Teachings by Beth Miller
Enjoying Life
Hello again, from my home to yours. My heart remains with you as we find our collective footing, possibly feeling antsy and facing hard choices about health . . . and well-being.
And, once again, I reflect upon the simple and profound reality – no matter what the circumstances or situation we are in, our response is where the real juice is. I am not saying, by any stretch of the imagination, that what we are facing is not hard or challenging.
But suffering is optional.
We have so much more choice regarding our response to life than we believe we do.
What better time to remind yourself of your goodness, your essential nobility, your freedom and beauty?
What if you were to enjoy your life . . . right now.
Enjoying our life seems so simple and yet seems to evade and beguile us. It is as if we live under a spell and believe we do not have choice in the matter. Believing that external circumstances hold power over us and dictate how we feel and how we behave.
But we do have a choice. It seems that the very denying ourselves that capacity of joy amounts to an ocean of troubles.
Yes, even in the trenches we are living in, we have the capacity to be fully alive, happy to be alive. More often than not being vulnerable, being on our knees, opens the door to that realization. Vulnerability can be a softening agent. And here we are, all around the globe, looking into the mirror and, if we are willing, seeing our tender selves.
I think back to before the world shifted on its axis in response to the pandemic and I remember the hundreds of interactions and going-about-our-business-as-usual we took for granted.
Can’t this be a good clarifying moment – how much were we available to truly enjoy, relish and savor all those interactions and moments. It is so easy to get lost and distracted and not take in the full measure of our moment to moment life, as it is happening. What are the moments now and how can we become more present to them, more alive to our beating heart?
We long for the aliveness that comes with being energized and engaged, fully engaged in the here and now; we come alive when we listen to our deepest selves and move in tune with and in concert with our heart.
Being awake to our life, fully absorbed and present is our birth right –inherently enjoying, cherishing our life, no matter the circumstances, is “factory-loaded”.
We are designed to be relaxed, at ease and in a state of flow. We all know this instinctively; watch how your mind and body constrict, get tight, go small when you are fighting something or resisting something that just happened . . . or something that happened a long time ago or might happen in some other-than-now time.
And watch and feel your body and mind expand in the open spaciousness of gratitude, openness, love, and creativity. Notice how you feel when you have “lost” yourself in some movement or happening, conversation or activity. Taste the ease and forgetfulness of anything other than that moment.
In the Canadian sport, curling, the sweeper skates in front of the players, sweeping the ice of debris and melting a thin layer of the ice, under the heat of the broom. The sweeper is setting up a smooth run for the stone, to travel further and straighter along the path, by removing obstacles.
Clearing the cobwebs in our psyche and body has the same effect – clears the way for a revelation of our essential nature, for the pure expression of our hearts. For pure laughter and play, sorrow and aches.
It is the debris of our mental constructs, our conditioned beliefs and training that blocks the view of our natural state . . . the running commentary in our minds that insist upon complaining, judging and self-pitying. Repeating a mantra, convincingly: there is something wrong and we cannot afford to rest.
We all know the voice; in one way or another it sounds like this: “I am not good enough, or even more debilitating, I am not good. I don’t deserve to be happy or peaceful; I need to stay vigilant and keep myself safe, I need to become something other than I am.”
That is not who we are. Make space, room, to see through these deceptions, for real. Ask questions . . . poke holes . . . reflect deeply . . . get clear, kind and constructive feedback . . . get distance from the mind chatter . . . open your hands and let the sand drop away . . .
It can be helpful to know when something needs to be processed and when you can simply let go of the illusion. Some conditioning can be very sticky, some deeply embedded beliefs need tender attention and care, and some illusions might need to be seen through again, and maybe even again.
When all psychological work is held in the context and spirit of revealing your true nature, remembering . . . sweetly remembering you are here as life itself, the sweeping away of the debris is powerfully liberating. As our very own sweepers we can sharpen our powers of discernment for what is real and what is not, and deepen into our devotion for freedom and release from psychological conditioning.
See within your heart you really are meant to fully enjoy your life.
Why not lift our glass and toast each other for being alive . . . now!
AND NOW
And Now
Who looks outside dreams
Who looks inside awakens
Carl Jung
If you cannot go outside, go inside
Greetings to you all . . . from my stay at home to yours. My heart is with every one of us connected to each other, whether we have met, talked remotely or come to each other solely through the written word.
I want to especially reach out to those of you who are having a hard time with the way we are living right now. My heart certainly goes out to you if you or a loved one is sick (or has died), if you are an essential worker who is in contact with others or you are finding ways to work from home and/or teach and entertain your children.
I am keenly aware, though, how hard this forced isolation might be on many of you psychologically and emotionally. If you and I were sitting across from each other (socially distant, of course;-)) I would want to know how you are feeling. I would welcome an honest and real conversation – how is it for you these days? The highs, the lows, and all the in-betweens.
So much of the news speaks of folks finding creative and generous ways to deal with sheltering in place; it is often uplifting and inspiring to witness our resilience. But we must also talk about how quarantine can be crushing, and how crises like this pandemic can and often do activate old traumas. While it is essential we reach out and be kind to each other, being kind and loving to oneself (when that might seem impossible) is profoundly transformative and vital, possibly even more essential.
Not only can these times be difficult but we also live in a society that prides itself on doing well (whatever that might mean) and feeling good. We often judge and divide emotions into good and bad, happy and sad. Part of what makes this time so difficult to those who are feeling quite low is the “agreed upon” notion that it is not okay to feel sad or angry or overwhelmed. Feeling low or out of sorts has even been seen as a failure. And yet, quite often, chasing after happiness . . . wanting only positive feelings . . . allowing only feel-good feelings is a flight from depth, from our interior life and the suffering around us.
And, in the spiritual world, the small self, our functioning ego, our default position has often been vilified in one way or another. There is nothing wrong with the small self. We were born into history, to a mother and father or caretaker, a culture, a society, who told us who we are. The small self has been doing what it was designed to do. And in times like now, when we are in a health and economic crisis, that very same small self is likely to step up to the plate, assuming the role of hero/heroine (in its’ eyes).
If everything comes from the same source . . . everything and everyone is a manifestation of that singular source, is the small self not sacred? Are we not missing something important when we deny what we don’t like or feel ill at ease with?
One thing seems for sure these days – we cannot get away from ourselves. For better or worse, in sickness and in health. Even as we home school our kids, even as we work from home, even as we take our temperature, even as we go to the grocery stores . . . it is as if we are in a meditation, there is no escaping “me”. The thoughts in our heads; the pull of our hearts, and in many cases our psychological patterns and the original wounds of trauma showing themselves in bold relief; , signs of PTSD, loneliness, helplessness, abandonment, and depression – so understandable in the midst of the whole world turned upside down.
It is not uncommon when present day catastrophes trigger old wounds.
What if this upheaval could be a time of radical transformation? What if we have the opportunity to bring old and deep wounds to the light of day with compassion – maybe even parts of ourselves that have not been accessible before, have been hidden in a cave, desiring to be revealed? What if this enormous shift in our daily lives is revealing aspects of denied shadow material that longs for our attention, for present day attention - for kind and unconditional attention?
