Our eyes are part of a dynamic system based on movement. They move freely and easily in order to see well. If they stop doing this, if they stare - for example, vision is diminished. I learned this years ago after getting a prescription for glasses and choosing to do eye exercises instead . In order to see better, I had to embrace the idea of relaxation as productive. Allowing my eyes to take things in, in an easy way became the goal, rather than trying hard to see.
In my work and my personal life, my inclination has been to try harder - the eyes' equivalent of straining. I often strive intently - going after problems with an intensity that ends up more like self-flagellation than focus. But like our physical eyes, true vision ( in-sight) requires the same room, softness, and ease to work its best. Resolution of any problem comes through clarity and clarity comes, ironically, from a soft focus. Gentleness and ease stimulate new, progressive thinking and vision. To see a situation more clearly, to step outside of a perspective that's frightening, requires me seeing it without the judgments and definitions I've originally placed upon it. I don't get to mentally stare at what scary thing I think is before me and simultaneously see clearly; in order to see clearly, I must relax - whether I like it or not.
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Ruminating on things we love to put us in a better frame of mind makes sense to me (as in the song My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music). After all, it's our thinking that sets the stage for our feelings. As Michael Neill (Life Coach & writer) says, "We feel our thoughts." Though I'm not that moved by warm woolen mittens, I've got stuff on my list that works pretty well for me. The only thing is, I find it's not enough to think these things - I must be willing. I must have decided that feeling good is a better idea than feeling horrible. I must have determined that I wish to influence the way I feel, that I can influence the way I feel, and that I am going to influence the way I feel. All this focus and determination sets the table for a meal of something more palatable than misery. The reason we're not always singing the My Favorite Things song to help one another (why it sort of teeters on the line between cloying and uplifting), is we know that one doesn't mention brown paper packages tied up with string to another who's looking upon their grimness as a part of them - like an internal organ. The image of raindrops on roses is not going to reach a person conjoined with depression. But it's not because it can't work or doesn't work, it's because there is something else to be addressed as well. We must see the unhappiness as separate from us. We have to de-identify with the emotional reaction and identify with ourselves as One Who Beholds. Reacting is very different than Seeing. From willingness to only behold for a moment, we can think about snowflakes and ponies, without rolling our eyes, and reinvest in the delight of life rather than all the dramas. And in doing so, we remember who we actually are - not the sum of our reactions but, at core, an expression of life not unlike the raindrop or that snowflake. That's why thinking things we love can work to cheer us - because when we think things we love, we stop seeing ourselves as a reaction we're having and remember ourselves as the inherent lover and appreciator we are. When I was a kid I followed my Mom around the house, talking. She would go up the stairs - so would I. She would walk from room to room, putting away the laundry - so would I - not helping, just talking. She would go in to her bedroom - me too. She would lie down on her bed; I would sit and continue talking to her. She would go to the kitchen; there I was.
I had a lot to say. It seemed. And she would sort of listen. But although it appeared as if I was getting what I wanted - the microphone and a considerate audience - in truth, there were few times I felt worse than those times I was traipsing after her, words and worries spilling out of me. I felt like I had something I just had to get out, something I needed to say but was never able to articulate. Instead, I just got lost in the rapids of retelling what I had seen, thought, heard, and felt that day. I didn't actually want to be regurgitating my day's emotional swings; I wanted to feel grounded despite all of the mental fodder floating through my head. All of the talking, as it turns out, was a reflection of trying to reach for, strangely enough, stillness - calm. I wanted to feel safe and stable despite thoughts that were troubling me. But talking only calms when it is an expression of thought that's been given room to grow into insight in quiet, not in reactivity. To this day, more often than I'd like, I find myself still talking when, in truth, I was done with the subject several minutes before. There is nothing more I am compelled to say, yet like a tap left on accidentally, there is still more coming out. I find these moments disconcerting, but at the same time, an opportunity to remember that once I've spoken my truth on any topic, there is only one thing for which I might still be searching - to get re-rooted in the place from which that truth came: that stillness, that quiet. And in this way, I can be saved the drain of speaking without connection. And, happily, others are spared it too. Traipsing after the world to get it to listen is an exhausting position. It has hopelessness built in. But when I no longer seek safety and grounding through talk, but through my inner stillness, my talk is left unburdened of that impossible mission and it no longer drains. When my own thinking empowers me, an interested audience naturally appears; and when I am done talking, I actually notice. When I was starting to take art lessons in college, I was intensely frightened. I saw the blank paper as a test I was bound to fail. The test involved me having to look at something outside of me and then make my paper look like that thing - and I believed I could not do this.
