever you can, to work as hard as you can, and then to surrender the outcome. To know that letting go is the only way to make space for something new ...to know this and yet to have to learn it again and again, and be willing to learn it again and again...
To act and not lay claim;
To do the work and let it go:
For just letting go is what
makes it stay. -- Lao Tzu
To act without demand or expectation. To do whatever you can, to work as hard as you can, and then to surrender the outcome. To know that letting go is the only way to make space for something new ...to know this and yet to have to learn it again and again, and be willing to learn it again and again...
SURRENDER AGAIN
Over the years, I've had many images of surrendering. One of the first was that I was a rat in a maze, frantically searching for the way out, when all I had to do was stop and the exit sign would appear.
"...all I had to do..." That's the hardest thing to do, to get to the moment when I fall to my knees in defeat, and in that falling find myself in a new place where change and answers can come. A place where I am willing to surrender all the manipulations of my ego, my expectations and demands, my certainty that there is only one right way for me to live and I can't live without achieving it. Willing to surrender the belief that only I can and should be the sole creator of my destiny.
Life would be much easier if there was a step by step guide to liberating surrender. Although I've come to that point many times, I can't say exactly what gets me there. All surrenders follow a similar path - I hold on and hold on until I can't do it anymore, then I let go and stillness comes. But I never am able to hurry it along; I can't say, oh, I need to surrender, and then simply do it. My desire to surrender doesn't help me surrender any more easily or quickly.
But once I directly experienced what a relief it is when I do surrender, I began to develop faith that if I kept trying to get free of my frantic will, my desperate demands and expectations, I would be led where I wanted to go. I began to see that the bubbling cauldron of fear and doubt and self-loathing that was reaching fever pitch wasn't my fate, wouldn't shatter me, but was part of a process leading me to insight and possibility. More and more, that bubbling cauldron had a context, a purpose - to move me along toward freedom. With each surrender, my belief that there was a purpose to my pain, that it was leading me toward insight, gave me the courage to keep on, to not cut and run, to hold steady and to keep my eyes focused on the possibility of change.
I can't make surrender happen on my schedule, but I can prepare the way so that I'll be ready for the moment of release. Where does that moment come from? Some would say it's grace or a moment of clarity or the hand of God. Wherever it comes from, it's a moment of expansion, a stabilizing connection to someplace beyond my own distorted ego.
"...all I had to do..." That's the hardest thing to do, to get to the moment when I fall to my knees in defeat, and in that falling find myself in a new place where change and answers can come. A place where I am willing to surrender all the manipulations of my ego, my expectations and demands, my certainty that there is only one right way for me to live and I can't live without achieving it. Willing to surrender the belief that only I can and should be the sole creator of my destiny.
Life would be much easier if there was a step by step guide to liberating surrender. Although I've come to that point many times, I can't say exactly what gets me there. All surrenders follow a similar path - I hold on and hold on until I can't do it anymore, then I let go and stillness comes. But I never am able to hurry it along; I can't say, oh, I need to surrender, and then simply do it. My desire to surrender doesn't help me surrender any more easily or quickly.
But once I directly experienced what a relief it is when I do surrender, I began to develop faith that if I kept trying to get free of my frantic will, my desperate demands and expectations, I would be led where I wanted to go. I began to see that the bubbling cauldron of fear and doubt and self-loathing that was reaching fever pitch wasn't my fate, wouldn't shatter me, but was part of a process leading me to insight and possibility. More and more, that bubbling cauldron had a context, a purpose - to move me along toward freedom. With each surrender, my belief that there was a purpose to my pain, that it was leading me toward insight, gave me the courage to keep on, to not cut and run, to hold steady and to keep my eyes focused on the possibility of change.
I can't make surrender happen on my schedule, but I can prepare the way so that I'll be ready for the moment of release. Where does that moment come from? Some would say it's grace or a moment of clarity or the hand of God. Wherever it comes from, it's a moment of expansion, a stabilizing connection to someplace beyond my own distorted ego.
Friday, February 12, 2016
SURRENDER
Surrender was a word I didn't want to get near. I heard defeat as if I were an army and if I surrendered to the other side I and my cause would be a total failure. To surrender is to stop fighting and I thought if I didn't fight I would be trampled, flattened by the world.
