Mojave Musings: the process of change

     Last week I witnessed a stunning weather event..flash flooding. During my previous five weeks in Joshua Tree it rained once for a minute. Last Tuesday afternoon it began pouring and hailing and pouring with lightning and a few rattling thunderclaps. The entire deluge lasted an hour at most.
     For those not familiar with desert monsoons, the ground is so hard it can't absorb heavy rain fast enough. An hours worth of monsoon shut the town down and flooded highway 62 with enough force to push a large SUV off the road. Rivers of mud, cacti, bushes, tree parts and rocks as big as my head came pouring down the roads. A small army of frontloaders worked through the night clearing mud and debris. A week later cleanup is still ongoing. All that chaos from an hour's worth of rain.
     We tend to think of change that arrives like a desert monsoon as an event rather than a process. But all change is a process, even if it begins with a event. As with last weeks flash flood, the cleanup and rebuilding is an ongoing part of the process.
    Despite all the articles, self-help books and talk show interviews that admonish us to "embrace change", I don't know anyone who consistently welcomes change with open arms. I have a mixed relationship with it. Some change I welcome. Some makes me wince a bit. Sometimes it scares me. Regardless of how I feel, change is fecund ground for growth and resistance is futile.
    I've read several times that we fear change because it threatens the comfort we've built for ourselves. While I don't disagree, this seems like a shallow answer. We fear change because it threatens familiarity, shatters our illusion of control and brings us face to face with the unknown.
     Fear of the unknown is perhaps the oldest, most innate human fear. The unknown triggers our lizard brain survival instinct and can set off the fight, flight or freeze reaction. Even if we don't run screaming many people experience spaciness, blanking out or an inability to think clearly during periods of intense change. These reactions are variants of the freeze response. As far as fighting goes, we all take a turn at that one.
    Most, if not all, of our fear of change is actually fear of the unknown. So how do we get over that? We don't. It's hardwired into our biology. We can't make it go away. We can get that fear down to a manageable size. When it no longer feels bigger than we are we can integrate our fear of the unknown so that it doesn't prevent us from growing.
      The unknown is a formless, intangible, inexplicable something. That makes it a blank screen for our lizard brains to project dire visions of loss, disaster and pain on. Fear is an early warning system designed to deter us from taking risks that might threaten our survival. As with any good warning system, the warning comes before anything actually happens. 
     With fear of the unknown, the brain doesn't have anything to attach the fear to so it makes up stories to explain the feeling. The first step in getting fear of the unknown down to a manageable size is figuring out how much is really about the unknown and how much is a reaction to your projections of what might be in the unknown. Finding this out means being the observer and sitting with the fear.
    Change is a confluence of destruction and creation. Change and the unknown are scary. They also combine to hand us a blank canvas for creation. Spending time daydreaming or imagining what you could create on that canvas is a great way to balance your fear of the unknown.
    The great things you imagine are no more "real" than your fear. That's not the point. Fear feeds on attention. When you focus on visualizing creation, you aren't feeding the fear.
    We all fight change to varing degrees. Some amount of fighting is part of the process of change. There is a big difference between fighting as a form of resistance and fighting as a way to move emotion.
    Resistance fighting involves denial, rationalization, excuses, justification and anything else we do to run from and avoid change. All of these reactions are based in fear. Often we unconsciously fight change until we realize what we're doing. Once we're aware, we have the choice to surrender or continue fighting. If we chose to continue fighting, it will take considerably more effort to ignore what we're doing. Denial, rationalization, excuses and justification only work well if we're not conscious of how we're using them.
     Often our initial reaction to change is anger and fear. Getting to the place of accepting change doesn't happen until those emotions have their say. Acceptance isn't about liking anything. It's about acknowledging what is and getting real. Acceptance and willingness to move with the change is on the other side of throwing a fit and having a meltdown to release the initial layers of fear and anger.
    Aside from changing your socks, change is not a linear process. We don't move from through fighting change and arrive at acceptance. We fight, surrender, avoid, surrender, resist, surrender, etc. Along the way we make choices about how present and how authentic we're willing to be.
    Deep change is unsettling, uncomfortable and challenging. Even a small act of surrender can provide some relief from these disturbing emotions. With relief comes a respite where the process doesn't have as firm a hold on you. From this relief point,  you may chose to abandon the change process. You step away, telling yourself the process is complete because the emotions you feel aren't as intense and nothing seems to be happening.
    That's certainly an option, but it requires an enormous amount of energy to maintain. At some point the same change process will begin calling your name again. Because you've already dipped your toe in the process you can't claim ignorance to avoid re-engaging. 
    Like every other process, change is watery and moves in waves. When the wave recedes and the intensity subsides, you may feeling a temporary sense of being stronger. This is a gift, a preview of what's possible if you stick with the change process. It's not a place you've arrived and get to stay.
     When the next wave comes, most of this new sense of strength will evaporate like mist. You'll be right back in the uncomfortable and the chaos. You may even feel like you're regressing. Hanging onto the memory of feeling that new strength is an important asset in riding the subsequent waves. It's a preview of what's possible that makes the unknown a little less unknown. The new sense of strength is real, but won't have a place to rest inside you until you've ridden a few more waves.

