Be a Light

Be a light in this world. The good will be drawn to you and grow in your warmth. The bad will shrink back or wither.

Adversity

A time of adversity is like so many stones being dumped on your head. It hurts, and you just want to throw your arms up to protect yourself. You want to give up. But if you stop fighting, you get buried.

So you keep struggling, you persevere. And when the dust settles, you look down and see a curious thing: you now stand on a mountain that was built from those painful stones.

You look up and see a breathtakingly beautiful view. The vista you now see is not only one of beauty, but many of the problems that loomed so large and intimidating now look so much smaller and less significant.

And as you stand on your mountain of stones, a survivor, a person of vision and perspective, you might even give humble thanks for the time of adversity that, although it brought pain for a time, has given you such a wonderful gift.

Reality and Attachment

Reality is a powerful force. Our attachment to our stories is a powerful force. Suffering comes from the collision of our story (our ideas about how things should be) against reality (what is).

To find peace, we must change what we can, get out the situation if we must, or simply accept that at least for now, this is the reality we have. The freedom that comes from making one of those choices can be life-changing.

We don't have to be passive or pretend that bad is good. Just realize that trying to change reality by raging against it with thought and emotion not only does not work, it hurts us a great deal. To accept reality is a profound act of self-love.

To stop the pointless war between “what is” and “how we wish things were” is to stop the collateral damage that war has on our peace and happiness. Let reality and our story live, if not as partners and friends, at least in peaceful co-existence.

To Receive Love, Show Love

An 87-year-old woman - a client of mine - just got back home from many months recovering in a nursing home after a fall led to a serious infection. It was a hard road back for her, and she was so glad to be once more in familiar surroundings among friends and family.

She needs some support to stay safe and independent as possible in her home, so I met with her to set things up, and she told me that she was scared to fall again because she knew that might send her back to the hospital.

Today she called and we talked about services and she said, “Your hug made me feel secure again.” It made my day and serves as a reminder that an act of simple affection can be so meaningful to someone who has been suffering.

Remember that whatever it is you think you are lacking in your life, whether it be kindness, an understanding ear, respect, affection… the best way to receive is not to wait for it, but to give it to others. The way feel loved is not to receive love, but to show love.

One Reason I Run

I know someday all too soon when I am older and suffer loss of mobility, I'll look back on today and think to myself,

"What I wouldn't to give to be back on the bike path, running with the warm sun on my face, babbling creek at my side, sweating and struggling, but running, running free and strong, pain and all."

So while running isn't fun - it's hard work, it's an act of freedom, an exercise of will, and an investment in today that I hope will keep that future self as far away from tomorrow as possible.

Quests

I have been on a few quests recently, many of which come down to a passionate drive to remove everything in my life that shames me. Or, stated more philosophically, I’ve been on a quest for coherence and authenticity.

The most public element is my health and fitness, but eating better and exercising is just one consequence of a broad change in perspective that continues to evolve as my consciousness is raised and my eyes are opened to the reality that is – the reality of now. This dedication to a brutal and sometimes gut-wrenching honesty requires a change in perspective – a change that appears to contain a paradox.

First, I must accept what is. Self-protecting lies (self-delusions) distort the map we use to navigate life. If we want a good map, if we want to actually arrive where we say we want to go, we need not only explicit honesty (speaking, acting, and hearing truth), but also a more implicit honesty (believing and feeling truth). This acceptance results in a coherency between what we say, do, believe, and feel about ourselves and the world.

Second, I must reject what is. If the reality of my life is being unhealthy, over-stressed, under-energized, ashamed of my habits and lifestyle, lonely and unfulfilled, then I must reject these things as being part of my identity. As I have written elsewhere, we fiercely protect our identity - our image of self – good or bad, even as we wish we were different. So it is vital that we do not accept these things as being a part of who we are. Instead we must see them as something we are doing, feeling, or experiencing… currently. Over-identification with problems is like putting a self-limiting label on our forehead – one that we have to stare at every morning in the mirror. We are more than the circumstance of our lives.

Although accepting what is and rejecting what is might seem paradoxical, it isn’t. We can accept the reality of now, accept what is, but reject that the negatives in our lives have power of us. We cannot let them be what defines us. We have power, agency, and responsibility.

We must confess the crimes we have committed against ourselves before we can forgive and move past self-victimization. We must dare to see the mess before we can clean it up. And we must love our broken selves before we can have the compassion we need to nurture that self, heal our wounds, and step forward into a healthy, authentic, and coherent life.

Layers of Unreality

And so I peel away layers of unreality, try to accept what is, not how I want things or people to be, to live in the now, and to not have my happiness be outcome dependent. And then I see I am still attached, still fighting reality, still trying to force reality to fit my story, my narrative.

And thus I realize that even my path to enlightenment has been outcome dependent. I want to grasp and hold and know truth, but truth is not playing my game. Truth is what truth does. Reality is what happens, not what I want to happen. I will learn to not only accept what is, I will learn to love it.