Listen. It is morning. And warm enough to sit outside. The air is sweet with green mustiness and growth, though not much new appears above the ground yet. The birds are singing the morning. The creek is rushing full. A pale sunlight muted by clouds lays over everything, and a soft breeze blows. Gentle morning.
I am longing for my words to come back to me--to carve a space inside where they would begin again, where i could listen to their music untrammeled, coax them out of hiding, feel a rhythm, divine a flow, direction, urge. I miss my words, the dedication to craft and art, the sense of creating, the interiority becoming exterior and meaningful, becoming shapely.
I miss the daily devotion beyond just journalling, working towards something, working on something, having purpose and something to return to, having something i carry around inside that is precious to me, partly secret, growing, that i must feed and tend regularly, that i must follow and sense its way, that teaches me, inspires me, troubles me, enlivens me, challenges me.
I miss this grace--no one can give or take it from me, though many have done damage to it easily with their words, unknowing. I miss my calling. I don't need to justify it in any of its weathers, dormant or blooming, reckless or calm--how can i? Only i really know its name and form. Keep the questioners at bay, then, who, out of their own pain and self-doubt, would injure me in my progress. We know what's written in our souls, though we often deny it.
So what do you do it for? To make sense of things, to make the world shapely, to add beauty, to discover what's unknown or hidden to me, to speak a truth, to life the veil partially, to inspire, move, enlighten, open others and myself, to contribute what i can, to grow in delight, to walk in the world, to be alive, to become more alive, engaged, attuned, listening, attentive, responsive, to dance with the world, the seen and unseen, to know myself and come to know other things, to be surprised, to play. Because i love it, it brings me joy. Because i can't help it, need to do it. Because it brings meaning and purpose to my life. Because it brings connection. Because i dry up and grow sad when i don't.
Too many thoughts rattle and distract me, too many things to do. But this gives life, breath, slowness, grace, excitement, joy, fullness. Too many things etch at me, wanting my time and attention, often making me feel guilty, anxious, worried, agitated, tired, bored, unhappy. But is a river i return to where i can dip my cup and drink. Who cares if the taxes are done and the house is clean, if the river doesn't flow, if the meaning of it all is gone?
Monday, April 4, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Truth or Consequences
The envelope of the day presses its white folds around us—brilliant white glancing off the Rio Grande, where a few people half-heartedly fish and a fat woman in a filthy t-shirt, filthy hair, sits by her piled-high car that looks like it hasn’t run since the 1980s and which she certainly lives out of in the dirt lot that passes for a campground by the river.
We pass trailers and junk-strewn yards, cars without all four wheels, dogs too languid in this heat and vapidity to bark—and it’s only March. All will, drive, energy leave you here, and you drift in the same unblinking languor of the locals, content. People come for a night, a weekend, a visit and never leave, beguiled by something, a place where for once it doesn’t matter that they don’t fit in?, that accepts many anomalies into its wide blank streets and scrubbed-raw hills: The cranio-sacral practitioner next door to the bible-thumping church and just up the road from the meth-producing trailer homes. Half the shops in town are boarded up. The other half seem to be anybody’s whim of an idea for a business, and many of them eke out their income by doubling as a couple different businesses at once—the hippie clothing store with tarot cards and crystals also has used clothing in a room in the back. Two natural food stores but both of them carrying not much on the few shelves and anything resembling fresh produce is scarce; one of them also serves breakfast and lunch. Yet the town supports a used bookstore/café with a fairly interesting selection of books and a lovely, funky ambience. People are exceptionally friendly, seeming pretty excited to meet someone new, even though this is a tourist destination because of the many hot spring motels.
The one we stay in is ragged—the rooms are nice enough, cozy, cabin-like, though we hear the slamming of the neighboring doors and everything in the room shakes when you walk across the floor. The rooms surround a dirt courtyard where people sit smoking cigarettes in the blazing sun. The hot spring baths are individual rooms with small square pools of various depths, none of them very deep, set in cracked and not very clean-looking concrete, nowhere really comfortable to sit, and they pipe awful New Age music through the bathhouse. It’s so bad in a way that it’s comical, and we cannot stop laughing, though you are supposed to whisper in the bathhouse because “people might be meditating” to that awful music.
