The days when my groups at the prison don’t go well and the wind is cold and my phone calls aren’t returned, I give thanks. When I feel stuck and frustrated, I am grateful. When my disappointment colors every interaction, I say Yes and Thank You.
Not because I am so lucky and I have so much and many others would trade places with me. My feelings are fine and I want to honor them. I give thanks because that’s all I can do. It’s the most selfish thing I choose because it always makes me feel better. So to get what I want, I release my hold on my intentions, I back off, and I assume a stance of non-resistance and grateful receptivity.
Thank you for the delayed mail. Thank you for the small turnout at my event. Thank you for the opportunity to forgive a hurtful remark.
When I don’t resist anything, everything proceeds more smoothly.
I trust that my time on earth is for learning lessons on levels my mind can’t reach. Life tries and tries and tries to teach me. I notice patterns in my experience—friendships that end abruptly, well thought out plans which don’t succeed, varied and impersonal but effective obstacles. My options in response: bloody my head further by continuing what doesn’t work, criticize others loudly (or even just to myself) and blame them, think, or surrender.
Anyone can grasp the futility of the first two choices but I’ve learned that thinking is also inappropriate at best and often self-indulgent. When it comes to life, experience is the teacher and to open to our experience we can’t be in our heads or close our hearts in fear of our feelings or curtail our vulnerability. We embrace our vulnerability and say Yes. We feel every scintilla of hurt and shame and powerlessness. We stay on our own side and keep our hearts open. We don’t disparage life’s messengers; we receive the message and focus on our experience. We feel and maybe cry and we hold ourselves as our loving Parent would and we surrender.
We practice surrender when we give thanks and when we feel our feelings and when we wait to be led. We practice surrender when we trust a guidance that is not from our mind. We adopt an attitude of non-resistance as a pattern for moving through Life. And by not resisting we partner with Life.
And then the fun begins!
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Sunday, May 8, 2011
The Controller and the Hero
The Controller part of us knows how things ‘should’ be. She knows what’s right and what’s unacceptable and how we should look. She ‘has a vision’ which, she is sure, will make our lives turn out just the right way which will then lead us to happiness.
We listen to her and trust her during the first half of life. She gets us through school and work and child rearing. She focuses on behavior and activity and doing. And we garner some rewards. We fit in, our kids look fine, and we’ve achieved respectability. And then after a few years we say, ‘And what now?’
We can let the Controller keep pushing and positing goals for us and repeat the first half of life but really isn’t it a bit empty? There must be more to life than our minds can suggest. And then we realize we’ve benefitted as much as we can from the Controller. Now we need to listen to an as-yet-unheard-from part of us. In our quiet moments when we’re not too focused, we hear from our Hero.
The Hero is not ego-based or fear-based as is the Controller. The Hero lets go and surrenders and lives in a state of surrender. Life flows through her, she doesn’t direct life. And if she forgets that momentarily she breathes into that peaceful place inside, even if she can’t feel it at the moment (because she remembers that it’s there) and says , ‘I’m available.’ She knows that the second half of life is for practicing attunement and she must check in regularly by meditating to practice that attunement. It’s not about success or acclaim. It’s simply experiencing her oneness with God.
At the end of the day the Hero gives thanks for experiences of God and she also gives thanks for everything else. She knows that disappointments are opportunities to move more deeply inside and to heal at a depth of consciousness that hasn’t yet been explored.
The Hero pays attention to the details of daily life in a non-proprietary way. She observes the patterns and the themes. She watches her feelings and reactions and releases them and lets them pass. She watches the outside world and notices the details that mirror the inside world and she breathes and surrenders. She appreciates the oneness of the world around her and the world inside. It’s all the same.
It is truly a Hero’s journey to maintain a constant state of attention and availability. When the Controller intrudes too loudly, the Hero gives her a job to do that is appropriate for a Controller–managing a project or organizing a closet or making a list. The Controller solves problems. The Hero keeps her focus on attunement and availability.
Owning our power is the greatest second-half-of-life challenge for us all. What if I’m not good enough? What if I don’t know enough? What if I mess up? The truth is we’re not good enough, we don’t know enough, and we will and do mess up all the time. But that’s not the point. Owning our power is jumping into the game and saying, ‘I’m willing to play. I’ll do my best and I’ll check in for guidance by meditating. I don’t know where I’m going but I know I must show up and bring all of myself.’ No excuses, no delays.
We come from our peaceful centers and we nurture that peace. That’s what power is–our personal experience of the peace that exists beyond our individual selves. That peace exists. We can participate in it or not. It’s up to our Hero.
