Mistaken Identity

 

Do not mistake my tears for weakness

Do not misconstrue my equanimity as inaction

Peace is not the absence of conflict

Stillness is not indifference 

Newton's Third Law of Motion nails the truth

I refuse to fuel the fire of hate.

No, love can be quiet, is patient, its grace easily overlooked

It needs no defense or offense

for it knows nothing is beyond it 

It moves without need of a microphone, or guns or even words 

no, love needs nothing, for love 

finds itself in all things 

in fact, that is how you can tell it is love

for of what could it even be afraid?

Let me move as love, let me hold as love 

let me be as love

dauntless, curious, open-spaced, 

even if I am mistaken for what I am not.

Exclusions

 

Exclusions

Perhaps the story you tell yourself or anyone who will listen

is that the brown-skinned person 

you corralled in your paddy wagon

 is a criminal, a rapist, a drug dealing degenerate thug

You call them “immigrants” like a slur

or illegal as if an imaginary line in the dirt

bestows worth,

say they don’t deserve to be “here” 

that they are stealing “our” jobs, 

as if we were not all on borrowed time.

I wonder what poison you had to drink 

to close yourself to his humanity

to lock them out of your heart

I wonder who hurt you so badly

 that you find your strength in exacting violence

on the different, vulnerable, suffering.

What delusion lets you romp through 

the garden of eden 

proclaiming these subjects unworthy. 

Does your act of separation, 

your call to remove "them"

make you feel as powerful as you think?

Your closed heart, 

unmoved, calcified

breaks mine

And in that moment

 I am freed of the prison of hate 

I belong. 

I belong to all of it, the earth, the trees,

the flowers, the refuse, 

the nasty smoke garroting her lungs, 

my fellow humans and creatures –

 it is all me 

Nothing is excluded

and so I weep.

Child's Play

When did we stop stomping in puddles 

When did we cease playing the balloon game

How long has it been since you caught snowflakes on your tongue

When did we all become so tame?

When did the wild crashing river

become a trickling flow

Where is that unabated spirit 

Just where did it go?

Have you rolled down a hill

tried to catch a leaf as it fell from the tree

Lived with abandon, unbounded carefree

In the seat of this moment, in liberty

Pay a penny for blown dandelion wishes

rising on Summer's breezy air

cartwheeling through sprinklers with nary a care

riches from each fountain you leap, for a simple dare

This poem's for you little boy on the bench smile stretching your face

Still holding momma's hand before it becomes out of place.

Does childhood slide like dusk to dawn 

Or is it slowly replaced

Does it escape suddenly like the balloon's loud pop

Or is it one day there then the next day stop.

Without expectation unburdened by history

Beginners mind, children's way, true liberty

We shackle ourselves in fear bound by grown up worry

We forget what is truly here 

In our obtaining, grasping, and hurry

We get stuck when all along we had the key.

Open, let go and 

let it all be so.

House Builder

House Builder

What if life is telling you exactly what you need to hear?

What if every moment, every single heartbeat,

every random twist of your wrist, twist of your hair

or twist of your story, that you make to be about you

has led to this moment now. 

Actually, could it even be any other way?

What if rather than looking beyond this gift 

you let go and embraced now, fully.

All of existence worked its potent power for you to exist.

You are the only expression of your form that will ever be

Can you see you are infinite beauty manifested?

but this is not a project of affirmation.

This is not a poem for building self esteem,

for a self that isn't here.

No, this is dynamite set to bring down the builder's house,

to reduce you to only the essence, frankly, nothing. 

But in that nothing, that is the subject of all objects,

you will discover life and know that you were never separate.

The Angry Poem

I, am an angry poem,

Beware, I might jump off the page 

and with a tightly curled fist wallop you in the gut too.

or I might spray my molten heat all over you.

I am a black man after all, you probably expect no more.

concentrated genetic fury from slave block to jim crow.

People like you would imprison us still

making sure we don't access the fullness of our wild hearts

For me, anger has always been radioactive.

Uppity people who look like me get put down, permanently.

Perhaps that's why its always been easier to hurt than to hurt.

To be black in any family is to know anger, but not always how to hold it.

