Truth

 

Of recent, I have been thinking, musing, meditating and reflecting,  a lot, upon truth.   I feel drawn towards what it is asking of me.   It seems that it is calling me moment by moment to a new kind of life, a new kind of adventure.  It is not one in which I understand much, but that is part of what makes it exciting and vibrant. 

 As a little boy, I always dreamed of being some kind of hero.  I dreamt of slaying dragons or flying deep into space and discovering new planets and species.   (Can we say science-fiction geek) I would be face to face with danger and fear and I would prevail.  I was thrilled by those who sacrificed themselves for all of humanity.  I admired  martyrs or savior archetypes.  I am still drawn to that kind of fiction.  Give me Frodo Baggins or Paul Atreides,   Katniss Everdeen, Commander Amelia Shepard any day.  I will always take them. What is interesting now though is that I can feel that adventure in life itself.  As truth’s voice becomes clearer not necessarily on any cosmic or grandly goal oriented scale but in the minutiae of heeding its moment to moment requests, I realize there is more than enough adventure in even the most simple of lives.  For me to align with truth in the moment requires a submission and staggering courage.  Standing  as who you are, unfettered and undaunted by the myriad ways the world tells you otherwise is thrilling.  This is the adventure.  

 It is easy to make truth a concept, a simple set of rules, prescriptions, ideas, commandments, laws, bargains, and  justifications but truth precedes them all.  Truth gives rise to them all.  They all try to capture truth, but fail because truth is ever moving even in its stillness.  It is quieter than all those concepts and yet much more powerful,  in part because it does not need anything else.  Truth is its own contentment; it is it own end.  As this silent voice is felt moment to moment to moment I recognize that I do not know anything.  I recognize that it could ask anything of me in the next moment.  It is anything but predictable.  This makes for a very exciting existence.  Anything in the world could show up and many things we have not even begun to imagine could appear too.  What could be more exciting than that?   What could be more exciting than answering that call?  The courage to truly be who I am with all my beauty and ugliness, perfection within my imperfection is mindblowing in its vibrancy. 

The call of truth to meet truth in all it manifestations in the world is exciting.  It is also terrifying.   Currently I can feel the schizophrenia.  On the one hand safety exists.  One can always do things the easy way.  One can always keep the status quo.  One does not need to rock the boat.  (And of course this is ultimately fine).   Truth has no need for judgment only our minds and ego’s do.  On the one hand it is not hard to say things like you have always said to people around you.  There is safety in saying I’m fine when really I’m really frustrated.  There is safety in telling the white lie about  someone’s outfit so as not to hurt their feelings.  There is convenience when we take the pens from the office but don’t believe  we will get caught.  There is ease in pretending  not to see that person as they approached elevator so that we could get to our floor more quickly.  There is safety in remaining  quiet and not saying hello to that person who passed us by because we were afraid they would think we were creepy.  There is safety in keeping quiet when our colleague gossips about another colleague.  There is convenience when we rapidly consume precious resources.  The path of safety always exists.  And in then end who ARE is more important than what we do.  But the calling is about embodying the perfection of our essence.   Safety becomes less appealing relative to truth.   

While there is safety as a choice,  for this body/mind currently,  the gap between truth and embodiment of it in the world is increasingly challenging.  It is becoming more painful  to act out of alignment. But its not even painful because I expect more of myself or have some idea of how I should behave exactly.  It’s painful because as I’ve realized more thoroughly  what I am, I  want to consciously be it all the time.   In the past,  I have been motivated by reward or by fear.  Believe me they still operate.  But they seem to be very juvenile forces for moving and action and it feels like they  take place in this much larger arena.  Terms like retribution, payback, reward, punishment  and even karma,  and  justice how they are sometimes used, rely upon the future.   They rely upon something being different than it is now and  depend on a notion that things are at some level wrong with this moment as a means of moving people to do act.  That feels less interesting.  How often  I have been motivated to do good for the promise of some cookie or sweet treat or to avoid something bad.   But actually there is a motivator that is beyond each of those and it is who we are in our core.  It is the essence of the world.

