Saturday, October 22, 2016

Unencumbered Love

I've been learning a lot about love this week.  My journey to the Midwest carried me first to visit 87- and 89-year-old aunts, one of which I hadn't seen for over 20 years and the other for much longer.  When the "younger" one and I left the older, we paused for a "group hug." The moment was so precious.  I felt like my heart would explode, and I could hardly hold back tears.  It had been wonderful catching up on the passing years with these two women, who had been such an important part of my youth.  However, the moment of our parting opened me in a way that I haven't allowed myself for a very long time.  Pure love flowed between us.

Forty-eight hours and a couple hundred miles later, I found myself joining my college roommate and her husband as they prepared for the rehearsal dinner preceding the marriage of their son.  We each had our roles, awesomely orchestrated by the roommate.  I experienced such joy in joining in the preparations for this young man, now 31 but whom I'd known since shortly after his birth.  When everything was in order, the three of us also paused for a "group hug," and once again, I felt such amazing love that I was certain my heart would break wide open.

I was reminded of a moment at least 25 years earlier when the groom-to-be was a youngster of four or five.  At that time, we had quite a love affair as one can only have with a four-year-old. The night before I left town after a visit, he crept into my room and asked if I would move to their city.  Similar to the two flows of love this week, I recall so vividly being overwhelmed with love and joy with this little boy that all these years later the feeling is as fresh as it was all those years ago.  

Yesterday, I took time from the busyness of pre-wedding events to pray, and the image that came to me at that time was of my heart in shackles, swelling so that it bulged beyond and between the constraints.  I immediately felt that my heart has been shackled by the pain of many heartbreaks, and this week it is bursting forth.  The term that came to me was unencumbered love.  In an instant that felt right, but I did look up the term "unencumbered" to clarify the meaning.  According to Google, to be "unencumbered" is "not having any burden or impediment." I suspect that unencumbered love is so free that it cannot be burdened.

The shackles that have protected my heart have been an impediment to a full experience of love.  In fact, until this week, I would say that "love" has been a concept or intellectual construct that I thought I understood but have rarely allowed myself to feel.  The realization also registered that, although I never articulated it or probably even thought about it that way before, I believe in the back of my mind, I've thought about love as a commodity.  I think I've seen it as something I give or something I receive.  In the instances this week I question whether we can give and receive love.  It seems to me that unencumbered love is just there to experience--to wash over us and take our breath away, forever changing us from the soul out.

As I am coming to know, "unencumbered love" requires complete and total surrender to the feeling, and in my case, I think the surrender means that I must let go of the protection that the shackles have provided and to risk the potential of pain in order to be vulnerable to the joy promised.

I am not sure I would have understood this on a spiritual level a week ago before the experiences on my journey. Having glimpsed the wonderful experience of love once again after so long, I ponder how to remove the restraints that I've allowed to remain in place for so long that removing them seems a formidable task. Yet, having glimpsed the wonder of unencumbered love, how can I not persist freedom from impediments to love?

I just really wonder, what if the more we allow ourselves to surrender and be engulfed in the vastness that is love that love itself is what can melt away all impediments, leaving us swimming in a sea of love.

Sunday, October 16, 2016

The Wanderer

Friday evening I invited a younger work colleague for dinner at my apartment.  Her own spiritual journey has been intensifying recently. She has frequently asked me questions about my journey.  Not that any of us are ever an expert on the journey, I do have a few more years in my spiritual journey experience bank.  Since we aren't working together any more, dinner seemed to be a more appropriate solution than attempting to text about the journey, as we have since I changed jobs.

After dinner, we pulled our chairs over to the bookshelf--the one with spiritual titles, not the one with books related to work.  I've been feeling spiritually fidgety for most of the year, but especially since changing jobs. As I shared with her some of my favorite titles, I was learning again for myself. When I pulled out Carol Pearson's The Hero Within, a book explicitly about the spiritual journey described through Jungian archetypes, a diagram fell out.  What immediately jumped to my eye as I glanced at "Three Turns Around the Hero's Wheel," (p. 14) was the archetype of "The Wanderer," whose purpose is to provide clarity to the next stage of life.

The diagram is like a pie with each of five pieces devoted to one of five archetypes.  The inner wedge of each piece/archetype describes the lessons for the first journey around the wheel.  Pearson explains that we go through the journey several times each life and with each we have a different lessons to learn on each archetype.  (I attempted to find a reproduction of the diagram online, but most are much more complicated than the simple-yet-clear version on yellowed pages that I have.  Markings on my own render it useless to others.)

