I have balanced between my daughters’ needs and my own every day for the past 19 years; always, they needed to be a constant front and center consideration. This slowing section of the stream has been a while in coming, it seems helpful for me to acknowledge. Years I fantasized about a little more mental space, a bit more quiet, more individual freedom. But now, as what I imagined for years is being given back to me in small increments, I am at a choice point. I am resisting a knee-jerk impulse to fill space up with anything not worthy of my time or focus.
Stillness is a gift that wants to be opened.
There are voices that say, get moving, make something happen, change things up, you are a nobody choosing to do so so much alone. These voices make me want to jump out of the raft and start kicking – maybe I even want to buy an outboard motor to blast through this part of the river.
I do not silence these voices, I do not call them silly; I am giving them space to fluster about. When they quiet down, I point out the beauty in the trees on the bank, the water birds standing watch, I am encouraging a long look at the clouds, I am saying to them gently, there is nothing you can miss out on. You have worked hard to clear yourself up for this space, now lie in it, bask in it. Do not get up do not rush on do not paddle down to some rapids of your own making. Life as you want it cannot leave you behind.
The stillness has me loving my own company. I like how little I make myself make small talk. I know my story, so I do not have to repeat it. I love the lack of explanation needed to enjoy a walk in nature with just me. I listen to girls as they come and go. I nod. They want to know I am here, the jumping off point to which they return, again and again. While I enjoy their presence, I do not demand their company. I give them my full attention, when they stop by.
Last weekend, I almost stepped on a snake as I was walking a sunny path at an old rice field. The silence and stillness indwelling in me allowed me to hover mid step and turn on a dime to give him space. I retreated without worry of threat, and he did too; he was a good 5 feet long. He slowly made his way across the path into the shady woods, without worry or hurry. We watched each other. I’ve been trying to identify him with no luck online, though I know he had no rattlers to shake.
I love this part of my little life path. I am in no hurry, though a million concerns lie and wait about my future. I am holding still, trying or rather flowing into a new way of existing in trust in beauty in silence in stillness, allowing the clarity to come before I make a move.
I chose to re-listen to one of Neil Kramer’s great Roamcasts with my spaciousness today – randomly selected – and I got a familiar overlapping (around the 18:29 mark) with the place in the stream in which I find myself trying to describe here: http://neilkramer.com/roamcast-6-unmaking-empire.html : then NK posts a beautiful piece of Hermit art…wink wink nudge nudge – hi ho, off to my cave I go…
Moritz von Schwind (1804–1871) painting, A Player With A Hermit
In contrast, however, my bedside dream journal is full of my ex-spouse. Perhaps I am working through in the night what seems a non-issue in the day. I feel at peace with those 20 plus years, accountable for my part in the learning, yet in my dream last night I stole his new RV to much condemnation of everyone in the dream world; the more I tried to justify, the more alone and misunderstood I felt. I set off on my own, on foot, after I was unable to turn the headlights on and got tracked down. The lone journey on foot seems apropos for where I am.
Ah, the journey. We all have them. 7 billion plus pairs of eyes. Every night, 7 billion plus dream bubbles floating up from planet earth – infinity all the way up and all the way down; how many lives have I lived? Ultimate freedom feels mine – any choice – any potential playing out – and I am just one potentiality at a time, slowed down light so I can enjoy it as it happens.
Only one friend has ever told me her IQ; she had a high one, and she much identified with her quick comprehension and multiple, impressive degrees. I enjoyed her edgy sarcasm that felt refreshing amongst all the proper moms on the playground.
But her cleverness, after a few glasses of wine, became a cruel streak which she used to debilitate others and build herself up. She came into my life with a gift; she helped me to demystify the mind. She helped me see that being intelligent and well-educated did not lead one to happiness and heart opening. Obvious, I know, but up to that point, I had some faulty thoughts in this area.
She also helped me to detach from the importance of my own words. I remember the feeling of being hurt whenever I was cut off in conversation. This friend, in her verbal cruelty, showed me that a cut off in conversation might be a blessing, a break to take a breath, switch gears, a chance to be more mindful in our words. What this friend began in me has been furthered by my kids: they get so tired of my words and explanations.
They are always cutting me off.