 In some religions people are afraid of some grand judgment from God that will banish us from “his” presence or that we will suffer at some later time.  I say Baaah.  In truth, we suffer more than enough for anything that isn’t aligned with truth.  Love is all forgiving.  In fact, in a way, for love, forgiveness does not even exist because from love’s perspective whatever it is that would “need forgiving” is ultimately just another manifestation of love itself.  It is just love showing up in some other way.   There is no grand judgment that one fails and is punished or rewarded for.  Not being aligned with truth IS its own suffering.  It is its own hell.   And if there is the notion that something is too big or “evil” for forgiveness that is not true either.  Truth is all embracing, the end.   God is ALL forgiving the end. There is not anything anyone could do that would ever move them out of the divine’s grace.  At the same time, I don’t wonder if most, if not all of any current pain (that isn’t purely physical) doesn’t come from unresolved past moments in which we were not aligned with truth.   It’s like the shape that shows up, who I take myself to be are all the places where I am not transparent.  It is all the places where pain has latched on to some kind of framework and I am creating a somebody out of it.   Yes, the pain happens.  It is absolutely real.  Yes, it hurts.  But who hurts?   Who is it actually happening to?  In fact, exactly who am I?  Am I this body?  Am I my thoughts?  This projection into the future? Am I my past experiences?  

Increasingly I can hear and feel something that wants to be expressed and I can tell that to be true to it I must let go (even amidst uncertainty and fear). Again this letting go is not on some grand scale.  This is not splendor on display.  It is again meeting truth moment to moment to moment and who knows what it will request.  If up to this point in my life I had clear plans for what needed to be done and what needed to be saved, and what  theories of action in the world might bring about lasting change,  it feels as though they are about to be subsumed in a silence driven by the heart.  Silence animates all regardless of whether or not we have paid attention to it.   It is this silence whose drumbeat continues to  resonate more clearly.  I will keep you posted as it all develops.

 

Dangerous Truth

Before they put him to rest they sang songs that called him nice.

And celebrated him with accolades.

He was always diplomatic, sweet,  careful.

words weighed to balance equations as he spoke.

Angling  pictures perfectly on the wall.

But even colorful, flat two-dimensional portraits can only represent depth.

And what is emerging now is no longer nice.

Instead it speaks of bare honesty.

honesty that will let nothing hide.

honesty of a searing glare.

honesty  willing to

sacrifice all because it is all.

Truth will set you free.

It will strip away more than you bargained for.

It will ask everything of you.

It will take everything.

If it did anything less, it would not be truth.

Contentment

How does the world look when you don’t need anything from it? So much of so many of our lives is spent pursuing. There are more ways to pursue happiness than there are people. Most never find. Perhaps they find moments of happiness or a break from the drum of stress, but daily life asserts itself once again and the constant stress and threat that many live with rises to the foreground. I once had a friend describe his capacity to worry like the law of the vacuum wherein empty space is abhorred. In her life it seemed like the moment she let go of one worry another popped in. She even noticed that the character of her worries had changed over the years as her situation improved and stability increased . But despite the character change they were no less frequent or aggravating. I think her situation is similar to many. We worry about things because we believe it will give us an manner in which to control that which Is beyond us. Its as if worrying enough we believe we will affect the outcome.

But if I don’t worry how will I change the situation I am in? Doesn’t worry enable me to produce solutions? Besides I do not know how to stop worrying?