If you are in pain these days, be gentle with yourself. In many ways, human kind is at a crossroads right now and real human transformations are honest, raw, ugly, hopeful, frustrated, beautiful, and divine. Transformation calls for great courage.
Paradoxically, there is a sweetness in pure sadness and grief and loneliness, emotions born of empathy and solidarity. As physical pain alerts us to something being amiss that needs our attention, sadness and grief can be a sign you care. Loneliness can be reminding you that your natural state is connected in spirit, that you are not separate. And overwhelm? Well, this pandemic and financial crisis is overwhelming, no covering that up with wishes to feel alright or drum up some false sense of control will change that reality.
We are not yet completely sure how the virus will move or be a thing of the past, much less what our life, our perceptions, our world, our finances will look like when we are freer to move about. Will we even shake hands again, go to the movie theatre and sit next to dozens of people; will we kiss a friend on the lips again or will we adopt new ways of greeting. We are in the midst of goodbyes . . . without even knowing fully or partially what we are losing. We are in the midst of missing simple things – meeting with friends for a meal; going to the grocery store on a whim, card games with grandparents . . . ordinary moments we might have taken for granted before the virus.
Perhaps this is a good time to set aside self-imposed pressures. Pressures to be a certain way, to achieve and accomplish, to be on top of things, to be productive, or perfect, to be seen by others as (fill in the blank). We are in the midst of profound change so why not allow yourself the freedom to be just as you are – and listen to your heart. Are you inclined to exercise, to sit still? Meditate, meet your shadow, wash the dishes? Stay in bed and read all day? Think differently, play more, listen more deeply? Can this be a time of depth; there is more time alone, a potentially sacred vessel for self-love, for realization.
Real human transformation is slower than society is used to. Be slow. Let go of the crazy notion that superficially and quickly changing how you think about things, all will be well. Let the new way of living distract you from your desire for the status quo, from wishing it would be over and done with–turning, instead, to your authentic, real experience, right here, right now. Let it change how you deeply think and how you see the world. What if this tragedy tore down your faulty assumptions about yourself, became the soil of healing and gave you the courage of bold self-love, of bold compassion for all?
I sense this time as an opportunity to enter consciously into deep silence. As we temporarily halt our striving and re-connect to our deepest beauty and life-affirming sanity. As we keep quiet and open to knowing ourselves anew. As the world is upside down, so are we . . . so as you hang upside down, why not allow all the old stones (conditioned mind and false beliefs) fall out of your pockets.
Embrace, consciously and intentionally, your most real self . . . know yourself as real, as what is true, not bound by fear or conventions. Allow yourself to be known and seen, through and through.
In stillness, everything is beautiful, everything is unified and everything is known.
Open-Heartedness
I began reflecting on this latest blog before the coronavirus sped up and “took over”.
I had been thinking about awareness in human form and how, from this human perspective, we are here – we do live in a body; we do think about our survival.
And here we are . . . in the midst of a global upheaval and in the midst of having nowhere to go, in the sense of our usual busyness and distractions.
If you are drawn to blogs like this one, you likely know . . . (you have heard, you have had glimpses, maybe savored long and longer visits); there is something much deeper and more profoundly real about us than our drive for survival, a ground of being that is free and expansive. An endless, boundless spaciousness that effortlessly absorbs and dissolves mind chatter, conditioning and fears of survival; body and existential, just as a drop of poison dissolves in the ocean.
An open-ended stream of ease and joy that is untouched and unbothered, no matter the size or intensity of the upheaval going on at the human level.
And here we are . . . spacious awareness in human form, experiencing a pandemic. How often have spiritual teachings pointed to the fact that, in truth, we cannot be certain of anything, not really. And here we are . . . living inside a profound unknown and the visceral reminder that we are not in control and someone coughing on the other side of the world does impact us.
Talk about waking up from deep illusions.
The illusion that we are in charge and the illusion that we somehow don’t all breath the same air.
And here we are . . . stopped in our tracks and facing the truth of not being in charge. Brought smack into reality . . . everything comes and goes, everything and everyone, at some point, comes to an end.
To this end I have been thinking a lot these days about fear . . . about grief . . . and about death.
In optimistic moments I wonder if we humans might make good use of this pandemic . . . the pandemic of the virus that is bringing just about everything and everyone to a halt and the pandemic of fear that is not only rampant right now but has governed how we live, always.
Many are afraid right now. I don’t take lightly what it actually means to let go of perceived control. Especially for those of us who have been through trauma.
I notice how many layers and faces fear has. I think it is one of the most unpopular emotions . . . we are often afraid of being afraid . . . what if I am overwhelmed and cannot bear it? Or - I will feel weak; I will look weak. I will feel vulnerable . . . dear god, I will feel hopeless, and even worse helpless. Often, we carry this dread of vulnerability and dependency from early, early on in childhood.
And yet, an exquisite truth, when willing to face it, is the freedom that comes from viscerally knowing I am humble and nakedly vulnerable, directly exposed to all that is. Ironically, true transcendence reveals itself in utter defenselessness.
Back to fear: dig a bit deeper and you’ll find fear of loss and the inevitability of death, the reality of our mortality.
Now, imagine, for a moment, getting real, facing this reality and feeling into all that might mean to you. What if you didn’t demonize your fear, didn’t give into it and didn’t deny it or succumb to magical thinking?
Instead, listen for its’ wisdom. What might it be telling you about what is at work; what is being broadcast?
Our world has been interrupted, stopping the endless noise of divisions and distractions. It is hard to listen when we are so busy all the time. But the foundation is giving way, buckling.
I think if we listen, we will see what we have been avoiding.
We are not well. None of us; all of us are suffering.
And here we are - stopped. And now, what if we get still. Get still and listen. See through the illusion of being separate and discover how to genuinely consider the concerns of all. Throughout time we have typically become our better selves during crisis. Now we see that as people stay home, sheltering in place, for the good of the community. We see people offering their resources, talents, and services generously so everyone benefits. We are asked to be cautious and yet kind; to be clear we either stand by each other or fall together.
We are able to move beyond our individual concerns and divisions when we are not frightened; when we are willing to own our fears instead of blaming and scapegoating “others”, when we opt for genuine deep connection, free from fear and “control”.
Experience has shown me over and over again, sitting still and being with whatever is happening, listening to the clock tick, feeding the crows; being with whatever I am feeling, effortlessly immerses me into the field of spacious well-being. I am overcome with peace, gratitude and even joy. It is how come the “now” is so magical, so clear and penetrating.
And in this place, unity is the realest of real and being open hearted to everyone and everything is simply the way it is.
When it comes down to it, the invitation is . . . no, not only an invitation, but an offering, a gift . . . to open our eyes, relinquish the out-of-whack reliance we have on our thinking minds and travel deep into the mind of the heart - fully open-hearted in the midst of a pandemic.
Maybe, just maybe we will make use of this world-wide shock.
May our hearts break open together.
Here’s a beautiful musical coming together I thought to share – may our hearts soar.
Who Am I?
Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.
Luke 17:33
To study the self is to forget the self.
To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things.
Eihei Dogen
We live in a dance. From our arrival on this earth we form a sense of ourselves and if we are lucky something about this apparent separate self doesn’t feel all that real or trustworthy.
