Minding the Gap Between Information and Interpretation: questions and stories

     A few weeks ago a friend shared a video on Facebook, Inside Amy Shumer - The Universe - Uncensored. According to Bill Nye, who narrates video, the Universe exists to pass on messages to women in their twenties. The funniest part of the video is how the women interpret the "messages". (Little heads up, there are a couple F bombs in the video)
     Silliness aside, the video brings up an  important point. Getting information and interpreting it are two very  different things.
     Although both the video and this post are focused on interpreting guidance, messages from the Universe, intuition and gut feelings, the gap between information and interpretation exists even in our daily interactions. Think about how many times you've heard a friend say something and thought you knew what she meant, only to find out a few days later she was referring to some entirely different?
     Most of us have engaged in conversation for as long as we've been able to talk. We regularly exchange words with friends, co workers, family and check out clerks. We have a lot of practice conversing. Given how easy it is to mishear, misinterpret and misunderstand what's communicated in the interactions we've engaged in for years, it's kinda silly to think we aren't missing in similar ways when we interpret guidance and our own gut nudges.
     So how do we bridge the gap between information and interpretation? Practice, practice, practice. If there's a shortcut to this one, I haven't found it. You're not going to pick up the subtleties and nuances of Portuguese two months after learning to speak it.
     The misses in interpretation seem to fall roughly into six categories:
1. Not asking questions
2. Not catching the story
3. Making assumptions about context
4. Projecting
5. Falling into the right/wrong trap
6. Language mismatch
     Not asking questions - When a friend or a boss says something confusing we ask them to clarify what they said, right? Well, some of us do. Some of us allow our fear of looking stupid or feeling vulnerable because we don't already know the answer to stop us.
     I've worked with numerous clients who've received guidance they don't understand. Sometimes that guidance is received in the course of our session. Usually the client will begin asking me questions about the information they got. My response is to inquire if they've asked their guides, the Universe or their soul those questions. Most of the time they haven't. It surprises me how often that option doesn't even occur to them.
      Whether it's a set of confusing instructions from your boss or guidance that seems to make no sense....ask questions!!!!
     What if you don't know who or what you're talking to when you ask questions? Ask anyway. When your computer does something wonky and you call tech support in India, you don't know who is giving you advice on how to fix the problem. You don't have to know who you're talking to in order to ask.
      Once you've asked, it's up to you to listen for the answer. Sometimes the answers are immediate. Often they aren't. This is a different sort of conversation than the one you have with a friend over dinner. There is usually more silence. Frequently the answers are whispered or arrive in an unexpected way.
     You may not get an answer for days, weeks or even months. The answer might arrive via a dream, an snippet of conversation you overhear in coffee shop or an unexpected opportunity.
       Not catching the story - Our brain/ego thrives definitions and explanations. The brain inherently tries to put our experience together in a way that makes logical, linear sense. Something as nebulous as a gut feeling or guidance from an intangible source is a big red flag. Things that can be defined, categorized and explained are safe. Confusing messages from an unknown source are scary and dangerous.
         So your brain jumps in to offer an explanation by telling about what happened that lets you turn the "I don't know" experience into something known. This is the same mental process that leaps in to try to make us more comfortable when we're triggered. When we get triggered, the mind and ego jump in to explain by telling us a story that usually has more to do with our wounding and our relationship to the trigger than anything that's happening in the moment.
     This storytelling is also a way for your brain/ego to make itself comfortable by discounting or pushing away information that's threatening to your internal status quo.
     Sometimes catching the story can be as simple as going back to the moment when you received the guidance or felt the gut nudge and looking at what actually happened. Distinguishing between what information you got and what you told yourself about it allows you stay with "I don't know." Simple, not easy and it takes practice.
     Simplified, catching the story is all about asking questions. While this may be a new place to ask questions, the process is no different from using self-questioning as a tool to step back from taking things personally. Next post....assumptions about context and projections.

