The Best Version's of Ourselves

"We are here to become the best version of ourselves that we can become".
I found this quote while reading Tomorrow's God By Neale Donald Walsch.  For me this is a very provocative quote.   It is a fascinating process to try to touch into the sense of that.  Try.  Close your eyes and try to feel, to sense, to image, to remember your best self.  Hopefully, it is not too distantly far from who we are this moment or yesterday.  Of course we all have our moments where we are unwarrantedly cross with others, where judgement or bias enters in - but hopefully it is not hard for us to remember moments where we acted with kindness, generosity of spirit, compassion, courage, humility, love, resolve, ___________ or whatever those traits are that we feel would edge us towards our better selves.

It seems both interesting and challenging to try to pull together all those snippets of memory, of lived experience, those traits and gifts into one simultaneous and ongoing expression of self.  That I think would be to be "the best version of ourselves" that Walsch calls us to, or more correctly that the Creator calls us to.

This also reminds me of the quote (erroneously attributed to Nelson Mandala for many years):

"We ask ourselves: who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God.  Your playing small doesn't serve the world.  There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.  We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us; it's in everyone.  And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

I have appreciated the way it talks about how we keep ourselves small and challenges so boldly "what can it possibly serve?"  As Richard Bach also conveyed this idea in Illusions:  "Argue for your limitations and they are yours". Yes, why do we keep ourselves small?  Why do we argue for our limitations - justifying them and claiming them like a familiar worn out sweater, claiming them as insurmountable.

It strikes me that there are two problems:  one being a psychological one and one being a spiritual problem. Psychologically we have had messages laid on us early and reinforced often so we both have negative self image, but also messages limiting what we believe is possible about change.  (These things are addressable through therapy.)  But the spiritual problem is that we see the job of change or growth as all our own work and we do not see or acknowledge the role of the creator in that growth.  We may not have a personal relationship with God, or may not see God as a source of strength available to us, or maybe even as a sympathetic source (See earlier posts about images of God).  Or we may have beliefs about original sin or our own "fallen nature" that get in the way.

As Walsch says:  Here is a central tenet of the New Spirituality: the purpose- and the greatest opportunity and gift- of life is to re-create yourself a new in the next grandest version you ever held about Who You Are. And you can do it every single moment of Now....It is not a question of whether you "have what it takes ," but of whether you take what  you have- and then use it.

Living as part of LIfe Itself

Recently I have been reading the book "Tomorrow's God" by Neale Donald Walsh.  In this book he both says we will (need to) move into a new spiritual renaissance if we are to save the planet and that it will include a new understanding of God which he calls Tomorrow's God.  He says we will (or suggests we should) stop using the word God (or Allah, or any similar words) because of the huge amount of misunderstandings and baggage we have attached to that word.  Instead he suggests we use the word LIFE.

Notice how this does shift some misunderstandings.  I for one think the ideas that God as vengeful, punishing, jealous or only blessing the US are distorted understanding of the Divine Being.  So in his schema of substituting the word Life you get:

A punishing God = A punishing Life.   Well that sort of clears up that Life does not punish us.  Sometimes other people do, but that is based upon their will, beliefs, or values.  They were not directed by the Life force to punish anyone.

A vengeful God = a vengeful Life.  Again there is no evidence of Life creating vengeance.  Some animals eat others but it is not vengeance.  Some people are vengeful to other people but again out of their emotions, or beliefs.  But the Life force does not make them vengeful.  In fact it is easier to notice that when a group acts vengefully towards another that the life force does not direct them to do so....they may call on beliefs to explain their actions, especially religious beliefs or as Walsh would say "the Old God".

A jealous God = a jealous Life.  Now it starts to seem rather absurd doesn't it?  How can life be jealous?

God Bless America = Life Bless America.  Well Life does bless America, and every other country too. While certainly some have far less material goods or sometimes less useful natural resources, none are without laughter, kindness, creativity, etc....in other words the blessings of life.

And then there is the other side of this:
A Loving God = A Loving Life.  Yes indeed as we look around we see all kinds of evidence of Life providing love, and love coming through all aspects of life and in fact creating life.

God the Creator = Life the Creator.  Well that one is fairly obvious huh?

