June 21 The Solstice
Midsummer is here. We have just experienced the Solstice. Here in the Northern Hemisphere we have had the longest day/shortest night of the year.
I just realized that I wrote the year. Even for me with all my work bringing our attention to the Inner Year, I write the. Let me begin again.
...You have just had the longest day/shortest night of YOUR year! This is your inner year. Nature gives us a year that belongs to no one and everyone. Your inner year belongs to only you. If you don’t pay attention to it, if you don’t give it meaning, then it remains simply Nature’s passing of time.
My inner year work seeks to awaken in you a creative awareness of your year of soul days and soul nights. How many inner solstices have you felt in your soul? Long day/short night? Short day/long night? Inner moments of dramatic imbalance marking a turning points in your life and your imaginations of self.
If you recollect your own inner solstices, what do you feel? For me, my inner solstice feelings seem to call forth a poem - a painting of tender and violent words or a watercolor painting of colored tears and dancing lights.
(Wow, imagine if our tears were a rainbow of colors to reflect our rainbow of feelings. What color tears would flow from grief, from rage, from joy, from truth??? Did the creator gods miss an opportunity here? Could we ask a crying person, a child, a friend, ourselves, what color are your tears?)
Do you connect more with long soul days or long soul nights? Do like the light shining in the world or the light shining from within yourself?
June 24
St. John’s Tide
John the Baptist’s birth finds it’s celebration at the height of summer, mirroring the birth of Jesus in the depth of winter. But most of us don’t have a conscious feeling for this festival and its meaning.
(Dear Folks in the Southern Hemisphere, Thank you for bringing a balancing feeling to the impact of Nature on these great archetypal experiences.)
John dwells in the wilderness and cries out with a voice that is heard throughout the cosmos. He is crying out for something he cannot name until he meets it. The power of his cry is not his dispair, but his confidence. He knows the turning point is coming.
In the mood of a voice crying in the wilderness, your voice, think//recollect your moments of greatest despair rising up in your throat lifted by an underlying, equally great, but not nameable confidence.
Have a moment today to feel the deep confidence that another of your turning points is near at hand.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
The Missing Pieces - An Understanding of the Father
Most of my mentees, those I mentor through conscious conversations, arrive wanting to find the missing pieces of their lives.
I remember being a child and loving to play with
puzzles - putting all the pieces in place was such a great
experience.
But when a piece was missing, it didn't matter that I had put
all the other pieces together, the hole sucked away all my joy.
It took all the pieces to create the complete picture. Missing a
piece meant I should throw away the entire puzzle.
We can't do that with our lives. We need to keep searching for
the pieces and put the puzzle together. Over many years as a
personal mentor, I have become adept at finding
missing pieces. Having an understanding of the human soul -
the puzzle with infinite pieces, has helped in many searches.
I want to share four essential pieces. I will give them names,
ask you questions about your experience, and suggest exercises.
These are pieces that come from paternal forces. They define the internal good father. Most of us have generations of missing paternal forces. You can have a very loving, wonderful father and still find these pieces missing. doing this work is not a betrayal of the father you love. Not doing it may be a betrayal of the you you need to become.
The four deeds of the generational paternal forces (going back to great-grandfathers and beyond) are
to provide
to protect
to name
to lead or guide
When these deeds are not fulfilled essential pieces of life, of our sense of self, are missing in some degree.
without adequate provision satisfaction is missing
without adequate protection safety is missing
without adequate naming identity is missing
without adequate guidance direction is missing
Each and everyone of us is missing satisfaction, safety, identity and/or direction in some areas of life:
the physical,
the emotional,
the intellectual,
the financial,
the sexual,
the relational,
the spiritual
And we suffer and puzzle over every missing piece.
This names our missing pieces and the naming empowers our ability to complete ourselves. I am giving you some challenging and comforting naming activities.
One of the dilemmas of being human is that we are never complete and always evolving. We are always growing, changing, transforming, transcending, learning, never fixed. We want a sense of not being curtailed or entangled or stuck.
The feeling of completeness is the experience of being unconditionally loved. Nothing to be, do or have to be totally seen, embraced, acknowledged, validated and valued. To complete ourselves we must love ourselves unconditionally as we are and as we are becoming.
