Duh... Which way do we go? Which way do we go?

Duh... Which way do we go? Which way do we go?

I just went for a walk this morning, that was all. Walked with my son and my fiance to the haircutting salon and looked through a large book with gorgeous pictures of South American rain forests. Took my son to Noah's for an egg-mit. Nothing spectacular. But mid-way through my bagel I was bombarded with the surreality of living in America right now.

Let me set the scene.

On the table, a discarded, leafed-through copy of the San Francisco Chronicle talked of a cafe, hysterically called the "Actual Cafe," that has a weekend prohibition on laptops in the hopes of making it's customers Actual-ly talk to each other. On the back page of today's chronicle: another story about the devastation in Haiti, the continuing struggle to slog through the remains of a hotel where just two weeks before a young woman had called her mother saying she'd "found her calling." Now she's counted among the more than 200,000 dead, and some might even consider her lucky compared to the millions more who are trying to haggle over too-small rations when and if they make it through to where survivors are. I suddenly was trying to hide my tears from my son as he started telling me why Tacky the Penguin was singing the wrong words to the song...

On the windows of the bagel shop, giant posters advertising drippy sugar-covered chocolate bagels dominated my view to the outside world, and people inside perused cases full of wheat-infested, sugar-infested non-nutritional madness to see which choice would fill their big bellies (oh no, I don't pretend to be apart from this non-spectacle spectacle, even though I did put the servers through the seemingly awfully burdensome task of loading our egg-mits into our to-go ware metal canisters to avoid using extra packaging). I guess since we've found out that bagels aren't so "good-for-you," companies are just going to outright go for the sugar addiction. Placate the masses, put their under-nourished bodies to sleep with corn syrup. Now, with a look at these posters, and the people at the table in front of me with their 2 Starbucks paper cups, 2 cardboard heat sleeves, 2 waxed paper bagel covers getting up to get more napkins, I hold back more tears for that rain forest I was looking at earlier, which is on the verge of destruction.

But I feel blessed in some ways, as I look around the shop. No one tried to bomb my neighborhood this morning because we mix the races so much, or because perhaps we practice different religions. As I sit at my table, I can see a Latino couple, a mother and son who look North African, some African-Americans, a Filipino couple, and some white guys all walking through the same store, at the same time. We've achieved something here, I think. But then I remember what people are still going through, how people get looked at sideways and still wonder - are they looking at me because I'm... Fill in the blank here with whichever disadvantaged population comes to mind first. Don't get me started about how our African-American president is getting torn down, bit by bit, in the media and then in the public opinion polls, as he tries (can you believe it) to create consensus. And again I'm tearing.

Holy crap! How am I going to make it through this day without falling under the weight of so much oppression, SO MUCH suffering? Each person with their own story, their own connection to our co-acted play of the world falling apart. Has it always been this way throughout time and history? Have we always been up against so many seemingly evil forces pushing us to extinction?

And how do we all sleep at night with the daily tales of corporate greed, terrorist death and destruction, war, environmental disaster, not to mention the petty things our one friend did to another?

I'm serious. Michael Moore has been making these movies about arms, health care, capitalism, and in each movie he basically says that all the information he's giving - all these outrageous examples of how the path we're on as a society is openly, flagrantly preaching profit over people again and again - is right there in the newspapers that we are all reading. We heard that the Supreme Court just approved the giant corporate funneling of money into political campaigns; we heard that Republicans in the Senate are blanket-voting "no" on every measure the president is trying to put through; we've read that politicians won't vote their consciences because the big corporations will fund them out of office in a second; we know that the health care system doesn't work - many of our friends and colleagues are getting screwed over daily - unable to get dental work, or get the biopsy they need; we've seen the movie about climate change - we even feel the crazy weather changes; we know the research is showing that if we do not take action now, our planet will be harmed irreversibly; we know there's a continent-sized plastic bag swirl in the middle of the Pacific; and we hear daily stories of bombings, beatings, struggle and injustice.

Is it just that we feel so over-whelmed and small? Is that what's making people stay asleep? Is it that we'd rather be eating our sugar-covered bagel-bites than cooking some brown rice at home or tending some greens in our gardens? Is it really that we'd rather be entertained than engaged?

Whatever it is, how do we combat it when it's coming at us on all fronts? How do we take a stand against forces so ubiquitous?