I might differentiate here between worry and analysis and action. Worry keeps one in a loop of fear hyped up on potential outcomes none of which you can know in advance. Analysis looks at the same data and says at the moment I can do a, b, and c and after that I will do 1, 2, and 3. Analysis can even look to the future to say if a, b, or c happens I will do 1, 2, or 3. But notice that in each case there is not really a problem. There is simply stimulus and response, a cause and a map of potential courses. We are so conditioned to analyzing within the context of our worry that we lose sight of how to separate them. With analysis the mind is not spinning and the body is not contracted around what might come to be. The truth is we never really know what is going to come to be yet we delude ourselves into thinking we know all the time. Perhaps if the sense of no control pervaded the mundane more clearly it would not be so acute during crises. The not knowing, the uncertainty could make its all so much more of an exciting adventure but usually people stress. It is a mistaken sense of self that turns everything into a problem. It is a mistaken sense of who we are that obscures our ability to simply act in concert with what the situation asks. The heart does not worry about pumping? And as for stopping worrying you don’t. It too is a magical part of the fabric of life. You simply notice it when it appears and get curious and kind towards what the worry thinks it will accomplish. It will either go away then or not, in either case it is again , no problem.


Worry is incredibly well meaning, it thinks it can protect you. It thinks it can help you resolve something out there in the future that is the source of anxiety. It cannot. It does not realize that it IS the cause of anxiety. But rather than make worry an enemy and try to rid oneself of it sidle up next to it and take it into your heart. What happens then?

Why do we go to the movies? What kind of movies do you like? Do you read fiction?  Movies come in all shades, shapes, colors, themes, topics and perspectives. It is the same with books. Do we watch movies to escape? Maybe, but often movies are just depicting slices of life. It is the same with books. Even if the situation is fantastical or completely imagined it still depicts some aspect of existence otherwise it couldn’t be written. In these movies or books we often experience a range of emotions and thoughts  from sadness to elation to fear, happiness, righteousness, anger or anxiety. In the context of the movie or book it is part of what we actually pay for. When we go see a romantic comedy we understand that at some point two people will meet. At some point there will be difficulty in their relationship and usually they will get back together at the end. In the horror film we go to be scared or to see if the movie is capable of scaring us. In many ways life is not much different except that we come to believe that the story is solid and real. In a movie or book at the end no matter how enchanted we were , we are able to separate the movie from who is watching the movie. What capacity allows you to identify with the characters in the movie or book? Who/what is it that identifies with characters in the book or movies? What capacity is it that enables you to identify with your own story? Who or what identifies with your own story? I have often said that with the right editing a compelling movie could be made of anyone’s life. So if we go to the movies or read books and enjoy them are we not paying for the emotions and experiences that in another context we are often trying to rid ourselves of? In  its essence there is nothing wrong with any emotion. They simply are and they are not  wrong or problematic for being there. We only struggle when we see the emotions as something that we need to overcome. As the movie demonstrates they are part of the wondrous fabric that keeps life real, beautiful, engaging and dynamic.

Even when discontent shows up do not fret. It does not mean you have done anything wrong or that you are less spiritual or that something is wrong or fill in whatever sweet treat one’s ego is feeding itself on at the moment. They are all ways of strengthening a self if you bite. That which is capable of noticing the discontent, your true essence, is capable of holding it all, the contentment and the discontent. If there is discontent, ask if you are identified with the person/body/mind whose life-circumstance does not have everything lined up perfectly or are you aligned with that tender and compassionate “space” which can see that discontent and offers up its heart to it. It offers its heart not to necessarily change it or eliminate it but simply because that is its nature; tender, caring, kind.

How would it feel if you knew in your deepest depths that everything is ok. Not that it would be ok when you got to heaven or that it would be ok in 10 minutes or in two days or after you accomplished this or read that book or finished this meditation,  but now. Actually it is more than ok it is absolutely beautiful and perfect. It does not mean that there won’t be be pain and dread, difficulty, sadness, hardship, grief, and sorrow but in a way does that matter. It means that there is less of need for it to be different than the way it is. It means that when change needs to happen it happens and is not a source of worry or anxiety. Unless of course it is a source of worry and anxiety in which case it still is ok.  :-)

There is nothing to get, nowhere to go.  All you ever needed is right here. They say home is where the heart is. Well, we live in the Kingdom of Heaven. We just forget our address sometimes.

