- Two impulses circling each other in an endless dance resulting in a divided awareness.
- Doing the same things and expecting different results.
Love to you and yours....
Sunday, February 7, 2010
What is addiction?
Love to you and yours....
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Sustaining the Mind
The ability to think skillfully and to sustain one’s mind with a positive attitude are inherent capabilities.
Lessons of the Mind
Learn to control your mind, rather than have your mind control you.
Teachers show you the path, but it’s up to you to walk the path.
One’s own experience is the teaching.
Your own mind is the real teacher.
How do I develop actions that support my intention?
· Ask Yourself: What’s happening that gives rise to emotions that cause pain and reinforce ineffective habits?
· Gain confidence in your potential, rather than on the confusion that oppresses your capabilities.
Lessons of the Mind
Learn to control your mind, rather than have your mind control you.
Teachers show you the path, but it’s up to you to walk the path.
One’s own experience is the teaching.
Your own mind is the real teacher.
How do I develop actions that support my intention?
· Ask Yourself: What’s happening that gives rise to emotions that cause pain and reinforce ineffective habits?
· Gain confidence in your potential, rather than on the confusion that oppresses your capabilities.
· Trust in your basic goodness.
Merit
· Merit is gathering causes and conditions that allow you to have a certain level of well-being.
· Become good at what you do and you will receive compensation.
· If you want to be selfish, then be selfish intelligently.
Self-importance
· Self importance is the drive to become important.
· None of what we seek is permanent.
· When you have a great deal of self-importance, you will never be able to enjoy whatever you possess that you may have gathered (merit) through hard work, wit and cunning.
Reducing self-importance
· Apply to others the same sense of cherish that you have for yourself.
· Develop the ability to be guided, not by your own self-importance, but by the need of others.
· Develop the ability to love, care and be concerned.
· You can then begin to sustain yourself with your innate positive qualities, rather than strive to become important.
Self-degradation
· Self-degradation is being full of yourself, but in a negative way.
· When you self-reflect and develop positive actions, you realize that there is nothing fundamentally wrong.
· You cannot be free from suffering if your mind does not support you.
Pain
· When we feel pain, it is a moment of truth.
· It’s a message: Right now is the moment when I could do something different.
· You can take a positive attitude toward suffering and pain.
· Go through a little withdrawal process to learn to simply be with the experience, rather than react to it or try to fix it.
· Pain is only “my pain” when you are in a confused state.
· Do not personalize the pain.
· Accept that the pain is neither good nor bad.
· Intense emotional pain can be related to a bell going off. It’s a signal to shift a pattern.
Confusion
· Confusion is being bewildered or overwhelmed.
· Go beyond confusion and accept the experience.
· Remember that there is nothing fundamentally wrong.
· Sustain your mind with a positive attitude.
Self-reflection
· Self-reflection is the ability to look inward.
· Without self-reflection, you will never be able to catch the habitual response.
· When confusion is not there, self-absorption is not there, the mind can both know something and know itself.
What should I do about confusion?
· Listen to the teachings and contemplate them.
· Have the teachings illuminate the experience.
· Be interested in reflecting on yourself.
· When you look closely at yourself, you will see not only your wisdom mind, you will also see your craziness, your neuroses and lack of kindness.
Devotion
· Wake up to the teachings.
· It’s called “Devotion”: a relationship you stick with through thick and thin in order to obtain enlightenment.
Resource:
Pema Chodron, Dzigar Kongtrul. (January 2006). Shambhala Sun (14,3), Boulder, CO.
Merit
· Merit is gathering causes and conditions that allow you to have a certain level of well-being.
· Become good at what you do and you will receive compensation.
· If you want to be selfish, then be selfish intelligently.
Self-importance
· Self importance is the drive to become important.
· None of what we seek is permanent.
· When you have a great deal of self-importance, you will never be able to enjoy whatever you possess that you may have gathered (merit) through hard work, wit and cunning.
Reducing self-importance
· Apply to others the same sense of cherish that you have for yourself.
· Develop the ability to be guided, not by your own self-importance, but by the need of others.
· Develop the ability to love, care and be concerned.
· You can then begin to sustain yourself with your innate positive qualities, rather than strive to become important.
Self-degradation
· Self-degradation is being full of yourself, but in a negative way.
· When you self-reflect and develop positive actions, you realize that there is nothing fundamentally wrong.
· You cannot be free from suffering if your mind does not support you.
Pain
· When we feel pain, it is a moment of truth.