Eventually, I heard the word in a different way. To surrender is to let go of my desperation - to change myself, to get what I want, to make everyone and everything do what I want. That kind of fighting is a terrible burden to carry - I used to feel it was three o'clock in the morning and I had to figure everything out by dawn or I would be taken out and shot. The best description of what that anxiety feels like is from Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner:
Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round
Walks on and no more turns his head
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
Who wouldn't want to surrender that? This kind of surrender is about letting go of the frantic need to get to the bottom, control, fix, get what I want. Not only is that desire for complete control impossible to have, it's the desire of someone who views everyone else as a object in her world, not a full human being. It's the sign of a neurotic vanity that says, you must do everything, control everything, but of course you can't control it all and you wind up thinking yourself a failure.
When I surrender I'm taking my tight little hands and clawing fingers off the controls. As soon as I do, relaxation comes, the kind that lets in air and light. No fighting, no pressure - only an open hand. That opening hand is the gesture that takes me beyond my willful desperate ego, and allows me to be precisely where I am in the moment. I see clearly the futility of my trying to impose answers and fix all the things I think are wrong with me. I realize that I am no judge of anything that has to do with me; my thoughts and opinions about my place in the world, all the sentences that start with "I should have" or "What if" come out of fearful and doubting ego.
No more trying to impose answers and fixes and my will on the world. I open my hand, relax and allow possibilities, answers to emerge from that surrendered place. It's one of the many paradoxes, that giving up the need for control, opening my hand, leads not to defeat but to the possibility of real change.
Eventually, I heard the word in a different way. To surrender is to let go of my desperation - to change myself, to get what I want, to make everyone and everything do what I want. That kind of fighting is a terrible burden to carry - I used to feel it was three o'clock in the morning and I had to figure everything out by dawn or I would be taken out and shot. The best description of what that anxiety feels like is from Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner:
Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round
Walks on and no more turns his head
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
Who wouldn't want to surrender that? This kind of surrender is about letting go of the frantic need to get to the bottom, control, fix, get what I want. Not only is that desire for complete control impossible to have, it's the desire of someone who views everyone else as a object in her world, not a full human being. It's the sign of a neurotic vanity that says, you must do everything, control everything, but of course you can't control it all and you wind up thinking yourself a failure.
When I surrender I'm taking my tight little hands and clawing fingers off the controls. As soon as I do, relaxation comes, the kind that lets in air and light. No fighting, no pressure - only an open hand. That opening hand is the gesture that takes me beyond my willful desperate ego, and allows me to be precisely where I am in the moment. I see clearly the futility of my trying to impose answers and fix all the things I think are wrong with me. I realize that I am no judge of anything that has to do with me; my thoughts and opinions about my place in the world, all the sentences that start with "I should have" or "What if" come out of fearful and doubting ego.
No more trying to impose answers and fixes and my will on the world. I open my hand, relax and allow possibilities, answers to emerge from that surrendered place. It's one of the many paradoxes, that giving up the need for control, opening my hand, leads not to defeat but to the possibility of real change.
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
STICK TO IT!
I discovered meditation long before I knew what mediation was. Sometimes, trying to fall asleep, I found myself focusing on a spot just past my nose. I always found it suddenly and it felt as if my whole scalp tipped forward. In a sense it did tip forward - into a focus that calmed my mind and centered me. I called it thinking with the front of my head.
That may be why the first "official" time I meditated I had a very good experience - I closed my eyes, focused on a spot at the end of my nose, breathed in and out and stayed motionless for the hour we sat. My mind calmed down after about twenty minutes and there were moments when it was as if my mind was in front of me, hanging out for an airing.
I went home determined to begin a consistent practice. I set an alarm for forty-five minutes, sat down and began. It did not go well. I felt an intense restlessness, a barely resisted desire to open my eyes and get up. I knew enough to try to focus on the restlessness, to soften it, to remind myself that it was only a feeling passing through. I managed to stay seated and hoped the next time would be better.
It wasn't. The restlessness, the desire to leap off the cushion, grew even more intense. I stayed seated - I understood that meditation for me was now solely about the discipline of sitting for the time I said I would. After what in my memory was a few weeks but may have been only a few days, the restlessness reached a fever pitch. I felt as if I had swallowed another creature who was battling inside my skin, pushing out the outline of its arms and legs as if we were in a cartoon.
Then just at the moment I thought I had to give in to the restlessness or spin off into space, the bubble burst, the fever broke. As if a switch had clicked, the restlessness was gone. I felt calm, centered, able to sit until the alarm went off.
I think of that experience often; I see it as a process for every aspect of my life. Don't run, stay with discipline, keep to your commitment. But perfection will never be my strong suit. I don't make it much of the time. At least I keep trying.
