Love and conformity

“Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself.” Saint Exupery

Truly loving someone else is a process, a process that does not involve requiring that person to be made over into the image we have of them, but rather to love them for who they are and who they are constantly changing into and growing to become. How often do we encounter relationships in our lives, however, where this is the kind of love we give or we receive? Instead of being excited about learning more about those we love and encouraging more sharing of who they are with us, we expect them to conform to our image of them, how we want them to be, the illusion we have created for ourselves. Eventually we wall parts of ourselves off from one another because it isn’t safe to reveal things we feel are unacceptable to one another.

The process of self discovery and growth over the course of a lifetime is affected by many factors from the people we interact with to the activities we engage in to the learning of new ideas and subjects. How wonderful it would be if we could all just give love to each other without limits and without conditions, give each other the freedom to reach our fullest potential as loving beings. It makes me wonder how many of us simply give up and adjust into being who it is others want us to be because it is too hard or too painful to do otherwise.

When I offer my love to someone, I want that person to be exactly who they are. I want to be a participant in and observer of their process of change and growth. I am ecstatic to watch the process of another person learning and growing and becoming who they are, becoming comfortable in their own skin, growing toward authenticity for themselves. Why would I want to change anyone and insist on conformity to some poor substitute of themselves that I decide I want to create for them? I have enough to do to learn about myself and continue my own growth and self discovery. I am not in any way qualified to assume the responsibility of making over someone else into some kind of illusion, nor would I want to.

What amazing things we can share with each other and discover about one another when we have the safety and the freedom of knowing that who we are at any given moment is completely acceptable and unconditionally loved. What is it that threatens us so much about loving others that way? It is our own need. Our own fears. Our own ego that demands a return from someone else that always makes US feel good. Those parts of someone else that don’t make us feel good become unacceptable, and so we make every attempt to restore that feel-good feeling by insisting there is something wrong with the other person that must be changed. It is so much easier to fall into the thinking that there is something wrong in someone else rather than turn that examination inward to discover within ourselves what is creating that feeling.

I continue to offer my love to others in the only way I know how regardless of the hurt that may result to myself. I love you for who you are. I love you as you are. I am ecstatic to learn every day who you are, who you are becoming, who you want to be. I give that as a gift and do not allow my ego to demand that you conform to my illusion of who I think you should be.

People Building

I am a believer in building up of people. Every opportunity I have when interacting with someone means a chance to discover a strength, a gift, or a talent they have and I get excited by that. It seems to me that focusing on our deficiencies or perceived failures has become such an ingrained way of life that we eventually believe we have nothing of value to offer the world. People are quick to write letters of complaint when they are disgruntled by something, but are they equally willing to write letters of appreciation when something is done well?

From the time we are children, we are taught to focus on what needs improving, rather than our accomplishments. When we have a test graded in school, we get it back from our teacher with our wrong answers marked in red, essentially putting an exclamation mark on our failure. What if teachers graded tests by marking the right answers instead of the wrong ones, therefore reinforcing what was done right rather than focusing on what was done wrong? Of course we want children to learn from their mistakes and we want to guide them and teach them not to repeat them. But does the constant attention to what needs improvement eventually convince the child that nothing he or she ever does is good enough? The right answers are essentially ignored. And in the meantime, is the approach to focus on failure doing anything to nurture and grow their gifts and talents? The tragedy is I wonder how many people never reach their full potential and the full realization of their gifts because they were so beaten down during their development that it became impossible to focus on anything but failure.

Then we grow into adulthood, and the focus on our failures continues. We get a job and for some of us the only time we hear anything from the boss is when he or she is angry over something that either wasn’t done or wasn’t done right. How many times do we hear what a good job we did on a project compared to how many times we hear of something that was done wrong?