· It’s a message: Right now is the moment when I could do something different.
· You can take a positive attitude toward suffering and pain.
· Go through a little withdrawal process to learn to simply be with the experience, rather than react to it or try to fix it.
· Pain is only “my pain” when you are in a confused state.
· Do not personalize the pain.
· Accept that the pain is neither good nor bad.
· Intense emotional pain can be related to a bell going off. It’s a signal to shift a pattern.
Confusion
· Confusion is being bewildered or overwhelmed.
· Go beyond confusion and accept the experience.
· Remember that there is nothing fundamentally wrong.
· Sustain your mind with a positive attitude.
Self-reflection
· Self-reflection is the ability to look inward.
· Without self-reflection, you will never be able to catch the habitual response.
· When confusion is not there, self-absorption is not there, the mind can both know something and know itself.
What should I do about confusion?
· Listen to the teachings and contemplate them.
· Have the teachings illuminate the experience.
· Be interested in reflecting on yourself.
· When you look closely at yourself, you will see not only your wisdom mind, you will also see your craziness, your neuroses and lack of kindness.
Devotion
· Wake up to the teachings.
· It’s called “Devotion”: a relationship you stick with through thick and thin in order to obtain enlightenment.
Resource:
Pema Chodron, Dzigar Kongtrul. (January 2006). Shambhala Sun (14,3), Boulder, CO.
Friday, February 5, 2010
The A-LIST: A Model of Recovery ©
Finding Celebrity in Recovery
Many of us who came of age in the 1970s remember an era of waste and mindlessness. As we transitioned into adulthood, the initiation process was fast and painful. There were no discussions. There were no boundaries. It was animalistic at best. We paid homage to wild rockers, fermented wheat and cheap weed. The more drugs our celebrities ingested, the more we honored them. If you drank and did drugs, you were cool. You had made it on an A-List of sorts: the A-List of partiers, and in our delusional minds, we were one step closer to celebrity.
Is it really any different in 2010? Are we perhaps getting closer to a time when those who have reached recovery status rather than celebrity status might be the preferred A-List to follow? Could we ever hear ourselves say “I choose Awareness over intoxication; I choose Learning over distraction; I choose Integration over polarity; I choose Success over distress; I choose Teaching over avoiding.”
What if we were to follow a recovery A-LIST, one that offers an approach to healing and offers a model of change. This five step process would be designed to help us wake up, end the habitual cycle of self-destruction, rediscover our true selves, and find meaning in life.
The path of recovery can be viewed as a return to a balanced way of life. It is not an event, but rather a process, which encompasses all aspects our life. The process of recovery begins when there is awareness that a problem exists and there is subsequently a willingness to learn more about the problem. This process continues as we work to make changes in negative lifestyle patterns and behaviors. We do this by learning new skills. As we go out and practice these new skills, we experience a sense of integration and purpose. We observe our life growing in new and positive directions. Over time, we develop a sense of self efficacy and success, which increases the possibility that these new attitudes and behaviors will continue and broaden.
As humans, we have a Prefrontal Cortex, which comprises approximately 40 percent of our brain. This higher brain makes us unique from others in the animal world in that we have this amazing ability to differentiate, analyze, plan and judge. Unfortunately, this ability also lends itself to compulsive and impulsive behaviors in that we believe that just because we have a thought, we must do something about it. According to American Psychiatrist Douglas M. Burns, humans obscure unconscious feelings by preoccupying themselves with thoughts and actions. Those who desperately try to repress overpowering and potentially negative emotions or impulses, such as fear, anger, lust or guilt, will often feel confused and thus develop neurotic symptoms. It's as if our emotional being and our rational brain are at war, which leads to a feeling of fragmentation. It is only when we are able to integrate our emotions with our thoughts that we heal our fragmentation and start the process of recovery.
By gaining a better understanding of how the mind contributes to overall health, we can take steps to begin the process of integration and thus develop emotional stability, becoming more social, empathic and hemispherically integrated. This process enhances our ability to build more complex interpersonal structures and to better realize our full creative potential. There are no drugs, no secrets, no elaborate techniques or mystical formulas. Your daily life becomes the fertile ground for self discipline, insight and understanding. Your life becomes lived, rather than just a series of thoughts.
The A-LIST of Recovery is designed to help us wake up, acquire information, integrate our fragmented selves, develop mastery over our lives, build self-efficacy, and share our new found knowledge with others, a profound step in developing our own higher intelligence, the intelligence of compassion.
