When we are willing to love

For the past two years I made the pilgrimage to the Sisters, Oregon Folk Festival. It’s a pilgrimage because it offers more than fabulous musicianship. It offers mind-blowing, concept cleansing, knee-dropping spirituality when we open to finding its presence.

One entertainer, Ellis, caught my eye this year. Standing alone on the stage with her guitar, Ellis offers a unique sound, one-of-a-kind songwriting and a heart as big as the festival. There were few who saw her that didn’t fall in love. It was her infectious smile, unregulated laughter and insightful words (words uncommon for one of her young years) that claimed my attention. She had a way of cutting right to the core of the human condition and making us laugh uproariously as she took us into her world.

During a break between songs she gently spoke of searching for a way out, and that what we really search for is a way in. As I listened, I thought back to my original reason for starting down the spiritual path. I thought I was searching for a way out – a way to silence the voices in my mind constantly tending to my short-comings. That, to me, was a pilgrimage worth its weight in gold. Were I to be victorious I knew life would look like heaven on earth, the Promised Land – worth any price I had to pay. In triumph, I would be adequate and worthy.

I didn’t know then that I really searched for a way ‘in’, a way to include more, relate more, to love more … to be fully here, participating, expressing, and connecting with all those I wanted so badly to leave in my dust. Had I known then, what I know now, I couldn’t have entered the path so innocently or been so willing to engage my dragons and demons. Looking back, it may have been a blessing to not know.

Although … knowing what I searched for might have helped me move more quickly and brought the real pot of gold into clearer view. Had I realized that loving more was the Holy Grail, the key to joy and self-love, surely I would have dropped my defenses and unabashedly embraced life. Had I, I would have discovered that anything is possible when we are present and willing to love. All the tightness and knots of life are because we choose ourselves – our ways, beliefs, needs – instead of choosing love, instead of being present this moment’s reality.

Perhaps though, it is our search to find a way out that hones us and breaks us open enough to accept love’s possibility. Had someone told me to just love I would have deemed them crazy. What? Love those who hurt me? I wouldn’t have been able to hear Ellis’s words were it not for countless dances with my now darling demons.

Our search for a way out is a wondrous teacher. It perfects us with each dead-end, until the pilgrim ceases. Along the way it shaped us into the face of acceptance, adoration, compassion, and deep abiding love. A friend dropped me a note the other day. In it she wrote, “… and yet the richness that pours through you now comes from the depths as well as the heights.” Her note captures the essence of the spiritual quest and the possibility that awaits us all. Anything is possible – even finding ourselves absolutely adequate and worthy.

Ellis: The only truth is what we do with right now.

Gayle: Will we choose love?

Your comments are appreciated.

Fears will either play us or we can learn to play with them

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -  I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. –  Robert Frost

Days like these can work in our favor when we let them. It doesn’t appear that way, but it is true. Fear is on the surface. Everywhere we look businesses are missing. One day they are here. The next day they are gone. No one knows when the next shoe, let alone the last shoe, will drop. We feel vulnerable. Lifestyles and more are in peril. To risk sounding like I miss the point entirely, this is an uncomfortable time and place in which we find ourselves. Ego is tenaciously hanging on, conducting damage control, running its programs of fear. It is the hammering voice in our heads, and the soft yearning of hearts sick with worry, yelling at us to tighten down the hatches and protect ourselves from the devil winds to come.

These are obviously not fun times for most of us. Even those of us with money in the bank are feeling dread, wondering how far the economic spiral will go. The talk is depressing. As Ursula Bacon, a dear, wise woman told me this week, it is ‘depression talk’. She went on to speak about the power of our words. Even when we are talking about another’s viewpoint, our use of their words, validates that energy within us. Listening, night after night, to the news, gives the energetic thread added continuity. It is like a storm building. With enough wind it builds first into a breeze, then a gale, and eventually into a typhoon.

This morning another important piece to the puzzle fell into place when Earl Storm, a partner in Workplace Evolution, shared a quote he had recently heard by Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco. It is profound. “The future is not in front of us. It is inside of us.”

We are choosing our future, as Ursula said, with our words, with what lives inside of us. Fortunately for us, the beliefs we hold and the stories we tell ourselves aren’t buried as deeply anymore. All of our fears are coming out to play. They will either play us or we can play with them. The beauty of this moment is that our fears are visible if we are willing to look. We don’t have to dig or coax them out into the open. They are present.