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Walking edges

   Since January of 2014 I've been living as a nomad; house sitting, pet sitting, a short  term sublet and a few days in a motel between house sits. I have a wonderful gypsy life that doesn't include a stable place to live. In the past couple weeks two friends remarked that they didn't think they could live like that. It's definitely not for every body...but what is?
     My favorite aspect of being a nomad...walking edges as a daily practice.
     Curiousity, pushing edges and taking risks is an innate part of being human. Watch a child for an hour or two and you'll see his instinctive need to taste, touch, explore and connect to the world around him. By the time we're adults that yearning to explore our edges is socialized and civilized out of many of us. In its place we're given  the need to pursue the illusions of safety and security.
     I can't help but notice the countries where the mirage of security and safety are most prevalent are also the places were people  invent things like extreme sports and adventure  vacations. The more access we have to comfort, the more driven we are to create ways to set our senses on fire and our hearts pounding.
Snow boarding after being dropped out of a helicopter or ingesting the latest designer club drug is an odd way to engage  our edge by simultaneously taking a risk and trying to control the risk. The drug will wear off.  The amazing snow board run ends when you reach the bottom of the mountain.  Neither experience may have any larger impact on your life beyond bragging rights or being able say "I did that."
     Sometimes that's enough. Sometimes it's not. The thing about those edges that makes our hearts beat faster is our engagement with the unknown. The unknown is the primordial, unformed, anything  could happen place that  reminds us we are not really in control of squat. Most of us are both attracted to and repelled by the unknown.
     We plan. We schedule. We have goals. Those things aren't inherently detrimental, but our attachment to them often is. Unless we consciously hold them lightly, our plans, goals and schedules reinforce the illusion that  we know what is going to happen next. That process of shoring up the mirage of safety and security may be the ultimate game of make believe.
     We schedule.We plan. Our attachment to those plans lets us pretend we know how this day is going to unfold. But almost every day there are bits of  random where the unknown comes to  visit. As long as those intrusions are small and limited in scope, we can hold the unknown as a belief  or idea and not an operating principle.
     When I decided to throw where I'm sleeping this week up  in the air, I invited the unknown to become my traveling companion. Impermanence and change are no longer ideas or beliefs  that I can keep at a comfortable distance.  Impermanence sits on my pillow when I wake up in the morning. Change slips into my duffel bag beside my tee shirts each time I move to a new house sit.
     Home, as the familiar place where our stuff lives, can be both a source of comfort and identity. Part of how we define ourselves often includes where we live and how we express ourselves in that space. The solidness of home adds to our sense of stability and security.
In the first couple months of throwing "home" up in the air,  I had a powerful flash of clarity. I  could  either learn to live in trust or spend a lot of time worrying, stressing and panicking over things I cound't predict, anticipate or control.
     Simple, not easy.  Uncertainty can be both amazing and terrifying! Having the unknown as my travel buddy changed  and is changing my level of  presence moment to moment. My ego still wants to get attached to plans. Walking the edge of change and impermanence on a daily basis, it's easier to let go of that story and be here, rather than skidding off into next week.
     Clarity is easier when I'm more present. I hadn't realized how much my body being here  while my mind and emotions were in last year or next week cluttered my ability to make decisions in the moment. When I'm more here, even the pull of the past or my own wounding is just part of  the moment. No more or less important than anything else. So the choices I make are more often in line with who I am now rather than who I was.
     Living with something as basic as where I'm sleeping in a constant state of flux I can't help but see how changeable everything else is too. Choosing not to feed my egos need to predict, anticipate or know what's going to happen lets me be surprised...by myself, by other people and by how things can seem disastrous one moment and fall neatly into place the next.
     There's  tremendous freedom in traveling with the unknown. That freedoms is bigger than not being tethered by a lease, a mortgage or the need to take care of the stuff  I've accumulated. When home keeps changing, change can become home.

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Authenticity and being consistent...round peg in a square hole?

