Awakening - Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

March 29 - What Keeps Us from Shedding

~Often we give up our right to renewal to accommodate the anxiety of those around us.~

For sure, living is not easy, and living openly is both wondrous and dangerous. The fact is that shedding, no matter how useful or inevitable, always has a pain of its own. Unfortunately, there is no escaping this underside of growth. So it is not surprising that there are many feelings peculiar to human beings that prevent us from shedding what has ceased to work, including fear, pride, nostalgia, a comfort in the familiar, and a want to please those we love. Often we give up our right to renewal to accommodate the anxiety of those around us.

The Melanesians of the New Hebrides contend that this is how we lost our immortality. Sir James Frazer has preserved their story. It seems, at first, human beings never died, but cast their skins like snakes and crabs and came out with youth renewed. But after a time, a woman, growing old, went to a stream to change her skin; according to some, she was Ul-ta-marama, Change-skin of the world. She threw her old skin in the water and observed that as it floated it caught on a stick. Then she went home, where she had left her child. But the child refused to recognize her, crying that its mother was an old woman, not this young stranger. So to pacify the child she went after her old skin and put it on. From that time, human beings ceased to cast their skins and died.

And so, when we cease to shed what's dead in us in order to soothe the fear of others, we remain partial. When we cease to surface our most sensitive skin simply to avoid conflict with others, we remove ourselves from all that is true. When we maintain ways we've already discarded just to placate the ignorance of those we love, we lose our access to what is eternal.

 

Oh yes, it seems like the lowest common denominator effect is the price we sometimes pay for being social animals.

 

This one really speaks to me. The trick is to accomplish this without being selfish or is there no way to accomplish it without being selfish?

 

Middle ground. I think it's always that elusive middle ground we are looking for.

 

March 30 - The Energy of Being Real

~Do not seek any rules or method of worship. Say whatever your pained heart chooses.~ - Rumi

"Mana" is a term originally used in Polynesian and Melanesian cultures to describe an extraordinary power or force residing in a person or an object, a sort of spiritual electricity that charges anyone who touches it. Carl Jung later defined the term as "the unconscious influence of one being on another." What Jung speaks to is the fact that the energy of being real has more power than outright persuasion, debate, or force of will. He suggests that being who we are always releases an extraordinary power that, without intent or design, affects the people who come in contact with such realness.

The beautiful and simple truth of this can be seen in looking at the sun. The sun, without intent or will or plan or sense of principle, just shines, thoroughly and constantly. By being itself, the sun warms with its light, never withholding or warming only certain things of the Earth. Rather, the sun emanates in all directions all the time, and things grow. In the same way, when we are authentic, expressing our warmth and light in all directions, we cause things around us to grow. When our souls like little suns express the light of who we are, we emanate what Jesus called love and what Buddha called compassion, and the roots of community lengthen.

In this way, without any intent to shape others, we simply have to be authentic, and a sense of mana, of spiritual light and warmth, will emanate from our very souls, causing others to grow - not toward us, but toward the light that moves through us. In this way, by being who we are, we not only experience life in all its vitality, but, quite innocently and without design, we help others be more thoroughly themselves. In being real, in staying devoted to this energy of realness, we help each other grow toward the one vital light.

 

I am in agreement with this.

 

Me too... I really like it.

 

Love this one.

 

March 31 - The Practice of Being Real

~As the sun cannot withhold its light, we cannot withhold what feels real.~

As the Earth keeps going by turning itself toward the light day after day, we have no choice, despite all forms of etiquette and training, but to keep turning toward what we feel is real. Otherwise, we become cold little planets spinning in the dark.

Very often, when I am confused or depressed for a long period of time, it is because I have stopped turning toward the light of what feels real. At times like this, I have to break the darkness of my spinning with a very small and simple step that often seems huge and difficult because I have been spinning in on myself - I have to practice being real by saying what I feel, not just once, but continually.

I have struggled my whole life with this. Like most of us, I learned to survive by withholding what feels real. When events happen - when someone says or does something that hurts me - I have learned to absorb the hit and pretend that nothing has changed, that everything is the same. But when I do this, my energy is used up in maintaining the pretense that nothing has happened, and I begin to spin coldly in the dark.

It is so simple and yet so brave to say that we are hurt when we are hurt, that we are sad when we are sad, that we are scared when we are scared. In very direct and daily ways, this energy of realness - this mana - changes situations because the immediate expression of our truth releases light and warmth that influences the life we are part of. This is the way our spirit shines.

 

Oh how I could relate to this one. Much of my life was spent repressing how I really felt, or what I really thought. Always needing to please, appease, saying what I thought was supposed to be said. After so many years of doing this it was hard to be really real. It took a lot of courage and self honesty to do. Being real is very freeing.

 

You know what I have noticed. When I let the real me come through, I get so much more positive feedback from other people. It's rarely the bad parts of me that I am withholding. Isn't that funny?

 

April 1 - Work of the Worm

~What the worm eats feeds the root.~

The story is told by a member of the Ojibway tribe that the Creator was having trouble kiiping the world together, when a little worm said he could help. The Creator paused, and the little worm spun its imperceptible silk, connecting all of creation with an unseeable web. The Creator's gift to the worm was to let it live forever, allowing that when the little worm enclosed itself in the unseeable web, it would after a time emerge with the thinnest wings full of color - as a butterfly.

The story tells us that everything in Creation is connected and that what holds it all together comes from the humble work of living on Earth. It tells us that the experience of eternity is possible if we immerse ourselves firsthand in the unseeable web of life. It tells us that if we still ourselves long enough within the web of all there is, we will eventually come to know the lightness of transformation.

