Do You Hide Yourself Away?

When we feel vulnerable, it is considered a weakened state by our society. But is it, really? Might it depend on what has weakened us and whether it’s an acute or chronic state of being? Let’s examine the more chronic state of vulnerability, as the acute kind is usually situation-specific and remedied by the disappearance of said situation.

If I am made to feel vulnerable by something emotional like grief, it is difficult to accomplish regular tasks, mingle openly with the world, and tend to my life as it was. But is this so bad? Maybe my life needs some re-ordering at this time, and my downtime allows me the self-reflection to do something about it. If I am made vulnerable by something more mental, like an existential or life crisis, I will feel unstable and perhaps frightened of what will come of me and my life. But am I really unsafe? Or is that just my ego talking, and so is this really an opportunity to break through it? If I feel vulnerable in a physical sense – as in an illness – it affects the heart and mind just as much as the body at first. But this is also the fastest way to put things in perspective and see what really and truly matters in our lives.

Sometimes we feel vulnerable from a life event, but it’s not always trauma that causes us to feel this way. I’ve found for instance, that I seem to have a 5-1/2 year cycle of doing and creating, then questioning and breaking down, until re-birth and re-building once again. We all have cycles of growth, coasting and burn out. If we didn’t, we’d probably be going through our lives more like robots, not assessing things periodically to see if they still align with our values and goals. And since we all experience bouts of vulnerability at times, I hope we can see that it’s just another knot on the old tree; that it’s part of the life experience, and so should be respected, accepted and perhaps talked about once in a while so we can learn to feel safer even within that rupturing, wounded, temporary state of being.

In her book When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chrodron says that true awakening is letting ourselves die over and over again. Of course the dying is really the false assumptions, beliefs and needs we’ve acquired over time thinking they’ll protect us. Instead of shielding us, however, they keep us trapped in illusion. Feeling this exposed and vulnerable is not how we tend to want to feel, but this raw state is a sign of authentic being and honest living. Going out into the world with our defenses smashed to pieces – while we may feel unsteady and transparent – is basically living through the fear. Awareness plus Humility plus Presence equals Courage.
How do you feel about yourself now?

When It All Comes Crashing Down...

About a year ago I had what seemed to me like a mini nervous breakdown. There was a lot going on in my life and there were decisions I needed to make that I wasn’t yet clear about. More specifically, there were longtime work stressors, mounting wedding pressures and a sudden pet illness at the forefront. I was going along “handling” it all, I thought, until something rather small reared its little head and took me over the deep end. It wasn’t really about the situation itself, but rather my exaggerated emotional reaction to something not significant in the scheme of things. Deep down, I knew I was probably blowing it out of proportion, but my emotions had the better of me and I was a little bit beside myself. The combined emotions from all the events were festering and there were too many of them to manage, so I sort of lost my cool.

Once it was “safe” (out of the public’s eye), I let myself feel the emotions for a while. I had to honor them in order to eventually put them in perspective. I was then able to explore those feelings with a calmer, clearer head. And it didn’t take long for me to realize what the most chronic stressor was. So not wanting a repeat of said “losing it” situation, I had to admit that I had some control over the stressor and recognized that it was time to finally do something about it.

While it wasn’t the most acute emotional situation at hand out of all the things weighing on me, it was the shadow that had been lingering for far too long, and this decision made everything else easier to deal with. So in a sense, I can thank that little mid-life crisis and the temporary cracking of my character for giving me a literally new outlook on my life. Things have been much better since (phew!).

What I experienced that day was probably more like an anxiety attack than a nervous breakdown, but if I hadn’t stopped to consciously evaluate the situation, things would have only gotten worse. Sometimes, when life’s challenges, emotions and beliefs go ignored and unexplored, the pressure literally becomes too much to bear. There is a point of no return when we cannot regain the trust that we had prior; Thus, we can no longer fully engage life.