The progression of archetypes that we go through starts with "orphan," where we learn "trust."  You might think about this as disappointment that things aren't as you might have thought they were but learning trust in an emerging, but not at all yet clear, world view. "Orphan" is followed by "Wanderer" where the lesson is "clarity."  This is how the "not at all yet clear world view" gets clarity--we listen and learn about the next evolution of how things really are.  You might also think about this as the time in the desert, demonstrated in many spiritual stories, including Abraham, Moses and Jesus, involve time spent alone in reflection.

After we have clarity, we move to the "Warrior," where we might have to fight for what we've received spiritual clarity about. Embarking on the lessons in order is critical; otherwise, we might be fighting for the wrong things.  The warrior is about learning and claiming "power."  The lesson after "Warrior" is that of "Martyr," where we learn about "love" and giving our lives to the Universe. The last of the five archetypes is the "Magician."  The lesson of the "Magician" is "joy."  Then we are ready to be "Orphans" again.

So what does this have to do with me...now?

I've spent a lot of time stuck in "Orphan."  Instead of learning the lesson of "trust," the long stall there exposed me to repeated examples where I couldn't/didn't let go of the expectations I had and move on to wander and figure things out.  My experience with this transition is that it requires a leap of faith, but each time I've had the courage to take it, everything has worked out perfectly.  For example, when I chose to leave Oregon, buy a house in North Carolina as I'd been guided to do, and drive across the country without a job or even knowing anyone, I was taken care of.  Work fell into may path within a week, but I had to wander first.

I've also spent way too much time in "Warrior" in recent years where I was fighting to survive rather than fighting for the spiritual truth I should have learned in "Wanderer."  When I've made the journey successfully before, I have found my inner power, the power that comes from connection with the divine and knowing if I do what is right and true, I will be OK.  When I've fought to survive, I've tried to control or manipulate things to assure I'd be taken care of rather than taking the leap of faith knowing I would be OK.

While the move to North Carolina worked out splendidly, there have been times when I have been "invited" into the desert, and I didn't follow, and it hasn't worked out so well.  On February 4, 2004, I received a clear message that I should move to Washington, D.C.  Depleted of resources from the dot.com bust and without a job in D.C., my reply was "I will do it when I have a job." I looked but didn't find one. Of course, that is not how this is supposed to work.  Leap of faith occurs first and then it works out.

One of the scripture readings in church today was about Jacob wrestling with the angel or God.  Our pastor said he always thought this passage was about our internal struggles.  Do I do what I want or do I do what God wants?  For the 28 months between my message to move to Washington and when I actually did move, almost everything of value was taken from me.  Yet, I struggled to control the transition by insisting on having a job first.  I should have wandered.

Last March when I told my old boss that I would leave my job at the end of the summer, I think what the Universe heard was that finally I had relented to go into the desert and find the next manifestation of me and my spiritual truth.  As the end of the summer approached, I was totally at peace.  I had accumulated vacation pay, and my financial planner and I had figured out how I could get by for several months after that.  Then, the job offers started coming--three of them, and they were good ones.  So I took the bait.  I could leave my job, go to a new one, and I wouldn't have to take the leap of faith, I thought to myself.  And, I also wouldn't learn the lesson of wandering.

When the diagram fell onto the floor Friday evening, in a flash I realized I had robbed myself of my season in the desert.  While it isn't exactly the bold leap of faith that leaving my old job without a new one would have been, I leave on Tuesday for a meandering trip to the Midwest, reconnecting with old friends and one of my few remaining relatives.  The wedding of the son of a dear friend lies at the end of the journey, but in the stillness of my road trip, I expect that I will find passages into my truth.

Sunday, October 9, 2016

$25,000 or 2,000 chocolate bars

In my last post, I wrote about attending a workshop on somatic (physical) aspects of personality.  In that post I focused on the deliterous effects of the gut-punched posture. Today I'd like to visit another dimension of somatics: the smile.  

Our instructor reported that on scans of the brain, the simple act of changing from a neutral face to a smile produces the equivalent brain response as receiving $25,000 or 2,000 chocolate bars.  All that we need to do is smile.  If you will allow a pun, this is a no-brained. 