A LIST of Recovery includes five steps:
Awareness
Awaken through awareness. We have learned many skills in this life. So, it becomes easy for us to live our lives unconsciously. We often eat unconsciously; work and play unconsciously; have whole conversations unconsciously; meet and date our mates unconsciously; we can even die unconsciously. Living this way does not really take much effort. When we wake up to our lives; that is, when we begin the process of choosing to lay our eyes on various aspects of our existence in a mindful way; to actually look at each and every moment as an opportunity to make a difference, we are, you might say, awakening to a world of possibilities. The job of the brain is to generate thoughts, but it is the mind, the seat of human unconsciousness, that is at the core of our existence. When we use our mind to look at a thought (internal observation), it goes away. This brings us into the present moment, leaving the past behind and the future unseen. It is the past and the future that get in the way of the present. Suffer one moment, not all moments.
When we have awareness, we are able to stop in mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-behavior, and ask the question, "What am I aware of?"
Learn
Discover a love of learning. According to His Holiness the Dalai Llama, “Knowledge is the insight that penetrates the nature of reality.” His Holiness lists three stages in obtaining wisdom. The first stage involves sensory input, such as seeing or hearing. This is when we read or hear about something. The second stage involves thinking and analyzing. This is when we think about the issue or topic fervently, and by gaining familiarity, our understanding becomes clearer. We will begin to have certain feelings or experiences about the topic at hand. The third stage can be thought of as "mindfully acquired wisdom," the Dalai Llama says. This is when we not only intellectually understand the subject matter, but also, through mindful experience, we are able to feel it. Being involved in the process of learning helps us build mastery, which is the ultimate in long term gratification. It's doing as opposed to knowing. It's "walking the talk."
As learners, it is important to:
Be Interested
Keep an open mind
Stay committed
Ask yourself, "How do I learn?" emotionally? physically? mentally? by doing? by seeing? by hearing? by feeling?
Learning changes the brain. If the brain doesn’t change, learning does not take place.
Integrate
Set an intention to integrate through insight. According to Buddhist Nun Pema Chodron, "Splitting in two is the moment when peace turns to war.” A person who operates from a fragmented self has difficulty focusing, dreaming, planning, judging, creating and directing. The fragmented self seems to be a result of psychological trauma. When we experience opposing intentions, we develop a split or "splintered" personality, which results in stress and emotional pain. It seems important then to begin the process of unification and healing. We can do this by personally taking responsibility for ourselves so we create change. It is only when we find the center that we can appreciate the extremes.
The Mitakuye Oyasin, a Lakota Sioux prayer, points out, "You are only as powerful as that for which you stand. Do you stand for more money in the bank and a bigger house? Do you stand for an attractive mate? Do you stand for imposing your way of thinking upon others? These are the stands of the personality seeking to satisfy its wants. Do you stand for perfection, for the beauty and compassion of each soul? Do you stand for the power of love and the clarity of wisdom? Do you stand for forgiveness and humbleness? These are the stands of the personality that has aligned itself with its soul. This is the position of a truly powerful personality."
Carl Jung, the famous psychotherapist, noted that we come into life with an essential blueprint of what we are and that all psychotherapy and growth is about finding our way back to the essential self.
Ask yourself, "Where am I split?"
Succeed
Succeed at Stability. According to Burns, the more we learn how to quiet our minds, the more we gain insight and relinquish undesirable feelings. It's at this point that our lives begin to feel more stable, more centered, more focused. We begin to feel safe again. We may even be ready to mourn our past, grieve our losses--loss of self, loss of innocence, loss of relationships, etc.
And through this process, we begin to build a sense of self-efficacy, the ability to know that we can do something, and this helps us find the motivation to continue. The words of Visuddhimagga highlight this process: "For when a very skillful archer, who is working to split a hair, actually splits the hair on once occasion, he discerns the modes of the position of his feet, the bow, the bowstring, and the arrow thus: 'I split the hair as I stood thus, with the bow thus, the bowstring thus, the arrow thus.' From then on he recaptures those same modes and repeats the splitting of the hair without fail."
We begin to be able to say: “I think I can do it. I can make that decision on my own. I can cope with my life. I can solve problems using my logical mind and my feelings. I can soothe myself when I am anxious and alone. I can develop pride and self-respect as someone who contributes to the world.”
Ask yourself, "Can I do it?" "What do I need to succeed?"