To some degree or another we remember and/or forget our true nature, the deeper reality of pure awareness . . . of unity, of love.
Waking up to our true nature includes embracing the very self that requires forgetting.
I have been a student of the self, most of my life. I have had many an encounter with its’ shortcomings and its’ blindness. I have also come to appreciate its’ dedication to survival and its’ brilliance in problem solving, planning and dreaming.
Donald Winnicott, a pediatrician turned psychologist studied thousands of infants. He found humans by nature are born with two primal fears, which he and others observed in very young children. One is the fear of falling forever, and the other is the fear of not being at all.
Stephen Jenkinson, a Canadian man who has shepherded thousands of dying people says people’s fear of dying is of not being here/not living in the eyes and minds of people left behind. “Not being at all”.
Seems we carry this fear of not being from birth to death.
Doesn’t this just make sense – doesn’t this speak to how lonely we often feel, how immensely important it is to us to be seen (or not seen when we feel ashamed)? Doesn’t it make sense that this deep fear . . . this agony of non being might inform our human lacking and feeling of emptiness? Doesn’t it make sense that this primal agony pervades our consciousness, begging the question, “Who am I really?”
“Not being at all”. We know, through psychology (and Mr. Rogers) that we need to be loved into being . . . it is through being seen, being accepted, being cared for, being mirrored and being guided and supported that we come into being; it is how we develop esteem, self-regard, confidence and a sense of place.
And, dear god, to whatever degree we are not loved into being, all hell breaks loose.
If you have paid attention to yourself in any reflective and sustaining way you can see and feel the accommodations and coping in service of not feeling sufficiently loved, and working oh so hard to avoid facing and feeling that essential agony and the terror underneath the feeling of “not being”.
And when we pay attention to the state of our world, isn’t it clear what we do to each other, to other living things, once these terrors and hurts and needs set in and are unconsciously lived out?
To get a real sense of the impact of this original agony we have only to look at how we collectively live our lives . . . managing the best we can to cope with something so big it takes over everything. From this illusory aloneness, we go the ends of the earth to fix ourselves and feel alright. We drink, we take drugs, we shop ‘til we drop, we connect for a night or a lifetime without examining what is driving us. We are susceptible to other people’s opinions of what makes us tick, and how the world works. We bank on “perfection” and make ourselves crazy chasing that illusion. We look for meaning and fulfillment in fantasy and superstition. Often filled with fear, filled with seemingly bottomless needs, we move further and further from the original agony, desperate to not feel it and terrified our hunger and loneliness is the greatest truth about us.
We work hard at convincing ourselves we exist – even if it means a neurotic need to steer the ship, assert, opine, manipulate, crave constant stimulation, and even hate ourselves or feel overly important.
One of the greatest freedoms from the tyranny of our small selves is pure and abiding acceptance . . . and compassion. There is nothing quite like the unconditional loving embrace of everything we feel, think, act out, and judge.
Why, we have asked forever, would we turn towards this pain instead of away from it? As upside down as it might sound - paying close (open and soft) attention to our suffering can be the very portal into the love we are seeking.
Talk about being loved into being! Being loved into deeper and deeper being-ness. We are invited to be with agony, pain or shock without any judgment or interpretation. We are invited to give complete attention to it, without trying to escape or distract. Trying to escape is not only a waste of energy but a recipe for continued suffering. In your bones you know this to be true – no distraction . . . no escape has ever brought you true contentment.
A recognition of the love and consciousness of our true nature makes it possible for the unconscious patterns . . . the unconscious patterns that play out as suffering and separateness, to be seen, to be felt, and to come home. Suffering ends and deep feeling is sweet. Underneath, around and all about the suffering is the beauty and depth of aliveness and love.
Be still and feel. Be still and see.
I’m scared
Be scared
I’m happy
Be happy
I’m lonely
Be lonely
I’m hungry
Be hungry
We have the capacity to be present
We have the capacity to attend
We have the capacity to be astonished
We are invited to look, really look and discover the clouds, clouds of doubt, confusion and disorientation are far from the whole story, light years from the truth of the matter. We are not alone; we are not disconnected and we swim in the very love and welcome we look for in every human encounter.
The very self we have come to embrace with love, the very self that has been loved into being is the one ultimately forgotten.
And here is the luscious irony – being nothing . . . being pure openness is liberating and exhilarating. It is the coming home; the very wholeness we feared was lost.
In the depth of winter, I finally learned
that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Albert Camus
I have had an irrational fear of unbalanced and disturbed people, walking out of my way hundreds of times to avoid contact. Today I sit down in Starbuck’s at the only empty table, sandwiched between a gangly, toothless homeless man and a young nanny looking at her phone while her adorable “charge”, sitting in his stroller, smiles at me.
While getting my tea the man has stood up to read the title of the book I have put down on the tabletop. He asks me about the book when I sit back down and I, politely, respond. He wants to know where he could get the book if he wanted to read it. We chat a bit and I return to the book.
I feel the familiar tightening in my body as the man, turning back on himself, shouts out some nonsensical phrases. I look at the baby, who is completely unmoved by the outburst. The baby curiously and calmly looks over at the man and turns back to his toy.
Another table has become available and I watch as the temptation to move crosses my awareness. Beside not wanting to hurt his feelings I am aware of sitting up straighter inside. Here it is . . . the eternal now, full bore presence . . . presenting a choice. Will I give into the habit of fear? What does love have to say in this timeless moment?
Life, presence announces itself . . . when we are still and receptive. Not for the first time I become aware of my body, my cleaner and cleaner psyche being used as a conduit for unconditional love. Growing little by little; and, at a time like now, more pronounced.
Now watching, with delight, as fear evaporates, knowing full well there really was no choice; surrender is the abiding and accepted mode. Without constriction love holds sway. I am comfortable, still inside.
In this very moment I am in touch with deep being, clear and resonant, and I am in touch with becoming. It feels like there is an ever-increasing, deepening into greater embodiment.
The human experience of the divine – conditional and unconditional love, temporal and eternal.
I remain at the table reading my book. The man turns to me and tells me it is his birthday next week . . . I tell him it is also my grandson’s birthday that day.
“How old will he be”. When I tell him, he responds he is old enough to get married.
“I sure hope not.”
“Oh Grandma!” We are fully engaged as he tells me I am being silly to want him not to be married.
He turns to the baby, calling over me to engage the child. We both smile and talk with the baby, who has begun blowing us both kisses.
We go about our independent business; I read, the baby plays with his toy truck and the man talks to himself and fidgets. Sometime the three of us interact; intermittently the man barks into the air, seeming to have some uncontrollable tics.
When the barista quietly walks over to the man, putting his body between my table and the man’s, providing him with some privacy and respect, it is pretty clear others in the coffee shop have become bothered by the man’s presence. I hear the barista tell the man he can come back tomorrow.
Everything in me has significantly softened and I find myself wanting to reach out and gently touch the barista’s arm, asking him not to tell the man he has to leave.
The man barks loudly all the way to the door, after telling me he knows why he has been kicked out but decided not to say anything.