What's In a Word

The other morning I was listening to Tara Brach ,when my sweetie groaned “what was I thinking” as her alarm clock sounded, alerting her to the need to get up in order to bring the car in for it’s oil change. She had made the appointment but after sleeping poorly several days in a row prior, she was now regretting, at least in part, the early appointment. I told her I would take the car in. She said “are you sure” I said of course it was no big deal. She again repeated “are you sure – that doesn’t feel fair, I made the appointment” I repeated cheerily that it was no problem. Her comment “it’s not fair” struck me as incredibly interesting and worth unpacking. Separate from what exists to be explored around how couples negotiate chores, duties and tasks, which could be another interesting post, I realized that there are a number of words whose meaning I seem to have a much different relationship to currently. It prompted me to reflect upon exactly what is in the words we use.

Recently I had the experience of hearing a story about a child, Florence, who was having difficulty learning to tie her shoes. My “own” child, who is several years younger is also having difficulty. It has caused him much strife as he believes that he is the only child in his class who cannot ties his own shoes. I said to a third adult, Alice -- not the parent of Florence, “see other children cannot tie their shoes either “ It was an odd comment generated perhaps in part as way to placate hurt feelings as I tried to understand (and perhaps alleviate my child’s pain or perhaps my own pain at seeing him suffer) –– as if the comparing and contrasting actually helped resolve the hurt feelings for either of us. But we’ll address that in a moment. Alice responded to me -- “Yes, Florence is dyslexic”.

What was interesting is that I had this very clear insight into how our words can block us from seeing what is really present. Prior to Florence being called dyslexic she was just a child struggling to tie her shoes but with the name “dyslexic” I could now box in her limitless potential. This entity Florence was now seen through the lens of “Florence who is dyslexic” and all that the word dyslexic means to me. Maybe I have known many incredibly smart dyslexics. Maybe someone who was dyslexic beat me up in 7th grade. Maybe my favorite uncle was dyslexic. Maybe the dyslexics I knew struggled a lot. In any case, I could feel my perspective shift with the availability of the label. I felt like I now understood something about Florence that I did not before. But did I really?

A few days later I learned that another child I have known her entire life had recently been diagnosed as autistic. My mind again gyrated and boxed the child in. It sought a nice neat little way of interpreting or understanding past behavior and interactions. But does that “label” really help me to understand? Rather than reach for the vast multitude of reasons why a behavior showed up – I could “explain” it by assigning it to the category autistic. When I call something by a name – am I interacting with the name and the label or am I interacting with the person or thing itself. When someone is assigned a label – cancer patient, mentally ill, autistic, palestininian, disabled, gay or lesbian, criminal – what do we see? Are we still able to interact with what is showing up at that moment and how much are our interactions colored by what we think we know because of the label?

Imagine the layers of words that we use each day for our experiences and for people, circumstances and situations in life. Imagine the many, many ways that these labels reduce something infinite to something smaller. When we give something a name we feel like we understand it better, and at some relative level we do. I would not pretend that there is not great utility in description and analysis. But might we also be missing something in doing that? What are we missing and how do we engage if we are not aware, at least in the background, that everything has such infinite depth that it could never be captured or confined.

Labeling is not wrong and it is not a problem. Words themselves are incredibly beautiful. Of course we need them. Words are an amazing invention. Language itself in any form is simply astonishing and magnificent. That somehow we figured out a way to communicate to each other is simply a true wonder. Words are symbols but they are marvelous and powerful. They help us live and act in the world. They are phenomenal tools. When we take them too seriously however, when we mistake what is really behind a word or a label or a form and miss the essence that everything is in its unity, suffering occurs and violence manifests.

