The secret to being happy in difficult times

There's a song many of us know: it has a happy lilting melody and rhythm and invites us to "Don't worry, be happy." It's a lovely song and reminds us not to become preoccupied with our troubles or difficulties, but to instead, "Don't worry, be happy."

So how do people go about putting this advice into practice? Well I'm going to divide the field into a few categories if I may. There's the distraction and numb out approach; there's the solve the problem approach, and there's the "shift your focus" approach.

As solid, responsible people, let's start with the "solve the problem approach." Sometimes this is great: doing research, getting advice, trying different things with the determination to succeed can accomplish quite a bit. There are in fact many problems or life situations in which progress can be made with this approach. But we also know that in fact in the end, we don't have control over our lives, or our environments, no matter how much we would like to believe we do; for many of us we are faced with this when illness, loss of career or marriage, an accident, etc. confront us with our mortality, with the fragility of life. But even in disaster we don't have to be reduced to the pitiful helplessness of victims.

The 2nd group are those who cope with pain, trauma or difficult situations they are unable to manage or control by seeking relief in distraction or "numbing out" behaviours. Any relief found in ingesting or indulging is temporary and often leads to more issues down the road. These people often end up with very established habits, even addictions, that then become problematic in and of themselves.

Finally, there's the shift your focus approach, with variations I know of in both the East and the West. A teacher I respect more than any other person walking this earth today likes to say, "everything is always changing." He also likes to encourage us to consider feelings as internal weather that comes and goes and also is always changing. This is of course, actually true, it is a perceptual choice to see something as unchanging because we and the universe are in constant flux and motion. The problem is we get stuck in our problems, stuck with a certain understanding of ourselves and others, stuck within our own supposed limitations. For an example of someone who knows the cost of staying stuck, and so never gives up watch this short video of Nick Vujicic, "Are you going to finish strong."

So what keeps us stuck? What prevents us from continuing to work at it until we overcome? It isn't just our beliefs in our limitations or of our helplessness in difficult circumstances, it's also our beliefs about what it takes to be happy. We are unhappy when we don't have we want or believe we need and if we stay focused on the "not having" we can end up paralyzed in depression and despair. However, beliefs can be changed; changing the beliefs changes how you feel; and realizing you are more than your feelings gives you the freedom to let a mood pass instead of being dominated by it. Just like a parent can out wait the feeling storm of their little child all the while loving and holding her or him; we too can out wait our own reactions, calming ourselves down, because sometimes we too just need a little reassurance, even from our adult selves.

Jesus told us the same thing about our place in the universe. He told us that the Creator is our Abba (literally Dadda in Aramaic) and that those who relate to the One in whom we live and move and have our being as a very small child, are in fact living in a whole new reality. This is my experience: being able to simply walk in life like a little child of the One frees me from worrying about many things and certainly reassures me of how loved and special I am. Waking up to the reality of being created children, of not having to understand everything or try to be in control (believing we truly understand or are in control is itself an illusion!), frees me to delight in the little or big things of life as they come along, rather than staying wrapped up in the stuff that in the end does not really matter; or so it seems to me! We can be responsible, do the right action as seems to be best, and yet be unattached to the result as we trust ourselves in Abba's hands!

So don't worry, be happy! You ARE loved, You ARE protected, You ARE provided for if only you can wake up and realize that it's true! :)

Blame, judgment, projection & the spiritual path

This path known by many names but travelled by only a few, this path of surrender, of service, of self-realization, of grace and blessing, this path of transformation for those who have left or are leaving the world behind, this path as it continues to rise up before me weaves its spell of new insight, of self-recognition and in so doing blesses me, and makes me a vehicle of blessing for those around me.

But anyone with the power to bless also has the power to curse, and this perhaps is why Jesus was SO strong on us not judging, not condemning our sisters and brothers but rather forgiving them as part of our walk of love. If there is a needed change, it is in being lovingly accepted that a change is more likely, rather than in having a finger wagged in your face. But, more importantly, this habit, this tendency, this attitude of finding others blameworthy is rooted in our own insecurities, our own fear, even our own self-hatred.