Wisdom, love and compassion flow mysteriously and without effort when self-thoughts, behaviors and patterns are well lit and seen through. Love, undivided awareness illumines it all, revealing the end of the sense of separation, revealing the truth of your whole being and revealing the truth of “we are in this together”.
Endings
Living with a fully open heart, no matter what.
How’s that for counterintuitive . . . allow your heart to open wider and wider, open wide and feel everything . . . no matter the state of the world. No matter the state of your interior or relationships.
I spent the majority of my life protecting my heart; having no conscious recollection of when exactly it closed or began to close. I was, for better or for worse, painfully aware of feeling closed off; not in touch with melting or softening moments.
I am far from alone in believing in that apparent protection. We work hard to avoid feeling vulnerable, enfeebled or weak. Babies and children are naturally sensitive – open and attuned – not yet being fully defended.
But when we as adults cry, or recoil or shudder we judge ourselves and others as being weak; we are supposed to be brave and strong. Not wanting to feel or appear weak, we distance from our feelings. We defend against hurt and rejection. We defend against grief, fear, confusion, and uncertainty, not wanting to acknowledge we have been impacted and/or feel threatened.
For the most part . . . to one degree or another, we deny we are going to die.
Knowing we live in a world of change . . . a world in which everyone and everything comes and goes . . . we, fighting against this reality, fend off a strumming dread . . . it can feel unbearable to lose what we love or need or believe we cannot live without.
I can hear a chorus shouting . . . duh! Why wouldn’t we be? Living in this world of judgment, guaranteed loss, and rejection.
And yet, the deeper truth is a fully opened heart – an awakened heart – knows no boundaries and meets everything and everyone without judgment and without distancing. Effortlessly.
It is impervious to suffering . It does not close down.
Heart closed I suffered mightily. Heart open I feel deeply and do not suffer.
Endings!
If I had known the last time I ate a See’s candy that it was the very last time I would taste this, would I have savored it more fully.
Friends and I have met at a beach-side cafe for Sunday brunch . . . countless times. They are now physically incapable of the drive and the energy such an outing takes. Did I have any inkling when we last met at the cafe we would never meet there again? And if I had, would our visit have registered more deeply?
Someone I knew has died and two of my friends who are experiencing terminal illnesses have worsened and talk about wanting to die. Stores and restaurants that have been open for business for decades are shuttered, there are more people without a home, sometimes splayed across a well-walked sidewalk. The college year has begun and many are empty nesters. Trees that have grown to unimaginable heights have been cut down. Scientists tell us some crazily high percentage of wild animals are no longer roaming our earth.
The news is filled with one extinction after another as we, collectively, try to get our heads out of the sand when it comes to the fragility of our planet and the very real possibility of it being too late to save our home.
What happens as you are reading this, so far? More often than not, we tell ourselves to look away; it is too hard, it is too sad to whole-heartedly face all those endings.
When we do bravely turn towards endings, there is something profoundly paradoxical and beautiful about meeting our sorrow fully and completely. There is something enlivening about knowing, really knowing we are going to die, not be here. What is it like feeling the warm water of the shower knowing this experience will not last forever.
What is it like hearing the sound of a loved one’s voice knowing one of you will die or leave?
What is it like to grieve . . . deeply grieve with no ground beneath you? What is it like to love your life so greatly it brings you to your knees?
These are evocative questions . . . they are a wake-up call to not miss how it feels to hear the voice of your loved one. To not miss the millions of moments you have, right while you are experiencing them. To open your heart indiscriminately.
The deeper I feel, the closer I come to direct contact with the real, the more alive I am. It turns out that knowing, viscerally knowing/accepting endings . . . my own, my loved ones, the world itself . . . heartbreaking as it is, is vibrant and beautiful. Stunningly beautiful. Much to my delight and surprise, knowing I will die, maybe tomorrow and maybe years from now, affords me greater and greater gratitude for the simplest things – the strawberry in my cereal, eye contact with a stranger, hiking on rocky terrain.
The heart is vast . . . vast beyond our minds’ comprehension and with great grace and ease is naturally receptive to grief . . . to gratitude . . . to sorrow, and to love, its very nature.
We are born a bundle of sensations, turning towards warmth and gentle embraces. This open, unguarded and tender beingness is deep within us. We are the very warmth and embrace we yearn for.
We long for the return to our natural being . . . a direct contact with sensation and uncomplicated feeling. We long to love big, really, really big.
No Other
Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back into the same box.
Italian proverb
I first heard the word wholeness from Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist. His view of our humanity/our divinity resonated in me, especially his recognition of our innate wholeness.
We are one, holy and wholly one. We are all that is.
Jung referred to our oneness as the Self. The truth and beauty and undividedness of our essential being. The Self, a representation of the wholeness/truth that we are.
Who am I?
I am that
I am all there is
What does it look like to remember and embody wholeness? What does it feel like to know, deeply and viscerally know there is no other?
Remembering our full being, remembering and owning wholeness requires us to become conscious . . . in an unfolding and every widening/deepening way.
We are privileged with a capacity for self-awareness.
Jung found a calling within all of us to individuate . . . to remember our wholeness, the Self. Through self-inquiry, we, often, first become conscious of our distinct personalities. We become self aware by exploring our interior and integrating all our energies, all our parts, our memories, and history . . .
Jung intuited the fact that we all have the whole world within us. The dictator’s impulse for complete power and control. Mother Teresa’s calling to touch the untouchables. The ancestor’s ethnic or cultural traditions, the push for achievement, the receptivity of being still. The win at any cost; open hearted generosity, feeling frail and weak, loving no matter what, the capacity for arrogance and greed, and the fear of dying alone. His map of the psyche (soul) encouraged us to recognize and integrate all that is within us.
Imagine being compassionate, empathetic and kind to every emotion you feel, to every thought you have, to every “mistake” you make; in fact, imagine being open to its energy, open and curious.
For the longest time I understood this map (and put it to good use) conceptually. It helped me feel empathic towards myself, forgive and understand folks who had “wronged” me and gave me an expansive view of our humanity. By exploring my own deep emotions, no matter how “ugly” they might be by my standards I, non-judgmentally, learned to compassionately understand what was driving me and my fellow human as well.
It simply made sense to me that as we, through making conscious what was unconscious, would be cooperating with an evolution of consciousness . . . an expansion that erases the illusion of there being an “other.”
In our heart of hearts whether we are consciously aware or not (remember, have glimpses, ripening in the truth of it) we know there is no other.
Instead, most often, we run from everything we cannot tolerate. We hate, disavow and often project out onto others what we refuse to own within ourselves.
We, personally and culturally, are a tangle of defense mechanisms. We try to suppress everything that’s not comfortable for us. We distance ourselves from our shadows (Jung’s term), all ugliness relegated to the basement or cut out of awareness. We defend ourselves against what we don’t want to recognize, to know, to face or to accept.
We deny our “negative” feelings, the parts of ourselves we consider abhorrent and undesirable and anything that appears contrary to how we see ourselves.
And yet, there really is no human emotion or behavior that, if we are willing to kindly look, we cannot relate to, understand, accept, and be with in a constructive way.
And when we do not look, when we stay asleep at the wheel?
What we do not bring to consciousness will be acted out, played out. Period!
