When my son was a toddler, I once said he was like a "CEO without a company". He wanted to run something. His preschool teacher complained he never listened to her directives and was "controlling", often telling the other children what to do. Though charming, funny, smart, and adorable, it was as though he'd come from another life as King and couldn’t quite fathom his new (lesser) position as child. But as he got older, he got happier. He grew able to harness his sharp, old soul mind and put it in service to making life easier. Still, sometimes I run up against that Boss and it’s challenging. Recently, he and I got into a conflict that left me confused and frustrated. That night I had a dream. He calls me on the phone - except he is only seven or eight (not 18). The phone rings, I answer, and he says: "I love you so much. I am so scared." "What are you scared of?" I ask. "I love you so much." "I love you so much too,” I say. With my son's personality packing so much Boss energy, it's been easy to forget that what can seem dominant and controlling, might be a call for something else. In the text A Course in Miracles, it says that every behavior is either an expression of love or a call for love. Sometimes it's easier to recognize a call for love in one who reads as afraid than in one who reads as bossy. But it's the same call. Now, all I have to do is remember. What do you need to remember? Much love, Jennifer
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When my oldest son was three, it was tough getting him to bed. Eventually, one night every time I went to him , he got up again.
It was almost 1:00 in the morning; my husband was working late waitering; I was alone and exhausted. My little son appeared again, this time not at the top of the steps calling, but in the living room. I started to cry, begging him to go to sleep. He looked at me perplexed. He was three but in his innocent eyes all I could see was a controlling, unreasonable force. And all I could see in me was a whining victim. On the surface my problem was: "The Kid Won't Go to Sleep". But my real problem was perception. I wasn't a victim; there was no breach, gross injustice, unconscionable demands -no unfairness by the Gods or anyone else. I needed to stop believing my thinking; it was wearing me out. Life talks to us in pictures. Every experience is a series of pictures, a scene-by-scene depiction of our current point of view. We get to live a physical reflection of the thoughts and feelings inside of us. I was not the person I wanted to be with him - but that wasn't his fault. It was up to me to decide who I wanted to be and to release any thinking that could not support that choice. I was never going to be who I wanted to be if I saw myself as the victim of anything. Who do you want to be? Lots of Love, Jennifer Recently, on my husband's birthday, his mom reminded him of what a rush he'd been in to be born; he was almost out before she could get to the delivery room. We laughed at how he's always been eager to get things going his whole life. Then I considered what I've heard about my own birth - that I had to be coaxed out with forceps. This seems terribly apropos in regards to the regular battles I've had with my reticent personality.
Then I considered my sons' births. My eldest was born with a long umbilical cord that had wrapped itself around his neck (that had to be untangled). In his life, his avid striving for greater independence, separateness, and distance has both benefited him and created problems. Then there's my youngest son - born with the shortest of umbilical cords. Had it been a smidgen shorter, he wouldn't have been able to come out on his own. This seems to accurately reflect how close he's wanted to stay to home and his uncertainty about being independent. Though I have no scientific evidence that quirky or difficult births reflect the energy and orientation of the personality of the person to come, this has got me thinking about how we all birth ourselves into the world every day. For birth doesn't happen only once in a life, it's an ongoing experience. Unlike the births that bring us onto the planet, our moment to moment arrivals afford us the opportunity of conscious choice. We can choose how we wish to be born into each moment - embracing the experience, or resisting it, watching as the new world unfolds before us, or fearing what is to come. Much Love, Jennifer In a web series called, "My Last Days", people with terminal illnesses not only talk about their challenges but also what they're gaining from their experience: the willingness to let go of trivial fixations, to focus on meaningful relationships , and to live in the moment. They become the great seers of the Real Reality - the one behind the scenes, the one that goes unnoticed when we focus mainly on life's surface expressions. Often we look at what is before us, facts and conditions, and judge them as good or bad, fair or unfair. But "unfair" assumes that fair things always read as balanced and equitable. Yet what is truly fair in a situation, what gives us what we want and need most, may not always appear as just at first. Luckily, peace doesn't come from living only things we judge as good and fair. It comes from feeling past the top layer of our lives into the Real Life - for the same light remains at the center of all experience. Regardless of differing situations, we are all equal in this way: each of us has only this moment. The past and future live solely in thought; they have no location in time or space. Because all we've really got is the moment we're living now, whether we're sick, healthy, with or without a job, a spouse, or financial woes - how we open to the moment or resist it determines our experience. There is no life condition that has the power to take away the value of the moment. That's what those with terminal illnesses seem to recognize and cherish and that's what we all can as well. Much love, Jennifer "Love yourself" can sound like a grating, tricky directive. The language implies there are two of (each of) us - "I" and this other "I" - and one "I" must give in and show affection for the other. But who's supposed to love whom? And why do we find ourselves in two pieces?
At core, who we are is the energy of Love. I do, however, also have thoughts about me - but those thoughts can change and are not what I am. Years ago, I heard Louise Hay - publisher, author, and affirmation queen - say that when we hate ourselves, we're just hating a "story about ourselves". Here I'd always thought I was hating me but actually I was hating my own judgmental, unkind thoughts about me, like "I'm not good enough" (a classic). Loving ourselves is about identifying ourselves as love - rather than identifying with a story of who we are. That's it: identify what you truly are and you'll find love there. Often we believe feeling loved comes from outside us. But loving ourselves is actually just allowing ourselves to feel loved regardless of circumstances. We lean into the love that is always here. Suffering may only be a product of looking for that sense of embrace outside ourselves. Love is always present. But to feel it, one must go to its source - within, not on the surface. And that takes practice. So let's practice. Much Love, Jennifer As part of homeschooling, I've taken to teaching my teenage son to meditate or at least, to be still (for a moment). It's not so easy. His tendency to pull from every day life and get lost in imagination, talking to himself - running his body and mind back and forth - is what put him in the realm of Special Needs/Autism and in conflict with school in the first place. This habit of chasing his thoughts doesn't serve him well outside of school either.
