Confusion to Clarity

Puddle Play

Hanging Out in Puddles

May 9, 2012

in Confusion to Clarity, Getting Unstuck, Questioning the Mind, Seasonal Reflections

This has been a season of puddles, and as the sun begins to show up I don’t want to forget what I’ve learned from exploring my inner puddling. It all began with a small injury, to which I added lots of insults. I mostly rained on what could have been a perfectly nice parade by thinking that I should be more evolved and enlightened than to feel disappointment or frustration.

I’m reminded of a time when my three-year-old daughter wet her “big girl pants” on a cloudless summer day, then claimed they were wet because she “sat in a puddle. A very big puddle.”

I had been sitting in a very big puddle of feelings and beliefs while I stayed dry in my mind, in my image of myself as someone who had evolved past lowly messes.

So I took a good hard look at where I was getting stuck and asked myself some hard questions about where I’m still arguing with reality. I took a close-up tour of what’s going on behind the façade of enlightened perfection that I sometimes wear. I took classes in inquiry. I led a small group as we got serious about living into our answers.

At the bottom of that puddle of disappointment I found a great gift. There’s a peace and clarity in discovering  what’s behind thoughts like: This situation is a problem. I need to take care of it now. There’s not time. It’s somebody else’s fault that the world isn’t perfect (from my point of view). 

As I poke around in the yuk of lies I sometimes believe about myself or the world, I keep finding how much easier and kinder it would be to just take a giant step to the side and discover how good my essential self really is, away from all the mental chatter.

Here’s the big surprise: When I strip away the façade of enlightenment, what I find is enlightenment.

A big part of this process has come from actually seeing and allowing some hidden feelings that I had not felt seemly in someone of my stage of evolution. Now that’s a relief. The relief that comes from being on the same page as reality, which contains all things natural. Like feelings.  Puddles of tears come, sometimes. And then the sun shines.

When I allow for all that messiness, I find myself in a big puddle of relief….and joy.

Where do you puddle up? What might you allow yourself to do or if you weren’t trying to be wise or enlightened? A big subject. Touch in and poke around gently. Hold what shows up in kind curiosity. What do you notice?

 

Tagged as: Getting Unstuck, Inquiry, Questioning the mind

1 comment

Story Blindness

April 2, 2012

in About the Oasis, Confusion to Clarity, Inquiry, Questioning the Mind


I just emerged from a bad case of story blindness. It’s not as painful as snow blindness, at least most of the time, Usually it’s more like driving in a whiteout.

I’m navigating along, appreciating the emerald moss or the birdcalls of spring. My life is going bloomingly. There’s a sense of equilibrium, a deep flow if happiness.

Until.  Something happens that isn’t a part of this peace. I get a call that someone I love is in trouble. My dog nips at a stranger. Somebody feels hurt by something I’ve said or done.

That’s when the Big Story shows up. The story that it shouldn’t have happened. That I should have known better. That it’s my job to rescue or make them feel better. It’s a story of my incompetence, one that’s so deeply embedded that I often don’t recognize it because it feels like a part of me. It’s a story of shame.

A story so engulfing that I can’t quite see through it. I react as if it were real, moving into habitual loops of rescuing, appeasing, or trying to soothe myself with food or television. Anything to avoid that feeling of contraction, that self-condemnation. Sometimes I’m in the whiteout for a few hours, and sometimes I’m there for days, trying to make the feelings go away with my old bag of tricks.

Here’s what I’ve noticed. Since I began seeing the tricks my mind plays on me, I’ve been able to avoid stepping into the fog much of the time by noticing how things I would call problems turn out not to be. Situations that would have sent me into blind reaction lose their charge. Or I just feel the feeling and let it pass through.

But not always. Sometimes, if I’m taken by surprise, it might take some time to sort out what’s real from what’s not. What’s harmful from what is there for my learning. But when I stay in curiosity and watch closely, the fog begins to clear. The shape of what is actually true shows up. I find what I can do to address the situation. I choose to stop blaming myself, and I reclaim my own essential innocence.

And there on the other side is the beauty that was there all along. A world of kind possibilities.

Tagged as: Inquiry, Presence, Questioning the mind

Be the first to comment

It’s the Glue

February 23, 2012Byron Katie's Work

I recently heard of a Tibetan Rinpoche who said “it’s not the thought. It’s the glue.” Body and mind shouted, YES!

I’ve spent a whole lot of time in the last seven years looking for THE thought that would bring freedom, finding thought after thought that opened the doors of truth. Painful beliefs have a way (only always) of not being true.

But, dang it, some of those doors are pretty determined to slam shut again. It’s as if there is a very viscous and sticky substance that allows them to open just enough to get a peek of possibility, but then pulls them closed. So I’ve been getting curious about that glue, poking a stick in it and then pulling it out and seeing what happens, as I sit in my own inquiry.

