"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." This much-quoted thought is most often credited to Buddha Siddhartha Gautama Shakyamuni, or to many of us, just "The Buddha."
I'd like to alter the line just a bit. "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear...and appear...and appear." So often, it seems that when I start working on a spiritual lesson, everywhere I turn I bump into a slightly nuanced version of the same lesson. Like a fine crystal, every way I turn it, I see unique impressions which describes a nuance of the lesson.
The last two evenings I've written about slightly different versions of seeing lessons through a lens of letting them support me in experiencing the beauty and wonder of spiritual growth as an endpoint but through which I must tiptoe through lessons. Today brought two very distinct, yet remarkably similar extensions of those lessons, or "teachers," if you prefer.
"People's Pharmacy" is one of my favorite sources of well-researched health information, and I've been a faithful listener for over 25 years (and an avid reader of their newspaper column for years before that.) When I moved to DC, I could no longer get the show. Since discovering the podcast about a month ago, I've been devouring many back episodes. As consequence, I am not sure when ones to which I listened today aired. The show's guest was Matthew Sanford, a yoga instructor and paraplegic. He lost use of his body from the chest down when he was 13, if I recall correctly 38 years ago.+
Because I've had significant body function/pain issues over the last 25 years, I listened carefully as he described the change he had experienced in his relationship with his body. (You might say he was rewriting his story.) His rehabilitation programs taught him how to overcome his disability by using parts of his body that were able to do so to facilitate movement through the world. But, Matthew missed his body and didn't like the image of dragging non-functioning parts of his body through the world. (My words, not his.) He began doing yoga to assist his experience of how his mind and body connected: his body is his body to be experienced not overcome.
As I listened, I drifted to the years I spent in rehab. At first, I wanted someone to make it better, and I spent years just doing with determination whatever I needed to "get back to normal." As soon as I'd experience a modicum of time with minimal pain, I'd stop doing my exercises, and soon I'd be in pain again. Ten or 12 years ago...maybe more...I had an aha! moment when I realized that if I was going to live with a minimal amount of pain, my physical therapy exercises were going to be an everyday part of life. I wouldn't like it but I would commit to doing them, day in and day out. It was a good decision. Although I do fall into periods of pain from time to time, if I faithfully do my exercises, most of the time I am relatively pain free.
I was doing a light jog on the treadmill as I was listening to the interview with Matthew. Mirrors all around me showed that I was in pretty good shape. A personal trainer who had worked with me last week had pronounced my routine as pretty thorough and had little to suggest that I add. I was able to walk 65 minutes on a springlike day yesterday.
As I listened to Matthew talk about the change in his thinking about his body, I realized that, perhaps less consciously than Matthew, I too had changed. I've moved beyond having to do exercises every day to stay out of pain to being delighted with this machine which is carrying me through life so effectively. If I were able to stop the exercises without pain, I wouldn't want to do that now. That is how I've come to show my body love...as it is.
Less than an hour later, I bumped into another teacher: an article by Dr. Tim Lomas, Ph.D., in Psychology Today.* He wrote about the approaching 20th anniversary of the positive psychology movement, launched by Dr. Martin Seligman. The piece was both retrospective and prospective, attempting to point the way forward for the growing psychology of happiness movement. The article described three stages: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. For the first part of its history, psychology had been concerned with how to get us out of misery--the "thesis."
Then along came Seligman with the antithesis: the point of psychology should be to have us experience well-being and happiness. In so doing, all the miserable parts of our lives were castigated or discounted as negative or lacking in value. But, the article proclaimed, there is usefulness from fear: it allows us to assess risk. Lomas continues that "'anti-social' emotions like anger can impel one to resist injustice, and drive progressive social change."*
Finally, Lomas predicts the future of psychology as being a synthesis that values the downsides while supporting our individual quests for well-being. As he described this integration of resistance of the negative while supporting happiness and well-being, it seemed to me that what he was describing for our psyches was a parallel to what Matthew and I had come to in our relationship with our bodies and what I've been coming to over the last two days in this blog. There is value in the struggle with the parts of ourselves that we might not like, but as we learn to accept the richness of the whole, we enable our souls to reach their potentials.
