The Only Lesson

Yesterday I committed to a new spiritual path, one on which I would explore the more pleasant side of the journey.  Already I am finding that isn't so easy.

Earlier this week I watched an episode of "The Late Show" from the first week of January.  Oprah Winfrey was Stephen Colbert's guest.  They were talking about resolutions, and Oprah said she'd stopped making them because they always got complicated.  She would resolve for something that was something she wanted, and then as the year progressed she discovered the more difficult sides of that wish.

Every topic I've ever taken on as a major writing project has similarly gotten complicated.  A book about courage resulted in my facing every major fear in my life.  A book about living consciously sucked me into a chaotic period when I lost whole years without really choosing me.

Night before last I enumerated a long list of desirable spiritual lessons.  Then in my meditation I discovered that if I only accomplished being present and being conscious of my choices--and those demanded that I do them together, I would accomplish the others.

Immediately, as if I'd been writing with ink it wouldn't have dried yet, I found myself facing a relatively easy test.  The Skype pop-up message that tells me when a friend is online popped up as I was writing.  At about midnight an old friend, who shares my strong tendency for "nightowlness" (my word) signed on, and I got the message.  I really wanted to talk to the friend with whom I hadn't spoken for about a year, and I really wanted to write.

I had just committed to being in the present and making conscious decisions. Normally, I would have kept writing, and I was conscious of that habit.  That would not have been a conscious choice: it would have been a habitual one.  I also knew that in the past I'd let myself be distracted from writing by fun diversions, and I made a commitment at the beginning of the year that I was going to write every day.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and knew that I should reach out. I did.  My friend and I had a great conversation.  We laughed a lot.  I felt lighter and more energized.  And, what self-respecting nightowl is going to let herself be held back from writing because of a relatively early midnight conversation?  I wrote afterward, easily.  I had made the right decision.

Today I must admit that I was neither conscious of my decisions or in the present much of the day.  I had several things that I "needed" to do, and I set about doing them until I discovered in the late afternoon that I had really missed the day. I prepared dinner and ate consciously, choosing foods that I liked and that were healthy.

Then about mid-evening I checked my email, and there was an invitation to do something after church tomorrow.  It is something that is definitely way outside my comfort zone, and I had already made plans to do something I've been wanting to do for weeks at the same time.  The invitation was to do something relating to one of my "things to explore."  I really don't know which I will do, but I know two things for sure.  First, I am glad that I am being conscious of the decision.  Second, I probably won't know which I will choose until I "check in" and am present to what my heart wants after church tomorrow.

This is what Oprah was talking about, and it is what I experienced with my books.  When we nod to the Universe that we are holding the intention to learn a particular lesson, we will very quickly be given the lessons.  I have had hints of a couple other opportunities to learn this lesson on the horizon.i am being present to what is in front of me now. When I said that I was ready to learn the more pleasant spiritual lessons, I should have been clear that I don't expect them to be easy.  Just different. For now, I am holding on for whatever my "only lesson" has in store.

Always Be Ready

If you've been reading this blog for any time at all, you know that I watch for "spiritual trends" that are sending me a message.  Over the last five hours, I've been bombarded with the message "Always be ready."

The Old Testament reading in church this morning was from Isaiah, and the prophet was saying to the Jewish people to be ready because they never knew when the "savior" would appear.

A few minutes later The New Testament lesson was to early Christians to always be ready because they never knew when their savior would return. A further admonition from the passage was that you couldn't wait until you thought the time was imminent to change behavior because there wouldn't be that opportunity. We had to always be ready.

I awakened this morning with a raspy throat.  I've been fighting a cold for several days, and my initial instinct was to curl up in bed and get some extra rest before leaving on a business trip.  Almost as quickly as I had the thought, I remembered what I'd written in my last post about consulting my inner compass before making decisions.  When I did, I clearly knew I was to go to church.  If I hadn't, I would have missed those lessons.