You may talk of fighting anti-blackness 

but you are snake-like in your poison planted words

deceptive, plotting, traitorous.

You do not fool me with you empty platitudes 

and honey-laced toxic whisperings

I see you for who you are.

And if there is any power in this angry poem at all

in the first encounter with it or the twentieth,

it will be in its power to DESTROY.

but not like an atomic bomb or a vicious slur

no, this explosion melts all boundaries

reduces the aggrieved and the aggriever

into their interdependent primordial essence 

transformed.

no blame exists here

just the raw ingredients 

of pure potential bathed

in compassion's building blocks. 

Belonging

Perhaps it all just wants to belong,

to be seen for what we are, 

to be known for the fact that by,

improbable odds we even exist.

Love comes back to collect all things

to know itself in all things.

Life as a game of peek-a-boo.

It seeks all the shadowy parts, 

all the parts that feel they have no home,

that may fear being seen. 

I "see you"

What if more than anything 

those parts simply want to be seen, heard, felt,

from the ache in your arthritic knees

to the calla lilly in the vase 

to the unforgivable act committed against you, 

by you, for you, in your name.

How a quivering heart would oscillate

if it was all seen; the sublime in it's majesty

to the unfathomably grotesque

just different nomenclatures for 

Lila

in it's all encompassing magnificence.

In Search of Something Else

 In Search of Something Else

The love that passed you by 

is not your source of misery

Nor the paths you could not try

that cause you to be unhappy

Neither parties that you've missed

Nor the ones you've never kissed

No self imposed, failed test

could yield such profound unrest.

They're not the foundation of your stinging pain

Nor the sorrows tallied in your sullen ledgermain

For in truth, a deeper reality and beyond exists

In this space here, dwells peace and serenity persists

Relax into yourself for it's near as can be

When all is removed then what do we see?

The source is never separate and never can be far

How could it be, it's in fact who you are.

Abandon memories of a self and all of its stories

Jettison your deeds, your image, your mind, your glories.

This place, above all, is silent and is still

Leave at the door, all false masks and your will.

Beyond the threshold --all that which is true

Discover here that which is simply, wholly, you.

A you unbounded vast and fully free

A you, that is we, expressed as mystery

Fruit of Being Poem

Fruit of Being

I never dreamt I'd lose myself and find the whole world

though I searched a thousand basket stands for the

ripest fruits

each time, empty hands.

I'd been told about the sweet nectar of true surrender,

of a cup full of emptiness, 

but I'd not tasted it's draught

til now.

What do you eat when you're satisfied ?

What do you drink when your sated? 

I know not how to be in this world

but I am no longer frightened 

fulfilled,

I am.

 Haiku Recipe

I slowly wake up

and begin to see clearly

how to be today

--

With a lions roar

felt like a gentle whisper

we are all uncaged

--

Johnny Appleseeds

sprinkling truths into the air.

Somewhere sprouts will grow

--

Intent is the fuel

surrendered to emptiness

we stir the soupot 

--

First this way then that

Tasting to make sure its good

Now, ready to eat

 Haiku Forms

That which moves me now

is quiet, small and mighty

does it move you too?

--

I am the ocean

my waves crash on shorelines

my spray foams the air

--

 Prison or Palace

Would you have this place be a cell

 caged and trapped against our will

Husks pacing our 20 x 20  pen,

running the ruts of our wheels in the floor, or

would you have it be a palace,

food served on platters of plastic

with attendees serving our every need, 

or a retreat center, a sanctuary from a dizzying world.

Maybe a classroom where each day teachers gift us to learn

new skills and lessons to live in a tough world.

Beware the ossification of roles, who exactly is the teacher

and who is the taught. 

We all have gifts to share.

Perhaps it is simply a community of burgeoning friendships and relationships 

which like azaleas are blossoming in their own time. 

All here to help each other grow, become their colorful, fragrant selves.

We have no true task besides getting well here in this hospital. 

We are all here to heal the primary division 

and see things as they truly are 

prison or palace. 

 Fracture

It can all break.

None of us is so solid we won't fracture. 