That may be why the first "official" time I meditated I had a very good experience - I closed my eyes, focused on a spot at the end of my nose, breathed in and out and stayed motionless for the hour we sat. My mind calmed down after about twenty minutes and there were moments when it was as if my mind was in front of me, hanging out for an airing.
I went home determined to begin a consistent practice. I set an alarm for forty-five minutes, sat down and began. It did not go well. I felt an intense restlessness, a barely resisted desire to open my eyes and get up. I knew enough to try to focus on the restlessness, to soften it, to remind myself that it was only a feeling passing through. I managed to stay seated and hoped the next time would be better.
It wasn't. The restlessness, the desire to leap off the cushion, grew even more intense. I stayed seated - I understood that meditation for me was now solely about the discipline of sitting for the time I said I would. After what in my memory was a few weeks but may have been only a few days, the restlessness reached a fever pitch. I felt as if I had swallowed another creature who was battling inside my skin, pushing out the outline of its arms and legs as if we were in a cartoon.
Then just at the moment I thought I had to give in to the restlessness or spin off into space, the bubble burst, the fever broke. As if a switch had clicked, the restlessness was gone. I felt calm, centered, able to sit until the alarm went off.
I think of that experience often; I see it as a process for every aspect of my life. Don't run, stay with discipline, keep to your commitment. But perfection will never be my strong suit. I don't make it much of the time. At least I keep trying.
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
RECONCILIATION
The concept of reconciliation is part of my inner life. The dictionary has a few different definitions for reconcile, but the ones are I respond to are: to reestablish a close relationship, to resolve, to make harmonious.
I hear "reconciliation" as, first, an acknowledgment that there are many aspects to my being. Some of them are known to me and some are hidden from my conscious mind. Some of them are good, they fuel me, but some contain unresolved things in the past, feelings I don't want to uncover because they feel huge, able to annihilate me. There are many others; each of us carries a universe within.
There have been times on my path that in retrospect were events of transformation, some big, others small, of coming to see things in a whole new light. These didn't necessarily happen in a blinding flash - most of them only rose to the surface after a long time of invisible wheels turning inside and after a long time of my despairing they would ever come. Some brought a new understanding of the past, some a new sense of my strengths and weakness, some an acceptance of long ago hurts and resentments, some giving me courage to face my rage and fear.
Each of those transforming moments has felt to me like a reconciliation. I take something in, accept and digest it; I feel a new harmony inside, a resolution of what was hidden, fragmented, into a whole. I feel I'm embracing I feared or couldn't see. No longer afraid, no longer blind or in illusion, I take it in, absorb it. My whole being isn't changed but it's altered as I embrace the new and feel myself expanded.
Once, an image came to me, seemingly out of nowhere. I was standing on a tall cliff, looking out at the wide, wide vista in front of me. There was someone standing next to me - it was myself, younger, smaller, trying to hide her fear. I reached out and put my arm around her. It will be all right, I heard myself saying, and I drew her close, took her in. Then we stood together, my arm around her, and looked out at the beauty spread out below.
Reconciliation...
I hear "reconciliation" as, first, an acknowledgment that there are many aspects to my being. Some of them are known to me and some are hidden from my conscious mind. Some of them are good, they fuel me, but some contain unresolved things in the past, feelings I don't want to uncover because they feel huge, able to annihilate me. There are many others; each of us carries a universe within.
There have been times on my path that in retrospect were events of transformation, some big, others small, of coming to see things in a whole new light. These didn't necessarily happen in a blinding flash - most of them only rose to the surface after a long time of invisible wheels turning inside and after a long time of my despairing they would ever come. Some brought a new understanding of the past, some a new sense of my strengths and weakness, some an acceptance of long ago hurts and resentments, some giving me courage to face my rage and fear.
Each of those transforming moments has felt to me like a reconciliation. I take something in, accept and digest it; I feel a new harmony inside, a resolution of what was hidden, fragmented, into a whole. I feel I'm embracing I feared or couldn't see. No longer afraid, no longer blind or in illusion, I take it in, absorb it. My whole being isn't changed but it's altered as I embrace the new and feel myself expanded.
Once, an image came to me, seemingly out of nowhere. I was standing on a tall cliff, looking out at the wide, wide vista in front of me. There was someone standing next to me - it was myself, younger, smaller, trying to hide her fear. I reached out and put my arm around her. It will be all right, I heard myself saying, and I drew her close, took her in. Then we stood together, my arm around her, and looked out at the beauty spread out below.
Reconciliation...
