"What will you do, God...?"
From the great poet Ranier Maria Rilke...“What will you do, God, when I die?I am your pitcher (when I shatter?)I am your drink (when I go bitter?)I, your garment; I, your craft.Without me what reason have you?..."
It is true, for each of us. We are a little piece of God. A particular expression of the Infinite and if we pull back on that expression, when we judge that expression, we judge Divine, we doubt. We think we know best, but the part of us that is doing that thinking is the protective system called the ego or strategic mind. This part of us is on the defense. But if, instead of listening to it, we turn the other direction, we do and be what we love, we wholeheartedly move toward what we love, then we give God full reign. AND we “feel” like God…big "G" not small. Feeling like a small "g" god, is grandiosity and hubris. It may feel good in the moment but it is what Jungians might call being caught in an "inflation".BUT if instead we know, we actually experience ourselves as a particular expression of the divine, then we want to kneel and kiss the ground. We do not feel certain or powerful. We feel awe. We feel wonder. We feel humility. We feel like,“really, really? I get to be and do this? Oh goodness," or "'Beam me up Scottie'. When what you love, loves you back!”What if that is the secret? The really big well kept secret? What if that is God? What you love? Don’t settle for god, it’s like trying to live on only cake, or only adrenalin. It ends up leaving you empty, literally and figuratively. The ultimate high that drops you to the ultimate low. BUT there is another path, literally that puts allows you to move to another level.Einstein said, “you can’t solve the problem at the level of thinking that created it” so instead of HIGH and then LOW and then HIGH…etc. how about something that is not in between, or in the middle of those two, but rather of an entirely different order? That order is akin to the wonder and joy we felt as children, or on Christmas morning, or when watching a doodle bug curl into itself, or the first time we realize we are riding our bike without training wheels. That feeling the Infinite's way of giving us a green light to keep going in that direction. The direction of what we love. What if it is really that simply? And those doubting and critical thoughts? Well, they never enlarge us. They never call us to become someone we can truly admire. Instead they call us to play it safe. To stay separate and to protect and cling to what we have. They call us to distrust not only others but ourselves and ultimately our destinies.If like Rilke, above I truly trust the little piece of stardust that is me...well, then paradoxically I quit judging myself and focusing on myself and whether or not I am good enough. What I do instead, is simply go out and express my little piece of heaven. Just like the old song said..."this little light of mine...I'm gonna let it shine..."[audio m4a="http://www.nancywonders.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/03-This-Little-Light-of-Mine.m4a"][/audio]
"Suffering is pain that hasn't found it's meaning yet..."
This quote from neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor's book My Stroke of Insight. Her 2008 TED talk, My Stroke of Insight by the same name, and currently holds the number 2 spot for most popular TED talks. Jill's left-side brain stroke sent her on a journey that included an 8 year recovery. Along the way, she decided that even though having her left brain largely unavailable to her put her in a very peaceful, harmonious place, it also restricted her ability to communicate and contribute to our world. She challenged herself to bring her damaged left hemisphere back on line WITHOUT reengage its negative emotional baggage. She refers to this part of her brain as her story teller.She did the miraculous thing of figuring out how to stop her story teller (left brain identity centers) from attaching to pain. She discovered that our emotions only last about 90 seconds in our blood stream. If she was feeling a negative feeling longer than that it meant her story teller was somehow keeping it alive or that she was somehow attaching to it emotionally. Toward the end of the audiobook, she says "suffering is pain that hasn't found it's meaning yet". I flashed back on Victor Frankel's Man's Search for Meaning and how his drive to understand why in conditions of extreme pain and deprivation (Nazi Concentration Camps), some people psychologically connected to the best and most resilient in themselves and others did not. Meaning and purpose played a significant role he concluded. It allowed people to endure pain while somehow also seemingly transcending it.When the pain we are experiencing has a context, when we create a larger meaning and purpose for our trials and struggles, they can enlarge us. We may well experience pain, yet we do not have to experience suffering. One of my teachers Richard Heckler Strozzi spoke of your "for the sake of". Using this concept, when there is a challenge in our lives, especially one that is painful to us, what this challenge "for the sake of"? Or what "for the sake of " could you give your pain? My sister, as she supported her husband through his long journey and eventual death from colon cancer appeared to create one of the most powerful contexts for his cancer and the pain they all endured. Looking from the outside and observing her compassion for herself, for him and their daughters her "For the sake of" appeared to be living fully each moment that they had together. They were both surprisingly present to the day to day joys available to them during so much of this journey. Not necessarily "laugh out loud" joy, though she did plenty of that too, more like a deep abiding gratefulness for whatever particular moment she was experiencing. And he seemed to be present without agenda and available to the moment and what was happening in a remarkable way. The story teller (suffering generator) gets banished when that happens. You know where this is going. If you are "suffering", if you are experiencing negative thinking or emotional energy, look around for a large enough meaning for your pain and the suffering may well dissipate.
They're really saying I love you...
