Out of Step With Whiners and Complainers

I earned a living providing solutions to people’s problems.   Or so I thought.  Now, given more space for reflection, I am suspecting that 99.99% of the time, I was out of step with people who approached me with their problems.  I am hard pressed to pinpoint one single person with whom I sat to help fix their concerns who came out of my consultation truly empowered and liberated.  That was after all my conscious agenda, to equip the client with more, different, or better tools for dealing with their issues.

As I refrain from offering advice or solutions, I am observing that people who moan and groan about this, that, or the other, and who may even sincerely think they want a problem solved, for the most part don’t.  Instead, and usually unbeknownst to them, what they want are any or all of the following:

* To feel good, even be praised that they noticed a problem existed

* To feel superior to people who give them a headache

* To invite pity, compassion, camaraderie, support, fellowship, commiseration that they are saddled with the problem

* To give themselves permission to be appalled, to gloat, to bristle, to feel something or someone beneath them

* To be admired for being so long suffering, for enduring so much, for tolerating such ingratitude, inhumanity, selfishness, incompetence, inadequacy, etc.

How do I know this?  Because I find traces of any or all of these in problems that I keep harping about.

Letting Things Be

This blog is only for people who have made it their business to make a difference most of their lives.  For those who have yet to make their mark, this can be a misleading reading.

To MAD (Make a Difference) people everywhere, you have programmed yourself or been programmed to never sit still, never to accept things as they are, but to always find ways to tinker with reality and make it better.  Your music is words like “Ask not what your country can do for you…” and are inspired by bold words that challenge man to not be satisfied and just keep making improvements.

I am speaking as comrade who belatedly has peeked into a small corner of the mind’s eye and seen the beginning of space where there is no compulsive drive to make a difference.  It’s a place of equanimity where the last thing you want to do is make a difference or change anything.  This place is called Mindfulness or mindful Attention, where all you do is observe things as they are, as they unfold, as they change, as they become what they were again, and then morph into something else yet again.

This is a place of calm, of quiet, where there is no frantic need to fix anyone or anything.  This is a place that is not ruled by a desire to control anyone or anything.  This is a place where an unruly child is a child is exhibiting energy and behaviors that make me uncomfortable.  I don’t know if he is unruly or not; unruly is a label, a judgement which may or may not be correct.  In Mindful Attention, I just see it for what it is, and see me for what my feelings are.  I see how I just so want to strangle him or beat him to a pulp or sit him down and read him the riot act or berate someone for this child’s behavior.  In Mindful Attention, I can witness my thoughts and feelings parade and stomp their angry feet and slowly disappear from view.  In this state, I can see how this child’s world is filled with strong and powerful characters, some of whom scare him, intimidate him, infuriate him for trying to kill the life in him.  I see that I am only a marginal character, but am most likely to join the chorus of monsters who yell at him and call him names — if I break out of Mindful Attention and yield to my impulse to drag him out of where he is and sit him down in a corner where I can lord it over him.

I let the impulse pass and the unruliness subsides.

Making a Difference has been over-rated, its importance extraordinarily exaggerated in my case.  So I’m practicing how to be on the periphery, in the margins, to the side of everyone, to be just the backwall, the background against which things happen.

My intended forecasts, prognostications, pronouncements, and words to the wise have been held in check for the better part of the day thus far, and no one has suffered from it.  It is conceivable that my contribution to the health of people around me might be my silence, my letting things be.  That is a new kind of difference I’d like to practice making.  It’s one that doesn’t demand the spotlight, that doesn’t turn someone issue and personalizes it, that does lay over a coat of personal imprint on anything.  It is one that leaves no trace of ego because ego has settled for a cameo role, even no role at all, except to be in respectful silence.

