—  Joseph Grant, Wandering and Welcome

The part about a collision-course with Grace sounds great, but wait, did you notice that other line in there? “The handover of self…” That is where true spiritual practice gets real and downright hard. And also truly worth it. When we hand over our self–our agendas, our identities, our worries and fears–we end up not so much on a collision-course, but floating in grace. Every moment becomes an opportunity to experience grace in all of its wondrous and challenging forms. However it shows up, it is there for your best, your highest. For your transformation.

How to hand over your self? The answer is very simple. You must surrender. The practice of surrender is simple but hard work. Over time, surrender becomes easier and easier and is your direct route to transformation.

Are you ready to surrender?

How are you already practicing surrender? What do you need to let go of that is no longer serving you?

Simple practice: Whenever you notice an emotional charge in your body (examples are conflict, fear, worry or self-judgment, anger, frustration) imagine that you are holding that situation in both hands. Now close your hands around the situation holding it tightly in your closed fist. Stay in this position for at least a full minute. How does it feel to hold on to the situation like this? What is it like in your hands? How about the rest of your body? Now slowly allow your hands to open. Notice the difference in how your body feels as you gently unfold your fingers. Now imagine the situation simply resting in your two palms. You aren’t asking the situation to leave. You are holding it in an open stance. Not trying to fix it. Not trying to push it away.

Now imagine that Grace flows in and covers your situation. Now you are holding both Grace and the situation in your surrendered hands. Ask Grace to affect this situation. Invite God, in whatever form is helpful, to hold this situation with you.

THIS is the practice of letting go. Did you notice that we didn’t force the situation away? It is still our situation. It is still our reality. In the practice of turning our situation over, we also hand our self over to Love. When we do that, we open the channel of grace. And we can rest there. As we surrender, as we rest, even for the space of a few breaths, we come into our true selves, our truest being. From this place, we will know how to respond to what is happening. Here we can ask ourselves, who/how do I want to BE in this situation? What is wanting to happen here? Listen deeply. Your knowing will flow in like Grace.

In Love,

Rebecca

Photo by Colton Sturgeon on Unsplash

I wanted to write and thank everyone again for being so willing to try something new in class that involved embodiment. When we plan an activity for the group, we consider three questions: Why, What, and How. And as a former teacher, I often think in terms of outcomes: what would I want the seekers to be able to understand and do? With all that in mind I want to remind you of what we tried in class last Wednesday. Hopefully, this will encourage you to be in the Out! 

Erika shared the beautiful words of John O’Donohue reminding us all that we belong and that we practice in the space of love. I notice that when I enter into the Zoom space for our Wednesday night gatherings, I feel relaxed (heartbeat regular, shoulders down and not tense) and also eager (my lungs feel full of air and open, and I notice my body wants to wiggle). Those are the sensations I have in my body when I get to belong in a space of love with you all. 

Next we all shared examples of how love and fear can show up as sensations in our bodies. Many of us talked about feeling a constriction in the chest when we felt fear. Or a warmth in our body when we felt love. 

And Erika shared in a post in our network that for her for a long time love caused her body to shake. We can have a myriad of body responses to love, fear, and all the many emotions we feel. 

The rest of the time we spent dropping into the body with exercises and doing some noticing. 

The Why of this practice was to intentionally focus on the changing sensations in our bodies by engaging with our TLC partners, so that we could be more cognizant of emotions and thoughts that come up in real-time. This is presence. Ego relaxation can ONLY happen if we are present in our bodies. Being only in the mind–thinking–will not support quieting the ego. The ego loves to drive us into over-thinking. This is how the ego believes it can keep us distracted and safe. 

The What and How involved playing around with focusing on sensations in different parts of our body: What does the back of my left knee feel like? What does my right shoulder feel like? What does the top of my head feel like? We then partnered up to mimic stances held by our partners and to respond with a pose, pulling us into our bodies and our noticing even more. 

