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.

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.

$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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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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Free at Last

I just finished my third week in my new job.  The journey (and it has been a journey) has been a defining one. 

While I fully understand that I am within a legitimate honeymoon period, there is almost nothing that isn't almost perfect.  That means my continuous improvement eye is just out of luck. The pay is at the top end of what I'd hoped for, the benefits are better, and the physical environment is quite pleasant.  I truly like my new team, which really seems to function as a team. So far, my clients have been pleasant, which, given that my clients are what held me at my old job long after it was healthy for me, is a delight.

All that given, I have been in something of a spiritual crisis these three weeks.  First, because I had worked exceptionally long hours I a job with normally long hours in order to meet client commitments, and I was just plain exhausted physically.  No amount of sleep would seem to relieve my fatigue during the first 2 to 3 weeks.

An overlay to the fatigue was an uneasiness, like waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Then, I noticed a reticence as I started into my work.  That really shocked me: having started semi-professional work at 16 and worked my way through college, I've always been quite confident in my work, even when doing something for the first time. And, the tasks I was assigned initially weren't at all challenging. That feeling continued for at least a week.

In parallel, or perhaps as a function of the reticence, I felt constrained, when I was fully aware nothing was constraining me.  I could intellectualize that part though.

In the late 1990s there was a study widely reported that often came to mind in the first days.  The study reported on fish in an aquarium. After swimming freely for a significant period of time, a clear glass plate was placed in the middle of the tank, blocking the fish from swimming beyond the midpoint.

For a while, the fish kept swimming, smashing repeatedly into the glass barrier.  After some period, the fish became conditioned to swim up to the plate and stop.

Eventually, the scientists removed the impediment.  The fish, who had been conditioned, continued to swim up to where the offending plate had been and would go no further. 

That's how I felt.  I had become so constrained in my last job, that I'd become uneasy doing activities that I'd done almost without thought for years previous to that job. 

I was angry.  How could I have allowed myself to tolerate such treatment, when I must have known what it was doing to me? I must have known, I told myself in the first few days of my new job. Yet, if I did, I had no recollection.  While some constraints had been  brutally blunt, the magnitude of hundreds of small limitations is what nearly destroyed me.

Now I was free; the proverbial glass plate had been removed.  And, I spent a few days frozen.  Then, one morning I was in my groove again on a design project.  A happy little introvert, I sat at my desk, cranking out work. 

Over the next 48 hours, I started to feel as if I was able to exhale for the first time in years.

Last week was my first facilitation in my new job.  For two of the three days, I was clearly not hitting on all the cylinders.  I didn't have energy or creativity.  I never hit the groove where I felt the group and I were one. 

I blamed it on lack of sleep, because I'd been awakening two hours early, able to go back to sleep.  Then, I questioned whether I'd burned out the small amount of extraversion the good Lord had given me. I was leading strategic planning, one of my favorite things, and it felt like crashing.  Finally I went to fear: what if I'd found this perfect place to work, and I was going to fail?

At last on Wednesday night, I slept all night and awakened full of energy.  I felt good.  I had some reflective time.  Over the three hours after awakening, I had several little epiphanies.  I was walking down the hall to my new office and realized I was carrying myself as if I'd been gut-punched.  Without losing stride, I opened my middle and breathed deeply into my belly...and smiled. 

When I arrived at my office, I was aware that mentality I'd gone back to the "running scared" mindset which resulted from years of way too much work and not nearly enough time to do it.  I took another deep breath. I had 90 minutes before the session started.  I told myself I could enjoy this.

Joy in my work.  I'd written about it extensively.  I'd lived it for many years, but temporary amnesia had possessed me in recent years as work had slowly slipped into a drudgery that I had to do do to buy groceries.  As I sat down at my desk Thursday morning, I smiled and gave myself permission to enjoy my work.

I remembered that the last time I'd facilitated strategic planning in June, one if the participants came up to me halfway through the day and said, "You really love this stuff don't you?"  I agreed.  He continued that I "radiated passion for the work."  Thursday morning I gave myself permission to radiate passion again.  Every few minutes that morning delivered an Aha!