God as my refuge = Life as my refuge.  Here I notice that if I use the word Life it helps me to notice how I should be approaching life.  Rather than trying to run to God as a refuge against life!

God the Provider = Life the Provider.  Certainly life provides many things, but what we want?  In the old way of turning to God and praying for things to be provided we were always like helpless children and what we wanted may or may not be provided.  (Some religions claiming that only if you were virtuous or hard working did God provide.)  But life seems to provide in no predictable pattern....or does it provide what our intentions are?  What we co-create in alignment with life's energy?

This also syncs up very well with what both Walsh and Wayne Dyer (and countless others) say about manifesting.   Dyer refers to The Universe (instead of God) and both talk about the Universe or Life as being neutral about what is created or provided.  Ask for sorrow or anger and that can be provided.  Ask for Love and joy and that can be provided.   We need therefore to be conscious about what we ask for and where we put our attention because what we dwell upon Dyer says is what we manifest.  Think endlessly "Oh I have so many bills to pay" and sure enough more bills will show up.  Think endlessly "Oh my life is blessed" and sure enough more blessings will show up.  So I would like to put my attention on the goodness of life and the love that is abundant in life.  I think if I put my attention on love and goodness I'm liking to live Life more deeply, more consciously.

When we pray to God this often evokes a sense of receiving or being denied, of a "power over" or a parent or "the Santa Claus God" who I have written about in a previous blog.  It is also to get mad at God for what we decide God has done. If we call this energy Life, it is I think still possible to pray to it, but it does sort of change the interaction.  There is wonder, awe, gratitude and joy, and there is the attempt to perceive the Life Energy and to align with it.  But any appealing to it...well you just have to go more into that co-creation or aligning the life energy with the bigger life energy.  From my point of view that keeps me more true to how I want to pray anyway.

Joanna Macy talks about how in systems theory you have living parts that make up bigger living parts.  So for example we have cells that make up organs (also parts of our life) which make up our live bodies and then our bodies join with other bodies to make up living communities, etc.   She points out that these parts at each level cooperate to make the larger level function.  But something much more profound is able to happen when any level has self-reflection upon itself as a separate living being and ALSO part of a living being.  So if I engage in being consciously aware (mindfulness) of being a part of Life/God this is different than living as part of Life with no awareness of anything beyond my own self.  It centers us into life itself.

Unseated Knight gets Married

This post is not strictly about spirituality.  It is about love and partnership in the 21st century.  Men and women have been having a kind of hard time for decades now with roughly 50% of marriages ending in divorce.  As a marriage counselor I often have a front row seat at this crisis.  Recently I have been noticing a theme: woman who come in with their husbands and wonder how he looked so attractive as suitor and so pathetic as a husband.  Their complaints are very similar: he does not do enough (including in cases where they acknowledge that "he" does more cleaning than she does.)  He is not good with money (sometimes does not earn enough, sometimes spends to much or is clueless about family finances.)  Does not communicate about meaningful things and seems annoyingly uniformed about her feelings. But as those complaints resolve there is almost always the complaint that he does not exhibit passion towards them, does not initiate sex, or show desire towards them.  I have been known to point out "how does that work while fielding all this other disappointment, frustration and complaints from you that he will be grabbing you for a passionate kiss?"

A recent NY Times article (2/14/2014 The All or Nothing Marriage) on the history of marriage reports on stages that went from the founding of this country till about 1850 referred to as Institutional marriage where marriage was primarily  an economic partnership,  focused on cooperating on getting a roof over head to food on the table. The next stage, compassionate marriage ran from 1850 till roughly 1965 was based upon strictly defined sex roles of male provider and female childrearer, but where both filled many of their companionship needs with same gender friends but expected to find love in their marriage.  This would be the frame of our parents or grandparents marriages.  But it says since then we have turned towards the model of self-expressive marriage that sees marriage as a vehicle for self-discovery, growth and personal development.  I have to say I wonder if this is a new model shared by both genders or if many men are not still trying to be the husbands that their father's were: providers and fathers but not emotional partners?  The 2006 book Mating in Captivity in fact hypothesis that the mutual tasks of household responsibilities and erotic sexuality are essentially incompatible.  With chapter titles: More Intimacy less sex: love seeks closeness but desire needs distance.....well you start to get a sense of the problem.