We decided right away that Truth or Consequences is obviously an alien processing station; the "people" here are either aliens in disguise or actual humans who have already been experimented on with unfortunate results. It is easy to tell which is which.
A tattoed boy with an unnatural gleam in his eye urges us enthusiastically to come back for “the best pizza in town” (who are they competing with? As far as we can tell there’s only one other restaurant that serves pizza) at the Happy Belly Deli. We sit outside on the patio under an awning propped up on beams that have been set on a row of old carved lions that were obviously part of some other structure once.
The next morning the locals instruct us to sit tight at the café where we go for breakfast. One woman way too busy in the kitchen is doing her best to feed and wait on a roomful of people, so we’re told to go behind the counter and help ourselves to coffee while we wait, eat a homemade scone that’s quite good, chat with the folks at the next table, including a woman who came for a night in her RV and hasn’t left yet, two months later. Everyone knows everyone by name, and no one is in a hurry to get anywhere. Everything happens in a leisurely way here, if it happens at all. Not much seems to be going on anywhere, though there are posters for a poetry reading and some sort of art walk happens on the second Saturday of the month. Many of the shops and cafes close by 3:00—that’s enough work for one day.
The day is a flat glassy pane, a little wind, some birdsong. Yesterday great gusts would suddenly stir up huge whirlwinds of dust, shake the buildings, then move on. A woman at the café said her bedding was torn from the wash line into the ditch.
You empty yourself of resistance here, extraneous effort, even useful effort. But is leaves you a little more open, a little burnished, sanded down, edges softened. I grow quiet and listen without trying to listen for anything, without reaching. There is no one to be here, nothing to do, nowhere in particular to go. So you can slow down, watch, receive, and you’ll be pretty much left alone to do it, except for some curious glances, friendly greetings, a little mostly-unneeded advice.
We pass trailers and junk-strewn yards, cars without all four wheels, dogs too languid in this heat and vapidity to bark—and it’s only March. All will, drive, energy leave you here, and you drift in the same unblinking languor of the locals, content. People come for a night, a weekend, a visit and never leave, beguiled by something, a place where for once it doesn’t matter that they don’t fit in?, that accepts many anomalies into its wide blank streets and scrubbed-raw hills: The cranio-sacral practitioner next door to the bible-thumping church and just up the road from the meth-producing trailer homes. Half the shops in town are boarded up. The other half seem to be anybody’s whim of an idea for a business, and many of them eke out their income by doubling as a couple different businesses at once—the hippie clothing store with tarot cards and crystals also has used clothing in a room in the back. Two natural food stores but both of them carrying not much on the few shelves and anything resembling fresh produce is scarce; one of them also serves breakfast and lunch. Yet the town supports a used bookstore/café with a fairly interesting selection of books and a lovely, funky ambience. People are exceptionally friendly, seeming pretty excited to meet someone new, even though this is a tourist destination because of the many hot spring motels.
The one we stay in is ragged—the rooms are nice enough, cozy, cabin-like, though we hear the slamming of the neighboring doors and everything in the room shakes when you walk across the floor. The rooms surround a dirt courtyard where people sit smoking cigarettes in the blazing sun. The hot spring baths are individual rooms with small square pools of various depths, none of them very deep, set in cracked and not very clean-looking concrete, nowhere really comfortable to sit, and they pipe awful New Age music through the bathhouse. It’s so bad in a way that it’s comical, and we cannot stop laughing, though you are supposed to whisper in the bathhouse because “people might be meditating” to that awful music.
We decided right away that Truth or Consequences is obviously an alien processing station; the "people" here are either aliens in disguise or actual humans who have already been experimented on with unfortunate results. It is easy to tell which is which.
A tattoed boy with an unnatural gleam in his eye urges us enthusiastically to come back for “the best pizza in town” (who are they competing with? As far as we can tell there’s only one other restaurant that serves pizza) at the Happy Belly Deli. We sit outside on the patio under an awning propped up on beams that have been set on a row of old carved lions that were obviously part of some other structure once.