As one who has committed himself to a life of loving service I nevertheless this week increasingly became aware of my own tendencies to judge, complete with righteous anger no less! For example, I’ve been starting to say what I think to some Tweeple on Twitter about how offensive I find their “marketing practices,” as increasingly they are setting up false attractive identities (young woman) as a way of getting you to click on a link/URL that is supposed to take you to this woman’s website but instead gives you some stupid get rich now thing to sign – just type in your email address! But worse are those people who pose as good Christian or spiritual people who really just want to sell you their own get rich quick scheme. I have gone after a few of these people, but then found myself in the messy situation of discussing someone’s way of doing business, of following God and leading their own lives. Perhaps something good will result from such an interaction, but it is a far cry from the satisfaction that comes from calling a spade a spade, especially when it’s someone else’s spade that you are naming!

So where does this feeling of satisfaction come from? In the case of Twitter, I too am a person representing myself to the world through this particular medium and working both on the face I present (trying to be as authentic as possible) and what in fact I have to sell if anything. So even a cursory look inwards turns up all kinds of mixed motivations and ambivalences that find some resolution in finger-pointing.

Then there’s soccer, where I felt righteous enough to take on the new manager of my team, the one I managed last year, but in pursuing Africa left it for someone else to rescue. Having rejoined the team just before the season will start, I reacted strongly to something he said in email about a couple of players. Again there was this telling feeling of satisfaction, and again, of course, stuff to deal with after calling a spade a spade. Speaking the truth in love does not result in self-righteous satisfaction; something else is going on.

But in an even cuter twist that the Spirit, the One in whom we live and move and have our being, the blessed magic of my path, has synchronistically brought to my attention, is this pattern of mine which begins with me, who after all lives in flow, pulling together or allowing to emerge a situation for which I have the vision, I get it, but then others don’t and things fall apart. Here again, I’ve woken up to realize that I badly want someone else to take the fall, if only in my mind, rather than looking at how my way of doing things is not working. I say synchronicity because it so happened that I was confronted with our (Saint Cecilia’s Singers) need to record our upcoming practice and/or performance (see poster), which brought again to mind the failure of the spontaneous recording of our last concert (we never got anything out of it) which I had organized. I felt I should tell our director how is actions had kiboshed the whole thing, which I least had the discretion to do privately. His response included the failures in communication that led to the misunderstanding.

I got an email today as well about how in the end the money sent by a friend to Ghana for supporting the start of our NGO was dispersed to another worthy cause because our NGO is a no go: again I had a vision for how it all should go, the pieces were coming together nicely and then it all fell apart. I so much want to blame someone else!!!

Finally, I’m presently struggling mightily (hmmm, doesn’t sound very flow-like does it?) to get a project I’m managing to come together as I see it . . . but the guys are not seeing it my way, and it has not come together yet. Perhaps now we’ll see how patience, being grounded in everyone’s input, confidence, etc., rather than simply my own and my ability to carry the day (sell water to fishermen) will bring US to that flow. We shall see . . . but returning to the main theme then . . .

It is when my own sense of self, my own ego, is threatened by a failure that implicates me, or by a way of acting that I’m repulsed by but also attracted, it’s the internal need to resolve my own ambivalence by projecting the blame onto another person that makes me feel that satisfaction, that calling a spade a spade that leaves me feeling righteous! There is so much work to do on this path, so much clearing away of illusions, defenses, assumptions, etc., The nice thing about this hard work is that it’s not only the work of an adult taking responsibility for his stuff and supporting other in doing the same, it’s also the work of a beloved child, held and supported by the One, our Abba, learning to love anew, to see anew, and to increasingly be free, free to play and dance lovingly with those I’m given to share this journey.

grace and blessings to you, whatever your path

may you also find yourself held by One! :)

Technorati Tags: spiritual path,judgment,projection,ego,surrender,love,service,blessing,flow,Spirit,the One

The Centre of the Confusion

Some people, like myself, because of some early trauma in life, have developed what Winnicott called a "false self;" one which was constructed to please Mom and other significant people as a way to seemingly guarantee getting one's required care and attention through an attunement to Mom's moods and needs (to the detriment of the normal connection to one's own needs) and the development of pleasing and helpful behaviours. Pleasing Mom or any other significant person like a teacher, spouse, etc., was such a person's way of ensuring their own needs would be met. Such a person, when answering the call to leave all and follow Jesus, to live for others, to live from the heart out of which flows the healing and transforming grace we all need, such a person requires healing and transformation: this includes the unmaking of old patterns, habits, assumptions, motivations, etc., the death of the old self, and the regeneration of a new way of being and doing in the world.

