Inside Out

When  I was 7 or 8, I was sitting with my family at our dining room table. We moved around a bit, so I know I was between 6 and 11, because those were the years we lived in that house.

My sister (older) and my brother (younger, probably about two) were goofing around. She was poking at him and he was laughing in that delightful giddy laugh of toddlers. There is something about that joyous sound that just requires everyone to smile.

But that evening I was not smiling. I don’t recall what I was irked about. I got irked a lot when I was a kid. What I do remember is that I was feeling desperately, horribly alone. My parents were doing whatever they did, chipping away at each other from either end of the table and my sister and my brother had each other.

I was alone. And worse, I couldn’t see any conceivable way to ever not be desperately horribly alone.  My innards recoiled at the way my parents talked to each other and the electric hostility that almost always crackled between them. My sister knew how to play and make the baby laugh. I was too serious to feel competent at playing. Besides, although the baby was giggling, I knew for a fact that when my sister did teasing, poking tickling stuff like that to me I hated it. I could never be comfortable playing that way with a baby.

I thought I was broken. Not quite human. I didn’t know how to play and I didn’t know how to bicker. I didn’t know how to fit in.

I worried about this a lot when I was young. And this particular evening I was fully immersed in my invisibleness and my misery.

But suddenly, something came over me. It’s hard to describe, like trying to describe an oddball dream. I remember being aware of the room, the hutch behind me, built by my grandpa, and the collection of tiny brass miniatures standing in a row on the back edge, the buttercup china dishes that were stored in the lower cabinet. I have no idea why this was important, but it formed a sort of gestalt, a holistic view of the dining room scene that I felt more than I saw.

And I knew, right then, that everything was OK. The words I heard were “everything always turns out the opposite of how it seems.” The feeling was one of peace. For a moment I could lay down my worry and my judgment and just be OK. For a moment I felt held like I had always longed to be held. For a moment I fully understood the advanced spiritual concept – which I would not even hear about for at least 10  more years – that our world, our lives, are illusion, that none of it is real and that appearances are very deceiving.

I had no mental level understanding of what was taking place, but I had a spiritual/energetic knowing about how it all works. I did not have a vocabulary to explain what I have known since that moment, and I did not have a tribe within which I could explore this huge idea. The understanding of IT ALL, came to me in ways a little girl could experience – a feeling of safety and words that soothed my distress.

I have spent all the ensuing years going after grounding and understanding and trying to articulate the knowing that came to me all at once in my family’s dining room..

So here’s a game to play. What if everything is the opposite of what it seems?

What if instead of being held helplessly to the ground by gravity, we are actually engaged in a struggle to stay grounded and not float away?

What if instead of struggling to remain healthy and live a long time, the struggle we are actually engaged in is all about creating the experiences of illness and death?

What if the money that we describe as being super-concentrated among a small number of people, is actually only distributed that way because the rest of us are actively engaged in pushing it away from ourselves and into those corners?

What if instead of educating children, what we really need to do is to allow ourselves to be educated by them?

What if telling stories of our victimhood doesn’t liberate us (as in: we must never forget or history will repeat itself!!), but only mires us down into more and more victimhood?

Stay calm! It’s only a game.

I know that questions like this can trigger all kinds of reactions. I know because I have lived with such reactions for most of my life. I encourage you to spend some time exploring these questions, or others like them, deeply. This isn’t an “oh yeah, cool idea” kind of game. It’s a depth game.

If you’re not willing to play, I totally understand. Just ignore me and go about your life. I’m just a crazy nobody anyway.

But if you are willing to play, if something about those statements tickles your intuition, then maybe you’re becoming a goddess too.

Stay tuned…

Authentic Creation

A friend asked me the other day if I still thought about the life I used to have before the relationship ended which spawned this blog.

It got me thinking about that time. I remember that the words, “I just want my life back,” kept reverberating in my skull. Now, all these years later, I was inspired to ask myself just exactly what it was that I had been longing for and the answer kind of surprised me.

I thought I was wishing for my relationship to get back to what it had been, but the truth is I didn’t really like what it had been. I liked what I imagined it could be.