Teach
Teach with compassion. As we gain experience and self understanding, we become more willing and able to share what we know. At its most fundamental level, teaching is a conduit for creativity. At it's highest level, teaching helps us develop a truly compassionate attitude towards others. When we teach, we have a responsibility towards others, e.g. the wish to help them overcome their problems. Teaching increases our sense of caring about others, and thus, increases our own sense of well-being. Ask yourself, "What am I willing to share?"
To quote the Dalai Lama, “There is nothing like to teaching to help one learn.”
Sources:
Burns, Douglas M. (1994). "Buddhist Publication Society Wheel Publication No. 88; 137k/45pp
Chödrön, Pema. (Nov. 2007). “Choosing Peace,” Shambhala Sun.
Singh, Renuka (1998). “His Holiness the Dalai Lama: The Path to Tranquility,” The Penguin Press.
Many of us who came of age in the 1970s remember an era of waste and mindlessness. As we transitioned into adulthood, the initiation process was fast and painful. There were no discussions. There were no boundaries. It was animalistic at best. We paid homage to wild rockers, fermented wheat and cheap weed. The more drugs our celebrities ingested, the more we honored them. If you drank and did drugs, you were cool. You had made it on an A-List of sorts: the A-List of partiers, and in our delusional minds, we were one step closer to celebrity.
Is it really any different in 2010? Are we perhaps getting closer to a time when those who have reached recovery status rather than celebrity status might be the preferred A-List to follow? Could we ever hear ourselves say “I choose Awareness over intoxication; I choose Learning over distraction; I choose Integration over polarity; I choose Success over distress; I choose Teaching over avoiding.”
What if we were to follow a recovery A-LIST, one that offers an approach to healing and offers a model of change. This five step process would be designed to help us wake up, end the habitual cycle of self-destruction, rediscover our true selves, and find meaning in life.
The path of recovery can be viewed as a return to a balanced way of life. It is not an event, but rather a process, which encompasses all aspects our life. The process of recovery begins when there is awareness that a problem exists and there is subsequently a willingness to learn more about the problem. This process continues as we work to make changes in negative lifestyle patterns and behaviors. We do this by learning new skills. As we go out and practice these new skills, we experience a sense of integration and purpose. We observe our life growing in new and positive directions. Over time, we develop a sense of self efficacy and success, which increases the possibility that these new attitudes and behaviors will continue and broaden.
As humans, we have a Prefrontal Cortex, which comprises approximately 40 percent of our brain. This higher brain makes us unique from others in the animal world in that we have this amazing ability to differentiate, analyze, plan and judge. Unfortunately, this ability also lends itself to compulsive and impulsive behaviors in that we believe that just because we have a thought, we must do something about it. According to American Psychiatrist Douglas M. Burns, humans obscure unconscious feelings by preoccupying themselves with thoughts and actions. Those who desperately try to repress overpowering and potentially negative emotions or impulses, such as fear, anger, lust or guilt, will often feel confused and thus develop neurotic symptoms. It's as if our emotional being and our rational brain are at war, which leads to a feeling of fragmentation. It is only when we are able to integrate our emotions with our thoughts that we heal our fragmentation and start the process of recovery.
By gaining a better understanding of how the mind contributes to overall health, we can take steps to begin the process of integration and thus develop emotional stability, becoming more social, empathic and hemispherically integrated. This process enhances our ability to build more complex interpersonal structures and to better realize our full creative potential. There are no drugs, no secrets, no elaborate techniques or mystical formulas. Your daily life becomes the fertile ground for self discipline, insight and understanding. Your life becomes lived, rather than just a series of thoughts.
The A-LIST of Recovery is designed to help us wake up, acquire information, integrate our fragmented selves, develop mastery over our lives, build self-efficacy, and share our new found knowledge with others, a profound step in developing our own higher intelligence, the intelligence of compassion.
A LIST of Recovery includes five steps:
Awareness
Awaken through awareness. We have learned many skills in this life. So, it becomes easy for us to live our lives unconsciously. We often eat unconsciously; work and play unconsciously; have whole conversations unconsciously; meet and date our mates unconsciously; we can even die unconsciously. Living this way does not really take much effort. When we wake up to our lives; that is, when we begin the process of choosing to lay our eyes on various aspects of our existence in a mindful way; to actually look at each and every moment as an opportunity to make a difference, we are, you might say, awakening to a world of possibilities. The job of the brain is to generate thoughts, but it is the mind, the seat of human unconsciousness, that is at the core of our existence. When we use our mind to look at a thought (internal observation), it goes away. This brings us into the present moment, leaving the past behind and the future unseen. It is the past and the future that get in the way of the present. Suffer one moment, not all moments.