      I started this blog based on a nudge. The first year and a half of posting weekly entries was surprisingly easy. Almost every week the Universe provided some experience that connected to new awareness, going deeper in old places or an opportunity to ask new questions.        
Some weeks writing a blog entry was close to effortless. I made the time to write, the Universe provided the rest. 

 Although I do have list of backup topics, I rarely used them. When I did write from that list  my engagement with the topic wasn't as immediate. The writing sometimes felt flat, even to me.
     A couple months ago my experience began to shift. What's moving in me these days is coming from a different instigator...my body. The motion comes more from instinct than from mindful observation or thought. I am equally moving and being moved. It feels like a different form of mindfulness that doesn't involve the mind.
    It's exciting, new, different and a walk in the unknown so a little scary at times. It's also a place of moving  more and having less to say about it. Which is fine, but doesn't make for good blogging.
   After the first couple weeks of feeling like I was really reaching to find something to write about, I didn't like how forced the writing felt. That opened up a pretty loud internal conflict. If I'm not coming up with something to write about every week, then maybe I should go to every other week.
    Part of what I committed to when I started this blog was keeping it authentic. I want to write from where I am. I want to keep using the mundane bits of a week or a day as an opportunity to embody the bigger picture. But if I only write when I'm nudged, that'll be pretty random. I need to be consistent. That's the way blogs work.
    I had a pretty good internal debate going about this for several weeks. Authenticity vs. being consistent. The two principles seemed so conflicting. One night as I was falling asleep I found myself wondering about the whole consistency thing. Some part of my brain seemed to think it was really important, but where did that come from? Do I value being consistent or was that some external value that I've unconsciously absorbed?
When I first moved to Taos, there was sign behind the cash register in my mechnic's shop that said something about how laws of commerce and business that work in the rest of the country break down in New Mexico. I believe it was a quote from FDR. Can't speak for the rest of New Mexico but yes, Taos is like that. Overnight shipping often takes two days. Manana is an operating principle. It's not unusual to drive up to a local business and find a sign on the door saying they'll be open in two hours or next week because they've gone somewhere else.
   Initially I found this puzzling and a bit frustrating. After living  here for fifteen years, the inconsistency is endearing and one of the things that makes Taos unique. When a business owner closes up shop to go camping it says to me s/he is more committed to having a life than to an external rule about how a business is supposed to function.
We're all unique in our need for stability, consistency and what that looks like. As a double Aquarian, I don't need much in the way of routine or consistent. Too much sameness usually brings out my rebellious side. It feels like a prison and a loss of freedom. That's one of the things I love about being a nomad and working for myself...every week is different. So why was I so hung up on being consistent with blogging?
The answers to that question came down to a whole lot of externals. Concern about what readers would think. Concern that I'd lose readers. So my worries about others expectations or at least my perception of others expectations. I felt a twinge of fear about stepping into another place where I was "breaking a rule" of how things are "supposed" to work. Yes, my life is filled with conscious rule breaking. That little fear flinch usually arises when I edge up to another one of those places where I risk being ostracized or marginalized by choosing not to follow a societal norm because it doesn’t fit for me.
Ah-hah! Being a consistent blogger vs. staying true to the spirit in which I started Viva la Duende and writing when I have something to say isn't a clash between being authentic and being consistent. It’s about being internally or externally consistent...and I've already made that choice.
When I'm internally consistent, I am congruent with myself. What I say, do and how I feel match. That's about my authenticity, which is worth more to me than fitting in or making others comfortable by adhering to social norms. I made the choice to be as authentic as I can years ago.
As with most choices about who I want to be, it's not a matter of deciding and poof...so it is. I have to embody that choice by living it. That means revisiting my choice to be authentic every time I have the opportunity to be more me. As Carl Jung once said, "I would rather be whole than good."