The next morning the locals instruct us to sit tight at the café where we go for breakfast. One woman way too busy in the kitchen is doing her best to feed and wait on a roomful of people, so we’re told to go behind the counter and help ourselves to coffee while we wait, eat a homemade scone that’s quite good, chat with the folks at the next table, including a woman who came for a night in her RV and hasn’t left yet, two months later. Everyone knows everyone by name, and no one is in a hurry to get anywhere. Everything happens in a leisurely way here, if it happens at all. Not much seems to be going on anywhere, though there are posters for a poetry reading and some sort of art walk happens on the second Saturday of the month. Many of the shops and cafes close by 3:00—that’s enough work for one day.
The day is a flat glassy pane, a little wind, some birdsong. Yesterday great gusts would suddenly stir up huge whirlwinds of dust, shake the buildings, then move on. A woman at the café said her bedding was torn from the wash line into the ditch.
You empty yourself of resistance here, extraneous effort, even useful effort. But is leaves you a little more open, a little burnished, sanded down, edges softened. I grow quiet and listen without trying to listen for anything, without reaching. There is no one to be here, nothing to do, nowhere in particular to go. So you can slow down, watch, receive, and you’ll be pretty much left alone to do it, except for some curious glances, friendly greetings, a little mostly-unneeded advice.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Fall Equinox Full Moon
Today is a day of balance, the equinox, a holy day. Today is a day of the marriage of the divine masculine and feminine in a potent form. The sun enters Libra, ruled by Venus, goddess of love, beauty, creativity, harmony and the sacred mysteries, and the moon enters Aries, warrior god, lover, dancer, at the full. A rare combination that the full moon falls right on the equinox and the two archetypal lovers meet.
In Greek mythology, Aphrodite (Venus) and Aries were passionate lovers. They hold the energies of the divine feminine and masculine in a powerful, distilled form.
Love, relationships, balance, harmony, beauty are called to the fore at this equinox. We are challenged to shed the old selves, old habits, fears, ways of hiding out. We are called to shine in a fuller radiance of who we can be, who we truly are, what's possible. We are called to be creators of beauty, not ugliness. We are asked to contribute to the Divine plan, to contribute the best of what we have to give.
Can we rise beyond our fears and addictions to become Love, fully Love? Can we stand in the mystery and wonder, not needing to know, not needing to be in charge? Can we freefall in surrender to the Divine, moving in our lives?
What is the best we have to give? Will we give it today? Will we give wholeheartedly, without reservations?
Today is a sacred day. How will we honor it in speech, action, being, loving?
Fear shakes my body. Doubt rattles my mind. I want to be a turtle and pull in all my limbs. But this day asks me to rise, to be the lover and the beloved, to find the union within, the song of creation, and to participate in that song.
I am moved to tears as i feel this profound union in the heavens, which is mirrored here on earth--how the universe is calling us to greater being, to shed the ways of the past and become the Truth.
In Greek mythology, Aphrodite (Venus) and Aries were passionate lovers. They hold the energies of the divine feminine and masculine in a powerful, distilled form.
Love, relationships, balance, harmony, beauty are called to the fore at this equinox. We are challenged to shed the old selves, old habits, fears, ways of hiding out. We are called to shine in a fuller radiance of who we can be, who we truly are, what's possible. We are called to be creators of beauty, not ugliness. We are asked to contribute to the Divine plan, to contribute the best of what we have to give.
Can we rise beyond our fears and addictions to become Love, fully Love? Can we stand in the mystery and wonder, not needing to know, not needing to be in charge? Can we freefall in surrender to the Divine, moving in our lives?
What is the best we have to give? Will we give it today? Will we give wholeheartedly, without reservations?
Today is a sacred day. How will we honor it in speech, action, being, loving?
Fear shakes my body. Doubt rattles my mind. I want to be a turtle and pull in all my limbs. But this day asks me to rise, to be the lover and the beloved, to find the union within, the song of creation, and to participate in that song.
I am moved to tears as i feel this profound union in the heavens, which is mirrored here on earth--how the universe is calling us to greater being, to shed the ways of the past and become the Truth.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
From where i sit
From where i sit, horses run across a flat black field, a sheen of dark water, the imagination roaming free, the word evocative. From where i sit, pebbles in a wooden cup. The music underneath the music. Always this longing, this sadness. But great sparkles of illumination, witness, radiance, the heart-felt joy.