I would describe the problem this way: a generation of women raised as feminists or in the shadow of feminism now seeks equality in marriage which is envisioned as a sharing of the work of marriage: taking turns with chores, child rearing and financial matters, and yet in an older more reptilian part of our brain is still the idea that the "man" will be strong, confident and decisive (and the gentle but aggressive lover).  You may already notice the collision waiting to happen here.  As one man cynically told his therapy:  "My wife would like me to share all my deepest feelings with her, but only as long as I'm not authentic because if I tell her of my fears, insecurities or doubts, that is a complete turn off."  So the man is wanted to be strong but not so strong that he dominates, confident but not to the degree that he would ignore her needs and feelings, (confidence while checking in?) and decisive as long as she likes his decision.  Not surprisingly men fail this impossible tight rope walk and then face their wives disappointment.  As one man recently told me:  Well if I withdraw I can just not care about it, or if I just make all the decisions I can be in charge.  But in the face of the disappointment, why keep initiating different efforts; the odds are against me."  And thus the now long dethroned suitor becomes the belled cat.

During the courtship both parties describe that there connection was easy and fun and their was lots of sex.  Well yes that makes sense with no mortgage, no kids to feed or bath; he could be confident, relaxed and fun.  She could be sexy and attentive and supportive without any bills to worry about or kids to tend.  Is it hopeless then?  Or should they just never have kids?  No I would not say that, but what I would say is that we have to reexamine what we expect.

If we have kids then the expectation needs to be that both will be sleep deprived for years, that both have more than 40 hour weeks and the trick is to not look resentfully at your spouse as not having done enough to save you, but at them gratefully for every piece they did you did not have to do!  Do not measure their help against what it was like without kids.  Measure it against what it would be like if you were a single parent.  Figure out how to exhibit the comadairee that is exhibited in the old Bill Crosby show where Cliff and Claire Huxtible laugh together that the children are in a plot to take the house from them, to drive them mad and turn towards each other in the expectation of understanding, perspective, humor and absolute backing.

But the much more complicated terrain is the intimate life of a couple.  I have had an image of a woman saying to her knight: get off that horse come down here and stand by my side as my equal and when he dismounts she says in dismay:  "you  are shorter than me."  Sisters I think we have to decide whether you want that equal partner or that strong guy knight.  I have known women who did not expect their emotional intimacy to be with their husbands. They long ago decided men were not capable of that and seek that sharing with their girlfriends and tell their husband the practical things and the things they gauge him to be interested in.  I have known many men who say their wives are their closest friends and yet are referencing a level of sharing most women would snort at.  So in some of these unions the dilemma has been solved by having lower expectations.

I don't think we will all make it.  There are many marriages that combine the pre-1963 model on one spouses part with the post 1963 model with the other and the paradigm collision takes its inevitable causalities.  The ever widening gap between the rich and the poor leave an increasingly cadre of those raised in the middle class with middle class expectations that will never be realized in their marriage.  In such marriages the fighting over bills and kids will be the fall out. Many modern men have no chance of providing as their father did and the old model and the new again collide to produce two frustrated partners each blaming the other for how their home life has turned out.  Hollywood movies and romance models still portray a swept off their feet model of love which shows the "fun and easy connection with passionate sparks" side of love, but never goes beyond the falling in love stage to show how intimacy functions within the grind of day to day demands and disappointments  There are several generations of men who know they are suppose to be sympathetic and caring and gentle and yet have not been taught by either father or mother how to listen empathetically to another person, and thus struggle without a skill set to fufill the role of the new husband.

However, what of those rare 25% of marriages that the NY Times article say are successful by sharing deeply every week?  Interestingly, what I have also noticed in these couples with dissatisfied wives is the wives as they loose confidence in their husbands increasingly take on more and more responsibilities: they manage the check book, carry the fear of whether the bills will all get paid, they do more of the child nurturing, they carry lists of things that need to be done for the house and in all anxiety the libido turns off completely.  They look tough and yet when asked the right questions they acknowledge being frightened, feeling very, very lonely and longing for a shoulder to turn on (but certainly not their husbands unreliable shoulder).  Their husbands sexual interest starts looking like neediness and thus the final burden.  They are so busy being strong that they no longer can say the more vulnerable things:  I need you, I'm scared, I am lonely, I want you.  Like Lake Woebegone, in this world all the women are strong and all the men are good looking.

