Be Careful What You Ask For

Years ago a friend and mentor told me that every day he said a kind of prayer to know God's will for him. He said it with full earnestness, and then one day he was smacked right in the face with a challenge that was way bigger than he had ever imagined. It became his job but he told me, "Be careful what you ask for - you just might get it."

I have been asking for a way to learn how to stay vulnerable while doing the work for which I trained throughout my adult life. It turns out that there isn't really a way to learn it - like there is no step one then step two. Nor is there a way to just put one's big toe into the pool of vulnerability to test the water temperature. It appears to me that vulnerability, as a state of being, either is something you are
or you aren't. It's kind of like being pregnant - there is no such thing as somewhat pregnant. And my lesson of late is that it is the same with vulnerability. You either are or you are not.

So it has come to the point where I must jump into the deep end of the pool and decide to live this way. There is no other choice - I cannot turn back and and stay defended and closed any longer. It is no longer a choice I will make. And what has opened up the deep end to me is that I had to let go of the fear of "what will people think?" The answer came pretty clearly to me over the last few days of training in which I have been participating: They will think I am being vulnerable. And overall that is not such a bad thing.

Brene Brown says that vulnerability without boundaries is not vulnerability. It's stupidity! So it's not like choosing to be vulnerable and live life from a more transparent stand means walking around naked all day or through a tough neighborhood alone at night. It means creating safe places and conditions for vulnerability to live and pull us all together. And with that it means knowing that home and among friends are some of those places. At least it is where I am starting. And the more I practice that with the ones I love and trust, the more I am able to know how to bring it to life in the public world. Wish me luck!

The Dawning Light

Over the past few posts I have been writing about what feels a lot like a transformative path. As a part of that process I have been becoming aware of my senses - especially my emotions - in a whole way. It's not that I didn't have emotions; I just did not experience them this way before. 

We all have emotions – they are part of our basic programming for survival. However as with all other things, the emerging ego seizes them for it’s own purpose. Thus the three survival instincts, survival/security, affection/esteem, and power/control, become self-referential in service to the ego. That is, instead of emotions that give us information about safety or security, they become emotions that protect the “well-being” of the ego and turn narcissistic. Emotions like love and affection, which are part of our DNA as relational beings, become schemes for the ego to gain praise and further aggrandizement. No wonder why we don't trust our emotions!

Psychologists tell us that by the age of five we have learned 90% of our total vocabulary. But while we were learning those concepts about the world, most of our world was bigger, faster, and smarter than we were as little children. Therefore, as the ego is forming, it begins working on how to protect itself and how to get what it wants for its self-perception, all of which are based on what Alfred Adler called our perception of “inferiority” as little ones. By the age of four or five, when the ego differentiation is completed, and most of our beliefs about the world (and our place in that world) have been formed, the ego has seized control of our emotional tools and turned them into self-referential and self-centered gimmicks. Innately, we know that this is wrong and for the bulk of us who have not done the inner work of clearing out that narcissistic tendency, we begin distrusting our full set of emotions. We have emotions but they are off-kilter. Oh, granted there are those among our species who don't suffer this malady, and they are truly blessed. But I have not been one of them; in fact, it took a long time to get here!

But here’s the clincher: when the ego is finally killed off – whether through the dark night of the soul or through some deep wound to its self-constructed idolatry – we break through that superficial level of emotional responses back into the real true level of emotion. In this deeper, pure level of emotionality, unencumbered by the need for praise, or coddling, or ego-stroking, emotions are true barometers of the world and directional indicators for effective living. What’s more, we no longer have to “obey” the emotional information (as the tyrannical ego demanded) but can take it in as part of what we need to be listening to as we make our way through the present moment.

That is the part I have been trying to find words for: that breakthrough to a deeper level. And as an added benefit, with the death of the ego, intellect is freed from it’s demand to show up as the smartest kid in the room and can be in service to others.  Freed from ego's tyranny, my emotions and my intellect can be used as they are meant to be. My inner witness just needs to keep ego out of the room and both intellect and emotion can inform my whole self in right action, right work, … It may be the beginning of what the Buddha called "the eightfold path."

The Error of Ego

There is a wisdom that only humility can teach. But it does not come in the form of some factual knowledge - some thing to be possessed or known - that the ego would love to grab hold of and claim as its own. Tis wisdom is merely an opening through which far more than the ego could imagine flows.