From where i sit, a little pirate encased in plastic, far from sea. The soothing stops. The fire burns hotter. Some days you must be responsible only to yourself. The weather turns. Cobwebs mar the view. How long will it take to scatter them all? Sometimes the wind is its own fair music and it is enough. The greenery folds. I cannot meet your every need, nor you mine. Desire is a vast field. We will never come to the end of it. Some people think being plainspoken is a virtue. I say, where are your pockets? Where is your sense of pleasure, rhyme?
From where i sit, the words stack up like armies, intent on landscape, conquest, view. Sex, of course, is another form of conquest, but not like you think. The self is devoured. Meridian, understanding, they ask me to reveal them, the words, but they are flat eyes staring. I don't know the answer to the riddle.
From where i sit, a little pirate encased in plastic, far from sea. The soothing stops. The fire burns hotter. Some days you must be responsible only to yourself. The weather turns. Cobwebs mar the view. How long will it take to scatter them all? Sometimes the wind is its own fair music and it is enough. The greenery folds. I cannot meet your every need, nor you mine. Desire is a vast field. We will never come to the end of it. Some people think being plainspoken is a virtue. I say, where are your pockets? Where is your sense of pleasure, rhyme?
From where i sit, the words stack up like armies, intent on landscape, conquest, view. Sex, of course, is another form of conquest, but not like you think. The self is devoured. Meridian, understanding, they ask me to reveal them, the words, but they are flat eyes staring. I don't know the answer to the riddle.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Inquiring Minds
I've been reading "Loving What Is" by Byron Katie and doing the inquiry process she calls "The Work," a process of investigating your thoughts with four simple questions and then a "turnaround," seeing if an opposite thought is as true or truer than the original statement. The process is remarkably simple and produces astounding insights, but as she says, it's not quick fix. It requires repeated effort. I am finding through doing this that all relationships are a mirror for what we think and feel about ourselves. It's shocking and amazing and liberating to discover. All my judgements about others contain a message I'm wanting to tell myself.
"She shouldn't criticize other writers so harshly" for me becomes "I shouldn't criticize my own writing so harshly" and also "I shouldn't criticize other writers so harshly." Illuminating. "He should do more to pursue his own happiness and not be so resigned about life" becomes "I should do more to pursue my own happiness and not be so resigned about life." Oh my god, it's true. But it's not about just doing the turnarounds, because as Byron Katie says, it's important to ask the questions first.
This morning feelings of frustration, impatience and sadness arise about my life: I'm sad that I'm alone, I don't have enough money, I'm tired of being in debt, my work is boring and unpleasant, I'm tired of the relentless pattern of my days.
"I'm alone"--is it true? Well, no, not really. Can we ever really be alone? Aren't we all intimately connected to everything? Who would I be in this moment alone in my house without the thought, "I'm sad that I'm alone"? Oh, wow, I would be enjoying the moment, sitting with the fire, writing in my journal, not making a story about poor me, I'm so alone.
"I don't have enough money"--is it true? For what? I have the amount I have. Is it enough? Well, yes, I guess it is. I'm not starving. Nothing terrible is happening in this moment. How do I react when I think the thought "I don't have enough money"? I get tense, worried, upset, frustrated, fearful. Is that helping anything? Without the thought I am able to be more fluid, responsive to life, work with the money I do have, find solutions. Doesn't it always work out somehow? So I do have enough money. Isn't that as true or truer?
"If I weren't in debt, I'd be happy"--is it true? Can I think of a time when I wasn't in debt and I was equally or more unhappy? Can I know that if I didn't have debt, things would be better, easier? No, I could actually be more poor with no debt.
I'm tired of the relentless pattern of my days." Do my days have a relentless pattern or are they actually amazingly varied? Isn't every moment utterly new and different? What's much more true is "I'm tired of the relentless pattern of my thoughts."
I'm not doing the whole process here, I'm skipping ahead, giving examples from just this morning as I woke up in a funky mood and then did the inquiry process on my thoughts. I didn't want to start, didn't want to look at what thoughts were behind the feelings of frustration and sadness, but once I did, something opened up.