‘Be still and know that I am God.’ We are asked to ‘know,’ that is to be present, to experience our oneness with God. Isn’t that an amazing thought? I am one with God. My power lies in being still and knowing my oneness with God and that is Hero’s work. The Controller stays busy and gets tired and maybe frustrated and sometimes she’s a little tense and maybe short, but who can blame her? She does so much.
The Hero is still and knows her oneness with God. The Hero listens and is committed to being present. She doesn’t know if she will act or what she will do. She doesn’t think about the future. The Hero is simply available now. She’s not caught in resentment from some injustice that truly was an injustice but now is past. She doesn’t take offense because taking offense is as bad as giving offense and breaks her knowing that she is one with God. She practices forgiveness so she won’t lose her experience of oneness. The Hero doesn’t let anything interfere with her experience of oneness, not even the Controller.
The truth is that the Controller doesn’t want to be one with God. She wants to have her own identity and her own way and to get a lot done and to move fast and cram as much in a day as she can. The Hero is still and knows her oneness with God and that is all. She knows that life is about learning and she is humble and always alert for her lessons. She is a student, she is receptive, she waits to be shown. She says ‘Yes’ to Life and works in partnership with Life.
The Controller and the Hero are each good parts of us. Are you willing to let each part of you have time this week? Your Controller can get something done and your Hero can practice availability. Will you do that?
We listen to her and trust her during the first half of life. She gets us through school and work and child rearing. She focuses on behavior and activity and doing. And we garner some rewards. We fit in, our kids look fine, and we’ve achieved respectability. And then after a few years we say, ‘And what now?’
We can let the Controller keep pushing and positing goals for us and repeat the first half of life but really isn’t it a bit empty? There must be more to life than our minds can suggest. And then we realize we’ve benefitted as much as we can from the Controller. Now we need to listen to an as-yet-unheard-from part of us. In our quiet moments when we’re not too focused, we hear from our Hero.
The Hero is not ego-based or fear-based as is the Controller. The Hero lets go and surrenders and lives in a state of surrender. Life flows through her, she doesn’t direct life. And if she forgets that momentarily she breathes into that peaceful place inside, even if she can’t feel it at the moment (because she remembers that it’s there) and says , ‘I’m available.’ She knows that the second half of life is for practicing attunement and she must check in regularly by meditating to practice that attunement. It’s not about success or acclaim. It’s simply experiencing her oneness with God.
At the end of the day the Hero gives thanks for experiences of God and she also gives thanks for everything else. She knows that disappointments are opportunities to move more deeply inside and to heal at a depth of consciousness that hasn’t yet been explored.
The Hero pays attention to the details of daily life in a non-proprietary way. She observes the patterns and the themes. She watches her feelings and reactions and releases them and lets them pass. She watches the outside world and notices the details that mirror the inside world and she breathes and surrenders. She appreciates the oneness of the world around her and the world inside. It’s all the same.
It is truly a Hero’s journey to maintain a constant state of attention and availability. When the Controller intrudes too loudly, the Hero gives her a job to do that is appropriate for a Controller–managing a project or organizing a closet or making a list. The Controller solves problems. The Hero keeps her focus on attunement and availability.
Owning our power is the greatest second-half-of-life challenge for us all. What if I’m not good enough? What if I don’t know enough? What if I mess up? The truth is we’re not good enough, we don’t know enough, and we will and do mess up all the time. But that’s not the point. Owning our power is jumping into the game and saying, ‘I’m willing to play. I’ll do my best and I’ll check in for guidance by meditating. I don’t know where I’m going but I know I must show up and bring all of myself.’ No excuses, no delays.
We come from our peaceful centers and we nurture that peace. That’s what power is–our personal experience of the peace that exists beyond our individual selves. That peace exists. We can participate in it or not. It’s up to our Hero.
‘Be still and know that I am God.’ We are asked to ‘know,’ that is to be present, to experience our oneness with God. Isn’t that an amazing thought? I am one with God. My power lies in being still and knowing my oneness with God and that is Hero’s work. The Controller stays busy and gets tired and maybe frustrated and sometimes she’s a little tense and maybe short, but who can blame her? She does so much.
The Hero is still and knows her oneness with God. The Hero listens and is committed to being present. She doesn’t know if she will act or what she will do. She doesn’t think about the future. The Hero is simply available now. She’s not caught in resentment from some injustice that truly was an injustice but now is past. She doesn’t take offense because taking offense is as bad as giving offense and breaks her knowing that she is one with God. She practices forgiveness so she won’t lose her experience of oneness. The Hero doesn’t let anything interfere with her experience of oneness, not even the Controller.