Even all the most spiritual texts, the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud, the Sutras, the Tao Te Ching, they are just words, powerful words pointing to something beyond themselves which must be realized individual by individual, but they are still just words. So often the texts are taken literally, fundamentally, as if they themselves are the truth. As if they could deliver TRUTH itself that would be unmutable and unchanging. Do we really think TRUTH could be captured by words? Sometimes I find it heartbreaking how so many wars have been fought over these spiritual and religious words. Can you imagine anything more insane? What “you” just said is so against what “I “say, that now I need to kill you? But where did each “you” come up with “your” ideas? Do you believe you really could have a thought independent of all the history that has preceded you? If your thoughts then, are products of something else, culture, education, history, race, genetics, circumstances etc, is it really worth killing someone or even arguing with someone who has different thoughts? Are they even your thoughts? Are the other person’s thoughts hers? What would happen if you were curious about how you came to those thoughts?

There is an old saying that says “if you meet the Buddha along the side of the road kill him” it’s a kind of shock-tactic statement in a spiritual tradition that is so gentle and full of compassion and non-violence. What could it possibly mean? Well, for me, it means not to take false permanent refuge in form. The moment you have locked in, the moment you are identified with a position, (even if the position is “I won’t have a position”) you have ceded the keys to the kingdom of heaven. The moment you take your thoughts or your words too seriously you will suffer. For me it’s the notion that even the ideas/concepts/experiences that initially row the boat of spirituality/seeking/enlightenment must dissolve too. It's like if you think you've got the truth - that ain't it. The mind’s desire to think “Iv’e got it” once and for all misses the point. I am reminded of another sutra – cultivate the mind that dwells nowhere. This is the beginner’s mind that is filled with possibility. This mind recognizes that all is new each and every moment. It is a mind filled with wonder, awe and gratitude. It is an incredibly deep gratitude that is not necessarily for a particular thing - though it can be expressed for particular things but in some ways, it is a gratitude that anything even IS at all. It is a gratitude for existence itself, that this amazing beautiful anything is even here.

So what is in the words we use. It has become clearer to me that though we manage to communicate and we have dictionaries and thesauruses and translators – and that generally we understand each other we can’t ever really be sure that through our minds that we actually mean the same thing when we refer to something. How could we be? How could we take the infinite and sum it up in a few letters and sounds. I think it is why I have always been drawn to poetry. Poems are readily open to multiple meanings and easily change through time with our experiences and they can very easily point beyond themselves to the infinite. One of my favorite books of poetry has always been Adrienne Rich’s Dream of A Common Language. It’s a beautiful book of poetry that is poignant, insightful, reflective, earnest, spirited and always courageous. The incredibly touching and sincere book explores through language what language can never ultimately do and yet paradoxically in the spaces between the words and the meanings perhaps does. It is a book that reflects on what is for me the charge of poetry: “ The drive to connect, the dream of a common language.”

In part, because I have been resisting less, when my sweetie said “that was not fair” I did not know what to do. It felt like it did not compute. What exactly is fairness? It seemed to me that at that moment fairness might at least in part be about arguing with what is. It seemed to me that fairness might be about thinking something should be different than what is appearing. I looked it up in the dictionary to get some help.

Fairness – what is fairness?
1) free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice: a fair decision; a fair judge.

2) legitimately sought, pursued, done, given, etc.; proper under the rules: a fair fight.

What I am struck by is that it seems both definitions hinge in some ways upon a subtle separation. Each depends in part upon something external. They depend upon some external arbiter or two or more entities.

In definition 1) Who or what determines what is free from bias, dishonesty or injustice?
In definition 2) who or what determines what is legitimately sought, pursued, done, given, etc. ?

What happens to the concept of fairness if we consider that there may be multiple “fairness es”? What happens to the concept of fairness if we really experienced things as one and whole? Do we think that one “fairness” exists in a given situation?

I do not pretend to know the answers to these questions. I don’t really try to answer them with my thinking mind. For me, the questions can do a beautiful job of actually arresting my mind. I am not even sure my mind feels like it can wrap itself around how to answer the questions. And in that space it is easier to let go of that which feels like it needs to know and needs to be right or even needs to understand. And what is left then? Can you feel that?

