Hopefulness

"Hope is a function of struggle.  Hope is not an emotion, but a is a cognitive, behavioral process that we learn when we experience adversity, when we have relationships that are trustworthy, when people have faith in our ability to get out of a jam".  

-- Brene Brown

The True Origin of Courage

"From Caring Comes Courage". - Lao Tzu.

I recently heard someone describe the incredible new quality of love they were capable of experiencing towards their newborn daughter.  They went on to explain the ways in which they could tell they had been initiated into a capacity for love that was entirely different from what they had been capable of feeling before: "Before this, I think I simply hoped that I would have the courage to jump in front of a bus or a bullet for someone else.  Now I know I would".  Their words reminded me of the Lao Tzu quote at the top of this post, and also reaffirmed to me what I've been remembering lately:  It takes courage to care about something because we know that any experience of caring will both beget and require more and more courage from us as we continue caring for it.

Getting married was one of the experiences that helped initiate me into a deeper understanding of the connection between caring and courage, as it required me to relate to my intuitive sense that I was signing up for a lifetime of learning how to become both more courageous and more caring towards this person I was marrying.  I did not know what "for better or for worse" could or would look like, and I had no interest in being naive about the vows I was making either.  My willingness to be that conscious about the phenomena of marriage required the kind of courage that could only come from a very deep caring for the man I was going to marry, the relationship I was agreeing to enter into, as well as my own set of personal need-strengths and limits.  I think this honest reflection has helped both of us navigate the circumstances in which we've needed to become more caring and more courageous towards one another.  I don't doubt that this will ever cease, and I'm powerfully grateful for that -- even though I still don't know what "for better or for worse" might look like for us.

Collectively, I believe we value both caring and courage in ourselves and others because it's the pro-social glue that holds the human species together.  Ironically, we have often learned that caring and courage can also be socially dangerous at times.  Maybe you were the child on the playground that cared deeply about the other child who was being actively bullied.  If you let your caring dictate a courageous gesture, you might soon find yourself on the receiving end of the bully's aggression. Perhaps you had the courage to tell someone that you liked, wanted, desired, or needed them, and were consequently rejected or humiliated.  So we become defended against both caring and courage in order to protect what's left of our delicate little egos.  To still appear socially attractive, we may learn how to pretend to care, or how to practice things that look like courage (but involve no real risk to our personal sense of safety).

For example, I notice that I'm willing to navigate intensely difficult interpersonal dynamics and admit my own shortcomings when I actually care deeply for the other person and the relationship itself.  I'm also willing to spend precious time, energy, and resources on the things I genuinely care about.  It should be noted that the word courage comes from latin roots that further illustrates this connection to caring.  In latin, the word means something like "to speak one's mind by telling one's whole heart". If courage is about telling one's whole heart, it also sounds like an invitation for lots of gut-wrenching honesty with oneself and others.  In light of this, I've started to examine the sincerity of my caring by the measure of real courage I experience in relation to it.  If I discover that I don't care as much as I want to care, then I have an opportunity to examine the psychological defenses that are holding me back.  As someone who is devoted to the ongoing process of wholeness, I'm often acutely aware that we have to be first willing to feel the experience of our heart in order to then speak about it.  That's a pretty courageous task in and of itself, which makes me think that even "caring about caring" involves some spark of real courage.

Echoing Lao Tzu's original sentiment, the social scientist, TedTalk celebrity, and author of the Ordinary Courage blog, Brene Brown, says it this way: "vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage".  My conclusion:  I believe the only real choices we have is this non-linear relationship between caring and courage is whether or not we will be open towards our own heart-felt response to things.

Book Evangelism!

The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren
A Little Book on The Human Shadow by Robert Bly
The Deepest Acceptance by Jeff Foster

The Intimate Life by Judith Blackstone

The Bond by Lynne McTaggart

Vibrational Medicine by Richard Gerber
The Polyvagal Theory by Stephen W. Porges
The Ever Present Origin by Jean Gebser

.... Ready, break!

Imperfection: the vehicle to all growth?

"Symmetry may have its appeal but it is inherently stale. Some kind of imbalance is behind every transformation."

-- astrophysicist, Marcelo Gleiser

Human Love

Today's Solar Eclipse!

I used to pay attention to horoscopes in the newspaper or magazines because I thought they were quirky and fun.  Maybe it also gave me a sense of cosmic connection when they were accurate as well.  Over the years, however, I've had more exposure to some very serious practitioners of the art, and any residual dismissive attitude has been consequently silenced.  According to the author of one particular astrology blog I read, these are the potential gifts of today's solar eclipse in Scorpio:

"Information lives in light.  This information comes from the heart of a Star–a star called the Sun. Our Sun holds information from its Creator (most likely the Black Hole at the Center of our Galaxy; the Galactic Center; Hunab Ku)… to Imagine what types of information is encoded within these primordial ancient galactic wave forms is mind bending. And light isn’t just information, it’s also energy. 