This is not a new concept to me. In fact, I wrote about it in Leading from the Heart, which is also marking its 20th anniversary. I actually looked through the book this evening to get my exact quote, but I was unable to locate it; the gist is that we see the world in black and white when in truth it is a million shades of gray. (That was when shades of gray weren't X-rated.) When we only focus on what we perceive as bad--disability or misery--or good--overcoming and happiness, we lose the texture of the fullness of our existence. Wholeness lies in the synthesis--accepting the fullness of our possibilities.
+https://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2017/01/19/show-1065-how-can-yoga-benefit-everyone-fit-and-flexible-or-not/
*https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-light-in-the-darkness/201602/second-wave-positive-psychology-introduction
Showing posts with label when the student is ready. Show all posts
Showing posts with label when the student is ready. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Boundaries
Washington is in the middle of a week of brutally hot weather, exceeding 100 degrees and shattering long-standing records. With the humidity, our heat indices have been even more relentless. Yet this morning I've been quite comfortably luxuriating on my north-facing balcony with a slight breeze. I breakfasted outdoors, a guilty pleasure I've enjoyed most of my adult life. As I did so, I found my mind drifting back to several patios, decks, and balconies on which I had breakfasted and to the friends with whom I had shared stories and laughed as we ate.
Before eating, I had finished a novel that I started a month ago on my staycation. In it the main characters started the book as boys, and by the end, they had become old men with failing eyesight. The book left me in a reflective space, which may have spawned my breakfast reverie. I've been thinking about this post for some time. For once I am not going to use the excuse of no time to write. If you had asked I wouldn't have known why I hadn't written, but this morning I know that I just hadn't had enough perspective.
I believe the expression "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear" came from the I Ching, but I also believe that a number of Eastern philosophies hold something similar to be true. During my outdoor breakfast contemplation this morning, the pieces began to fall into place for me. I, as the student, must be ready because lots of opportunities to learn a similar lesson have appeared.
During my four-month detail last fall and early winter, I became keenly aware that my life had spun totally out of control in recent years--to the extent that my physical and mental health were being compromised and my relationships were back-burnered, awaiting that precious "time" for nurturing. Certainly, time for writing, which really nourishes my soul, had become a low priority. I fell asleep from exhaustion when I tried to meditate. I had to be away from my long-standing, abusive work environment to get the perspective to recognize that.
In those treasured four months, I was able to see what had evaded me for so long. In my situation I had lost either the self-respect or the self-confidence to set and stick to my boundaries. When I returned to my permanent job, I wrote in big block letters with a box around them on the whiteboard behind my desk, where I looked at it every time I entered my office, "boundary clarity."
In a matter of days, I was tested. An unsustainable level of dark work again began flowing at me from very high places. Encouraged by my "boundary clarity" reminder, I began telling my clients that I would work with them, but it would be three months, four months, and even five months later. I brought in a contractor to do work with one client organization, which had needs that wouldn't wait. Still, the darkness and the volume of the work were too much.
Within a month I knew something had to change. After several conversations with my new boss, it became clear that the organization was more concerned about keeping my very senior customers happy than in keeping me healthy and happy. No relief would be coming, but I was assured that I was very good at this work. After an unusually frightening dream about the same time, I knew I had to leave. I began the process of planning for an end-of-the-summer departure. I was quite transparent with my boss and his boss about planning for an August separation.
I had no other job from which to make money, and I really need serious income for several years yet I knew I needed to take care of myself. My friends worried a bit more than I did about how I would live, but as soon as I got very clear about needing to move on, I had faith that something would work out. My big focus was on getting my clients, most of whom I'd worked with for years, to a good transition point. I learned about a month ago that the boss didn't really think I'd go, but he obviously doesn't know my courage when my spiritual path has become clear to me, and it had become very clear to me.
As soon as I had become very clear, out of the blue I received a call from a potential employer. Job announcements began falling into my email inbox with regularity. Even USAJobs, which has seldom had appropriate jobs, sent me a promising vacancy announcement. I am now just five weeks from my departure date, and I have two very strong prospects, each of which allows me to work in my "sweet spot," and each of which will be a significant increase in income. Perhaps as encouraging is that along the way as I networked with former bosses and colleagues, I found great sources for independent contract work.
