new beginnings....october 26th, 2014

Ideas. I am sure that we all have come across an awareness that seemingly changes our perspective and how we move through life.  I had such an idea come to me a couple of weeks ago while preparing to do a group facilitation in nearby Boulder, Colorado.  Prior to the meeting, I was thinking about how I could best help these individuals as they searched for what they wanted to accomplish in the next year.   Now each facilitations is different from each other; so while I was thinking about this activity, I was drawn to its purpose.  But the more I thought about the purpose I became more absorbed with the planning on how the event was going to transpire; which led me to feel like I really had nothing to offer them.  On my drive to the location, I had a concept come to me; so, I presented it to them and it would eventually set the tone for the event. I asked them not to think, “What are we going to do to accomplish our mission?” but to think of the more basic question of “Why is our mission important?” 

The concept of “why” over “what” is a simple one if we take the time to consider the difference.  Oh sure, “what” is an action word that means that we are busy doing “something”.  We may have started doing something based on a desire to accomplish a goal.  But how many times do we continually do the same thing over and over again without reflecting on why we are doing it.  As I think about the meeting with the group from Boulder, I remember not sensing that I left them with the best of feelings and now I know why.  I could feel that there was a sense of frustration over their final collective decision and that was because the action plan that they had chosen was the same one that they had chosen the year before.  My mistake was that I did not reflect on the comment that I started the meeting off with. Instead of allowing them to “sit” in their frustration, I should have asked them why this act was so important to them.  I should have asked that they consider not “what” or “how” but to ask themselves “why”.  The “why” will reflect their passion.  The “why” will develop their truest identity.  

There it is.  The concept of “why”.

 

Individually we ask ourselves, why do we want to get a better education… or to be successful in business… or to be faithful in our relationships… or to stand up for social justice? Is it just because we know it is the right thing to do?  Well, we know that telling the truth is the right thing to do.  We know that obeying the laws is the right thing to do. We know a lot of “right thing” to do’s but yet we still don’t always do them.

Now this is where the story becomes a little more personal. I have asked myself the very same thing. Why do I write… why is it so important for me to study how to be a counselor… why do I eat healthy… why do I choose to work out the way that I do… why do I have the faith system that I have?  

So let me offer this as a suggestions, when we are about to start a new phase of life or set a new goal, lets first ask ourselves why we want to do it.  I believe that once we personally know the answer to “why” it will become a lot easier to discover “what” we want to do and “how” we should do it.

streams of thought...may 14th, 2014

”In those moments I sometimes catch a glimpse of my true life, a life hidden like the river beneath the ice.” – Parker Palmer from Let Your Life Speak

Have you ever found a writer, a performer, a thinker of all times, or perhaps just another person that makes both your face and soul smile at the same time? 

It may be in the way they live their lives.  It may be in some act of kindness that they have done.  It may be in what they have written.  Or it may be just because they sang something that just reached inside you.

Parker Palmer is one of those individuals for me.  He speaks with such depth and clarity, yet with the simplest of ways.

In moments that I need to re-find my way, I go to some of the writing sources that always seem to inspire me.  Yes, I find refuge in the Jewish Proverbs.  I find meaning in the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh. I revisit my calling in the writings of Parker Palmer and Henri Nouwen.

We just left a winter season of introspection.  That period of time when we can pause to discover how we can live life. 

I think that we take the seasons for granted.  In winter, we move through them mindlessly and always looking for the warmer seasons to come. In the spring, we seem to be thinking about the family “vacations” that need to be planned out.  In the summer, we are outdoors and moving about going from one event to another, all the while making plans for the fall events and holiday seasons. We just do not seem to give the seasons a place where they can guide us in looking at ourselves.   

Hopefully, during this winter season of reflection, we had the opportunity to glimpse through the icy cold exterior of the day to day into a warmed life that flows inside of us.  Just as the trees had shed their leaves… a symbol of their external beauty… its life moved inside of itself to develop a greater strength in the roots, which anchor the tree into the soil of the earth.  We, too, have gone through a season of moving inside of our own souls to take a moment from the busyness of life to develop the roots inside of ourselves to anchor us for the impending seasons. 

Now in the spring season, we move into a period of renewal and rebirth.  Just as we see the flowers and the buds on the trees start to peek their colorful heads from the dark depth of their birthing place of protection, we, too, are moving into a new season of life.