Why has it become so much easier to tear people down rather than to build them up, to focus on their weaknesses rather than their strengths, to be so quick with comments that cut each other to the core? I choose instead to think about the heights that individuals can achieve if only someone would be willing to recognize their strengths and help them build on them. I make it a point with everyone I meet to discover those strengths, get excited about them, and hopefully be an agent of encouragement in the expression of those strengths and talents. I believe that what we focus on in others is what they will return back to us, and back to the world. I want to live in the kind of world where all of us are expressing the best of what God has gifted us with.

Experiencing

What ever happened to spontaneity and experiencing life? Everywhere I go, from the supermarket to the airport to the shopping mall to the doctor’s office, people seem to be walking around in a robotic trance oblivious to their surroundings and unaware of anything beyond their schedule and what the next task at hand is. No one seems to live in or experience the present moment any more. There are so many distractions from overscheduled lives that experiencing any given moment in a day has become impossible.

When I walk outside in the morning the first thing I notice is the air. The smell of the air, the dryness of it, how cold or warm it feels, what it feels like as it enters and exits my body with every breath. Ever stop for just a second and notice the air? For that matter, do you ever stop to notice much of anything any more? On a recent visit to a local fast food establishment (and I do not eat fast food very often but sometimes you have to have those french fries) I watched the way people were eating. The thought came to my mind that not a single person seemed to even notice they were eating. They were literally shoveling in one mouthful after the other after the other, obviously trying to finish this task quickly to be available for whatever would come next. Does anyone stop to notice anything when they are eating, all the different flavors, the feeling of the food in their mouth, the feeling of it being swallowed. Anything?

Are we so disconnected from experiences at this point that we don’t notice anything any more? And what might be the wider consequences of this disconnectedness form experience? A disconnectedness from one another? A disconnectedness from our spirit? A disconnectedness from God? An inability to access anything on a deeper level of our existence and expand our daily experience from the usual mundane activities that we give so much value to?

Walking through life dead to experience limits not only our own path to fulfillment but also places barriers on our capacity to serve others, to love others, to be fully present as collective citizens of this world we share. As we numb ourselves to everything around us, eventually we don’t really care about much of anything any more beyond marking time on a calendar. The frightening prospect of this anesthesia when carried to its extreme is developing a complacency regarding the collective experience, extending to and including human suffering and pain.

Awakening to experience, gaining an appreciation for every moment of every day and the experience it brings, noticing each other, being in our spirit and listening for the voice of God, just noticing more and paying attention more can broaden our experience of life and open our lives to unimaginable possibilities both for ourselves and for those around us.

Remembering love

So many people approach their world and their view of it with anger, self doubt, depression, sadness, fear, and helplessness, having integrated the wounds of their past into their psyche and almost taking a certain pride in their hostility and edginess. To be ruled by their angst deceives them into thinking they are somehow deeper, more intelligent, or more highly evolved than those around them and nobody could possibly understand them in their depth. Others are on a frantic quest for more material possessions, more money, and more power in the misguided belief that these things will satisfy them and somehow fill the hole in their soul, but even when ultimate “success” has been achieved they find themselves still waking up to empty lives.

We must remember that the most important thing is connecting to our true selves and not allowing our ego-based pathology to dominate our lives. Allowing the authentic love of God to lead our lives toward wholeness is a choice we make. When we choose to be dominated by the hurts the world inflicts upon us, it is no small wonder that we spin out of control into the darkness of the pain caused by our own experience. We so easily reject the divine spark that exists within each one of us that is not of this painful world but is rather of God, the pure love of God — and if we would only choose to be embraced by that love and be comforted by it, the evils of the world would have no power to damage us.

The darkest of emotions deceive us into believing that we are all alone, that we are left defenseless to the pain and trapped in the devastating belief that there is no hope and no way out of that darkness. It is so easy to forget we are not alone. We have a holy connection with God, and through that holy connection we can choose loving connections with others. We can surround ourselves with beauty and nurture the love that is inside all of us, engaging in activities that nourish our spirit and bring us closer to God and his divine love for us — or we can choose to embrace our ego-based failings and live a life full of anger, bitterness and depression.