Sadly, there is no magic wand for self-love. Coming to self-love is a process of self-attention. Working with the missing perceptions of satisfaction, safety, identity and direction is a significant path to self-attention.
Rate the Missing
Begin with simply rating your overall degree of satisfaction, safety, identity and direction in your life on a 1-10 scale. (10 means there is no way in heaven you could experience more, which means I can’t imagine anyone having a 10.) You can consider 5 a midpoint of reasonable degree. Below five is challenging and a 2 or a 1 is a dramatic missing. Ideally, you would feel pretty great with an 8 and nine is fabulous. Remember, self-loving is always a feeling that encourages growth, so hold off on the perfect 10’s. You can have an 8 in safety and a 3 in satisfaction, a 5 in identity and 2 in direction.
This is not a test on which to seek a perfect score in order to feel good about your self. This is just an exercise to support your self-awareness.
You can go through each of the life areas I mentioned above. Feel free to add to the list. I suggest you create a chart to track your ratings. Do this in a spreadsheet on your computer or a page in your journal.
Create a Positive Definition
Write down your description of each feeling: satisfaction, safety, identity and direction.
If your family was deeply dysfunctional you may not have a clue how to describe these feelings. If that is the case, begin with a dictionary definition. Use a dictionary as a source of possibility, not as the word of God. You are looking to create the description that rings true with you, not anyone else.
However, sharing this exercise with a close friend or two can be very encouraging.
If The Missing Pieces Are Found, This is What I Would Know….
Make a list of five to 8 statements indicating fullness in each feeling. I have put down four for each feeling as a source of inspiration.
Satisfaction
I have…
Growing recognition of my needs.
Knowledge of responsible ways to meet those needs.
Awareness of essential resources.
Ability to forgive those who could not meet original needs of childhood.
Safety
I have…
Ability to articulate my boundaries.
Ability to maintain my boundaries.
Sense of my personal strength.
Willingness to call for help.
Identity
I have…
Confidence in my authority.
A sense of inner integrity.
Knowledge of my rights.
No need to fantasize being someone else.
Direction
I am…
Orientated toward an achievable goal.
Grounded in a clear assessment of my talents and gifts
Able to say no to seductive distractions.
Able to create and follow effective plans of action.
This exercise is to first be approached from an overall consciousness. Then, you are encouraged to bring this first list to a more specialized consideration of each area in your life.
I don’t know about you, but I would have loved to have been able to do this in high school or college. But it is never too late to get hold of your life.
You are the source of your satisfaction, your safety, your identity and your direction. You can find the missing pieces and put your puzzles together.
If you find this challenging, disturbing or isolating you may want to give yourself the gift of personal coaching or counseling. A good counselor will provide the elements of warmth, containment, encouragement and creative review and reflection. Each of us needs a rhythm of sacred conversation centered on our own path of self-development.
Please let me here from you. Share your questions, your process, your surprises. Post your comments on the blog.
I remember being a child and loving to play with
puzzles - putting all the pieces in place was such a great
experience.
But when a piece was missing, it didn't matter that I had put
all the other pieces together, the hole sucked away all my joy.
It took all the pieces to create the complete picture. Missing a
piece meant I should throw away the entire puzzle.
We can't do that with our lives. We need to keep searching for
the pieces and put the puzzle together. Over many years as a
personal mentor, I have become adept at finding
missing pieces. Having an understanding of the human soul -
the puzzle with infinite pieces, has helped in many searches.
I want to share four essential pieces. I will give them names,
ask you questions about your experience, and suggest exercises.
These are pieces that come from paternal forces. They define the internal good father. Most of us have generations of missing paternal forces. You can have a very loving, wonderful father and still find these pieces missing. doing this work is not a betrayal of the father you love. Not doing it may be a betrayal of the you you need to become.
The four deeds of the generational paternal forces (going back to great-grandfathers and beyond) are
to provide
to protect
to name
to lead or guide
When these deeds are not fulfilled essential pieces of life, of our sense of self, are missing in some degree.
without adequate provision satisfaction is missing
without adequate protection safety is missing
without adequate naming identity is missing
without adequate guidance direction is missing
Each and everyone of us is missing satisfaction, safety, identity and/or direction in some areas of life:
the physical,
the emotional,
the intellectual,
the financial,
the sexual,
the relational,
the spiritual
And we suffer and puzzle over every missing piece.