Isn’t it agonizingly obvious that we act out against ourselves, against each other, against our best interests and against our environment over and over again?
What does it mean to own our shit . . . stop blaming ourselves and others, end projections?
Give yourself the gift of sweet encounters that are judgment free, not filled with suspicion and assumptions. Meet the toothless truck driver delivering wood and be available for a genuine connection. Why not meet yourself in such a way, over and over again?
When you know, in your bones, there is nothing wrong or shameful with how you feel, or how you think, or . . . even yes . . . the hurtful and traumatic things you have experienced or done . . . when you are able to own your shadow, take back projection after projection, you are open to genuine transformation. When you know you are not missing anything, there is nothing to gain or get, you are free to be authentic and fully alive. When you know you are connected to every living being you are attuned to the truth of things.
You know those films of an explosion in reverse? How everything comes flying back together and the world is in one piece again?
Transforming our apparent brokenness, our fragmented psyches back into the eternal wholeness at the core of our being is like that. Embodying the deepest being you know is like that. You are not your fears, your smallness, you are the graciousness, the dignity of all that is. You are not your psychological patterns, your conditioning; you are the consciousness from which that all comes.
Bring back all your disowned pieces and discover for yourself that what you see, what you perceive, what you construct, even what you know is a small sliver, a minutiae form of consciousness. Discover the humble truth; your perception of reality is incomplete, a mere tip of the iceberg.
There is hidden (in plain sight) vastness, infinite wholeness.
You are all that.
Consciousness . . . life . . . is always dancing, moving, alive and fully present; permeating and animating everything that makes up our world, from the spec of sand on the beaches to the stars in the sky, from the rhinoceros to our morning tea, from the bruise on our shin to everything our hearts desire.
We are called to wake up to that oneness.
Open your eyes, your hearts and your ears to your deepest vitality, allowing yourself to be a vehicle for consciousness to widen and deepen and flow without restriction.
Waking up to knowing, viscerally knowing, that everything and everyone comes out of the same cloth.
There is no other.
Home
The mere mention of home stirs something comforting and beckoning in my heart and soul.
Earlier in my life I had a dream, over and over again, that I was moving into a larger home; some magnificent home that was expansive and roomy – wherever I might roam or explore I would not be crowded or limited. I could open my arms wide and wider still. It felt big and I felt free.
Or . . . I dreamt that I, marvelously, discovered endless nooks and crannies to the home I already lived in. Much to my delight I kept discovering places I hadn’t known were there before. A room here, an alcove hidden under the stairs, an opening in a closet. The feeling inside the dream was the same, over and over again, unmitigated joy.
Growing up I had coloring books and paper dolls. I collected all sorts of dolls and loved playing jacks and pick up sticks. I played hop scotch and caught (and let go) lightening bugs in a glass jar.
But all I wanted, longed for and yearned after was a doll house. A wooden, stable, two storied doll house, with wall paper and furniture, wainscoting on the wall, a stairway with a wooden bannister and a family of four that would sleep in the beds and comb their hair in front of the bathroom mirror.
Truth be known, I wanted to move right into that home.
It can easily be said this yearning for home was extra pronounced since my childhood was very difficult. And yet this longing for home runs deeper than that – I think our souls are calling us to remember our natural, essential self.
No matter how we distract ourselves, no matter what mask or costume we put on, no matter how many achievements or accomplishments we rack up it is not uncommon to feel displaced, unsatisfied, far from home . . . in an inner sense. Deep down we know we are not at rest.
We try hard to convince ourselves to feel at home, at rest, when we fit in, find the perfect-fit clothing or the newest computer or appliance, have enough money to pay all our bills, know the “right” people, have a loving family, discover the real meaning to life, are “on top of things”, and mostly, no longer feel frightened, or alienated, or misplaced, bad, or inadequate (in one way or another) about yourself.
Maybe you know, in your heart of hearts, there is more to life than you are living. Maybe you spend a lot of time looking for a sign or an answer to what that might be.
There is a very strong societal undertow convincing us that home . . . the very thing, the very sign or answer that will do the trick and make us feel alright, at ease, comfortable, is outside ourselves.
This illusion is widespread . . . the belief that deep contentment is dependent on someone or something external. Our world manipulates this hunger for the real: Drink the right drink and you will be . . . courageous, loved, fit as a fiddle forever. Find the right partner/have the right family and all will be right in your world . . . forever. If you are fortunate enough to be disillusioned, maybe even over and over and over again, you realize that what you are looking for is not “out there”. The longed for rest, the longed for home has little to nothing to do with the external circumstances, no matter how comfortable, cozy and just right our living situation or mind-state might be. And the longed for rest, longed for home has little to nothing to do with perceived safety or certainty. For sure!
Anyone of us fortunate to know this, really know this, can stop the vicious cycle of trying to find our deepest peace in the wrong places. And trying, trying by banging our heads against the wall in a useless attempt to control, manage or avoid the uncertainty and impermanence of life itself, and, of course, death, the really, really big unavoidable truth of the matter.
Home is interior, an inside job. Deep rest is a state of being.
Home is interior and a state of being that is not swayed by our thoughts and feelings that come and go, nor by the circumstances that we cling to or run from and also come and go. Nothing lasts forever. No matter how many comforts and safety you accrue it is only a matter of time until something changes, someone leaves or dies, and the very thing that you counted on as home has evaporated. No matter how many therapy sessions you have or how well you meditate, you will likely feel constricted or reactive at some point. What we are really seeking is the equanimity to rest anytime, anywhere, whether our world is stable for now, listing left or right, or even coming apart at the seams. What we are seeking is the spacious presence for all our thoughts . . . all our feelings . . . all our humanity.
It can appear to be such an irony – peace . . . home . . . rest is knowing (viscerally knowing) we are not in control, so much so, we are willing to surrender, let go of our stronghold on how we think things should be, how we wish things are, how we insist things should be when they aren’t . . . let go of our concerted (and ultimately useless) efforts to reign in our lives to our liking and/or how we feel. Surrendering the insistence that what has already happened shouldn’t have happened. Such an irony . . .
The irony . . . it is in the very giving up of the pretenses we use to fool ourselves, the willingness to stop performing (whatever role we have attached to) as if we will die if we are not liked or respected or accepted, in being willing to look, really look at how hard we are working to not “get hurt or rejected” and feel worthy of love . . . letting go of this attempt to make ourselves feel at home, all the while knowing, deep down, that we are at odds with ourselves; the giving up of all that can open us to the truly remarkable thing:
We are whole, worthy and well.
Our true home is the center-most depths of our inner being, in the all around, above, below and sideways space that fills us to the brim and beyond when we open to the reality of things . . to the truth and fullness that shows up when we are radically honest and real . . . when we show up as our natural being, in our natural state, when we are present. Present to what is true.
Being present is home. Being present in this very moment, always, is home.
That is where life is living itself.
This is where roominess, our opening ourselves wider and wider, our unbound rest, no matter what, resides. Contrary to what our tribal instincts tell us, genuine home is unguarded, inclusive, and universally sacred. It is opening to life’s movement, open to the humdrum, the miraculous, the radical, the unexpected, the heart breaks – humbling us, allowing us to see with fresh eyes over and over again, as everything appears and disappears, comes and goes.