Putting the thoughts up to inquiry takes discipline, and there is some resistance. It's not a quick fix, but it does help. The feelings arise again, they aren't just gone, but they lose a little power each time. I can't quite believe them with the full force of my conviction. I've seen holes in the argument.
There's a strange feeling that comes with exploding the thoughts--lightness, disorientation, as if the top of my head were coming off. Realizing that so much more is possible than my stories of reality would have me believe, that i am choosing this and can make other choices. No one's holding a gun to my head, telling me what to do. So then the tension and upset inside ease up. It doesn't seem so awful, dire, serious or even true. I am a free agent. This moment is new, instead of a repetition of the same story played over and over. "I am tired of the relentless pattern of my thoughts" is a much truer thought than the one about my days.
Letting light in to a dark, airless room, breath of fresh air--that's what inquiry does, exposing the unquestioned thoughts and assumptions. Who am i without my thoughts? Does it matter? I am free, in the flow. And then they come again, and i have another opportunity to question them and find freedom.
"She shouldn't criticize other writers so harshly" for me becomes "I shouldn't criticize my own writing so harshly" and also "I shouldn't criticize other writers so harshly." Illuminating. "He should do more to pursue his own happiness and not be so resigned about life" becomes "I should do more to pursue my own happiness and not be so resigned about life." Oh my god, it's true. But it's not about just doing the turnarounds, because as Byron Katie says, it's important to ask the questions first.
This morning feelings of frustration, impatience and sadness arise about my life: I'm sad that I'm alone, I don't have enough money, I'm tired of being in debt, my work is boring and unpleasant, I'm tired of the relentless pattern of my days.
"I'm alone"--is it true? Well, no, not really. Can we ever really be alone? Aren't we all intimately connected to everything? Who would I be in this moment alone in my house without the thought, "I'm sad that I'm alone"? Oh, wow, I would be enjoying the moment, sitting with the fire, writing in my journal, not making a story about poor me, I'm so alone.
"I don't have enough money"--is it true? For what? I have the amount I have. Is it enough? Well, yes, I guess it is. I'm not starving. Nothing terrible is happening in this moment. How do I react when I think the thought "I don't have enough money"? I get tense, worried, upset, frustrated, fearful. Is that helping anything? Without the thought I am able to be more fluid, responsive to life, work with the money I do have, find solutions. Doesn't it always work out somehow? So I do have enough money. Isn't that as true or truer?
"If I weren't in debt, I'd be happy"--is it true? Can I think of a time when I wasn't in debt and I was equally or more unhappy? Can I know that if I didn't have debt, things would be better, easier? No, I could actually be more poor with no debt.
I'm tired of the relentless pattern of my days." Do my days have a relentless pattern or are they actually amazingly varied? Isn't every moment utterly new and different? What's much more true is "I'm tired of the relentless pattern of my thoughts."
I'm not doing the whole process here, I'm skipping ahead, giving examples from just this morning as I woke up in a funky mood and then did the inquiry process on my thoughts. I didn't want to start, didn't want to look at what thoughts were behind the feelings of frustration and sadness, but once I did, something opened up.
Putting the thoughts up to inquiry takes discipline, and there is some resistance. It's not a quick fix, but it does help. The feelings arise again, they aren't just gone, but they lose a little power each time. I can't quite believe them with the full force of my conviction. I've seen holes in the argument.
There's a strange feeling that comes with exploding the thoughts--lightness, disorientation, as if the top of my head were coming off. Realizing that so much more is possible than my stories of reality would have me believe, that i am choosing this and can make other choices. No one's holding a gun to my head, telling me what to do. So then the tension and upset inside ease up. It doesn't seem so awful, dire, serious or even true. I am a free agent. This moment is new, instead of a repetition of the same story played over and over. "I am tired of the relentless pattern of my thoughts" is a much truer thought than the one about my days.