In truth, I have always been terrified of this test in more ways than just having to do with drawing. I have, for a very long time, been frightened by the idea that there is a right way out there, a realistic way, a way everyone agrees is good and right and that I am to either be it, draw it, or at the very least, work very hard to achieve it. This thought is why, when I went to my first life drawing class, my hand shook and I sweated in ways new to me. It is why I felt, with every move of my charcoal across the paper, I was failing, and why, in the end, I quit that class (though I did return to studying studio art later). It was the idea I was to copy what was out there that was so problematic for me. In a broader context, I think, for many of us, this idea is painful and throws a wrench in tuning in to our true selves and what we most wish to offer the world. Even amongst the realistic artists of the world, each still translates the vase, the model, or the landscape differently. One truly cannot copy anything; one always only expresses. But we certainly can run interference between who we actually are and what we offer with erroneous ideas of what has value and what does not, what is right, true, and "real", and what is not. If I could go back in time and talk to that panicked self, I would tell her first to breathe. And after she had balked at the simplicity and uselessness of that advice, I would say she need not concern herself with copying anything, that it is her connection to life that is of paramount importance. It is her connection to life, not her copying of its various forms, that will guide her hand and give her a new form that truly contributes to the whole and fuels others' connection, appreciation, and love of life. And that is no test she can pass or fail, that is as it already is and that is true for everyone. In my journal writing I strive to step outside my usual way of thinking about my challenges and open to another perspective in order to get the bigger picture. So, often, I write from this perspective in order to coach myself when I need it. This is a condensed bit of that guidance, from several years ago, I came across today and still resonates with me.
"Your World is So Waiting for You" The world you want is waiting for you - the world you dream of and want to be a part of - not some cruel, scary dog-eat-dog world. It is the world you wish to create for yourself. That is the world waiting. That world loves you and when you acknowledge this, you are loving life. Today when you pass something you hate, send love rather than resistance, and you will place yourself in the middle of a great cloud parting at that moment . You do not wait to bandage a bleeding wound. This is how quickly we ask you to move to act internally. We ask you to understand that when you feel pain or discomfort, anger, frustration etc. a cut has opened and you are losing blood = joy. And you don't want to weaken yourself by waiting too long to stop the bleeding. You get the bandage and work to help stop the loss now. This is what we want for you: to tend to the loss of Joy now - loss of connection to life now. Don't stand around complaining about it - act- care for it. Act with love, to care for the wound. Right away. When you do - the loss stops and you do not become weakened by the experience, nor exhausted by it. This is the I love you. Tend it. And when you do? The "loss" stops - the sense of despair, of losing connection (=joy) with life and meaning - stops. It has to because you're back in touch. It is life giving. One of my favorite books is, "The Art of Monsters, Inc." It's a collection of artwork, created by the artists at Pixar and famous illustrators, to inspire the creators while they were developing characters and settings for the film.
I love this book because it's devoted to the free flowing ideas of different people all given the same seed and asked to allow it to grow in his/her own way. The drawings and paintings are referred to as "inspirational artwork" and they inspire me too. They're inspirational for me because all of the art together becomes testimony to the joy of process which offers a different gift than the greatness of any particular piece. This is a book of process, of different minds seeking and searching from the same starting point. Its value for me goes beyond individual images and into the dynamism of creativity and the energy of being a part of it. There is an aliveness to the pages, a vitality to the energy of exploration that helps me shift from my concern about outcomes and back into excitement about allowing something new to happen in my work (and my life). I've always found this the happiest and most productive way to create: to be playful, to explore, to free myself, and to allow discovery. In this light, the outcome is a just a natural byproduct of my joy of being engaged in life and creating, rather than a stressful well-planned, well-executed journey to an end. "We don't live to arrive safely at our deaths." ~ Robert Holden I am beginning to understand just how tied to outcomes I've been in my life. Previously, I saw myself as balanced in that regard - striving to do what I want and not feeling overly tied to how my choices turned out. Well, new realization: that was BALONEY.
I used to think my slow decision-making process (some might perceive as indecision) was taking the time to tune-in and know what is really right for me - not what other people might want me to do, or what I "should" do, but what I actually want to do. And, to my credit, some of it is. But after a time, when the process starts feeling taxing, it turns out that tuning-in part ends and my busy, worried mind takes over and simply goes into overdrive trying to psyche out what the outcome will be. But there's no knowing what will be and so the process of trying to "know" in order to make a "right" decision only leads to insecurity. To thrive, I'm going to have to give up my habit of trying to know what will happen, return to the only thing I can know (what feels right to me and what I want to do right now) and move on. Growth doesn't occur through external control. One plants a seed, waters, and waits. No amount of manipulation will do anything but disturb the natural process and integrity of what is to come. Freedom doesn't come from doing something in order to secure a certain outcome, nor does it come from trying to escape anything. Freedom is a state of being in which the heart leads, the mind serves, and life naturally unfolds from that point of grace within ourselves in which we, like a seed, are compelled to reach up and out and break new ground. No particular outcome guaranteed - no particular outcome needed. The other day I received a letter from my publisher letting me know that my book, VIOLET BING AND THE GRAND HOUSE, is going out of print due to decreased sales. And on that day, after reading the letter, I found myself in tears.