Letting go of our desires and wishes for things/us to be different than they are opens us to the power and direct contact of the present. Accepting things as they are, as they have happened opens the door to profound creativity, unrestricted options, clear thinking, and heightened awareness.
Living inside this very moment the rain is just the rain, the tears are just tears, the twig is just a twig and the scowl on your partner’s face is just a scowl. Living inside the home of this very moment sorrow is sorrow, disappointment is just that and all the comings and goings of your life means no more than being present to it as it unfolds.
The presence of home is unflappable, dynamic, and wholeheartedly welcoming. Our job is to listen . . . to heed.
Embodiment
I have a life-time of familiarity with my psyche, having watched it within a millisecond of its sometimes absurd and most times illuminating shift-shaping. I know its nooks and valleys and other than any worrisome possibility of going psychotic I was pretty comfortable with the dark and light places I found myself. And I knew how to get help when I needed someone else’s guiding light.
But not my body. My body, in the past, has scared the hell out of me and now here I am. I mean here I am in the grounded, earthy, sensual sense and I mean here I am in the profoundly spiritual realm of here am I. Being conscious, being aware of being human in the exact same moment of being human.
Being embodied. There is something completely wondrous about it to me. It sits deep in my solar plexus. Settling into the contours of my shape gives me the gift of being real. And congruent. It is as if I live inside the deepest bowels of the earth, when it used to feel like floating. To defend myself against insult and injury to my body I had lived as if I was far removed from it, hence floating . . . energetically apart, so seemingly unaware of having a body.
And now, with no removal, no separation, consciously embodied, I marvel at the real part of things, the way, being embodied, is showing up and, increasingly, from moment to moment, affording me realness. I would not have said, since awakening, that I was pretending or putting undue effort into interactions with other folks. I would not have said I was pushing to make something happen. But relatively speaking, I was. In retrospect I can see, my body, tired to the bone, knew it.
It is the quiet that first gets my attention. Or maybe, better expressed using the word neutrality. From this unassuming and powerful state of quiet . . . neutrality . . . everything has slowed down. Cooking a new dish, I recognize . . . easily captured now in this slowed down state . . . the assumption that I am feeling good about the activity; feeling happy and peaceful. But I don’t. Not particularly. I am simply going about the business of chopping and roasting, reading a recipe and paying close attention since I have not cooked this before.
It is what happens next (automatically) that gets my attention. In this recognition of it not being what I assumed it was and settling into whatever it really is, in this case, neutral, unemotional, maybe even indifferent, a just is ness. . . with absolutely nothing needing to be done or different about it . . . is restful. Bodily restful. Grounded restful. A first time ever full body restful.
This is ness . . . a knowing that keeps deepening and widening. And now it is quietly alive in my body.
Awakening, that radical shift in perception . . . the movement from seeing through the ego’s eyes to seeing from awareness, to being awareness . . . all that, all that is the beginning. Even though others had said this very thing I was still surprised; I had the illusion that the long sought after freedom was the be-all and end-all of things.
Now six years later I marvel at the embodiment of freedom, at the evaporation of anxiety that lived in the cells of my body, having a life of its own. The embodiment that is landing me even more deeply inside here and now.
Since awakening I have had a sixth sense/ intuition of something needing to unfold, reveal itself. I felt “unfinished”, not even fully knowing what that might mean. I would say to myself that the body needed to awaken.
I turned to yoga, to meditative body scanning, to cranial-sacral and Feldenkrais work. My nervous system, from years and decades of hyper vigilance was in a low level state of anxiety. Automatically and chronically. I wanted to kiss Scott Kiloby when I heard him say, about himself, “the body had not yet gotten the good news”, in reference to his state of being after awakening.
I had been afraid of illness, whenever something felt “off” with my body I would worry. My mind would quickly go to some possible catastrophe, and even though I didn’t buy into the thoughts, my body would tense and tighten. Since I was so out of touch with my body I didn’t have a reasonable read on things; my beleaguered body would hold the worry as a state of emergency when, in fact, there was no danger.
I became more and more conscious of this pattern, strikingly so and as all the varying body workers offered their skills and kindness, the love that we all are continued to, from deep inside me, embrace and contain all the cells of my nervous system. Always held in warm, soothing, and caressing arms, quieting and relaxing.
My body seems to have gotten the good news and the original shift in perception has deepened considerably. This more integrated and deeper awareness of how things really are feels innocent. Innocent like a young child who moves through the day and the world attuned to what comes to her attention. That might be the mesmerizing movement of color as the clothes spin in the washer . . . it might be a wash of feeling . . . it might be the ticking of a clock or the bark of a tree. This is how it goes when anxiety is not clouding perception. A simple fresh and neutral look at what is showing up in awareness at this particular moment.
And now there is an is ness in my body as well. A sensation is a sensation – an ache or pain or limitation is just that. A deepening of trust – the body speaks – and I listen.
It is a Technicolor embodiment – the irony is not lost on me. Becoming a full human being, alive and at home in my body, open and transparent, further reveals and expands the animating presence and unconditional love that is our essential nature.
This presence, this unconditional love, this is ness is silent, oh so quiet, and neutral . . . innocent; empty of this full humanity it so loves.
And is larger and more real (the realest) than anything my mere humanity can fathom.
We are, indeed, divinely human
Being
This piece comes out of a writing prompt – when you read the word ‘mother’ consider mother including society, culture, extended family, religion, and institutions.
TELL THE NONFICTION STORY THAT YOU DON’T WANT YOUR MOTHER TO KNOW. YOU KNOW THE ONE. DON’T CENSOR YOURSELF.
My parents loved to entertain. It was one of their uncomplicated pleasures. I remember lots of people milling around the small living room of our apartment (the very room that was my bedroom at night), laughing and telling dirty jokes and stories.
I was the official “would you like some hors d’ oeuvres” as I walked amongst the bodies of my parents’ friends.
I can still taste the feeling of having an important job to do.
When I was in my late teens my parents had another party, this time in their home in Los Altos, their very first home.
I had outgrown passing out snacks and I see myself standing on the edge of the living room, next to the fireplace. There is a woman sitting in one of the upholstered chairs, swaying slightly, with her eyes closed and her head slanted towards the heavens. I don’t remember how I know she was a musician – I think a pianist. I also don’t remember how I knew she was lost inside some piece of music.
You know that place . . . getting lost into something bigger than yourself, that sweet, sweet enchantment that comes from forgetting yourself for a moment. Losing yourself inside the music you are playing or listening to, sinking into the soil and the leaves of the plants as you garden, soaring weightless as you master the high jump. That delicious moment when the world around you, the thoughts inside your head disappear.
What I can still see clearly is the ecstasy on her face. I can see her husband standing at her side in an otherwise empty room. Most of the other guests were in the kitchen or family room.
I am not sure if I would have this memory – the simple, lovely image of this woman living in her own transported world at that moment if it wasn’t for my mother’s reaction.
My mother’s reaction, after all the guests had left and she could be free to complain. She found it rude and completely inappropriate and annoying . . . and if I read between the lines . . . threatening.
