Developing New Stories To Live By and Nourishing
Our Capacity to Act Out of Wisdom, Compassion, and Love
I began writing this piece prior to the mass shooting in Las Vegas.
This post is dedicated to the victims of this horrific tragedy
and to all who suffer great tragedy and loss everywhere.
****
There are many quotes that hold a great deal of heart and meaning for me, and this is one of them:
DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU THINK
I just ordered a new bumper sticker of this one. For years I had this quote up in my kitchen as a reminder to question reality as I thought I knew it in an ongoing way, and now I'm adding it to the bumper stickers we already have on our Casita (our R-Pod). The ones already up on our trailer, and that I have long had on my car, are these two:
Compassion is the radicalism of our time.― The Dalai Lama
NON-JUDGEMENT DAY IS NEAR
I need these holy reminders. I need them to stay open and fluid in my sense of "reality" rather than fixed and unquestioning. I need the reminder to be aware of when my judging, shaming, blaming, us versus them, critical and condemning mind is being triggered and know that I have another choice, that I can instead choose compassion and to become aware of and to feel my deeper feelings. And, gratefully, I need to remember that we are also in a time that some refer to as the Great Awakening or the Great Turning ― a time when many are becoming aware of and consciously turning away from that which harms and turning toward that which nourishes, heals, awakens and makes whole.
Meanwhile, we humans are having a rough time of it, to say the least. It seems that everywhere we turn there are debates and denials and demonetizations and polarizations. Round and round we go with issue after issue - politics, patriotism, poverty, climate change, healthcare, injustice, incarceration, immigration, racism, religion, refugees, the economy, the environment, the government, gun control, war and peace, LBGTQ rights, corporate rights, human rights, animal rights, the rights of the Earth.
So often our conditioned and unquestioned belief systems are divided in two. You're with us or you're with the terrorists. You're a Republican and you're good/bad, or you're a Democrat and you're good/bad. There are the racists and the non-racists, the patriots and the non-patriots, the climate change believers and the climate change deniers, the gays and the straights, the saved and the unsaved, the winners and the losers, those who live in reality and those who don't.
And what is reality anyway?
My reality today is profoundly different than in 1983. That's when my closest friend, Ann Baker, told me that my husband was an alcoholic. But I didn't know any alcoholics!!! She had to be wrong! Still, and deep bow to the Grace that had me questioning what I believed to be true, Ann suggested I try an Al-Anon meeting - and I did. There I was sitting outside of a Portland church in my car watching people walk inside and thinking I'm not one of those people, those people who know alcoholics. My judging mind was raging and, of course, under all that judging was terrified me, utterly scared to death of opening the door of this church and maybe learning something I didn't want to know.
Sixteen months later I sat in the office of a counselor at an alcohol treatment center in Gresham. I made the appointment for an assessment spontaneously and went before I could talked myself out of it. I had come to a point where I believed that I was either crazy or I was an alcoholic. I'm not sure what I preferred the answer to be. But I had to find out! Damn! And here I'd been trying to do an A+ job in Al-Anon and was working on perfecting detaching with love, whatever in the hell that was, and I had put myself through two treatment programs for spouses and friends of people struggling with addiction. I had equipped myself with books on alcoholism and was working the Al-Anon Steps and doing everything I was supposed to! And, yes, my former husband turned out to be an alcoholic. And so did my parents and his parents and most of my friends. Which eventually led me to this point of not knowing what was real or not real about myself. And then this ATC counselor who sat in front of me had the audacity to ask me what I thought an alcoholic looks like and before I knew it the words just flew out of my mouth with great passion and fury - "Well sure as hell not like Me!!"
My sobriety date is June 19th, 1984. I've been clean and sober ever since. Another deep bow of gratitude. What had begun as a nightmare that threatened everything I knew turned out to be the exact doorway that did indeed change my whole life.
