To Ignore or Not Ignore, that is the question
|
Here’s today’s aha for ya’ll:
So there’s this Buddhist term called Bodhicitta.
Bodhi= Awake Citta= Mind or Heart
And of course, we all aspire to be awake and open. Feels a hell of a lot better than fearfully shut down and closed in.
… what what? waitasecond…REWIND! Mind OR heart? How can it be mind OR heart??!!! They are clearly varrry separate things!
Are they? What if they aren’t?
Actually, they are one. Inexorably, inexplicably one.
So in other words,
Try not to make your ‘ego mind’ the big bad ass wolf.
Simply watch it.
And watch the consequences of your behaviour.
And the resulting emotions of your thoughts.
Paradoxically, on an absolute level, your ego serves a higher purpose, which is to wake you up. Yup, you read me.
Our dear dear ego (our closely held identity and beliefs, our comforting habits and addictions, our thoughts and stories that we so tightly cling to) creates so much suffering, that eventually, the suffering is so great that we wake up. Sheer desperation. And with tenacious courage and determination we find a way out of the maze of delusion, out, out into open space and back home into our expansive heart and mind.
Just experiment and watch what happens if we let go of the storyline a single thought may trigger.
Just let it go and watch it float away like a leaf on a river.
Stay with magic quality of the present breath.
Ah relief.
A moment of respite.
And lo and behold.. we’re cultivating bodhicitta!
What the hell, give it shot!
Huge insight lately about children and love.
Do you think children are born empty of love and our job as parents is to fill them up with love them to make them feel loved ? No! This makes no sense does it? We are so backwards sometimes! Our job as parents is to actually open ourselves up enough to receive their love and all their fantastic expressions of it. That’s true acceptance.
Children need to love. And they need to have their love received. Maybe even more than they need to be loved by others. Children already have a deep infinite source of love and joy that they are connected to because they are children and it’s innate in them. They need to have their love and bouncy joy accepted and taken in. They need to have their love and all their creative expressions of it appreciated with gratitude. They need others to receive it with full presence.
Recently I read a journal I wrote when I was eleven years old. It was poignant, funny and full of longing. Longing to love. NOT longing to be loved. I was struck by the distinction. From my adult perspective it’s easy to think that children simply want to be loved, but this is actually not the whole truth. When children see suffering or pain around them, their natural instinct and desire is to love and to try to help. This reading of my own eleven year old perspective really reminded me of this.
I remember feeling sorry for my parents as a very small child. I remember not so much the feeling of needing their love, but I wanted them to stop suffering. SO BADLY. Children can see their parents suffering. It’s as plain as day to them. I saw how stuck in their heads they were, trapped in the self imposed suffering of their worrisome doubts, thoughts and fears. I tried everything to get them to feel better. Cuteness, loving kindness, servitude, being funny, being loud and silly, being rambunctious, being quiet and good and eventually being BAD, to try to get them to snap out of it. Rarely did they have the willingness to peek out of the window and see me, to see how hard I was trying to make them feel better. They were blind to me. I was just an annoyance and I’d get a reprimand, and back into their heads they went. Lost. In the cocoon of misery.
So what if you are a parent who (let’s face it) is grumpy a lot of the time or worried all the time, lost in thought and just not really there? Do you think you can accept their love when you are so focused on your miserable thoughts? Do you think you are capable of enjoying them, or truly seeing them and appreciating them?
Are your children already angry and acting out because they feel so invisible? If so, then sorry, it may already be too late. They may already have learned that their energy is useless, worth nothing and not important to you and therefore the world. Their love was not received. God knows they tried, but you were too stuck with your head up your ass to notice them. They were powerless. That hurt. So they hate you. Maybe, I don’t know. But this is how children learn to loathe their parents and to feel worthless. Can you see this now?
And when those children grow up and eventually feel so desperate to be accepted, and decide having children is the best way, they soon repeat that lovely cycle of not being able to take in their own children’s love. Their hearts were shut down and locked up long ago. YEP. Around the misery-go-round we go.