What I had hoped to open up in you all is the idea that lack of awareness or presence means we have a lack of choices. When we are not grounded in our bodies, and our minds are in charge that can make us reactive machines. Or paralyzed ones. 

If depression is related to being angry about being stuck in the past, and anxiety is about being stuck in the future (both limited ways of being), then being present is about being in the moment, which means being aware of our bodies, our thoughts, and the world around us. This is a world of infinite possibility. 

Erika’s post about how her body responded to love in the past helped me to see something I hadn’t thought about with some of the embodiment exercises. I realized that when we do drop into our body (even during a light-hearted exercise) sometimes the sensation is pain–emotional, physical, psychological, etc.  And we can go into resistance about feeling that and fly right back out of the body again. 

When talking with Erika about this, she mentioned that maybe it would be good to encourage you all to invite in sensations that feel good. And spend more time noticing when things feel good, in preparation for when we feel pain. If we hang out in our bodies when we feel pleasure, maybe the practice will help us want to stay in presence with pain too. 

Here are some suggestions for inviting in sensations that feel pleasurable: 

Feel the touch of your bed-sheet or the weight of the covers on your body. 

Slow down to really taste the sweetness of a dessert. Stay with presence for every bite.

Stay present with a hug from a loved one. Don’t rush out of the embrace. 

When you are in a good mood, notice what sensations are happening in different regions of your body. 

Conversely, it may also be helpful to notice sensations without labeling them as good or bad. For example, when I am hiking hard, I try not to think about how my body is “hurting” (no labeling), and just notice. This is what it sounds like in my self-talk, “You are breathing deeply. Your muscles feel warm. There is a sharp twinge in your left knee when you take a deep step up.” This way I’m less likely to go into resistance and let ego tell me that I’m having a certain kind of experience that I don’t want to have: uncomfortable, painful, etc. 

How might you drop into your body more this next week? What are you noticing? Can you resist the thinking and the labeling and spend more time noticing? How is this helpful? 

The reason we work with embodiment (presence) in TLC is because being in the body is the entry-way to awareness. All we need is contained in presence. 

In the life of the spirit, our spiritual journey, we will be invited into this territory over and over again. Sometimes it will be a thrilling adventure. Other times it may feel like the emotional and spiritual equivalent of slogging through deep mud. Always, there will be not knowing, some discomfort, and a sense that you are in unfamiliar territory. (We aren’t in Kansas any more, Toto!)

I adore this quote from Dr. Barbara Holmes who was one of the keynote speakers at a recent Spiritual Companions International conference. “Safety is an illusion. Journey is our only option.” She is speaking to those who have already placed their feet firmly on the path of transformation. At some point in the journey, it begins to feel like there is no option, no turning back, no standing still. The only way is forward in response to the repeated gentle whisper of the Divine. “This way, my beloved. Come with me. Come toward me.” Ever nearer to Love. Each step closer to unity with All That Is.

I myself am currently once again stepping into an unfamiliar territory. While I am very sure it is in response to God’s loving call, this territory seems full of darkness and shadow. My knees and legs are shaky. My heart filled with trepidation. My mind tries to make sense of it all. My ego insistently tells me that I am here alone. The still small voice whispers, We’re in this together. I’ve got you. Let go. Let go. I will do all that needs doing.

To walk into the wilderness and then to surrender there requires great trust. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have enough. It is then that I look behind me. Yes, there is the path that I have traveled. There are all of the moments that have led to NOW. And I have always, always been caught. I have been held. Healed. Each time I am caught and held my trust grows. This is not to say AT ALL that I have not suffered. I have. And I have suffered greatly. But I have never suffered from surrender and trust. The Grace that allows me to surrender and to trust has always, always caught me.

This offering from Rumi contains such beauty and wisdom. In terms of our being able to enter into the land of our true self and the transformation we seek, I think that the “secret formula” is in the last word in the poem.

A Necessary Autumn Inside Each

You and I have spoken all these words, but as for the way we have to go,

words are no preparation.  There is no getting ready other than grace.