The truth is that the Controller doesn’t want to be one with God. She wants to have her own identity and her own way and to get a lot done and to move fast and cram as much in a day as she can. The Hero is still and knows her oneness with God and that is all. She knows that life is about learning and she is humble and always alert for her lessons. She is a student, she is receptive, she waits to be shown. She says ‘Yes’ to Life and works in partnership with Life.
The Controller and the Hero are each good parts of us. Are you willing to let each part of you have time this week? Your Controller can get something done and your Hero can practice availability. Will you do that?
Monday, May 2, 2011
Owning Our Power Through Meditation
I get crazy when folks in the meditation group ask me “why” questions or repeat what the current guru has said on television or talk in abstractions off the top of their heads. I have committed to make the Saturday morning meditation group a healing experience and healing never happens intellectually. The Controller tells us to get into our heads. The Controller is trying to protect our vulnerability, to prevent too much feeling, and to live superficially. The Controller is never the figure we call on when we want to live with passion and depth, the essence of meditation.
The Controller helps us keep our lives going by attending to necessary details–keep food in the fridge, cut the grass, balance the bank statement (or at least know pretty much where you stand), pay bills on time, change the sheets regularly, buy clothes on sale, and generally use good judgment in practical matters.
That’s great and we absolutely need the Controller’s input. I hope you have a strong Controller. But as with everything else there is a time and place for the Controller. If we indulge the Controller with too much of our energy we’ll have trouble sleeping, lose our spontaneity, forget how to have fun, and turn our lives into a series of projects to be completed.
The Controller is a subpersonality we develop from our experience growing up. In school we meet certain expectations–arrive on time, keep our desks neat, hand in homework, and sit quietly when the teacher speaks. We restrain our here-to-fore unrestrained natural enthusiasm in deference to the demands of the world around us. We all need to learn that lesson and to give it priority in many parts of our lives–our work, our responsibilities as citizens and neighbors, our conduct with strangers, and our planning for the future. We don’t want to live without a Controller.
However, the Controller is not how we heal. Healing requires vulnerability and an open-ended commitment to be present and to see what happens. We don’t want to use that presence and vulnerability with the tax collector. We give the state its due. But just as we have responsibilities to the outside world we have responsibilities to the inner world, also. “Why,” you ask, “is it not enough to obey the law, live a decent life, and contribute in our own particular way?” Certainly no one will criticize you and you will build a comfortable life for yourself. If you are satisfied with ceasing your questing at that point, OK.
Some of us feel pulled to look more deeply, however. The death of a child thrusts us into an agony we don’t think we can survive. An unexpected turn of events leaves us without the future we had counted on. Or simply living every day pulls us away from the world and into spaces inside which scare us. For whatever reason, we want more. The surface verities don’t satisfy and our heads can’t answer soulful questions. Our churches offer comfort and support but this delving to which we are called is so personal that we must set out alone. It would be easier if we could take the latest best seller with us and we could read about our lives but at some point we are confronted with experiencing our lives. Just experiencing. Not understanding, not controlling, not directing. Simply experiencing. Saying Yes to the moment and experiencing what is at any given second.
At first this exercise may serve to get us through a strained time but eventually it becomes a way of life. And then we don’t identify with the Controller but with the one caught in the current. We don’t know where we are being carried and we don’t need to. We simply say Yes.
On an inner level we practice non-resistance to everything–I won’t fight any feeling which comes up, then acceptance of everything–thank you for this feeling which I don’t like, then trust–I say Yes to this second. Owning our power includes each of these steps. Non-resistance challenges those of us who like to act, who judge and want to correct. But as we accept that life is not a problem to be solved and that our minds (our Controllers) don’t know best, we acknowledge the beauty and wisdom in the patterns of our lives which lead us to heal. Life is for healing through experience. If our Controllers cut off our experience, we can’t heal. We can’t stay safe, intellectual, above it all, comfortable and still heal. Healing is messy and sometimes painful and always vulnerable and we’re never in control. Life knows what experiences we need to heal. We can go with them or resist and stay in our heads.
Owning our power may manifest in our gratitude for every little thing. “Thank you for my breath today.” “Thank you for that driver cutting me off and taking my parking place.” “Thank you for the latest disappointment.” How many times have I heard, “That’s crazy to be thankful for what you don’t like and didn’t choose and don’t want!”
It is. But what’s the alternative? To be angry or hurt and vengeful? To take it personally and hate others? I’ve lived that way and it doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t empower me, and I don’t heal. My life works better when I say, “Yes, thank you, and what’s next?” I can get very angry and very self righteous and very intellectual when I’m hurt. I can demolish another with my analysis and words. But where does it get me? I’m still in the world and so are they and I’ve just contributed a whole lot of pain that didn’t need to be there. All because I was insulted, which is to say, not in control. Control is useful only in circumscribed situations. With God, the soul, eternity, feelings, or relationships, control is a dirty word.
