What Are You Running Away From?

Suppose what you fear
could be trapped
and held in Paris.

Then you would have the courage
to go everywhere in the world.
All the directions of the compass
open to you,
except the degrees east or west
of true north
that lead to Paris.

Still, you wouldn’t dare
to put your toes smack dab
on the city limit line.

And you’re not really willing to stand on a mountainside
miles away
and watch the Paris lights
come up at night.
And just to be on the safe side, you decide to stay completely
out of France.

But then danger
seems too close
even to those boundaries,
and you feel the timid part of you
covering the whole globe again.

You need the kind of friend
who learns your secret and says,
“See Paris first.”

—M. Truman Cooper

Loss; whose other side is salvation....

Everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

-- Mary Oliver

Healing the Ancestral Lines

Recently, I had a beautiful and strange experience called a Tarpana ceremony. Tarpana is an Ayurvedic ritual that combines physical massage with spiritual journeying (or "active imagination") into a timeless, spaceless place in which I was encouraged to have conversations with people (alive and dead) with whom I have established or inherited unhealthy relationship patterns.

The Tarpana ritual turned out to be much more powerful than I expected at first. Combining bodywork with spiritual and psychological sensitivity helped me feel into the places in my body where I was holding onto these attachments. From there, I could then work to release these holding patterns in the psyche and the body simultaneously. I have done many, many kinds of therapy and spiritual healing rituals in my life, but this one in particular brought something unexpected: a new sense of personal responsibility.

Let me explain.  

After the ceremony, I felt myself start to understand - both mentally and viscerally - that my attitudes towards the people in my life (past and present) manifest as inner attitudes towards myself. I could see how all the negative energy I’d been directing towards any of my relationships created the same experience of negativity in my own body! For example: if I was defending against empathy and understanding in a relationship with someone else, I was blocking off the flow of empathy and understanding within my own system. Alternatively, when I allowed empathy and understanding to arise towards this person, those same energies began to flow freely in my body again.

Many intuitive healers talk about the role of psychological or spiritual sickness in the manifestation of physical dis-ease. I saw this very clearly during my Tarpana ritual. It was as if the innate flow of healing energy was being released from behind a dam of my own creation. It became suddenly obvious to me that while the abundance I seek is within my own reach, it is also not freely available if I’m willfully defended against others - alive or dead; present or absent; known or unknown.

As Rumi says, "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it".

May all beings Awaken. Namaste.

The intelligence of 'Trance'.

There is a pain—so utter—
It swallows substance up—
Then covers the Abyss with Trance—
So Memory can step
Around—across—upon it—
As one within a Swoon—
Goes safely—where an open eye—
Would drop Him—Bone by Bone. 

-- Emily Dickinson

There's an incredible book called The Inner World of Trauma by Donald Kalsched.  In the book, Kalsched explores the way self-destructive habits get created in response to early traumas we might experienced.  Essentially, he suggests that these self-destructive habits were ORIGINALLY intelligent because they allowed us to survive what was unbearable at the time.  As we begin find a way to start looking at these painful habits later in life - the gift and burden of consciousness then becomes learning how to forebear what we once could not in order to give up what no longer helps us thrive.

The intelligence of the psyche will not allow us to go there, however, until we feel authentically safe enough to survive this kind of regression into old psychic injuries.  In my work as a therapist, I often realize that the symptomatic 'acting out' that brings people into my office must then be intrinsically linked to an unresolved feeling of danger.  Figuring out how to help people get safe in their bodies, safe in their relationship with me, and safely connected to their own inner reality feels like the heart and soul of what I might hope to achieve with each new person I see.

Lately, I've become convinced that figuring out how to create this safe space for someone else requires a certain reverence for the 'symptoms' themselves.  When we approach our destructive habits with curiosity and compassion, I believe we afford ourselves a chance to learn how to follow their trail into an accurate understanding of their symbolic function.  Once we can see clearly how our own attempts to survive our lives may no longer be helping us to do so, we might be able to forgive ourselves for holding on to what hurts us and begin to let go.  It sounds like somewhat of a paradox, of course, but I truly believe that it's our capacity to honor the original intelligence that created these personal habits that imprison us the most, that then gives us the possibility to begin living beyond them.

Namaste.

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!

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.  :-)

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.

Honest Humanity

An honorable human relationship -- that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word "love" -- is a process of deepening the truths they can tell each other.

It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.

It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.

It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.