This names our missing pieces and the naming empowers our ability to complete ourselves. I am giving you some challenging and comforting naming activities.
One of the dilemmas of being human is that we are never complete and always evolving. We are always growing, changing, transforming, transcending, learning, never fixed. We want a sense of not being curtailed or entangled or stuck.
The feeling of completeness is the experience of being unconditionally loved. Nothing to be, do or have to be totally seen, embraced, acknowledged, validated and valued. To complete ourselves we must love ourselves unconditionally as we are and as we are becoming.
Sadly, there is no magic wand for self-love. Coming to self-love is a process of self-attention. Working with the missing perceptions of satisfaction, safety, identity and direction is a significant path to self-attention.
Rate the Missing
Begin with simply rating your overall degree of satisfaction, safety, identity and direction in your life on a 1-10 scale. (10 means there is no way in heaven you could experience more, which means I can’t imagine anyone having a 10.) You can consider 5 a midpoint of reasonable degree. Below five is challenging and a 2 or a 1 is a dramatic missing. Ideally, you would feel pretty great with an 8 and nine is fabulous. Remember, self-loving is always a feeling that encourages growth, so hold off on the perfect 10’s. You can have an 8 in safety and a 3 in satisfaction, a 5 in identity and 2 in direction.
This is not a test on which to seek a perfect score in order to feel good about your self. This is just an exercise to support your self-awareness.
You can go through each of the life areas I mentioned above. Feel free to add to the list. I suggest you create a chart to track your ratings. Do this in a spreadsheet on your computer or a page in your journal.
Create a Positive Definition
Write down your description of each feeling: satisfaction, safety, identity and direction.
If your family was deeply dysfunctional you may not have a clue how to describe these feelings. If that is the case, begin with a dictionary definition. Use a dictionary as a source of possibility, not as the word of God. You are looking to create the description that rings true with you, not anyone else.
However, sharing this exercise with a close friend or two can be very encouraging.
If The Missing Pieces Are Found, This is What I Would Know….
Make a list of five to 8 statements indicating fullness in each feeling. I have put down four for each feeling as a source of inspiration.
Satisfaction
I have…
Growing recognition of my needs.
Knowledge of responsible ways to meet those needs.
Awareness of essential resources.
Ability to forgive those who could not meet original needs of childhood.
Safety
I have…
Ability to articulate my boundaries.
Ability to maintain my boundaries.
Sense of my personal strength.
Willingness to call for help.
Identity
I have…
Confidence in my authority.
A sense of inner integrity.
Knowledge of my rights.
No need to fantasize being someone else.
Direction
I am…
Orientated toward an achievable goal.
Grounded in a clear assessment of my talents and gifts
Able to say no to seductive distractions.
Able to create and follow effective plans of action.
This exercise is to first be approached from an overall consciousness. Then, you are encouraged to bring this first list to a more specialized consideration of each area in your life.
I don’t know about you, but I would have loved to have been able to do this in high school or college. But it is never too late to get hold of your life.
You are the source of your satisfaction, your safety, your identity and your direction. You can find the missing pieces and put your puzzles together.
If you find this challenging, disturbing or isolating you may want to give yourself the gift of personal coaching or counseling. A good counselor will provide the elements of warmth, containment, encouragement and creative review and reflection. Each of us needs a rhythm of sacred conversation centered on our own path of self-development.
Please let me here from you. Share your questions, your process, your surprises. Post your comments on the blog.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Standing in the Center - Inner Pentecost
It’s Pentecost.
When I write my posts it is always scary and thrilling because I am taking a stand. I take a stand somewhere between opinion and truth, between prejudice and openess, between demand and encouragement. I struggle to have my language of soul meet your language of soul in a creative engagement.
I strive to find the words that point to the center of an idea or a feeling or a desire so you can find first your bearings and then the momentum to move toward the center of your relationship to the idea, even to the center of your being.
I imagine center as a place where my being is found unfettered by limiting stories, distorting perspectives, constricting one-sidedness. Perhaps in the center I find my consciousness living free from the distracting and distorting challenges of karma or sin.
There are a number of biological elements in the human body - your body and my body- that give us a living corporeal experience of center. Of course, there is the heart and the spine, and the corpus callosum, but I find the fovea centralis the most exciting. The fovea is the tiny “pit” in the retina which provides the most acute sight - receptive to the brightest light. Perhaps understood esoterically, the fovea is also the place where our own inner light shines forth most brightly into the world, into others sight.
