Truth be told, you have no choice because not voting is also a “vote.” It may not be a vote for a candidate, but it is an expression of political preference, nevertheless.
A long time ago, a musical group called The Fugs asked the question, “Why are we always voting for the lesser of two evils?” For the original, see https://genius.com/The-fugs-wide-wide-river-lyrics. We vote for the “lesser of two evils” because we consider it better than the alternative.
In the “old days,” people just did what the tribal chiefs, kings, and/or queens told them to do. Originally, battles were fought over limited resources. I don’t know the degree to which limited resources influence war these days, but the battle lines are centuries old. For example, take a look at a partial listing of wars between France and England: “
As is true for the vast majority of men in our culture, I spent time in the military. Virtually all the men in my family spent at least some time in military service. For my father and my uncles, the wars were WWII and Korea. My mother grew up knowing older relatives who had fought in the U.S. Civil War. For me, the war was Vietnam. I am glad to say that my son has not been called to serve. With some luck, we will continue to reduce the necessity—and desire—for war. That is, I think, social progress.
At some point, we will “out grow” the need and desire for war. In the meantime, democracy is, perhaps, the best alternative to militarism. My sense is that voting for leadership is the best way to reduce the need and desire for war. People are much less inclined to go to war if/when they feel that they had a say in the outcome of elections. The more people who vote, the less likely one faction or another will want to go to war.
People who vote have a vested interest in democracy, even when their candidate loses. While having a vested interest in democracy is not quite the same as having a vested interest in peace, it is probably the next-best thing. Also a long time ago, John Lennon (of Beatles fame) and Yoko Ono suggested that we “Give Peace a Chance”: See
Truth be told, we haven’t given peace much of a chance at any point in history. We eventually, of course, get tired of waging constant wars. Perhaps we have reduced the number of conflicts (especially militarized conflicts) simply because we got tired of fighting. John Lennon was right: We really should give peace a chance….
“There is no power on earth that can withstand the united cooperation on spiritual levels of men and women of goodwill everywhere. It is for this reason that the continued and widespread observance of the Silent Minute is of such vital importance in the interest of human welfare.” ~ Major Wellesley Tudor Pole
I received this quotation via email from a friend asking me to join in “one minute for peace” each night at 10:00 pm. My friend shared this background:
The original Big Ben Silent Minute was a peace prayer initiated by Wellesley Tudor Pole, a major in the British Army and the founder of the Chalice Well Trust, Glastonbury.
During World War II, all over Britain and the Commonwealth, millions of people joined together every evening at 9.00pm just before the news, to the chimes of Big Ben, to pray for peace.
In the dark days of war the Silent Minute became a vast network of Light and Hope in the hearts of all people of goodwill. It had the blessing of King George VI, Sir Winston Churchill and his Parliamentary Cabinet, and it was also recognized by the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The Silent Minute was observed on land, at sea, on the battlefields, in air raid shelters and in hospitals. With Churchill’s support the BBC, on Sunday, 10th November 1940, began to play the chimes of Big Ben on the radio as a signal for the Silent Minute to begin.
I did not say that if one silent minute is good, why limit it to that. Instead, I responded by sharing with her that my weekly group meditation times are Sunday 11-12; Tuesday 9-9:30 am and 2-3 pm. I did not say that I also meditate each morning, and have done an hour of yoga daily since the pandemic caused people to “stay safe at home” and the YMCA was closed.
Admittedly, this takes me more than one silent minute, but you can start where you are…
I have developed a lifetime of great appreciation for introspection. Appreciation expanded to an even greater degree while listening to a Sounds True Podcast with Jennie Lee, a yoga therapist. Jennie began working regularly with open-ended questions such as “What soul quality do I need to awaken more?” and “Am I listening to what life is asking of me right now?” Her new book Spark Change identifies 108 “provocative questions for spiritual evolution” including a powerful question to help understand hard-to-change habits: “What is the inner need my worst habit fulfills?”
A brief text exchange was an amazing reminder of how truly connected and intimately sacred every silent moment is. I will share the tale in story fashion, including a few links from the Sacred Stories archives. (You can sign up to receive Sacred Stories as they post.)