I have one small drop of knowing in my soul.  Let it dissolve in your ocean. 

Inside each of us, there’s continual autumn.  Our leaves fall and are blown out

over the water. A crow sits in the blackened limbs and talks about what’s gone.

Then, your generosity returns: spring, moisture, intelligence, 

the scent of the hyacinth and rose and cypress. Joseph is back! And if you don’t feel in yourself the freshness of Joseph, be Jacob! 

Weep and then smile. Don’t pretend to know something you haven’t experienced.

There’s a necessary dying, and then Jesus is breathing again. 

Very little grows on jagged rock.  

Be ground.

Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are.

You’ve been stony for too many years.  

Try something different. 

Surrender. 

Rumi

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.

Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

A while back I was having coffee with a group of friends when the topic of A Game of Thrones came up. No one else at the table was watching it yet but I was hooked. When they asked if I recommended it, the advice that I gave was not to start. There were too many negatives about it…mostly its focus on power at all costs and extreme violence and torture.

The group’s appropriate followup question was not a surprise. “Why are you watching it then”? I thought for a moment, wondering the same thing. My reply was a single word: Dragons.

I had given up on GOT in the middle of the first season for the above reasons. But, after viewing the last episode of season 1 my husband said, “Just watch the last episode. You might change your mind.” This scene was, of course, the scene in which Danerys “births” her three dragons. I was in. There was no way for me to get out now. I endured another 8 seasons almost solely to get a glimpse of those amazing creatures. What is it about me and dragons? At the time, I had no idea but I am starting to get a glimpse. Rilke’s advice to a Young Poet helps.

Something in me resonated very powerfully with the archetype of the Mother of Dragons. The one who could (mostly) wield such powerful creatures to take care of her, protect her, and even slay her enemies. I believe that I sensed some sort of that strength in myself as well.

I have had a lot of fear in my life, mostly exhibiting itself as anxiety and worry. The dragons that I feared lived in the future, ready to swoop down at any moment to swallow me whole or burn my whole life down. I believed that I needed to “fight back” in kind, to don a protective armor and then to marshal my own army of dragons to do battle with the fear. So I fought the fear. For a long time.

Slowly, over many awakenings, I came to truly know what Rilke is saying in the quote above. I wasn’t battling against some external assaulting force. I was attacking myself. And I was no ravaging, roaring monster. “I” was a frightened and vulnerable little girl who hadn’t been protected from the dragons of her childhood. No knight in shining armor had rode in to save me. I had been wounded. And that wound had yet to heal. The way to healing was not returning violence with violence. The way to healing was to allow myself to BE LOVED. To drop the armor, call off the dragons, and allow God to truly, completely, deeply love me and thus, to love myself.

Here, on the other side of that healing, I feel truly like the Mother of Dragons. One dragon is Green. She is the dragon of compassion. She protects the hearts of all of the wounded ones. One of the dragons is Golden. She is the dragon of beauty and of grace. Always flowing in to lift up what has fallen. And one dragon is Black. The deepest darkest black. She is the dragon of Not Knowing. Of Mystery. And Surrender. These three dragons have my back. They allow me to love the deepest unloved parts of myself and to love All That Is with all of our Power.

Inquiry is the practice of inwardly exploring, wondering, investigating, and searching.  In the bible Jesus said, “Seek and you will find.  Knock and the door will be opened.”  Inquiry is an inner seeking and a gentle knocking at the door of our truest self.   

Inquiry is rooted in listening. Deep listening.  Imagine Sherlock Holmes “listening for” the clues, the facts.  In the same way, we can be the private detective of our Self, our Soul.  

Two methods of inquiry that we use in Transformational Listening is (1) the four questions that comes from the process that Byron Katie calls The Work and (2) Alan Seale’s Four Levels of Awareness and Engagement.  

The Four Questions

The Four Questions are best used when we have a strong recurrent thought such as, “I shouldn’t be….” or “I should be…or ”they are.…” or “I am…”  usually followed by a judgment. 