Language is so magnificently beautiful. It helps us cross the great divide among each other but it can never get us there fully. It is always limited in its capacity as beautiful as it is. Each of us is alone. And in this aloneness we are one.

The “eyes” of love make everything whole.

Here is a poem by Rumi translated by Coleman Barks that I would like to leave you with.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other"
doesn't make any sense.

Let’s meet in that field.

Our Stories

A story that I impose upon the events of life goes like this. I was raised Catholic in a loving and strict household. When I went off to college I wanted to be President because I thought it would enable me to help the greatest number of people. When I headed off I also knew deep within, that college would test the ideas that I had been brought up with. I wondered what I would be like when I had to think for myself. My sophomore year of college I took a course that exploded my mind. I had always been something of a feminist. In high school when we read “Lord of the Flies”, a story about little boys stranded on an island and the breakdown in civility that occurs, I remember being the only one to suggest that it would have been different if it had been all little girls on the island. My feminism is different now, but the class that exploded my mind, Political Thinking About Women, made me examine so many of my beliefs about how society was organized and how frequently the feminine was lost or devalued. Much of what I was exposed to conflicted with my Catholic upbringing yet it resonated deeply. I could see that it made sense and that this perspective was driven by love, compassion and a desire for justice and equality. I struggled to reconcile my Catholicism and my burgeoning feminism . I also met someone who would much later become my life partner. At the end of my sophomore year however, we parted as friends as she went into the world to pursue her own dreams of helping people. When she left, I was incredibly bereft and searching. She was perhaps the first person that I truly loved. My junior year I met another woman and I reinvented myself in the image of what I projected she wanted. In the end I lost touch with reality. I became mentally ill and had to be hospitalized. My friends found me one morning wandering campus mumbling to myself about marriage, Christ and the Resurrection. Since then I have had a number of other episodes in which I have lost touch with reality, even one as few as three years ago, though I have managed to avoid an episode for as long as 14 years. The psychiatrists have classified me as bi-polar.


So why do I relay this story? Why do I circumsribe the events of life with a narrative and labels that appear to give a cohesive understanding or picture? Well in this case, I do it because I want to suggest the opposite; that no one is fact their story. I write it but I am not identified with it. I do not see limitations to the completeness of who I am based on what has happened in life. They are just events that pass through a space that is much deeper, richer and untouchable. It may seem like once I am classified, once I am labeled, one can understand me, but is that true? In truth there is such depth to everything that in the realm of form we can only know very little about something. In the realm of stillness however, we can "know" the wholeness of something to its core. I write it to suggest that those who have struggled with depression or bi polar disease or any other mental illness or any other malady for that matter can know peace contentment and presence. The key lies in not being attached to the story and in remembering who you are at the deepest level.

It is easy to become attached to the particular label of mental or other illness that a doctor proscribes. And the reality is that we may be limited in what we are able to do by what the doctor says. We may have to operate under certain parameters such as being on medication or confinement to a wheelchair. Let those limitations awaken you, let them teach you wholeness by truly being with that limitation and seeing if in fact that very real limitation binds who you are at the deepest level. It is not what we do or do not do that makes us complete, or whole. Ultimately our actions do not even have the ability to make us content or happy. Happiness comes from the inside. You have heard it before, but what does it really mean. It means that peace, happiness and contentment are available to us in any moment, even the "difficult" ones, even in our worldly limitations. It is simply up to us to clear the layers between our open heart and the world which we are. Happiness, contenment, peace and joy come from remembering in every cell, our limitless "self" and embracing the moment we are in.

