Body, Mind, Spirit as Classroom

Last arti­cle I con­cluded with a long list from Shel­don Kopp. As I was con­tem­plat­ing today’s topic, I caught sight of the bot­tom end of the list, and espe­cially:

38. We must learn the power of liv­ing with our help­less­ness.
39. The only vic­tory lies in sur­ren­der to one­self.
40. All of the sig­nif­i­cant bat­tles are waged within the self.
41. You are free to do what­ever you like. You need only to face the consequences.

All 43 items in the list are inter­re­lated, and part of the ‘help­less’ (# 38) idea is that we always work from a place of insuf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion (# 33–35).

The Next Dilemma

Inter­nal work begins with this sub­tle recog­ni­tion:

I am help­less to change oth­ers or the world, and I never have all the answers.

Which, once you really get it, is pretty powerful.

It’s pow­er­ful because you can stop your­self from wast­ing time doing what will never work, and you can get to work­ing on your self.

Body­Mind­Spirit Work

Your body, mind, and spirit is the only class­room you have a hope of suc­ceed­ing in.

For those of you that are heav­ily invested in chang­ing the world, end­ing poverty and dis­ease, etc.—good for you! Do what you can. Every sig­nif­i­cant change has come from the work of indi­vid­u­als who first worked on them­selves. In other words, change in the world comes from per­sonal effort and discovery.

Body­Mind­Spirit work (BMS) is, for me, best cap­tured in the con­cepts of Zen and mind­ful­ness. Sur­ren­der­ing to self (Kopp # 39) is all about accept­ing that the only real­ity you have is the one inside of you. We’ve spent many arti­cles talk­ing about this. What goes on inside of you and how you spin your life is uniquely yours. As in my sug­ges­tion about think­ing about your habit­ual behav­iours, the goal of BMS work is to become con­scious of your process.

This is simple/hard. Next time you get angry (or have another pro­found expe­ri­ence) try this: instead of blam­ing and fin­ger point­ing (Kopp: # 37 — It is most impor­tant to run out of scape­goats) and thus detach­ing from your anger, stop and have a breath. Be present with the feel­ing of your anger. Say, to your­self or aloud, “This is anger.” Then, “I am angry.”

Once you have named and owned the feel­ing, find a safe place to ‘be’ anger. Climb into your bed and pound your pil­low. Go out to your car, roll up the win­dows, and scream.

Many New Age wimps think the game is all about walk­ing around hum­ming “Om” and smil­ing. Crap. BMS work is all about being com­pletely in your expe­ri­ence, with­out blame, with­out mis­di­rec­tion, with­out excuse. When we do this, we find that our emo­tions and thoughts flow through us like water in a fast-moving stream.

There is noth­ing real or per­ma­nent about any of it.

To con­tinue with anger for a minute longer: peo­ple fear anger because they mostly have seen it directed at oth­ers, or have seen vio­lence. We are speak­ing here of self-responsible anger (and self-responsible every­thing…) that has lim­its and con­trols. When we teach our clients this, the rules are:

1. direct the anger at an inan­i­mate object (a pil­low, pad, etc.)
2. Don’t touch any­one with­out per­mis­sion
3. Don’t break any­thing.
4. Set a timer for 5 min­utes.

For more on this, order “Anger, Bound­aries and Safety” from The Haven.

The Plea­sure of Inter­nal Battles

The con­cept of an inter­nal bat­tle is this: inter­nal work is not about ‘let­ting it all hang out.’ It’s about self-discovery under your own con­trol.

Most peo­ple have no con­trol. So, they blow and spout and steam and run in repet­i­tive circles.

The bat­tle is to stay focused on you and your ‘stuff’—you and your choices. And to accept that all of it is ‘you.’

Once you get this, you can dig even deeper, and you’ll find addi­tional resources and new ideas for liv­ing out your life.

Remem­ber, think­ing you can keep doing what you are doing and get dif­fer­ent results is childish.

Liv­ing new, Amorous Adventures

I can’t believe I did this, but I signed up for Face­book. I have no idea what this thing is for, and find it a lousy way to com­mu­ni­cate, but there you are. Any­way, a friend of mine posts her ‘sta­tus’ reg­u­larly. Yes­ter­day, she posted a line from her Chi­nese horoscope:

I am hav­ing my heart torn between sta­bil­ity and the need to live new amorous adven­tures (Chi­nese horoscope).

Notice how this horo­scope per­fectly cap­tures the dilemma of life. You can either try, des­per­ately, to cling to sta­bil­ity (an illu­sion, as every­thing is always chang­ing) or you can pas­sion­ately live life.

I wrote to her that my expe­ri­ence of her and her self-made dilem­mas was per­fectly cap­tured in this horoscope.

As is true for all of us.

This IS the dilemma

As each thing ‘comes up’ for us, there is a choice. Do I ‘behave myself’ and do what ‘mommy and daddy’ what me to do, or do I take a risk? We’ve been con­di­tioned since child­hood to des­per­ately cling to sta­bil­ity, so we make it dif­fi­cult to let go. We scare ourselves.

This is not to say that embrac­ing a life of ‘liv­ing new amorous adven­tures’ will be easy, or accept­able. Because most peo­ple fear change, and see explo­ration as threat­en­ing, there will be out­side pres­sure to con­form, and inter­nal pres­sure to be a good boy or girl.

So, we go back to our ini­tial exer­cise, rephrased:

A Small Reminder

Now, I want to quickly say that Kopp reminds us: # 41. “You are free to do what­ever you like. You need only to face the consequences.”

North Amer­i­cans espe­cially do not like con­se­quences. Chang­ing a chargy behav­iour has the poten­tial to stir up all kinds of inter­est­ing stuff. Mostly, there is the poten­tial of some­one around you get­ting their shorts in a knot.

So, you’re right back to: “I think I’ll live my life as a good boy/girl, and do what oth­ers want me to do.”

Besides, the unknown is so… scary.

Well, have a look at your life. If you love it exactly as it is, keep doing what you’re doing. If all of it or aspects of it aren’t work­ing, you must pro-actively change something.

There is no other option.

More on this, with spe­cific sug­ges­tions, start­ing next article.