Each has their shatter point

the point beyond which, we snap.

but do not fear.

always there is a part beyond breaking

I ask, how much emptiness lies between the stars

how much space is even between the smallest particles

Science says relative miles separate the nucleus from electrons.

There is always more space, nothingness, than solidity.

Try breaking emptiness.

Connect with space and be not distracted by the objects

For it is not a nihilistic emptiness

It is the emptiness of potential, pure kineticism

the power of birth and death and all that's in between, 

an active nothingness, a cradle of love and compassion.

This space is our home, birthright, universe.

We are but stardust rearranged again and again

and that is beautiful.

Fear not the fissures, the fractures 

for this is where the light shines through,

and we are light.

Mirror Images

I stare at the flouorescent screen willing away the pain

It remains.

Sometimes in the foreground.  And in the background too, sometimes,

but present,

like an achy back that asserts itself when you reach too far for the light.

I do not say this casually;

I know too easily how words are misconstrued and

having spent a lifetime constructing a self out of false idols of what sacrifice truly meant, I understand its currency.

But I would take up the burden of your pain and carry it if I could

If indeed, it could ease your torment.  But I know it cannot.

I am not one of those parents who seeks to shield you from hurt.

With careful attention, pain can be a crucible capable of forging the sturdiest and most loving of individuals.

I would not rob you of those lessons.

But suffering is not the only path to empathy and compassion.

And joy always dwells much deeper than the circumstances that commonly appear to birth it.

Nor does wisdom need to be wrought through tragedy.

Sometimes pain just kills.

When did you look in the mirror and fail to see

the cherub who renounced his birthday gifts to charity

or defied his teacher to stand up for his crying friend

or deftly puzzled a thousand lego bricks into flying galactic starships

or sprinkled wisdom seeds wantonly about the things that matter?

or who courageously owned the colors of himself before the world.

What chicanery hides your own beautiful countenance, obvious to others

From you, who hold that face?

and what spellcraft warps the inner light that shines from you?

Powerful must be the illusion to obscure such infinite worth, radiance and depth

from its source

a proximity too near to measure.

But such is not how it works. No sacrifice mollifies. No substitutions allowed.

So instead, I will wish for you my son, the sight my father once wished for me;

to see myself as he saw me

with the beauty, strength, love, wisdom and intelligence

capable of remaking the whole world.

A Little Butterfly's Lullaby

Little butterfly with your slit wing do you believe you cannot fly?

Is the flight you seek -- the very nature of your being -- elusive in a sorrowful way?

Even before your chrysalis, flight was yours.

Here, now, lie pink lilies extending their nectar in the fields around you.

Tulips open wide and vulnerable, pressing towards the nourishing yellow rays of the sun and craning their thin necks.

Neither strains to be its full potential.

Just arising in this colorful, delicate, sweetness.

When the dawn breaks and mauve clouds mottle the morning sky, in an explosion of fiery hues,

And heaven kisses the gentle earth, its mate, good morning,

though they have been alone in their separation through the night they embrace their suffering for

even as the architect calls forth the artistry from the stone and space, it was never apart from the pure

potential from which it was birthed.

Ultimately what is not heard, seen, touched or conjured 

by a moving mind is inherently present, always.

And that divinity levels all, from the mightiest empires to the most ephemeral fragrance.

It is that which is most precious of all.

I would have you see yourself as you truly are, floating in breezy currents. 

Seeped in glorious mystery.

Alighting on the invisible eddies of wind  

Surrendered like a flame which worries not about its particular

form the next moment.  

For a flame can be nothing but fire and light.

Your wing is clipped not when a gash tears your folds.

Hurt though it may,

And you were no less beautiful as a caterpillar.

It is only when you close your mind to your own brilliant, infinite radiance.

That you cannot flutter

Opus

On days like this when I wonder why I dragged this husk out of bed,

when the cold rain drips and seeps into every surface

and sullen faces squeeze by on a too narrow, soaked sidewalks

where is it that I turn for solace?

I can distract myself in tall tales of Princess knights saving kingdoms

Or Pathfinders charting new homes in foreign universes far, far away

But eventually the palliatives wear off and the grim realities of a world gone mad

still ache in this body politic.

When did it become so?  How did it become thus?