Monday, February 8, 2016
MY ANARCHIST SENSIBILITY
Is not our temperament the coloration of events? Do we not encounter everything in the mirror of our personality? -- Emerson
We are interpreting beings. Information comes in through the senses and then ultimately we invest it with meaning What meaning we give grows out of our experience and the ideas we've absorbed from our culture. These meanings are ephemeral, not written in stone, and can change over time, do change as new experience comes.
Our beliefs are interpretations which is why the same event is often seen in some many different ways. Religion, ideology, any system of belief fits new information into old structures, aligns new information with prior beliefs. We choose our perspective, our means of interpreting, and become certain that we are right.
The belief that we are right makes us feel safe. If we already know what we think, if we hold on to it hard enough, it gives the illusion that we are standing on solid, unchanging ground. It appears that most people need this sense of solid ground, of an anchor, so that they won't go spinning into the void.
Other people - like me - find liberation in the belief that there is no solid ground. All things are contingent, mutable; we ourselves have only our interpretations of reality; we don't have direct access to "reality" itself.
I see the world from what I like to call my anarchist sensibility. Anarchism is against making institutions of ideas. Spontaneous structures are created to deal with whatever arises and then they are meant to pass away as new situations arise. I see myself as if playing against a tennis ball machine - I have faith that spontaneously I can hit whatever comes. I face the world with confidence - bring it on, I say, bring it on.
My anarchist sensibility is an ideal that animates my imagination. But it's just one possible interpretation. There is no Truth with a capital T, only perspective. Is every perspective equally valid? How then are we to justify calling something bad or good? These are the kinds of questions that keep philosophers very busy. But more about that later...
We are interpreting beings. Information comes in through the senses and then ultimately we invest it with meaning What meaning we give grows out of our experience and the ideas we've absorbed from our culture. These meanings are ephemeral, not written in stone, and can change over time, do change as new experience comes.
Our beliefs are interpretations which is why the same event is often seen in some many different ways. Religion, ideology, any system of belief fits new information into old structures, aligns new information with prior beliefs. We choose our perspective, our means of interpreting, and become certain that we are right.
The belief that we are right makes us feel safe. If we already know what we think, if we hold on to it hard enough, it gives the illusion that we are standing on solid, unchanging ground. It appears that most people need this sense of solid ground, of an anchor, so that they won't go spinning into the void.
Other people - like me - find liberation in the belief that there is no solid ground. All things are contingent, mutable; we ourselves have only our interpretations of reality; we don't have direct access to "reality" itself.
I see the world from what I like to call my anarchist sensibility. Anarchism is against making institutions of ideas. Spontaneous structures are created to deal with whatever arises and then they are meant to pass away as new situations arise. I see myself as if playing against a tennis ball machine - I have faith that spontaneously I can hit whatever comes. I face the world with confidence - bring it on, I say, bring it on.
My anarchist sensibility is an ideal that animates my imagination. But it's just one possible interpretation. There is no Truth with a capital T, only perspective. Is every perspective equally valid? How then are we to justify calling something bad or good? These are the kinds of questions that keep philosophers very busy. But more about that later...
Sunday, February 7, 2016
MY MOTHER'S GAZE
Sometimes, when I'm out and about, in the market or on the street, I see a mother and child who bring me to a stop. The mother is gazing directly into the eyes of her child and smiling, the child is doing the same and they're both happy. It's a completely ordinary moment, a mother and child sharing an intimate gaze, the look of security and mutual pleasure.
I don't remember my mother ever looking at me like that - gazing directly at me with pleasure and encouragement, making me for a moment the focus of her gaze. Maybe there were times when she did look at me that way, but I'll never know that objective truth. What I know is the truth I feel inside me, the image I have of her distracted by anxiety, always worried something is wrong and something bad will happen.
Years ago, I saw a documentary about a clinic in Toronto that works with mothers and babies who have attachment problems. They showed the first session of a mother and her toddler; during the whole session the mother ignored the child who didn't stop climbing all over her trying to get her attention. Over the course of a few sessions, the therapists very gently pointed out certain behaviors to the mother and suggested different ways for her to act. In a surprisingly short time, at the last session, the mother was paying close attention to the child, and the child was calm, resting contentedly next to her. It made me cry, that such a small consistent change in behavior could make such an enormous difference to the child. Why hadn't there been someone to show my mother how to make a difference for me?