As I returned from church and started to make lunch, I thought my mind darted to habit.  Since I was out with friends last evening, I was going to flip on the replay of the "Hallmark Hall of Fame" presentation that I'd missed.  In my last post I wrote that I planned to spend my Sunday afternoon in a meditation on the floor of my bedroom closet, consciously choosing what would be part of my future and what I need to leave behind by December 21.  I thought I was hedging on my commitment to watch a television program that I know will be replayed a number of times in December.

One thing that became very clear to me when writing Choice Point, my as-yet-unpublished book about life as a meditation, was that everything, every thing, is connected.  There truly are no accidents or coincidences if we are listening: we will be led.

The gathering last night was a somewhat impromptu one, or I would have watched the program on its first broadcast.  That is important because, without the scripture lessons this morning, I might have missed that the theme of this television play was also "always be ready" or more precisely to "live your life like there's no tomorrow." Could I have guessed that the gathering was contrived by the Universe to help me "get it"?

Fortunately, when I checked in, it became clear to me that I was to watch the Hallmark program.  I thought to myself that I could bring some of the boxes into the living room and sort while viewing, but again a very clear message: the sorting was to be a meditation, and I couldn't watch TV and meditate.  So I ate and watched, and then I just watched.

The protagonist in the movie was a woman who worked too much.  (Anyone I know fill that bill?) As a consequence to a happy accident, she learns that she has been neglecting what is really important while giving every aspect of her life away to work, which we might say is pretty much what I've been doing over the last 16 years....maybe longer.  Of course, since there are no original story lines in Hallmark movies, I won't be giving anything away when I stay she does get a second chance, and this time she remembers what is important to her and to those around her.

So it is that in five short hours, the Universe has bombarded me to remember what is important in my life, an important lesson any time, but especially as I've been looking at my overly busy December over several days and struggling to find a time to put up my Christmas tree.

I got a headache about two-thirds of the way through the movie.  What is important?  I have known for a long time that I've squandered my relationships, and I've struggled to know how to intentionally choose to build a different life. I am sure that quandary is what gave me the headache, which lingers even as I write.

I truly do not know the answer, but as I wrote in Choice Point, I don't need to know.  I just need to consciously choose my path, and I will be led.  That is all I need to know, and I will "always be ready."

Dark Nights, Extraordinary Grace, and Humility

I have just completed one of my silent meditation retreats.  I used to take four days, two times a year, for these retreats.  I am not sure how it happened but in recent years they've been more sporadic and often shorter.  This time I took three days.

For many years I would choose a book around a theme I intended to explore in my meditations and read it in the few days before I began my retreat.  Occasionally, I would finish it on the first day of the retreat.  About 10 days before I started this withdrawal for reflection, I got a message about Choice Point, a book that I first drafted in 1997 and which I continued to revise until about 2000.  I hadn't read it since about 2009, so revisiting it seemed in order.  While I didn't have time to read the book prior to my retreat, I did bring it with me and I read about half of it in bits and pieces over the three days.

When I last read the book in 2009, I recognized that it was badly dated, and that was even more apparent this time.  However, the thing that I noticed most was what I can only describe as my arrogance in tone.  I can assure you that was not my intention.  In the mid- to late-1990s, my life worked extraordinarily well spiritually, and I just assumed that was "normal."  The years in between have demonstrated to me that my experience was not in any way "normal," but instead was extraordinary grace.  My failure to recognize that was arrogant.

Choice Point is a guide to listening for our inner voice or divine voice or whatever it is that guides us on a spiritual path.  For 8-9 years in the 1990s,  my inner guidance system worked extremely well. All I had to do was ask a question, and the answer was there.  I moved across the country, worked globally, designed a new home, and wrote several books on that guidance.  So, it should not be surprising that the book I wrote about that intention process carried a "just do it!" attitude, implying that if we express the intention, the communication will just flow.

Sometime, and I can't really say precisely when it was, I stopped being able to get that guidance.  I struggled to get anything.  I would like to say that as the regularity of my meditation time waned that my guidance did as well because, if that were the case, fixing the problem would be easy.  I'd just have to start meditating regularly again.  I actually think just the opposite was the case.  I think my failure to get guidance precipitated my willingness to meditate less frequently.