When we are able to learn something from our crisis and move beyond it, however, this is when we break through boundaries rather than breaking down. Sometimes the difference between the two is simply being able and willing to see the signs of trouble ahead. If we deny how we’re feeling or what we need for too long, something’s eventually going to have to give. On the other hand, if we regularly get in touch with and honor ourselves enough to accept our feelings and question outdated beliefs about the way things are “supposed” to be, life can move forward and we can go along more willingly and honestly.

Messy Dreams - Can They Bring Order to Life?

I had a series of dreams the other night where people had good intentions, but ended up causing more chaos than comfort. Even though our car went off the road, our accommodations were cold and disorganized, and our pre-arranged plans became hindered and monotonous, no one seemed to care but me.

Although it was supposed to be a fun occasion - I think it was my birthday - nothing was as it should be. Everything felt foreign, I was too far from home, and yet I had little control. Although I was grateful for their efforts, I really wanted to take the reins and chart a new course. But everyone was too busy - unconsciously wrapped up in the unnecessary chaos – to notice my growing desperation and attempts at getting everyone’s attention.

So while I was the ‘guest of honor’ in these dreams, why did I feel so invisible??

Upon waking, the dreams didn’t specifically seem to relate to any part of my life. But because they were weighing on my mind, I figured I’d better ask: Where in my life might I feel this way? Where in my life could I be feeling helpless to the events that transpire? Where in my life might I be feeling invisible (and not even know it)? Where in my life might I need to take more initiative and exert more control?

Although these dreams were rather unpleasant – and especially because they didn’t at first feel significant to me – I figured I’d better explore them further. In writing my impressions of the dreams now, I see certain word choices standing out and resonating with me. Because it’s not literally about my mom driving the car off the road, being inconvenienced, or my husband choosing a boring place to hang out. It’s about how I felt about these events, which translates to how I currently feel about something in my life.

So I break it down. What’s with the car going off the road? We didn’t end up being in any danger, but I was worried about damage to the car and was peeved that my mother wasn’t being as responsible and aware as usual. So what did these feelings make me want to do? Take the wheel and more deliberately steer my own life.

How about the lack of luxury when we were supposed to be in the lap of luxury? What really bothered me was the lack of hominess and comfort. I wasn’t where I belonged, I knew it, and yet I felt trapped since my loved ones all seemed so content. While this could be over-interpreted as me needing an entire life overhaul, sometimes dreams communicate to us in exaggerated and dramatic ways so we’ll take notice. It could have just been a reminder that I know best about what feels right to me, regardless what others around me are thinking or doing.

And finally, the old standard hangout and birthday “celebration” void of any fun… I was simply downright bored, but didn’t feel in control of where I was or what I was doing. Again, the word “control” comes up. While it can have a negative connotation – as in someone being ‘over-controlling’ and unable to go with the flow – perhaps I am under-utilizing my own ability to control something in my life; something that needs some facilitating and mastering. It could also just be that I’m bored with some aspect of our social life and need to think outside the box to freshen it.

As for the birthday reference, birthdays are a celebration of someone’s life, a reminder of the innocence and purity they were born with, a call back to one’s true essence, perhaps. And it just so happens that like never before, I am deliberately designing my life based on this essence. It is an experiment in faith and meaning, passion and personal power… And so it is imperative that I - as the re-affirmed captain of this ship - take the wheel, steer the course, make the executive decisions… and take time to plan my own celebrations once in a while!

When It's So Absurd You Just Have to Laugh

In keeping with the theme of our last blog entry – and because we aren’t sure if the rash of unfortunate events surrounding our marketing postcard has fully subsided yet – we wanted to delve a little deeper into mischievous mythological territory. Speaking of Leprechauns and Menehune and volatile little things that never fully show themselves, Stephen brought up the Trickster archetype and “things that can go either way in life.”
What exactly is a Trickster, anyway? Loosely I knew what it meant, but was curious to uncover more, especially because I’d felt I was at the butt of several of its recent antics. And I wondered where exactly it originates from - whether the individual’s psyche, the collective conscious, the powers that be, the creative life force itself, or something I couldn’t yet comprehend.