In the coming days, I was as low as I've ever been. I was bereft, desolate, feeling the knife of despair for what I had never had - the sense that someone loved me unconditionally, acknowledged me, took delight in my existence. Added to that was not only the abyss of loss but also a great shame, as if the lack of my mother's gaze was my fault. It was classic, the way I had taken in the blame - and was still feeling it - even though I knew the problem was my mother's and not mine.
I saw very clearly what the absence of that gaze had done to the many aspects of my life, and I realized how my shame had imprisoned me in the very sense of loss I wanted so much to transcend. I had no part in my mother's inability to see me completely but I did very much have a part in the blame and shame I had laid upon myself. As long as they controlled me, I wouldn't be able to leave that very early wound behind. I wouldn't be able to heal.
I wish I could say that the realization of my imprisoning shame turned on the light and brought the changes I sought. But in fact, the hard work was all ahead. I had to find a way to accept the loss of what every child needs, and to neutralize my shame at being the one who wasn't loved. The search for psychological insight was useful but ultimately words and concepts only kept me at a distance. I needed to find the courage to feel what was under all my ideas, to let go and feel the whole constellation of rage, despair, shame and hopelessness that was always flowing like lava beneath the surface. I needed to find faith that if I let all of that out, I wouldn't be annihilated, wouldn't melt away like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz until there was nothing left but my hat of shame.
Staying on the path to courage and faith has become the main commitment in my life. To go on when progress is minute and slow, to keep on in the face of fear - to feel the certainty of a refuge inside me and the belief that I'm not walking this path alone - that is at once the source and the result of any change I've found. I'm freer than I've ever been and knowing what more freedom feels like, I want to keep walking, to find even more.
I don't remember my mother ever looking at me like that - gazing directly at me with pleasure and encouragement, making me for a moment the focus of her gaze. Maybe there were times when she did look at me that way, but I'll never know that objective truth. What I know is the truth I feel inside me, the image I have of her distracted by anxiety, always worried something is wrong and something bad will happen.
Years ago, I saw a documentary about a clinic in Toronto that works with mothers and babies who have attachment problems. They showed the first session of a mother and her toddler; during the whole session the mother ignored the child who didn't stop climbing all over her trying to get her attention. Over the course of a few sessions, the therapists very gently pointed out certain behaviors to the mother and suggested different ways for her to act. In a surprisingly short time, at the last session, the mother was paying close attention to the child, and the child was calm, resting contentedly next to her. It made me cry, that such a small consistent change in behavior could make such an enormous difference to the child. Why hadn't there been someone to show my mother how to make a difference for me?
In the coming days, I was as low as I've ever been. I was bereft, desolate, feeling the knife of despair for what I had never had - the sense that someone loved me unconditionally, acknowledged me, took delight in my existence. Added to that was not only the abyss of loss but also a great shame, as if the lack of my mother's gaze was my fault. It was classic, the way I had taken in the blame - and was still feeling it - even though I knew the problem was my mother's and not mine.
I saw very clearly what the absence of that gaze had done to the many aspects of my life, and I realized how my shame had imprisoned me in the very sense of loss I wanted so much to transcend. I had no part in my mother's inability to see me completely but I did very much have a part in the blame and shame I had laid upon myself. As long as they controlled me, I wouldn't be able to leave that very early wound behind. I wouldn't be able to heal.
I wish I could say that the realization of my imprisoning shame turned on the light and brought the changes I sought. But in fact, the hard work was all ahead. I had to find a way to accept the loss of what every child needs, and to neutralize my shame at being the one who wasn't loved. The search for psychological insight was useful but ultimately words and concepts only kept me at a distance. I needed to find the courage to feel what was under all my ideas, to let go and feel the whole constellation of rage, despair, shame and hopelessness that was always flowing like lava beneath the surface. I needed to find faith that if I let all of that out, I wouldn't be annihilated, wouldn't melt away like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz until there was nothing left but my hat of shame.
Staying on the path to courage and faith has become the main commitment in my life. To go on when progress is minute and slow, to keep on in the face of fear - to feel the certainty of a refuge inside me and the belief that I'm not walking this path alone - that is at once the source and the result of any change I've found. I'm freer than I've ever been and knowing what more freedom feels like, I want to keep walking, to find even more.
Saturday, February 6, 2016
GETTING OFF MY CASE
I don't know why it's so hard for me to get off my case. I know that the voice in my head that tells me I'm not enough, I don't do enough, is only attached to ephemeral thoughts floating through my mind. I know that I am not what that voice tells me. I know getting on my case is a very old habit - sometimes I think I was born with the on-my-case button already installed - and even the oldest of habits can change.