We are at a crossroads. One road inevitably leads deeper into fear, anxiety and protectionism, leaving us more completely separated from others, less able to connect, and with a gaping hole in our hearts. This road appears, at first glance, to be our savior. It isn’t. It is the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. No matter how much we insulate ourselves, no matter how much we rethink and analyze our situation, it will never be enough. Experience shows us this. There is no lasting calm. Upon this road, we devise and improvise layers of protective strategy, even when the only defense we can lay our hands on is mental maneuvering. Regardless of what we do the fears keep resurfacing with increasingly shorter intervals. Each time they resurface we fortify ourselves again, building a more impenetrable wall, effectively and efficiently separating ourselves from those with whom we are intended to partner and play.

Alone we are lost within the desert of our mind’s making. Together we can move beyond the crisis of spirit into an oasis of possibility. The second road, truly the road less travelled, leads to unity, to being in this together. It directs us into realization of our eternal and flawless connection with all beings. This road heals the hole in our hearts and allows us to flower into service and full use.

We choose. Granted, it is an extreme shift to turn and meet our fears, but so important. Fear is an insulator and it prevents us from seeing what is right before our eyes. Free of fear’s trance, we can see new solutions, creative ideas, and willing people with talents to help us find our way out of difficulty. We normally turn from fear rather than turning towards it, but we can choose to face fear now. And even if once again we choose fear, in the next breath we can choose differently. We are never beyond God’s grace. 

When we stop for a minute, we will see that in the short term, turning and meeting our fears is actually no more uncomfortable than turning away. Note the anxiety present now. It is an uneasiness that never seems to quite go away. It is not intended too. Its purpose is to show us where we are blocked, where we can’t say ‘yes’ to God’s vision for our lives, where we still have our hands locked onto life’s steering wheel. When we are stuck and flailing about within our heads, we miss the love notes, the divine messages that line our pathway. We create the mishaps from within our disconnected and protective state. This turmoil is far less than what is possible for mankind. We created it unknowingly. With this new awareness gleaned from self-understanding we can turn and make a stand for the Good within ourselves and within us all.

In the short term, meeting our fears can feel uncomfortable, but it doesn’t have to. It is only uncomfortable to the degree that we hang onto our patterns and personal stories. When we put them down, even for a minute, we can feel the relief. Imagine what it would feel like to not need anything. We can experiment and allow ourselves to sit right in the middle of being happy with what we have. We can take another step and imagine ourselves living simply, unattached to any thing, gladly giving all that we have back to the creator’s keeping. Breathe it in deeply. Let it swell and fill the ache created by hanging on. When we are willing to loose everything, including our lives, we become a blank page upon which God alone writes. From there, anything is possible.  

In the long term, committing to make your life a divine experiment means coming out from under the pall of fear. Along this path we learn to get out of our own way and allow God’s way to emerge. With a little experimentation, we come face to face with our greater purpose (and it isn’t to accumulate the most of everything or to make ourselves right and others wrong). It is to be of real use, to allow God to express through our simple vessel. The more simple we become, the more empty of self-wanting and self-importance, the greater the flow of Pure Expression.

It is an adventure if we choose to see it that way. I do. Life is this amazing mystery, constantly unfolding in new and different ways. Just as soon as I think I know where it is going, life takes a sharp turn, zinging off in a new direction. The audacity of it leaves me breathless in wonder. Seeing my self as a character in God’s script is quite exhilarating. No, I didn’t get my copy of the script, but that’s alright with me. I’d rather not know where it is going. It is infinitely more fun to follow God’s breadcrumbs, along His trail, grateful that I am a simple player.

Are there not… Two points in the adventure of the diver: One – when a beggar, he prepares to plunge? Two – when a prince, he rises with his pearl? I plunge! –Robert Browning

Life or its imitation

Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things. (Chinese Philosopher Master Zhuang)

Do you know what is real and what is imagination? Are you sure? If so, how do you know the difference? Your mind is an amazingly creative device. When you awaken from a dream, sometimes minutes pass before you can shake yourself out of what only a breath before appeared real. If you believed in the dream’s reality, what makes you believe only minutes later in the dream’s unreality? Which reality is true—the dream about life or life lived apparently outside the dream? Which dream is the dream? Beliefs are different for each of us. What is believed real for me may not be real to you. Is it possible that what is real comes with no bottom line certainty?

