Posts Tagged: Noticing

Story Blindness

in Confusion to Clarity, Noticing, Wordlessness

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.

“Aha’s” on Epiphany

in Confusion to Clarity, Noticing, Radical Kindness, Remembering, Winter

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.

“Exploding Head” Remedy

in Confusion to Clarity, Noticing, Power of Connection, Radical Kindness

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.

Truth Serum

in Confusion to Clarity, Noticing

Some moments, even some entire days, I can catch myself in the judgements and lies that keep me from the truth. There’s such grace in that kind of clarity, that kind of peace. That is, when I can catch the lies.

And then there are the other days. The days I actually believe that “they’re” at fault. By “they” I mean anybody (or anything) out there that I can judge or blame. Like my dog for barking too much, my husband for not shutting the door, the weather for not being warmer or drier. Not to mention the theme songs I play in my own brain. Number one right now is There’s something wrong, and it’s because I’m not enough or there’s not enough.

These are the days I need a truth serum. Or some loving but stern Zen master to rap me up the side of the head. One question can usually do that: really? Is it true? When I’m aware enough of that feeling of shrinking inside, the way I’m living from a small self, that’s usually enough to bring me back.

Sometimes Truth shows up in harsher ways: the illness or death of a loved one can take me right there. To an opening of the heart big enough to embrace and allow the beauty around me to teach me to heal. What a shame that this is what it would take.

The Space Inside Stuckness

in Confusion to Clarity, Getting Unstuck

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.

When the Outside Messes with the Inside

in Confusion to Clarity, Getting Unstuck, Noticing, Radical Kindness, Remembering

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.

Returning Home to My Wise Body

in Noticing, Radical Kindness

I just spent more than a week at the Oregon coast, a place I usually feel instantly at home. Being on the ocean simply returns me to source. It’s a short cut for me.

So when I decided to go there to get started on a book I’ve been wanting to write, I expected a vacation. It was a vacation, all right. I vacated my body and moved right into my head. The mental work of framing my ideas and beginning such a large project had me set up housekeeping in the world of the mind, which happens to be what I was writing about. I got a good start on the book, but I’ve had a series of headaches from the mental strain. Not an accident, I think.

The Cafe at the End of the Search

in Getting Unstuck, Noticing, Radical Kindness, Surrendering

I’ve spent a whole lot of my life in a search for truth, beauty, goodness, The Way. Much of what has motivated me has been from that deep longing that propels each of us to connect with the sacred in life.

No regrets. But lately I’ve been thinking of calling off the search. Because it feels like peace. (What better reason would there be?) When I’m craving something to eat, drink or do that will fill a hole, I’m usually believing that my current state isn’t okay.