The first is the last (you may have heard that before…) and is titled Rocking Chair. It is a tender story of a friend who gave away an old rocking chair. This was not just any old rocking chair. This rocking chair is filled with a mother’s precious memories….
A few moments after I posted “Rocking Chair” I received a text message from another friend who was feeling some remorse over “a few verbal spars” with her daughter that had taken place the day before. I sent the link about the rocking chair, and discovered that his friend — a loyal reader of the Beyond Mastery Newsletter — had not followed Sacred Stories.
You see, I had taken the rocking chair three years earlier, knowing some day it would be wanted. Unable to be with her son on his birthday and with her mother’s visit from Europe cancelled because of the pandemic, that day came.
Next, I sent a link to another Sacred Story, this one titled Electric Heater, about this same woman who had been a refugee with a baby less than a year old, when she had had to flee from the Communists when they invaded Poland.
The last Sacred Story link I sent was titled Lord’s Supper and this one was her own story about her grandfather. Two times his painting of the Lord’s Supper had fallen off the wall face down as a message of the death of a family member.
My attention landed on the closing lines of these two Sacred Story posts I had shared that morning with my friend:
What once seemed so strange, is now seen as evidence spirit and matter are not really separate at all.
Today they are very successful living in the U.S. in a 3,500 square foot home – but they remember this evidence that our needs can be met in extraordinary ways.
Our needs can be met in extraordinary ways: spirit and matter are not separate at all, and there is no power on earth that can withstand the united cooperation on spiritual levels of men and women of goodwill everywhere.
I may be the only regular reader of this newsletter who has actually been to war. My guess is that most of our readers are following Debra, and, like her, are women. In general, especially these days in the States, men have more experience with war than women do. “My” war was Vietnam. All my older male relatives saw combat in one military operation or another. My dad and his brother fought in WWII. I had cousins and an uncle who fought in Korea. For generation after generation, war is what men “did” at least some of the time.
Although I was one of the lucky ones and wasn’t directly involved in much combat, I can tell you that war is no fun. At best, the least of your worries is learning to sleep with your boots on. At any time of day or night (almost always at night), you could hear a whistle, and someone would shout, “Incoming!” At that point—if you wren’t in the field–you needed to run to your designated bunker.
I was one of the lucky ones. I always had a bunker I could run to. Others weren’t so lucky and spent their time in “the field,” in actual combat. I always had a bunker to run to because I had a valuable skill: I could type. I had learned how to type in high school but didn’t fully appreciate the skill until I was in the Army. When we were asked in Basic Training, “Who here can type?” I held up my hand. From that time on, I spent most of my time in the Army typing, and that included my time in Vietnam. Not everyone was so lucky.
I suspect, however, that everyone has some unexpected, “extraordinary ways” that he or she has been influenced by the unfolding of life’s events. One of my friends from karate was selected for training as a Corpsman (medic in the Marines) in basically the same way I was selected to type reports in the Army. We had very different experiences in Vietnam. Whether such differences are simply “luck of the draw” or are part of a “grand design” that we are unable to see is a question I have asked myself with regularity: “why him and not me”?
An old saying with various attributions is, “There but for the Grace of God go I.” The supposed origin of that saying was a wealthy Londoner looking out the window of his townhouse and seeing a beggar on the sidewalk, points, and says to one of his companions, “There but for the Grace of God go I.” One of the great mysteries of life has always been, “Why?” Why is one person born healthy and another born with serious physical problems? Why is one person born into wealth, and other into poverty?
Do we get to choose the life we end up living, or is it simply a matter of “chance”? Or is it a life based on what we need to gain perspective or learn spiritual lessons? We like to think that some person we think of as “God” has a plan and that everything—including our lives—will unfold as it should. My sense is that humanity is slowly but surely making progress in a variety of ways. We have been doing what we can to reduce disease and conflict. It has, of course, remained an ongoing struggle, and my sense is that the struggle is far from over. I suspect we’ll be singing, “Aint goin’ to study war no more” for generations.
If you, like me, are hoping ours will be the last generation for whom this is a concern, do your best to “hold energy” for “peace, love, and brotherhood” and do what you can to promote policies that will move all of humanity in that direction.