In parallel, I realized how my work situation has made me unavailable for time with friends and even to pursue a primary relationship. In fact, for the first time in a long time, I added up how many years it had been since I'd had more than a date or two with someone. It wasn't an acceptable number. I began focusing my intention on at least meeting some men. I had first dates with people I would have just checked off my list a year ago. Most of them weren't serious prospects, but I was at least getting out and sending the Universe a message that I was serious.
Along the way, something else happened. While I just didn't have much in common with most of these men, there was another category. The only way I can describe them is "Really?!" The one who pronounced that he had two other women in his life but would like to add others. "Really?!" There was one who was married but said his wife was OK with him dating others. "Really?!" Last week, there was one who seriously treated me like a child. "Really?!" I wanted to add, "What do I look like?" but the truth is, I probably looked like a doormat, both at work and in my personal life.
I like to be nice to people. If I have ever been rude, it was either because I was tired or didn't realize what I was doing. In each of these cases, I just walked out. The last one in the middle of dinner at a famous-chef restaurant that I really love. As a serious foodie, that should have been hard, but it wasn't. Following each of these, someone more interesting followed. I'm still not there yet, but...progress.
In the 2006 movie "The Holiday," one of two female leads, Iris, played by Kate Winslet, has also been down on her confidence and has allowed her former boyfriend to walk all over her. In the movie, she meets an octogenarian, who is former screenwriter. He begins "assigning" her movie viewing of classic films, all of which have strong women leads. After said boyfriend crosses the line yet one more time, she kicks him out of her life. He is incredulous. "What's gotten into you, Iris?" he asks.
After a pause, she replies, "I think it is something resembling gumption." And, away she sends him.
As I've been contemplating this post over the last few weeks, that scene and those words have played over and again in my mind. Where did my gumption go, and more importantly, how did I let it go. I have been a strong woman most of my adult life. Anyone who has known me before this century would certainly have laughed at the thought that I didn't have confidence. A former dance partner once remarked (paraphrased for the general audience) "You have more moxie than any man I know."
"Where did it go?" is still a question I ponder, but mostly, I don't care. What I am passionate about is sustaining it into what feels to me like the next phase of my life--one that promises to be the best ever.
While both personally and professionally my life has been about helping others, I now know that I can't sustain my help for others if I don't take care of my first. How many coaching clients have I reminded that the airlines always warn us to put the oxygen mask over our own faces before attempting to help children around us. On this turn of the hero's journey, I've gotten this lesson differently than I had before. Saying "Sorry, I can't help me, I need to take care of myself," really is uncomfortable to even consider, but, whatever comes next, that is a clear boundary that I must enforce.
Before eating, I had finished a novel that I started a month ago on my staycation. In it the main characters started the book as boys, and by the end, they had become old men with failing eyesight. The book left me in a reflective space, which may have spawned my breakfast reverie. I've been thinking about this post for some time. For once I am not going to use the excuse of no time to write. If you had asked I wouldn't have known why I hadn't written, but this morning I know that I just hadn't had enough perspective.
I believe the expression "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear" came from the I Ching, but I also believe that a number of Eastern philosophies hold something similar to be true. During my outdoor breakfast contemplation this morning, the pieces began to fall into place for me. I, as the student, must be ready because lots of opportunities to learn a similar lesson have appeared.
During my four-month detail last fall and early winter, I became keenly aware that my life had spun totally out of control in recent years--to the extent that my physical and mental health were being compromised and my relationships were back-burnered, awaiting that precious "time" for nurturing. Certainly, time for writing, which really nourishes my soul, had become a low priority. I fell asleep from exhaustion when I tried to meditate. I had to be away from my long-standing, abusive work environment to get the perspective to recognize that.
In those treasured four months, I was able to see what had evaded me for so long. In my situation I had lost either the self-respect or the self-confidence to set and stick to my boundaries. When I returned to my permanent job, I wrote in big block letters with a box around them on the whiteboard behind my desk, where I looked at it every time I entered my office, "boundary clarity."