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Mojave Musings: balance...the nitty gritty

  

   After last weeks post I found myself thinking more about the nitty gritty aspects of balance. How do I know when I'm out of balance? What do I do to address that? I spent  a little time this week looking at internet articles on that topic. I didn't find any that resonated completely.                            The articles I read were a mixed bag of suggestions on increasing awareness (yea!) and concrete "do this" kinda things...hmmm. Beyond basic physical needs like nutrition and getting enough sleep, balance is unique to each individual. Balance for me may feel completely out of whack for you.
     Virtually all the articles I read on balance made suggestions regarding priorities, goals, lists and plans. As far as plans go there's a saying I love, "If you want to make the Universe laugh, make plans." Yep. Feeling out of balance often involves situations that seem to constantly change. Sure I can make plans but if I hold those as more than a rough outline...
    Most of what I read about priorities focused on daily priorities. I can see how that's helpful, but where do bigger priorities play in? Knowing what's important to me and what I want my life to be about changes my daily priorities.
    Bigger priorities for me include engaging my creativity, being of service, personal growth and being the best me I can. Being true to myself means using those bigger priorities as a guage to arrange my daily priorities. If I'm still not sure whether something is important or not, I ask myself if this is going to matter in five years. If the answer is "no", it gets tossed.
    Arranging daily priorities according to my larger ones often results in things going undone for awhile. Bottom line - when it comes to chores like cleaning, yard work and errand running, there is always more to do. If the chores habitually make the top of my list, I'm creating a life that's about getting chores done and how clean my house is. No thanks.
     Lists can be great tools, depending on how I use them. When I'm really busy my mind spits out endless "do" lists. These mental lists tend to grow, distort and seem much bigger than they actually are. Once I write them down, they stop shape shifting and taking up so much head space. But if I turn the list items into things I "should" or "have to" do by some self-imposed deadline, my list contributes to the imbalance I'm feeling.
    Goals can also add to feeling out of whack if I hold them rigidly. I have a love-hate relationship with goals. They can help me remain mindful of my larger priorities. However if the come from my head, without equal input from my heart and gut, goals become stumbling blocks. If I hold my goals rigidly, I blind myself. I get so focused on achieving the goal I miss opportunities that can open me to something better.
    Most of what I've learned about balance has come from being way out of balance and experiencing what that feels like. It's uncomfortable. When we feel that discomfort many of us look for a way to stop feeling uncomfortable. We drink a couple glasses of wine, zone out with TV or keep ourselves so busy we don't notice what we're feeling.
     While this may provide temporary relief from the discomfort, it doesn't effect the imbalance or allow to us to be aware of how being out of balance feels. Knowing what I experience physically, mentally, emotionally, energetically and spiritually when I'm out of balance lets me recognize what's happening before my seesaw hits the ground.
      Physical tension:
          -My jaw gets tight. Most of the time this is either unprocessed emotion or the need to say something that I'm not voicing.
         -Tight spots my back, neck and shoulders.
         -Straining muscles while performing mundane tasks. Holding more tension in my body results in strained muscles from doing things like taking groceries out of my car and sleeping "wrong."
      More monkey mind:
         -The "what ifs" get more persistent
         -I'm more prone to spinning around in my head about things I can neither change nor control...and some that aren't even happening.
         -My mind and body aren't in the same place. Rather than being present with what I'm doing, my mind is already on the next task or out in what might happen next week.
      More emotional rollercoaster:
         -I get easily thrown off when things don't go according to my plan.
         -My emotional reactions are more likely to be disproportionate to the situation.
         -I feel generally impatient, grumpy, out of sorts and irritated.
      Spiritual disconnection:
         -I feel alone and isolated.
         -I feel disconnected from my internal landscape.
         -I lose track of the bigger picture and get stuck in details.
         -I tend to take things personally
      Energetic scatteredness:
         -I don't feel grounded.
         -I feel scattered and have a hard time focusing.
      If I'm paying attention, I can often catch these imbalance signs as they come up and work with them. Knowing my reset buttons is an invaluable tool. Reset buttons are the things I can do to mitigate feeling out of balance and change my relationship to what's happening.
    Taking a walk alone in nature is a big one for me. It gets my endorphines going. It pulls me back to being centered in my body and the present moment. Walking in nature also clears my head and reminds me of my right size in relation to the rest of the Universe.
    When I go through long periods of time where my life is filled with intensity and/or chaos walking in nature is an important part of staying centered in the storm. So is taking time to write or draw. Getting disconnected from my creativity, even if nothing else is going on, leaves me feeling grumpy and out of sorts.
    Attending to those maintenance things means stepping away from the chaos. That, in and of itself, can be challenging. Part of being out of balance includes feeling there is way too much to do for me to take a break. The more acutely I feel I can't afford a break, the more I need to take one.
   We're all unique in our tolerance for physical, mental, energetic, spiritual and emotional discomfort. Knowing which form of discomfort affects you the most is important because addressing that aspect of feeling off balance can shift your relationship to everything else that's going on.