Humbly, like a little worm, it is in us to work our experience - our pain and frustration and confusion and wonder - into threads of silk. And freely, it is in our realm of choice to first connect everything with our experience and then to make a cocoon of those connections. Finally, we can enter that cocoon of experiential connection - the way a Native American sweats in his lodge, the way a yogi holds his third eye, the way a monk maintains his vow of silence - until we emerge wearing our deepest colors for everyone to see.

Amazingly, the Universe is held together by the unseeable threads of our own experience, and our reward for keeping the web of connection alive is that our spirit emerges through what is personal into the center of All Being. And so, by being who we re, we are suddenly enlivened, however briefly, into the web of All Creation.

No matter how important we imagine others to be, it is each of us who holds things together, in our small humble way of working through the days with all that we have. This is the quiet miracle of spinning connection from our very humanness. This humble practice, that no one can stop, is the work of the worm.

 

I take the quote more literally. It addresses one of the big questions. Life is a circle and yes, we are all connected. Even the inanimate becomes part of life.

 

This is so beautiful and so true. If you ever visit Michigan's Upper Peninsula, go to Chicagoan Lake Park. There you will see a series of Canoes along the shoreline of the lake, constructed by the Ojibway's over150 years ago. They were fashioned with the love, strength of these fantastic people and are still amazing tourists and residents to this day. As a child, I would go there in the evening and just sit in them trying to connect to those wonderful native
Americans.

 

April 2 - We Share the Same River

~The river's now in me~

I was traveling in South Africa and felt very tender one morning, when my friend Kim came upon me as I was weeping. She asked if I was okay. I told her it was only the waters of life splashing up my shore. Later that day, I found her near tears and checked in with her. She said, "The river's now in me."

We looked into each other and realized that we all share the same river. It flows beneath us and through us, from one dry heart to the next. We share the same river. It makes the Earth one living thing.

The whole of life has a power to soften and open us against our will, to irrigate our spirits, and in those moments, we discover that tears, the water from within, are a common blood, mysterious and clear. We may speak different languages and live very different lives, but when that deep water swells to the surface, it pulls us to each other.

We share the same river, and where it enters, we lose our stubbornness the way fists wear open when held under in the stream of love.

 

This is true.

 

April 3 - Talking Fast

~Live loud enough in your heart and there is no need to speak.~

There was a time in my life during my years in college when I was so talkative that the waterfall of words kept others at a safe distance. Of course, in time, this cascade pushed others away. But what I didn't realize till much later was that I kept talking faster and louder to the world around me because I couldn't hear the world within me. Of course, the more noise I made, the less chance I had of having what was real enter me or rise from me. It became a damning cycle.

So often, we mistake the need to hear with the need to be heard. All that talk was a way of reaching out to others with my heart. Ultimately, it was all based on the fear that if I didn't throw my heart our there - through endless words and gestures and questions - I would be left alone. It's taken me many years to learn that the world comes flooding in if I can only keep myself open.

It remains important to reach out and to express oneself, but underneath that is the need to be porous and real. Through the opened heart, the world comes rushing in, the way oceans fill the smalles hole along the shore. It is the quietest sort of miracle: by simply being who we are, the world will come to fill us, to cleanse us, to baptize us, again and again.

 

April 4 - Making Amends

~There is hurt and there is love. They roll us through the days like a turtle down a hill. All we can do when on our back is roll one more time and head for the sea.~

Stones loosened by storms cover paths, and uprooted trees break newly formed nests, and crisis after crisis throws us into each other. It is inevitable. Stay alive and you will be hurt, and you will also hurt others.

Unintended hurt is as common as branches snapped in wind. But it is the unacknowledged hurt that becomes a wound. Just as our only recourse to falling down is getting up, our only recourse to hurting others is to acknowledge what we've done and clean up the mess. This is known as making amends, a simple yet enormous act of integrity that restores trust, and trust, after all, is the soil that holds the roots of humankind. Without it, life on Earth begins to eat itself dry.

What causes us to hurt each other? It's hard to say. But it seems that, being human, we are subject to many ancient and powerful opposites found in life. Among those that impact us constantly are light and dark, yes and no, and especially fear and peace. For it is out of fear that we feel the need to isolate ourselves or to control others, and it is often in the act of elevating ourselves that we hurt one another, not to mention ourselves. When not afraid, when in a moment of peace, we feel quite a different need. We feel a sudden requirement to connect and belong to other living things, and it is then in the act of true embrace that we love one another.

Still, as no one in daily life is exempt from both sleeping and waking, no one can escape feeling both fear and peace, and so, no one can escape being both hurtful and loving. But the world is kept whole by those who can overcome their fear, however briefly. The blood of life itself is kept vital by those who can simply and bravely repair their separations, time and time again.

Even if our awareness of being hurtful comes years after delivering the hurt, the smallest word or gesture - owning what we've done - can reopen the heart.

 

Powerful.

 

April 5 - The Courage of the Seed

~All the buried seeds crack open in the dark the instant they surrender to a process they can't see.~

What a powerful lesson is the beginning of spring. All around us, everything small and buried surrenders to a process that none of the buried parts can see. And this innate surrender allows everything edible and fragrant to break ground into a life of light that we call spring.

In nature, we are quietly given countless models of how to give ourselves over to what appears dark and hopeless, but which ultimately is an awakening that is beyond all imagining. This moving through the dark into blossom is the threshold to God.

As a seed buried in the earth cannot imagine itself as an orchid or hyacinth, neither can a heart packed with hurt imagine itself loved or at peace. The courage of the seed is that once cracking, it cracks all the way.