Open Heart Surgery

"You are faced with a situation that requires you to make the very changes you have been putting off.  Decisions must be made...By refusing to deal with these issues, you are preventing new opportunities from entering your life."  (DeLorey, Life Cycles, p. 198.)  From the description of the spiritual lessons I have to learn in September, described in DeLorey's powerful book on numerology, I got a chill of the accuracy of the prediction for a month that is two-thirds finished.

Almost since the moment that September began, I have found myself facing one growth experience after another.  First, there was the Laughter Yoga certification class I took as an admission that I really missed laughter.  Today I heard on Radio Lab that laughter is a function of social engagement.  When we are alone, it said, we don't laugh.  Well, duh! That is why I took the class which teaches fake laughter as an anecdote to the absence of real laughter.  (It has the same positive health benefits.) The truth is that lack of laughter is just one sign of what I miss from spending too much time alone. 

After that, just four days into the month, came the influence assessment, which indicated that I don't advocate for myself.  That, too, should have been a no-brainer.  Why else would I be working 1l- and 12-hour days?  But it also hit me over the head with my boundary issues. ("Boundary Issues," 9/4) 

Then, I got into the personal growth/leadership where I had the Aha! moment that, by being so nose-down, doing my work that people described me as insensitive and uncaring.  That was like a knife into my heart.  Open-heart surgery, I am calling it.

This week, I went for my annual physical to assure that I can use the gym at work.  Of course, I've probably only used it three or four times this year and only once since June.  The doctor reminds me that I've picked up five pounds (there could be a relationship) and tells me that my blood pressure has jumped 30 points.  (Fortunately, it has always been very low, so I am still well within optimal range, but still disturbing. I had it checked again at the end of the week, and it was back to close to my normal.)

The next day I followed up with one person who participated in my 360 assessment.  She related my change in behaviors to a specific incident in which I'd felt very threatened last year.  After a couple of decades of feeling like I had put my childhood coping mechanisms behind, without knowing what she was doing, this woman had told me that I was behaving like I was three again.  Oh, great!

I also taught a segment of a class on Emotional Intelligence, which reminded me that all of this self-awareness was meaningless unless I choose to change something.

The trend here is to slow down, work less, get a life, and connect more.  It is bigger than that though.  It was at age three that I chose to close my heart and chose high-quality work as my survival mechanism.  In the realm of "How's that workin' for you?" the answer is: it isn't. 

For 21 years I've been mostly alone, as attested to by the lack-of-laughter issue.  I've said I want someone special in my life, but I own that a dozen years ago I figured out that I've attracted men into my life who couldn't open their hearts because I couldn't open mine.  Closed hearts avoiding each other was my comfort zone.  I pledged at that point that I really wanted the next man in my life to be one who could love whole-heartedly.  That, of course, begs the question, "Why would someone who could love whole-heartedly want to be in relationship with someone whose heart is locked closed, and the lock is so rusted that even if I could find the key, it just might not work any longer.

So when I read the DeLorey quote above this afternoon, describing my spiritual growth assignment for this month, I knew in an instant that the issue that I must deal with is opening my heart. Nothing short of emotional open-heart surgery is what I am willing to do. I have no clue what that will look like. I plan to take a few days at the end of this month as I generally do around Rosh Hashanah to reflect, but I also know that this is not something I can totally resolve from the quiet and solitude of meditation. 

Emotional open-heart surgery happens in relationships.  I've already started slowing down at work and taking time to connect, even if just for a minute or two.  Voila!  It really feels good.  In the schema of the spiritual work that DeLorey writes about, this time of year sets the tone for the year ahead.  By expressing my intention to open my heart in September, I pray that the year ahead will be one of love and connection.

Warmth

Washington is finally experiencing some serious fall weather with temperatures predicted into the 30s tonight.  A serious chill brought shivers to my jaw as I walked to dinner in the city this evening. Yet, I am warm--warm in a way that, regrettably, I have rarely been in recent past. 

I've just spent three hours with special friends.  We've been friends since college, and that was more than a few years ago. It has probably been over three years since two of us were together, and more likely a dozen since all of us were together.  We did the usual catching up on our day-to-day lives, shared stories of health challenges, and talked about what we thought the next chapter in our lives would be. They got a brief tour of my new home. It was a fun evening.

Sometime early in the evening, I realized that I had been wrong in this blog yesterday.  I can let love in.  I can feel that warm vibration in my heart with other humans.  I felt it tonight.  It was wonderful, and I want to let more of love into my life.  What could be more important?

If the world works like I am pretty sure it is supposed to, this heart-to-heart warmth should be normal all the time.  People connecting to people connecting to people in a ribbon of love that connects the whole world.  I've advocated for it. I've believed it could be.  I've even talked about how important it is that those of us who want to change humankind focus on staying in that spot until we build critical mass to global transformation.  I couldn't quite get there myself.  Or maybe I could at some time in the past, but not yesterday or the day before or the day before that.

At what point between two days ago and several decades ago did I lose the ability to let love in? Does it matter?  What really matters is that today--this one miraculous day--my heart opened.  I really believe that if I can do that tomorrow, the day after that, and 100 days after that, we can change the world.  I am confident that is why I am here in this world.  I am pretty sure that is why we are all here.  Seems like changing the world is pretty easy...as soon as the heart creaks open to just one person. I think the first is the hardest.  Tomorrow, I will open again.