Gray and grey are both common spellings of the color between black and white. Gray is more frequent in American English, whereas grey is more common in British English.
During the week of the primaries, my sister put the following post on Facebook. I do not know who wrote these words, but I think you will agree that this message is vital.
Gray and grey is a good way to think about the way we see the world. And politics aside, we need to remember that some of the most beautiful, inspirational people we know will disagree with what we believe. We (as individuals) are learning to speak from our hearts. The heart recognizes the beauty in those we agree with and those we do not. Just as the wave is not separate from the ocean, we are not separate from one another, even those with whom we cannot agree wholeheartedly.
We can make a habit to follow some version of the four basic steps of communication as they are outlined by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, founder and director of educational services for The Center for Nonviolent Communication:
1. Observe the situation objectively.
2. State how the observation is making you feel.
3. Connect with a need.
4. Make a request.
I went through this process looking at, not politics, but just one dynamic related to dealing with the pandemic.
1. People I respect and care about are making divergent choices navigating the pandemic.
2. I feel helpless when people who are important to me socialize in ways that do not seem safe to me, so I do not feel OK being with them.
3. I need to feel like I matter to the people who matter to me.
4. Are you willing to quarantine so I could feel safe to make a visit?
I have not asked these questions directly, but articulating this has made space within me. The process inspired a poem.
Some Do
Sadness seeps in
seemingly unbidden
Arising out of conditions
This pandemic puts people in jeopardy
everything seems different now
We cannot plan or travel
or freely visit with friends and family
Some do
When everything falls apart,
what remains?
The sun still rises
birds still sing
Butterflies and flowers burst forth
Babies are born
people pass away
Some do not see what remains
some do
Remaining blind and deaf and dumb
or numb
Some think they can drink themselves toward peace
or eat, or sleep, or read
Willing themselves to pretend
what is lost cannot be found
My fingers find the keys
My voice sings the chants
My heart opens closing the gap
between what is and what is not
What is is now
What is not is then, next, never, always
Some do not make that distinction
some do
Recently working with a woman doing the Imagine Healing process in preparation of some surgery, just moments into our Zoom meeting, she had soft tears. “I did not expect to cry,” she said.
Those who have sat face-to-face with me over the years recognize that tears often accompany change. And everything is changing during this dimensional flux….
I generated a mantra around Gillian MacBeth-Louthan’s “How to Move Through This Dimensional Flux.”
Come to the plateau of inner peace; a place where words, actions or emanations of others cannot touch you unless they are invited in. Find your center — your fulcrum — your balance, and stand in that place in power.
Just as the Imagine Healing process is designed to help see gifts in healing happenings, many gifts are hidden in plain sight during this pandemic. The woman on Zoom mentioned that her boss had always been the kind to get into the office by 6:30 am five days a week. She reported him saying, “I don’t see myself ever going back to that.”
Imagine Healing is an amazing process primarily because it quickly activates the parasympathetic nervous system, where healing is natural. Any time we are involved in something that has not yet come to be, the sympathetic nervous system takes over to watch for anything that might be life-threatening. Unfortunately, one of the most life-threatening things is staying in the sympathetic nervous system! Fight, or flight, or freeze is not designed for healing. Quite the opposite. It is only designed for an actual immediate threat. The lion, the attack, the disaster…. we want to be able to activate and act and survive.
Healing occurs naturally when the body is in the parasympathetic nervous system where the focus is on regeneration, renewal, and recovery.
Think about the changes that have occurred in your life as a result of the pandemic that you don’t see yourself ever going back to.
Let’s never go back to forgetting we can put politics aside and be kind, wise, and transformed!
A long time ago a musician named Pete Seeger wrote a song entitled, “Which Side Are You On:”
The song depicted the conflict (often bloody) between the mine owners and the miners in Harlen County, Kentucky.
Most of the conflicts in human history are based on perceived differences, pitting what is basically one “tribe” against another. For generations the English and the French waged a long-term, on-going war for dominance in Europe. And, of course, the Romans wanted to rule Europe, and before that the Greeks, and before that….
In the States, we have had our share of wars as well, most notably the Revolutionary War, the “Indian wars,” and, of course, the “Civil War.” War is, in fact, so common that it is probably the “natural” state of affairs. In spite of the human desire to “study war no more,” war seems to be natural for us.