How do we engage intimacy in this brave new land?  I think for men it means neither retreating is the hopelessness of ever not disappointing their partner, or putting on the old cowboy hat and trying to be "the MAN" but engaging in that very difficult middle ground that involves listening, not trying to fix but simply empathizing in a clear and visible way- staying in that tension in the middle between giving in and taking over but instead collaboration.  It means not going into little boy mode in face of a woman with power, nor going for the Patriarchal Power over mode. For women it means giving up the comfortable old powerlessness of our mothers who could not say directly what they needed or wanted and thus manipulated indirectly for their needs through disappointment and disapproval.  And it means not trying to be our fathers...not simply taking over the male roles of responsibilities.  It also means engaging in that uncomfortable middle ground where we don't blame our partners for our unhappiness, have to take our own risks and fight our own battles,  but tell the vulnerable truth about what we need and how we feel and our need for comfort and emotional support. Which is to say that woman also must stay out of the patriarchal patterns of either having power only indirectly or attempting to put on pants and have power over.  Even more complexly, it means having to stop seeing men as either knights or sons, but really have an image of them as collaborative partners in a shared life who will sometimes lean on us just as we lean on them.  For both genders it means listening, accepting, forgiving and collaborating.

Intending who We are

In the book Illusions, the main character of Richard Bach’s novel gets a Messiah’s Handbook which he reads verses of throughout the book.  These snippets indeed carry real wisdom.  Some examples: 

“Remember where you came from where you’re going, and why you crated the mess you got yourself into in the first place.” 

“Learning is finding out what you already know”.

“The simplest questions are the most profound.  Where were you born?  Where is your home?  Where are you going?  What are you doing?  Think about these once in a while, and watch your answers change.”

“You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being an that is your real self.  Don’t turn away from possible futures before you’re certain you don’t have anything to learn from them.  You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.”

Collectively what I got out of these bits of wisdom and the book itself, at the tender age of 23, was a sense that if we let go of external symbols, rules, others expectations, and a sense of  the unweilding “facts” of our lives that we can find our true selves and work with that “clay” throughout our lives.  What goes with that for me is a sense of all of life being an exciting adventure, where learning is always possible and where mistakes really are just learning opportunities.  It means claiming growth as a birthright of all humans.  It has also meant that it is really important to look carefully at the story we tell about our own life and the power that story has to shape the way we feel about and experience our lives.  With clients I see this all the time and am very sad sometimes by the profoundly sad and limiting stories people tell about their own lives and the way they will steadfastly cling to that story even while bemoaning the unhappy and unpalatable results of such a story.  This also has tied back to my offerings of last month about how we involve the divine Spirit in this continuous process of creating the life we lead.

This has also lead to my own unique approach to New Year’s resolutions.  Every New Year’s Eve I sit with my journal and try to remember where I came from and where I’m going.  The very first time I did it I tried to list what I thought I was learning from the events of that year.  Then looking at that I wrote identities I felt I was working on developing: wife, mother, therapist, activist, physical body, spiritual being, etc.

Then for each one I wrote down who I wanted to be more of in the coming year.  In the years that followed I would look at my list of intentions and write about how I did on them and why,  and new learnings and then write down my intentions for the next year.

So for example, as a therapist I want to make time to pray (privately) for my clients, as a spiritual being I want to be more in touch with gratitude and the expression of gratitude and so forth. It is also possible to deal transformatively  in this process with any identity we don’t like.  For if you notice any negative story you tell about your self (I’m too busy, I’m disorganized, don’t have enough friends,…whatever) then it is possible to tell a different story.  To in your statements of becoming for the New Year to positively address those issues.  (“I move purposefully, and at measured pace throughout my life creating order and meaning in my life.”)

I remember once rather innocently describing this process to a man in my church and him saying:  “Wow, I always saw New Year’s resolutions as being about setting goals, but I have never thought that I can have goals for how I live, for who I am.  That feels really good”.  It does…you might want to try it.