Stop the cycle. Please. Start by being willing to learn how to love yourself. Be willing. That’s all that it takes. And then some baby steps. Be willing to listen to yourself. Be willing to take care of yourself. Be willing to be present with yourself with loving kindness. Yes it may feel really unnatural at first, but as an act of will, it will actually begin to feel more normal and actually good. The more you love yourself, the more present you will be for your children and their open expressions of affection and adoration of you. Yes you.
And when our children see and feel that their love is valued, good and important because we are willing to take it in to our hearts, then they feel worthwhile. They feel like they can contribute something useful to humanity. And they can be free to explore and enjoy their world and not constantly be burdened with worry about their unhappy family members.
Can you see this? Can you see how important it is to learn to love yourself?
Signed up for my second parenting course run by the Adler Centre here in Vancouver. First time with the ‘Adlerians’. Sounds like an alien species. A bit scary for some people who have never experienced any kind of therapy or pschology stuffs. They should really not use that term “Adlerian” in my opinion…not the best marketing strategy, but whatever. The Adlerians strongly encourage community support for people, particularly parents. But any kind of therapy is really just about being honest about our feelings, or non-feelings if you happen to be numb, looking at our history and our actions…and piecing it all together…all to create more self awareness and therefore choice in how we can act in the future. First day was really awesome. I’d forgotten how inspiring it is to be amongst a group of people who are willing to speak about difficult things, like when we aren’t being the best of parents and in what ways we want to get better. This is a very touchy topic in our business. Many parents wouldn’t touch a parenting course with a ten foot pole, because it would be an admission of having ‘issues’. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s still so much judgement and lack of real compassion out there amongst parents in general. In my experience, parents are very very defensive when the topic of parenting comes up. It used to make me confused as a young parent, how this ‘profession’ of parenting created such frightened people, but then it dawned on me, that most parents are afraid to admit any wrong doing, poor choices or any difficulties because the worst case scenario is that someone may report them to social services and they may get torn apart from their children. It’s very much a protective mechanism. Also, if parents are in some kind of a custody battle, then any admission of having any kind of challenges, no matter how small, may seem like evidence that they are unfit. So I get the need to protect, I really do, but also, I see the real detriment of not really examining our unhealthy patterns. If parents aren’t willing to look, well, then, neither are their kids, a feeling of shame and isolation follows and the power of addiction to any kind of behaviour and substance is thus strengthened, why?… because it’s a good way to numb out the feelings. And round and round it goes.
Maybe another reason why it’s so hard to talk about parenting for some is because most people had absolutely no previous training!!! Fakin’ it till they make it, perhaps. Think about it! If we were to HIRE someone to take care of babies and young children we would want them to have some kind of basic training, RIGHT??? No no, it’s just pretend everything is FINE. That ‘it’s innate’ bullshit. And if you don’t know the acronym yet, FINE stands for Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional. So it is so comforting to be amongst other parents in our parenting group who are willing to share and who are willing to learn. It’s the human need for relation. It’s the human need for empathy. And growth. Especially growth. Yeah, yeah we can all say, it’s normal, I can handle it on my own, I can read some books on my own, but that’s a big ol’ trap. A trap of isolation, and DON’t DO IT!!! There’s something really special that happens in group work. There’s a special energy of non judgement, of empathy and really being listened to. It’s a magical thing, having some basic rules layed out, where we don’t give each other unsolicited advice and we just listen with to another share their lives. Plus there’s that implicit thing about group work, where it’s not at all about judging others and their choices, but it’s about calling forth some DIRECT reflections of ourselves to learn from. Well anyways, as always, my constant recommendation is: therapy is an awesome way to support yourself, particularly if you like freedom and joy. Group therapy specifically is an amazingly immersive tool in learning how to move from judgement to compassion.
You know when you do things that you don’t understand why you do them? But you have to? Or when you begin to behave in an addictive manner…ie. smoking, eating, drinking, working, etc. to stop feeling something? Sometimes you can’t even identify the feelings, but you know they are there, simmering below the surface? Or when you think you aren’t afraid of something, but somehow, you can’t bring yourself to do it? Well, that is the quintessential push and a pull between our conscious minds and our unconscious minds. And whether or not we’re willing to pay attention, there’s always a subconscious agenda running your behaviour, there is always work being done in your subconscious that is going on, carrying on, sorting out, and attempting to reconcile and resolve. There are layers upon layers under there, like all those layers of the earth over the millenia, with stuff frozen in that particular time and space.
