Monthly Archives: September 2016

PRACTICE PRESENCE

Profile photograph of a worried young man

 

You say someone is emotionally unavailable, as if it were a bad thing.

Might it not also be a good, a necessary thing?

 

As long as you are emotionally available to other people, you are allowing them to have an input into you. You are making them important. You are in some way trying to please them, or at least get their attention.

 

Do not try to please anyone. Do not try to get anyone’s attention. Be the same to all. One is not different from another. To believe so is to become the prophet of division. Go not down this road.

 

Statue of a woman saint, south western, located in Santa Fe, NM

 

What is this about? What are you trying to tell me?

 

Statuette of blissfully sleeping cherub

 

To thine own Self be true. To the extent that you are trying to flatter, or impress, or control, or in any way care about the outcome of another person, to that extent have you given up common cause with your most holy Self, which has always been created, and has no need to flatter, cajole or browbeat anyone, having no needs. You mistake who you are when you try to please.

 

You mean not to care about the outcome of your own family members?

 

A woman’s hands reaching triumphantly skyward, breaking the chains with which she was bound

 

Not to care means not to be vested in any particular outcome. It is of course possible to love deeply and not be attached to any particular outcome.

 

 

 

What is an outcome but a potential future?  If you were to live only in the present moment, with no regard for past or future, no time spent thinking about either one of them, you would be freed from outcomes, would you not?  You would be freed from the fertile field of all your fears.

 Would you not do this?

I invite you today to the present. What if you, today, were to practice the present moment?

 

The perfection of a white water crystal against a black background

 

How is this to be done?

 

In the midst of a routine activity like brushing your teeth,  drying your hair, doing dishes, stop, put down all utensils. As slowly as you can count to ten.  Doing this creates a space for new thought to come. It enables consciousness. It enables all kinds of good that you yet have no name for, having yet to feel.

One technique practiced fifty times,  is better than fifty techniques attempted once.

Practice Presence

 


A woman leading a small child to Stillwater. The little girl is carrying her floating seahorse.

 

 

 

 

TRANSFORM YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

 

White marble statuette of a cherub, looking down and smiling.

 

It is fun and interesting to put yourself in the place of another human being.  To stand in their shoes, look out through their eyes, and imagine what they see.  That hotel clerk you talked to last night; you cut off his speech to ask what time breakfast was, and if you’d only listened, you’d have heard it at the end.  How many people must do that?  What must he wonder about people in general? What behaviors does he see all of the time?  People getting angry when they don’t get what they want? What does he think when he sees this?

 

You have only to ask

 

Transform all your relationships. This is a big promise; how often can you transform anything at all? With all your pushing and pulling in your real world, how many outcomes have you brought about or prevented?

 

Six year old girl with her palms upward, engaging your eye contact. A silent why.

 

Transform all your relationships

 

How may this be done, you wonder? Not piecemeal, as in one at a time, ever-improving. This is promise, not change. No, transform means to change completely, as in, turn into something else entirely different. You transform your relationships by changing your inner I am, your conception of yourself. This causes you to change into something entirely different.

 

Detail from Michelangelo’s painting, The Creation of Adam, showing God’s hand touching man’s, conferring life.

 

I am lonely. I am anxious. I am subtle. I am sophisticated. I am hardworking. I am a victim.

Whatever. On and on.

Once you have accepted an I am, you will be drawn to situations and people that allow you to bear it out, to illustrate it. If you have I am worthless, your relationships will give evidence of that. You will seek others who are emotionally distant, unavailable, unkind, or not what you want in a myriad ways.

 

 

If you have adopted I am clever, you will be drawn into situations which illustrate this. That you are clever, or think or wish you were, will be something that people know about you.  This will be borne out in your relationships. You will value people differently according to how clever you think they are. You can use whatever criteria you want to decide if they are clever or not. You can spend a lifetime in this pursuit.

But why would you?

 

One chess piece taking another

 

Relationships are transformed by transforming your conception of yourself. Begin by examining different I ams that you have taken to heart. Separate emotion from this process and it is more effective. No shame and no guilt as you unearth your I ams.

Do you find any that serve no good purpose? I am always late.  How is this helping your cause?

I am confused.  Why would you keep this?

I am nervous in front of people. Is this a role you want to play?  Is this something you want to live out?

 

A monarch butterfly emerging beautiful and new from its chrysalis

Photo by Bankim Desai on Unsplash

 

Dismiss what does not serve

 

Are there some other I ams that you could embrace now?  You choose. Begin by consciously deciding which I ams are deserving of your increased attention. I am always calm. I am peaceful. I am happy. I am beloved.

And as you pay attention here, turning inward your focus and your light, so do these I ams become rays of light emanating outward from your being, attracting like and transforming every relationship you have.

 

A lighthouse standing against stars in a dark sky, sending forth beams of light

Photo by Nathan Jennings on Unsplash