Several saints from the Roman Catholic tradition have written about their inability to receive guidance after rich periods of regular communication with the divine.*  A book released after her death revealed that Mother Teresa had struggled for decades with the inability to communicate directly, as she had done quite regularly in her younger years.  The most common term for that absence of communication is "the dark night of the soul," and the period of non-communication--often for the rest of life--usually follows a rich period of dialogue with the divine.  While I haven't experienced the depression that many described, I have keenly felt the lack of communication which characterizes the "dark night of the soul."

My just-completed three days of sitting continued the lack of communication.  Even exercises that I've used to jump-start the flow failed me repeatedly.  So, I mostly sat.  Occasionally, I picked up Choice Point to read a chapter.  Taking time from the fast-paced life I find myself living for personal reflection is reward in and of itself, but I am definitely not stepping out with the feeling of personal enlightenment that I used to experience.

I have learned that the 8-9 years of constant dialogue with the divine that I used to experience as "normal" was instead extraordinary grace.  The communication vacuum, which has dominated my life for 15 years, has taught me what a gift I received for the preceding years.  If I revisit Choice Point again for rewrite, it will be from true humility as I will bring the understanding of what a gift it was.


*I believe this is true of other traditions as well, but I am less well read on them.

Getting in the Way of Better Things

Sometime in the last month, I heard an interview with comedian and now dramatic actor Bill Murray. In it he related that he had lost his smart phone recently and described how liberating it had been.  He said, "The things you usually do get in the way of better things you could be or should be doing."

I am not sure I could live with out my smartphone, and yet, I really understand what he was saying. I love reading The Washington Post on my phone on the way to and from work.  It is great to catch up on my email on the train so when I get home, I can devote my attention to other endeavors.  The reminders of birthdays and special events have prevented me from missing landmarks.  My calendar gets me where I am "supposed to be" more often than not.  The My Fitness Pal app has helped me lose 15 pounds this year.  I've even been learning Spanish as I walk and ride about.

Yet while there is immeasurable value in my smartphone, so much is lost along the way, and I think that is what Murray was relating.  Pre-device days, I used to actually have conversations with strangers on the train.  Some would share funny stories or new pieces of music they had discovered. When I was looking for a job, a man once told me about one in his agency that might be a good fit. Now, everyone is hunkered over their device with ear buds in place.  With the exception of an occasional pair that get on the train together, I almost never see anyone talking these days.  So among those better things we could or should be doing, connecting with our fellow humans might be one.

The concept of my book Choice Point was to be totally present in the moment and choose second to second what we should be doing in that moment.  While there are days, like this one, when I unplug most of the time, when I find myself doing what Murray described, I stop letting the things I usually do get in the way of what I could/should be doing.  I just listen...to my body, to my heart, and to my inspirations.

As I went to bed last night, I had several things that I wanted to do today, beginning with going to church.  Generally, on the weekend, I don't set my alarm, and most of the time I wake up after about eight or nine hours of sleep.  I find it delicious to wake up on my own though, even if I am not sleeping a lot more.  Last night I slept 10-1/2 hours, which meant that I missed church. It also meant that my body must need more rest. I allowed this day to be one of those days in which I did what I could/should be doing--what I knew in my heart, instead of what I usually did--what was programmed into my schedule.

I did enjoyed time in the kitchen, something that I usually do, but also something I love.  Then I turned my schedule upside down and meditated for a couple of hours, gaining clear insight on something with which I've been wrestling.  I dug out my hard copy of Choice Point because I haven't read it in a while, and in my meditation, I got that it was time to revisit the book.  While I know there is rewriting needed, my sense is that this visit is for my personal spiritual learning I need.  So the day is some, but not earth-shatteringly different.  Yet, I feel so much freer by having listened to my internal compass as opposed to responding to reminders and habits driven by my smart phone.