When did the steady dribble of corruption and malice,

the constant flow of bad news and hate

leach the reservoir of goodwill and compassion that

is your birthright, nourishment and purpose?

Can you identify the source of the churning and feverish anger

that now poisons the well in self-righteous opacity?

What reflection do you see in those dark, aggressive waters?

Blame is peddled like an opiate among addicts,

never enough to go around.  A hungry bottomless, swallowing, abyss.

But the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.

It is easy to cast aspersions but they are simply

more distractions, more ways of avoiding  

that which is truly feared?

a freedom so immense, a liberation so unmoored

a compassion so deep, that

other and movement itself  betray.

And yet in stillness

I am.

Polaris

There's is still the starlit night by which to see, beacons innumerable shedding their light. 

 And toddlers giggles unfettered and free.  Look around you there is much which sustains gratefully. 

Take a moment to taste the air upon your nostrils, your belly heave. 

If you jump upward- bound can you feel when your toes leave ? 

Planting back down have you solid ground beneath your feet?

 Go ahead settle into earth's firm seat. 

Its support is stable and grand. 

Present, supportive, there when you land. 

But so too air's embrace as you leaped far 

for a moment outstretched to a star.

When last did you notice the maple outside tossing its leaves to its windy partner, carefree and bare. 

 Its former adornments now swirled in the air.  

You seek solace in shows; barricade yourself in an echo chamber of rage, 

submerge your head in grief, turn the plot's page.  

And so for a time that may be whats needed 

but harken to words now well heeded.  

Your vision narrowed and amnesiac of who you really are, 

may cloud the sky, but not extinguish the star.  

So much masquerades, self important and showy, beckoning you to taste poison fruit. 

Do not be deluded by illusions.Pay them no mind - all moot. 

Misogynistic words cannot contain infinity. 

Silence is unbroken by shouts of profanity. 

Truth is not marred by racist arrows shot blind,  

nor compassion unraveled by deeds done unkind. 

Your space, our space, space itself always unsullied. 

Far beyond that which can ever be bullied. 

You may know pain but that is never all. 

Always there is more than what appears as our fall. 

Do not limit your imagination to the dominating frame or shell. 

The thundering plane, the chime of the bell. 

The shared smile of passing young men, 

the hum of the compactor churning again. 

Stillness: that which births sound,

 the guide dog, it's master curled round.  

They are your atlas, your map, road and journey. 

Start where you are; amidst great uncertainty. 

Dwell in your wholeness just simply be. 

That if anything is the only recipe. 

We're I to say, do nothing perhaps some would claim truth bent, 

but is that which is stated really that which is meant. 

Many paths converge on the night starlit. 

To find your way home. Simply,

quit.

What I Learned

More than any captivating class or paper, course or major,
all nighter or postponed procrastination,

more than any hallowed  ground crossed by legion feet 

where pliant minds soaked in the genius of
sacred space and intellectual blossoming,

more than special dinners, flumes, turkey tetrazzini, trivia,

winter study, Bronfman movie nights, the dog house, 

Prospect late nights, Papa C's indulgences, or Mardis Gras queens,

the most enduring learning, that which altered my very marrow,
was the true meaning of friendship.

Formed in the trials of mind-bending, late night discussions,

shared vulnerabilities -- entrusted and soothed, 

and steadfast companionship unfazed by time, distance or sorrow.

These alchemized my heart
much like golden sun might project purple on a cow at sunrise and sunset

and renew wonder each day, infinite, and sustaining

thus changing forevermore how life is seen, loved, learned and lived.

Letter to a Beloved on Depression

Sweetie there is no trying. It is your IDEA that something is wrong with you or anyone else which causes the suffering. This isn't to say that it does not hurt or that it does not stink or that it is not achingly raw and excruciating, and it not to say that its in your head but that paradoxically the only balm that will "fix" us in the end is love that only we can give to ourselves. Nothing else will ever be enough because we are the ones who sacrificed that completeness, usually because it was all we could do to survive at that time. But please don’t hear those sentences and for a nanosecond go down the road of self blame. The "we" who sacrificed completeness, did so to survive at that time and it is probably less useful now though it causes much pain. The good part is that it need not be difficult to give ourselves that love. We literally just take it moment by moment. A favorite mantra of mine is "what problem do I have right now" not in five minutes, not tomorrow but literally right now. Not even one second from now but right now. Over and over again, it can bring clarity. Your brain may want to say but I feel awful or I can't pay this bill or my fiancé didn't call or my best friend is too damn preachy, but look carefully. Are they truly problems right NOW. They may suck - true enough, they may really hurt, they may even be crippling but are they “problems” right now. Anyway, know that I love you and if I am being a pain just tell me. There will be no hard feelings or judgment. YOU know what is best for you.