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Mojave Musings : the process of balance

  

   I don't like being overly busy. Having unstructured time where I can move to my own internal rhythms is a necessary piece of my well-being. But busy happens. In our fast paced lives, busy can become the norm unless we consciously step out of perpetual doing.
     Not surprisingly, the busier we get the more balance becomes an issue. What is the balance between being and doing? Between taking care of ourselves and caring for others? How do we balance the time and energy spent on one aspect of our lives in the whole of lives?
   A few years ago the concept of balance brought up the image of a balance scale with the two pans equally weighted and motionless. That image changed for me after my second knee replacement.
    One of the exercises the physical therapist gave me was standing on one leg. The first several times I attempted this I kept my leg straight and my muscles tight. When I felt myself wobble, I clenched my leg muscles tighter to hold myself rigid against the movement. It didn't work. After a couple seconds I had to put my other foot down to keep from falling.
     Then I remembered something I learned years ago while taking tai chi. Physical balance doesn't come from being rigid and tight. It comes from being relaxed and rooted. Okay, take two...
    I bent my knee slightly, followed my breath down my leg and myself sink into the floor. I focused on keeping my feet and leg relaxed rather than on keeping my balance. I let my eyes rest on a blank spot on the wall in front of me...and for a few seconds I stayed balanced on one leg.
   Over course of a year the few seconds stretched to thirty seconds and sometimes a full minute. As I continued to do the exercise I began to experience a few seconds each time where I was balanced and perfectly still. Most of the time I was balanced and in motion as my body made a gazillion tiny adjustments.
    This experience became my new reference for balance. Balance changes day to day, situation to situation and sometimes moment to moment. Balance is not a still point. It is not a destination, a place I arrive after following a self-help checklist of seven ways to balance my life. How balanced I am depends on my ability to stay flexible and move with what's happening rather than tightening up against it.
    Balance is process and process involves motion. My body already knew that. It took the rest of me a while to catch up. The human body is made of trillions of cells all working in concert to support the wellbeing of the whole organism. The myriad of processes the body uses to maintain its internal environment are collectively called homeostasis. Homeostasis is an ongoing process of constant motion.
    In order to maintain equilibrium, my body is in a perpetual state of flux. Homeostasis is effected by both internal and external factors like illness, injury, environmental temperature, etc. Each of these factors triggers a response aimed at supporting homeostasis. With a few exceptions, homeostasis is a range not a set point.
   From what my body did while learning to stand on one foot I got that balance in the my life is also a range not a point. Negotiating that range means being fluid. I am constantly moving from balance to imbalance to counterbalance and back. All of this is part of process of balance...including the falling over.
     We've all experienced being suddenly overcome by how challenging a situation is, how stressed we are and hitting that wall where we just can't keep doing what we're doing. Although the awareness may come to us suddenly, the situation didn't suddenly happen. It built up slowly like weight gradually added to one side of a teeter totter. The seesaw wobbles toward its tipping point where one side crashes to the ground. We often don't notice the additional weight until the teeter totter hits the ground.
    Fortunately I don't have to wait till my seesaw hits the ground to begin rebalancing it. If I'm paying attention to how I feel and what my gut says I can often mitigate how out of whack things get...but not always.
    Most of us have times when we're asked to show up for something that's hard, intense and goes on for weeks or months. In those times, if I hang onto a rigid definition of balance, I make the entire situation harder for myself. Balance is not limited to a set point where everything is equally weighted and level. A seesaw can stay balanced in the air even if both sides are differently weighted.
    The idea of balance where all things have equal weight is an ideal. An ideal is more a fleeting possibility than what actually happens in physical reality. Hanging on to an ideal or making an ideal into goal only prevents me from moving with what is.