There is however a significant confusion at the centre of the required transformation: I have been blessed enough to have a question put to me three times in the last week or so (twice in the last two days) a question that leaves me both further enlightened and quite confused. Let me explain. The question is a simple one, the first time it was asked it was, "Why do you want to go to Africa so much." The related question that hit the same point was asked in the face of a number of interesting and potentially rewarding opportunities: and it was, "What does your heart say." This simple question is incredibly important, because our Creator, the One in whom we live and move and have our being, the reality that supports our existence in ways we cannot even imagine, inspired Solomon, Israel's wisest king, to say:

"Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart." (Psalm 37.4)

Now I've been delighting myself in our Divine Lover, my Abba (Dadda in Aramaic) for some time now, but when it comes to the desires of my heart, I realize that I am so powerfully drawn to meeting other people's needs, that beyond meeting their needs, I have no idea. What is confusing of course is that I am called into loving service, but if this service is from a "false self" constructed to mitigate trauma and ensure I get what I need, then my drive to serve can be operating from the wrong motivation. Meanwhile my constructed sense of self, the identity that I project to the world, is quite satisfying as I am a humble servant, dedicated to serving others, but in the words of a friend of mine, perhaps also a professional codependent. The key is the motivation.

Now I've been going through a deconstruction of this ego or sense of self, and have therefore been becoming more and more aware of this need to be needed that has driven much of my walk with others over the last year or so: I was never so at peace and so satisfied as when I was helping or supporting others. But as I've become aware of these interior dynamics I have been both ceasing and desisting from reaching for these satisfactions as well as holding my younger self more and more. (Winnicott believed that the provision of a reliable holding environment gave the afflicted person the conditions in which to grow past the false self constructs into a more authentic being: holding simply means being warmly present to.) At the same time I have have also stopped describing with certainty the "inevitable" results of my business activities, developing a certain detachment to my activities, as I continue to simply walk with the ONE and those I'm given.

Now as for the realization that has finally come to rest today as I continue to allow this question to work away at me: "What does my heart say?" You see, as one who is detaching from the need to be needed, I've realized that I really don't know what my heart wants! I am however comfortable with not knowing but holding the experience as I unfold. Now I realize that what makes the many options opening in front of me attractive is what other people see in me: the meeting of their needs, the fulfillment of their desires: there is no stronger tonic for a false self constructed person such as myself. But now I'm not attached to the outcome of any of these potential opportunities, but rather I'm simply walking with the people involved as we find our way to what God has in mind for me, and perhaps for each of them. I know that a key to this will be my discovery of my own "heart's desires," for not only do I delight in Abba, but I am surrendered so that S/He is able to remake my heart according to her/his purposes. My task is simply to BE ME, the loving and beloved child I was created to be, the gift of light and life to those who are seeking.

To say the same thing in a language accessible to those who do not do the divine object thing, say my Buddhist or psychoanalytic friends, what I am doing is taking apart the delusional ego constructs that were developed in response to a traumatic situation. In so doing, I am becoming more aware of who I actually am in the fullest sense of those words. Self-realization must include such a transformational journey, before and/or after the moment of one's awakening. There is every bit the need to drop the old habits and ways of being and doing on these transformation paths as there is on the path of being a disciple of Jesus. In fact, Buddhists, Hindus, followers of Jesus and psychoanalysts all have in common the master/disciple or teacher/student relationship which is often provides the context and support for such self-transformation.

So I say to all who have realized their disenchantment with the world, who have committed themselves to some vision of transforming the world, and have realized to some degree this transformation in themselves, I say, "Walk on sisters and brothers" for we have the grace and power of the universe co-operating with us, supporting us in our unfolding as we become lights on the way for those who are searching for a better way. We recognize each other not so much from the verbal and conceptual constructs we use to frame our self-understanding, our theology, our pictures of the Divine, but rather we recognize in each other people on the path having the same experiences, being transformed in the same manner. I am so blessed to have sisters and brothers from so many different religious and spiritual traditions who are on this path of suffering, renunciation and liberation, surrendered to the greatest horizon of their experience! J

Dazed and confused in the desert :)

I started out without finishing a couple of blog postings in the last few weeks, one of which was entitled "dazed & confused in the desert." I will start my reflections with this one after saying that I am okay if swamped by many things these days. More on that later: first the reflection I started sometime ago that gives you the feel for my ongoing experience and walk.