It's not positive thinking or negative thinking that is the culprit. In a way, it is thinking at all. We believe that who we are is something we can think about but who we truly are is something that cannot be thought. Take a bowl for a moment.  We are like bowls. What is most useful is actually its space. Its functionality, its true meaning comes from a kind of absence. Our true selves are similar. Our true meaning comes from our absence. We are never what we "THINK" we are.  We project ourselves into the world , as good, bad, sick, healthy, smart, artsy, sad, goth, black, tall,depressed, lazy, struggling, dedicated, confident.  That image – that we often believe, is not who we are. Neither is the world. The world is full of more heartbreak than and joy than could ever be contained by a persons mind but again we are not our chemically balanced or imbalanced minds.

You will not think your way out of this, which is why I suspect the urge to strangle people who tell you to just think positively comes to the fore. As well meant as it might be, it demonstrates a keen lack of understanding of depression as well as insensitivity to how one feels.

By the same token I wonder if there is not some part of you that believes “you're just not trying hard enough” or that if you “just thought the right thoughts things would be ok”. They wont.  No thought will get you there. They won’t because at their heart things actually are ok. They are not ok because bad things don't happen. They do. It is not ok because the world isn't full of pain and suffering in heartbreaking magnitude. It is. It is ok because who you are IS the world and that heartbreak is yours, mine, ours everyone's to truly own and the real "space" of who we are is actually capable of holding it all - the pain the sorrow, the happy, the anger the guilt, the numbness. All of it. Who we really are can hold it all.

I am serious about this my beloved. Have you tried meditation? I am not saying this as some proselytizing zealot. You know me well enough.  I might meditate. I might not.  Like Walt Whitman Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
Meditation is only a tool. It’s a tool that is useful to some people at some times. It is a way of creating some space between the mind which runs our lives and who we truly are underneath. It is a way of creating a space between our emotions which are derivative of our thoughts and who we truly are underneath. That "who we are truly are underneath" is so big it is far beyond positive and negative. It is not separate from that duality though.

People who believe that positive thinking is the solution will discover eventually that it doesn't work (or maybe they won't). We all feel pain.  It is the human condition.  In the meantime, be gentle with yourself and please do not beat yourself up over your reaction when you have been hurt.  I suspect many who ascribe to the positive thinking camp fail to recall the moments in their own lives when the opposite happens - which it inevitably will or does. Every thought, positive or negative is in some way not fully true.  How could it be?  Thought parses truth. Truth does exist though. However it is not something that can be spoken. It is something to be. And the most beautiful (though often paradoxically, hard part) is that one need not DO anything to be that truth.  We are so conditioned to do, so conditioned to think that we must earn our belonging, earn our existence, earn being loved.  We do not. They are ours for the recognition, simply for being.  Life wants nothing more than to express itself through you – all of you.

Spend time watching your own mind. It is an incredibly powerful way to connect to that which you truly are. In fact, that which watches the mind is not the mind. It is something bigger and grander though again not separate).

So if your next question is how do I "be" or how do I "be truth" I have a few thoughts - what if you were unapologetically you? What would that look like? You write a lot. It is an excellent way to process but in your case I suspect that part of why you write on facebook is because you want reactions because they then give you something to react to. You write on facebook for the same reason anyone does - in our hearts we want to be seen. In what spaces are you seen? Who does see you? Do you see yourself in your entirety? What if you created a blog?  What if you wrote with yourself as your main audience and others as an afterthought? It might not change what you wrote but would it change your relationship to the writing?