That was the beginning of my discovery that reality can be a funny thing. As human beings, any one of us can be off in our perceptions and belief systems. Actually, and to one degree or another, that's a guarantee. And when we are, we often don't know it. In the very early days when another counselor looked at me and stated that she noticed that I was getting more honest, I was quietly very disturbed by her feedback because I did not know how dishonest I had been. I had no idea. And every piece of new information that painted me in anything other than a positive light was met with the violence, judgment, and shame of my inner critic, the one I used to use to beat up on other people. Now the bats were turned on myself. Shame can be be so overwhelming. And my untouched grief felt like something I could utterly drown in.
There are reasons why we don't want to peak under the layers of our belief systems and question what we believe is true. This process can shake us to our very core. It sure did me. This whole business of growing in honesty, of evolving and questioning, of coming to be passionate about truth-seeking, of opening to a full range of emotions and vulnerability is simply scary as hell. The science tells us that the vast majority of our brain's activity is unconscious. And, again, there are reasons we humans have defenses which cloud our capacity for consciousness. To understand our limitations as human beings, to hold our ignorance with compassion, and to then choose to follow a path in our lives in which we are actively seeking in an ongoing way to make the unconscious conscious takes courage. And a lot of it.
And these times ask of us to cultivate courage. And beginners mind and open heart. And we're asked, I believe, to shift from our focus on a fixed reality to a focus on a profound commitment to truth. This commitment to truth guarantees, as they say in 12 Step programs, that "more will be revealed."
Where I sit today, I am humbled with the awareness that there is always a new veil to lift and fog to clear that reveals, with compassion, both my ignorance and my increased clarity. This is the journey of remembrance of what I have forgotten, what we all, to one degree or another, forget through our cultural conditioning and unconscious generational family legacies and other life experiences that have caused us, often completely without our knowing, to build walls around our hearts and minds. It is a very brave thing to do to take down the KEEP OUT! sign again and again that we've unconsciously erected to keep out what is not familiar and beckons us instead to explore new and unexplored territory. This is also the path in which we are continuously offered the opportunity to grow in our capacity to love.
Where I sit today, I am humbled with the awareness that there is always a new veil to lift and fog to clear that reveals, with compassion, both my ignorance and my increased clarity. This is the journey of remembrance of what I have forgotten, what we all, to one degree or another, forget through our cultural conditioning and unconscious generational family legacies and other life experiences that have caused us, often completely without our knowing, to build walls around our hearts and minds. It is a very brave thing to do to take down the KEEP OUT! sign again and again that we've unconsciously erected to keep out what is not familiar and beckons us instead to explore new and unexplored territory. This is also the path in which we are continuously offered the opportunity to grow in our capacity to love.
Over these years I have discovered that the collective and the individual are interwoven and mirrors of each other. If we believe that we are rooted in reality and that this reality is solid and fixed, we are likely to be drawn to those friendships, partners, politics, resources of information, etc. that confirm our reality. So, for instance, we can be utterly convinced that we're on the good side in our alignment with Donald Trump or with Hillary Clinton. We might believe that FOX or that NPR is always the one that gives us the facts and truth that we need to know. We can be sure that patriots are not racists or that all those who say they're conservative are. We can be sure that we know everything about climate change or we can be sure that global warming is a hoax. We can believe that some millionaire philanthropist will save us or that this same millionaire philanthropist is dooming us and has liberals wrapped around his finger. And the list of black/white, either/or, us versus them thinking goes on and on.
Awareness that everything is impermanent, on the contrary, puts everything on its head. Reality is no longer fixed, it's fluid and shifting and changing. And with a strong intention to question and explore comes this humility of oh my God, I had it so wrong! Being so sure and in the know and "right" can now slide into deep disillusionment and also the opportunity to grow in humility, compassion, and consciousness.
I certainly went through this time and again as I've found the courage and support to allow many aspects of the world as I'd known it to be to fall out from under me. This happened to me as I actively sought to learn about addiction and gradually came to understand that, although I'd been immersed in an environment of active addiction my whole life, I had not seen it. It happened when George Bush declared in the wake of 9-11 that "they attacked us for our freedom." I knew in my deepest self that this was not true, but I also had no idea in the world why 9-11 happened. So I was propelled to follow those threads and to this very day, more and more is revealed about our country that I had had no idea about. This happened in the wake of the election of Barack Obama, someone I had worked to get elected. Then friends who know more than I did began to share the reality that so many of his campaign promises not only were not happening, but the opposite was. And this happened when my severely mentally ill mother, who had been incapable of love, began to gradually awaken and open her heart at age 87 - something I was so positive was utterly and completely impossible.