- Adrienne Rich

Movement Theory!

In this culture, we are typically taught to understand the body as the ultimate biological machine in which the brain functions as a kind of "control" switch board.  Over the past decade of my life, I've been questioning this irreverent attitude towards the body in a really persistent and ongoing way.  My questions are largely intuitive and typically require more experiential learning than theoretical learning. However, once in a while I have the good fortune to stumble upon some fascinating theoretical information about the body that deepens the way in which I experience my own.

Apparently, there are five basic types of human movement that make up something called "The Satisfaction Cycle":  Yielding, Pushing, Reaching, Grasping, and Pulling.  All five of these movements are fundamentally important for human survival and interaction.  BUT - and here's the amazing teacher within this concept - yielding is the foundation for every other movement possibility in this sequence.  In other words: without being able to first yield into something, you cannot push off from it, reach out from there, grasp hold of anything, or pull things back towards yourself.

Why is this so fascinating to me?!  Because what's true in the body is also true in the mind and in the heart, of course!  See if you can make this analogous connection with me: we must first yield into our own authentic desires if we want to be able to move towards, reach out, grasp hold of, and pull them back into ourselves.  I don't know about the rest of you, but I certainly got the message from this culture that being soft and open about what I really wanted to experience in my life would make me an easy target for disappointment.  In recent years, however, I've been able to slowly (sometimes painfully!) unlearn this defensive habit, and experience many tender and beautiful things as a result. It now absolutely stuns and delights me to discover that the movements of my physical body were there all along, revealing this truer picture of things.

So what is yielding and how do we do it?  I imagine we each have to explore this question in our own personal hearts and minds to some degree.  Yet, it's equally interesting to note that Merriam-Webster defines yielding as "lacking rigidity or stiffness; flexible", "disposed to submit or comply", or "productive" (as in "high-yielding wheat").  That's right; yielding can mean "productive"!  As the cornerstone of all other movement possibilities, this makes perfect sense to me.  A seed must be willing to submit to the earth and the rain if it wants to be able to then push, reach, grasp, and pull in all the nourishment it requires to become the fullest (most productive!) expression of itself. We, ourselves, are no different.

Here's how Rumi might also say it: "Let yourself [yield and] be drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.  It will not lead you astray".  I wonder if your heart - or mine - is softening into it's own gravitational pull yet?

Hearing the Whole.

"It's an incredibly interesting risk, and you've got to trust that when you have surrendered, you will hear clearly. The Tao says the truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing, and your longing to have it different than it is, is ultimately a trap, because it keeps you from hearing the whole gestalt, the whole way things are. And as you hear the totality of it, you trust that out of that will come an appropriate action, a dharmic action. That's the trust of dharma, that's the trust in the wisdom of the universe that is greater than your own personal egoism. So there is certainly an exquisite risk in it. We're so used to working out of "I ought to do it, I should do it" -- getting behind ourselves and pushing. The whole idea of trusting, that if we didn't push something would still happen, is very interesting to explore in people."  -- Ram Dass

Task of Love.

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it".  - Rumi

Forgiveness

Listen.  
Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward.  
You are afraid you might forget, but you never will.  
You will forgive and remember.

-- Barbara Kingsolver

The gift of pain.

I've been thinking a lot about hurt and pain, as I've experienced quite a bit of both (in many different manifestations) lately.  The most fascinating thing about all this recent physical and psychological suffering is that I'm genuinely grateful for it.  In fact, as I've been working towards finding out what messages this pain may have for me, I'm becoming able to let go of some old habits that are no longer serving me.  And within this new very hard-won freedom, I'm also discovering a creative new space in which I can become different in ways that serve me much better.

As I've been reflecting on this process, I'm reminded of two things from two different very wise spiritual teachers.  The first is something the Dalai Lama said at a conference I attended in Chicago this past spring.  He was talking about his time as a youth in school, and made a reference to this set of whips the monks would use to discipline their students.  He explained to the audience that the monks used both a brown whip and a yellow whip, and that the yellow whip was referred to as the 'holy whip'.  His point?  Holy pain does not hurt any less.

I think I often want the spiritual path to be a little less painful than the non-spiritual path.  And I suppose it is less painful in some ways because suffering can be worked with skillfully, and meaning can be made from it.  But to echo the Dalai Lama:  IT STILL HURTS LIKE HELL.  