When I hit the meeting room an hour later, I was energized.  I'd hit my stride.  I am certain that the team noticed: the difference was certainly palpable to me.

I have had what I think are a couple legitimate concerns about the work, but I am fully cognizant of my tendency to bolt when things are feeling too good, more conditioning but from a very young age. Right now, I am allowing myself to enjoy my new little piece of heaven.

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Making Meaning

I finished Cameron Diaz's Longevity Book a few weeks ago.  It is a fascinating study of all of the human systems and how we age--not necessarily getting old; it describes how our bodies age, pretty much from birth.  As the book is drawing to a close, Diaz relates that when she turned 40, she was interested in understanding what it meant physically to pass this milestone.

This natural curiosity propelled her into an intriguing scientific investigation, which she generously shares with readers.  She continues to say that in this process, she came to understand that it was her job to create meaning in her life, which she did in researching and writing the book.  Then, she challenges the reader to create meaning in their own lives.

I've heard this message countless times. I've even written it a few dozen times...or more.  But this time, as I read her words, they took me in a different direction.  As someone who had little formal education in science until a few years ago, Diaz followed her natural curiosity like a string she was following to see where it led.  The reader can feel her excitement throughout the book.  There is a breathless quality to it.

I recall that over 20 years ago now when I was in one of many edits for Leading from the Heart, one of the leaders I'd asked to read the manuscript criticized it saying that there was a breathless quality to it, just like I was discovering something new.  While there was nothing I wrote that was new to me, following my own inspiration was an exciting journey.  I recall going many hours without food, water, or other biological relief because I was so excited about what was unfolding on the computer screen in front of me.

Last week I began briefings at the conclusion of a five-month organization assessment.  This one was particularly intriguing because of the interrelatedness and complexity of the organizational dynamics.  I said more than once over the last month as I was pulling my data together that it was like pulling apart a knotted ball of yarn.

Reading Diaz's charge, I realized that, while I enjoy making change in organizations, what really flips my switches is figuring out the puzzle and developing a hypothesis about what will address the challenges that people in that situation face.  I love getting things started.  Grinding it out over several years, not so much.

That is important to me, especially as I move to a new job.  As I define who I am in my profession, I will do so more intentionally with what brings meaning to me as the focus of my work.  I've used the "What brings life to me, what brings me to life" guideline in this blog before.  Too much of what I've done in recent years has sucked the life right out of me...and I let it.

Over the years, I've coached a number of people who were bent upon discovering what their life's purpose is, and I've always encouraged them to think about purpose as more of a process than a destination.  If we think of purpose as an endpoint, we have no room to grow as the world changes and as we grow and develop.  If, by contrast, we think about making meaning in this moment, we are able to continue to evolve for the rest of our lives.

As I think about Diaz's book which gracefully describes what happens in every one of our physical systems, I see great parallel.  Our cells don't leap frog from birth to death in an instant, they go through many stages of life.  Similarly, our respiration, our hearts, and other systems are vastly different as a newborn, a toddler, a teen, a young adult and a senior citizen.

Our purpose should evolve similarly.  Tomorrow, I start my last week in a job that has borne frustrations and accomplishments.  I will be very mindful about how my spiritual development is transition as I end this job and move next week to another.

Self-trust

Those who have been reading this blog for a while will recall that I've felt like I was in a transition for at least a year, maybe 18 months.  I have talked about "feeling pregnant," sure that I was going to "deliver" a new and fuller me without really knowing what that meant.

All of a sudden, it feels like I am in the final moments of giving birth.  I still don't really know where it is going, but I do know that I've learned a huge amount about myself and life over the last few months.  Whatever is coming feels like I've taken a quantum leap in the cycle of spirit growth.

In the process of doing some "cleaning up of the past" so that I can really move forward, I stumbled onto "self-trust" as an issue. It ends up that the whole self-trust thing has come up before.  20-plus years ago, I had a cranial-sacral session in which the practitioner said, "You have self-trust issues."  I was indignant.

