Strength AND vulnerability...

I feel like the oak tree on the north side of the caddy shack at the city golf course I walk each morning.Fragile...beautiful...broken and bare branched in places, yet graceful and lovely on the whole.My mind like the leaves rustled by any breeze, yet my core, my trunk and roots are sturdy and strong.Strength and vulnerability, my existance.Strength and vulnerability our world.Strength and vulnerability, my home.At last.

Psyche (aka your unconscious): Holds all the trump!

More and more neuroscience is demonstrating the limits of the logical and the rational.  Thus proving C.G. Jung, (Jungian Psychology) to have been a prophet.  The power of the unconscious, the mysterious and unfathomable, within each and everyone of us is truly breathtaking.  AND it is efficient!  How does it get better than that?!I write about this because there are tools that one can use (many of which I have practiced for almost 2 decades) that help us actually hear the voice of our own psyche.  AND why that matters is because it turns out ..that it is not "Father who knows best" but Psyche.  (Yes, I am that old!)Our own sweet souls are what will make the best and happiest decisions on any and all matter of preference for each of us.  Whether it be the next car we buy, the person we live with or career path we take...or which pair of shoes to buy and where to go for dinner.    Psyche (soul) always speaks to us in the language of feelings, energy, moods and dreams.  She is always letting us know what will make us happy in the long run.So why aren't we happier?  Because our Strategic Mind generally overrules her and so quickly we often don't hear her at all.    She says, "I want light and space."  Strategic mind jumps in with "We can't move, we don't have time and where will we find....blah, blah, blah."  Conversation over...except it isn't because Psyche will now start to disturb our peace with ennui or discontent or weird dreams.  AND she won't stop.Our distrust of her is part and parcel of our inherent distrust of joy and happiness.  (See my post:  Trusting Joy).  Most of us trust suffering and struggle more than we do joy and happiness.  That is why we mostly change through the school of hardknocks.   What would happen is when Psyche whispered "I want light and space." we would respond with curiosity with "Tell me more"?Maybe we allow Strategic Mind (SM) to register it's concerns immediately...but in the spirit of a brainstorm, instead of control.SM:  "Look, the easy way would be to change our exisiting space if that is possible, but why is it you want light and space and are there other ways we could achieve that, because moving is a a big chunk of time and money?"And then the ideas surface.  The brainstorm is on.  Strategic mind doesn't have to and should not just say "yes" to Psyche, it is meant to be a true conversation between the rational and irrational within us.  We can learn how to stay in the tension of the conflicting needs within our own minds, knowing that one day something greater than either "move or stay here and ignore the need for light and space" will emerge.  Einstein said, "you can't solve a problem with the level of thinking that created it."  I say, ask yourself where you are stuck.  AND put those two opposites together and ask "how can I have both X and Y?"  Then settle in and wait, trusting that an answer will come.  Stay open.  Wait for what is fresh, new and alive to arrive.  

For those Difficult Conversations during the Holidays:

This was written by Daniel Goleman and The Emotional Intelligience Guru.  I have reposted it because I think it is spot on and well written.  Before I tell myself a story about how a sister or brother, or mother or father-in-law, or whomever just doesn't get it.  Or "Always" judges me or "never" listens to me, I might want to take Goleman's advice. "We’ve all had difficult conversations, often with difficult people. How do you improve the process and outcome of challenging discussions? I recently spoke with Erica Ariel Fox, lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, and member of the internationally acclaimed Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School (PON), about how to manage a difficult conversation. Her research on negotiation showed her that improving your interactions with others starts with managing how you interact with yourself.Here’s her take on how she came to discover the effectiveness of emotionally intelligent negotiation:"Every difficult conversation is really three conversations. There's the conversation about what happened: the substance, the facts. Each of us has a story about what happened. There's also what they call the feeling conversation, the emotional level. And there's also the identity conversation, which asks “what does this say about me?” Is something in my self-image implicated in what's going on here? What's making the conversation difficult for me? Expanding your view of the conversation in this way lets you understand that just battling back and forth to prove that you're right and the other side is wrong is not likely to get you from a breakdown to a breakthrough. I've spent a lot of time working with executives, teaching, working in companies, and working in some government situations, and I noticed that people had this difficulty trying to deal with the three conversations - they got the concept, but in real time they found it very difficult to use this concept. Even if they practiced it in a workshop and got the words to come out of their mouth, their real-time experience was that they weren't doing the best practices that they cognitively knew they should do.I became extremely interested in this gap, what I later called the Performance Gap, between people's potential to negotiate effectively, which might be very high, and their ability to practice it. In looking at this gap and trying to figure out how you help people in real time bring forward their skillful means and higher nature, I simply asked the question: What if I'm the problem? What do I need to do to be more effective to get better results, or develop stronger relationships, or reap the deeper rewards of life in general? I can stop looking out there. I can stop wishing my boss would change. I can stop blaming or judging my family members. I can look inside and ask how am I contributing, how is my relationship with my self leading me to get in my own way? Asking yourself if I’m the problem isn’t the same as self-blame. If you think about your levers of change, where you can influence - it’s not easy to change other people, particularly when you're talking about long-standing habits and mindsets. But you actually do have a quality of autonomy that enables you to grow as a human being. You set that intention, you learn skills, and you shift your mindset. It’s extremely empowering to notice that one of the ways to improve your interactions with other people is to get better at how you interact with yourself."  Daniel Goleman

Nothing stops her...

"Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasures."  RilkeToday is Katharine Lillie Dearing's 27th birthday.  My daughter's courage amazes me.  How many things she has done for the sake of her career in acting.  She continually has faced down each of her fears for the sake of this career.   Fears like, rejection and whether or not she could make a living in a big city AND still create time and space to fill her life with things and people that bring her wonder and joy.   And as we speak she is now challenging some of her deepest fears.  So, I write this to remind her that her deepest treasure is barely a breath away.  AND to remind us all that it is worth the grand quest.  It is worth taking on that which we are most frightened by because (as is true in the realm of myth and magic) it is in those moments the great transformation occurs.  The frog becomes a prince.  In Phantom of the Opera, she kisses his ugly face and he frees her.  We must prove ourselves worthy or our deepest treasures, before they will reveal themselves to us and drop their costume of our deepest fears.  We must prove to our sweet souls that we won't let their deepest treasure be co-opted by the strategic mind, the ego.Yes, it is true, that which you resist most or fear most, you will one day discover this to be the source of the greatest healing and comfort.  You will say things like:  "O, if only I had known, that what I most wanted and longed for all my life, was actually in the thing I most despised."   Let's say your greatest fear is being unaccessible, not there for others, unavailable and/or self-consumed.  Yet one day for strange reasons you risk  being that one who is unaccessible and unavailable to others and find the greatest peace you have ever known, the peace that surpasses understanding.So, Kate as I sit on the sidelines of your life watching you take on, challenge after challenge, always rising to the occasion, and always overcoming your fears...I realize that you are my teacher.  Your dream is much harder to be faithful to, than many others.  The path less clear and so many examples of those who tried and failed.  Yet, nothing stops you, angel girl.  Who would have guessed that angelic little easy going, baby girl who entered the world 27 years ago would turn out to be an amazon warrior for her right to have a life that takes her breath away.  It will be so angel.  It will be so. 

Earth's crammed with heaven

"Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God;" This could have been written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning about my son Zachary Robert Dearing who is celebrating his 23rd birthday today.  Since his arrival he has grabbed for this earth as if it were indeed crammed with all things divine.  At age 2 in the grocery store checkout, he would stretch away from me to watch the cashier, mesmerized.  (He received a toy cash register for his next Christmas).  At age 5,  he pursued T-ball, basketball and any other sport with such focus and determination that he was typically the coach's example to the other five year olds.  At early as 3 years old when he was giving his new birthday roller blades a trial, he fell.  Then promptly picked himself up with "Good fall, Zac" and went back after it again.Zachary has treated this world as if it truly is sacred, as if it were indeed created by God, (whether in 7 days or via the big bang and evolution), matters not so much to him as loving planet earth well. Loving it though, not with a mother's or father's love, but as lover.  He devours this world and is the most present person to each of his experiences I have ever known.   He expects to fall in love with all aspects of earthly life and so he does and has; now for 23 years.  You know with all the focus on saving this planet I wonder if we are really present to  it?  Do we truly experience it?  Do we love it and more importantly our own precious lives as if they will never come again?  Because each moment will never come again.  Somehow Zachary, from the moment he arrived (he slept only 10 hours a day as an infant... until he was 14 years old) has intuitively known how to love this world and his life here as if he had only this one shot at it.I know something about loving one's life.  I was raised by a man who truly loved his life.  Zachary's grandfather, Robert Wonders loved all the days of his life.  But more quietly than Zachary.  Zachary's enthusiasm for the world can take one aback, especially in his younger days.  He takes up space.  He has big ideas and pursues them and most importantly he does not focus on outcome.  He focuses on the hunt.  He celebrates each achievement, mourns his losses but never for more than 24 hours, then on to the next pursuit.  It is clear that victory is not the point.  The point is life.  The point is being "all in" his life.  The point is being truly alive.What does this have to do with you and with me?Ask yourself,"Where am I concerned with outcome?"  or"Whether something makes sense enough to give it a shot?" or"How will I look doing it?" or"What so and so might think of me?"or some other form of doubt that is distracting you from channeling your inner Zachary Robert Dearing and simply loving this "earth crammed with Heaven?"  Happy Birthday, Tiger boy!