A New Series—On Cling­ing

The remain­ing arti­cles in this series:

6– body rules and ill­nesses
7– trau­mas
8– habits
9– emo­tions
10– ide­olo­gies

Hey there,

It’s been some time since I wrote just to say hi and to make a rec­om­men­da­tion. So, “Hi!” Dar­bella and I are well, inspired, and enjoy­ing life here in sunny Canada. We’re close to deci­sion time regard­ing retir­ing to another place, and have just begun a new project, which may impact that deci­sion. We will let you know what we decide, mid March.

Sec­ond, about a book, and a writer. Some years ago we were wan­der­ing in the book­store of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and Dar found a book by Sarah Susanka. She’s and archi­tect, and we fell in love not only with her designs, but with her approach to life.
The orig­i­nal book was called “The Not so Big House.” The book
keys on the idea that more space means more junk. Effi­cient and ele­gant use of space is wisdom.

I’m read­ing her lat­est, and this one is about us as peo­ple. It res­onates with every­thing I write. It’s called “The Not so Big Life.” I rate this book a must read. She takes the anal­ogy of design­ing a house and applies it to liv­ing one’s life with sim­plic­ity, integrity, and clar­ity.
She sees through the games, the movies in our heads, and cuts to the chase — when will you stop re-arranging the fur­ni­ture, and open up the ‘house’ that is your life?

Check it out! You’ll be glad you did!

Rela­tion­ships 101

A while back, I got into writ­ing chakra arti­cles, and got as far as com­pos­ing 4 out of 7. The arti­cle on the sec­ond chakra mostly con­cerned using mas­sage to release blocked energy, and is likely worth a read. I men­tion this because the sec­ond chakra is the “Rela­tion­ships Chakra” and we’re talk­ing about ele­gant relat­ing. I want to explore how we cling to rela­tion­ships, and how cling­ing, in gen­eral, is the cause of our distress.

Here’s the open­ing para­graph from the Body­works sec­tion article:

The sec­ond Chakra is the rela­tion­ships Chakra. It’s about rela­tion­ships to any­thing – peo­ple, objects, even money. The energy here is a com­bi­na­tion of “relat­ing,” sen­su­al­ity, sex­u­al­ity and passion.

If the energy is blocked in this area, the lan­guage is usu­ally, “I feel dead from the waist down.” There is a heav­i­ness to the area, and press­ing on the lower belly might be painful. The per­son with blocked energy here might have issues around the lower GI, or with the lower back or with the sex­ual organs. Block­ages in this area also lead to loss of inter­est in sex.

Let’s unpack a bit.

First of all, a rela­tion­ship is not a thing.

Cou­ples often tell me, “I want to work on our rela­tion­ship. I typ­i­cally look around the room, then look con­fused, and finally say, “OK, I’ll work on it… but where is it? Can you bring it along the next time? Because at the moment, all I see are two indi­vid­u­als, who appar­ently have trou­ble relat­ing.”

Some­times they laugh, some­times they don’t.

That doesn’t change my point. I have no per­ma­nent rela­tion­ship with any­thing. All there ever is, is how I am act­ing, right now, toward the per­son, place or thing.

Relat­ing, then, is an activ­ity, not a state.

Cling­ing is never a phys­i­cal, ‘real,’ for­ever thing. Oh, sure, you can grab hold of some­one and call that cling­ing, but that’s still a momen­tary event.

Cling­ing is always to a belief.

Now, there are only three ‘times,’ and two of them are an illu­sion—past, present, future. The present (this end­less moment) is real, and is the only place any of us have ever lived. Past and future are totally, com­pletely imag­i­nary.

Surely not! I have a past! An identity!

I did a work­shop this past week, for injured work­ers. I’m pulling a resource together for this and Dar­bella and I are hav­ing as riot com­ing up with tools and meth­ods to help. I men­tioned to the work­ers that much of their suf­fer­ing comes from cling­ing to their past—to “how they imag­ine they were, prior to injury,” and cling­ing to the future—to their imag­in­ings of “how the pain will be unre­lent­ing and get worse.” One woman walked out at that point, and told some­one she hated me. Because I had the audac­ity to chal­lenge her story—her misery.

Funny. I thought she was there to change her rela­tion­ship to her injury and pain, not sup­port it. But cling­ing to one’s story is a pow­er­ful drug.

Here’s how cling­ing works.

You have a pic­ture in your mind of ‘how things should be.’ The ‘thing’ can be a per­son, place, or object. So, it might be, “Here is how my hus­band should be.” This pic­ture in your head is quite real-seeming and fleshed out. You have spent decades cre­at­ing this pic­ture of how another should be, and you hold your pic­ture to be both true and real.

It’s nei­ther.

It’s no dif­fer­ent than the imag­in­ings of direc­tors of Hol­ly­wood movies. Even the most real­is­tic are inven­tions. As are doc­u­men­taries, which always present the bias of the director/writer. As does this blog, which is totally and com­pletely a reflec­tion of my biases.

Noth­ing you remem­ber of the past, and noth­ing you imag­ine of the future is true. It’s a movie.

Until you get this, you are well and truly stuck in your drama, and are thus con­demned to cling.

Back to “the hus­band” in my illus­tra­tion. How he is, is how he is, right now, and if I am with him, I get to relate to him, not to my imag­ined ver­sion. Now, we are pre­dictable, to a cer­tain extent, mostly because we’re bor­ing, stuck, sti­fled peo­ple, but that’s beside the point. I may know what “he” has done in the past, but that, in and of itself, is no predictor.

What I do know is this: if I deal with him as I always have, the odds are the same thing is going to happen.

Now, if I am invested in my story of how he ought to be—“everyone knows how a hus­band ought to act!”— then I am no longer present with the per­son in front of me. He is com­pared to my imag­in­ings, and comes up short. I then begin a cam­paign to get him to become who I imag­ine he ought to be.

Con­tin­ued below

This pat­tern applies to everything—to how I relate to money—“I should be able to spend more, more, more!” To my sex life—“How much, how var­ied, with whom, etc.” To my job or career—“I should be get­ting more, and every­one at work should cut me slack.” 

In other words, there is the ‘thing’ out there, which I can choose, in the moment, to relate to, and there is the story about the ‘thing’ I have in my head.

Always, there is a story, and a real­ity.

If I choose to cling to my story, pre­tend­ing what’s in my head is real, I will suffer.

If I choose to relate, in the moment, to the per­son, place, or object I am relat­ing to, there may be dif­fi­cul­ties, but I will not suf­fer.

I will not suf­fer because I am not expect­ing any­thing other than ‘what is.’

Is it pos­si­ble to live this way?

Yes, it is.

The key is under­stand­ing the movie in your head. You have to com­pletely ‘get’ the con­cept that your sto­ries are not real, are not pre­dic­tive, and are not very valuable.

Now, the sto­ries will be there until you die. We are meaning-making crea­tures, and our meaning-making comes via the films in our heads. Buried in all the sequences are labels, descrip­tions, warn­ings. Our safety depends on know­ing not to step in front of the onrush­ing bus.

Beyond that, sto­ries are just stories.

Real­ity is in the moment, and only involves the present choice. Do I lis­ten or shut down? Do I express curios­ity, or deliver crit­i­cism? Do I stay put or run away? Do I try to keep things “just as they are,” or do I know, deeply, that this is impossible?

This week, as you inter­act with the things with which you relate, notice how the movies start run­ning. Have a breath, and drag your atten­tion back to the moment. Let the sto­ries, the demands, the expec­ta­tions, fade, and just be present, with curios­ity. You may be sur­prised at how much more inter­est­ing the moment becomes.