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Mojave Musings: synchronicity and grace

    
     This year I've bumped through numerous situations infused with something I can only call grace. I didn't seek out that word. It arose unbidden when I looked for a way to describe my experience.
     Grace has a decidedly Christian connotation for me. I wanted a different word, but couldn't find one. The Christian definition of grace is unmerited favor from God.  Hin the context of a religion that places such emphasis on "sin" isn't all favor  unmerited? If so, that definition of grace is too commonplace to fit my experience.
     The use of the word "unmerited" implies there is a way to earn grace, to have it arrive in response of my earning merit. This doesn't match my experience either. The magic of grace is that it arrives unexpectedly and can't be anticipated. So what is grace?
     In Hinduism the concept of divine grace is called kripa. The infusion of kripa is an event which can catapult a devotee into personal transformation. This definition is closer to my experience, although how much transformation it initiates depends on how I pay attention.
     I've been chewing on this grace thing for months but it didn't coalesce until this past week. Here in this desert landscape of harsh beauty the intrinsic softness of grace stands in sharp relief.
     For months I wondered if grace was another name for synchronicity. Although grace can come with synchronicity, they are not the same thing. Synchronicity is something I can invite and align myself with. When I listen to my heart and gut/intuition and let them lead rather than relying on logic, I invite synchronicity.
    If I invite synchronicity, it will come. I've experienced that over and over. It's about aligning myself with the flow of the Universe around me, even if the motion doesn't match my idea of what "should" be happening. I often gauge how much in right relation I am by the level of synchronicity in my life.
     Shortly before I left for Joshua Tree I spent two weeks cooking up in the Taos Ski Valley. During the first week I realized I'd need a door I could close, wifi and a decent cell service to work with long distance clients while I was in JT.
     I had a day and a half off between cooking weeks. Shortly after I got home I followed a nudge to check Craigslist for housing in Joshua Tree and found a couple guys renting a room in their house. Synchronicity...problem solved in 24 hours.
     That level of synchronicity permeated all the planning and prep I did for the trip. That's the way synchronicity works for me. It enters in response to a need when I align myself with the bigger picture. Synchronicity isn't always linear. I've experienced the need being fulfilled before the event that creates the need occurred. The crux of the invitation seems to center on a need that doesn't come from ego and my awareness of that need.
    Grace exists outside of need...or at least beyond any need I'm aware of. It comes not in response to any requirement but as a messenger of beauty, wonder or something I hadn't thought possible. Grace arises from a more complex intersection of seen and unseen than synchronicity.
    Synchronicity can be startling. Grace is gentle and sometimes so subtle I can miss it if I'm not paying attention. It seems to enter when I am in an open receiving state.
    While I cannot create synchronicity it is the warp through which life is woven. Although I still find it magical, given how inextricably interconnected we all are, I've often wondered why lack of synchronicity isn't more startling than its presence.      Grace holds more profound mystery because it can't be predicted, anticipated or expected. The magic of grace is closer to raw creation. It comes from a place beyond the comprehension of our human pea brains.
    Grace is a sacred exchange. If I bring a gift and grace enters when I release the gift, that space is filled with an immensity that stretches my bones and inspires reverence. This exchange only takes place if I am able to allow and receive.
     Before I left for Joshua Tree I felt some introvert anxiety about going to a new place where I only knew one person. I wanted to come with an open heart. What I continue to receive here is a heart opening beyond what I thought I was capable of.
    The present moment immediacy of stepping into a community focused on caring for a family is stunning. The intimacy of what we're doing strips us bare. I'm amazed at how after a couple weeks I feel more comfortable with and more connected to some of  these new people than I usually do after six months of getting to know someone.
    Last night it hit me that this is what's possible when people meet each other naked with  no room for pretense or persona. I feel awed both by the singular uniqueness of this experience and how open hearted I feel in it. This is what grace does.

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