I don't have the answers. I've been reading a few books and perusing a few web-sites that have good ideas - "No Impact Man," by Colin Beavan, www.fouryearsgo.org. I've been using my to-go cup and hankies instead of paper napkins. I've been cooking more at home, trying not to buy packaged food and using my cloth grocery bags. I've been practicing kindness, going out of my way to get to know people from other cultures. I've been meditating and crying out my stress about this dire set of situations. I'm teaching classes to over-worked parents to help them raise healthier children. And even with all this, I need to do more. Perhaps with this little rant, I can convince some of you to consider consuming less, consider the places where you might watch tv instead of connecting with friends and make a change. What could you do TODAY? One change? Today is national take-your-own-cup day. Could you NOT buy a coffee if you didn't bring your own cup? If we all did, we could stop the destruction, and pretty quickly I think. If we all cried out for people to stop bombing - I mean all of us - what if we all (peacefully) rioted in the streets crying out for a stop to world violence - could we get people to stop for a minute? If we knew that it would really change things, would we all have the courage?

Just some things rattling around my brain this morning. Just a thought or two from the morning walk. May the rain cleanse away the sleepiness today. May someone (God? The Universe? The Great Spirit? Buddha? Just Little Old Me?) give me the strength to speak out again tomorrow.

Peace.

In the Cocoon (it's a long one, but worth it)

A caterpillar basically has to die before it can become a butterfly, right? It has to shut itself down, wrap itself in it’s own excretions and withdraw deeply within. When it emerges, its whole being is new, never before seen or felt or experienced. I feel a bit like I’m in one of these life transitions, and I’ve no idea what being is going to break forth. A part of me is hopeful, but having never before seen or felt or experienced this new being I am hoping to become, there is another part of me (currently a stronger part I think) that is incredulous. Some might say cynical, but I really think fearful and lost are more accurate words to describe this brand of hopelessness I’m finding myself engulfed in these days.

Here’s the progression. My personal work of seeking truth and meaning in my life has always included much reflection, and in a meditation workshop I did in February I spent 6 days doing just that - reflecting, feeling, and opening parts of myself that have long been hidden, stifled by the traumas of my childhood. I had many profound insights, seeing how my opinions or concepts of “how things should be” actually keep me stuck in the way things are, rather than allowing me to create something new or move on. I also saw how much I depend on the feedback and direction of others to make things happen in my life. I often won’t do things just for myself – what I do must be in service to those around me.

Don’t get me wrong – being in service to those around you can be quite a noble pre-occupation, if taken up consciously with purpose. But I was not being conscious about it. Rather, I was being “in service” to protect myself from getting in trouble for doing something for myself, and to protect myself from the risks of failure and making “wrong” choices. I think the official word for it is “co-dependent.”

It may seem silly to you, to fear “trouble” like it’s certain doom just for doing something for yourself, but when I was a young girl, making wrong choices was devastating, often resulting in physical violence, humiliation, forced isolation. In that unpredictable, volatile environment, I learned not to make choices for myself. I learned to spend every waking moment watching my step-father, trying to pre-empt the strike by cleaning up, hiding out, doing my homework. At that age, I was trapped in my house, and had no clue that I could do anything to escape. And that trapped feeling has prevailed throughout my life, showing up as self-sabotage, people-pleasing, denial and shame.

It’s lead me here – where I’m 35 and once again at a turning point, once again trying to find my life’s purpose, once again feeling that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that tells me I can never really accomplish what I want to accomplish – I’ll just have to do something so I don’t financially implode. I am a singer and a songwriter, with deeply hidden aspirations of rock-stardom (don’t tell anyone). I am a jewelry designer, hoping to make millions with my one-of-a-kind designs. I am a teacher, facilitator and speaker, wanting to change the world by helping it feel and release its traumas and teaching it to communicate openly with itself and others. I am actually quite talented and damn creative when you look in from the outside.

But from here inside my fuzzy, prickly caterpillar skin, I cannot see my way through to the end of any of these dreams. I sit down to work on something and my mind splinters in a hundred directions, freezes, and then some old protection mechanism firmly directs me to FaceBook, or YouTube, or online video games that take my attention and numb the dread that arises when no one is telling me what I should do. At the end of a day like this, I feel worse than before. I don’t want to tell anyone what I did all day, being ashamed of it, and I feel further isolated and powerless. It’s a spiral downward, a place I’ve been stuck for so many years I can’t even
remember not being here. I hate it.

It’s no longer a place I can tolerate without committing suicide, and in the last ten years, I’ve finally made myself comfortable enough to start dissembling this place head on. So, starting sometime last August, I began tackling this particular tendency, this part of myself that keeps me from realizing my wants and goals. I am determined to understand it, heal it and move forward – with colorful butterfly wings.