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Falling into Chaos

     We all experience spurts of chaos in our lives. In the past couple years chaos has visited me more frequently and with greater intensity. It doesn't surprise me as there's more chaos in the world in general. The latest chaos spurt began last week. I was going to start a new house and pet sit on Wednesday. Had my car all packed up to move houses and something came up for the homeowners that shifted their timing to leaving Thursday around noon. So I partially unpacked my car Wednesday evening and repacked it Thursday morning.
     The homeowners didn't get on the road till after 1pm. That gave  me just enough time to swing by the house after an appointment, unload my car and feed the animals  before I went off the radio station to DJ. Whew! That seems to have set the tone for this week, which is crashing along pretty chaotically.
     Sometimes the chaos in my life is of my own creation. Other times, stuff just happens.  No matter how carefully we plan and arrange, random happens. Life is by nature chaotic and unpredictable, even though we often organize ourselves into believing we have some control over how things turn  out.
How smoothly we move through these spurts of chaos depends on how we respond. Chaos cracks our illusion of control, bringing us face-to-face with the unknown...the ultimate reminder that we aren't in charge of squat. Many of us react to that reminder by working even harder to control what's happening. Chaos can't be controlled. Fighting it is pointless.
     Often falling apart is a prelude to things falling into place. So if we resist or attempt to stop the chaos, we miss the gifts it brings. While too much routine can be physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually numbing, chaos can be both intensely creative and liberating. When we're knocked out of routine, we have the opportunity to think, act and see things differently.  Many times a spurt of chaos has gifted me with some motion in a place I felt stuck,invited something entirely new into my life or allowed me to dump something that no longer works.
     Neither of those things makes chaos any easier move with when it's happening. Staying grounded, paying attention and falling into the chaos does. The idea of falling into chaos is a recent discovery. It came from a 5 Rhythms workshop I attended in May. Chaos is one of the five rhythms and we focused on that rhythm a fair amount in the workshop. At one point the teacher talked about the difference between leaping into chaos and allowing ourselves to fall into it.
     That caught my ear. I found myself thinking about it over and over for a few weeks after the workshop. As I mulled it over, I played with it when I danced. Instead of stretching to meet the intensity of the music in chaos, I experimented with sinking in and letting the music carry me. Then last week here comes an opportunity to see how that works with chaos in my life.
     Spurts of chaos feel like big, often tsunami sized waves. For years I've responded by psyching myself up to leap and surf the wave. That does work. It lets me move with what's happening rather than resisting it. However it's a lot of work, and as I realized this past week, surfing does involve a fair amount of ducking and dodging to keep my balance.
     Chaos is rarely a single wave. With each successive wave, I go through the process of psyching myself up again to leap onto it. After a few waves, that gets exhausting. Falling into chaos is almost effortless. I don't have to psych myself up. I don't have to jump. I can just let myself fall into what's happening.
     The difference is a bit tough to describe. Psyching myself up to jump into chaos was largely a mental exercise. Falling into chaos is more of an instinctive, body first mind catches up later thing. I simply went with what was happening rather than stepping back to think about it first.
Instead of surfing and skirting the top of wave, when I fall into chaos I am in the wave and can embody it. Rather than riding the wave, I am the wave. I've been  happily surprised to discover that being in the wave or being the wave means the chaos simply carries me along with it. I don't have to duck, dodge or fight for balance. All I need to do is stay in the moment and move with what's happening. I don't have to anticipate or get anxious. So far I'm liking falling into the chaos better than surfing it.
     Doing chaos from the inside makes the chaos itself look different. It's not a monster I have to fight my way through. It's just motion in an unexpected direction. And it's not as random as it seems. Being inside the chaos I can feel ebb, flow, rhythm and pattern in its movement.
I'm also accutely aware of what happens when my ego/brain wants  to jump in and "figure this out." So far I've felt pretty relaxed during most of this chaos. But when my brain jumps in, here comes the anxiety. As soon as I begin thinking about what's happening instead of being in it, I create friction. I lose my full body presence in the moment and pull my energy up in my head.
     Although I'm not actively resisting  the chaos, when I stop to "figure it out" I hold myself  motionless against the wave. The chaos moves on without me. Suddenly I'm left scrambling to figure out what to do next and how to get back into the wave so it doesn't crash over me. When I put myself in that scrambling place, I miss the opportunity to use the creative potential of chaos.
     From the outside the idea of falling into chaos looks risky, even threatening. If I'm in the chaos, won't I be swept away? Yeah, that's possible if I fall in and then resist. Falling into chaos is just another form of surrender; another avenue to being an active participant in this life I'm co-creating.