If we have caught a “glimpse of (our) true life” during the season of introspection, we have discovered what path we are designed to travel on. Hopefully, we have looked at our sense of being a little differently than before.  Many times we get caught up into a cultural movement which pushes us into competing more… into earning more… into consuming more… and yet our life, that is uniquely individual, yearns for more than just moving in the same direction as everyone else.  We are reluctant… dare we say… afraid… to step outside of our environment that we live in to be different.  We have learned to live from the outside in and then wonder why we are never satisfied.  Instead, we need to pause long enough not to say how we want to live life but to listen long enough for our life to tell us how we should live it.  We are becoming deaf to the beating of our soul because the noise of the world has been turned up too loudly.

Nature has a way of teaching us so much more on how we should walk in our own present life.  We have become the consumers of the earth more than the caretakers.  A caretaker will do just that…. “take care”.  They will know the dangers and the possibilities in the land and the creatures that reside in the habitat.  It may be possible that we no longer listen to our own inner self because we are just thinking about how we can consume life not care for it.

Parker Palmer writes, “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.”

We all go through a season of what is seemingly lost.  Is it possible that the loss is not really a loss but a lesson?  Is it possible that the lesson is meant to be a positive teaching of how to live and love?  Perhaps the loss is showing us what we truly value and therefore giving us a chance to live those values out in a richer sense.

We see the streams of water… the current is flowing and carrying with it what needs to be taken away… perhaps the only thing the separates us from that Living Water is the icy barrier of being something that we are truly not meant to be.

Breaking script… Namaste

streams of thought....february 12th, 2014

Sometimes I get a little lost in the journey.  Do you ever feel that way?

We get caught up in the movement that we exhaustedly sit down at the end of the day and we simply... with a sigh... wonder what happen.  We made plans. We set the calendars. We made lists. We did every conceivable organizational thing we have been taught or promoted to do but yet we think about all that we did not accomplish. We think back on the day and become aware of a lost fifteen minutes driving.... or ten minutes standing in line... or the phone call or project that took a lot longer than we had planned for. 

So, what do we normally do?  We begin to think that we need to just either be more disciplined or we need to plan better or we need to just be more focused... or perhaps... maybe, we need to give ourselves space. 

In the past four months, I have been working on my balance and flexibility.  It has been a difficult two years and the tension of the inner struggle for health has taken its toll on me. However, I know that what I am doing in the present is beyond my wildest imagination. I look back at photos that were taken prior to my diagnosis of cancer and I am reminded that I was not as healthy as I thought that I was at that time.  My body was betraying my own sense of health.  I was running and preparing to participate for a half marathon but the whole time my body was silently dying inside. The thing that I thought was normal was actually anything but normal. I have very little recollection of the first month after my first surgery but I do remember at times driving around the streets of Denver feeling exhausted and confused.  I, now, realize it was the lack of glucose and other vitally important nutrients. In that first month I had not eaten or drank anything of measurable value.

Four more surgical procedures later, I was walking out St Luke's Hospital for the last time.  Well, more like shuffling out of the hospital for the last time. A year after that last surgery, I am sitting here planning on going on an exploratory / immersion trip to Nicaragua. I will have my personal trainer certification from the NCSF at the end of the month. We will be in the second semester of a graduate school program in Counseling/Psychology at Regis University. We will be Level One certified in the practice of Reiki. We will start the completion of a book that will hopefully encourage and inspire others.

Inwardly, I smile that it took me almost a half a century to realize that the act of balance comes not from juggling a lot of projects or tasks. I am now aware that being stable is not the same as being sedentary. But the journey of health and healing came from within before it was seen from the outside.

I remember my yoga instructor, Julieta Claire, inviting me to come back to the practice of yoga.  I knew that I was going to be very limited due to the devices that I had to carry and was attached to at the time. To me the invitation meant more than the actual participation. Since that time, I have had not been able to practice with Julieta but I have carried on the practice in my home. I am aware that for me the invitation was an external gift of belonging. The internal gift of belonging is found in being mindful of my own longing to "be".  To be authentic. To be faithful to my own practice. To be content not in things but content within my own sense of self. To not be judgmental. To not be critical of self.  

The Buddha says that we should only speak when these four criteria are being met:

§  Is it True

§  Is it Timely

§  Is it helpful

§  Is it kind

Christ said that we are to love others as we love ourselves. But how many times do we forget the second part, "as we love ourselves" The act of metta.

A good friend Rachael Medd said, "To help cultivate a state of balance and stability; among the suffering and noise, [we need to know] what it is to be ‘alive’ and to be able to make sense of this, accept this and use this to not only realize, but explore… who we truly are."