Letting light in to a dark, airless room, breath of fresh air--that's what inquiry does, exposing the unquestioned thoughts and assumptions. Who am i without my thoughts? Does it matter? I am free, in the flow. And then they come again, and i have another opportunity to question them and find freedom.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
The danger of prayer
I have been deeply engaged in a process of visioning my life, creating goals for this year, and dividing those goals into measurable, achievable steps, and then following through. The process has been amazing and challenging and quite a learning experience. Suddenly I am making things happen in my life that I have wanted for a long time and felt like I either couldn't make time for or had no control over. In the process I have to get very real about what's important to me, what I truly desire, and what I'm willing to commit myself, my energy and time and resources to. How much do I want it?
One of the things I am realizing is that in the past I have relied heavily on wishful thinking, waiting for a miracle to take me out of my current predicament in some area of my life and bring me my dreams. I have used prayer to ask the Divine for what I want and need in my life. While I continue to use prayer in this way, what I've been seeing is how I've been praying in this way while not committing myself to making the things I am praying about happen for me. I haven't felt empowered to create the life I desire, to manifest my dreams. I have felt helpless and hopeless, like the best I can do is ask the gods and then maybe these things will show up and maybe they won't. Hence I vacillate between periods of great optimism and great despair, because I don't feel I have any agency in the situation.
Now I realize this is totally wrong. The whole recent craze around "The Secret," "The Law of Attraction," and manifesting your life has gone overboard with the sense "I can have anything I want" without regard for what is right alignment, what is good for all beings, what is there that I might need that I don't know about and that at the outset I might reject, how sometimes the difficult or unpleasant situations of our lives are exactly what we need for our highest good. But on the other hand, the idea that it's all out of my hands, it's all up to the gods and there's nothing I can do about it, is no good either. We are here to co-create with the Divine within us and all around us. In fact, in the past I have approached the Law of Attraction in just the same disempowered way as I have approached prayer. I have written affirmations and done visualizations (admittedly, sometimes with startling results) all still hoping for a miracle, for it to be done for me.
There is a saying, "If you take one step toward God, He will take ten steps toward you." I think I believed my one step to be prayer, or affirmations or visualization, but there's more required of us. This is what I now see. The value of prayer is releasing the results, the outcome, to the Divine. After you create your vision, this is an important, in fact, crucial step, that is missed in the whole manifesting craze. What I see now is the step I was missing, which was not this one.
So here are the steps:
1) First you get very clear about what it is that you desire to create in your life. You name it. You visualize it. You feel it in your being, and in the feeling, you make sure you really want it, and it isn't just something you think you should want. You get clear and real about the details. You define. If I want to publish my writing in literary magazines, I need to have a clear idea what that means: I'd like to publish in five magazines by the end of this year, for example.
2) Then, you change the wishing and wanting to a commitment. I commit to publishing my writing in five magazines this year. I find in changing my desire to a commitment, feelings about it and resistance may arise. This points to work I need to commit to doing, to clear out what is in the way inside of me that keeps my desire away from me. This is my job, to feel the feelings and beliefs that hold me back, and work on them.
3) You state your commitment to friends. You make it known. You have accountability and support. And you ask for help where you will need it to make this dream a reality. Don't try to do it alone.
4) Then you can do your prayers or affirmations daily to keep it in your consciousness, but as you do them remember it is up to you to take the step toward God, to act. This next step is the step I was missing.
5) You take actions congruent with your desire. You make your life congruent with what you wish to create. If I want to publish in five magazines, I need to write and I need to submit work on a regular basis. I need to make a schedule and have commitments to make this happen, not just vaguely decide I'll do it "sometime". Otherwise all the prayer in the world isn't going to make this happen for me.
6) A very important step many people miss: You surrender. You hand it over to the Divine, trusting that the highest and best for you will be done in this situation, even if it looks nothing like what you asked for. You let it go. Even though you continue to conduct your life congruent with your desire, until you receive information/feeling/sensing that it is no longer right for you, you still release the results. If I keep writing and sending out my work, and it does not get published anywhere this year, I trust in the process, and most of all, I remember to enjoy the process, that the process is everything, or nearly everything, because the process is my life happening now.
So it's not enough to engage in wishful thinking and magical practices. You have to go out and change your life, take action, be the creative force in your life, make all of your behavior congruent with your desire, be accountable, be empowered, and then release the results. No one, not even the Divine, is going to do it for you if you don't care enough to make it happen in your life.