They say to me all the time, “just tell me what you want me to do; don’t say because.” They want me to just say what I want, but not to say why.
Often, when I use an explanation for whatever I am asking, or doing, or thinking, there is no explanation necessary.
I am grateful for the reason to stop and just trust what they are telling me. For a while when they said to me, “Don’t say because,” I was confused…what does that mean? They were showing me that mostly the WHY is self-evident and over-explanation is tedious to listen to. Let me give an example:
“You really need to clean up your room because you have been losing things lately and your dirty clothes are not making it into the hamper to get clean.” Ugh. I don’t like even typing that.
They know all of this already. I can say: “Clean up your room. Put your dirty clothes in the laundry.”
Or better yet, “What do you think needs to be done in your room today?”
This over-explaning does not only apply to parenting. I am beginning to suspect it is more universal.
When Eden was sitting beside me while I was grading essays, she told me to stop explaining so much. I feel compelled to write out explanations to students telling them not only what is incorrect, but also explaining why it is incorrect and explaining how to correct. Goodness, overkill! “They don’t read all of that, mom. If they really want to understand, they will look it up or they will ask you.”
Something clicks inside of me.
Ah, explanations are a lack of trust!
I feel like I need to explain my actions or requests “because” I don’t trust you to get it; or I don’t trust myself in asking for it. I am not trusting my students to learn on their own when I offer all of this explanation. And the truth, they don’t read all of my statements; most just look for the number grade and move on. All that work, dust in the wind. 🙂
I am going to work on eliminating the word “because” in my home and at school and see if I can.
I think I will speak more clearly, more powerfully.
“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others…” — Timothy Leary
When I came across this quote a few days ago, something about it struck me and caused the words to linger with me through my days. More and more I find myself taking chances on conversations, and while connections are not always made, I’m often glad I made the effort to stay open. I am also amazed by how often the normal moment blossoms into something wholly (holy) unexpected. There are some excellent folks showing up. Life brings these moments to our doorstep to experience the real – BEing there and allowing unfolds happenings of connectedness.
Blessings on your heads – all my stranger friends – my others.
I have had some questions about my attitude toward a particular student in one of my literature classes. My frustration and impatience with this student has turned my idea of myself as a patient, kind, and supportive teacher on its head – marvelous! She came just at the right time.
This confining role of goodness I have created for myself needed some examination. In walks B, 1/2 hour late to every class, her hand up to stop the class mid-flow at her late arrival with personal matters, no book, not prepared, staying after every class trying to manipulate the conversation into praise for herself…what? Are you kidding? Sounds cruel to me but what I see is low functioning with arrogance. To move out of low functioning, she will need to understand the tough work ahead of her. I am unable to stay in my shallow role of helper with her. I am having to learn to express my genuine frustration as a mirror of truth, while also operating with compassion in the moment. Whew.
Do I trust myself to do the right thing? When I err on the side of helpfulness without reflecting back to her the consequences of her own behavior, I am not honoring myself or her. When I err on the side of harsh judgement, I am lost to the possibility of change. Has she earned my unconditional acceptance? No! How do I need to reflect her failure back to her? How do I give her my honest feedback with integrity – for her benefit, for my own? How do I help her and myself establish healthy boundaries? How do I keep hope and promise for the potential for change?
Trust is not a given with everybody, unconditionally, yet the idea of trust is so golden. It feels like one can extend the olive branch of love to all, yet trust is actually conditional. We do not blindly trust until there is agreement. And agreement can be broken at any time. We enter into conditional agreement with others. As we fulfill our agreements, trust grows.
You can build lots of trust over time, only to lose it by a single instance of broken agreement. Trust has to then be re-built.
The most important trust relationship in my life is with myself. Once TRUST is established with myself, the rest clicks into place, it feels to me. When I trust my own self, I can read the truth of my frustration within as a mirror to help reflect back to the student where she may need to reflect on her own behavior. I can trust myself to stay open in the moment, to feel what I feel, to accept and express all of my feelings, even those that feel unacceptable. Perhaps I am in the kindergarten class, and all of what I am writing here is like spelling out the A,B C’s. That is okay. I may be a bit behind by my false idea of unconditional trust. I am learning what I need to learn by the experience life hands me. I am grateful for this student who finds my hidden buttons and pushes them often to help me to see where to examine.