When we see that we are stuck in a thought–it keeps recurring–we can use these four steps to inquire into our experience to shift out of the stuck place and free up space to be who we actually want to be.

I will practice with my current recurrent thought.  I have been having tech issues for the past 24 hours and I have had to reset a lot of things AND some of the things that are working now no longer work.  I have been troubleshooting.  I had wanted to spend this day writing and reading.  I feel very disappointed that I used my time in something that seems very unfulfilling to me. 

This morning was a giant waste of my time.

The four questions are: 

Is it true? 

Can you be sure that it is true?  

What happens when you engage that thought?  

How/Who are you without that thought? 

Okay.  Here I go.

Is it true? 

Well…it feels true.  (I think this is probably the most common answer to this first question.)

Can you be sure that it is true?

No. For all I know this was the best possible use of my time.  

What happens in my body/mind when I have that thought?  

When answering this question ist is very important that you check in with your mind AND body here.  If you just stay in your head it will likely spin you out into all kinds of “answers”.  

When I engage the thought that I’m not doing enough, I feel tightness and constriction in my muscles.  I feel like I have less room to breathe.  I feel defeated and ineffectual.  I feel like I want to go back to bed. I feel angry.  I feel resentful that it went this way.  I feel frantic to get everything else done that needs to get done. 

Who/How am I without that thought?  

Being in my body allows me to more quickly let go of the thought that is in my mind so that I can truly experience how I am being without the thought.  Without the thought,  I am present.  I feel compassionate toward myself.  I can sense my deep value of attention and stillness coming through. I feel my muscles and belly relax.  I look around and see the sun shining and the snow on the mountains and I feel that one of the most important things that I can do is to simply BE with the beauty around me.  I feel God’s presence coming back in.  

What I love about this process is the juxtaposition and contrast of questions 3 and 4. We get to experience what it feels like with the thought and then to experience what it is like without the thought.  And then, we get to decide.  Which one do we want in our life? Which one will we practice?  Which one will we go toward?  

Very frequently the question we will be working with in this process will come from the ego.  It will almost always involve something that we view as wrong, not quite right, or something that needs fixed.  When we let go of the question in question 4, we also let go of the perspective of the ego. This is the point at which the true self can be heard. It’s as if we have told the ego to wait outside in the hall while we get some input from our true self.  

We can actually use this practice in very small ways as a way to deepen our self understanding.  For instance, a recurrent thought is occurring to me right now.  It is saying:  I am not giving my dog enough attention.  

Is it true?  Can I be sure it’s true?  What happens in my being when I engage that thought? Who/how am I without that thought?  

As I quickly work through this I am less distracted and more present to the work that I am doing here.  I trust that there will be time for everything that needs to be done.  

The Four Levels of Awareness and Engagement

I will very quickly illustrate the 4 levels with the questions we are asking ourselves in each level.  For a deeper dive click here.  

Drama: 

 Whose fault is this?  Who is to blame?  Can you believe this happened?  (External to self.)

Situation:  How can we fix it and how quickly.  (Figure out the problem and then fix it ASAP.)

Choice:  Who do I choose to be here?  What do I choose as my relationship to this situation?  

Opportunity: What wants to happen here?  What is emerging? 

Level One:  Drama

Don’t get too hung up on that word drama.  We aren’t talking about “drama queens” or necessarily highly charged emotional settings although some of us live in that world.  What we do mean is anything in your inner life that keeps you in a tussle, going back and forth.  

My current tussle is the feeling that I don’t have enough time. 

At level one, drama, I am in near constant struggle with internal thoughts and feelings about time and not having enough of it. 

Level Two: Situation

At level 2, I feel this lack of time as an urgent something to fix.  Which I do.  So, my usual way of managing that, and the way that our culture teaches us to manage it, is to come up with a plan.  What am I going to do to make enough time in my life? I can do less. I can find more time. I can get more efficient, etc.  

I think that I have probably spent 80% of my life in level 2.  I am a planner and a problem solver and while it is definitely a cultural “go to” for many or most of us, I feel that I jump to it more readily than most. I feel that it is what I am good at so I spend a lot of time there.