One of the things I am realizing is that in the past I have relied heavily on wishful thinking, waiting for a miracle to take me out of my current predicament in some area of my life and bring me my dreams. I have used prayer to ask the Divine for what I want and need in my life. While I continue to use prayer in this way, what I've been seeing is how I've been praying in this way while not committing myself to making the things I am praying about happen for me. I haven't felt empowered to create the life I desire, to manifest my dreams. I have felt helpless and hopeless, like the best I can do is ask the gods and then maybe these things will show up and maybe they won't. Hence I vacillate between periods of great optimism and great despair, because I don't feel I have any agency in the situation.
Now I realize this is totally wrong. The whole recent craze around "The Secret," "The Law of Attraction," and manifesting your life has gone overboard with the sense "I can have anything I want" without regard for what is right alignment, what is good for all beings, what is there that I might need that I don't know about and that at the outset I might reject, how sometimes the difficult or unpleasant situations of our lives are exactly what we need for our highest good. But on the other hand, the idea that it's all out of my hands, it's all up to the gods and there's nothing I can do about it, is no good either. We are here to co-create with the Divine within us and all around us. In fact, in the past I have approached the Law of Attraction in just the same disempowered way as I have approached prayer. I have written affirmations and done visualizations (admittedly, sometimes with startling results) all still hoping for a miracle, for it to be done for me.
There is a saying, "If you take one step toward God, He will take ten steps toward you." I think I believed my one step to be prayer, or affirmations or visualization, but there's more required of us. This is what I now see. The value of prayer is releasing the results, the outcome, to the Divine. After you create your vision, this is an important, in fact, crucial step, that is missed in the whole manifesting craze. What I see now is the step I was missing, which was not this one.
So here are the steps:
1) First you get very clear about what it is that you desire to create in your life. You name it. You visualize it. You feel it in your being, and in the feeling, you make sure you really want it, and it isn't just something you think you should want. You get clear and real about the details. You define. If I want to publish my writing in literary magazines, I need to have a clear idea what that means: I'd like to publish in five magazines by the end of this year, for example.
2) Then, you change the wishing and wanting to a commitment. I commit to publishing my writing in five magazines this year. I find in changing my desire to a commitment, feelings about it and resistance may arise. This points to work I need to commit to doing, to clear out what is in the way inside of me that keeps my desire away from me. This is my job, to feel the feelings and beliefs that hold me back, and work on them.
3) You state your commitment to friends. You make it known. You have accountability and support. And you ask for help where you will need it to make this dream a reality. Don't try to do it alone.
4) Then you can do your prayers or affirmations daily to keep it in your consciousness, but as you do them remember it is up to you to take the step toward God, to act. This next step is the step I was missing.
5) You take actions congruent with your desire. You make your life congruent with what you wish to create. If I want to publish in five magazines, I need to write and I need to submit work on a regular basis. I need to make a schedule and have commitments to make this happen, not just vaguely decide I'll do it "sometime". Otherwise all the prayer in the world isn't going to make this happen for me.
6) A very important step many people miss: You surrender. You hand it over to the Divine, trusting that the highest and best for you will be done in this situation, even if it looks nothing like what you asked for. You let it go. Even though you continue to conduct your life congruent with your desire, until you receive information/feeling/sensing that it is no longer right for you, you still release the results. If I keep writing and sending out my work, and it does not get published anywhere this year, I trust in the process, and most of all, I remember to enjoy the process, that the process is everything, or nearly everything, because the process is my life happening now.
So it's not enough to engage in wishful thinking and magical practices. You have to go out and change your life, take action, be the creative force in your life, make all of your behavior congruent with your desire, be accountable, be empowered, and then release the results. No one, not even the Divine, is going to do it for you if you don't care enough to make it happen in your life.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Listening to the Child Within
I've been doing this journalling process, in which I have conversations on the page with my "inner child." I do it in my head and out loud too. It's a process I learned from a wise and intense book called Healing Your Aloneness and I was using this process last winter when I was in a lot of emotional pain. I've returned to the process now because a little voice in my head told me it's what I'm needing for the next step in my journey.