When we have awareness, we are able to stop in mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-behavior, and ask the question, "What am I aware of?"
Learn
Discover a love of learning. According to His Holiness the Dalai Llama, “Knowledge is the insight that penetrates the nature of reality.” His Holiness lists three stages in obtaining wisdom. The first stage involves sensory input, such as seeing or hearing. This is when we read or hear about something. The second stage involves thinking and analyzing. This is when we think about the issue or topic fervently, and by gaining familiarity, our understanding becomes clearer. We will begin to have certain feelings or experiences about the topic at hand. The third stage can be thought of as "mindfully acquired wisdom," the Dalai Llama says. This is when we not only intellectually understand the subject matter, but also, through mindful experience, we are able to feel it. Being involved in the process of learning helps us build mastery, which is the ultimate in long term gratification. It's doing as opposed to knowing. It's "walking the talk."
As learners, it is important to:
Be Interested
Keep an open mind
Stay committed
Ask yourself, "How do I learn?" emotionally? physically? mentally? by doing? by seeing? by hearing? by feeling?
Learning changes the brain. If the brain doesn’t change, learning does not take place.
Integrate
Set an intention to integrate through insight. According to Buddhist Nun Pema Chodron, "Splitting in two is the moment when peace turns to war.” A person who operates from a fragmented self has difficulty focusing, dreaming, planning, judging, creating and directing. The fragmented self seems to be a result of psychological trauma. When we experience opposing intentions, we develop a split or "splintered" personality, which results in stress and emotional pain. It seems important then to begin the process of unification and healing. We can do this by personally taking responsibility for ourselves so we create change. It is only when we find the center that we can appreciate the extremes.
The Mitakuye Oyasin, a Lakota Sioux prayer, points out, "You are only as powerful as that for which you stand. Do you stand for more money in the bank and a bigger house? Do you stand for an attractive mate? Do you stand for imposing your way of thinking upon others? These are the stands of the personality seeking to satisfy its wants. Do you stand for perfection, for the beauty and compassion of each soul? Do you stand for the power of love and the clarity of wisdom? Do you stand for forgiveness and humbleness? These are the stands of the personality that has aligned itself with its soul. This is the position of a truly powerful personality."
Carl Jung, the famous psychotherapist, noted that we come into life with an essential blueprint of what we are and that all psychotherapy and growth is about finding our way back to the essential self.
Ask yourself, "Where am I split?"
Succeed
Succeed at Stability. According to Burns, the more we learn how to quiet our minds, the more we gain insight and relinquish undesirable feelings. It's at this point that our lives begin to feel more stable, more centered, more focused. We begin to feel safe again. We may even be ready to mourn our past, grieve our losses--loss of self, loss of innocence, loss of relationships, etc.
And through this process, we begin to build a sense of self-efficacy, the ability to know that we can do something, and this helps us find the motivation to continue. The words of Visuddhimagga highlight this process: "For when a very skillful archer, who is working to split a hair, actually splits the hair on once occasion, he discerns the modes of the position of his feet, the bow, the bowstring, and the arrow thus: 'I split the hair as I stood thus, with the bow thus, the bowstring thus, the arrow thus.' From then on he recaptures those same modes and repeats the splitting of the hair without fail."
We begin to be able to say: “I think I can do it. I can make that decision on my own. I can cope with my life. I can solve problems using my logical mind and my feelings. I can soothe myself when I am anxious and alone. I can develop pride and self-respect as someone who contributes to the world.”
Ask yourself, "Can I do it?" "What do I need to succeed?"
Teach
Teach with compassion. As we gain experience and self understanding, we become more willing and able to share what we know. At its most fundamental level, teaching is a conduit for creativity. At it's highest level, teaching helps us develop a truly compassionate attitude towards others. When we teach, we have a responsibility towards others, e.g. the wish to help them overcome their problems. Teaching increases our sense of caring about others, and thus, increases our own sense of well-being. Ask yourself, "What am I willing to share?"
To quote the Dalai Lama, “There is nothing like to teaching to help one learn.”
Sources:
Burns, Douglas M. (1994). "Buddhist Publication Society Wheel Publication No. 88; 137k/45pp
Chödrön, Pema. (Nov. 2007). “Choosing Peace,” Shambhala Sun.
