POSSIBILITIES

There are countless possibilities locked away inside me. Some are unknown to me, some when I sense them fill me with fear, some I try to nourish and bring out into the world. It's one of the great dilemmas in being alive - anything is possible but I can only live out a few of my possibilities. Circumstances, choices, crazy ideas - they narrow my possibilities which I don't always realize. I'm locked in my ego and I misread the signs, don't catch half of what's going by, misjudge the importance of events. It can't be helped; it's part of the human condition.
     And there is the second guessing, the anxious ambivalence that I may be pursuing the wrong things. But haven't I learned by now that as I go along, there are no "wrong" choices; I simply do what I do, it leads to new possibilities which in turn further lead me on. A life, my life, is always evolving, constantly connecting myself to self.  
     No matter what I say about this, it comes down to one fact: my time is limited and I can't do all I have in me to do. But I don't have to think that's a lack of fulfilling my potential. Again, I can't do it all. But I can close my eyes and feel those possibilities inside me, the old ones and the new, feel them as a rich fullness. Isn't that what my spiritual life is all about? Feeling the expansiveness of all that lives inside me.

TERMINAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

   The other day something reminded me of what I used to call my terminal self-consciousness. It was as if there was a camera in the ceiling recording my every move and I worried constantly about how I was doing. Sometimes, I felt I was lurking behind my eyes, looking out at everyone and everything, assessing. What did this person think of me? Was this the person I should be talking to, instead of someone else across the room? That person is wearing the wrong shoes so I should get away as fast as I can. 
     The camera in the ceiling, the lurking behind my eyes - nothing happened without my constant worry that I would be seen in the wrong way, or reveal something shameful, or be found wanting by the cool people, whoever they were. It was all about judgment, judging myself and all the rest of you. It was exhausting but I couldn't rest - judging others and being afraid others were judging me kept me very busy. 
     I couldn't be in my body and I couldn't be in the world. In that self-consciousness, I didn't see anything apart from myself. Everyone was an object that revolved around me. I didn't understand it was narcissism; how could I be narcissistic if I was afraid all the time and condemned just about everything I did? 
     I couldn't survive in that place. In a way, it was a matter of life and death - self-consciousness and its friend ambivalence would have taken me down, stripped my life of pleasure, enjoyment, the freedom to create. Desperation made me willing to surrender, just surrender all the anxiety, judgment and second-guessing. You take it, I said to the universe, because this is killing me.
     I can narrate some of the steps in my changing. Surrender created a sliver of space in which I began to understand that my terminal self-consciousness and reflexive judging weren't standing on anything solid; they were habits of thought, ephemeral patterns of behavior that were just passing across my vision. I saw that they weren't "reality," whatever that was, and there was at least the possibility that reality might be something different. Surrender, hope, willingness became my building blocks and their solidity gave the courage to untie the knots inside. A slow process began, one that's still going on, and I hope it will always go on because I will never come to the end of the possibilities of getting free.
     I can narrate the steps of this process, but I don't know why it came to me. It's not because I'm special or more deserving that anyone else. I can see that at every step I made the right choice, the one that would lead me on toward change, and I can see that I was willing to stay in the process, not matter how painful or frightening it was. But I don't feel I can take much credit. I didn't make something happen. Something happened to me.
     I was talking about grace this morning which William James defines as a sudden inrush of energy, energy that seems to come from outside us, beyond the confines of our consciousness. I have felt that energy many times and when it was most needed. The energy of grace has kept me moving on.

THAT TYRANT, AMBIVALENCE

Left to my own devices, I often choose to be alone. I work alone so solitude is necessary. But when I have nothing in particular to do, solitude feels comfortable and rich; my mind and curiosity are very good companions. I feel like I have all the time in the world. It feels like freedom. 
     I'm not often lonely - which is very different than solitude. Loneliness feels as if I'm incomplete; I feel a longing for someone or something I don't have. Loneliness asks the outside world to come in and make a change, and it makes me feel as if there's something wrong with me. 
      I once said to someone that I spend too much time alone. She said, "You like to be alone. What's wrong with that?" There's the rub, another appearance by my old friend "should." I should be different than I am, do different things than I do. It's ambivalence as a tyrant, not letting me rest peacefully in my choices. 
     But I've had a lot of time getting to know the place in me where my ambivalence and all those shoulds live. Sometimes they fully claim me and seem my only reality. But in fact I always have another choice: I can sit quietly, focus and after a while watch them dissolve and drift away. As they go, they leave behind the space where peace and acceptance live and, after another while, I know that I'm all right. 
     
(There's a very interesting book by Robert D. Putnam on the collapse of community in America. It's called "Bowling Alone," the saddest title I've ever come across, more than sad - tipping over into despair.)

CLEARING THE KITCHEN COUNTERS

I used to have a lot of stuff on my kitchen counter - a canister of coffee, the coffee machine, more than a dozen knives held in a wood block, a small bowl for spare change, a roll of paper towels, and odds and ends that were meant to be temporary but somehow never moved. Sometimes, I had trouble clearing enough space to do whatever it is you usually do on kitchen counters but I hardly noticed the inconvenience. It simply didn't occur to me that things could be different.  
     Last week, I made a change. I moved the bowl of change onto a shelf outside the kitchen, found a place in one of the cupboards to store the block of knives, cleared off the odds and ends. That left the coffee canister and maker and the standing roll of paper towels. Now, when I walk into the kitchen I'm amazed at all the space. I could cater a five course meal without a problem at all.
     What took me so long? Why was I so able to ignore the inconvenience? Why didn't occur to me to make things easier for myself? I have some idea of the answers - these are questions I've asked myself many times before over different problematic areas of my life.  
     It turns out I have a high tolerance for inconvenience. I can step over a pile of papers on the floor for days instead of picking it up and finding a place for it. I can put off depositing checks in the bank despite knowing my account is running low. I can sit with the pain of isolation without making a move to connect with friends and go out. Then one day something shifts inside and I pick up the papers, get the checks in the bank, call up a friend and make a plan for dinner. 
     Full frontal attacks on whatever the problem is don't seem to get me moving. I wish they did, but there's a perverse resistance in me and it's that I have to work through. "There's a problem, why don't I deal with it, I have to deal with it, I don't want to deal with it." That litany goes round and round in me... until "one day something shifts." I didn't decide to clear off the kitchen counter - instead, I just found myself doing it. Clearly, the time had come.
     In the face of change, there's a pushme-pullyou inside me and as long as the conflict, the ambivalence lasts I can't force myself to act. I need to chip off little pieces, sometimes tiny pieces of my resistance, until, like Michelangelo's statues emerging from the stone, right action emerges from me. Why can't I hurry it along? I don't know, maybe I'll never know, but in any case, I've learned not to ask this particular why. After all, I know from experience: it just takes what it takes. 
     

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.