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Body Schools Mind = Holy Sh*t

    

      A couple months ago, during a break in a 5 Rhythms workshop, I plopped down on the floor next to a woman I hadn’t danced with before. She’d been sitting on the sidelines for a while and seemed to be having trouble with one of her knees. When I asked her how she was doing, she told me she’d come to the workshop out of curiosity but didn’t think she could do this because she had a knee replacement.

    I smiled at her and pulled up my pant legs, showing her the six inch scars down both of my knees. Both my knees are bionic, it’s doable.

     I was born with a rare knee disorder called congenital patellar dislocation. It can’t be corrected and gets worse over time. The only real fix is a knee replacement.

   I don’t have any high school gym horror stories because I had a medical exemption from gym.  The “don’t do that” list from various orthopedists got longer as I got older. While I understood the reasons for the restrictions, I also heard the underlying inevitability of my knees failing completely.

    Fortunately some wiser part of me got early on that the big choice was what not about what I chose to do physically but how I was going to live with this. I could let this limitation become who I was or not. I could focus on what I couldn’t do, complain and be resentful or I could focus on the places where I wasn’t limited.

    In college while my friends and peers were backpacking through India and exploring the physical world, I began exploring my inner world. My mind, emotions and spirit were not limited by my cranky knees. Along the way I did pretty much everything the orthopedists told me not to. I danced. I did physical labor jobs that involved standing on my feet for hours. I hiked. If it looked interesting or fun, I tried it and accepted that I’d be limping for a few days afterwards. Although I learned to accept my physical limitations, I often felt envious at what other peoples bodies could do.

    Like many other seekers, I latched onto the belief that connection with the Divine required transcending my physicality. I didn’t ignore my body completely or deny its innate wisdom. I did look at the messages it sent the way I regard the “Check oil” light on my car….as something I could ignore unless it yelled.

    By the time I was forty-three, my right knee had deteriorated to the point where I was walking with a cane. Based on a recommendation from my chiropractor I found my way to Dr. Jones, an orthopedist who was more focused on quality of life than whether I was old enough for a knee replacement. He took one look at my x-rays and said, “You need a new knee.” If I hadn’t been using a cane, I would’ve jumped out of my chair and kissed him!

    Recovery from knee replacement is a bit brutal. It involves intensive physical therapy, much of which hurts a lot. My right knee replacement was surgery number thirteen on that knee. Other temporary fixes included wearing a brace for five years that went from mid-thigh to halfway down my calf. It helped but I lost a lot of muscle in that leg. So after my PT I went to the gym to work on building muscle. While I liked seeing muscle in my leg for the first time, the gym was a chore.

    Four years later my left knee called it quits….replacement number two. I was forty-eight. For the first time in my life I had two knees that worked!! That’s a miracle. It didn’t hurt when I got out of bed in the morning. I could get out of chairs and off couches without pushing myself up with my arms. I could walk down the stairs like a normal person rather than crab walking sideways.  Wahooo!!

    I used to have a body that seemed fine with being sedentary. Suddenly it wanted to move. So in my late forties I started down a road that most people have mapped by their mid-teens, figuring out what my body could do. The years I spent working on mindfulness, being my own observer and learning to focus my attention made it easy shift my old presets from “I can’t do that” to “I wonder if I can?”

     The more I consciously engaged my body, the more it had to say.  I learned to deal with the constant knee pain by compartmentalizing it and push the pain away from me. While that enabled me to avoid prescription painkillers most of the time, it also blocked much of what my body had to say. Suddenly my body didn’t like being still for long stretches. It didn’t like some of what I was eating. When I got engrossed in drawing and forgot to move it let me know long before my leg fell asleep.