I cannot claim to know that wisdom, because my teacher has told me it is not mine to hold or mine to claim and name. It is something that only has existence in letting it go and in giving it away. This wisdom is quite simple in its message: that I am a human, like every other human on this planet. In learning this, through humility, one has to accept that what lives in the most wretched terrorist is also resident in me. It is easy to claim brotherhood with the mystics (and loads of fun for the ego to claim as his understanding!). But to know that I am no different - NO DIFFERENT - than the poorest of the nameless untouchables or than the foulest and most hate-filled zealot, is the humiliating (humbling) lesson.

But least I get ahead of myself, let me walk you through the steps of getting here. For whatever reason and by whatever means, I have been recently opened up to a new level of understanding and feeling emotions. And with that level of perception came the awareness of other people's emotions as well - not some people's emotions, not just my friend's emotions; all people's emotions. It is the one thing we all have in common, irrespective of circumstances, history, culture, gender or any other aspect of life. The bottom line of the human experience is that we are blessed or cursed with that region of our brain that produces emotions.

Now, truth be told, many are not aware of their emotions, or if aware of them, do not know how to access them, or may not know the full extent of what they are and how they work. But we all have them. That translates into something like seeing a picture of a Syrian father grieving the death of his child and knowing full well that you do not need to know his religion or speak his language to
understand his pain or well up with tears.

But if that is true - that we all are given the same capacity of emotion - it levels the playing field. It means that we are actually, on some level, all the same; created the same, evolved the same. We all bleed the same and die the same way. By placing myself apart from, or different from another human (which is what we do when we outcast them, vilify them and make them "them") I am living in the state of egoic superiority and denying my fundamental humanness. I guess I can no longer do that.

And now that I have painted myself into that corner, we are left with the question of what to do. I will try taking that on tomorrow.

Rising Strong

Recently I have been reading Brene Brown's new book Rising Strong, and I love every page of it - take that as highly recommended reading! But I would like to offer a slightly different take on the comeback from adversity.

Modern cultures, and predominantly the cultures descended from white, Anglo-Saxon, alpha types, have adopted the mindset that obstacles are to be overcome. We are programmed to set goals and pursue them with abandon. I even have a t-shirt with the motto, "I don't stop for obstacles; I destroy them!" and another with a Gandhi quote about power being derived from "indomitable will." But the wisdom of mystics from all traditions tells us that there is another way. According to mystical wisdom, the goal is not to knock down every hurdle and barrier so that we remain unchanging, but rather to allow ourselves to be bent and shaped by nature so that we emerge as re-formed and wholly new creations of that encounter.

Listen to how Rilke describes it in his poem The Man Watching: "If only we would allow ourselves to be dominated, as things do by some immense storm, we would become strong too, and not need names." And the modern mystic poet, David Whyte puts it this way in Working Together: "We shape ourselves to fit this world and by the world are shaped again. The visible and the invisible working together, in common cause to produce the miraculous.
I am thinking of the way the intangible air passed at speed round a shaped wing easily holds out weight. So may we, in this life, trust to those elements we have yet to see or imagine, and look for the true shape of our own self, by forming it well to the great intangibles about us."

This journey of transformation has been one of learning to trust those great forces, and to listen to the creaks and moans of my branches and bones in the immense storm. It is allowing the forces in so that I might become one with nature, and in doing so, take my place as one with all humanity.  Like so many of us, I have spent my life amassing knowledge without understanding, chalking up credentials like so many bullet points on a resume. But in the words of Pope Francis, "Our goal is not to amass information or to satisfy curiosity, but rather to become painfully aware, to dare to turn what is happening to the world into our own personal suffering and thus to discover what each of us can do about it."

Rilke ends The Man Watching by saying, "Whoever was beaten by this Angel went away proud and strengthened and great from that harsh hand, that kneaded him as if to change his shape. Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater things."

I have been awakened. I am feeling deeply (because I finally can). And while I may walk with a limp, like the Biblical wrestler of the angel, I have been resurrected as a stronger, and more fully alive human.

Fragile Power

With apologies for continuing the metaphor...

As I emerge from this transformation, just as the butterfly begins to open its wings, there is an sense of unknowing that lives just above the level of abject terror that arises from within. There is nothing in my memory as a caterpillar that has anything to do with wings, let alone flying. This new body seems far less rugged, in fact it feels frail, thin and vulnerable. And I have lost that voracious appetite for any and all things.