Spiritual Loneliness

Most of us have seen movies or television depictions of addicts in drug withdrawal.  One of the most moving performances that I recall was that of Diana Ross in the 1972 movie, "Lady Sings the Blues," which portrays the struggle that jazz icon Billie Holiday had with heroin.  Ross made her audience feel Holiday's pain. (I still think she deserved the Academy Award for the performance.)

As I've been withdrawing from work addiction, I too have been adjusting to physical changes.  While I have been working fewer hours and having more fun, I do find that I am often very tired, and I've been sleeping...a lot.

Work addiction triggers other addictions, and it ends up that one of the most destructive is adrenaline addiction.  Adrenaline is a powerful hormone, which nature gave us for emergencies--when we needed to pull out the stops and do something extraordinary.  The classic example is the mom which finds it within herself to lift a car when her child is trapped beneath it.  Adrenaline is supposed to help us do something extraordinary in unusual circumstances.

However, increasingly, adrenaline is being used just to get through our normal daily schedules, where multi-tasking and long hours have become the order of the day.  We, myself included, have often used it to keep us focused on what is in front of us in that moment...and the next...and the next.

I am sure that, rarely having needed the addictive hormone in the last month, I should expect some withdrawal symptoms.  Most troubling to me is how detached that I must have become to my body's physical needs.  Somehow the adrenaline has allowed me to push down my exhaustion so I didn't notice it until I was out from under the destructive influence of the hormone's destructive power when it is used habitually to just get through life.

More important than the physical withdrawal is the spiritual loneliness that I've been feeling.  Back in the day when I lived a normal, relaxed life, I meditated daily, and I prayed off and on all day. Dancing gave me a physical creative outlet almost daily.

My writing kept me in touch with my soul and how I connected with all of human kind through my soul.  Although I've had more time recently, I haven't written much in this blog for these weeks.  I have almost never, even as a child, sat down to write and not had words flow through me.

But, they just haven't been flowing.  I would sit and stare at the computer screen, and nothing would come.  Or a thought would come, and it would be gone as fast as it came because I'd be so physically tired from the adrenaline withdrawal.  Only this week have I been able to sit and get my words again.

Almost always in my life, I've been able to push through what was in front of me and get done what needed to get done.  I've thought that a good thing.  Determination and perseverance of qualities valued in our culture.  Now I am not sure that the ability to push through whatever is in front of me is a good thing, certainly not for me.  I've used those qualities instead of establishing priorities and setting boundaries.  I've tried to prove I could do it all, without ever asking myself "What is the value of doing it all?"  And even, "Is that value something that is meaningful to me?"

I've written a lot about intention, and I've even written about buying into our culture's expectations to the exclusion of our personal spiritual intentions.  And without adrenaline masking what was happening, I can see how I've been seduced by the cultural norms.  Now, stripped of the adrenaline, relaxed, and much more conscious, I feel spiritual loneliness.  I am aware that I've lost important pieces of myself along the way, and I haven't really known exactly how to begin reclaiming them.

As I write, deep within me is a muffled chuckle: "You had to come to this," it says.  On New Year's Eve 1997, I finished my first draft of a manuscript for the book Choice Point.  I worked on it for another couple of years after that, polishing it.  About 50 people read it and thought it was an important work.  I was never able to find a publisher for it.  In the craziness of the last 15 years, Choice Point has gathered dust on a shelf, becoming badly dated.

The book is about choosing your soul's intention for its life, rather than buying into expectations of the popular culture around us.  I believe the principles are solid, but when I wrote it in the 1990s, I was in my relaxed period, and I couldn't really understand, or maybe remember, what it was like to make those hard choices.  I hadn't made them for a very long time.  In the frenetic years, I couldn't write about them, because I wasn't conscious enough.  Now, in my spiritual loneliness, I see the potential to bring life to the manuscript with full consciousness of the spiritual sacrifices that we often make, without even being aware we are making them.  That is the knowing of the muffled, "You had to come to this."

My experience reflects this truth: when I am writing a book, I need to live it before it can be birthed into the world.  So it was with Leading from the Heart, subtitled "choosing courage over fear."  I repeatedly had to reach deep within myself to find the courage of my heart.  As I was birthing The Alchemy of Fear, I had to face some of my deepest fears.  I am not surprised then that the Universe has provided me with this opportunity to step into my spiritual loneliness and find the truth of Choice Point.