A second "thought"  and it is not my own but based in a number of spiritual practices is one I have already mentioned. Ask the question:what "problem" do I have right now? (not in five minutes or in a half hour but right Now. Problems only exist in time. They exist in a future in which we are worried about controlling the outcome.  That’s hard, because we can’t.  We can plan and prepare but we cannot control the outcome and when the future comes we will handle it then with the resources we have then. There cannot be a "problem" in the now. My third thought is to watch your own mind as much as you can (essentially that is what meditation is) Become interested in the fact that its saying all these different things all the time. (In that way,  your mind is no different than any other human’s on this planet. All of our minds think crazy thoughts).  Just listen to them for a few minutes even right now.  Some people are more honest about the fact their minds say these things. Everyone one of our minds is built to strive for security by scanning the environment. It is hardwired into us. It has served us well for many centuries. It is not bad, its just it’s not the only kind of intelligence that exists.  It serves a purpose.  Again it is not "bad" or negative" its just that there is a deeper consciousness, a deeper intelligence that beats ones heart, that breathes your lungs, that even thinks your thoughts into existence that knows what it is doing even when our minds don’t. You are closer than you think. When you say you feel like there is an alien species in your human skin you are more onto something you might be consciously aware of. I do not mean green skinned and big eyed extra terrestrials from the Andromeda galaxy but the fact that your brain probably tells you all kinds of crazy stuff, and you must think how can I think this or why does everyone else seems to think differently. They might. Who cares? Just because you think it or they think it does not make it less wrong or right. In a way it doesn't matter what they think or even what you think. YOU are not your thoughts. When you touch that you will have contacted the power of your own liberation and everyone else’s too.

When I say you will have contacted everyone else's liberation. I do not mean that others are consciously liberated necessarily. What is meant is that when consciousness finds freedom through any one of us it gives freedom to the world because in the end we are not separate.

Know that you are loved – in fact more so than could ever be articulated.

Your beloved

Where is God?

God is an equation.

waiting to be solved,

A complex algorithm of fantastic proportions and complexity.

God is a flower

bursting through the sidewalk crack, slipping to life through

the unexpected hardness.

God is the dust particles

floating in the morning sun

wafting up your nose-hairs and tickling you to sneeze- fits

before settling too regularly on the book shelves.

God is the soft footfall of shoes on dark wooden planks

as a legacy of family and friends stream in to rest a cherished life.

If a white bearded man in the sky is what you see, then so be it ,

perhaps that brings you solace.

But would it really be better as scintillating minds or brilliant logic, phenomenal artistry,

thoughtfulness, kindness, warmth, caring or generosity, even love?

All pales in the real essence,

simply words, mere concepts like this poem,

like a single sentence in an epic oeuvre larger than a galaxy.

It is all God, the phlegm hacked onto the ground,

Sewage leaking from the pipes

The nasty smoke garroting her lungs

Perhaps it is no more sexist to call out the beauty of a part to the whole

than it is for language itself to describe the divine.

You will never get more God than the rock in your shoe or the hangnail on your thumb.

All means all after all.

Here is a blasphemy: worship the tough things.  The things you want to exclude.

God, God and more God.

The stubbed toe, earwax, yes, even war.

We desperately want to pick and choose.

To say this but not that.

We desperately want it  to make sense to our mind

And there is infinite beauty in that failure.

Let your heart break again and again if you truly want to know.

You say you don’t believe in God.

I believe you.

Too often that word has been used misused in the name of power and horror

but in the end, I say, if you have participated in this world

if you believe in this computer, or the food you eat or that  your own hands exist

then you have all the concrete evidence of God there will ever be.