Morpheus to Neo: If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain (The Matrix)

Is that all real is? Electrical signals? Each of us must answer that question for ourselves, but if you have experienced glimpses, have a sense of something beyond the wizard’s curtain, you already know that something other than this day-to-day experience exists. It is what drives the search. Without that inner understanding wouldn’t you be content, unable to conceive the possible validity of your butterfly nature. Perhaps there are layers of reality, like the layers of an onion, and different things appear real depending on your perspective and willingness to look deeper.

It’s an interesting conundrum, this reality question. When you are daydreaming—life lived within the dream—is that real? You make up stories in your heads, act out conversations, envision outcomes, and feel the energetic impact of your imagination in your stomach and heart. Is that real? Feels pretty real, doesn’t it? But as soon as you pop out of the trance, you immediately recognize the daydream as unreality. Too bad your body doesn’t have such a mechanism. If it did it would shake off the silent apprehension easily, effortlessly.

Imagination feels real, even after you snap out of the game. We humans spend much of our lives playing with imagination and fantasy. Most suffering stems from this mindplay as we strive to envision a life different from the one we have, replaying old conversations, conversations long gone and yet, energetically resilient.

Pay attention and you will find a goldmine of information floating through your head. Notice that it is not enough to live in the moment—that it is more important to analyze, to review, and replay. Become aware of how you spend your life’s precious days inside your head, playing with different versions of life instead of living it. In fact, can you detect that you spend so much time within the what ifs of imagination that you develop a craving for mindplay, little by little learning to prefer it to the real thing, even while you quietly pray for the voices inside your head to stop?

Most of us fear dying, afraid we haven’t fully lived because at some level we know we haven’t yet begun to live. Fear of death, when seen and acknowledged, is liberating, especially when we see the gift that lies beneath this desire to linger a little longer. Life is not a brain inside a bell jar. Life is full-on engagement. It is lived out loud and accessed only in the moment. Insistence upon our version of life keeps us locked inside our mind, crippling us emotionally and spiritually, consuming the spice of life. It kills us long before the body drops away. Our fear of death is actually our desire to truly live, to experience living life out loud.

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. Norman Cousins (American Essayist and Editor, long associated with the Saturday Review. 1912-1990)

This ache, this loneliness, this sense of faking our way through life, is our blessing. It is the divine cattle prod, the siren’s call to freedom. For many of us it is the reason we search. It asks nothing of us other than to answer its call and understand its message. And the message is, “What you have been doing has not been working or you wouldn’t still be looking for answers, you would have become answer, complete in yourself”.

What have you been doing? Have you been attempting to think your way out of your predicament, envisioning the perfect future, perhaps even uttering words of hope and faith, but to what purpose, to change your current reality into one you deem better? Have you held out hope for your awakening to ensure your specialness, hope for your success to guarantee that others look up to you, hope for your picture of the perfect life that will finally establish your worthiness? Have you held out hope to be any of many things rather than abandoning desire and looking to life as it is? Each hope, is a wolf in sheep’s clothes, a distraction from reality, another foray into mind! Are you ready yet to lay down your arms and consider the message?

Morpheus to Neo: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
Morpheus [to Neo who is choosing the red pill] Remember… all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.

What is truth? What is real? Can you really know? Would you like to? You will not find the Real in imagination. You won’t even find ‘life’ in imagination. Life is only lived on the razor’s edge, between past and future. It shimmers lightly right here in this moment even before thoughts about the present. A life of imagination is not life. It is make-believe, fantasy, pretend, imitation—no different than imaginary food on a child’s play table. This pretend life leaves one empty and unfulfilled, aching for the Real. It leaves us gasping for air, depressed and alone. Life is only lived as one chooses to be fully present, fully here, regardless of what or who shows up, even when it’s messy and uncomfortable as it is certain to be.