Yes - it is kind of like that. Only I can't seem to connect with the DNA that would instruct my wings to work yet and I've yet to experience a gentle wind that would lift me off this branch I seem to be so desperately clinging to. Perhaps I am not suited for butterfly life. Worm life was simple: eat, shed, grow, repeat, eat, shed, grow. This life seems not only fragile but finite. Something in me knows that there is not a next step after this form. And most certainly there is no way back.

But there must be some power in these wings. If only I can figure out how to use them I might begin to see what this branch is attached to and where it is in the bigger picture. With the power of wings I can see well more than the ground or leaves I walked on. I think that might be a great new perspective. But this fragile new power is very much an oxymoron. I have no clue what Paul meant by, "When I am weak, I am strong." Though I think it is dawning on me that "I have died and something else is living in me."

Ego versus Soul

I am doing some work these days on knowing the difference between the voices of ego and soul. I envisioned a great battle set in the days of the Romans in a sun-drenched coliseum. At one end of the open arena stands the gladiator Egous Pontificus. His armor gleams in the noonday sun. Huge well-trained muscles bulging out from under the chain mail. Sweat glistens on his face and arms, steeled and ready for the battle. And entering from the other end of the arena comes his opponent, Souleus Minimus, an elderly and diminutive man clad only in a loincloth. He walks slowly, his bare feet barely making an imprint on the sandy floor of the arena. 

Ego arches back and lets out a bellowing laugh at the sight. Who set up this fight in the first place? It is hardly worth the warm up. "Ha Ha, Oh frail one, you come here to do battle with me?" he roars.  The old man says nothing but continues walking slowly forward. "Very well. A battle to the death it shall be," roars the giant gladiator. "But as I am feeling gracious today, you may choose the terms of the battle and the weapons and I swear to obey the terms."

At this the old man stopped in his tracks and stood silently thinking for a moment.  Then he slowly sat down in the sand crossing his legs in a lotus position. “Most gracious of you, my fine adversary. Have a seat. I choose a duel to the death by starvation!”

Ah yes my mighty ego thinks it is so powerful and strong, but it has no real power and not the least bit of endurance in the real tests of worth.  Soul never asserts itself, but just is. Pure power in its powerlessness. Certainly ego serves its purpose in ensuring that I accomplish what I have committed to.  But by far the power I am growing to love and embrace is the humility of the soul.

A Light in the Darkness

I have a wonderful friend who is a magnificent stand for light and laughter in this world, but recently was compelled to write to her in the wake of the murders in Newtown, CT.

My Dear Sweet Friend

How I love you – and how I adore and embrace your message of light and laughter as a service to this world.  But I have been watching your posts over the last two days since the most recent horrific event in our world has unfolded. And there is something that just doesn’t sit right with me. In many of your posts you say that we ought to turn off the media and delete those stories in an effort to send our message to that same set of sources that they should stop the hype and backward glorification of these killers and perpetrators. And for me that is too passive.

To any act of violence there are three courses of action: retaliatory violence (attacking back in some form of revenge), passivity and non-violent resistance (taking away the power of their status seeking), and a third way that is active, positive action.  I am of the third way. I cannot simply turn it off least they (the media or some future on-looking perpetrator-to-be) think I don’t care or can’t be bothered. Well I am bothered – I am bothered beyond my ability to contain myself in non-action.

But let me say a bit about how I perceive your message of hope.  It is not wrong – not in the least.  In fact it is the only message we should preach.  It is the context of that hope with which I have issue.  Just as you cannot see in total darkness, you cannot see in total light.  If we look only for the positive in our world, accent only the good that exists, and turn our backs on the darkness, the hatred and the violence of our chaotic world, we run the risk of being blinded by the light.

Life is painful and chaotic, and that pain is exacerbated by hoping for or wishing that is would somehow be different than it is.  Suffering, says the Buddha, is caused by trying to deny the reality of the now and wishing for something better. We first have to accept that there are people in this world who are so alienated and lost that their only thought is to inflict that pain on others.  Whether we call that evil or the devil or mental illness does not matter. Whether that manifests in genocide or warring or the slaughter of innocent children (close to home or on the other side of the planet) is irrelevant.  It exists; and my first calling is to recognize that it does exist.

It is against that pain and suffering that you and I have been called to stand as a beacon. It is in those dark places that we have to shine even more brightly. But I must first acknowledge the pain and suffering and then with the greatest compassion light a candle of hope. And that hope that we bring is the hope for and in human connection. Our greatest darkness happens when we are alone and unconnected to others.  Our greatest lightness is when we are embraced in the loving arms of another. Murder, genocide and war are places where the human fabric has been torn apart, where lost and alone people can somehow ignore the brotherhood or sisterhood of the human on the other end of their weapon. Killing cannot happen any other way.