Inspired by ah

Belief That its Safer To Keep a Low Profile

Deeply, I have believed for many years that it is safer to keep a low profile than it is to risk speaking up. It is something so deep that it is not something I have examined and would say I actually wholeheartedly disagreed with if actually asked. But if you examine my actions and being the world, it is clear that under the surface I have lived trying to avoid detection and scrutiny for much of my life.  I do not rock the boat,  I do not speak my mind.  The other day at a museum I tried to control someone close to me because I thought they were speaking too loudly.   On another recent occasion I cringed when I sat next to a friend who was speaking on controversial subjects in a loud voice on the train.  "What if people judged me by association? "What if they thought less of me? "My mind is constantly spinning with the possibilities and calculations for how I am being perceived.  It runs an algorithm to calculate where I stand and how safe I am in relation to others.  The equation is weighted towards the past.  It is weighted towards a model of security in absence; security in silence, security through being small and non-existent.  It is easy to see why I was drawn to an orientation to the world that speaks of selflessness and the lack of a "self".  To leave the analysis there however, is to miss the point.  Real selflessness is actually beyond narrow conceptual logic. It is the recognition of the true lion's roar and that "I" am present in that which is much larger. It is all things, not simply quiet or risk averse or conflict averse or conversely the extraordinarily brave.  It is simply true unto itself.  It is not afraid of encountering another part of itself and therefore is beyond keeping profiles at all. Real selflessness sees that you are all of it.  Sometimes "it" may move under the radar and sometimes it may move like a trumpeter. The key lies in getting out of its way.  The key lies in unpacking the belief.


So let's take a look at some of the beliefs of that seem to be operating here:


1) Why would I believe that its ok to make myself small rather than own whatever was presenting itself in this form?

2) When may I have formulated this belief?

3) What does this belief protect me from?

4) What have I gained from holding this belief?

5) What do I lose by holding this belief?

6) What does this belief keep me from facing?


Answers:


1) Speaking aloud for myself  is not easy. I do not stand up for myself. Being small is easier because I think I will get hurt less if people don't know I am here.  I do not claim my presence in the world and am more comfortable being the person on the side making things happen. There are a few places of interesting exceptions, for instance I laugh loudly and can be a performer.    I have acted and I am not afraid of speaking to audiences.  In those arenas, I am not afraid to be bold, but most of the time when I am in public I act as if I prefer not to be noticed. 


1A) What is different about those situations and the others.  I am certainly confident in those situations and the confidence comes from something internal. It feels as though I have been "asked" in those situations to carry out something specific.  It is interesting to note that it does not feel like life is asking something specific in the situations in which I feel less confident, for that would be the source of the needed confidence.


2)When did you formulate this belief - I am not sure. Probably as a child.  I probably had a fair share of circumstances in which it was not safe to speak up. There are probably also accidentals of early childhood, race, disposition, geography that contribute to sense of safety.


3) What does it protect me from now? It protects me from failing.  It enables me to be loved by everyone or perhaps more accurately --  thought of fondly of by many.  I suspect it is truly -loved by few because  it diminshes the extent of real authenticity and subsequently "real" love.  It keeps me from the discomfort of "not knowing" If you don't stick your head out, its not as likely to get chopped off.   I have gained some degree of safety from this belief but traded away much.


4) What have I gained by holding this belief ?- the illusion of security. the illusion of safety.  The false belief that things are OK if others validate your existence rather than knowing from the heart that existence itself gives us intrinsic meaning that needs no validation. It has enabled me to excel at many things but prevented me from trying many others for fear of failure.


4) What do I "lose" by holding this belief: Freedom, Authenticity, Happiness.


5) What does this belief keep me from facing ? My self .  If I have a low profile then the shadowy parts don't have to get examined by me or by others. We can almost pretend they don't exist, but it also keeps me from facing my own power.  I want to be liked. Being myself might mean not always being liked.   My own power is simply authenticity.  It is not something grandiose, it is simply whatever gifts this body/mind is meant to bring to the world.  This belief keeps me from facing life in all its glory and misery.   When I relate to the smallness I feel like I will break but when I relate from the largeness of it all then all of life is a grand adventure of discovery and hide and seek.  Life seeking itself in every nook and cranny and celebrating all the while.


5A) What then is the power that is here?  What is meant to come into the world through me?  In many ways that is a question that is lived through the moment to moment life that is manifesting through me - it is not a question that is statically answered and put in the closet


5B) Who is "My Self" - Is it necessary to think in terms of boundaries - who I am is what is manifesting right now, right here in this space.


So much of my life I have spent shrinking myself, blending into the walls, quieting any aspects of myself that might be disturbing to others, but perhaps enlightenment is nothing more than full authenticity and wholeness.