Sisyphus?

In Greek mythology Sisyphus was a king who was known for deceitfulness.  His punishment in the afterlife was to push a huge boulder up a steep hill, and just as he was about to reach the pinnacle, the boulder would slip, and he would be forced to follow it down.  Then, the process of pushing the boulder up the hill would start all over again. 

For whatever reason, sometimes my life seems like I'm living out Sisyphus' punishment.  There have been a number of periods in my life during which I really struggled financially. Just when I would be able to see the light of day, something unexpected (usually a shift in one market or other) would occur, and I'd be starting over. 

I've encountered Sisyphus in my health as well.  "Health" isn't really the right word.  My overall health is excellent, but I've struggled with pain issues for 23 years.  In recent months, the annoyance has been the sight in my right eye.  If it's not one irritation, it's another. 

I'm tired.  I am ready for life to be easier.  So far, no magic easy pill has appeared.  Somehow I just keep on keeping on...and being pretty happy along the way.  The way I figure it, I can be cross pushing that boulder up the hill, or I can be happy.  Both those around me and I enjoy life more when I choose the latter.

I was talking to a friend the other day about my memoir, and she spoke to how resilient I had been.  I guess I have.  As I sat to write this, I googled "resilience."  No shortage of material on resilience out there, but the description I love the best was from Psychology Today:  "Resilience is that ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever." 

What I liked most about it was the word "ineffable."  I just liked the sound and feel of the word; it has a happy feel to it.  I looked that up, too.  "Too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words."

Put together, we get "That too great or extreme quality to be expressed in words that allows some people to be knocked down by life, and come back stronger than ever."  How cool!  That reminds me of a song I learned as a youngster, "Get yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again."  I like that my friend thinks of me that way. 

A couple days ago I was recovering from a challenging week, facing taxes and paying bills, a writing deadline in front of me, as a cold was settling in for a stay.  I wanted to go to bed and sleep for a few days.  I didn't.  I wrote instead.  The more I wrote, the better I felt. 

When I start doing something I love, things just magically get better. In the painful days after a break-up, I ran.  I'd take off with tears running down my cheeks, and by the time I was home, I always felt great.  Sometimes I dance.  Other times I garden.  Still other times, I cook.  This weekend, I wrote. 

I think resilience must be a bit of a chicken and egg thing.  Is resilience what makes me do the things I love, thus allowing me to bounce back? Or, is doing what I love what gives me resilience? Or, does it matter? I think not.

Life has thrown me a curve ball or ten, and I have always bounced back.  I always learn something along the way, and most of the time I make new friends on the journey.  Most of the time I don't even whine much any more.  Maybe I've developed my resilience muscle. 

Although the definition implies that only some people have resilience, I wonder if resilience isn't something we choose.  Let's say I bring the intention that this next trip up the hill is going to be an adventure, and I will meet some interesting new people along the way. Odds are on that I will appear to be resilient, but not because I have a special mysterious quality.  I will appear to be resilient because I choose to be.  I've written many times that everything in life is a choice point. I've just chosen to be resilient, and that makes magic happen.

Risking Greatness

In my book The Game Called Life, spiritual guide/guardian angel Helen explains to Lizzie, the person she is helping, the steps to "living a prayer in the real world."  The "real" world is the spiritual world, as opposed to the "fictional" world, which is the one in which most of us think we exist.  Step Six is "risk greatness." 

She says: "I am not speaking of greatness in fictional world terms where people reach a high level in their worldly work or make a lot of money. Greatness in the real world means speeding the evolution of humankind." Later she explains why "greatness" is a risk.

"Greatness itself isn't the risk.  The risk lies in the willingness to consistently answer a call that usually cannot be understood.  The path to greatness requires players to do things that they may never have been done before or at least to do them in unconventional ways."