I am learning! I reflect back to my student B my boundaries, my expectations, my detached judgements that my job requires of me. I honor my own impatience instead of sweeping it under the rug in some fake dance of compassion. I have compassion for my own limitations and thus reflect honestly back a truer trust, for real. When I give myself an outlet for this truth, my compassion and patience grow!
There is a truth or a myth, I don’t know which, that the blooming of a Peony is symbiotically related to ants. I am unwilling to determine the truth of it, that ants eat the sugary coating off of the tightly bound blossom petals of the Peony bud and allow it to blossom in its amazing glory, because I enjoy the truth of it beyond the factual validation. I cleave to the metaphor.
Humans are an exotic and wonderful bud in the universe who have forgotten how to blossom. Our blossoming is actually as natural as all the flowers that we observe on this planet, yet most human beings are stuck in the tight bud phase – We have forgotten to blossom.
This blossoming is organic. This unfolding is not a doing but just the way the petals of our innate beauty unfurl when we allow life to assist us. We allow the ants to march up our stem; we don’t resist the nibbling of their little mouths. We begin to feel a loosening of the petals; we allow the sugar coating that inhibits our development to disintegrate as what was sweet before becomes untenable – naturally.
What needs to fall away, naturally will, if we allow it to do so.
From a real human life, I have found that while I may feel the need to list, to plan, to orchestrate my life journey, the growth spurts occured from within and without without the assistance of mind. TV fell away on its own without a struggle, discordant friends or jobs or food or activities or locations all seemed to dissolve and disappear into the air at just the time and order in which they were best for me. And though it may have felt desolate and lonely as these things fell away, what came in next to fill the void was as amazing as this blossom right here – so soft and vulnerable and neck to a sharp knife brave. This blossoming. Beyond what my mind could ever conceive.
What is it I’m trying to say that first struck a true cord in me? My own private epiphany? We are here together like a field of sunflowers, (another flower comparison this morning, really?) and some of the enormous audacious heads are starting to face up toward the sun. We are allowing the blossoming to occur. It is so funny in a field of flowers to know that what is occurring here is nothing special; it is just what flowers do, bloom.
Our field is odd in the universe in that the blossoming is co-opted, hidden; we humans have been lulled into a dream and we do not even know that we are flowers, we do not know that we can blossom. And that is okay too! Every human can choose for herself whether to remember to flower or not; not every field chooses the full on glory of every flower face turned up toward the sun – but wouldn’t that be magnificent!
I recently listened to the latest installment of these most organic new teachings of Neil Kramer – and felt this response to his demarcation points that we all hit with the image of our flowering, the remembrance of my own way on the path as it has automatically allowed me to let go, let go, and let go again of all that does not serve me. I only had to carry on – and what was no longer appropriate for where I found myself – fell away, as I allowed it to do so.
The ants on my tight bud self were uncomfortable; I often wanted to beat them back, but now I see more clearly; each discomfort is helping me to blossom.
The way of the path, for me, since it has not been an instantaneous, permanent remembering, seems to be about encountering the perfect mixture of circumstances, chaos, escalating hot heads, etc. 🙂 to help me find myself in a reactive state (much to my “spiritual identity’s” dismay) so i can ferret out the tendrils of identification with thought within and RELEASE…ah, the relief. Like waking from a nightmare.
The path that has led me here has been horribly and beautifully orchestrated with my agreement.
In a fractal sense, every little release has an effect throughout our realm and other realms unseen. Does that feel true to you? No matter, because the release is enough for just tiny, amoeba me.
Now here is the freaky part – in the state of release, “I hate you” sounds the very same as “I love you.” That blows me away 😮
Another lesson: when I become nonreactive to a particular sticky spot forevermore, there is no thought that these changes in me will change another in any way. I don’t mind.
Flowing to the bus pickup today, two girls who know my daughters get in my car – their ride has not shown up. I bow to the trust that I will take them home. I experience no worry that it may make us late. Then we get caught in a traffic back up and creep forward for many, maybe 6, lights in a row and it only feels like space to me.
Existing in the space of that which I already am, I find that time itself stretches and contracts according to the needs of the moment.
What’s not to trust?
Eckhart Tolle is much clearer than I…getting quiet now.
Life as Improv 