Don't believe everything you think!
Life is so different and amazing and shifting and changing when we nurture curiosity and a passion for truth, wherever it may lead. It is a profound experience to come to recognize that we are not who we believed ourselves to be AND that we can grow more whole, more compassionate, more loving. This is not about self improvement. This is about shedding our protective armor and unhealthy layers of misperceptions and harmful beliefs and instead becoming who we more wholly are. And the honest truth is that being in the middle of a "growth spurt" can also be painful and disorienting and scary. Consequently, we humans also need support and encouragement and teachers and mentors and those who inspire us to keep moving forward. Peeling back the layers of our illusions, making the unconscious conscious, doing this shadow work also gifts us with connection with an inner strength that we would never know was there if we remained on the seemingly safe soil of familiarity and feedback loops that only serve to confirm rather than question our reality.
And it is my belief and my experience on both a personal and professional level that we humans all fall somewhere on a continuum, which is something very different from the rigidity of black or white thinking. Rather, I believe, we can take heart in seeing ourselves and others as falling somewhere between this or that, all or nothing. This gives space for insight, growth, evolution, and becoming more fully who we are.
These are some of the areas that I have been actively exploring within myself for many years now. I have found it incredibly illuminating to consciously look with tenderness and compassion, and in an ongoing way, as to where I fall in these different interconnected areas and to nurture and strengthen the qualities I most seek to embody. Again, I also believe we humans all fall somewhere on these continuums:
I certainly went through this time and again as I've found the courage and support to allow many aspects of the world as I'd known it to be to fall out from under me. This happened to me as I actively sought to learn about addiction and gradually came to understand that, although I'd been immersed in an environment of active addiction my whole life, I had not seen it. It happened when George Bush declared in the wake of 9-11 that "they attacked us for our freedom." I knew in my deepest self that this was not true, but I also had no idea in the world why 9-11 happened. So I was propelled to follow those threads and to this very day, more and more is revealed about our country that I had had no idea about. This happened in the wake of the election of Barack Obama, someone I had worked to get elected. Then friends who know more than I did began to share the reality that so many of his campaign promises not only were not happening, but the opposite was. And this happened when my severely mentally ill mother, who had been incapable of love, began to gradually awaken and open her heart at age 87 - something I was so positive was utterly and completely impossible.
Don't believe everything you think!
Life is so different and amazing and shifting and changing when we nurture curiosity and a passion for truth, wherever it may lead. It is a profound experience to come to recognize that we are not who we believed ourselves to be AND that we can grow more whole, more compassionate, more loving. This is not about self improvement. This is about shedding our protective armor and unhealthy layers of misperceptions and harmful beliefs and instead becoming who we more wholly are. And the honest truth is that being in the middle of a "growth spurt" can also be painful and disorienting and scary. Consequently, we humans also need support and encouragement and teachers and mentors and those who inspire us to keep moving forward. Peeling back the layers of our illusions, making the unconscious conscious, doing this shadow work also gifts us with connection with an inner strength that we would never know was there if we remained on the seemingly safe soil of familiarity and feedback loops that only serve to confirm rather than question our reality.
And it is my belief and my experience on both a personal and professional level that we humans all fall somewhere on a continuum, which is something very different from the rigidity of black or white thinking. Rather, I believe, we can take heart in seeing ourselves and others as falling somewhere between this or that, all or nothing. This gives space for insight, growth, evolution, and becoming more fully who we are.