Do you want freedom from mind’s endless conversation, from your self-condemnation and fear of inadequacy—this mess we all, when we are willing to be brutally honest, find ourselves in. Do you genuinely want emotional, mental and spiritual freedom? Stop a minute before you answer. There are many reasons you might want to continue this mindplay. As you well know, at times it is quite fun and entertaining. It has kept you utterly occupied for years. Stop and recognize that choosing Now, choosing to show up for life, means stopping the game, stopping the play of mind, stopping the forays into daydream, into what if, and the scenarios of your perfect life—you know, the life you will have when and if you get lucky or better yet, work hard enough. Choosing this moment has infinite implications. Are you ready to quit dreaming and enter into Life, ready to reclaim yourself from the bell jar of your imagination? Are you willing to really live? Will you choose the red pill?

Morpheus: I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.

 

What did you think about the article? Your comments are welcomed and will be responded to as well!

You Would Jump at Such an Opportunity, Wouldn’t You?

So, here’s the choice. We can stop here, now, and tread no further into the adventure of this lifetime, stunned into silence, by the storied fears within our heads, barren of exquisite feeling, satiated expression, and unqualified authenticity, inwardly aware, at least at some level, of what we have forsaken with our choosing, now and forever more, lost to this moment, this moment that only is. Or, we can walk, heads bowed low, into the mystery of life, willing to embrace life with all its ups and downs, its apparent triumphs and failures, knowing that only abundant head-on, breathless, living-out-loud can satisfy. We choose to be the expansive freedom that comes with our full consent to life, and enter into this adventure eyes wide open and raised to the heavens, our hearts laid bare upon the altar of YES. G. Gregory

Choice is such a loaded word, especially when you feel you have none, after all, if you felt you had a choice, you would jump at the opportunity for such a life, wouldn’t you? Is it possible that we really ‘choose’ lives of quiet desperation rather than choosing to step up to the plate and live life head-on, breathless, eloquently out loud?

What would it take to make such a choice? When I was imprisoned in my storied world of fear it didn’t seem like a choice. It felt more like a life-sentence—event, reaction, experience—event, reaction, experience—a giant mesmerizing revolving door. I couldn’t seem to break free of the drama, the constant dread of the next shoe to drop. I didn’t even know enough to know that I was caught in the door, going round and round. I just thought that this merry-go-round was life. If asked, I would have told you, “I would never have chosen this!”

Comfort kept me bottled up in my old patterns. The ‘known’ is a trickster. It sneakily makes you believe that life could always be much worse. The pasture next door may be greener but it’s full of weeds and snakes and holes. The trickster says, ‘Stay here where it is familiar, where you know the territory and what to expect”. Comfort is a guardian of fear. If I wasn’t so enamored of security and comfort I would have been more willing to chance living life fully out loud.

Was I choosing? As much as the old me would hate to admit it, yes, I was. I was choosing within a framework of fear and had no idea it was in control. My choice was unconscious, but it was choice.

As I write this, I am trying to recall the turning point, that moment in time when life changed, when that something clicked into place and I was no longer willing to maintain my personal status quo, that moment when I chose the road less traveled, and began to walk down the path to freedom. My moment of truth came when I chose to stand up against heartless treatment at work, offering my resignation, unwilling to continue with the program as it stood. The choice was conscious, although I didn’t fully understand what making it meant. Choosing to live out loud becomes easier after the first excursion and victim-hood wears much heavier than before.

This life lived out loud is what we all want, what we dream of, and beat ourselves unmercifully for not choosing. We know we are choosing lives of quiet desperation. We know it. As much as we try, we can’t hide from ourselves for long. Every time we get that feeling in our gut that says, ‘you’re doing it again’, we know we are the ones that let ourselves down. At a deep level, I knew that even before I knew I was caught in the revolving door.

My life as drama seems like a life-time ago, and yet, just yesterday, I found myself tense and insensitive—tied up in knots, although much smaller knots, knots none-the-less. The knots didn’t last. As soon as I stopped long enough to see what was happening, they dissolved with my seeing and acceptance. Still, they had found a way into the calm, wormed their way into awareness, and attempted to convince me of their worth, but again, I chose. I chose to live a life head-on, breathless, and on the edge of God’s envelope. I can’t do that with shards of fear hanging from my ankles. Sometimes I have to give it a little kick and shake it loose, like a puppy shaking off its bath, wiggling from the top of its head to the tip of its floppy tail. We can shake like that little dog and dislodge the fear that has us trapped within its spell. All we have to do is choose and let the shaking begin.

“What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliness, and say, ‘This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!’ Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer,’Never have I heard anything more divine’?” Friedrich Nietzsche (German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, 1844-1900)