Love is the antidote, caring and compassion are its vehicles. Every sage who ever walked on this planet has instructed us to love our enemies, not just our friends. Anyone can love those who love. Anyone can shine brightly when surrounded by others of the light.  That is the easy part. But to stand up with tears of grief streaming down your cheeks and shine a ray of hope, is the really hard part of this work. To name the darkness and embrace another, to become a contagious infection of caring and compassion and spread love where there is none, that is the real work.

So I will not turn it off – not because I get some twisted horror-movie thrill out of human carnage – but because I am called to stand up to evil and darkness and not back down, and not dampen my light. The hope I peddle is that if and when we love each other, there can be no more of this pain. (And I just want to say that I am as crushed by the death reports coming from Afghanistan or the Gaza strip as I am from Newtown CT.  Every soldier was once a baby rocked by his or her mother; every one of us had a beautiful future in front of us and brought a sparkle to our parent’s eyes.) We need to spread the message that the best action to prevent violence is the bonds we forge between each of us when we love and embrace each other.  In a message to the parents of the children that attend our school, I said that now is the time to start talking to the other parents, get to know them, make them part of your family – love each other as your own.

Now is a time of action, and the battlefront is where the darkness is the deepest.  Your message is right on but my request is that we wage radical love in those darkest places of the human experience. I can love more powerfully than anyone can hate, and when you and I join together, that becomes exponentially greater. And that is how we will win, one at a time; one more at a time; every time we say “we” and we mean one more person that the last time we said it. And we will overcome the darkness.

Emotional Processing

My personal trek into the unknown is beginning to reshape my understanding of human emotions and how we precess emotional matter.  In fact that last sentence is the problem most of us (myself included) seem to have about emotions.  We think we can process or understand our emotions - that they are messengers for what we are to do.   You know; see a bear charging us, run away; see an attractive person, move toward, etc. And while that may work to some extent, what I am learning is that we have gotten it backwards.  We do not process our emotions (or at least we should not try to process them), emotions process us.

I am not talking here about the pretense of indecision reflected in a person's saying, "I don't know how I feel about suchandso," or "Let me see how I feel about it." Those "emotions" are more often than not the result of cognitive processes; of the "I think therefore I feel" type of thinking.  What I am talking about, on the other hand, is the occurrence of a deeply felt emotion that comes upon us.  Take for example the experience of love or grief or the welling up of whatever moves us to tears in the presence of the indefinable.

We need to learn how to resist the urge to analyze what those mean and begin to let them do their work on us. To say that emotions move us may be more accurate that we first think.  What happens when we allow an emotion to work its magic on us is that it begins to transform our very being from the inside out. And our "normal" reaction to that transformation is to quickly avoid it, run away from it or do something about it.  Transformation is never pleasant - it is often more like pulling yourself inside out through your belly button!  But when we allow an emotion to work us, that is exactly what is possible.

Lovers may feel the love but may too often move to capture the object of their love instead of letting it grow them in new and unthought of ways. The former is an act of narcissism (not love) where the latter is transformative. Similarly suffering causes a knee-jerk reaction of doing whatever will stifle the suffering. And yet nothing will reinvent us like suffering. This is not to be confused with victimhood. There are times when suffering must be ended for the safety of the victim.  But when our ego takes charge (a bad habit it engages in for most of our waking hours), and it is our ego need that wants to end the suffering or claim the reward at having loved so well, then we are denying our emotions the power that is uniquely theirs. Ego is the enemy of transformation.

Most of the time allowing emotions the opportunity of doing the inner work feels like sitting in a pool of muck - all damp and smelly and dirty. What's worse is that emotions do not work on us in any linear fashion (step 1, 2, 3) as our logical egos would have it.  It is sporadic, coming and going in waves of differing times and intervals.  And it is not over until it is over.  As if that is not enough bad news for your ego, get this: once you start this work, there is no way out except through it. And a nasty corollary to that is that any part that you skip will come back to kick you in the butt when you least expect it.

But there is good news. On the other end, there is a rainbow of new opportunities and insights that were never visible through your ego-controlled lenses. New worlds and new ways of being wait for those willing to let themselves be sucked through the vortex of emotion-driven transformation. Be patient with yourself and gentle with your emotions. It is hard work, but the rewards are worth it.