Reading Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth & Art by Lewis Hyde, if I had to choose one word to describe the Trickster, I’d say it equates with “uncertainty”. And isn’t that one particular word we tend to find hard to swallow in life?
The trickster symbolizes “the playful and disruptive side of the human imagination” as it is embodied in mythology. This makes sense to me. But Tricksters as “indispensable culture heroes”? I didn’t yet see it.

In North America, the Trickster is represented by the Coyote, in West Africa it is called ‘Eshu’, in Greece Hermes the Thief is the scapegoat, and to the western world Mercury (as in Mercury retrograde) is both trickster and teacher. Of course there are more: Raven, Vampire, Fox, Dragon, Joker, Jester, etc. What the Trickster has in common: It creates ambiguity and messiness to make this life imperfect. It is “the wild, creative genius that breaks up static institutions and saves humanity with archetypal merriment” (Robert Aitken). Aka, “subversive innovation”.

The Trickster represents confusion, blurred lines and space, that which is un-certain; leaving us always a little bit on edge. Tricksters are boundary crossers, boundary keepers and boundary changers. We create boundaries – because they make us feel safer – and Coyote or Eshu comes along in the night and moves the markers.
Tricksters are voracious wanderers whose appetites are never quite satisfied and whose home can be likened to the wind itself. Curiously, they are mostly male. In this regard it can be surmised that the world’s cultures mainly recognize the Trickster as male because they cannot give birth and therefore cannot become confined or defined by their own creations.

In a paradoxical sense, Tricksters act as “creators of culture” by stealing gifts from the heavens and giving them to humans. And yet they also break down certain rigid parts of that very culture. When you view this in a big-picture way, they “continue to keep our world lively and give it the flexibility to endure” by “uncover(ing) and disrupt(ing) the very things that cultures are based on.” The Trickster, according to Jung, is an aspect of the shadow archetype, at least in its negative traits. It has the ability to… “play havoc with the hyper-rational personality and community."

Although unwelcome annoyances at times, the Trickster is not seeking to do harm for the sake of doing harm itself. He recognizes that good and bad go together ; that yin and yang make a harmonious paradox, a paradoxical harmony, an eloquent contradiction that is just life itself.

In the highest sense, Tricksters “open the road to possible new worlds.” And although there are consequences to this, if we try to bind, suppress or deny the Trickster, even worse consequences will likely ensue. There is simply no sense fighting a strong current that will eventually get bored or distracted by some greater endeavor and move on. Trickster is a natural part of life, in order for life to go on creatively and free itself from the rigid forms a society tends to create. Frustrating as the tricks can be, little bits of freedom along the way are the ultimate gifts.

In reading the descriptions and discussions on the Trickster as portrayed by Hyde, I realized I like the Trickster and have some trickster in my blood myself. So does that mean I caused all those disruptions to our project? Or that I should simply honor the Trickster’s motives... which were.... well, who ever really knows?! To keep my eyes open to new ways of doing things? To not be trapped by expectation – my own or others’? To not take it all so seriously? To let myself fail? To let the Trickster in me come out to play? To let go of the outcome because I was too invested? Or Maybe there just became too many different sets of ‘rules’ I had to play by with this project, and maybe Hermes stepped in as one obstacle after another to get the ball rolling another direction.

Pondering the Trickster mythology makes me think of clowns... how adverse many adults are to them. I always assumed it was simply because clowns tend to have an appearance that unnerves us. But clowns also engage in activities that make us uncomfortable. For instance, they wear a “mask”, so to speak, and we don’t like when people hide behind things because we can’t fully see what we’re in for. Clowns also tend to pull foreign objects out of their sleeves or our ears, and we don’t like these little annoying surprises. But is the clown really just a trickster in human form, someone who teases us just enough to get a rise out of us, maybe hoping we’ll relax, let go, and laugh at ourselves? And what happens if we actually stop to partake in some nonsensical play? Will it all come crashing down or perhaps vibrate the unused china just to the edge of the hutch?

The answer to that, says the Magic 8-Ball, “Reply hazy – try again.”