For myself, art is a simply profound and amazing way to connect with my subconscious. Art is my portal. Particularly paint. My truest art comes from that non-thinking mysterious place that just surprises me. What’s more, the work I create actually has a life of its own, it morphs, it changes and it becomes a feedback system for me to go to. Even if I’m not in the act of creating my paintings, they still ’speak’ to me. There are hidden messages in it if I am willing to be still, listen and feel. And somehow, miraculously, I created them! If I can do work purely from a feeling place, being aware of the feelings in my body and how they change, and my own areas of resistence and the thoughts that pop into my head, well, wow, this is the beauty of really communicating with myself. My subconscious becomes conscious, little by little, and I learn about myself. My deepest hurts and fears, the parts I didn’t know I even had, the memories I’d resigned as lost but most importantly, the gifts are also there. The gifts that bring me indescribable joy. The amazing unique gifts that are as unique as my fingerprints. It’s there. Just waiting to be discovered. It’s that part of me that deeply knows the answers I am looking for, the wise one. We all have a wise one within us. Every person has a sense of intuition that they can develop and learn from. It’s intangible, though, so it’s difficult to teach logically or rather, perhaps it’s only understandable to those who are exactly in the right place in the right time. It’s worth learning though, I’m telling you, this skill of communicating with our subconscious. And if you can be gentle with yourself and stay the course, it’ll be the beginning of trust. Trusting yourself. Trusting ‘timing’. Trusting that your gifts are worth knowing and that perhaps, you may inspire others to look for their own.
Thanks to the genius that resides next to Elizabeth’s pen and mouth for this helps me, helps me so much with the fwightened twisty bits in me.
Watch (link below) and be comforted….and then listen for that cute American lady at the end with her twangy Spanish.
On Nurturing Creativity
I’ve been thinking a lot of conflict lately. More like the good aspect of conflict rather than the fear of it. Unfortunately we live in a culture dominated by fear of conflict, we’ve all backed down from our truth in order to avoid conflict at some point, and then felt badly about it later…realizing we kind of betrayed ourselves. I hate that, but I know it’s an inevitable reaction sometimes, because I’ve been so conditioned to avoid anything remotely resembling conflict. As a child I often witnessed unconcious conflict that was mean, vicious and hurtful, it left everyone who was in its path shattered and raw…there was never any healthy resolution, only a heavy painful silence afterwards…and so I learned to fear it, and do anything to avoid it. That totally backfired, because I learned to distrust myself, because I had stopped living my truth, and was just trying to appease others in order to avoid conflict. Now after more than a decade of digging deep, weeding out old systems that had been learned by such experiences, I’ve had the profoundly healing experience of learning how to have healthy conflict, how to stand strongly in my truth, tell my truth, push and pull with another person and yet still be loving. It’s with utter gratitude when I say that conflict can be empowering…to both parties. Conflict usually comes about from anger, a feeling that a boundary has been crossed, a need to say ‘That’s not ok with me!” And if I am willing to express that a boundary has been crossed I have an opportunity to learn about myself. Why I have this boundary in the first place; where it came from. What needs to be healed in that particular spot. Conflict = Contact. Human contact. And when we share who we really are on a deeply personal level and really are able to listen to another person on a deeply personal level, we have the magical experience of understanding ourselves and another through genuine empathy and compassion. Learning healthy conflict gave me the door to learn amazing things about the people I love. It requires a certain kind of power and it builds power in each person who is willing to stand in their truth. I see their own passion, the ‘why’ behind it, and the gifts that come out of it. In my little family now, we conflict often and conciously, shout and cry loudly and in front of each other and anyone who happens to be around…we know it’s nothing to be ashamed of, not something to do behind closed doors. Anger is often expressed. But the distinction that is always clear to me is that it’s anger to express our own stance, not anger meant to hurt another back. And always in the midst of it, I am conscious that I need to model loving resolution to my children…so I always search for that percentage of responsibility I need to be accountable for and we all get to apologize, make amends, resolve and problem solve it together and end with a loving cuddle and tickle. Conflict = contact people!! Learn it and love it!!