My integrity is critical to me.  I wouldn't/couldn't lie, cheat or steal.  I am the girl who argued about the integrity of exceeding the speed limit by 5 miles an hour even if everyone else was doing it. How could I have self-trust issues?  But self-trust...even trust...is more than that. In fact, integrity is much more than not lying, cheating, or stealing. As soon as I was able to break through my self-righteousness after each of these messages about self-trust, everywhere I turned I was able to see lack of self-trust.

Integrity derives from the same Greek root as "integer"--a whole number.  Being in integrity is being true to who you know you are in your heart.  Self-trust is acting in accord with that "soul's intention" for your life.  Sometimes I've been very good at acting in alignment with my truth, but I admit that in recent years more often than not I've more reliably acting in accord with what the world around me has expected of me.

The world around me tells me that financial success, a well-founded retirement, and increasingly higher status jobs is "success," but I've really know that wasn't my definition of success. Why have I tolerated a job and superiors who treat me so disrespectfully for years? Do I not trust myself to do the things that I know are right for me? For that matter, why is it that I can't keep my intentions to avoid sugar, or to write this blog, or to meditate everyday? Those are the intentions that I know to be true to my heart.

Several months ago I mustered the courage to tell my boss I was quitting at the end of the summer...without another job in hand. That was integrity and self-trust. I gave a long notice because I needed that time to make sure current projects were either complete or at the stage of development at which they could be handed off to someone else. Taking good care of clients I love was integrity.  I couldn't have trusted myself if I'd done less.

As the weeks passed I found myself dragging my feet.  I kept saying the words but inside me I was afraid I couldn't do it.

In June I began to feel a real physical exhaustion.  Why, I asked myself, had I not planned to leave sooner?  Two things occurred about the same time that reinforced my decision to leave, and they were the final straws.  Suddenly I was like the proverbial horse headed for the barn.  I may not know what was at the end of the tunnel, but I was sure it would be better.  Almost overnight, I felt a super-charged sense of self-efficacy.  In retrospect, I had recognized my ability to come out on top... whatever life presented me.  I finally trusted myself.  Whoo-hoo!

The Universe was very affirming.  Almost as soon as I got really clear that I was going to come out better however I came out, things started popping.  I had two interviews in a week for a job I'd applied for in February.  The founder of a new consulting firm called and began salary negotiation for an executive position.  I attended a conference and a professional meeting and walked away from both with several leads on contract work if I decided to go independent.  All of this is 10 days time. Within another week, I had an offer for a job I've agreed to take that will allow me to do work that is better aligned with my strengths and is significantly more money and benefits.

I have wondered to myself a number of times  what would have happened if I'd quit this job years ago.  Did I just need to trust myself enough to know I would land on my feet for the Universe to support me?  Although we will never know, I am guessing that is true.

After a dry spell, my date life is picking up again, too.  No great loves on the horizon. What I've started noticing that if a man doesn't treat me the way I expect to be treated, I trust myself enough to just walk away (once in the middle of dinner) rather than politely tolerating unacceptable behavior.

One of my favorite rom-com movies is "The Holiday."  In it, Iris, played by Kate Winslet, has been a doormat for her "former" boyfriend.  Although he is in a relationship with another woman, he uses Iris when it is convenient for him. Iris encounters an octogenarian screenwriter, who "assigns" her movie watching of classic films with strong female leads.

Soon her boyfriend is once again asking her to do something for him again.  This time she indignantly refuses.  "What's gotten into you, Iris?" he asks.  Stopped in her tracks for a split second, Iris hesitates before saying, "I think it is something resembling gumption."

"Gumption" isn't a word I hear often these days.  Yet that is what I am finding seems to come in the wake of self-trust.  When I know what is right for me in my heart, and when I act on what I know is true, the gumption part seems to come easily.  Gumption isn't arrogant: it feels to me like a deep, peaceful truth that wells up inside of me, offering a sense of strength and focus that I haven't been conscious of for a while.

Trust, you see, is a lot like a hug: you have to give it to get it.  Once I started trusting myself with the truth of my heart, the Universe has trusted me enough to support me in my truth.  Can there be much more?