Looking Backwards to the Present

I have been reading James Redfield's new novel: the Twelfth Insight. Without reading any reviews, I can predict that the reviewers say the novel was too much a regurgitation of his previous three novels. Perhaps a fair complaint.  I do think that for those who have been troubled by wars fought for religious reasons and with concern for the Middle East they may find interesting his ideas about the shared roots of religions as a ground for connection.  (Although this too is not the most original idea.)

While I certainly enjoyed revisiting what Redfield has to say about synchronistic events - always significant in my own faith life - what I did find interesting was Redfeld's idea that we can use intuition predicatively.  In this novel as the main characters learn/remember to tune into syncrhonicities and the common bond between all of us, they learn when contemplating a possible step to see if they can picture the two most likely possibilities and to use the feedback loop of what they can picture and what they cannot as Light from the
Universe shed upon their path.

This has been helpful to me as I have been recently contemplating one of those places where the spiritual tradition I grew up in goes bump with the beliefs I have come to learn and trust in my adult life.  So my tradition teaches me that when we consider a possible action, to listen in the silence for The Holy Author's divine guidance as to whether this is a right course of action for us.  Certainly within the Christian tradition it frames God as having power over us, although I long ago released that belief for one that is more mutual and collaborative.  There are models out there that talk about a co-creation process with God.  That does not seem quite right either because it implies we know as much as the Creator which is far from my experience.  But in my experience there is our own will and there is the Creator's intent for all life, and yes I like to believe or experience an intention for each of us as well.  Perhaps that is simply our own soul's work and what we have come to do which can place us either in alignment with Spirit or out of alignment with Spirit.

I have written much in other entries about the delicate process of "listening" to God and how the Divine often speaks in symbolic language, metaphor, or in synchronicity.  But this sort of begs the question of how we "plan" our lives.  Christianity would suggest we should not plan our lives but listen for and be "obedient" to God's intention for our lives. (Or in some strands make our own choices while being obedient to Biblical directives). Some strands of new age thinking such as The Secret would seem to suggest that we put out our intention, vision or desire out to the Universe and just manifest that which we wish.  I have deeply appreciated Neale Donald Walsch's attempt to readdress the messages from the Secret in his book: Happier than God.   In this book Walsch clarifies that we can only align with the nature of the universe as it is which he says is all interconnected and for the Good of all.  Thus he says when we attempt to manifest with either harmful intent or selfish intent we actually step out of alignment, and the messages we receive will simply bring us back into alignment for the common good.

So Walsch would say we could plan whatever we want as long as it aligned with the Universe.  Wayne Dyer who of course writes extensively about this in his book The Power of Intention, as well as in his other books, also talks a great deal about how to be in alignment, how to avoid blocks and other pitfalls.  But Dyer, while saying we can not be poor enough or sick enough to prevent other people from being poor or sick, is silent on the question of how we plan or whether our plans can be selfish or create negative effects for others.

Recently, I have been trying to discern whether to commit civil disobedience on behalf of climate change.  In my old model I would listen and not act until I received a clear message to go forward.  So far I have not received such a green light...although in both previous occasions in my life I contemplated a possible action with my mind analyzing the justice and injustice of the situation, and in both occasions just days before The Just One spoke powerfully and clearly with unmistakable direction right before the action with a power I could not have ignored.

In my new model I have been trying to hold a vision of the world re-emerging out of fossil fuel dominated world into one that uses sustainable alternative fuels.  This is very challenging to hold a vision of since both the actions and mindsets that leads to carbon consumption are deeply embedded in our society.  I know a visualizing process taught by Elise Boulding, the founder of modern Peace studies, which if engaged in with great detail can reveal strategic action, but this is different than a spiritual process. The process both Dyer and Walsch talk about would seem to suggest hold the big future vision, (not the yearning or you manifest the yearning) and then let it go in the confidence that the Universe will manifest it.  Dyer does talk about working from the end which he describes as imagining a book already written and then writing  it. This however still doesn't answer for me the question: how do we make yes/no decisions about possible actions?  Oh, the moral from the immoral is fairly easy to discern, but should I take this or action or not is a different question?