In recent days there seems to be a magic that as soon as I publish one blogpost, a related idea pops into my head which builds on that post.  After yesterday's post on vulnerability, I realized that what I'd really been writing about was risking greatness.  Am I willing to be personally vulnerable in order to evolve humankind? 

I've crossed that bridge before.  Leading from the Heart and The Alchemy of Fear were not exactly conventional business books. I knew at the time I wrote them that I was exposing myself to criticism from traditional management audiences, as well as more conventionally religious readers. I couldn't prove what I was about to write.  I had no data (and still don't) that leading and working from our spiritual cores and making the increase of love be our motivation would help organizations, but I'd seen it. I knew what I knew.  I could evolve the way we work.  So, I wrote, and many people read.  Both books received some official recognition, but in serving the spirit world, I did marginalize myself for a long time in the management consulting world.  It was as if that community thought that my left brain evaporated, as I wrote what the right brain told me.

Then came The Game Called Life which explained "how the world worked" in a somewhat unconventional way. Life is a game, but most of us just don't know the rules. The Game and Choice Point, which hasn't seen the light of day beyond a small circle of friends who have been deeply moved by it, not only flew in the face of many conventional religious beliefs but also are contrary to many popular "New Age" teachings. I couldn't prove it, but I knew what I knew, so I wrote. 

I've stood in front of audiences and shared deeply personal parts of myself because I thought that doing so would help others sustain their own spiritual journeys. 

Although I am not sure that anyone would say that I achieved greatness in the normal world (what Helen would call the "fictional" world) context, I still hear from people who were empowered for their own journeys by the words that have moved through me.  While it was a risk to take on these major constituencies, my spiritual center told me that it was my work to do.

Have I been vulnerable? Of course.  Would I do one thing differently? Never.  If vulnerability is how we find God then each of those writing experiences have been other worldly.  I have surrendered to the words that wanted to move through me.  I have learned for the first time as I read what was on the screen in front of me. To surrender so completely is by definition risking and vulnerable.  And, only twice have I felt closer to God than when I am writing.

I stand at the precipice of vulnerability, ready to jump,...again.  I am ready to risk greatness in the hope that I can have the teensiest role in evolving human kind.

Birthing the Intentions of Spring

After a week typing it and completing the first proofreading of The Game Called Life manuscript yesterday, I decided I needed to do something different today.  With a steady downpour outside, a long walk was not an option I chose.

My desk is stacked and sadly overflowing, so cleaning my desk seemed in order.  I've been at it for about five hours now, and I can truthfully say that I cannot tell that I've done anything.  Really!  Much of the sorting that I've been doing has been turning handwritten notes from meditations and retreats into word documents that I could file and refer to.  Other pages in the stacks have been thoughts for various books that I am working on. 

Among the pages of notes, I found intentions for the rest of the year from my spring retreat.  While I am still without a life partner again for almost 20 years, I am amazed at how much on the list is gradually becoming reality.  The summer must have been a germination period, because since my mid-September retreat and thanks to both this blog and the government shutdown and my furlough, my intentions have been in fast-forward.  Making a contribution to the healing of the world, using my voice, and writing daily have become a reality.  I hope this blog is making a difference, and I am confident that when The Game Called Life is an e-book, it will dramatically contribute to the healing of our world.

At the end of the page of intentions, I had printed in larger letters "WHAT IS MY INTENTION?"  I believe that referred to what my single underlying intention was from all the others.  I had a drawing and the words "living at the choice point."  Choice Point is a book that I wrote in the late 90s but has never been published. It is about living in conscious communion, moment-by-moment, with All That Is. For me that means, following what I know to be true in my heart. I call the process "living a prayer."  As I looked over the list, it was true: the only way I could do anything on the list is by living a prayer. 

I definitely am not there, but I am markedly farther along than I was six months ago when I wrote this.  I truly believe that I have planted seeds over the summer and in this furlough that predict I will be still farther along the path when I cross the one-year anniversary of my last spring retreat.  And, that's what it is all about--consciously attempting to do better and better at living a spiritually rich life.  In my heart I know that is where I am intended to be.