When the Moon aligns perfectly between Sun and Earth we experience Solar Eclipses.  Divinely infused New Moons meant to catapult us onto the right path.  It is up to us to be good tricksters in this opportune space.  Nobody is going to do this work for you.  It is up to you.  Be quick, be stealthy, and have an idea of what you are looking for.  Without the light of the Sun, we are “eclipsed” and free to roam in the Shadow of our being for a short time, rewriting aspects of our story we have been hungry to edit. 

What is the Shadow?  The Shadow in Jungian psychology is the unconscious dumping ground for undesirable characteristics of personality.  And so, during Eclipses we get to choose what gets released or incinerated in our unconscious dumping grounds.  Only with intent will you experience the stellar magic of these Dragon holes.  Intention and courage will bring you to the moments where you become weightless, carried by Love and nothing else…."

For more moon updates - check out this blog:  Holes To Heaven.

Our Oceanic Selves

No wave moves against the ocean.

When you remember that you are the whole ocean,
You're no longer afraid of the waves.

Be The Mystery.

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. And as you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, this intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world shall cease to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
And to the rushing water speak, I am.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

The Intelligence of Play.

"Who knows what makes us play?  The young of very many species, including our own, spontaneously chase, leap, twist, wrestle and cavort, promoting strength and endurance, instinct, social bonding and adaptation.  Complex play with objects and goals is associated with more complex brains.  But playing is also, apparently, just for the sheer pleasure of play.  An aquarium fish will repeatedly leap in and out of a tiny waterfall.  Ravens have been observed sledding on their backs down slopes of snow, and kea parrots toss rocks in the air.  Elephants kneel to equalize play with a smaller playmate.  Cats, dogs and primates, among others, incorporate objects and obstacles in their play and often have favorite toys.  Dolphins invite play with human swimmers.  Play, in fact, is a principal way in which acquaintance is made with another".  -- from The Book of Symbols

Intuitively, we know how important play is for our ongoing development.  We teach children games and give them time to play.  Hopscotch, for example, has it's origins in myths about the soul's journey from earth to heaven through a labyrinth.  I have no idea why we stop valuing this way of learning for our adult selves, but I think it's a grievous error to do so.  As Ramikrishna reminds us, "The divine mother is always sportive.  The universe is her play... her pleasure is in continuing the game".

The Book of Symbols further elaborates: "Psychologically, consciousness and unconscious interact and impact one another in all kinds of play.  The reverie of play unveils feelings, aspirations, impressions, locked up pieces of experience and potentialities.  Play can evoke the affinity and polarity between psychic opposites, and dynamics of exclusion and integration, separation and reunification.  Alchemy described a part of the opus as "child's play" despite the arduous nature of the work of self-understanding, suggesting that psychic process requires an attitude of play and that the imagination was a primary tool of the adept".

Carl Jung played "children's games" of drawing, sand-tray, making models out of clay, and dialoging with unseen figures, all of which are ways of engaging the unconscious energies of the psyche in order to coax them into consciousness.  Physicists, also, play speculative "god-games" with specialized toys that can only be handled safely because of the agreed upon rules of a specific game.  We could conclude, consequently, that play allows for "evolutionary change, self-awareness, scientific discovery, artistic composition, invention, pleasure, good friends of multiple species and the resolution of many questions" (The Book of Symbols).

Do you remember being a young child and enthusiastically ringing someone's doorbell in order to see if they could "come out and play"?  I believe that THIS is a good intention to have with ourselves and each other throughout the entire course of our lives.  Tremendous creativity and learning can come from play in a way that few other practices are able to facilitate so... playfully.  :-)

Abundance of Life

You see, I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing
and are raised to the rank of prince
by the slippery ease of their light judgments.

But what you love to see are faces
that do work and feel thirst.
You love most of all those who need you
as they need a crowbar or a hoe.
You have not grown old, and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

It's okay to feel things!

My own experiences with intense emotions (both personally and professionally) have convinced me that there is purpose and intelligence inside of all emotional material.  Over the past several years in particular, I've noticed a correlation between the feeling of sadness and the experience of grounding. Often times, when I attempt to slow down and connect to the immediate ground of my being, I also notice that I must allow an experience of genuine sadness to move through me as well.

I've also noticed a correlation between "not wanting to feel sadness", and an avoidance of grounding practices like meditation or deep relaxation.  Yet, I also know that every single time I've allowed this feeling of sadness into my conscious awareness, I wind up with a sense of incredible gratitude for having reconnected to my tender, immediate experience of being.  In fact, those moments of working with this emotion in particular have often taught me that sadness an appropriate expression of grief for having abandoned my immediate experience of myself in the first place.

Consequently, the sadness - or grief - turns out to be the emotional expression that allows me to authentically reconnect with my own wholeness.  My point?  Difficult emotions do not arise to haunt and persecute us, but rather to invite us back into relationship with our whole dynamic selves.

My other point?  The emotional experience is already here whether we acknowledge it consciously or unconsciously.  I once heard a brilliant man express the following sentiment about working with difficult emotions:  "Whatever arises arises.  As a result, we only have two real choices about how we might approach things:  face forwards or ass backwards".  I believe it's precisely this practice of 'facing' ourselves that ultimately reflects our original beauty back to us.