Experiment - Sit quietly for 5 minutes. At the end of the five minutes mentally list or even write down all the things that would make you happy if you had them. Now spend a few minutes going through what has actually made you happy in your life and list those things. Are they similar or different? Does it take much to make you happy? Look deeply, why do you think you were "happy" during some of the things you named? Try to get to the bottom of why? Was it really something the thing gave you or was it more about a simple connection and attention. Is that connection and attention only available when that something is around or is it something you could bring to whatever is before you? How does the space you were in relate to your happiness? Who are you without those things that would make you happy? What would happen if you embraced whatever is coming up for you in this moment with compassion? Do not worry. There are no wrong answers. This was just an exercise, hopefully playful, at looking at the conditions for happiness.

Stories are wonderful perspectives on truth. They are entertaining, lovely, riveting, wondrous, and at times helpful, and informative. They are like looking through one face in a diamond crystal. Some part of reality is shown but not all of it. To look through another facet of the diamond, another story, is to see another element of truth. Ultimately however, truth, which is who we all are, cannot ever be captured by a story. So liberate yourself from your story by remembering in each moment the full glory of your being.

Opening and Closing

Awakening is the process of continually opening. It is the process of love claiming all. It is paradoxically already complete and at the same time blossoming. In my own life it is interesting to see the places that I contract. It is interesting to note the places where I am not open or feel a pull to close. It is interesting to feel them in my gut or throat or shoulders. Sometimes I will try to defend a mental position as if that position were somehow imbued with a little part of myself, and I guess to my ego it is. It is also funny when I can look back and think - how odd that I took that idea or situation to be so serious. Two places that have been wonderfully illustrious to me recently have been my relationship with my sweetie and my work.


Oh, yes, I got a job. It is very intense at my new job. People's expectations of me are very high. During the day I am often knotted inside, too much afraid of the ways that I might fail. One antidote of course, is riveting myself on the actual task at hand. If I am knotted, I am likely too focused on the future and not enough in the present moment. It helps to remind myself to dwell there as often as I can. Sometimes just the sipping of a cup of tea at my desk can remind me to come home.


It is also interesting, to witness my identity dissolving. The dissolution is sometimes awkward and uncomfortable. The contraction inside, the knotted place, is oddly helpful, it shows me where my ego is still invested. My ego still finds it important to be seen as an intelligent, competent person. It still fears failing and creates a story of "but what if. . . ." But who would I be if I did not excel at my job? The contraction is the gap between the truth which my heart knows and the pull of the illusion which suggests that I need to be special through my intelligence to matter to the world. Does this mean that I should suddenly stop trying to excel at work or that something is wrong if one is smart or any other "desirable" quality. No, not at all, it simply means that to the extent I tie my identity to those qualities, when I am so much more than them, I will be closed off and suffer. Remember, you are both all and nothing.


I am glad that I no longer for the most part make an enemy out of my contractions. Instead I try to let them be or embrace them with a little love. A little empathetic curiosity goes a long way. Don't make a foe out of them. They are signals that can allow you to open further if you are willing to hear what they have to say. With my sweetie, I have discovered perhaps for the first time, the real beauty of relationship. She is a crystal mirror for me. She reflects back to me who I still believe I am. If we "fight" it is the perfect opportunity for me to discover where I am not transparent. It is the perfect chance to see where I am still invested in again creating a story of "me" or in being something special or of being right. We defend ourselves because deep down we are trying to convince 0urselves of something. One only defends, or attempts to feel special or needs to be right when one isn't aligned with the truth that they are. When we are aligned with that truth there is nothing we need to prove. My relationship with my sweetie is such a gift because it gives me such a deep opportunity to open, or to see where I still feel my limitations. Where in your life do you contract?

So what is "open"? What does it mean? Well for a definition I suggest you check in with your own heart. It is a good compass for what is open and what is not. When I am open such a sweet tenderness exists. Open is the outpouring of love. It is connection with and compassion for. It is alignment with truth. The invitation is always there but I am not always courageous enough to rest there. But even still, all is well for, love claims it all. It never goes away, even if you are not open to it and remained closed at that moment. There are always more chances to open, to love.