God, I know a lot! And none of it helps me when the voice is on me. The reality of that voice in my head is stunning, powerful, all-consuming. I think of Jim Carrey in "The Truman Show" - sometimes I'm encased in a world that feels absolutely real, that I completely believe, but when a chink appears, a sliver of light, I see that I can step through it and find myself in a new and expansive place, a place where I'm enough, I do enough and there's no reason to get on my case.
I am my own chink in the sky, my own sliver of light. They are inside me and I know a few things to help me find them. When the voice has claimed me, I've learned to shake hands with it, to say you're smaller than I am and you're not all of reality. And repeat it until I really hear the words. Like an actor in a sense memory exercise, I work to summon up the feeling of fullness that tells me I'm enough. I remind myself I have some accomplishments and have done some good things. I picture the people in my life I care about the most. I especially think about how far I've come on this path of change. Then like Alice I step through the looking glass. In that new land, acceptance blossoms inside me, along with humility which allows me to be who I am, and gratitude for what I have and what I've done. I take a deep breath, come fully into the moment and find myself in that place where I and the world are enough.
God, I know a lot! And none of it helps me when the voice is on me. The reality of that voice in my head is stunning, powerful, all-consuming. I think of Jim Carrey in "The Truman Show" - sometimes I'm encased in a world that feels absolutely real, that I completely believe, but when a chink appears, a sliver of light, I see that I can step through it and find myself in a new and expansive place, a place where I'm enough, I do enough and there's no reason to get on my case.
I am my own chink in the sky, my own sliver of light. They are inside me and I know a few things to help me find them. When the voice has claimed me, I've learned to shake hands with it, to say you're smaller than I am and you're not all of reality. And repeat it until I really hear the words. Like an actor in a sense memory exercise, I work to summon up the feeling of fullness that tells me I'm enough. I remind myself I have some accomplishments and have done some good things. I picture the people in my life I care about the most. I especially think about how far I've come on this path of change. Then like Alice I step through the looking glass. In that new land, acceptance blossoms inside me, along with humility which allows me to be who I am, and gratitude for what I have and what I've done. I take a deep breath, come fully into the moment and find myself in that place where I and the world are enough.
Friday, February 5, 2016
POWERLESSNESS
Isolation is one of my default settings. I distinguish between that and solitude - solitude is the alone time everyone needs - to reflect, create, calm down. My isolation is of another order - it's the thing that makes it hard for me to get out the door or initiate plans with people and stay in touch with them even when I want to. It's what keeps me invisible - lets me be invisible. It's a feeling that descends on me as soon as I turn away from people, away from the world.
There's no point outlining the anatomy of my urge, need, compulsion to isolate. I know enough about it; I want to know how to change. Powerlessness is one way in. Not the kind of powerlessness that's an admission of defeat, or enslavement or in fact anything negative. My admission of powerlessness is an opening. It allows me to take my white-knuckled hands off the frantic need to figure things out and change myself in an instant. There is no kindness to myself in that and it doesn't help in any case. Change doesn't come when the knives are out.
The powerlessness I mean creates a enough space so that I can take a deep breath and relax into the moment, this moment. Willfulness, the endless jockeying of my mind looking for a sense of control - all that dissolves and I feel myself expand. That's where the kindness is, the compassion. Without the calm that comes when I allow myself to feel that kindness, there's no chance at all that anything will change.
There's no point outlining the anatomy of my urge, need, compulsion to isolate. I know enough about it; I want to know how to change. Powerlessness is one way in. Not the kind of powerlessness that's an admission of defeat, or enslavement or in fact anything negative. My admission of powerlessness is an opening. It allows me to take my white-knuckled hands off the frantic need to figure things out and change myself in an instant. There is no kindness to myself in that and it doesn't help in any case. Change doesn't come when the knives are out.
The powerlessness I mean creates a enough space so that I can take a deep breath and relax into the moment, this moment. Willfulness, the endless jockeying of my mind looking for a sense of control - all that dissolves and I feel myself expand. That's where the kindness is, the compassion. Without the calm that comes when I allow myself to feel that kindness, there's no chance at all that anything will change.
Thursday, February 4, 2016
THE BLANK PAGE
Meditating on the blank page, the white computer screen. Focusing, centering, and waiting to see what comes. I can remember those times that filled me with so much anxiety my eyes would literally slip off the page; I didn't have control of them. The double fear: nothing will come, what comes will be bad.