I use the term "inner child" with great reluctance. Something in me recoils at the pop psychology of it all. But the truth is we do have a child within us, at least one, and I've been making some real discoveries about her, this little girl inside of me.
The conversations usually don't go too well. She's angry and in pain a lot, reluctant to talk to me because I've neglected her too much and don't give her what she wants or needs. So the process can be painful, difficult and frustrating, but I stick with it, calling forth my most patient, loving, compassionate and understanding adult self, remembering to keep listening to her feelings, acknowledging them and asking how I can help. Here's what I'm finding:
I am happy to make contact with this little person inside--even though the conversations are often painful and difficult--because she knows what feels good and what doesn't. She has my passion and my joy, my creativity, humor, aliveness. She has my sensitivity, softness and vulnerability. She has my playfulness, openness, silliness, love of adventure, and sensuality. She is a fountain of good ideas that would not otherwise occur to me. She is imaginative and unique and miraculous. She knows how to create a life of passion, joy and connection, a life that matters. Without her, I do not have access to these qualities, this guidance, this richness of feeling and wonder.
She doesn't know how to reserve an airline ticket or balance a checkbook, and she doesn't want to do these things. That's where my adult self comes in, to do all these things, to make her visions a reality and to take care of the everyday necessities. She doesn't know how to protect herself, though she knows what's scary and doesn't feel right. She doesn't know how to heal when she's hurt. She doesn't care about convention or habit. She loves freedom, expression and play. She remembers what's important.
She's not always right. She comes to wrong conclusions, especially about herself, and she needs my help correcting those, but she has a childlike wisdom, insight and intuition that I cannot live well without. My job is to protect her, help her heal her wounds, encourage her, and most of all, to listen to her. My job is to help her live and express through me, to realize her dreams, so that i am living a life of heart.
I am grateful for her wisdom and her feelings, even all the difficult ones, because she is honest and true and knows things my adult self has forgotten or routinely neglects. She gets me to stop and smell the roses, to curl up with a book on a rainy day, to listen to the still, small voice within, to dance.
I use the term "inner child" with great reluctance. Something in me recoils at the pop psychology of it all. But the truth is we do have a child within us, at least one, and I've been making some real discoveries about her, this little girl inside of me.
The conversations usually don't go too well. She's angry and in pain a lot, reluctant to talk to me because I've neglected her too much and don't give her what she wants or needs. So the process can be painful, difficult and frustrating, but I stick with it, calling forth my most patient, loving, compassionate and understanding adult self, remembering to keep listening to her feelings, acknowledging them and asking how I can help. Here's what I'm finding:
I am happy to make contact with this little person inside--even though the conversations are often painful and difficult--because she knows what feels good and what doesn't. She has my passion and my joy, my creativity, humor, aliveness. She has my sensitivity, softness and vulnerability. She has my playfulness, openness, silliness, love of adventure, and sensuality. She is a fountain of good ideas that would not otherwise occur to me. She is imaginative and unique and miraculous. She knows how to create a life of passion, joy and connection, a life that matters. Without her, I do not have access to these qualities, this guidance, this richness of feeling and wonder.
She doesn't know how to reserve an airline ticket or balance a checkbook, and she doesn't want to do these things. That's where my adult self comes in, to do all these things, to make her visions a reality and to take care of the everyday necessities. She doesn't know how to protect herself, though she knows what's scary and doesn't feel right. She doesn't know how to heal when she's hurt. She doesn't care about convention or habit. She loves freedom, expression and play. She remembers what's important.
She's not always right. She comes to wrong conclusions, especially about herself, and she needs my help correcting those, but she has a childlike wisdom, insight and intuition that I cannot live well without. My job is to protect her, help her heal her wounds, encourage her, and most of all, to listen to her. My job is to help her live and express through me, to realize her dreams, so that i am living a life of heart.
I am grateful for her wisdom and her feelings, even all the difficult ones, because she is honest and true and knows things my adult self has forgotten or routinely neglects. She gets me to stop and smell the roses, to curl up with a book on a rainy day, to listen to the still, small voice within, to dance.
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