I know the choice I am making. And during those times when I feel sad and alone it can be a struggle, but it is precisely during those times that I turn solidly back toward the light again. When I am at my weakest moments, the step back toward the light and toward the pure divine love of God is infinitesimally small, really requiring nothing more than the briefest moment of embrace — it is available to me again and I realize it never did leave me, it has always been there waiting for me to remember. The world only has as much power over me as I choose to give it.

Choosing love over fear

“Fear insinuates itself in every action or passion of the mind….”John Donne

I frequently hear how naive the simplicity of my belief is in the power of love to change the world. I hear that my head is in the clouds and I can’t possibly be living a real life in the real world. I wonder how it came to be that choosing cynicism, fear, and doubt has become more attractive than choosing love. Sure we all carry disappointment and hurt with us from our past and see overwhelming pain and hurt in our everyday lives around us, but we all have a choice to make on how we allow those experiences to affect our choices, attitudes and actions today and going forward.

My choice is to wake up each day and choose love, choose to serve others with my gifts in any capacity I can in the part of the world I live in and to the best of my ability the world as a whole. I choose to believe that love is healing, love is empowering, love is freeing, and love is a healthier choice than the alternatives both for myself and for the world we inhabit. Obviously, that is not the choice being made by everyone when we look around at a war-torn broken world. But that just makes my resolve greater to wake up every morning and make my choice to love even stronger. The power of one person’s commitment to love will spread its sphere of influence to everyone it encounters, and hopefully begin to heal some of the deep wounds causing so much suffering.

There are some of us who choose to get up every new day and wallow in the circumstances we have created for our lives. Feelings of inadequacy, hopelessness and powerlessness can keep some of us stuck in the quagmire we have created and we begin to live out the self fulfilling prophecy of defeat which serves only to reinforce that negativity. That is a choice. I say, why not wake up and try something different? Why not allow the possibility that fear does not have power over the day, that love can conquer all and create hope for a better future?

The pure love that comes from God is strong, it is healing, it is not self seeking, it is patient, it is kind, it is not for the ego, it keeps no record of wrongs or hurts and does not hold grudges, it is enduring, it is hopeful, and it is inside each of one of us if we would just allow ourselves to choose it, allow ourselves the idea that it is possible to banish the fears we give so much power. We know that God’s gift of love is inside of all of us just waiting for us to choose it, and this pure love has the power to break down our barriers and transcend our own fears and our own disappointments. It is within our power and our capacity to make the choice, we just have to be open to it.

God is waiting patiently for our choice.

Simplicity

I was thinking this morning about how much time we spend in our lives focusing on negativity, wallowing in our emotional hurts, mourning the things that are missing from our lives, feeling hopeless over ever seeing peace in the world, and consistently being paralyzed to change anything by our own fears and learned helplessness.

We wake up and hear of a new bombing or suicide attack, and forget to glance out the window at the glorious sunrise giving birth to the possibility of a new day. We focus on the disappointments that have occurred in our past rather than our accomplishments, and choose to see our weaknesses rather than strengths. We convince ourselves that nothing is ever going to change anyway, so why try and why hope for something better?

The spiritual journey to banishing the barriers of fear is really about getting back to simplicity. All that is required is simple belief in the power of love to overcome our fear-based barriers to our own potential. There is nothing complicated about it, and yet for so many it is so difficult to imagine. God tells us we need faith the size of a mustard seed and great things can be accomplished. All that is required is that we open ourselves to the possibility that love can transform our lives and can overcome our fears, our anger, and our hopelessness. It only requires the smallest step toward that light that burns inside all of us, and God can take that step of faith and grow it into something beyond our imagination.

As we begin to open our hearts to the transformative power of love, our perceptions will undergo a fundamental shift. The beauty of the sunrise, the smell of a fresh spring day, the blooming of a tiny flower, the smile on a friend’s face, the embrace of someone we love — all of these things have the power to influence our perception if we would just open ourselves to noticing again.

Love has the power to heal our hurts if we would simply make that choice. The world we live in needs us to make that choice.