{Coyote artist uknown}

Life Sometimes Equals Snafus

I would call myself creative, but not necessarily artistic. I would call myself capable and determined, but I also have my limits. Sometimes, no matter our intentions or efforts, things don’t work out how we planned. And sometimes, those things are small, but nonetheless significant to our lives.

For instance. Stephen and I have been designing some marketing material to announce our new and expanded services at Middle Way Health. We were having fun mixing professional details with free-form imagination. And in theory, everything was hunky dory; even glorious in minute ways. We liked what we’ve created so far, we felt accomplished, and we were happy to move onto a new project. Life requires momentum and we were riding this particular wave rather effortlessly.

Until… the rocks beneath the mighty ocean of life began to reveal themselves, preventing the harmony I envisioned in my head from duplicating itself on paper.

Sometimes, approaching things with an innocent or fresh perspective can yield wondrous results. At other times, the child inside needs some reassurance. For just as we were getting ready to go to print, we found out that the images we’ve extracted and glued together are not compatible or appropriate for print layout.

“Ok, no problem, still do-able,” I think, not pushing the panic button and still genuinely hopeful. So the determined and optimistic side of me attempts to get new images and put those together just like I had the old ones. But it turns out that the online publisher we’re using needs the images in a different format yet. So I go back to my sources and attempt to secure the altered ones. But while I’m able to open those, I can’t edit or thus utilize them the way I need to. In addition, I’m still having a compatibility issue that can’t be rectified unless one of the images is totally recreated. And that’s only about half of the snafus that keep swimming by and nipping at my toes.

On one hand, the life-experienced adult in me can laugh at the absurdity. Terms like ‘Murphy’s Law’ and ‘Comedy of Errors’ come to mind as I scratch my head and wonder how I could have avoided this conundrum in the first place. But if I had foreseen this potential trouble and sidestepped the project altogether, I wouldn’t have lived it and now been richer for the experience. (At least that’s how I have to look at the situation – without too much ‘Oh, woe is me, why is this happening?!’ lamenting, with some flexible focus, and a compromising meeting of the minds with my project partner.

Certainly, I would have preferred it all go as smoothly as planned. But I know I’m only somewhat in charge of what happens in life. So I put my best foot forward and stubbed a toe – it happens sometimes. And at least I’m one step closer than I was before, even if in a ‘one step forward, two steps back’ kind of way.

How will this all turn out? Literally, hopefully with some marketing materials we can at least live with. Reactively, hopefully not afraid to try something new in the future. And figuratively, hopefully with us wiser for the wear. Wise enough at least, to know that the planets do not always align in our favor, that there is a black hole for laundry socks somewhere, and that tricksters are always in our midst.

(The folklore of many nations around the world include stories of magical little people, like the Leprechauns of Ireland. In Hawaii, it is the mischievous Menehune who are said to haunt the deep forests or the mountains. They come out mostly at night to play tricks on people.)

Resolutions & Intentions: Why 'The Secret' Isn’t Enough

In general, people seem to be happy about the New Year. What’s not to like about a fresh start? Before talking about our goals for the days, weeks and months to come, however, my husband and I took some time to reflect on what we’d accomplished in 2010. To our surprise, much of what we’d hoped to create, inspire or experience actually manifested (or the momentum was at least ignited).

Having an idea of what we want our lives to be like is essential for helping to steer them in the right direction. Being mindful of our goals and setting intentions are key ingredients for the laws of attraction. But we can’t stop there. We can’t put our wishes out there and then sit idly waiting for our dreams to come to us. But then, neither should we push so aggressively that we don’t allow life to unfold naturally. Life, in general, has to go on in order for our desires to become infused with energy.

At Middle Way Health we strive to create some structure for our goals, meanwhile also being open, flexible and balanced. The structure is the framework from which our goals can manifest, but our dreams need more than nails and 2-by-4s. We need to leave some open, undesignated space in which the unknowns or unexpected can unfold. The balance is created by accepting the limbo we’re in and seeing it as potential in motion.