The journey to the center of the black hole is heating up, and last week, in a healing session with my friend Scot MacInis, I slowed down enough to realize some very important points. We were talking on the phone, and he was directing me to notice what sensations were occurring in my body. I noticed some deep tension in my shoulders and neck, and in my gluts (that’s my tush, in case you were wondering). As he began talking me deeper into relaxation, I noticed some tension releasing, and for a moment I had a pinging sensation in my heart, like excitement or joy that I was moving. Immediately following that ping, I felt a crushing disappointment and started to cry. Scot kindly listened, instructing me to just let those feelings be there, with no judgment.

As I cried, I thought, “what is this?” and my mind responded, “It’s either grief or fear.”

“Which one?” I demanded.

“Fear. Fear that the second I have a moment of joy, you’re going to take it away from me, or I’m going to be in trouble.”

I told Scot what my mind was saying.

“How old is that fear?” he asked me, meaning, how old was I when I first felt it?

“Seven or Eight.” Actually I was 4 when I first felt traumatic fear, but 7 or 8 when I began to understand that no matter what I did, my joy would be fleeting, and in no time I’d be back, bent over my step-dad’s knee or feeling his hot disgusting windrush of breath yelling in my face, or his brick-like fingers poking me in the breast-plate, or his open iron hand across my cheeks. I think it was at that point that I became conscious that I was truly trapped. No exit. Destined to die here with no help. Better use all my energy to placate. Better not rock the boat with any of my own ideas.

"Okay, just let that feeling be there. Look at it like it's the coolest fear you've ever had" he said.

So I continued to sit there, and then another feeling gripped me. Rage. I saw this part of myself that was so intensely angry that I had suffered all this abuse. This was no surprise. I’ve seen this part before. She rears up all the time, actually. I’ve been intimately acquainted with my rage since moving out of my step-dad’s house at 13. But what was surprising was what she seemed to yell out inside my mind.

“I am so ineffective!” What? I’d never heard that before. Angry? Yes. Outraged! Yes. But ineffective? Hmmm.

“How old is that part?” Scot asked.

“I don’t know. Much more current. Could be 30. I mean, it could be 13 for all I know, but it’s definitely some part of me that arose after I moved out. “

And in that moment I saw something I had never seen before. This raging part of me, which, if you didn’t know, is like the shadow side of power and accomplishment – if you don’t allow them both to exist, you cannot fully have either - was frozen in ineffectiveness. None of my rage makes any difference. The damage is already done. I can’t go back and protect myself now. It’s over. I lost. I’d better just shut up and watch for what people want me to do so that I don’t get in trouble now. Better not show any of my power.

With this insight came the momentary triumph of self-discovery, inevitably followed by the flood of feelings about the amount of time I’ve spent locked up in this pattern of hating myself for being ineffective, but surrendering to the powerlessness anyway for fear of annihilation.
The next day in meditation I sank further into the hole. All the feelings of hopelessness, the desire for suicide or some kind of final relief from all this suffering, the feelings of powerlessness, fatigue, and dread that I’ve experienced so many times over the years consumed me. For three hours I wept, hid my face, and endeavored to let these feelings go. At the end of my meditation, when I usually feel some lightness, some sense that I’ve moved through something, I couldn’t pull myself together. Even after all the participants of the meditation got into a circle and shared their inspiring insights, I could not shake the darkness.

Even through the weekend till today, I am still feeling the fear, feeling the frozen dark nature of it, longing to escape.

Alas, I am in the cocoon.

I cannot just move through thirty years of patterns, emotions and loss in one three-hour meditation. One set of insights is not enough to release me and land me squarely in the middle of redemption. I am sitting here in the darkness, letting this part of myself be exposed, to slowly shed itself and reveal what’s underneath.

I do not like the cocoon.

But being in here is different than anything I’ve experienced before. You see, I know I’m in the cocoon. I know inside that something is transforming, developing, opening. Even though I still feel like a caterpillar, even though some small part of me still doesn’t believe that transformation is possible having never experienced it fully myself, yet I seem to have this consciousness of where I am, and that one day, hopefully soon, I’ll emerge as a new being.

And another thing that’s different – I’m not here alone. I’ve got people guiding me, like my partner Ben, who is also on this journey, my friend Scot, my meditation teachers and all the other healers in my life. I only know to make the cocoon in the first place because I have seen you do it, or felt your gentle hands guiding me there. So I beg of you butterflies, stay near. Let me feel the brush of your wings on my shell and whisper to me that I am emerging. Lend me your strength so I can continue this excruciating process in the darkness. Thank you for going before me.




To contact healers that work powerfully with this kind of spiritual, emotional development, e-mail me from the blogspot, or check out the following peeps:

Edward Scot MacInnis 303-.875.9446

Center for 21st Century Transformation (meditations) 800-454-1224 www.thecentersf.org

A word or a thousand on love and parenting… Mostly love….