Words

The power of our words……

Words can be used to inspire, to lift up, to heal, to comfort, to love, to express our thoughts and feelings, to teach, to accept, and to share of ourselves. Words can also be used as weapons to wound, to destroy, to tear down, to control, to manipulate, to incite wars, to lie, to judge, and certainly to reveal sides of ourselves that would best be kept unseen.

How easily words slip out of our mouths without much thought to the power they may have over another individual.

Prejudice and intolerance are sadly still given a loud voice in our society. How did it come to pass that we created a world where our fear of each other has allowed us to believe it is acceptable to single out certain groups of people and use not only our words, but our actions to decide they are inferior, immoral, and not even worthy of life? Who are we as individuals that we truly believe that the color of someone’s skin, their gender, their sexual identity, their weight, what they look like, their age, or their disability in any way deserves words and acts of hatred and/or discrimination? Is there any person alive who is so utterly without blemish in themselves that they stand fit to judge anyone else? Hardly.

And just when we try to deceive ourselves into thinking that progress is being made, it is brought to our attention that we truly are just deluding ourselves. We are still raising our children to believe in acceptable hatred and intolerance.

I invite you to please read the story of Jim Wheeler. From that website, “So Jimmy tried to pretend that he was completely comfortable with who he was. He tried to pretend that it didn’t bother him when the kids called him names like ‘Faggot’ or ‘Queer’ or that it didn’t totally humiliate him when they pulled him out of the gym class shower and peed on him.”

This is but one of countless examples of similar acts of hatred and the destruction that words can cause. One more young man with so much promise snuffed out by suicide, self destruction that begins with self doubt from deep inside and is fueled by the words and acts of hatred of those who feared him.

It all begins with what is in our hearts and what we allow a voice. We have a choice to replace our fear with love. What are we going to choose for ourselves? What are we going to choose for the world we live in?

The power of our words…..the power of our hearts…..the power of our choice.

Actualization

We live in a time of self examination, a time when we hunger for deeper meaning in our lives and wish to be more than merely robots walking through life and passing time. We spend a great deal of time thinking about fulfillment, happiness and life satisfaction. I imagine part of that comes from living in a modern society where instead of worrying about having to go out and kill an antelope for dinner, we run down to the corner market and pick up a pre-packaged steak.

The psychologist Abraham Maslow created a hierarchy of needs, often represented in a pyramid diagram. He believed that human beings have four “deficiency” needs that must be met before the being need, “actualization” can be reached. For example, physiological needs rank at the very bottom of the “deficiency” needs hierarchy. The human being requires air, food, water, sleep, etc. Without meeting these needs, it is obviously impossible to move up the pyramid to consider deeper needs of the psyche.

Our physiological needs are met when we sit down to dinner or take in a breath of air. Our need for safety is met when we go to work and make money to provide shelter, we meet our love and belonging needs by spending time with friends and family, we meet our needs for esteem in our work or in our hobbies to gain a sense of achievement. At the actualization stage of being (which is at the top of Maslow’s pyramid) is where we find our spirituality. We spend a lot of time meeting our “deficiency” needs, and I have to wonder how much we are neglecting our spirit or “being needs” as we frantically attempt to feed deficiency needs which never seem to be satisfied.

Are we opening ourselves up to experiences that allow us to transcend ourselves, feel interconnected with something greater than ourselves, and feel God speaking to us? Or have we become so busy meeting our “deficiency” needs that we have no energy or time left over to reach for something more purposeful and with deeper meaning? Are we allowing our own problems and neuroses to block us from becoming all that God wants us to be, and numbing our pain over what is missing by falsely assuming that continually feeding our deficiencies will lead to more satisfaction? I see people so driven to achieve more in their jobs, drive a better car, own a bigger house, get more stuff, and achieve more power as if they are running some desperate race to get somewhere. The problem is they never reach the goal and the finish line never comes and the race never ends. Actualization cannot be achieved in the material world in which we reside. Materialism and hunger for power only breed envy and greed, and cater to our neuroses and deficiencies.