    This new level of conversation with my body was humbling, exciting and baffling. I was used to looking at my body the same way I do my car, as something I need to carry the rest of me around. But my body is not car. While I am more than my physicality, my body is part of who I am. I am innately connected to it.

    The more I listened, the more apparent this gap in my evolution became.  Body, mind, spirit….oh. I’d spent years focused on mind and spirit. To be all in with myself, my body needed to be included. But how?

     Going to the gym helped meet my need to move and build muscle. I was downright gleeful the first time I used the leg press. Me, on the leg press…Wow! After a year and a half of stationary bikes, weights and treadmills I got bored. When I tried to go back to the gym after spending six weeks in Joshua Tree hiking in the park I just couldn’t do it.

    Thankfully the Universe had a solution….dance. I got nudge to check out 5 Rhythms during a holotropic breathwork session. I like to dance, but the idea of doing that in a group of people I don’t know gave my introvert a good scare. Groups have been challenging for me for as long as I can remember. My comfort zone ends at any group larger than six. I feel self-conscious, can’t figure out what to do with myself. I’ve worked on this for years. I’ve learned to be okay in groups some of time but that self-conscious, outsider thing is always lurking under a thin veneer of okay. I’d accepted my discomfort in groups was just part of who I am.

    So it took me a couple weeks to sort through my mental noise and show up to dance. And holy sh*t, I loved it!  It felt familiar. It felt powerful. Something about it felt like home. Before I went to my first class I was hoping dance might be a new way to exercise. It is and there’s so much more.

     When I dance my body becomes the conduit for creativity, spontaneity, clarity and instinct. In surrendering to music and movement, I just am. Yes, there were many moments of self-consciousness. They faded when I danced through them. It only took a couple months for that outsider feeling to vanish with the Taos 5 Rhythms tribe.

     As I kept dancing, that motion began to move me. During all those years of focusing on my inner landscape I got pretty good at self-questioning. I could see how my wounding showed up, find the root of my reaction when I was triggered and see what I could do differently the next time. But all that took time and work. My default response to new situations and opportunities was “maybe” unless I got a strong “yes” nudge or could think about it for a while.

    Suddenly I was spontaneously saying “yes” to new things. I found myself being different in situations that would have triggered a few months earlier. It happened so organically I frequently didn’t notice till the end of the day. Where was this coming from?

   Years ago in twelve step programs I heard “You can’t think yourself into acting differently but you can act yourself into thinking differently.” I’d seen how that worked for me. Once I’d unscrambled whatever pile of fear and wounding I was dealing with, doing something different was not going to get less uncomfortable or scary until I just did it a few times.

    But this being different in old lurching places was more than just acting differently. I was somehow bypassing the argument between how I felt and what I wanted to do. I wasn’t thinking at all. I was just acting on instinct. Dancing brought me to a place where my body was schooling my mind. Wow.

    Two weeks ago I spent the weekend at a 5 Rhythms workshop in Santa Fe. I’ve been to several workshops in Taos. They’ve been small. This one I spent the weekend dancing with 50+ people. Way outside my comfort zone. The workshop was incredible; evocative, edgy, intimate, and filled with heart. The most miraculous thing for me, it was the first time I’ve been in a group that large and felt like I belonged. That familiar self-conscious outsider feeling wasn’t even lurking under the surface. It was just gone. That is some holy shi*t.

   

    

Ferguson, Baltimore and me

     Watching recent events in Baltimore I felt many of the same emotions I experienced last summer watching news clips from Ferguson; anger, sadness, fear and the desire to act because “somebody needs to do something!” While armchair quarterbacking can temporarily alleviate that urgency in me, it changes nothing.

    While I can support and assist others in their evolution, the only person or thing I can change is me. That brings me to questioning where I am unwittingly complicit in what happened in Baltimore.