I’ve learned that from the center of our being something can become, something new can enter in that then radiates out. In the ideal, it is truth, compassion, empowerment, love, even freedom, that comes in and radiates out.
In my conversations with clients, I find the collaborative goal or intention is to find their center, so they can stand in it and clearly experience who they are and interact with others and the world from that place. It is so hard to stand in our times and even harder to find our center but once there we can get a clear and empowering imagination of self.
Each year for Inner Pentecost, I share a way to find a deeply personal connection to the great cosmic event that is described in New Testament Acts of the Apostles 2:1-31. This year I celebrate standing in the center.
FYI: I am writing this in the kitchen in front of a big window. Today there is indeed a mighty wind in the earthly sense. Truly blowing with major gusts - almost frightening. And finally, heavy rains falling on the parched Devon earth - it’s been a record setting dry spring. There is a grouping of irises outside the window and they are being blow off center but their strong rootedness allows them to “bounce back.”
The pentecostal event could not occur without one being standing in the center of the gathering of the Apostles and the other devoted souls. That individual was a woman and a mother whose soul carried the twin experiences of innocence and wisdom. In the stories of the New Testemant she is Mary. As a being, she is the Virgin Sophia.
Nothing is out of place in cosmic events so we can learn much about our inmost selves this Pentecost by embracing the image of standing in the center and having a feeling of who stands there.
Ask yourself, “Who am I who stands in my center? Who stands in my center ready to receive the spirit of love and the future?”
Can you hold the circle, all that is you, from the center? Too often we think we can only hold the circle by running frantically around the periphery, by attempting to expand or contract our limiting definitions of who we are. We do not hold our lives and our destinies together by stretching or limiting at the periphery. We hold them together by gently, firmly, warmly, dwelling at the center of our being. Without the center there is no circle, no life and no love.
The center is the neutral zone I wrote about in my post on Mother’s Day. The you that stands in the center has no stories. The moment you tell a story about yourself you have moved off center. We all move off center often.
What is important is to remember the centered feeling and know how to return to it.
When we only hear and speak our own language/stories we are off center, standing in one part of ourselves. When we are not in our center, we can only understand the languages of competing needs and defensive rejections.
Inner Pentecost asks us to find our center and stand in it, relinquishing our own languages so we can experience the universal language and see in clear bright light those who stand around us.
Here is a list of the key phrases I have written in this post that I want to consider more deeply and more personally. I want to find feelings and events that bring each phrase to life, my life. I’ve added some of my thoughts about each phrase.
You may want to follow this example and take a few minutes to note and respond to whatever words or phrases you resonate with. Listen to them and write down what you comprehend.
Innocence and wisdom — Only if I am innocent can I be wise? Being wise keeps innocence alive.
Holding the circle from the center — Holding all the parts of my life together from the core of my being. Given that I have a tendency to pay attention to too many things at once, this holding from the center imagination slows me down and lets me understand more of the language of things.
Center — What is my center? How do I know I am in my center? Is my center where I am most loving, most courageous, most understanding, most understood?
Expanding and contracting the periphery — From the serene power of the center I don’t worry about the peripheral activity.
The neutral zone of no stories — This is my upper room, where my Inner Pentecost takes place every time I can get myself there. I need to make up a list of reminders on how to return to the neutral zone.
Give up and forgive competing needs and defensive rejections — The key words are competing and defensive. We are entitled to have needs and entitled to reject but the pentecostal image of standing in the center sees all needs and rejections with equanimity. This is liberating maturity, not dramatizing adolescence.
Here are my previous posts on Pentecost.
http://theinneryear.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html
http://theinneryear.blogspot.com/2010/05/understanding-and-being-understood.html
When I write my posts it is always scary and thrilling because I am taking a stand. I take a stand somewhere between opinion and truth, between prejudice and openess, between demand and encouragement. I struggle to have my language of soul meet your language of soul in a creative engagement.
I strive to find the words that point to the center of an idea or a feeling or a desire so you can find first your bearings and then the momentum to move toward the center of your relationship to the idea, even to the center of your being.