I got the school jitters big time! Just a little coaching needed for how not to get too involved in school politics but stay closely connected to Lula. It’s a tricky thing, this parenting school aged children. I don’t generally like being around large gaggles of parents, but then all of a sudden, I’m there, talking about mediocre non-stuff and feeling like the plastic mask has somehow melted back on my face and I’m suffocating. Yes, we went on a little vacation. Summer was great. Oh thanks, I bought those at the Gap for her. Oh yes it WAS unseasonably cold this summer. Really not looking forward to the day to day polite chit chat about the weather. And every year actually after every break, I resolve to do no more of this kind of energy wasting, but there it is again. Social norms pushing up against me. And sometimes I give in, and sometimes I hide and sometimes I show up, just the way I am and ask really intrusive questions. Heya ____ what’s new and exciting with you? Working on any kind of personal projects? How’s the marriage?! Speak much? Are you in therapy? Oh meee?? Yes, actually, I’ve seriously been fantasizing about joining the circus, singing, clowning, then the trapeze…in that order I think. No not Lula! She’s into classical violin, I’m talking about ME!!! No, really, I’m not joking whatsoever. Then I’ll hopefully gain the reputation of being the nosy mom who asks really personal direct questions and to avoid me at all costs unless you’re willing to get right into it. God willing.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for…. I’m sorry that I….
Apologizing is powerful. Apologizing instantly raises the energy of the interaction, so long as it’s sincere and not meant to manipulate. ’I'm sorry’ is something I pretty much use every day all throughout the day. There is always an instance where I was insensitive, there is always an instance where I spoke sharply, there is always an instance where I made a mistake. Apologizing leads to truth, truth of why I behaved a particular way, what I was really reacting to on a deeply personal level. Apologizing lets me see past all the ego based justifications and posturing and allows me to see through the other person’s eyes. Apologizing to children is simply not done enough. It’s usually in the guise of mental rationalization of adult hypocrisy, but if we can get past the bullshit we tend to produce, and apologize from your heart, your child will look you straight in the eyes and you will know that they see you. Not just ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’, not just ‘my parent’, or ‘the grownup’, but human to human. And every time you do this, and meet them on this level, you will know that they are our own special little gurus come here to teach us about ourselves and not the other way around. They inspire by constantly pushing the envelope for what we think is possible, they inspire through their resilience, their open hearts and their easy ability to achieve. And when you demonstrate fallibility to your children, it doesn’t set them up for years and years of self flagellation if they themselves make mistakes in the future. It teaches them the perfection of imperfection; the joy of the journey.
Sun shiney days are upon us. As soon as it finally stopped raining and got hot here in Vancouver, my daughter Lula says, ‘I wish it were winter.’ Now let me tell you, from a raised right here in Vancouver gal, this is like blasphemy. We WORSHIP the sun here; if any smidgen of sunlight gets through our thick dense wet dark clouds people RUN out in their bathing suits. Seriously. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes. And you can guess what she wishes for in the coldest days of winter. Yep. Parenting is the practice of letting annoying things wash over you. Of not biting the hook. Of letting it go. Of picking your battles. All this good bad ugly annoying gross disgusting embarrassing horrifying humanness in little cute packages. Cuteness is totally evolutionary. For SURE. She has this way, I tell you, of pushing my buttons like no other person on the planet. My children really do know me the best out of anyone I know. Better than my husband, better than my best friends, better than my sister, better than my parents, yes better than my own mother. Only our children watch every facial twitch and every body movement of ours and know what it means and then use their intimate knowledge of us to GET WHAT THEY WANT. Only our children can do this to us, they are born masters. And so they are our teachers, our little ones. They teach us about ourselves. What we really find annoying, for instance. Or gross. Or what makes us angry in an instant. It can just be a comment. Or a tone of voice. Or a touchy topic. It’s very interesting to me, watching myself. Watching myself react.