Have you ever done this?

I didn’t know it then but now I realize that I was trying to control the conditions of my life to try to create something that I didn’t have the self-awareness, courage or power to create authentically.

I think just about everybody does this. We think we can control the trajectory of our health, for example, by taking vitamins or getting treatments or exercising more, or not eating sugar. But the trajectory of our health is created in an unseen world directed by our mindset and the stories we reiterate inside, the beliefs and attitudes and history that we hold. We can’t powerfully control that trajectory through our physical actions alone.

Every Science of Mind practitioner knows this. Most New Agers would agree with the statement in theory.

To create greater levels of health, wealth, wisdom and love in our lives, we have to commit to these things energetically, and we have to be diligent about being aware of how we are applying our energy to the conditions we are creating.

This commitment is how we create authentically and it takes a vast level of courage to do it.

What I was trying to do was to make the other people in my life be the force that created the conditions I thought I wanted. What the health-seeker is trying to do is to control the body’s intake of substances and/or output of effort, thinking that those physical actions are what creates the condition of health.

But the physical level of our bodies and our relationships are not creative by nature. They are reactive; they play out the stories we give them.

The courage comes in when we have to face down the tremendous momentum of our cultural suppositions.

What would it take to commit to health – no matter what you eat?

What would it take for me to identify, express and go ahead and create my dreams, no matter what the others in my life say or think or do –or don’t do?

Can I commit to finding and tapping into Universal Power, laying bare my soul in commitment to my ideals, and allowing the Power that creates worlds to take me on its ride to my goals – without trying to control the ride?

I can. And I am.

Stay tuned..

Boredom

I love boredom. It’s a rare commodity these days. Instead of a condition that once crept up on us, it is one we have to actively cultivate if we want it at all.

Once many years ago, before I owned my first cell phone – even before I had acquired a pager (remember those?) – I went on a four day retreat and I took nothing with me that could be considered input. No books. No music. I did take lots of paper, pens, colored pencils, and my hiking shoes. I did get really bored. It took a lot of effort to not pick up one of the books in the library of the place where I was staying. But I also created some really cool poems and a couple of drawings I still like.

I was thinking about that time this morning and I realized that I almost can’t imagine doing that again. I spend so much time on my computer and phone, that it would feel beyond weird to go off for four full days without at least having them with me. Even if I resolved to not turn them on, which I probably would do in the end anyway, I would want to have them with me.

They connect me with the world, with my family and my friends. Even when I am hiking in the wilderness, I have my phone with me.

It’s weird. I have a whistle that I take with me on long hikes. I carry it just in case I fall or some other unanticipated circumstance finds me and I need help. The sound of a whistle carries far and it is how I would flag down help if I needed it. Yet, I would feel more naked and vulnerable without my phone, than without my whistle – even if the place where I am going has no cell service, where the whistle would be much more useful.

And it’s not just the computer or phone. I rarely sit still any more, unless I am purposefully sitting down to meditate or take a nap. There’s always something going on. I grab the next paragraph in the book I’m reading, or I pick up a magazine, or check Instagram (there might be priceless photos of my grandkids that I haven’t seen yet!). If I’m thinking of what to write, I’m likely playing Spider Solitaire while I think. While I drink my morning tea, I’m also doing a crossword puzzle.

So if I want boredom, I have to practice giving it some space to develop. You might ask why I would do that in this very busy life. It’s because the real creative thought can only arise from the quiet space of boredom.

It occurs to me that maybe we, the people of Earth, haven’t come up with solutions to some of our difficult problems because we haven’t taken enough time to sit quietly cultivating boredom and seeing what creative thoughts come up in it. Maybe we have so much trouble being civil to one another because we are always on the go, go, go, and we don’t take the time to reflect or to find peace inside – it feels so unusual to not be doing something. Maybe we don’t appreciate each other because we haven’t sat with ourselves enough.

I realize I miss it; I miss sometimes feeling bored. So I’ll schedule some time this weekend to go sit outside without my phone, without my book, without even my journal and see what happens.

I’ll whistle if I need you.

Stay tuned…