As Tennyson observed in the nineteenth century, Nature itself is “red in tooth and claw.” Conflict is the natural state of affairs. Consider for a moment how many earlier species have gone extinct. Nature is a world of strife, conflict. and violence. Humans are, of course, part of the natural world. I suspect that most of you reading this eat meat at least on occasion. Whether fish, fowl, or cattle. Everything that lives, eats something, and that “something” stayed alive by eating something else. Even Mahatma Gandhi had to eat to stay alive.
Most human conflict is based on perceived needs. What do humans actually need to survive? If it gets too cold, we die. If it gets too hot, we die. We need water, food, and breathable air. And then, of course, if the species is to survive, we need to reproduce. In many ways, life is a competition, a struggle for the survival of the “fittest.” And humans, of course, are just one of the species in the competition.
We’re not the biggest, we’re not the strongest, we’re not the fastest, but we are perhaps the smartest. That suggests that if we are to come up with a way to solve the various problems that influence us all, humans will need to be the ones to do it. Although it would be nice, it doesn’t have to be done all at once. If you’ve read much history, you already know what a long process it’s been.
Progress takes time when the choice is always the perceived lesser of two evils. We cannot choose not to sin. For that reason, it is the human obligation to consistently make the best choice(s) possible. To do that, we need to be acutely aware of the choices we are making. That requires something more than the flip of a coin….
Martin Luther said we are to sin boldly, with the implication being that we have no choice but to “sin.” For that reason, we need to be bold in deciding when and how to “sin.” Always do your best to choose the lesser of two evils….
Nine-year-old Michaela Munyan, is CEO and sole seamstress of an unincorporated operation. Michaela had learned to sew hair scrunchies in an after-school program, so when her school was shut down because of the coronavirus, she did something constructive. She found a pattern and made a mask. Then she found a YouTube video about batch sewing and taught herself to make roughly 50 masks in two hours, a fraction of the time it was taking her to sew a single mask before.
Perhaps like no time behind us, the time before us asks us to live the line from John Wooden: Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
Nothing stops us more effectively than our own limiting beliefs. If you believe that something is true, you can almost always find evidence to support the belief. If you believe the time before us is keeping you from doing something, look again. Notice what the time before us is allowing all of us to do….
That is what Michaela did.
While at the time of this writing I am still doing remote sessions only, I am still available to support folks that way.
Let’s look at the way everything holds its opposite:
The event of I lost my job is on a continuum from, “I cannot support myself and others who depend upon me” to “I have wanted to go out on my own for a long time.” In the middle somewhere is probably, “I am not sure what I can do but I need to do something.”
From my October 31, 2019, Beyond Mastery Newsletter article titled: Disappointment,Sometimes we need ways to support ourselves through disappointment until we can see the gifts. You may find tapping’s universal reversals can provide that support. (The reversals are included in the article.)
Of course, the time before us offers some disappointment, every time does, but opportunities are hidden in plain sight in your heart right now.
In Hope and Resiliency: Understanding the Psychotherapeutic Strategies of Milton H. Erickson, MD, a lot of attention is given to the ability to affect a person’s subjective experience of time. Working with an amputee who was struggling to accept the idea that he had only one leg, Erickson used age regression and had the man ponder how he might adjust if some time in the future he had an amputation. Reorienting him in time, and discussing the situation hypothetically, the man was able to develop a solution for how he could deal with the current situation.
Richard Bandler followed up the familiar consoling comment, “Years from now we’ll probably look back on this and laugh,” with, “Why wait?”
It is vital for us to believe we can do something about the situation.
Erickson sometimes used a slight change in perspective to initiate both forward progression and time distortion… suggesting, “Instead of looking at what you’re doing, look at the ending. How can you make it better? How can you make it more of what you want? How can you make it more lasting? How can you make it more productive?” (pg. 179-180).
From all of this, Steve de Shazer devised what is called the miracle question, “If you woke one morning and discovered that a miracle had occurred and your problem was solved, how would your actions change?”
If you haven’t yet, take some time to project yourself forward in time and look back on the time before us now as the past. Notice the things that truly have meaning. Pay special attention to the subtle differences in choices you can make now that bring benefit to yourselves and others long into the future as well as today.