These are some of the areas that I have been actively exploring within myself for many years now. I have found it incredibly illuminating to consciously look with tenderness and compassion, and in an ongoing way, as to where I fall in these different interconnected areas and to nurture and strengthen the qualities I most seek to embody. Again, I also believe we humans all fall somewhere on these continuums:
Unconscious --------------------------- Conscious
Self absorbed --------------------------- Altruist
Closed-hearted --------------------------- Open-hearted
Withholding --------------------------- Generous
Bitter --------------------------- Forgiving
Judgmental --------------------------- Compassionate
Hateful --------------------------- Loving
Dishonest --------------------------- Honest
Fearful --------------------------- Courageous
Shaming/shameful --------------------------- Tender
Ignorant --------------------------- Awakened
Delusional --------------------------- Aware
Oblivious --------------------------- Mindful
Triggered --------------------------- Accountable
Addicted --------------------------- Fully present
Shutting out --------------------------- Accepting
Clinging --------------------------- Letting Go
Rigid --------------------------- Flexible
Serious --------------------------- Playful
Hardened --------------------------- Belly Laughter
Projecting --------------------------- Owning our projections
Cruel --------------------------- Kind
Separate --------------------------- Connected
Dehumanizing --------------------------- Caring for all
Guarded --------------------------- Vulnerable
Small circle of caring ----------------- Expansive circle of caring
Unconscious implicit/explicit biases --------------- Introspective
Shut down --------------------------- Wholehearted
Dis-eased --------------------------- Peaceful
Cold --------------------------- Nurturing
Lost --------------------------- Sense of purpose
False self --------------------------- Being one's authentic Self
Resisting --------------------------- Allowing
Limited emotions ------------------------Full range of emotions
Unaware of life lessons --------------------------- Alchemist
Stuck in suffering ----------------------- Transforming Suffering
Blaming --------------------------- Being Peace
Acting out --------------------------- Healing
Wounded --------------------------- Whole
Resentful --------------------------- Grateful
Contracting --------------------------- Evolving
On my deathbed, I am truly hoping that I will know in my deepest being that I did all I could do in my lifetime to embody that which is rooted in consciousness, compassion, wisdom, and love. I don't want to be left with if onlys, as my twin brother wrote about in a poem before he committed suicide at age 26. When the question comes to me, Did I love well?, I want to answer authentically and honestly YES. Which is why I hold this question in my daily awareness today and every day. Did I love well? This may seem like an easy question to ask and answer. But it is not.
We truly are at a time in our human evolution where we are given this opportunity to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization. And, first, I believe that there is this essential question: What is our relationship with our own heart? If we don't go there, if we don't slow down and open to our heart's wisdom in a consistent way, we're not going to be able to see and hear and understand the depths of what is held in the hearts of others. What I was told in the early years of my sobriety, healing, and awakening is wise and true - we will only go as deep with other human beings, and in how we live our lives, as we first go within ourselves. If we're so sure that we have our shit together, we're not going to be open to learning how it is that we don't.
We truly are at a time in our human evolution where we are given this opportunity to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization. And, first, I believe that there is this essential question: What is our relationship with our own heart? If we don't go there, if we don't slow down and open to our heart's wisdom in a consistent way, we're not going to be able to see and hear and understand the depths of what is held in the hearts of others. What I was told in the early years of my sobriety, healing, and awakening is wise and true - we will only go as deep with other human beings, and in how we live our lives, as we first go within ourselves. If we're so sure that we have our shit together, we're not going to be open to learning how it is that we don't.
And, believe me, I get it that it's not easy to begin to let go of really believing that I'm right and you're wrong. That was my whole reality for the first many years of my life. Then people started saying things. (Molly, Jim [my former husband] is an alcoholic. Molly, well people don't marry sick people. Molly, it's important that you not drink during this time in counseling. Molly, I believe that you are living from the neck up. You're going to need to make that long journey from your head to your heart. Molly, you're going to need to do shadow work. Molly, you're also emotionally unavailable. Etc., etc., etc.) The miracle is that I listened and couldn't shake their words. God/Goddess/Mystery/Spirit works through the people whose paths cross ours. And these potential teachers can bless us with both painful and joyful lessons. We also can't receive the joyful ones without opening to the other, darker, scary and disturbing ones. Joy and sorrow are deeply interwoven.