I like to believe that I lead a pretty spiritual, connected life. I meditate, do emotional discharge work, do therapy of many kinds, read spiritual masters, go to lectures and symposiums about uplifting ourselves, humanity and the planet. At the moment, I am also changing careers and moving into the world of teaching parents and other adults how to access their emotional intelligence. I’m catching up on all the latest brain/heart research, and reading many different approaches to parenting while also pursuing my own personal growth.

What’s striking me today, enough to want to sit down and say something about it, is how similar so many approaches are. Perhaps we like to think that we are different, or perhaps it’s just human nature to feel alone and isolated in how we do things, but the truth is, most of the paths to “freedom” and most of the approaches to parenting, to personal growth, even to spiritual enlightenment that I’ve seen all seem to lead in the same direction.

The most salient point on all these paths is that human beings are essentially good. We each have some kind of connection to a higher truth, call it God, The Universe, the Flow, The Truth, Consciousness, Spirit, whatever. We each have a true heart inside, a good heart that longs for connection, truth and love. When we get connection, truth and love, when we are listened to and helped, encouraged and understood, we act respectfully. When we get separated from one another (I hurt you, you annoy me, something causes us to separate), we feel pain. If we express the pain healthily and lovingly, we can move through it and move on. If we suppress the pain we become angry, depressed, self-loathing, or just plain don’t like people. We become judgmental to protect ourselves from having to experience that separation again, and off we go into a world of hurt, dislikes, isolation and lonliness.

In order to avoid this separation, we do our best to train our children to act respectfully. The problem is that we’ve been taught that our “moral compass” is not something innate, rather it is something that is trained in us over time. We must be good trainers, and must accept nothing less than respectful behavior from our children (not to mention our significant others and family members). Good training imposes structure, punishment for bad behavior and rewards for good behavior. Love and acceptance for behaving the way we should and shame or a time out (or god-forbid a breakup) when we are bad.

The problem is that this perception of people - that we require training to be decent - does not account for how our brains physically function, and does not lead us to solving our problems and becoming more connected. Actually, it is what leads us to brow-beating each other with our own opinions, to clinging fiercely or desperately to our position in a conflict, and to the general unease we experience in relation to our fellows.

The most current research out there on Brain Function shows that when we feel safe and cared for, we are more able to think and choose actions that benefit us, and those around us. When we feel bad, threatened, ashamed, or distressed, our pre-frontal cortex shuts down and we begin functioning from our brain stem – that area of our brain designed to protect us – to fight, freeze or flee.

I don’t know about you, but for me, trying to resolve arguments with my loved ones by fighting, fleeing or freezing has never really worked.

I need to feel loved. I need to be listened to. I need to have the people around me understand and believe that I am a basically good person, and that when I behave badly it’s less about maniacal selfishness and more about how hurt, angry or disconnected I feel. If people believed that about me, and chose to look at why I might be behaving some particularly baaaad way, instead of just judging me and reacting with their own negativity, perhaps we could de-escalate the problem. Perhaps we could share, understand each other, come closer, know one another better.

I also need to have the people around me have faith in my basic intelligence. Given conditions of love and acceptance, I will be courageous and will find solutions to my problems. Children are, believe it or not, the same way. Sure, they need training on how to communicate their feelings, but let’s not confuse punishment and shame with training. Punishment and shame shut down a person’s natural ability to problem solve. They may cause a person to suppress their feelings and look like they’re being “good,” but that ultimately leads to lying, depression, anger, mania, and finally that feeling that we are all alone in the world and no one will ever understand us.

If we could give each other that faith, if we could give each other the gift of listening, if we could be detectives and ask ourselves why people behave how they do, then we might be able to show enough compassion to liberate someone else, or ourselves, from the feelings that caused the behavior in the first place. We might be able to create lasting peace and connection. We might be able to create love.

If we could see for ourselves how hurt we really feel about how that thing that just happened separated us from someone, perhaps we could focus on getting connected again rather than condemning someone for the behavior.

Current scientific research shows that we act respectfully because we feel safe and loved, not the other way around. So today, when your child acts out and you desperately want to shut them in their room, or tell them how bad they’re being, or throw them out the window or whatever (don’t be shocked – you know you have that feeling now and then), try looking at why their behavior is off. Try figuring out what they might need in this moment to come back to being the loving caring person they truly are. Try it with your spouse, or with that problem sibling or co-worker. Address the need behind the behavior and see if you can create more love. Cuz don’tcha want more love? I do.