The journey of change is this point. The beginning point must be where the need exists right now.
Just like Michaela did, you are able to develop the necessary insights for you to look back and see how you made it better, more lasting, and more productive.
Life moves in only one direction: forward. There’s no going back, and there are no “do-overs.” That’s why we need to do the best we can with everything we do all the time. A long time ago, the Steve Miller Band said, “Time keeps on slippin’ into the future”:
Time is, in fact, a slippery slope. When we are young, the passage of time seems slow. You can probably remember one year in school that seemed to last forever. For me, that was third grade. With each passing year, however, the speed at which time seemed to be passing accelerated. By the time a person hits 60—or more—the rate at which time is passing seems increasingly supersonic.
Time is also a one-way street. There are “no do-overs.” You can apologize for something you said or did, but you can’t “undo” it. Do the best job you can the first time—and every time—because that is actually the only time. A long time ago, the poet Edward Fitzgerald translated the “Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam,” (1859):
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
It is a hard lesson to learn. Learning that lesson is basically the purpose of childhood. What’s done can’t be undone. The only way to go is forward. We are told to Sin boldly….
I am not exactly sure what Martin Luther meant when he gave that advice, but it seems to imply that “sin” is inevitable. “Sin” in this sense refers to “mistakes.” Everyone makes them, so in that sense we are all “sinners.” Are some sins worse than others? I assume so, but while I have a vague sense of what actions are better or worse than others, I do not fully understand the variety of ways different people classify them.
Catholics, for example, have what they consider holy days of obligation, when church attendance (for Mass) is required. Christians in general reserve Sunday (the Sabbath) for religious observance. And, of course, Jews consider Saturday the “sabbath.”
If you’re reading this, living when and where you probably do, you may well be thinking, “So what?” Take a minute, however, to consider how many people fought and died because they thought that one way of “being spiritual” was better than another. It is hard to say whether most wars in history were fought because of religious differences or whether religion was simply being used to justify wars fought for material gain.
So much of life depends on perspective. In general, people have been expanding their perspective over time. Someone Debra and I trained with, Richard Bandler, used to say, “I’m not myself—know more.” In some ways, that is what life is asking of all of us: We are supposed to “know more” as we go through life.
Life is, after all, a great adventure of learning and knowing more….
As the 4th of July comes around it looks as though social-distancing measures to mitigate risks of contracting COVID-19 are likely to be with us for a while. Although Marie Curie said “the way of progress is neither swift nor easy,” there are ways that we can all still let freedom ring on Independence Day.
We can begin by making a conscious choice for Freedom from Fear. Individuals certainly have differing views of the degrees of statistical risk.
I have been one who has taken precautions which (to some) might seem extreme. My reasons include the reality that I live with someone who is considered to be at higher risk. He is over 70 (and so am I), but he has a diagnosis of diabetes and high blood pressure. He is also currently on steroid therapy due to a diagnosis of polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) — likely triggered by mold exposure in our home last year.
Wearing a mask is one thing I can easily do. “Unsure About Actually Wearing a Mask?” addresses a lot of questions. According to Aaron Hamilton, M.D., “A cloth mask will not prevent you from breathing in respiratory droplets that carry a virus, like COVID-19. But it will help to protect others from you if you happen to be infected, with or without symptoms. Furthermore, cloth masks help to reinforce social distancing and good cough etiquette, which ultimately will help to slow how far the virus spreads.”
I have been intentional to be creative (and sometimes comical) about the masks I wear.
A friend was kind enough to tell me that Gucci got into big trouble for a similar look with their blackface sweater design. I admit that knowledge, along with recent heightened sensitivity to the history of cultural racism, has dampened the innocent joy I had making this one from a sock. I have chosen to exercise Freedom from Guilt.
I do have an actual N-95 mask (purchased last year during the discovery of mold infestation first at the office, then here at the house), but the material of it is a serious irritant to my skin. This second no-sew mask is cut from the sleeve of a comfy cotton shirt, and it is tied with a simple cord. I like that it is two layers and it holds up my long hair (I was overdue for a hair cut in March when we began sheltering-in-place while still in Florida), and I can choose to coordinate colors.