This is where Redfield's concept of trying to picture a certain action and the other course (even if that is inaction) and see if we can picture it, provides, I think, an interesting intersection between these two paradigms. It suggests to me for the first time how to listen for the Divine Author's message regarding that which dwells in the future. When I tried to picture myself getting arrested I did not see it, but oddly it was because I did not really see the whole group getting arrested either!  Perhaps this means Obama will not approve the XL pipeline.  Or perhaps as happened in the past two occasions, that as events unfold a new Truth will plant itself in my heart with a correspondingly strong picture of that very arrest.  My hope is in either, both? paradigms will be to listen in faithfulness and obedience to the Greatest Truth as it reveals itself.

Hope in My Soul

Hope is a very central issue to me. I was almost named Hope when I was born.  I was born out of the reconciliation of my parent’s separation, and my father wanted to name me Hope.  My mother vetoed this name.  Two years later when my sister was born his hope had died into a stubborn faith that they would continue, and so he wanted to name her Faith.  My mother vetoed this name, and she was named Fay.  Was his hope sucessful?  My parents were married till my mother died, for 11 more years after he reached for the name Hope.  But they were kept together by her dying and would have separated if she had not become ill.

I hoped my mother would live during the two and half years she lay dying.  Hope was disappointed when she died.  Thus also began my career of hoping for impossible things and yet needing hope to survive that which is awful.

For me at that time the Emily Dickerson poem was truth:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all

I then launched a lifetime of activism.  As a favorite quote of mine says: “An idealist is someone who is homesick for a land they have never been.”  Certainly activists always struggle for things that are not yet: justice, peace, community.  To struggle for these things which are not yet, one has to have hope.

Somehow I have been the champion of lost causes.  I worked for years as a volunteer in prisons, work which touched my soul and was deep and meaningful…and when I would go to fundraise for it I would see how clearly our society judged prisoners “hopeless”.  I tried to stop nuclear weapons which amassed more quickly than demonstrators.  And now in my most challenging of impossible causes I’m fighting climate change.  So I have spent a lot of time over the years thinking about the significance of hope.

Recently, I went to hear Meg Wheatly, a Buddhist, talk on being a warrior for our time.  For me the most significant part of the talk was when she talked about hope.  She started to say something about the “ambush of hope” and how people’s disappointed hope can make them give up on what they are trying to do.  She said: “The space between hope and fear is inseparable.”  I have heard people who are without hope sort of bash hope, say it is just a form of trickery, a fool’s gold…something to be avoided.  I really cannot stand that message, it seems so dark and so fatalistic.  I was concerned that that was where she was going.   I have usefully heard people say the opposite of love is fear…but it was interesting to think that hope and fear are inseparable.  Because yes, I had to admit that when I have hope there is always a niggling fear somewhere that I will be wrong, be foolish or be disappointed.   And when I have fear there is also a little niggling hope that it will be ok and everything will turn out well.

Then Meg said she’d heard the joke: “expectation is pre-meditated disappointment.”  I laughed in recognition of how often my expectations have brought me disappointment.

I have written in my Jan blog on Gratitude and Expectations: “I have been thinking about how expectations, like goals and dreams are generally a good thing and help us aim for things and collectively move forward in life.  And yet I am aware of how we can become so attached to a dream, or a goal as to have the expectation that life will be a certain way and experience great disappointment or frustration when it is not that way”. 

It all comes into clearer focus for me that goals, visions and dreams are a good thing that help us move forward, but that expectations do lead to disappointment.  Certainly the relationship between disappointment and fear is clear…and now leads to the issue of hope.  Then someone said: “I think an aspiration is hope without expectation.”  Whether one agrees with that term it does begin to distinguish a way of hoping that is unattached.

Another person said: “Hope is being willing to face the pain of disappointment”.  Which I think speaks to the idea that we realize there are no guarantees for the things we hope for, and we do it anyway.

Meg then introduced these two quotes.

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”  Vaclav Havel President of Czechoslovia  1989-92

“Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”
― Thomas Merton

These two quotes are important to me because of the work on “Active Hope” that I have done with Joanna Macy.  Joanna has been for decades, starting with our responses to the nuclear arms race been inviting Americans to look at our grief and despair about the world.  She says in her Work that Reconnects that we must start with gratitude for what is and then experience our grief so we are not dragged down by it and can then see with new eyes and be freed to act.  The part of this formula that did not resonate with me at first was gratitude.  It was hard for me to notice what to be grateful for when I was so worried!   However, my work with Joanna has been very profound.