VIOLET BING took me about seven years to develop and see to its form as book. And as I wept and felt this sense of complete despair, I realized what a burden I had placed upon the shoulders of one small idea, one little gift I had wanted to give. Unconsciously, I had held the expectation that the book might dismiss my own doubt about my ability to sustain something and see it flourish. But along with that hope was the anxiety that making this book might actually just affirm my greatest fears about myself: that I simply can't. So when the letter arrived, all of that craziness came crashing down inside me. On my mind's movie screen I saw failure and then I felt the resulting feelings of taking that blow against myself. I imagined others seeing me and my work this way. And I wept in response. I blamed myself for letting it "die on the vine" and the cruel voice within used it as evidence in its argument for my inability. I looked at my impending birthday with new, rotten eyes - now seeing it as a foreshadowing of a horrible year to come. And then, because I ultimately know better, I started to let the experience not just break me down, but open me up. This life is my own. It's my creation - from the moment I cautiously made my first appearance on planet earth onward. It's my work of art and it's made of my choices. Regardless of experiences, achievements, pursuits, accolades or criticisms, the "success" of my life depends upon how I feel about it and myself. Which means it depends upon how I think about it. Placing this emotional boulder upon the book and myself means that I have been investing my energies in trying to control outcomes in order to feel okay. And the sense of capability, thriving and flourishing that I've so wanted cannot come in that outside-in way. When we are unkind to ourselves it is brutal and it slows and muddies the waters, bringing us to our knees as we keep fighting to be where we think we need to be, instead of allowing ourselves to flourish where we are and make our decisions free of fear. If we reject ourselves, it is impossible to see the growth, to see ourselves as flourishing and to witness the love that can sustain us and all that we do. I am learning much here since the day - several years ago- I first showed up as a baby - and I will learn more. Here's to a new day, a new year, and the release of all that burdens our hearts and our heads. Happy Birthday. I have been getting bent out of shape lately - seemingly twisted up and worked over by outside forces. I've been telling myself stories about trying to do this or trying to do that - trying to get such and such straightened out, or this planned or taken care of. And all of this mental activity is like a mallet tapping on a piece of metal over and over in my head. Until I finally snap at somebody, throw up the white flag of "overwhelm", or silently complain to myself about how impossible it is.
But then for a moment I found myself aware of the hype. There is an experience and then there's the hype I create around it. So I became aware of my own hype. And in becoming aware, relief from the tapping started to occur. And then I started understanding what I really wanted. And, interestingly, it wasn't just to be done with my "problems". As it turns out, there were unowned strengths and abilities in me from which I wanted to act. Each situation with which I was faced called for me to step into my power in a way I was resisting but actually wanted. So the question I need to ask isn't "How do I make this stop? it's "Who and how do I want to be and can I allow the challenge to serve as an opportunity for bringing that forward?" Within these gaps in the hype emerge the TRUE headlines, the true news about ourselves and what qualities we're wanting to embrace - but have thus far resisted. And that's the real story. I say I'm at the "bottom of the pond" when I'm sad. It's a phrase I think I made up (though I may have picked it up somewhere). The other day I happened to be at the bottom of the pond and this is what occurred to me.
In thinking of things I love - to buoy my spirits - I thought of the sunroom - a room connected to my childhood bedroom by french doors . Other than an old braided rug and a short, pine bookcase filled with stuffed animals, the room was empty. But still, every Spring, with a sense of ceremony and import, I would throw open the french doors and a window or two and sit on the floor in there and make something - a drawing, a craft project, a card. The sunroom seemed special and I perceived it as one might a vacation home. There was nothing in that room but what I brought to it and it was my favorite place. My bedroom was like my sanctuary and sometimes a place to hide, but the sunroom was like a vantage point from which I felt I could look out and love the world. The bottom of the pond- the way I use it - really just indicates my current chosen vantage point for looking at life; it's not an actual place - nowhere I've been made to go. And the sunroom, though an actual place, also just represents another way of seeing things. Sadness and Happiness do do not land on us, delivered by unfortunate or joyous events. They only indicate through which eyes we're seeing life - the eyes of love or the eyes of fear. I fell in love with the sunroom because it seemed to make me feel good. But in actuality, it had no power other than that which I gave it; I used it to help me remember how I could see things if I chose. And how I can now - whether (temporarily) at the bottom of the pond or not. |
From the Inside
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