Though resistant to allowing quiet and calm, he's permitted a slight practice. While we sit together, my eyes fight to close but his remain open. He says he doesn't want to close them. Though he's thought to have "special needs", his true need is to feel safe within himself, so the outside world no longer appears as a threat. From this vantage point, there will be nothing from which to run. The eye that always has to be open is the exhausted eye. It is the one weary and wary of life. It's always watching to make sure it doesn't get hurt. But life isn't a threat; pain comes from attention to fearful thinking. Chasing our thoughts is what makes us feel lost and unsafe. Sometime soon I hope to see that eye (for all of us in need of peace) allow itself the rest it deserves, using its inner vision to know itself and its safety - and its outer vision to embrace the world. Much Love, Jennifer "The soul speaks in the language of hope."
~ Unknown I used to think of a transformative story in terms of hope emerging - sort of popping up at the end. But actually hope is always present. What emerges is our awareness; we wake up. Transformation occurs when we finally recognize the hope and love that was always there, regardless of the circumstance. Whether we suffer or not depends upon whether or not we see the hope - not whether or not it's present. Hopelessness is never a deep or complete truth; it may accurately reflect a sad, fearful or angry thought - but that's all. Hopelessness is actually dishonest. Regardless of the story we're telling about our experience, hope always walks beside that story, challenging or enhancing our current rendition of life and ourselves. So, when we feel compelled to tell depressing stories to others or ourselves, an opportunity presents - not just to rehash misery but to reveal the unrecognized truth beneath the hopeless thinking. The goal in telling our story is not for Misery to love Company but rather for Misery to remember Love. A depressing story is never anything more than someone's thought of the truth with the omission of love and hope. Love to you, Jennifer ". . . Learn to be more compassionate company [to yourself], as if you were somebody you are fond of and wish to encourage."
~ Anne Lamott Recently my husband encouraged me to relate to my work as a friend. He wants me to be a true friend to it - rather than just trying to get it done or sold, worrying about how to make it right, or striving to do more of it. Though I love my work, I sometimes forget it reflects a relationship that deserves appreciation. Starting around eight I regularly wrote, drew, and made things. I didn't think much about it; I wasn't blowing minds with stories like, "Sally Hamburger and Harry French Fries" or my sweet, awkward, and (sometimes) hard-to-know-what-it-is pictures. As I got older and wrote more in my journal, writing became important because I could say everything and feel as though there was someone there willing to hear me out. When I wrote, I took the time to listen to myself. I was being a good friend. The journal came to represent me hearing me, an intention of kindness towards myself. After all these years of writing and drawing, I find this sense of listening remains one of the most moving and reassuring aspects of doing my work. There is always something there - interested. Even when my thoughts run to self- criticism, failure, and doubt, there in the background remains a friend - enthusiastic to hear and see more, always asking that I continue. Much love, Jennifer I haven't suffered many physical wounds. Once I fainted into a doorway and had to have twenty something stitches in my forehead. Yet, most of my wounds, results of falling off my bike - to having a mole removed, have shared one thing in common: I didn't want to look at them.
I didn't want to see anything "gross" or be alarmed. It wasn't fear of the cut itself so much as fear of how I'd feel once I saw it - meaning my attention to thoughts that would feel distressing. The thought "Oh no!" for example, might activate a feeling of panic, if I invest in it. This goes for anything I don't want to look at. I fear seeing the thing because, on some level, I believe external conditions control how I feel. For instance - I have left the bathroom dimly lit to avoid the face about which I might think not-so-nice thoughts and then feel bad. But it is not the face - the face is innocent. It's not even the thoughts - they are innocent; it is attention to the thoughts that packs the wallop. For without attention, thoughts morph and move on. Luckily, Life makes it possible to release fear by releasing our attention to those thoughts. Like allowing a top to spin itself to stillness, we can allow a thought to stop itself. We no longer fight those thoughts or fight for them and our attention is freed and we are freed - freed to look at anything fearlessly. Much Love, Jennifer When I was eight I hid under my bed. I thought I was afraid of school but it really wasn't school. I was feeling the repercussions of thinking something "out there" was bound to hurt me - and a desperate mental attempt to prevent that from happening. I even went so far as to sleep under my bed, leaving it made, with pillow and blankets perfectly arranged as though I'd never been there, as though I'd just. . . disappeared.
It seemed like disappearing - taking myself out of the scene - would be a way to end feeling afraid. But from under the bed, I felt worse. Taking my body to school while my mind and attention attempted to vacate the experience put me in a state of anxiety. Though I was convinced the trick to feeling better lay in figuring out how to disappear, the resolution of these difficult feelings actually resided in my willingness to fully appear. I have the habit of running from things mentally - a lot of mental chatter - judging, scrutinizing, analyzing. When I settle, allow all that reactive thought to land, and call myself forward - I get calmer. When I stop paying so much attention to thoughts that resist what is happening and step back into my skin, in willingness and acceptance, the peace I'd sought through dropping out and pulling away - through disappearing - is right where I am. |
From the Inside
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