They’re really saying “I love you”…Everyone who has heard this song loves it. It is a song of wonder and joy. A song of seeing deeply to the heart of what is happening. Yes, on one level that person that just reached out and said “Hi” or “What’s up?” or “How’s it going?” is following a customary greeting practice when we meet someone. But what Louis Armstrong knew, is that this was only the surface of the interaction. At the heart of the greeting was “I love you”, a desire for connection and community; an example of caring and kindness.I can almost hear your smart minds going, “How can s/he know that?” Or maybe it is saying “That is a sweet idea but really? Come on.” Here is what I know for sure: we are all a mess of different feelings and motivations and intentions. We are everything. None of us purely good or bad. That’s what makes us so interesting … and impossible to predict! For me it doesn’t matter if the idea that someone is reaching out to me is accurate or not. When I choose to see a greeting as a request for contact and connection, my better angels take over, I become someone I admire. AND the world becomes a little brighter, softer and filled with wonder! Just like the song says.So, where can you shift your seeing and hearing just enough to hear "They're really saying "I love you"? Often it is only those smart minds of ours that cover over our experiences of wonder and joy with the mind's need for predictability and control. Predictability and control are fine for machines and schedules but they can hurt living things, like relationships. The choice is ours moment by moment. This new year, I apprentice myself to wonder and joy. To turn my dial to the frequency of ..."they're really saying, I love you" I so hope you will join me.
"These are the days of miracle and wonder..." Paul Simon
When I left my homestead of 25 years and moved 6 blocks south to my dream cottage home, a 1928 craftsman bungalow,I envisioned an ache in my heart that would never really leave. I mean my babies grew up here. They only home they ever knew. And we had to say goodbye to it and those memories. A lump in my throat accompanied me as I went through getting the home ready for sale and then packing up to move. I NEVER envisioned, being back at said homestead on retreat while the men who own it now, vacation elsewhere. I thought I would have to say goodbye forever.But today I sit next to a newly re-plastered perfect pool, in a new remodeled home that still structurally holds the best of my "old" homestead. And I am amazed at how wrong I was about what I thought the future with my children's and my home would hold for me/them. AND more importantly I so created unnecessary suffering by getting out ahead into a future that ...never happened! Instead I got to leave a home that was too much for me and move into a new chapter in my life. AND I got visiting privileges. How great is that?!"These are indeed the days of miracle and wonder..." The miracle of shifting your mind and the wonder of opening your heart abound. Had I trusted the future and trusted myself to meet it, I could have saved myself some unnecessary pain and heartache.
- Where do you need to open your heart and trust yourself to meet the future?
- Where are you out ahead of today with a story that diminishes you in large or small ways?
- Where can you make a miracle just by looking at something differently?
The ideal and the real...
Mom's pin-curled hair, now loose and blowing in the March Wisconsin winds as she applies the clothes pins to the wet laundry on the clothes lines strung through the backyard by my father. Four children, I the oldest at 8 years, followed by three more all two years apart. Her life. Her busy and full life. Many fighting for her lap and her attention. "Mama", "Mom", "Mary" ...my mother and many mothers' lives in the 1950s. It was a different time. Another time. Or is it?I watch my young friends, juggle work schedules and a variety of enrichment classes for multiple children. They are having their children closer together, like my parents generation did. And they are having larger families. As I sit on the large patio of the local city golf course looking out ...and back in time...I am struck with the cycles of life.When I was in that jam-packed family and house-holding phase of my own life, I missed time to read, time for me, time for museums, brunches and gallery walks. Now I have much time for all of these things. And I miss the sound of "mom" "momma". I miss being sought after and adored. I miss the fullness. The busyness of it all. Truth be told each phase of life has its exquisite beauties AND the places it falls short. I advise a young client who currently has no romantic love in her life to enjoy this time because when love finds her again her life and time, will no longer be primarily about just her and her own preferences. But do I heed my own advice?Not so much...Do I wake up excited about being the sole person I get to please and care for today? Somedays. Today, this day, I glance back and wish that I understood 20 years ago that to everything there is indeed a season. Such a life-long challenge for this visionary, this midwife of change and possibility, to fully embrace whatever cycle I am in, rather than lean into the next "ideal" vision, I glimpse. For too often that "ideal" arose out of an anxiety or sense of lack. Years back, when covered over in motherhood, I wondered if there would ever be time for me again. Would there be enough? Was I enough? And when I thought that thought I was leaning away from the reality of my life without deeply embracing it for its particular beauties and flaws. So often the inner dialogue then was "I better..." "I need to..." "and I have to..."So now when I hear myself say "I better______" and note an anxiety that time is running out, or that something negative will happen if I don't act now, I breathe and question that thought. Same thing with "I need to______". or "I have to_________." And often I discover that these thoughts have fear-scarcity-lack or some sort of anxiety lurking at their base.For example, today I could say to myself "Nancy you need to appreciate your current state of being single." And if I respond to that inner command it is ultimately a lack-based response. Ditto, if I say "Nancy, while you are still single you better enjoy and make the most of it." But, what happens, if I say to myself, "Nancy, lucky lady, you get the privilege of a low maintenance life with enough time to focus on those things that you set aside during the years you were raising your children"?Shift is what happens. Shift inside of me. Shift to a deep gratitude and a wholehearted embrace of the life I have been given.