Click for Full Article

“Aha’s” on Epiphany

January 6, 2012Confusion to Clarity
Reaching the Top of a Mountain

Jan. 5th (or 6th) is my favorite holiday. For years I thought I had it all to myself. Having already failed at whatever New Year’s Resolutions I had thrown at the dartboard, I would try again to envision my next year after the decorations were put away and the rich holiday foods were consumed or thrown away.

When I was raising a family, this would hit after the kids were back in school and we were once again held by familiar routines. I discovered that arranging some time for myself and myself alone on this day was the last and best day of the holiday. It was like my own personal clean-up, my revisioning time.

Later I was giddy to learn that there was a date on the liturgical calendar called “Epiphany,” and that it coincided with my private holiday.

Click for Full Article

Hitting Refresh

June 6, 2011Coming Home

Have you ever wished you’d come equipped with an Auto Refresh button? If I had one, I’d use it today. Where was I before the weekend? Oh, right. There. A place to start on Monday morning. A place to Begin Within. This is the time of year when Things come up. Things to prepare for. Things to complete. Friends and family, too. Their things. All of those things we call life with others, life of community.

I’m one of those people who needs to stop and listen to my own directions before I can go into the world and do my thing.

Simply dropping in to a deeper level of connection with my own needs, wants, and inner promptings can be….well, a little more difficult than hitting Reset. There are days I’d give anything for a little curvy upward arrow that I could click and magically reset my screen, putting me back in the loop of my own deeper thinking/knowing.

Click for Full Article

“Exploding Head” Remedy

March 2, 2011Confusion to Clarity

Last week I co-hosted a cross cultural dialogue with Balinese visiting San Francisco. The focus was on Tri Hita Karuna, the ancient principle of balancing relationships with community, spirit, and nature. When I asked a beautiful Balinese singer to share. she said,

“All this talking and talking makes our heads explode.”

Then she led a long, lovely chant. A sense of connection with each other, with the world, with spirit, saturated the room. We were singing our world back in balance.

Click for Full Article

The Space Inside Stuckness

January 31, 2011Coming Home
Thumbnail image for The Space Inside Stuckness

Sometimes I find myself slipping into an old robotic pattern, a certain contracted stuckness. This trance-like state of being shows up in different ways: reading late into the night and awakening tired, heading to the snack cupboard instead of going on a walk. Leaving a little late for an appointment and then rushing to get there, forgetting my goal of staying present in my life. As if this added drama gives me a life of purpose. I slip into a way of moving through my life as if I’m wearing blinders. There’s very little space for different choices. After all, that would upset the robot with blinders.

Click for Full Article

My Life as a Sea Anemone

September 30, 2010Confusion to Clarity
Thumbnail image for My Life as a Sea Anemone

Sea anemones are among my favorite sea creatures. Fortunately Disney’s crew didn’t make them into a character in Little Mermaid. It would be a grave injustice, They don’t like the press.

They’re lovely just as they are, in their shy beauty. Colorful, vibrant. Content to stay in one place and ingest new nutrients. They stay perched and open and lovely until their space is invaded, and then a quick poke sends them into contraction and protection.

Click for Full Article

When the Outside Messes with the Inside

September 13, 2010Confusion to Clarity

I was just so proud of myself a month or two ago. I was fairly convinced that I’d figured out the major puzzles of my life. Or at least one major puzzle, the tendency to put stuff in my mouth when I wasn’t hungry.
I honestly believed that attending Geneen Roth’s residential retreat and living the Women Food & God Way had brought such a bolt of enlightenment that I would never eat compulsively again.
That was before I started moving everything out of half of my house for a long-anticipated remodel. Before I began traveling and celebrating the freedom of summer. Before I started working on a book project, or at least before I experienced my favorite procrastination technique.

Click for Full Article

Is it true?

November 4, 2009Confusion to Clarity

This is the 24 carat question. It’s truly astounding to me how often I don’t stop to ask it, even after more than five years of inquiry where this is the first question (The Work of Byron Katie).  The more mindful of my choices I become, the more assumptions I notice I have about the [...]

Click for Full Article

Right on Time Living

April 9, 2009Confusion to Clarity

Isaiah Jones, a black gospel musician and preacher  who was  raised in East St. Louis,  somehow showed up here in our Northwest college town in the mid-1990’s.  He started a gospel choir which was 99% white. And therefore remedial.  It took us about two years to figure out how to sway together to the rhythm, [...]

Click for Full Article

Showing Up For My Part Of The Job

April 3, 2009Confusion to Clarity

I love TED, although I do not know him personally.  TED (Ideas that Matter), at www.ted.com,  hosts gifted thinkers like Al Gore or Terry Robbins.  Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke of Insight expanded my world in my mind, growing new neural connections. I love Elizabeth Gilbert, although I do not know her personally. I managed to [...]

Click for Full Article