That doesn't happen writing here. I've learned how to wait quietly, to focus my eyes on the middle distance. I don't try to figure out what to write. I wait for something to come. I think, now it's time to connect, to let the connection between my heart and my hand emerge. There's nothing to be anxious about. I'm not trying to have opinions or make any case or create a story that will bring the world to my door.
I'm just trying to get quiet, not even so much to write, as to feel the connection with a very deep part of me. If I can bring out anything authentic and true, that's where it comes from.
Getting quiet, waiting to connect with the stillness beyond my conscious mind and the energy that connection creates in me - it's not only the way for me to write. It's also the way to live. To be receptive, without the narrowness of preconceived ideas. To move through the day with a sense of that live connection, that energy, and feel the confidence that it won't turn off and leave me stranded. When I'm connected to that deep place there's no chance of that. Words like "stranded" have no meaning. Nothing abrupt and disorienting or "bad" can happen. I feel my experience as a flowing unity, always arising from moment to moment, and I'm able to take in whatever comes, process it and go on to the next. I have equanimity.
Needless to say, I don't feel that connection all the time. Anxiety, doubt, resentment can all come up and claim me. But now that I know what the deeper connection feels like, I can always get quiet enough to go looking for it and in looking I find my way back.
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
PERCHINGS AND FLIGHTS
I have a story I tell myself. It's the story of myself, the one on which I build my identity. "I'm the on who...." and "this is who I am, that is who I am. These are my beliefs, this is the group I belong to, I never....I always..." It seems silly to say, "Isn't amazing that I go to bed at night and when I wake up in the morning I know who I am?" But it is amazing, that from moment to moment, I carry forward everything I mean when I say "me." William James described what he called the stream of consciousness, the internal continuity of "me-ness." He uses a wonderful metaphor of birds both in flight and perching - our conscious thoughts are the perchings but the flights, the connections, are always there, not rising to be known, but running beneath and unifying all that we mean by "self." "I" am the stream with all its eddies and whirlpools and still surfaces, always in the flow.
It also sounds silly to say how amazed I am that I can have a new idea; I can revise and redefine who I feel I was and who I feel I am now and who I think I'll be in the future. I can learn something new about myself, see things in a different way, have a lifetime of epiphanies. I am able to reflect on myself - I can change my mind. That ability is the glory of consciousness, that ideas and opinions aren't set in stone but are part of the great stream that is always changing, never the same stream twice - such a simple thing, that I can come to see things differently.
I know why I remind myself of all this. This view of my reality tells me I can change, that I can bind up all the fragments and shards inside that I don't understand, and come to feel myself whole, brimming with energy from that stream, constantly moving, reveling in the flow.
I need to keep reminding myself of the possibility of change. All of it ephemeral and also a solid rock to stand on.
It also sounds silly to say how amazed I am that I can have a new idea; I can revise and redefine who I feel I was and who I feel I am now and who I think I'll be in the future. I can learn something new about myself, see things in a different way, have a lifetime of epiphanies. I am able to reflect on myself - I can change my mind. That ability is the glory of consciousness, that ideas and opinions aren't set in stone but are part of the great stream that is always changing, never the same stream twice - such a simple thing, that I can come to see things differently.
I know why I remind myself of all this. This view of my reality tells me I can change, that I can bind up all the fragments and shards inside that I don't understand, and come to feel myself whole, brimming with energy from that stream, constantly moving, reveling in the flow.
I need to keep reminding myself of the possibility of change. All of it ephemeral and also a solid rock to stand on.
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
SELF-PITY: THE SEDUCTIVE VOICE
I was thinking about a man I knew a long time ago. I've kept track of him and he seems to be living the life I've wanted for myself - enormously successful and moving in the very top circles in his field, a long and close marriage, children and, of course, tons of money.
Sometimes I've used him as a cudgel against myself. See what he has? What he's accomplished? Now look at your life - what have you done, how far have you gotten, you're a failure in every way. It's a voice that plays over and over again and I let myself be seduced by it even though I know that comparing someone's outsides to my insides is always a losing game.
It took me a long time to realize that voice is my version of self-pity. Its only purpose is to make me feel sorry for myself. Poor, poor me, look how pathetic I am. When that voice is on me, I can't shake an image of myself turning from the light as if I don't deserve its warmth. It's a self-perpetuating loop - the more I feel sorry for myself, the sorrier I feel for myself. And I think that is the purpose behind the purpose: as long as I submerge myself in that swamp of self-pity, I don't have to act. I can stay in the darkness, alone and despairing, and not take a risk or challenge myself to move forward or work hard to bring about change. Self-pity lets me off the hook.