Meditation is practice for life. We practice letting go of our minds, accepting what comes, releasing what we no longer need to hold onto, breathing, trusting, and waiting to be shown the next step. If we can do that for twenty minutes we can do it throughout the day. We practice the relationship we want to have with Life in meditation and then we live it all day. And that’s owning our power.
The Controller helps us keep our lives going by attending to necessary details–keep food in the fridge, cut the grass, balance the bank statement (or at least know pretty much where you stand), pay bills on time, change the sheets regularly, buy clothes on sale, and generally use good judgment in practical matters.
That’s great and we absolutely need the Controller’s input. I hope you have a strong Controller. But as with everything else there is a time and place for the Controller. If we indulge the Controller with too much of our energy we’ll have trouble sleeping, lose our spontaneity, forget how to have fun, and turn our lives into a series of projects to be completed.
The Controller is a subpersonality we develop from our experience growing up. In school we meet certain expectations–arrive on time, keep our desks neat, hand in homework, and sit quietly when the teacher speaks. We restrain our here-to-fore unrestrained natural enthusiasm in deference to the demands of the world around us. We all need to learn that lesson and to give it priority in many parts of our lives–our work, our responsibilities as citizens and neighbors, our conduct with strangers, and our planning for the future. We don’t want to live without a Controller.
However, the Controller is not how we heal. Healing requires vulnerability and an open-ended commitment to be present and to see what happens. We don’t want to use that presence and vulnerability with the tax collector. We give the state its due. But just as we have responsibilities to the outside world we have responsibilities to the inner world, also. “Why,” you ask, “is it not enough to obey the law, live a decent life, and contribute in our own particular way?” Certainly no one will criticize you and you will build a comfortable life for yourself. If you are satisfied with ceasing your questing at that point, OK.
Some of us feel pulled to look more deeply, however. The death of a child thrusts us into an agony we don’t think we can survive. An unexpected turn of events leaves us without the future we had counted on. Or simply living every day pulls us away from the world and into spaces inside which scare us. For whatever reason, we want more. The surface verities don’t satisfy and our heads can’t answer soulful questions. Our churches offer comfort and support but this delving to which we are called is so personal that we must set out alone. It would be easier if we could take the latest best seller with us and we could read about our lives but at some point we are confronted with experiencing our lives. Just experiencing. Not understanding, not controlling, not directing. Simply experiencing. Saying Yes to the moment and experiencing what is at any given second.
At first this exercise may serve to get us through a strained time but eventually it becomes a way of life. And then we don’t identify with the Controller but with the one caught in the current. We don’t know where we are being carried and we don’t need to. We simply say Yes.
On an inner level we practice non-resistance to everything–I won’t fight any feeling which comes up, then acceptance of everything–thank you for this feeling which I don’t like, then trust–I say Yes to this second. Owning our power includes each of these steps. Non-resistance challenges those of us who like to act, who judge and want to correct. But as we accept that life is not a problem to be solved and that our minds (our Controllers) don’t know best, we acknowledge the beauty and wisdom in the patterns of our lives which lead us to heal. Life is for healing through experience. If our Controllers cut off our experience, we can’t heal. We can’t stay safe, intellectual, above it all, comfortable and still heal. Healing is messy and sometimes painful and always vulnerable and we’re never in control. Life knows what experiences we need to heal. We can go with them or resist and stay in our heads.
Owning our power may manifest in our gratitude for every little thing. “Thank you for my breath today.” “Thank you for that driver cutting me off and taking my parking place.” “Thank you for the latest disappointment.” How many times have I heard, “That’s crazy to be thankful for what you don’t like and didn’t choose and don’t want!”
It is. But what’s the alternative? To be angry or hurt and vengeful? To take it personally and hate others? I’ve lived that way and it doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t empower me, and I don’t heal. My life works better when I say, “Yes, thank you, and what’s next?” I can get very angry and very self righteous and very intellectual when I’m hurt. I can demolish another with my analysis and words. But where does it get me? I’m still in the world and so are they and I’ve just contributed a whole lot of pain that didn’t need to be there. All because I was insulted, which is to say, not in control. Control is useful only in circumscribed situations. With God, the soul, eternity, feelings, or relationships, control is a dirty word.
Meditation is practice for life. We practice letting go of our minds, accepting what comes, releasing what we no longer need to hold onto, breathing, trusting, and waiting to be shown the next step. If we can do that for twenty minutes we can do it throughout the day. We practice the relationship we want to have with Life in meditation and then we live it all day. And that’s owning our power.
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