I've been resonating a lot lately with the Hebrews' exodus and desert experiences: the desert is the place to get Egypt out of you, lonely, uncomfortable and barren yet full of a life of its own. Egypt is of course a handy metaphor for "the world" today, being as most of us living in the world are in its chains (job, social expectations, etc.), and like the rich young man are just not able to drop everything to go with God wherever he calls you. However, sometimes God disrupts our illusory existence by calling us: Moses called Abraham's descendants, Jesus called his disciples, and still calls those today who will in fact drop everything and follow him.

Once you are following, then comes the desert, the confusion of having to relearn everything (dropping old habits and identifications and being refined by the loving but firey finger of the Spirit who unmakes and then reshapes us. You notice how much God's chosen people considered themselves cursed and simply wanted to go back to Egypt? It's not easy wandering in the desert, being undone and remade in the process!So as someone going through this ongoing traumatic yet uplifting experience, (agony and ecstacy being in some ways as close as love and hate it would seem but I digress in perhaps too exaggerated a manner! :) ) I find myself unconsciously grasping at straws to prop up a sense of self: and in fact they keep being offered to me.

One friend has said you're such a wonderful counsellor - you should put out a shingle, another has said you are such a good recruiter (IT) you should be a recruiter. I have people I've met on Twitter asking me to to mentor them. Then there's the opportunities! You see I have a growing number of irons in the fire as I seek for what it is God is leading me into: I don't have a clue whether any will turn out, and suspect that if any do, they will do so in an unexpected fashion. Oh, I tell you, wandering in the desert and seeing what looks like a familiar and hopeful sign is often an illusion, conjured up not so much by water vapour and sunlight, but by my own desires, memories and habits of thinking, as combined with what people see in me.

Until fairly recently I would go around describing what I was doing (therefore in some sense who I am) with reference to this or that possiblity I was persuing, giving them more reality than actually exists simply by use of optimism, enthusiasm and being able to sell water to a fisherman. So now, as I am increasingly overwhelmed with the number of seemingly high quality opportunities, I am also increasingly unattached to the outcome of any of these activities. Rather I try to maintain enough local business (money now) through window cleaning, carpet cleaning & supporting a strong painting/renovation team, while I continue to give the long range opportunities the energy they require, at least as much as I can manage at the time:

• I'm trying to get international development going with growing possibilities in Ghana and Ethiopia but I'm not from that field and only paying attention to it part-time
• I'm being considered for a 6 - 12 month term managing an IT project in Ghana
• I'm working on an opportunity in Oman to do a sustainable cultural eco-tourism strategy as part of InterCulture http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~iculture/eng/index_eng.html
• I've been invited to consider becoming part of a start-up Buddhist University in Taiwan to work in their department of philanthropy
• I'm looking at starting a Software company (search engine for social media sites) and/or a 2nd stage addictions treatment facility combined with a trades business in the Cornwall area
• I'm trying to find work for my Russian IT genius buddy who's currently unemployed
• I'm spending more and more time in Social Media environments like Twitter and Facebook - and as a result getting stronger in the understanding of why to establish a presence there and how to achieve desired results - so I'm starting to advise people on Twitter
• I'm still supporting friends, walking with them, being with them as needed, and, of course still being transformed myself in the process

I'm a sales guy, a counsellor, a mediator, a marketing guy, a business manager and my gifts are in human transformation and finding solutions to complex problems, whatever they might be - because in the end they're all human problems. But I'm also a disciple of Jesus, one who left the world behind to walk to the beat of a different drummer, and yet who is in the world trying to sort out "being in but not of the world." All the while I'm guided by the Spirit, by God-incidences, doors opening and closing, walking without attachment and more and more being unmade and refashioned by that fiery finger of Divine Love.On top of all of this I'm trying to figure out who the hell I am when it comes to presenting myself to the world. I've been experimenting for some time with "Brother Daniel" as a working or stage identity - and thus have that moniker in some social media sites as well as a name for my cleaning business. But as I continue to participate in Twitter, I find myself wondering, who am I, what am I selling, how do I present myself to the world? Of this I am sure, I am certainly a work in progress! :)

So I've stopped blogging and just as it was sometime since my last posting it may be an even longer time before the next one. From a sojourner in the social media corner of the internet to you then, as may best fit you:

Jai Guru Dev
Namaste
Grace and Blessings

Your brother Dan