Side bar: neighbourhood noises are coming into my back door that I have open to let the cooling summer evening air in and I just heard an old Chinese lady haranguing her brother/husband/son in that way. That quintessential WAY. There’s a lesson in tonality right there. How to perfect the BERATING NAG… go listen to old Chinese ladies tear a strip off someone they love.
Anyhoo. back to my topic. So lately, what’s been getting my knickers in a knot is this DEMANDING WHINE, or WHINEY DEMANDing way Lula has been known to speak at times. Instant bristling. The subtext is usually along the vein of ENTITLEMENT. ie. YOU OWE ME, or THAT’S NOT FAIR or That’s NOT good enough, it needs to be better NOW, or MAMA,YOU MY BITCH. God it gets me. I’ve talked to her about it a billion times. Yes i point it out, and yes it usually settles down after I go over the major points, something along the lines of: ‘I’m actually NOT your bitch, i don’t care if other parents like to be the bitches but I happen to prefer some mutual respect and YOU GOT TWO ARMS and two LEGS YOU CAN GO GET IT YOURSELF and what in the HELL happened to your MANNERS. But boy oh boy does it flare up when she’s been around her seven year old friends after a big ol’ birthday cake sugar pinata explosion of parental servitude. Holy shit. Shit motherfucker.
Questions I’ve been playing with: what old limiting patterns of thought regarding the 4th dimension (ie. Time) are we still caught in? How is the illusion of time really hampering humans? Since time is an illusion, as good ol’ Einstein shows us it is, and all possibilites and all realities exist simultaneously, then what are the implications of this as we live out our lives ‘moment to moment’? It’s so freeing to not be an ‘official’ scientist and be so obedient to the ’scientific method’ and the need to prove shit before I can feel it’s truth. So freeing to be able to play and have fun with these ideas and throw them out and see what boomerangs back. I’ve been lately doing a lot of chucking lately, actually for the last decade or so, but I’ve recently done a bit of spring cleaning, gotta do some weeding every so often, y’know? Letting go of thoughts I was previously somehow identified with or ‘believed’ in. It’s funny how a collection of mental ideas soon becomes a ‘belief’ and then ‘truths’ to people. And all these beliefs do is serve to be a block between genuine feeling and understanding and very often FUN. Like how many people out there believe that their ‘reality’ still exists when they’re not there….but think about it really. Really take the time to think about these things, and push the mind to work from a much huger perspective even though we may not have any concrete answers, just realize it’s kinda FuN! Helluva lot funner than focussing on all the ‘problems’ in life, on ‘those people’ and ‘what I don’t have’. Whatever I put my attention on grows, whatever I’m interested in grows; put your attention on problems and they grow! Try it, just to experiment! It’s crazy to see how it piles up! But not so fun. The purpose of life is to have fun. The purpose of life is enjoy, stretch and grow. Focus on what is fun to you and watch it grow!
The real question is: how long does it take? Ha ha just screwin’ wit ja! Remember, there’s NO SUCH THING as time. We have as humans such a deep belief in how long things take before we get to our destination…. but this is part of the illusion of time isn’t it? I had someone say to me the other day ” I was just talking to an old elementary school friend today and saying, wow, lookit us, already in our forties with a bunch of kids,” and yeah ok i admit it, I played the game of ‘yeah yeah we’re really gettin’ old, eh, heh, heh.’ I just felt like a teeny weeny bit of an alien, frankly, because my genuine response to that was something i couldn’t say out loud without sounding like a loony (not that I believe that everyone who is considered loony is actually loony) which was ‘You actually believe in the process of “AGING”??? how charmingly prehistoric! We’re just playing being human! it’s not real! Our bodies aren’t real, we’re just a swirling collection of energy dancing to a particular cadence! This solid shit we see and feel, it’s pretend!!!!! i like my game and i know it’s pretend!!! You actually believe this shit is IT? this is ALL THERE IS?? Holy shit batman, this must be hell on earth for you!”
Wouldn’t it be cool if we could evolve to a point where we could blink like in I Dream Of Jeannie and we were in the exact place that we wanted to be in? Then each dream we ever had would be a part of our journey rather than the destination. Mmmmm may be this is already soooo….wake up!!!
|
|