Loving others, creating a world based on love and not fear, being committed and open to experiences that allow us to transcend our own sphere of being and feel a sense of interconnectedness with each other and with God, opening ourselves to our own creativity, and accepting others without judgment — this is where actualization is to be found.

The power of belief

Our beliefs determine our destiny.

If we believe we are powerless to affect change either in our own lives or in the world, that will be our destiny. If we believe we are agents of change with a responsibility both to ourselves and to the world around us, that will be our destiny. As I look around these days I see a growing discontent in individuals and a growing hopelessness for the future. People seem to feel that both personally and globally they are paralyzed and incapable of creating something better and more fulfilling.

I wonder what purpose it serves us as individuals to believe we are victims of circumstance with no power to change our destiny, or to effect change in the world. Does it absolve us of our sense of responsibility to be agents of change? Does this belief give us an excuse to merely live a life of “business as usual” or status quo? Is it easier to merely live a life of complacency and mediocrity rather than allow ourselves the idealistic vision of something greater, more loving, and more fulfilling? We allow fear to dominate us into paralysis. Our comfort level in our own discontent is often more acceptable than what may await us in the frightening sphere of the unknown.

If I were to stop the next 10 people I meet on the street and ask each one what his/her wish is for the world we live in, I suspect each answer would undoubtedly be very inspiring. But those same 10 people would also probably indicate some sense of helplessness and hopelessness for the future and for ever being able to be any real influence toward the fulfillment of those wishes.

We each make the mistake of believing we as individuals cannot make a difference, whether it be in our own lives or with a more global perspective. It starts with the power of belief of one individual. It starts with each one of us, with the belief that we are powerful, with the belief that we can effect change, with the belief that we can influence our own destiny and the destiny of the world merely by being open to reshaping our own attitudes and breaking down the barriers that are holding us back.

Our beliefs determine our destiny. Do we really wish to limit the potential of those beliefs and define the limits of our own destiny based on fear, helplessness and hopelessness?

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Love

Creatures of Habit

As human beings we are such creatures of habit. Ever notice how you get up every morning and essentially do the same thing in the same way every day? I’m even remembering an I Love Lucy episode where Lucy is lamenting how boring their lives have become because they are so predictable every day, having become stale and moldy.

Consistency and predictability every day provides us with a sense of comfort, diminishes our feelings of vulnerability in a big and scary world, and allows us a feeling that we have some sort of control over our lives. But do we really wish to settle into habits every single day that essentially create a lifetime of days that all melt into one another, creating a shade of gray rather than a vivid rainbow of experiences by the time we reach the end of our lives? Do we really want one day to look just like dozens, or even hundreds, of other days?

Many of us have a myriad of excuses for not making major changes in our lives that could lead to greater fulfillment and realization of dreams, but do the little things we do every day really matter that much? Does our daily routine of getting up, making coffee, reading the paper, taking a shower, brushing our teeth, getting dressed, etc. — and doing those things the same exact way every day really make any kind of impact on the day ahead? Maybe not. But, what if you woke up tomorrow morning and instead of brushing your teeth using your dominant hand, you used the other hand? What would the challenge of doing that do to your attitude in performing that simple daily activity? No doubt you would be a bit frustrated by your incoordination, you may feel impatient by the increased amount of time it would take to do this simple task, and you certainly would have to concentrate more fully on the task at hand rather than thinking of the dozens of other things you have to do that day. You would certainly be more present in that moment.

Further, you would be engaging a totally different part of your brain than you normally would in order to complete this simple daily task normally given little to no conscious thought each day. With that one very simple change in your day, you have actually done something profoundly different from the routine. How might that simple change affect the rest of your day? How might engaging a different part of your brain in that one simple task affect your thinking and reactions in ways you can’t imagine?

Given the complexities of the human brain, shaking things up once in a while - even in small ways - may have an impact we can’t even imagine, and who knows where starting with the simplest of things could lead? Hmmm. I think I’ll go brush my teeth with my left hand.