Nonetheless, I'm aware today that I needed this recent round of painful blows in order to wake up to more of who I truly want to become.  The second spiritual teacher I alluded to above may have said it best:

There's courage involved if you want to become truth. 
There is a broken-open place in a lover. 
Where are those qualities of bravery and sharp compassion? 

What's the use of old and frozen thought? 

I want a howling hurt.
This is not a treasury where gold is stored; this is for copper.
We alchemists look for talent that can heat up and change.    

Lukewarm won't do. 
Halfhearted holding back, well-enough getting by? 

Not here.

-Rumi

How to Dialogue with Emotions

One of the very best conversations I've ever had the privilege to overhear came from an interview with a gifted empath named Karla McLaren.  She spoke about the necessary genius of emotions, and spent some time coaching listeners on intelligent ways to work with their own emotions.  I was reminded again about the brilliance that can be found in every human experience.  Unfortunately, however, I was also forced to remember how much of our personal and collective genius gets relegated by our cultures attempts at social control.  Karla pointed out that while we are taught to read, write, do arithmetic, operate computers, and even how to practice safe sex before we graduate elementary school -- our only emotional education centers around learning which emotions are acceptable and which are not.

From her own experience as a survivor of childhood trauma, however, Karla learned the hard way that "bad" emotions do not disappear just because we call them names and try to shut them out.  In fact, they seem to only grow in ferocity and then erupt unconsciously.  Some of the greatest minds and hearts of all time have agreed with this sentiment, FYI (Buddha, Jung, Rumi).  From my own experience working with difficult emotions, I too completely agree that this lop-sided strategy is a sad mismanagement of a brilliant kind of intelligence!

Karla teaches us that we can begin to trust ourselves to dialogue with our emotions by learning the function of each emotion first.  She talks about how free-flowing anger allows us to understand our own boundaries, while fear signals us to pay attention and take appropriate action.  She goes on to redeem even the most shunned emotional experiences -- such as jealousy, envy, major depression, and even suicidal urges.  It's as if she's almost learned to experience these energies as autonomous intelligent beings that arise in order to help the human organism continue intelligently towards it's own unique destiny.  I love it!

Here are four of the questions she suggested we might be able to utilize when we're trying to dialogue with really difficult emotions:

When anger arises:  "What needs to be protected?"
When fear is present:  "What action needs to be taken?"
When sadness presses down on us:  "What needs to be released?"
When a suicidal urge exists:  "What needs to be killed?" (The answer to this is not ever going to be "me" according to Karla, who understands that ALL emotions work to help you experience more abundance in your life).

Here's the full transcript of Karla's interview in case you prefer to read instead of listen to it. 

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-Rumi

Remembering.

One of the most important things that babies do to ensure their survival is that they do not inhibit full-bodied emotional expression.  They trust that natural intelligence coursing through them and allow for it to manifest authentically as a result.  They cry out when they need something, and it allows their caretakers to know when to feed them/clean them/rock them/touch and hold them/make eye contact with them, etc.  This then enables them to survive, grow, and perhaps even learn how this ever-developing expression of intelligence might allow them to support the entire species' immediate growth and survival as well.

Unfortunately, by the time we've reached adulthood we've often received so many mixed messages about whether or not we can trust our natural intelligence that we begin to mistrust some of our survival-linked impulses too.  I think that the consequences of that inner-breach are absolutely devastating PRECISELY because that kind of internalized mistrust risks threatening our very survival most of all.   It seems to me that the real threat arises when we no longer have access to a reliable relationship with our instinctual ways of perceiving information.

I don't mean to suggest that we surrender to every instinct, but instead that we learn to understand and work with the intelligent information that those instincts can contain.  Without this basic trust in our natural intelligence, we often began to ignore what we know and ultimately run the risk of misunderstanding what's really happening in any given moment.

Furthermore, this kind of suspicious or dismissive attitude toward ourselves creates a kind of inner-violence and neglect that will manifest in our outer world as well.  No one has ever said it better than whomever first said "violence begets violence".  It's often hard to understand or remember the origin of the original injury, but suffice it to say:  inner violence begets outer violence and vice versa.

The good news is that we can break this cycle of violence by turning inward with a different kind of attitude.  Often times it is too big of a leap to move from an inner attitude of suspicion and neglect to one of reverence and love.  For myself, however, I have discovered that I can approach almost anything with simple curiosity.  Curiously, I have also discovered that curiosity is really the only ingredient needed to begin.