Our inquiry practice invites us to leave aside the fixing and planning for now.  It invites us to level three.

Level Three: Choice

Who/How do I want to be here?  

Turning my gaze inward to my heart-mind and body, I wait for my answer to arise.  As I listen the answer arises spontaneously and with great clarity:  

I want to be in flow. 

When we have clarity about who or how we want to be, our doing can then arise out of our chosen way of being.  When we know how we want to be, we much more quickly arrive at what to do or how to do it.  

Level Four: Opportunity

And now, the fourth question asks us to listen even more deeply and with more subtlety.  It invites us to listen for and be present to what wants to arise.  What our leading edge and growth might be.  Here again, for me, the answer comes simply and quickly.

What wants to arise is a new paradigm for how to be. 

The new paradigm is being in flow rather than checking things off the to do list.  The BE rather than being productive.  And most importantly, the new paradigm has new values.  It values stillness and contemplation.  It values time for listening, waiting and visioning.  It values depth of attention over efficiency.

In this fourth stage, we can surrender to what wants to come.  

In this inquiry process, we have a much greater chance of relaxing ego in levels 3 and 4.  However, as I practice them, I am aware of how easily ego can also sneak in and name “who” I want to be. Actually, more likely who I think I “should” be.   And without quite a relaxed ego we will not truly be able to listen in a way that we can hear what wants to arise out of level 4.  It’s very important to let go and relax into this inquiry.  Let go of our expectations and criticisms of ourselves so that we can hear what is actually true.  

Watch your mind.  Where do you see tussle or drama?  Where do you see a recurrent demanding or strong thought?  When you notice them, inquire with them.  And let your Circle know what you are experiencing so that we can continue to grow together.  

Most of our mind knows that we are eternal, but there is one small splinter which is haunted by distance and exile.

If we can bring that splinter home, we can be one in God again.

And once we taste the God presence, nothing else will ever satisfy.

John O’Donohue, Walking on the Pastures of Wonder

Photo by Charles Etoroma on Unsplash

— Source Unknown

We are aware of the power that story and storytelling have had in our lives personally and how another person’s story can awaken our hearts and minds to new and different realities.   And, we are also aware that we have stories that we can get stuck in.  We can use the metaphor of a pair of  “story glasses” that we are continually looking through at the world around us.  Our glasses project our story onto the rest of the world.  The big problem with story glasses is that WE ARE ALL wearing them AND we all have different “story glasses” on, causing us to only see our own view of the world.  And the biggest problem?  Almost none of  us know that we are wearing story glasses.  We think that everyone sees the same story.  Our story! Acting out of our belief that our story is real, right and true keeps us stuck in our familiar habits and patterns.  When we are in a story,  which story are we telling?  WHO is telling the story? 

For the purpose of this teaching, stories can be sorted into two categories. 

(1) The stories that take us out of ourselves and disconnect us from self and others. These stories keep us blind to our shadow and to deeper truth.  

(2) The stories that draw us inward to look at ourselves and connect us to self and others.  These are the stories that reveal what is actually TRUE.  They shine a light on where we need healing and transformation.  

During our inquiry, as the role of story in the process of transformation emerged and showed us how to differentiate transformational story from separating story, it felt important to more deeply understand connection, how we experience it, and how it transforms us. 

In a recent meeting, our check-in question asked us to share an experience of either connection or disconnection.  As we shared in the circle, it seemed that almost immediately the wisdom began to arise that “in order to connect in the way that people are used to me connecting, I think that I have to leave myself.”  We began to get a glimmer of the idea that we were often disconnecting from ourselves in our usual interactions with others. 

In groups of three, we then deepened into the question “How do we know when we are connected?” using a circling practice in which we kept asking, “What is the deeper question?”. The goal was not to answer the questions, but to simply be explorers of the questions that arose.  In our process, we were trying to get past our story and to access the felt sense and experience of being in connection.   