I've been traveling for work this week, and while we had some serious laugh-out-loud moments at the destination meeting, in transit I saw very few smiles.  Now imagine that if even half the people at a boarding gate smiled, it would be like raining money...or chocolate (but that could be a messier visual.) But they don't.

I did observe though that I could create a little proverbial money magic by giving away smiles.  Without stopping or making other contact, about half of the strangers with whom I made eye contact as I smiled actually smiled back at me.

An old saying about hugs suggests, "You can't give one without getting one." While it would seem that not everyone to whom I smile also smiles back, a lot do. When I give my brain a shot of cash or chocolate with my smile, I am simultaneously able to give the same to a total stranger as they smile back. And, I get one back as well.  The possibilities are almost limitless.

Over the years that I've been writing this blog, I've encouraged readers to generate positive energy around the world by multiplying some spiritual quality, such as gratitude by saying "thank you." Today I am encouraging readers to smile.  Give smiles and get smiles.  I am certain you will feel richer at the end of your day.






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Sunday, October 2, 2016

Discovering Heaven

A couple weeks ago my pastor shared a Thomas Hobbs quote upon which I've been pondering.  "Hell is truth seen too late."

A few days after the pondering began I had the breakthrough I shared in my last post.  In that post I shared my focus on the negatives of my new position, and when I was able to see that was in my perception rather than objective reality, everything shifted.  

In the days since, however, I have continued to notice my posture going reflexively to one of being "gut-punched."  The truth is no one in my present world is gut-punching me, either literally or figuratively.  The "puncher" exists totally in my imagination and memory. 

Which brings me back to emotional intelligence about which I've written several times in recent years.  The first key to being emotionally intelligent is self-awareness.  Because I have been able to notice the gut-punched posture, I am at least moving toward self-awareness.  The second key is to self-manage or to choose a different behavior or response.  When I take that split second for a deep belly breath and adjust to an open, relaxed posture, I am demonstrating self-management.

...at least to a degree I am self-aware and self-management.  It seems to me that I am at the stage of needing to intentionally tell my body to shift my posture.  I look forward to the point when a natural, open, and relaxed posture will occur automatically, but I am clearly not there yet.

Over twenty years ago when I was struggling with the worst of my chronic pain, resulting from an accident, a doctor recommended a book to me.  Tom Hanna, the author of Somatics, described neuromotor amnesia.  The condition results when some part of the body forgets how it is supposed to work.  Back then, it was my hip and neck.  Now, it would seem it is my abdomen and the low back that supports it in pulling back to gut-punched. 

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a workshop on somatic dimensions of various aspects of our personalities. During the lecture portion, the workshop leader projected an X-ray of a person in a posture similar to the gut-punch.  He related that just being in that particular posture produces the hormone cortisol, which has been nicknamed "the stress hormone."  It causes progressive shutdown of the immune system.  (Small wonder that after 20 years without one, I had a cold, including one debilitating one, each of the last three winters at my old job.)

The particularly remarkable twist is that, changing nothing else, a person can induce stress by simply going into that posture.  Conversely, I can elicit confidence and relaxation by moving out of the posture.  That's all that is necessary.

So it should also not be a shock that the morning that I noticed the gut-punch posture the first time that as soon as I changed how I held myself physically, everything else seemed to change as if flipping a switch, and in a way that is just what happened.  By opening myself to expectation of positive outcomes, I switched off the cortisol and turned on oxytocin, the hormone associated with giving birth and trust, among other functions.

Harvard professor Amy Cuddy detailed in her recent book "Presence" that body language is not necessarily a reflection of what we are feeling, but instead the reverse is true: our body determines what we feel.  (If you haven't seen her TED talk, it is the second most viewed of those popular lectures.)

There are two other aspects of emotional intelligence.  The third is our awareness of others, and the fourth is how we manage our relationships different because of that awareness. When I walked into the room the morning I made the shift, I noticed openness and hopefulness.  Because of my heightened awareness of both myself and participants in the event, I managed the relationship that I had as the facilitator with my participants differently.  I recalled earlier days before my last job when I listened deeply to my inner knowing and didn't do what I planned.  At the end of the day, the leader said I had been "masterful."

As the evolution of pondering the Hobbes quote, I've come to understand that I don't have to wait until it is too late to see my truth. I can avoid that hell by choosing to hold myself in the place of trust, openness to my inner knowing, and birthing things instead of stress.  That is discovering heaven in every magical moment.

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