Posts Categorized: Confusion to Clarity

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.

Law of Distraction

in Confusion to Clarity, Noticing, Radical Kindness

I have nothing personal against the Law of Attraction Except for the painful shadow it casts when it becomes your direction-finder and distracts you from what needs to be learned or done about your current reality.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s much to be said for hope and belief and positive intention. Leaning into life’s possibilities, as a way of walking the planet, offers joy and curiosity.

But imaginative envisioning is half of an equation, and it can be a distraction to sit in wishful thinking when a lot of life perspiration and determination. It’s really true what they told us when we were little: Almost everything that has any worth and personal value requires work, and that sense of accomplishment is its own reward.

But the darkest shadow of the Law of Attraction is the way it seems to trigger the belief that if bad things happen, I must have done something wrong

Goodbye Cruel World

in Confusion to Clarity, Noticing, Radical Kindness

Goodbye, Cruel World. These words came drifting into my mind while I was walking the beaches of the impossibly beautiful Oregon Coast last weekend. The rhythms of the ocean have a way of opening my inner ear to wisdom, so I didn’t take this lightly.   Goodbye cruel world? Since I wasn’t in a suicidal frame of mind, I didn’t go there.  I also didn’t take it to mean anything about the lives that have come and gone by way of water.

Goodbye, cruel world?  Why these words? Then I had a tiny epiphany. A momentary glimpse of how, even in the expansiveness and generosity of nature, I can lose the beauty of the world around me by listening to my inner narrator. I can so easily contract into a shrunken world inside when I’m triggered by feelings, glued stickily in place with supporting thoughts and evidence.

When I fall into that spell, I’ve said goodbye to the real world around me and hello to a cruel world of self-judgement and lies. Goodbye cruel world. Can I say goodbye to the cruel world that shows up when I believe my inner dictator and discover a kinder one?

When I haven’t shrunk the heaven I live in to fit a smaller belief system (like the one that says I’m not good enough, smart enough, enough enough), there’s never enough of anything around me to fill me up. Least of all the sugar or salty foods I usually begin to crave for comfort or relief.

But when I’m not in the thrall of my inner limiting loops, I’m there for it. All of it. The beauty and the poignancy of the real world. I have said goodbye to the cruel world inside and said hello to something else. To the heaven of wind, rainbows and human connection. And also hello to the challenges of financial ups and downs, failing health, troubled family members.

The more I’ve questioned my feelings/beliefs, the more I see the beauty even in these situations. I may not like it all the time, but I have moments when I see the perfection of the current “disaster.” Or I trust that I just can’t see it yet…and maybe I will. But if I don’t, I figure I’m probably missing something, and I give it up to the mysterious way of things.

I’d rather leave the cruel world behind and live in a kinder one, even if I don’t always see the goodness in the situation at first glance. Hello, real world!

What things have appeared in your life that seemed unkind but turned out later to be kind?

A Personal Prescription for Happiness

in Confusion to Clarity, Getting Unstuck, Radical Kindness

I love a good fight. Whether I’m “fighting traffic, fighting the Battle of the Bulge, or having a disagreement (aka “fight”) with my husband, I know that somewhere in there is my “prescription for happiness,” as Byron Katie describes what happens when you turn a painful belief around and discover what’s there that you might have been missing.

He should be more sensitive? Once I can really see how that deep belief causes suffering in my life, really close-up and personal, the little slights and unkindness it creates, I’m more than ready to let go.

It’s the Glue

in Confusion to Clarity, Family Stress, Getting Unstuck, Radical Kindness

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.

“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.

Putting Yourself on Your List

in Confusion to Clarity, Radical Kindness, Winter

In this chilly and bustling time, where do you freeze yourself out of your own heart? Maybe you check the holiday list and check it twice, without even noticing that your name never happens to appear. Your Inner Santa doesn’t see you, even if you’ve been nice rather than naughty. And so you leap through the holidays and to the end of the year without ever bringing yourself along.

Despite the exhilaration of the season, there’s often something inside that just longs to be heard, to be seen. It can be naughty by overeating or overdrinking to get your attention. Or it can have a meltdown or get sick. Then maybe you’ll stop and appreciate it. Instead, it usually waits quietly to get noticed.

Building a Kinder World

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

There’s a line in the recent Sherlock Holmes movie that grabbed my attention.

“Give me some evidence, Holmes. With a little mud I can build bricks and from there I can build a case.”

I’m struck by how often we use the evidence we have to wall us into a world view that isn’t kind to us or the people around us. Someone cuts us off in traffic and we take it personally. Our kids are acting out. Proof we’re a bad parent. And so it can go, if we believe our case that we’re failing or not measuring up, somehow.

What I’ve been discovering as I work with my own mind and assist others in inquiry is that there’s another choice.

Hitting Refresh

in Confusion to Clarity, Getting Unstuck, Noticing, Remembering

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.