In a matter of days, I was tested. An unsustainable level of dark work again began flowing at me from very high places. Encouraged by my "boundary clarity" reminder, I began telling my clients that I would work with them, but it would be three months, four months, and even five months later. I brought in a contractor to do work with one client organization, which had needs that wouldn't wait. Still, the darkness and the volume of the work were too much.
Within a month I knew something had to change. After several conversations with my new boss, it became clear that the organization was more concerned about keeping my very senior customers happy than in keeping me healthy and happy. No relief would be coming, but I was assured that I was very good at this work. After an unusually frightening dream about the same time, I knew I had to leave. I began the process of planning for an end-of-the-summer departure. I was quite transparent with my boss and his boss about planning for an August separation.
I had no other job from which to make money, and I really need serious income for several years yet I knew I needed to take care of myself. My friends worried a bit more than I did about how I would live, but as soon as I got very clear about needing to move on, I had faith that something would work out. My big focus was on getting my clients, most of whom I'd worked with for years, to a good transition point. I learned about a month ago that the boss didn't really think I'd go, but he obviously doesn't know my courage when my spiritual path has become clear to me, and it had become very clear to me.
As soon as I had become very clear, out of the blue I received a call from a potential employer. Job announcements began falling into my email inbox with regularity. Even USAJobs, which has seldom had appropriate jobs, sent me a promising vacancy announcement. I am now just five weeks from my departure date, and I have two very strong prospects, each of which allows me to work in my "sweet spot," and each of which will be a significant increase in income. Perhaps as encouraging is that along the way as I networked with former bosses and colleagues, I found great sources for independent contract work.
In parallel, I realized how my work situation has made me unavailable for time with friends and even to pursue a primary relationship. In fact, for the first time in a long time, I added up how many years it had been since I'd had more than a date or two with someone. It wasn't an acceptable number. I began focusing my intention on at least meeting some men. I had first dates with people I would have just checked off my list a year ago. Most of them weren't serious prospects, but I was at least getting out and sending the Universe a message that I was serious.
Along the way, something else happened. While I just didn't have much in common with most of these men, there was another category. The only way I can describe them is "Really?!" The one who pronounced that he had two other women in his life but would like to add others. "Really?!" There was one who was married but said his wife was OK with him dating others. "Really?!" Last week, there was one who seriously treated me like a child. "Really?!" I wanted to add, "What do I look like?" but the truth is, I probably looked like a doormat, both at work and in my personal life.
I like to be nice to people. If I have ever been rude, it was either because I was tired or didn't realize what I was doing. In each of these cases, I just walked out. The last one in the middle of dinner at a famous-chef restaurant that I really love. As a serious foodie, that should have been hard, but it wasn't. Following each of these, someone more interesting followed. I'm still not there yet, but...progress.
In the 2006 movie "The Holiday," one of two female leads, Iris, played by Kate Winslet, has also been down on her confidence and has allowed her former boyfriend to walk all over her. In the movie, she meets an octogenarian, who is former screenwriter. He begins "assigning" her movie viewing of classic films, all of which have strong women leads. After said boyfriend crosses the line yet one more time, she kicks him out of her life. He is incredulous. "What's gotten into you, Iris?" he asks.
After a pause, she replies, "I think it is something resembling gumption." And, away she sends him.
As I've been contemplating this post over the last few weeks, that scene and those words have played over and again in my mind. Where did my gumption go, and more importantly, how did I let it go. I have been a strong woman most of my adult life. Anyone who has known me before this century would certainly have laughed at the thought that I didn't have confidence. A former dance partner once remarked (paraphrased for the general audience) "You have more moxie than any man I know."
"Where did it go?" is still a question I ponder, but mostly, I don't care. What I am passionate about is sustaining it into what feels to me like the next phase of my life--one that promises to be the best ever.
While both personally and professionally my life has been about helping others, I now know that I can't sustain my help for others if I don't take care of my first. How many coaching clients have I reminded that the airlines always warn us to put the oxygen mask over our own faces before attempting to help children around us. On this turn of the hero's journey, I've gotten this lesson differently than I had before. Saying "Sorry, I can't help me, I need to take care of myself," really is uncomfortable to even consider, but, whatever comes next, that is a clear boundary that I must enforce.
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