    I lived in Bloomington Indiana for fourteen years. Sometime in the mid-nineties the city proposed adding sexual orientation to its anti-discrimination clause. Although I’d stepped back from direct political action, my girlfriend and I attended the open city council meeting about the proposed resolution.

    A group of us from the LGBT community attended the meeting. So did few local ministers and pastors along with their congregations. When my girlfriend and I stepped into the lobby of the city/county building, a sea of fundamentalists closed in around us. They sang hymns, hurled Bible verses and told us were going to Hell.

     I wasn’t afraid until I saw their eyes. Their mouths recited scripture but their eyes spoke in anger and hatred. I didn’t know these people. My sexual orientation was so offensive these people wanted to hurt me. The rest of who I was didn’t matter.

    Then I was just an angry at the fundamentalists as they were at me. In that moment I hated a few of them.

     In that moment their anger and hatred was terrifying. Days and weeks later I was more disturbed by the anger and hatred I felt toward them.

     It took me years to understand what was actually going on. When I stood in that lobby feeling waves of anger and hatred directed toward me and I responded in kind, we stopped being human to each other.

     I didn’t see those people as human beings with families, jobs, heartaches and fears. They became a conglomerate of ignorant, close-minded bigots. To them I was no longer a human being with a partner, a life, fears and heartaches. I was a symbol of the moral decay that threatened their lifestyle.

     After that, there was no human involvement. What unfolded came from our projections taking pot shots at each other.

    Because of the experience twenty odd years ago, I can no longer look at events like Baltimore and say I don’t understand that level of anger and hatred. I do. I’ve felt it. Yes, I feel angry and sad over what has and is happening. I am choosing not to rage for peace, equality and respect because the shift needed to stop this cycle cannot be fueled by rage.

    Who am I really angry at? The police? Some other organization that “should” have stepped in to prevent this from happening?

     Groups and organizations are made of individuals. The wounding, fears and beliefs of each person form the larger consciousness of that group. How can I expect a group to see people as human beings even when they’re in conflict when I struggle with that? How can I blame the police or anyone else for getting caught in their projections of “other” when I’m still learning how not to do that?

     In these explosions of our collective shadow, I see my own darkness. I can’t change what happened in Baltimore. I can change how complicit I am in the beliefs and wounding that created these events. Yeah, part of me wishes I could make some grand gesture that would “fix” this….but does it need to be fixed? Or is this more about being different in relation to beliefs I don’t agree with?

    While changing me may not seem like enough, my gut tells me it’s the only that is enough. If I change my relationship to my wounding and beliefs then what I bring into any group I’m part of is different. If a bunch of us were different…well you get the idea.

    In the news clips from Baltimore I see racism, power and abuse of power. When I look deeper I see the consequences of dividing the world into “us” and “them”, me and “other”…same old duality.

     Over the past week I’ve more mindful of where I struggle to see people as human beings, want to categorize a person or group as “other” and where that impulse comes from in me. When I label something or someone as “other” I distance myself. My creation of “other” comes from fear, no surprise there. What surprised me is the face that fear wears.

     When I’m truly present with another person or a group I’m open, empathetic and I listen differently. Showing up like that means making myself vulnerable. Sometimes I’m not willing to be vulnerable. Creating an “other” is sneaky way to say “no” to the vulnerability without owning the choice I’m making.

     This impulse also arises in me when I’m concerned another person or group may reject or judge me. My ego thinks I can avoid being hurt if I engage in a little preemptive abandonment.  I caught myself a couple times wanting to create an “other” when I felt intimidated or less than.

    Looking at what happened in those moments brought me to a bigger awareness. When I react to feeling less than or intimidated by creating an “other” I’m pushing away the situation, person or group because I don’t like what it’s showing me in myself. Looking back over my impulses to create an “other” this past week I find the same dynamics every time. On the surface it looks like I’m distancing myself from something external but what I’m really pushing away are the uncomfortable feelings the situation brings up in me.