What Does It Mean to be a Friend?

Today I have been in intense exploration of the question, "What does it mean to be a friend?"  Although I say "today," because today it has been very focused, I believe that I've been playing with this question for almost a week.  Last Sunday I watched Brene Brown on OWN's Lifeclass.  She is a prominent researcher on "vulnerability" and "shame."  She said that in a lifetime, we should count ourselves lucky to have one or two friends with whom we can totally share who we are--to whom we can open our hearts, and they are willing to just empathize with us.  She calls it opening our "arena" to that person and letting them in to our vulnerability.

"Wow!" I thought.  One or two in a life time.  I must be very fortunate indeed with so many friends.  That is when the pondering began.  I have people I do things with. I have people I turn to for spirited discourse. I have people that I strategize with.  I have people I know I can depend on and who know they can depend on me.  But, do I truly have people in my life that I can totally open my heart to and with whom I can share my "shame"?  Do I have people who can just sit there and be with me and ride through it with me without trying to "fix" me or somehow move me around my vulnerability?  I am not sure that I do...and I have a really evolved group of friends, well populated from the "helping professions."

I am a staunch believer in when I am pointing my finger at others, I should notice three other fingers pointing back at me.  So I noticed.  Could I really sit with one of my "friends" and ride with them into their shame and vulnerability?  I'd like to think that I could, but the truth is that I am more likely to help them reframe, excuse, justify, strategize, or encourage than to just sit with them in their vulnerability. 

Have I unconsciously invited a group of people into my life that could function with me at a superficial level because that is my comfort zone?  They don't show their vulnerability, and I don't show my own, and we can safely avoid the discomfort of just being empathetic with each other.  That hurts.  But, what to do about it? Do I need new people?  I hope not. Can I change the fundamental nature of my relationship with the people in my lives?  I hope so, but wonder. 

I am tired of hiding behind a wall that I've built to keep others from knowing who I am in my heart, and I am terrified at coming from behind the wall.  But the wall is built of stuff I need to forgive myself and others for.  The wall is built of the past and keeps me from the present.  The wall is what keeps me from being fully who I am.  What I know in my heart is that if I can find the courage to come behind the wall, "my people" will be there for me.  The question for me is can I forgive, be in the present, and be fully who I am?  Now that is the question.

Spiritual discipline

I know that I said yesterday that today I was going to write about what happens when I don't ask and/or don't listen to my guidance.  However, my guidance today was to write something different. 

Today a passage of scripture from the Christian New Testament Gospel of Luke (17:1-4) guided worship. At the beginning of the passage, The Teacher talks about forgiveness.  The lesson says that if someone transgresses against us even as many as seven times in a day and asks for forgiveness that we are to forgive them. 

A couple days ago I wrote about doing the first two parts of a forgiveness exercise.  I forgave those that I felt I needed to forgive, but I am certain that several of them would not have asked for forgiveness.   Yet, I have forgiven them, and that I am not carrying resentment any longer is a gift for me.  I also meditationally asked others for forgiveness.  Since I was asking, I assume that qualifies me for forgiveness. 

In each of those exercises what was amazing was that as soon as forgiveness was given either way, there would be a wave of positive memories about that person, which the lack of forgiveness had blocked.  As I worked through the list, my heart felt more and more full.  I realize that the lesson today really was about opening our hearts. No matter how many times that we must forgive, doing so is a gift we give ourselves--the gift of the open heart.

What I haven't written about was the third part of the exercise, which I completed a day later.  The third column was comprised of things for which I needed to forgive myself.  As I thought about that list this morning, I recalled the impatience I felt about needing to forgive myself for the umpteenth time for not asking for guidance before I did something, not following the guidance I got, or following the guidance when it was so delinquent that it no longer had efficacy. 

It is much easier for me to forgive people who have done some pretty nasty things to me than it was to forgive myself.  Many of the times that I'd forgotten to check in with my heart occurred months or years apart.  Could I forgive myself seven times in a day? 

The word "discipline" derives from the Greek for "disciple" which means "student."  A spiritual discipline implies that it is our way of learning to be closer to our spirits.  For me, that means following what is written on my heart and messaged to me through listening to my heart. 

I realize that I have an unduly harsh standard for myself when it comes to being a spiritual student.  Somehow, even though I know we are all beginners, I expect myself to be perfect. However, the word "sin" was an archery term which meant the archer missed the bulls-eye: missed the mark. The implication was that the archer needed to adjust his/her aim. "Sin" isn't an arbitrary standard of judgment but rather a teaching term about how to get it better--not perfect--the next time.  That is what a spiritual discipline is about: aiming over and again until we hit the mark.

Now I realize that I did end up writing about what happens when I didn't follow my guidance, but it hasn't ended up looking like I expected.  That is what happens when we listen to the wisdom of our hearts.

Yes, I have failed to ask for guidance from my heart, and I have failed to follow in a timely way.  The results weren't as rewarding as those I wrote about yesterday and hundreds of other stories I could have written. AND, I have aimed again.  Now, I will recall that I should have forgive me...even seven times a day, if needed.

Ahhh!