CHANGE IS SLOW

I've said many times that the solution lies in letting go of whatever it is that's blocking me. It sounds as if it's easy and simply letting go - however I understand it at any particular time - will quickly bring change. I know from experience that isn't so. Whatever the change I've wanted, I've had to become willing to struggle to let go and I've had to do it over and over again. It's true that every time I've let go and let new energy come into my life, it's helped me stay on the path to change. But sometimes that's barely discernible. Time goes by and it feels to me that I'm making no progress. No progress at all. It's very easy to get discouraged.
     I've had to learn change only comes slowly. I can't think of a time it's come all at once. Even when I believe I'm willing, I may still make no progress at all. My willingness meets resistance and I hang motionless at the dividing line. Nothing will happen if I'm not willing, but it's also true that nothing will happen until I acknowledge my resistance and work to let it go. That's the letting go behind the letting go. It's a very long process.
     Do I want to stop smoking? Yes, I'm willing but I can't seem to get to actually throwing the pack away. I'm afraid of who I'll be without the crutch of a cigarette; I don't think I have the discipline. I'm ambivalent, and some part of me is echoing St. Augustine's famous "Lord, make me abstinent -- but not yet." A lot has to happen internally to allow me to get past that "not yet," to bring me to being unafraid to risk knowing who I'll be without a cigarette and to imagine that I might have the discipline after all. Willingness has to wrestle with resistance until finally I'm no longer ambivalent and am ready for a real attempt at letting go. That takes a long time.
     Do I want to let go of pride and arrogance? I'm very willing but in fact I don't understand how pride and arrogance work in me. I remember once signing up at a temp agency that gave a basic math test. I couldn't believe how simple it was so I did it quickly and although there was time to go over my answers I didn't think I needed it. Well, I was shocked, shocked to learn I had gotten three wrong. It wasn't until much later that I understood why I didn't take the time to check my answers: pride and arrogance. I had known their dictionary definitions but I hadn't a clue of how they worked in me. I prayed to be willing, I thought I was willing, but I still had to uncover all the subtle ways pride and arrogance lived in my consciousness and affected my actions. Only then could I make much progress in letting go. That takes a long time.
     Sometimes change moves at a glacial pace and it's easy to get forget that wheels are turning inside. But once you know what you're aiming at - giving up cigarettes, learning to recognize pride and arrogance - the process is set in motion. When people quote St. Augustine, it's usually to nod in identification with that "not yet." But it was the first part of that prayer that moved him step by step toward change.
     I'm a very impatient person. I want things when I want them and if they don't come quickly I'm as likely as not to give up trying to get them. The voice that says, "Nothing is happening. Why bother? Give up," is sometimes very loud. It repeats and repeats, a negative mantra, installed in me a very long time ago. But I know now that voice isn't telling me anything that has to be the truth. It's only an old habit, a way for me to have excuses not to do the hard thing, not to struggle with my own imperfections, not to aim high. I'm able to pay less attention to it than I used to. I practice patience and do what I can to deepen my faith in my own possibilities. And I remind myself, as many times as I need to, that change, deep change, only comes slowly.
     
     

FAILURE

I knew a man who, in the eyes of the world, was both accomplished and admirable. His first novel won a national prize, he went on to make money from other kinds of writing, and he took a principled political stand at a time it was dangerous to do so. He and his family paid a high price, but years later he was seen as a hero, his name well-known. But as glad as he was that he had done what he had done, something was missing. He regretted he had had no success with other novels and plays; he had wanted a career like Dreiser, or Dos Passos, any of the other great social issue novelists. It wasn't that he felt he was a failure, but he felt he had failed his deepest and dearest ambitions.
     I sometimes think that I could win an Oscar one day, the Nobel Peace Prize the next and gnash my teeth that it wasn't the Nobel for literature. Some part of me is a bottomless pit that is never filled no matter what I do. Freudians would say I have an out-of-whack superego, an ego driving me on which I can never satisfy. Many people do. For some, it drives them to greater and greater accomplishments, others are paralyzed by the impossibility of attaining an imaginary perfection of ambition, while others, like me and most other people, fall somewhere in the middle. On good days, I can take pleasure in my accomplishments but on a bad day I feel myself a complete and utter failure.
     Over the years, I've learned some things. I can step back from my self-centered opinions of myself, from both the grandiose and the self-loathing. I don't have to attach to either of them, or to any ideas in between. I remind myself of my belief that there is no truth, but only perspective, which is something I create, and it has a search light I can swing in another direction. It's very hard to believe that ideas I feel deeply, that seem to have no distance between them and whatever this thing is that I call "me", can possibly not be "real," not be true. But I've experienced many times that if I shift my gaze only a few degrees, move the light to a different part of the ocean, I can move out of all the judgments I make about myself. I know now that other direction, the stillness and release it provides, is always available to me, if I take a moment to look for it. 
     I often say, "Is, is." It's the shortest version I can think of for acceptance. I don't mean acceptance of any of my ideas, either the ones that drive me to outlandish pride and arrogance, the ones that tell me I have to resign myself, or the ones that collapse me into failure. I mean acceptance of the reality that all my opinions, no matter how vivid they can be, are only passing through, undoubtedly subject to change. 
     It's the paradox I want to have before me, that the only reality is that there is no reality, nothing fixed, unchanging, written in stone, or more true than anything else. That's where my freedom lies, in letting go, breathing in and out, surrendering to my own particular stream of consciousness.