  

   

The Counterbalance of Choice and Surrender

     When I landed in recovery in my early twenties my life was an unfolding train wreck. Things happened. I reacted. My reaction spawned more events that I reacted to and on and on and on.  Recovery introduced me to the concept of surrender and to a higher power as tangible presence in my life, rather than abstract idea. Although I didn’t like the idea of surrender, I couldn’t deny that my addiction had kicked my butt.

     Integrating and getting my head around the concept of surrender involved a lot of playing with it. What did the Universe want from me? How far did this surrender thing go? One morning I dumped all my socks on my bed and decided to sit there until the Universe told me which pair to put on. I don’t remember how long I waited to put on my socks. I felt both disappointed and relieved when a sticky note didn’t appear on my bed telling me what to wear.

     The relief came from learning that surrender didn’t mean letting something else take me over and force me to do something. That was the beginning of my stepping away from a typical Western concept of surrender into something that looks more like a partnership.

     In our go-getter, make it happen society surrender often has a decidedly negative connotation. Many of us associate surrender with waving the proverbial white flag. We see surrender as giving up, giving in, giving over or some other form of relinquishing our autonomy.

    Surrendering and being conquered are not the same thing. Surrender is about inviting the Universe to be a partner in the life I’m creating and taking more responsibility for my choices, not less.

     As with any other collaboration, the partnership works best when I’m clear on what is and isn’t my part. That’s where choice as the counterbalance to surrender comes in. My part consists of whatever’s happening right now. All the power I have is in the present moment. I can meet what’s in front of me, make choices and the rest is up to the Universe. Simple but far from easy.

     Being able to do that means letting go of whatever isn’t happening right now.  That’s a skill that takes practice. I first became aware of how much I wasn’t letting go when it came to future plans. I’d make a decision about doing something next week or next month. Because I was no longer actively in the decision process, I thought I’d let go. I hadn’t.

     If the decision involved something I felt excited or anxious about, my head leapt in to create scenarios. If the scenarios centered on something that might be difficult I’d spend hours going over what I’d say or do if this or that happened. If I liked the scenarios I’d forget they were just possibilities. I’d feed them with my attention until some part of me was convinced that what I imagined might happen was going to happen.

    When the event I’d spent so much time ruminating over arrived, it rarely looked like my projections. That usually left me scrambling around in my head about why this didn’t look like I thought it would….which made it really difficult to stay present with what was happening.

    It took me a few years to see that all my monkey mind after making the choice was a warped attempt at controlling or influencing future events. I forgot and still often do that all the power I have to change or affect future events lies in this moment. When I get ahead of myself, I rob myself of my own power by trying to do the Universe’s job.

    While the idea staying present and making plans seems contradictory, it isn’t. For most of us, making future plans is a necessity. My calendar between now and the end of 2015 has a lot of plans in it. I can pretty much guarantee that most of it won’t look like it does in my calendar. The timing will change. Some of what I’ve planned won’t happen at all.  Some will show up looking entirely different than what I can see right now.

    A lot of that rearrangement will come from surrendering to the Universe and what’s bigger. My part in that is paying attention. Ever hear that saying about “If you want to make the Universe laugh, make plans”? My version is “If you want to make the Universe laugh, get attached to your plans.”

    When I get attached to what I’ve projected, I give myself tunnel vision. The Universe rarely leaves a sticky note on my bed letting me know this fork in the road will lead to something much better than what I have planned. The Universe speaks through other people, unexpected opportunities, gifts and little nudges. If I’m too focused on what I think should be happening, I not only miss the magic by cutting off the ways the Universe can surprise me. Bottom line - collaboration doesn’t work if I invite the Universe in and then decide to ignore it.

     And it doesn’t work if I expect the Universe to do all the work by doing it for me. I am responsible for meeting this moment, making choices and letting go into what comes in the next moment. That letting go is opening to the magic of bigger. The most profound and amazing experiences in my life come from following nudges..not from what I had planned.