Maintaining some sense of humor and humility in this process is something I have also found to be essential. Otherwise we can just beat ourselves to death when we begin to uncover our implicit biases and recognize that we have racist belief systems after all. Or we can pummel ourselves with shame when we recognize yet another layer of a different form of ignorance. It is so important to learn now to be gentle with ourselves as we begin to pull those outwardly pointing fingers back and are confronted with the temptation to then turn our judgments upon ourselves. There is a big difference between our judging minds and the need to make judgment calls based on the discernment of our wiser selves. It is helpful, I have found, to also offer ourselves reminders that we've all had experiences of being conned, we've all bought into bullshit, we've all suffered from our own delusions and ignorance, and that nobody - short of the most evolved humans alive - has their shit together. No, we just don't. And we can laugh and cry together at our human folly, with these photos illuminating some of what even the most intelligent among us have been swept up into...
Maintaining some sense of humor and humility in this process is something I have also found to be essential. Otherwise we can just beat ourselves to death when we begin to uncover our implicit biases and recognize that we have racist belief systems after all. Or we can pummel ourselves with shame when we recognize yet another layer of a different form of ignorance. It is so important to learn now to be gentle with ourselves as we begin to pull those outwardly pointing fingers back and are confronted with the temptation to then turn our judgments upon ourselves. There is a big difference between our judging minds and the need to make judgment calls based on the discernment of our wiser selves. It is helpful, I have found, to also offer ourselves reminders that we've all had experiences of being conned, we've all bought into bullshit, we've all suffered from our own delusions and ignorance, and that nobody - short of the most evolved humans alive - has their shit together. No, we just don't. And we can laugh and cry together at our human folly, with these photos illuminating some of what even the most intelligent among us have been swept up into...
And while we may laugh and cry, may we also remember again and again that ignorance is not something that afflicts just those "idiots" over there. We can instead choose to intervene on ourselves, put down the bats, and again and again and again feed and nourish our capacity for compassion and humility. From this tender and courageous openness emerges the recognition and remembrance that being human means we that all have our blind spots, we all have been wounded in life, we all have engaged in hurtful belief systems and actions, and each of us can benefit from seeking to continue to evolve and learn and grow, no exception. I hold this deep compassion today knowing that we humans are all born into families and communities and cultures which, to one degree or another, have encouraged both our wisdom and our falling asleep, our strengths and gifts and our shame and fear, our connectedness with all of life and our separation, our critical and judging mind and the nurturing of our compassionate and wise heart. If we are alive and breathing, there are more veils to lift that have obstructed our clarity and our capacity for kindness, caring, compassion, and love.
From my perspective today, all of the individual and collective, national and planetary challenges and crises are interwoven. They are not separate but are part of a great web of sickness that plagues our species and all of life. This sickness is revealing itself and speaking to the need to awaken and heal and evolve. Each is a symptom of something much larger than our corporate media points to, much larger than our normalized cultural belief systems, and much greater than the fragmented and polarizing stories that so many of us have come to believe are reality.
What is reality? What is truth? What is our relationship with our own heart and the Great Heart that connects us all? Depending upon where we fall on the continuums of being human, we are going to see more or less of a more expansive vista. We will look at the horrific mass shooting from last night and follow the news stories which ask why did this one man kill and injure so many people - but with questions emerging only from a safe and limited perspective, not ones that could trigger something much more uncomfortable and profound. Or we will take it upon ourselves individually and collectively to look more deeply with the awareness of the imperative to connect the dots between mass shootings and warming oceans and Black Lives Matter and tweet wars and real wars and whether or not our hearts and minds are open and expanding or not so much.
There is this life-death-rebirth that is trying to happen on Earth. We are trying to birth something beyond what we humans have known before. I believe in our capacity to evolve, that humankind is not doomed to remain in its adolescence. I have lived my own incredible journey of waking up for the past 30+ years now, I have watched my own crazy mother become sane, I have watched human beings courageously learning how to open their hearts and explore territory within themselves and this beautiful world that is foreign and scary and so vital to embrace and come to know. We can do this. We can. Let us seize this glorious opportunity to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization.
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