I recall at a workshop where I felt deeply sunk in a sense of despair over the threat of the dying of the oceans that I felt no hope.  Joanna’s assistant Anne spoke and said that she did not think we would survive but that she was sustained by “resting in the arms of all of you, in the love of you.”  I realized as I reflected upon this that I did not know if we will survive but that if the worst scenarios were to play out that I would still want in the descent of humanity for us to treat each other with as much respect as possible, without violence, to try to be fair with each other, to face our challenges cooperatively and with love. I realized that it meant I would make the same choices that I would make while fighting for our survival if I thought we would not survive.  I realized that I needed not to “concentrate on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself” as Merton says.  Or as Meg Wheatly said: “It becomes “What is”.  A place of gratitude.  Gratitude for what we still have.”

After my experience in Joanna’s workshop my “hope” changed.  It was not desperate, it was actually much deeper.  There was a calm I felt even in the face of much worse news.  There was the perseverance to just keep forging forward.  And strangely the gratitude showed up.  I felt like some people with chronic illnesses report feeling…just grateful for all the small things.  Grateful for what we still have, for as long as we have it.  Grateful to rest in the love of community.

The English language is said to be poor in that it has only one word for love.  It does not distinguish between the love of parents and children, from romantic love, or the love of a comrade or for the world in general.  The same could be said about the word hope.  There is this kind of hope that has expectations and the danger of much disappointment and there is this other kind of hope that has surrendered all expectations and that is just a steady direction and intention for Good – an almost instinct towards Light.

God Who? and the Garden of Eden

As I have previously written about (See: God Who 1/12 post) I can frequently go into a “God Who?” state. This is not a state where I doubt the existence of God but rather where I forget The Holy One.  Simply drop into the World and forget that I’m divinely connected to a Higher Power.  What I have also learned after decades of struggling with this is that fear is the surest path into this God who? state.

I was in a relationship that God lead me into and yet when the going got hard I got so scared that I went into the “God who? state” which eventually lead to its end.  I am pleased that at least in the beginning I did a better job of staying connected with the divine.  In one conflict, meeting my partner’s self-righteous anger, I felt defensive and also angry.  However, when the next day we went to sit in silent meditation I remembered in that silence that the position my partner had argued for was one I had been lead to many years ago and in fact reflected the Truth as I knew it.  It was a series of life events, accommodations to life struggles, that had taken me in another direction.  I realized that while my partner’s anger was agitating me that he was in fact calling me back to the Truth as I had found it, and with that clarity I was able to easily change my behavior.  In this incident I did not feel the fear of loosing our relationship and so I was not derailed from listening to and hearing the Holy One’s voice.

In the previous post I talked about how the Story of the Garden of Eden has also something to say about the state of forgetting God.  I’m not a bible fan, but certain stories are powerful allegories, and the story of Adam and Eve is such a story.  It is story of being in a seemingly perfect place, much like love is when we first fall in love.  As anyone who has ever been in love will tell you, as well as quite a bit of research, we sadly cannot stay in that rosy colored classes, oxytocin induced state forever.  Eventually, we come in contact with knowledge that makes us see the world/ our partner as they really are, to come in touch with the difficult places.  However, there is more than one possibility at that point.  There is the exile from Eden or there is the learning of how to navigate love inside of reality, the learning of the lessons The Teacher would have us learn at that point.  But that does require remembering that there is a Teacher and being attuned to that Teacher.  Adam and Eve forgot God, and so they did not receive his guidance but the false guidance of the serpent instead and thus were exiled from Eden.

For myself fear is a sure way to forget God and once the fear of the relationship breaking up hits I go into that frozen fear state.  As I did when I was a scared child I try to think my way out of the problem, I take actions or desperately demand actions out of others.  Both of these are out of the head and not out of the Spirit.  In Adam and Eve terms they are listening to the Serpent rather than the Creator of the Garden.  Unfortunately, when I’m in that scared frozen place nothing seems to help, not being at the Ocean – normally a sure path to the Holy, not sitting in prayer asking for answers…only sometimes can the message be delivered to me through others.  And of course it does not help if both me and my partner are in a state of fear for no Light can come thru either of us in this state.

So what next?  Now comes the learning we do after we have left the Garden of  Eden about how to walk with The Gardener in the World where we now live.