When I read those words, I was reminded of what John O’Donohue wrote. He writes, “The beauty of being human is the capacity and desire for intimacy” It is not an intimacy that is met by the presence of another but by the presence of ourselves. We become so deeply aware of who we are that we reflect it in what we do. It is on the “mat” that we are drawn deeper into gently embrace the spiritual tension that we feel.  We want to embrace the tension not in the sense that we approve of it but that we acknowledge it.  We are present with our own situation that we learn from the emotions that those tensions create. We become mindful that the presence of tension promotes within us the inflexibility of being able to give ourselves the space and the grace to just be whom we truly are.   O’Donohue leads us in seeing that the intimate awareness of who we are is the greater angel that comes along to interact with the emotions that insecurity and doubt may create. And this interaction is not an internal session of struggle but acceptance.  Because with acceptance comes understanding. This understanding leads us to know more deeply and safely where we need to redeem the lesser part of who we struggle to be.   Because without this redemption we lose our balance and stability.

Breaking script… Namaste

streams of thought...january 25th, 2014

"It is not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It is because we dare not venture that they are difficult" - Seneca (1st Century)

I think that we need a break. A moment of time where we allow time to move while we pause. Perhaps we need to walk into a field or to find a chair in our home and close our outward vision of all that is going on around us. This world of ours is a lot to take in don't you think?

Then.....

We need to open our eyes and hearts to the possibilities.

Someone asked me recently about this new mantra of mine. Just in case someone has missed it or perhaps we have just started to walk this journey together; I made this year my year of "Breaking Script".  It is actually a title of a talk that Rabbi Sharon Brous gave this past September.  My ears are open to all truths and she is one of my favorite people to hear truth from.

"Breaking Script" simply means that the role that I had been playing is no longer the role I accept or want to continue have a part in.

When we stop to think about the role we play, let’s ask some questions. 

How many relationships are we in that are unhealthy and undermined our own sense of value?  It doesn't matter what kind of relationship it is; because anytime we interact with another person or group it is relationship. Sadly, we might even be doing this to ourselves.

How many of us are in dream state where we wish we could fully utilize our skills but we seem invisible at the place where we work?

How many are in family relationships that have placed us in the role of being a rescuer...a victim...a locus of blame...an enabler?

How many classes have we sat in where we are nothing more than a student id number?

How many of us have walked into a gym where we simply feel uncomfortable?

How many of us have sat in our homes wishing that we had a sense of connection with others so we become addicted to social media?

Relationships are delicate balances. So is life. They can bring us utter and unimaginable joy... a sense of acceptance that is not just physical but goes much deeper than that. They can, also, bring us pain... a state of being where you just can't move. I think we all have experienced both joy and pain to this degree.

We look back at not just what was but we think about what we truly hoped that it would have been. We have a struggle that leads us to wanting more but we stopped to think about what we have to do to make it different?  

We have to risk living a life that is not filled with "what if's" and "should I's".  Let’s find out what inspires us to have a role that gives us a sense of value and space.  If we are really wanting to live a life that allows us to breathe deeply, we will realize that it is not perfection that what we should strive for but it is a sense of inner strength of moving in life knowing that you are being present and authentic. This effort to discover who we are is the place to begin and from this beginning place we should not settle for the lesser of who we are but to chase... to grab on to... and to embrace the greater part of who we are meant to be. We need to stop being the lesser of who we are because how we present ourselves is how others will accept us.

In my effort of breaking script from my previous illness, the other day I was running and I was thinking about a lot of different things, as I always seem to do. I thought about those that are still suffering from illnesses that have turned their lives upside down. I thought about a friend who recently lost a deeply loved one. I thought about what I can do to make my project to Nicaragua the best it can be... I thought of the people that are suffering from abuse, disease, and mental disorders.

An idea came to mind...

For us to be a light we need to go into the darkness. For us to share love we have to confront hatred. For us to give hope we have to be willing to pick up those who are empty of all hope.

In other words, breaking script for me means that I have to risk. I have to step outside the normal course of life and to risk being authentic. I know the script that I have been playing for too long and that is a role that I am no longer willing to be a part of. What does "taking a risk" mean for you? I have no idea; however, you do.

We need to be bold in our lives. We need to live with a lion's heart.

We always be pushed into roles that emphasize a lesser filled life, it is simply a struggle that we will always encounter. We need to remember… we deserve to live a life that displays our greater and true self.  

breaking script....Namaste