I have to remind myself at this point that other than her husband no one else was in the room (except me, to the side, as I remember it), which says to me that no-one had been “harmed” here.
What stands out to me, wondering why this memory comes to me at this moment, is the world’s admonition against introspection, walking to your own drummer (or pianist in this case), and allowing yourself to get transported into something other than the “party” at hand.
A bit of a tangent here. In George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo (a remarkable fictional tale of Abraham Lincoln letting go of his beloved son, Willie, who died at the age of eleven) Willie has let go of his earthly body and is in the moment of transformation. He does a dance and a jig. Throwing his hands wide into the air he sings “ALLOW, ALLOW, All is Allowed now All is allowed me now. Getting out of bed and going down to the party, allowed. Candy bees, allowed, chunks of cake, allowed! Swinging from the chandelier, allowed; floating up to ceiling, allowed.”
He goes on: “Whatever that former fellow (willie) had, must now be given back (is given back gladly) as it never was mine (never his) and therefore is not being taken away, not at all!
As I (who was of willie but is no longer (merely) of willie) return
To such beauty.”
ALLOW, ALLOW – breaking the shackles of . . . what . . . the constraints we buy into, the being good/rebellious for being good /rebellious sake, the belief we are what we are told we are. Breaking the shackles of the conditioned mind and ALLOW, ALLOW our deepest longings, our very own song.
And returning to such beauty!
I am humbled by what it has taken to tell the truth I didn’t want my mother to know. I am humbled by the power of wanting to belong. I am humbled by the fear of being misunderstood. It is a reckoning to see, really see, the cost we pay for following society’s distractions, for getting caught up in the throes of the collective beliefs that seem to dictate our lives and divert us from such beauty – the truth of our being.
And oh, the irony here. The story . . . the truth I didn’t want to tell was not about the abuse I experienced, although I didn’t want to mention that either.
And then . . . deepening the irony here – while there is the ego’s requisite shame . . . and regrets . . . around abuse, about the hurtful things I have done to people in my life, along the way, about being profoundly self absorbed for so much of my life, about being blind, about blindly following other people and ideas, about cheating on an important exam – these are not what come to me as I contemplate the question being asked here.
No, what I really didn’t want to tell . . . what I kept to myself was my inner life. How I felt, what I desired, the night-time and day-time dreams that I cherished. I shielded this, I nursed it, I kept it tightly embedded in my chest and heart.
Instead, the greatest impact on my life has been hiding my soul, my essence. Not allowing myself, not being able, to shout from the mountain top the unfettered, unwavering joy of being alive. Simply that.
Of looking within. ALLOW, ALLOW
Of tasting the sweet purity of what is real – what is true. ALLOW, ALLOW
Of crying with grief for the pain I/we feel. ALLOW, ALLOW
ALLOW, ALLOW the water, blood, heart, and marrow of life – unrestricted and uncensored – to overflow and permeate and move on its own, as it will.
I know I am not alone in the masquerade. I look around and see my fellow beings struggle and, at times, question themselves. I look around and feel my fellow beings’ pain, reaching out for each other and something, anything, to blunt the feelings that confuse and scare them.
What I think we want more than anything else is to live in what is real, to experience the freedom of being ourselves, to know love, no matter what – explore what it means to be alive, to be fully and completely present to the truth as it appears to us, day in and day out, moment to moment.
I know that is what compelled me . . . that is what kept me looking and looking, outside myself in the form of reading and teachers and philosophers and inside myself, following the bread crumbs from my soul. A quiet, still voice inside kept me focused. No matter how long or lost I got into the world’s distractions and my own wounds, the steady drumbeat of my soul reminded me to “remember”.
Remember what really matters.
Without any need for proof, other than the deep alignment and holding I feel, I know there is a presence . . . a silence, permeating every cell of my being and is the coherence of everything we see and touch and interact with in our world.
This presence, this “other-worldly” intelligence has made itself known throughout my life, sometimes quietly and sometimes loud enough to wake the dead; and has emboldened me, over and over, allowing me to leave the party no matter how many times I was frightened or had to pay the price of not belonging or ended up hurting someone’s feelings or sensibilities, or walked directly into the unknown.
And now, as the new captain in the house, guides my every movement. No, in fact, IS every movement. IT is wholeness itself. It is completion itself. With gentle compassion presence revealed that the party and the complaint; the introspection and the pains, the music and the disharmony are all of one piece. Imagine for a moment, compassion for everything . . . everything. There is nothing outside, there is nothing wrong, nothing at odds.
That is one mighty and strong presence. And profoundly real; the realest thing I know, the realest thing I can even imagine.
To invoke this presence, we must go beyond that which confines and imprisons us. ALLOW, ALLOW. This presence, this love, is an energy and speaks its name again and again, quietly and fiercely, from within all of us. It is up to us to turn inwards, to listen, and follow its sound. Turn inwards; Introspect, reflect, contemplate the inner landscape. Nowhere else will it be found, and no one can sell or rent it to us. It is to be remembered, allowed to grow in the very core of our being.
ALLOW – ALLOW.
The space between
I arrived into the spiritual conversation when the debate was gathering steam: the debate around there is no one here (and therefore our human experience is an illusion) and becoming embodied is where the real work out is. What it really means to have life live through you, to be fully human.
I want to look at the space between these apparent distinctions.
In particular, the phenomena of spiritual bypass and the phenomena of getting stuck in the psychology of the human experience.
The space between.
There is no escaping the suffering we humans experience. Whether we acknowledge it or attempt to send it packing, suffering, or perhaps more to the point, pain, is a fact of life. Living in an ever changing world, with everything and everyone coming and going at some point in time, we are subject to fear, loss and disappointment.
Living in a world where we are convinced there is an “other” (do not experience our interconnectedness) and our well being and even our relative survival appears dependent on ‘holding our own’, on our either coming out on top or avoiding oppression we are subject to fear, aggression and hostility.
We humans, in contrast to animals and nature, can pretend to be something other than we are, can be unaware of our feelings, ignore our body’s impulses and sensations. We can don masks, close off our hearts, and believe we are alone, small, disconnected, and impervious to suffering.
We pretend, most often, to avoid pain and strong emotions. We pretend, even more often, to not feel vulnerable, naked, tender to the touch. No wonder we are often afraid of living, of entering into anything real.
A certain understanding of spirituality, awakening to our true nature, can, and often does, add to this desire for avoidance, to the illusion that we can, in one way or another, avoid the challenges of being human.
I remember, pretty clearly, having this semi-conscious belief. Like most of us humans I wanted to not feel pain, to not suffer and to not feel hateful. I carried wishful, magical thinking that bliss and nothing-would-bother-me was always just around the corner, courting, begging for certainty, for security. The more I read about spiritual awakening the more I strengthened the belief.
There is a deep and abiding contentment that comes with the visceral being of emptiness, of life itself. The message from many spiritual teachers, directly or indirectly, can easily persuade a seeker that waking up means not feeling the pain of loss, not feeling the constrictions of a conditioned mind, or not being subject to the stomach lurch that comes when you fall off a cliff. After all, if there is no-one here, who would be at the mercy of such things?