Once I recognized this voice as self-pity I began to be able to work with it. Naming it gives me a way to step back from it, to see that it isn't something that's bigger than me. Yes, it's a huge ball but if I'm patient I can make it smaller and smaller, until it's small enough to put it in my pocket. I may carry it with me but it doesn't get in my way.
Sometimes I've used him as a cudgel against myself. See what he has? What he's accomplished? Now look at your life - what have you done, how far have you gotten, you're a failure in every way. It's a voice that plays over and over again and I let myself be seduced by it even though I know that comparing someone's outsides to my insides is always a losing game.
It took me a long time to realize that voice is my version of self-pity. Its only purpose is to make me feel sorry for myself. Poor, poor me, look how pathetic I am. When that voice is on me, I can't shake an image of myself turning from the light as if I don't deserve its warmth. It's a self-perpetuating loop - the more I feel sorry for myself, the sorrier I feel for myself. And I think that is the purpose behind the purpose: as long as I submerge myself in that swamp of self-pity, I don't have to act. I can stay in the darkness, alone and despairing, and not take a risk or challenge myself to move forward or work hard to bring about change. Self-pity lets me off the hook.
Once I recognized this voice as self-pity I began to be able to work with it. Naming it gives me a way to step back from it, to see that it isn't something that's bigger than me. Yes, it's a huge ball but if I'm patient I can make it smaller and smaller, until it's small enough to put it in my pocket. I may carry it with me but it doesn't get in my way.
Monday, February 1, 2016
FLEXIBLE AND STRONG
"Plasticity then, in the widest sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits." -- William James
Substitute flexible, malleable for weak...plasticity, able to be shaped, molded, able to change. Not all at once, dramatically, but step by step, gradually so that equilibrium can be maintained. When it is you find yourself in a new place, acting in a new way.
A slow transformation...I picture an old fashioned scales with suspended plates (or whatever they're called) on either side. Add a weight and then another to one and slowly the plate that was high becomes low. There's a tipping point, a moment and it's elusive, impossible to discern.
The only physical exercise I genuinely like is walking uphill. I used to walk up one of canyon trails that begin where the pavement ends in Griffith Park. This particular trail was steep for the first ten minutes or so. When I first began walking up, I'd stop after those ten minutes, out of breath, my muscles sore.
One day, I found myself feeling bad because I stopped. It seemed like a wimpy thing to do. Nonetheless, I continued stopping but day by day the bad feeling deepened, the sense that I was letting myself down. You know what comes next - a day came when as I took my first steps I said to myself -- no stopping. If it kills you, you're going straight to the top. Reader, I did.
I think about that walking very often because I see in it the slow transformation of self. For a while, I choose to stay put rather than take the risk of changing. But slowly wheels turn inside, the scales tip, the line is crossed. I realize I can't stand the pain of staying put and I take the risk of change.
I no longer wish I could will myself across that line. I no longer believe that if only I could find the right words, ask the right questions, have enough information, change would come in a minute.
Flexible and strong, change coming in small increments, slow but from a very deep place. I'll take it. Gladly.
Substitute flexible, malleable for weak...plasticity, able to be shaped, molded, able to change. Not all at once, dramatically, but step by step, gradually so that equilibrium can be maintained. When it is you find yourself in a new place, acting in a new way.
A slow transformation...I picture an old fashioned scales with suspended plates (or whatever they're called) on either side. Add a weight and then another to one and slowly the plate that was high becomes low. There's a tipping point, a moment and it's elusive, impossible to discern.
The only physical exercise I genuinely like is walking uphill. I used to walk up one of canyon trails that begin where the pavement ends in Griffith Park. This particular trail was steep for the first ten minutes or so. When I first began walking up, I'd stop after those ten minutes, out of breath, my muscles sore.
One day, I found myself feeling bad because I stopped. It seemed like a wimpy thing to do. Nonetheless, I continued stopping but day by day the bad feeling deepened, the sense that I was letting myself down. You know what comes next - a day came when as I took my first steps I said to myself -- no stopping. If it kills you, you're going straight to the top. Reader, I did.
I think about that walking very often because I see in it the slow transformation of self. For a while, I choose to stay put rather than take the risk of changing. But slowly wheels turn inside, the scales tip, the line is crossed. I realize I can't stand the pain of staying put and I take the risk of change.
I no longer wish I could will myself across that line. I no longer believe that if only I could find the right words, ask the right questions, have enough information, change would come in a minute.
Flexible and strong, change coming in small increments, slow but from a very deep place. I'll take it. Gladly.
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