My kids really hate this one. The base is made out of a sock, and the image was printed in black and white and colored with crayons. I did not realize it looks like the Joker, so apologies to Jack Nicolson. Freedom from embarrassment, freedom from shame, freedom from sadness, and freedom to choose how you feel and what you do is really key.
SCS/NLP has at it’s core, transformational tools for noticing the differences and similarities within everything. We have preferred sensory systems, if you see what I mean. While one person looks around him/ or herself to decide what is appropriate, others want to make his or her own choice based solely on self. Notice how freedom is intrinsic in both of these behavioral tendencies.
“The Sneetches” by Dr. Seuss is excellent for discussing issues of mask-wearers and nonmask-wearers. In the story, the Star-Bellied Sneetches are really rude to the Plain-Bellied Sneetches, just because of the simple stars on their bellies. But with freedom comes responsibility. I have the freedom to choose to wear a mask. I also have the responsibility to not think I am better than someone who does not. Even the Plain-Bellied Sneetches begin to treat one another disrespectfully when some of them had stars put upon thars (their bellies,that is) to fit in!
As we navigate this Pandemic of 2020, we are afforded the freedom to question the absurdity of all of our prejudices.
One freedom worth cultivating is the freedom from being a Monday-Morning Quarterback. Lots of learning curve is happening. Daily we know more than we knew before. Looking back with the information we have now, it is clear things could have been done differently. But…. when the choice of today was being made yesterday, we did not see anything as clearly as we will see everything tomorrow.
Tom Brokaw may have said it best. “It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.”
Underneath each mask is a face without one, and everyone has a reason for doing it the way he or she is doing it. I love how Dr. Seuss drew freedom into the conclusion of the story:
“The Sneetches got really quite smart on that day. The day they decided that Sneetches are Sneetches. And no kind of Sneetch is the best on the beaches. That day, all the Sneetches forgot about stars and whether they had one, or not, upon thars.”
Let freedom ring! Let that freedom ring once and for all so we can all be kind, to the masked and the unmasked among us….
We seem to be living the “ancient Chinese curse” that was rumored to have been made up by Robert Kennedy in the 1970s. The phrase has been investigated many times because it has the “ring” of truth. Peace and plenty are not as interesting as war and famine. We can find a lot of times in history during which wars were common. It is, however, not easy to find extended periods of peace.
Not that long ago, England and France had what has been called the Hundred Years War. That was in the days of swords, shields, and bows and arrows. The carnage was horrendous. In the States, we also had a Civil War. More recently, we had what is known as World War One, which was thought to be the war to end all wars. It was followed by World War Two, which was followed by The Vietnam War. The one thing the wars prove is that humans are slow to learn.
When I was an undergraduate taking a psychology course, we had a saying, “Even a rat learns.” Humans do, of course, learn. They don’t always learn what’s most desirable, however. Instead of learning how to avoid war and otherwise reduce conflict, for example, humans tend to learn how to build and employ better weapons. A well-known play from Ancient Greece, Lysistrata, has women withholding sex from men to get the men to refrain from going to war. If it were actually that easy, I suspect wars would be ancient history by now.
War is, of course, very unpleasant, primarily for those who fight them, but also for those who care about those who go to war and for those who live in areas were the wars are fought. You would think that we would be sufficiently tired of war by now that we would make sure not to have another one. That doesn’t appear to be the case, however. If you’re old enough, you may remember the resistance to the War in Vietnam. That one was “my war.” I was one of the lucky ones. I didn’t see any actual combat, and I came home alive. I knew people who weren’t so lucky.
My sense is that it’s about time we learned how to avoid war. During the Vietnam era, Another Mother for Peace was founded to promote peace. It seems to me that it is past time for us to realize that dream. You may remember the saying, “Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me.” Now would be a good time for us to do what we can to make that true. And another one, if you are old enough to remember it: “Crystal Blue Persuasion”
“Death isn’t quite as scary as the exhilarating terror of trying to accept life.”