Last weekend, Stephen led a ‘Four Wheels of the Chariot’ meditation retreat, based on ‘The Four Chariots of Spiritual Practice’. The four wheels represent mindfulness, relaxation, friendliness, and spaciousness.

• Mindfulness is making the decision to pay attention to something (Intention)
• Relaxation requires easing into the blending of our intention and current life circumstances, as well as easing into our body
• Friendliness is having non-judgment about what occurs (not always so easy to do), along with a sense of warmth
• And Spaciousness is leaving room for possibilities (sometimes different or even greater than we had envisioned)

Most of us are familiar with the book and movie ‘The Secret’. But it’s not the only “secret” we need to know. Being mindfully present and stopping at intention is not enough. We can formulate our goals in our head and “put them out there,” so to speak, but we can’t stop there. We also need relaxation of body, not just mind. In a sense, we have to trust that things will work out (even if it’s different than we’d hoped) and actually embody this faith in the processes of life. Otherwise, intention alone can become like a demand – and nobody likes to be commanded.

If you say, for instance, that you’re going to lose 20 lbs, but you don’t embody it – actually see the results and begin to feel the desire with your physical body – you are ignoring the importance of your full role in the process. Mindfulness alone is like a unicycle – only one person/thing can get on it. With a chariot, however, we can transport several people or entities at once, and our experience becomes multi-faceted rather than singularly-focused.

Typically, nothing much happens if we just sit and wait. We have to at least stay in the stream of life and go with the flow when it feels right. Like floating on an air mattress in a pool, we should relax into it and enjoy the subtle movements, but if we stop moving our arms and legs completely or for too long, we’ll end up stagnant in a corner with the gathering leaves.

Mindfulness is more than being present. It is remembering what we’re doing. And remembering – although cognitive - implies action. Action in the sense that we have purpose and a drive to engage in our lives no matter what the current circumstances.

Happy 2011!

Magical Words and Evolutionary Leaps

Sometimes we have to play with words in order to get where we want to go but have yet to fully define. This includes opening the mind and letting it “play” in the realm of possibility (aka, brainstorming). Words are important, but sometimes we (ok, I) get lazy and let the same overused words define us. But since we’re always evolving, so should our language evolve to represent where we are and where we want to go. Using the same old words to describe ourselves and our lives can keep us stuck in the past. Therefore, words have great power and that power can be harnessed.

In thinking about the new programs at Middle Way Health, Stephen and I took some time to figure out how best to convey our message genuinely and in entirety. Sometimes a word works just fine, but doesn’t feel fully encompassing. For instance, while we’re “expanding” our services, there’s really more to it than that. The expansion of services is a symbol for how Middle Way Health and its practitioners are evolving. The word ‘expanding’ for me conjures images of waist sizes around the holidays - and while it’s an adequate word - when we’re designing our future, I don’t think we should stop at “adequate”.

When we think of the changes at Middle Way Health, we see movement in all directions, so “growth” and “radiating” feel like fuller, better-rounded words to describe the progress under way. And since they evoke more holistic images in my head, that means more potential too.

Yet new services offered aren’t the only changes at Middle Way Health. There’s also our relationship with our clients, colleagues and prospective clients. Just as any kind of therapy requires some effort on both the practitioner and patient’s part, Middle Way Health is a place of interaction. We want people to get involved, participate, connect and perhaps link with others. This kind of holistic environment is created within sacred space - that atmosphere in which we can all let down our guards and be our authentic selves – and it creates more of the same. From this freedom come transformation and a blossoming of who we are, both individually and collectively.

A strong sense of who we are (or want to be) and how to best interact with the world then allows us to generate both confidence and compassion, and exude both vulnerability and empowerment. This personal branching out encourages others to show their true colors and figure out what it will take for them to blossom as well. We’re all role models for one another.

The core values of Middle Way Health have not changed; they are now simply more encompassing. Fostering awareness, empowerment, healing, creative expression, transformation and connection, Middle Way Health is a place where all of these things can converge. As a center for healing, creativity and growth, we all aim to thrive, not just survive.