Singh, Renuka (1998). “His Holiness the Dalai Lama: The Path to Tranquility,” The Penguin Press.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Gut Feeling
So I awoke with a gut feeling this morning. It was a hot fiery ball of substance plastered to the internal walls of my solar plexus.
I let go yet one more time. This morning marks the transition from one job to another. This is a difficult place: transition. It is something I crave; I must do; and something that causes anxiety. I know it has to do with the fear of the unknown. It has a lot to do with the feeling of being alone.
When the anchor lets go, there is chaos. I gave my resignation at my place of employment one month ago. "That's what professionals do," my supervisor reminded me yesterday when I complained that giving four weeks notice was not a comfortable process to live through. I was forced to watch my transition during this last month as if seated from a higher place (literally). It was if I was a fly on the wall. It was interesting, to say the least. I have heard that outsiders unite when they feel excluded; that there is power in numbers; strength in singing a similar song! This uniting is largely due to ignorance; for that which is not known is feared. To sit and observe the aftermath in its chaotic state...OUCH! It hurt.
As I prepared to leave my post at my corner office, I watched as my co-workers scrambled for the crumbs I might leave behind. I hesitate to stay it...but here goes: it was like watching vultures. I relinquished my desk; my chair; my client's chair; my blue-lined sand tray; my two windows to the outside; my wrought iron table with burnished slate tiles; my blue carpet; my bookshelf with a few scattered books on it. I left behind my workplace, my job, my sense of security; a bi monthly paycheck; my sense of knowledge; my sense of accomplishment; my sense of place, space, and gravity. I left it all behind with a bow and a string of prayer flags and I walked out the door, with a tear and a glance back through the window with blinds half drawn. I was on the outside and could barely see back my way back in. I walked out with the image of Charlie Brown, bald head and all, disappearing behind a closed door; leaving Lucy, his psychiatrist behind, to walk into the cold, cruel top down world. School is out. Or is it?
This brings up a question: How many times will I have to relinquish before I stay? And this question leads to more questions: Will I ever stay? Is letting go the only way? How do I connect and let go in the same breath? How do I love and grieve in the same heart beat?
My thought is that school is not over. I know that we do not heal but just one time. We have many commencements on life's path. How many are left to go? Life is a parade of endless grades; each succession leads to new awareness, learning, integration, success and new teachings.
I know the answer.
Love to you and yours....
I let go yet one more time. This morning marks the transition from one job to another. This is a difficult place: transition. It is something I crave; I must do; and something that causes anxiety. I know it has to do with the fear of the unknown. It has a lot to do with the feeling of being alone.
When the anchor lets go, there is chaos. I gave my resignation at my place of employment one month ago. "That's what professionals do," my supervisor reminded me yesterday when I complained that giving four weeks notice was not a comfortable process to live through. I was forced to watch my transition during this last month as if seated from a higher place (literally). It was if I was a fly on the wall. It was interesting, to say the least. I have heard that outsiders unite when they feel excluded; that there is power in numbers; strength in singing a similar song! This uniting is largely due to ignorance; for that which is not known is feared. To sit and observe the aftermath in its chaotic state...OUCH! It hurt.
As I prepared to leave my post at my corner office, I watched as my co-workers scrambled for the crumbs I might leave behind. I hesitate to stay it...but here goes: it was like watching vultures. I relinquished my desk; my chair; my client's chair; my blue-lined sand tray; my two windows to the outside; my wrought iron table with burnished slate tiles; my blue carpet; my bookshelf with a few scattered books on it. I left behind my workplace, my job, my sense of security; a bi monthly paycheck; my sense of knowledge; my sense of accomplishment; my sense of place, space, and gravity. I left it all behind with a bow and a string of prayer flags and I walked out the door, with a tear and a glance back through the window with blinds half drawn. I was on the outside and could barely see back my way back in. I walked out with the image of Charlie Brown, bald head and all, disappearing behind a closed door; leaving Lucy, his psychiatrist behind, to walk into the cold, cruel top down world. School is out. Or is it?
This brings up a question: How many times will I have to relinquish before I stay? And this question leads to more questions: Will I ever stay? Is letting go the only way? How do I connect and let go in the same breath? How do I love and grieve in the same heart beat?
My thought is that school is not over. I know that we do not heal but just one time. We have many commencements on life's path. How many are left to go? Life is a parade of endless grades; each succession leads to new awareness, learning, integration, success and new teachings.
I know the answer.
Love to you and yours....
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