And yet, and yet, waking up to our true nature, in fact, brings us smack into the full force of feeling and aliveness. When there is no buffer, when all of reality, all of life, is directly engaged, there is no avoidance, there cannot be avoidance. There is full bore being whatever is happening. Always. The contentment we are pulled towards comes from a deep acceptance of what is happening right now, right here.
What does it mean then, that there is no-one here?
Since a profound shift in consciousness I watch and notice kindness dancing and moving. It seems to be coming from me; at least it shows up as my gestures and smiles as I naturally offer a helping hand. I listen as some wide open spacious wisdom puts words on my tongue, clear and insightful. I marvel . . . really does seem like a marvel . . . as an invisible and gentle force of love contains and permeates me as conditioning and constrictions attempt to flood my being.
The kindness, the intelligence, the love . . . these vast, infinite, neutral qualities are formless, tasteless, and invisible to the naked eye . . . they come through me but they do not originate from me – they are not a product of my personality – left to its’ own devices my conditioned “self” would opt for safety, pleasure, and personal survival. More often than not!
Instead these embracing and enduring qualities come from some unfathomable depth and appear to have no beginning and no end. I sit in a field of openness that has no boundary.
And from this perspective my psyche and my body are motes of dust, here one moment and gone the next.
And from that perspective it does, indeed, reveal no one here.
But something is here – this mote of dust breaths and walks. When we look at ourselves we can see that we have bodies, we think, we feel, we want to love and be loved, we grow and we die.
We are nothing and we are something.
Why would we ignore something so mysterious, something so close and seemingly familiar? Why wouldn’t we want to be intimate, deeply and abidingly intimate with every part of this being?
Here’s the thing about spiritual bypassing – it comes out of a deep assumption – an assumption that your human pain and discomforts will kill you and that the humiliations and horrors you often experience are an indication of who you think you are.
It comes out of a deep forgetting that you are whole . . . you are one . . . and that you are alive and kicking – alive in this blue, pulsating planet of interconnectedness (we really are all in this together) and impermanence. You are alive and able to be conscious of being alive. You are alive and if you are not keeping your head in the sand you know you have a limited time on this earth.
It seems to me that one of the biggest miracle is that we have the capacity to be awake to ourselves – every single part of ourselves – every unknown part, including everything left behind, unrecognized and undesired. The upside of such devotion is being wholly alive; vulnerable, tender and soft, open to the touch of right here and right now.
Spiritual awakening, inner self/Self-knowledge invites and supports us to turn towards, listen to, attend to, and surrender to to every bit of our wholeness, our being, our oneness . . . with unabashed love.
* * * * * *
Psychology, a relatively new kid on the block, is a godsend for anyone sincerely looking for self knowledge.
The inner and outer conditions of modern life are such that is has become difficult, if not nearly impossible for many of us to hear the the small quiet voice within. In therapy offices and retreats, with skilled therapists and facilitators, we are able to look deeply into our interior, in a safe, contained and inviting atmosphere. We can look at, we can touch, and we can feel our sorrow, our pain, our despair, our shame, our joy, our misgivings, our confusion, our loneliness, our happiness and our doubts – in a nutshell, our vulnerability.
We can examine the roles we play, the masks we put on; we can look honestly at our self absorption, our wounds and betrayals, our deepest desires and longings, our unrequited love, and the myriad disappointments in how life appears to be “treating us”. We can, with understanding the young parts of ourselves, become more conscious of defenses and walls we put up to protect ourselves. We can learn what triggers us, what we need and want, when we feel safe enough to feel and we can become aware of what we are thinking. We can learn to take care of ourselves without drama or manipulation and we can develop inner resources, allowing us to hold tender space for ourselves. We can be self-aware!
All . . . all with compassion, with true acceptance and with a tender heart.
It appears to me, in looking back over the years I spent in analysis, it was instrumental in helping me remember the love that lives within all of us. Until I trusted life enough to surrender into and rest in that deepest truth, I needed a “person”, a kind, understanding, patient and skilled person to reflect that love. I needed that containment in order to drop defenses and identities.
Sometimes we need someone to hold our hand. Sometimes we feel very little and very young and we need someone to tell us it is okay. Sometimes we feel alone and need someone to remind us we are connected.
The world of psychology, the world of therapy and self reflection, has given humanity the gift of being able to define our personalities, our intricacies, our faults and our genius. It has given us a place to discover a precious gift . . . to “know thyself.”
But psychology and therapy are profoundly limited. As they are designed, as they are commonly practiced, they cannot bring us home.
The underlying premise to every psychological viewpoint is - we are broken, in some fashion or another, we need to be fixed, we need to be other than we are. Within the walls of most therapy offices fear and lack are validated, even if subtly. This reinforces what families, cultures, societies and religions have more often than not believed and taught. The belief that we are incomplete.
But . . . we are not incomplete. We are not lacking, really we are not.
There are deeper questions calling you. The question of who you are and what it is like to be alive and fully present. To be fully alive and fully present to now, it is important to look beyond the boundaries of self knowing and open yourself to the vast, unknowable Self. It is important to be aware of the limitations of knowing your self, knowing not to stop there or get caught up there for too long. Recognizing the truth of there being so much more, vastly more.
I am indebted to psychology. All that I have learned from my years in analysis, in addition to being healing and transformative, also helps me understand the patterns and quirks of how I move in the world and how I relate to everything and everyone. I am grateful that I can, when necessary, see through neurotic or dysfunctional behaviors and with insight take a step in a new direction. I am grateful I know, when things go south, to look within for my reaction and not waste my time blaming the circumstances.
But none of that can hold a candle to simply noticing! Simply noticing in a kind and non-judgmental way. Simply feeling without interpretations and without the knee-jerk reaction to fix something.
Noticing the sensations. Noticing the feeling. Noticing the thoughts. Noticing the impulses. Noticing the behavior.
Over and over again I bear witness to the power of noticing. Awareness, like a fully attuned parent, neutrally and gently breathes fresh air in and around and through every aspect of what is happening . . . whatever is happening within me or whatever reaction I am having to some external event or person.
I notice that Life seems to feel great joy when I come up against some snarky feeling or thought – something so, so familiar – and simply notice what I am thinking or feeling . . . simply pay attention to it, with a mixture of tenderness, curiosity and detachment. What used to strangle me when I fiercely believed something was terribly wrong (with me or the world) now moves right along (energetically) . . . blows away like the mote of dust it really is.
The deep patterns that used to define me and drive my life are now seen through, again with tenderness and detachment, as if they are knots in a rope that are being loosened and unwound.
The expansiveness I feel from noticing and from experiencing awareness is freeing, is restful and tastes like nectar. This freedom, this rest, this nectar is the very thing I looked for in psychology and in relationships and in activities and interests all through my life.
The visceral experience of expansiveness reminds me, again and again, of my underlying knowing that there is always more to the picture than I can fathom. The visceral experience of expansiveness affords me the bigger perspective I have always intuited. The vast ocean of endless love and well-being within is something we all intuit, sense, and long to remember.
I am grateful and humbled by the space between. I feel awe at the mystery of this crazy, messy, beautiful, stirring life, this seeming juncture of being something and being nothing, the challenge of living my full humanity with the profound awareness of it being but a mote of dust!