I imagine center as a place where my being is found unfettered by limiting stories, distorting perspectives, constricting one-sidedness. Perhaps in the center I find my consciousness living free from the distracting and distorting challenges of karma or sin.
There are a number of biological elements in the human body - your body and my body- that give us a living corporeal experience of center. Of course, there is the heart and the spine, and the corpus callosum, but I find the fovea centralis the most exciting. The fovea is the tiny “pit” in the retina which provides the most acute sight - receptive to the brightest light. Perhaps understood esoterically, the fovea is also the place where our own inner light shines forth most brightly into the world, into others sight.
I’ve learned that from the center of our being something can become, something new can enter in that then radiates out. In the ideal, it is truth, compassion, empowerment, love, even freedom, that comes in and radiates out.
In my conversations with clients, I find the collaborative goal or intention is to find their center, so they can stand in it and clearly experience who they are and interact with others and the world from that place. It is so hard to stand in our times and even harder to find our center but once there we can get a clear and empowering imagination of self.
INNER PENTECOST
Each year for Inner Pentecost, I share a way to find a deeply personal connection to the great cosmic event that is described in New Testament Acts of the Apostles 2:1-31. This year I celebrate standing in the center.
FYI: I am writing this in the kitchen in front of a big window. Today there is indeed a mighty wind in the earthly sense. Truly blowing with major gusts - almost frightening. And finally, heavy rains falling on the parched Devon earth - it’s been a record setting dry spring. There is a grouping of irises outside the window and they are being blow off center but their strong rootedness allows them to “bounce back.”
The pentecostal event could not occur without one being standing in the center of the gathering of the Apostles and the other devoted souls. That individual was a woman and a mother whose soul carried the twin experiences of innocence and wisdom. In the stories of the New Testemant she is Mary. As a being, she is the Virgin Sophia.
Nothing is out of place in cosmic events so we can learn much about our inmost selves this Pentecost by embracing the image of standing in the center and having a feeling of who stands there.
Ask yourself, “Who am I who stands in my center? Who stands in my center ready to receive the spirit of love and the future?”
Can you hold the circle, all that is you, from the center? Too often we think we can only hold the circle by running frantically around the periphery, by attempting to expand or contract our limiting definitions of who we are. We do not hold our lives and our destinies together by stretching or limiting at the periphery. We hold them together by gently, firmly, warmly, dwelling at the center of our being. Without the center there is no circle, no life and no love.
The center is the neutral zone I wrote about in my post on Mother’s Day. The you that stands in the center has no stories. The moment you tell a story about yourself you have moved off center. We all move off center often.
What is important is to remember the centered feeling and know how to return to it.
When we only hear and speak our own language/stories we are off center, standing in one part of ourselves. When we are not in our center, we can only understand the languages of competing needs and defensive rejections.
Inner Pentecost asks us to find our center and stand in it, relinquishing our own languages so we can experience the universal language and see in clear bright light those who stand around us.
SUGGESTIONS FOR INNER PENTECOST
Here is a list of the key phrases I have written in this post that I want to consider more deeply and more personally. I want to find feelings and events that bring each phrase to life, my life. I’ve added some of my thoughts about each phrase.
You may want to follow this example and take a few minutes to note and respond to whatever words or phrases you resonate with. Listen to them and write down what you comprehend.
Innocence and wisdom — Only if I am innocent can I be wise? Being wise keeps innocence alive.
Holding the circle from the center — Holding all the parts of my life together from the core of my being. Given that I have a tendency to pay attention to too many things at once, this holding from the center imagination slows me down and lets me understand more of the language of things.
Center — What is my center? How do I know I am in my center? Is my center where I am most loving, most courageous, most understanding, most understood?
Expanding and contracting the periphery — From the serene power of the center I don’t worry about the peripheral activity.
The neutral zone of no stories — This is my upper room, where my Inner Pentecost takes place every time I can get myself there. I need to make up a list of reminders on how to return to the neutral zone.
Give up and forgive competing needs and defensive rejections — The key words are competing and defensive. We are entitled to have needs and entitled to reject but the pentecostal image of standing in the center sees all needs and rejections with equanimity. This is liberating maturity, not dramatizing adolescence.
Here are my previous posts on Pentecost.
http://theinneryear.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html
http://theinneryear.blogspot.com/2010/05/understanding-and-being-understood.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)