Carlsbad, California, June 2006, “The Scariest Thing,”, AA Grapevine
Accepting life right now means adapting to a lot of change. By the first of June, in the past many years, I would have for a couple of months been comfortably settled in to weekly trips to Kalamazoo. Sometimes seeing clients at Borgess Integrative Medicine, most weeks enjoying a walk with Joel to the WMU Engineering campus to see the swans, I would certainly be enjoying interacting with his three indoor cats: Bobbie, McGee, and Zeus.
I would normally have been seeing clients in St. Joseph, and for sure enjoying meals with my sister and brother-in-law, and loving getting together with friends.
2020 is unlike any other year in the 20th century, and unlike any other year in my life.
The May 6, 2020, Deep Spring Center Thought for Today, quotes Aaron, “Great care must be taken that wisdom and compassion are not learned before faith and love, but simultaneously or after. Distorted compassion can lead to a distortion of wisdom which does not oppose negativity with love, but rather, feels obligated to hear it out; and in that way, negativity may play on that compassion and wisdom and manipulate the, as yet, immature faith and love.”
Social-isolation is revealing our immature faith and love. Humans have been very proficient at planning, controlling, and trying to dictate the events of our lives. We have wanted things to be a certain way, and we have worked diligently to that end. The current conditions around the coronavirus (COVID-19) are out of our control, and mostly we do not like that at all.
Some people admit to liking some things about the current conditions. Perhaps there is no commute time now, as many are working from home. Some are laid off, enjoying time for leisure or hobbies while collecting unemployment benefits. Environmentalists and nature lovers value cleaner air and water and less noise pollution. While some aspects of our lives are definitely more difficult, every challenge offers opportunities.
In The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Lovingkindness, Pema Chodron (American Buddhist nun), writes of making friends with our selves and our world, and about accepting the delightful and painful situation of “no exit.”
The five spiritual faculties in Buddhism are: faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. This is the fourth term of a two-year Dharma Path study. When I was exploring whether I was to commit to this program or not, I was kicking and screaming. Classes meet on Tuesday evenings, the same time our local St. Joseph Buddhist Sangha meets. The Dharma Path commitment was a lot of time and a lot of money.
“There is nothing you are going to be doing in these two-years that is more important than this,” came the message from my inner voice. The emphasis of our current term, designed almost three years ago, has us all working with darkness….
I actually love darkness. I have room darkening shades, light blocking drapes, and I put a towel over the nightlight in the outlet in our master bathroom. I cover the small red light on the cable box for the TV, and the blue blinking light on my electric toothbrush.
It is not so much the darkness I love, but I love what is visible within the darkness. That is the way darkness becomes sacred. You let your light shine….
When I got up this morning, the full moon was shining in through the front bedroom. A sliver of light worked its way along the floor, lighting my path, beckoning me to comes sit in the silence. I lit the oil globe and turned on the recording of last night’s teaching, and sat in what was my mom’s rocking chair.
My mind drifted back to a phone conversation with a friend yesterday. She was trying to make choices about the near future. Right now, even that is not possible. We do not know. Some anticipate an element of social-distancing may be prudent for months or years. My friend said, “I can’t do that!”
What a dis-empowered statement. We do not yet know what will be necessary, but we do know we already survived a lot in our lives. We are more capable than we admit, even to ourselves. What is accurate to say might be, “It terrifies me to think about that.” We might feel sad, or frightened, or helpless. All of these inner conditions are honest given the outer conditions. But, saying, “I can’t” does not even fit. How do you know what you are capable of as we move forward?
Reading now in the book for this two-year intensive (The Path of Clear Light by Aaron expressed through Barbara Brodsky), “You may freely choose, once you understand how to do so.”
Just watch it, without trying to fix it.
Breathing in, bring awareness to tension.
Breathing out, smile into the tension.
There is nothing to fix.
Each time you attend to fear or other contracting emotions with kindness, you release a layer of binding.
With added light it becomes easier to release the next layer.
In SCS/NLP we are always working with limiting beliefs. We watch language vigilantly for clues that an immature state has been activated: can’t, won’t, always, never….
Accepting life as it is right now is willingness to change. You willingly change your world by seeing and saying the truth of what you can, and what you will. Willingness to change is about realizing it is never too late to have a happy childhood and, even with current conditions, you still can live happily the rest of your life….