Our answers to how we know when we are connected will be wildly different depending on if the answer is coming from our story self (ego) or our True Self (soul).

One of the definitions of ego is a separate sense of self.  Ego views itself as separate and therefore, when we view the world through the ego, we believe ourselves to be separate, even if our hearts tell us something different.  Separation is inherent to the ego’s understanding of self.  We believe we are separate from everything else.  Ultimately, in some sense, we all act out the belief that we are alone and that we have to figure out how to take care of ourselves and make it on our own.  

While our egos enjoy the feeling of being separate in terms of being unique and individual, the ego does not like to feel alone, so the ego has to be working constantly to connect.  The ego attempts to connect by making sure you look good and that you act right. It wants people to notice you and give you their approval for your good behavior.  The ego believes that it is connected whenever others find you acceptable.  We all find our own ways of being acceptable in the world.  Ego attempts to connect by being smart, charming, witty, or expert.  Ego connects by being helpful, kind, even indispensable.  It connects through humor and entertaining others.  When you laugh the ego believe that we are connected.  Ego attempts to connect through sensual experiences like great food, an excellent bottle of wine, or satisfying sex.  A good way to understand the many ways that your ego is attempting to connect is to research your Enneagram type.  

The problem with this connection strategy is pretty obvious.   The connection never becomes permanent in any of these instances.  We end up working constantly to stay connected.  It is constant work to be worthy of love.  

The question that arises for me here is: 

When we speak of being connected, what exactly are we connecting to and how do we get connected?   

Most of us tend to think of connection as depicted in the graphic above.  Connection is a straight line that goes from one person or thing to another.  Connection is a direct path from you to me.  W usually assume that to be connected we  must be proximal, close to one another in both space and time.  One of our biggest assumptions about connection is that we are the ones doing the connecting.  We and the people we are with are creating the connection.  

However, 

the great mystics

experts in connection all–

have long known that connection looks more like this: 

A wave  or a single drop of water 

in the great vastness of the ocean.  

All one ocean.  

And yet, 

an individual wave that arises and falls, 

A single drop 

Merging with all other drops. 

And how did the mystics come to that knowing?  They experienced it.  

What would happen to our ability to connect with others if we never forgot that we are truly and irrevocably connected to All That Is? To ALL. That.  Is.  

Q:  What are we connected to?

A:  All that is. (God, the universe, nature, oneness, the Divine.)

Q:  How do we connect?  

A:  You can’t do anything to connect.  It is a given.  You are already connected.  You are in. 

But….because we are human it feels like there is always a BUT.   But, we CAN connect from ourselves.  

The wisdom that the TLC (Transformational Listening Circle) was really connecting to in our inquiry –which became a co-created teaching– is that the way we disconnect from all that is or even from another person, is that we disconnect from ourselves.  There is no possibility of connection with any other being, creature, tree, mountain, stream, rock, sky or ocean without first being in yourself, your True Self.  When you can truly be there, you realize there never was and never will be any such thing as disconnection.  The only thing that can disconnect in this whole universe (as far as we know) is the human mind, which is the dwelling place of the ego.  It believes itself to be separate.  We think ourselves out of connection. 

How do we stay connected to True Self?  

The answer is simple AND requires work and commitment from all of us.  The answer is that we PRACTICE re-connecting to self.  This implies that we WILL dis-connect from ourselves.  We will.  So let’s give ourselves the grace to not expect ourselves to never back out of our lives in some way.  But we can and must add connectional practices into our daily lives.

I would love to hear from all of you, what reconnects you to yourself?  

In the meantime, I encourage this very simple practice which can be practiced many times throughout the day:

Take a deep breath.

As you breathe in, FEEL and experience your body breathing.

Release the breath fully.  

If you are alone, allow yourself to make an AHHHH sound.   

Let that AH draw you all the way down to your feet on the floor.  

Notice the pull of gravity on your feet.  

Say simply: I AM HERE. 

Love and unity to all. 

Rebecca