Where Grace Lives

Think of places in the heart where Fear rules, where you feel like the object of predatory pursuit and  have locked on the solution: the only way out is to take lodging in these guaranteed safe houses.  A piece of paper – license, certificate, marital status, citizenship,  proof of something or other that identifies you as qualified or legitimate.    You are convinced “I’ve gotta have it” as though this were the only oxygen that your constricted lungs need to survive.

Sometimes it helps to reverse the pursuit, to turn around and face the pursuer and run it all the way back to where it came from.

Irreconcilable differences, unworkable conditions, unacceptable terms, unsatisfactory decisions are bad enough as they are.   Fear lurks behind — what would people think of me?  what about my reputation?  the image that is solidifed in people’s mind of an upstanding citizen who may not be perfect but at least virtuous in matters that count?  who will I disappoint? — but Fear rarely announces and unmasks itself.  It wears a hood and hides behind carefully selected facts and sharply crafted justifications.  “If I do x, then y will logically follow, so I have no other choice except z.”

Ego is always in the mix.  Lots of it.  Gooey, sticky, gummy, spicy, sweet and sour, crackling ego.  Especially when we think “But I’m only thinking of the best for YOU and for THEM” when Ego is mostly scared for itself of not getting what it wants when it wants the way it wants exactly what it wants.  When things don’t go our way, adrenaline pumps, nostrils flare, eyes slant and slit, neck lengthens, back stiffens.  Doors slam, phones slam, and we resort to words like “always” and “never” with certainty and finality, such as “you’ll never see me again — if you don’t give me what I want” or expressions in the same order.  The mind manufactures worst case scenarios by the dozen, all guaranteed to convince the fearful mind that there is only one solution.

Maybe chasing the predatory pursuer is not the answer, but rather inviting It to coffee at Starbucks.  “Sit down, relax, tell me about yourself.  You seem so determined to get my attention.  Now that you’ve got it, here I am.  Please speak to me.  I want to understand all about you – where you came from, how long you’ve been trying to get my attention, and of course, why.  You look so desperate to get me, and now I’m here.  Let’s chat.”

In the course of coffee between Hunter and Hunted, or Haunter and Haunted, something called Mindfulness might show up.  In the quiet of the mind, when fear has quieted down because it has been acknowledged, faced, and respectfully heard, the terrain of possibilities changes.  When we are not longer run by Fear, we become much more open to the Reality that what we know plus what we think we know are so much smaller than what Life has to offer.

Nature, the universe does not like having things yanked out of it forcibly, prematurely, out of season.  It may yield to our disregard for its rhythm and sense of order, but it finds its way to reorganize, rearrange, and recapture the mysterious way that it asserts its primacy and the wisdom that resides in it.  In a state of Mindfulness, we can get a glimpse of this, but never when we are run by Fear.  Fear cannot, will not accommodate Mindfulness.  Mindfulness invites Fear to coffee.

When Fear retires because it’s been recognized for what it is, there is the potential for Grace to show up.  She can’t be summoned, however.  You can be the best little girl or the best little boy, and She still might not show up.  She rarely goes by our clocks, analog or digital.    You can’t make an appointment with Her.  She chooses the time, place, shape, messenger, and vehicle.  She’s known to wear hoods, too, just like Fear.  She’s been known to chase people, too.    She produces rancor just like Fear.  Here’s one huge difference between the two.    Fear’s message is always, “If you don’t do this, you will die!”  Grace’s message is always, “Do this and you will live joyfully.”

Unkindest Cuts and Bloodhounds

What is your first reaction when someone you love and respect gets removed from a prized position?

What is your first reaction when someone you love makes an unpopular decision that leaves someone feeling victimized?

In either case, the sight of blood, the feel of emotional wounds could arouse sympathy, total identification, or full-blown projection.  When we react simply on the unexamined feelings, we become bloodhounds, every single one of us.  We want to see more blood – either from the Victim if we believe he or she deserves it, or we want to see new blood bursting open – from the Executioner if we feel he or she has been unfair.

Neither helps anyone – not the Victim, not the Executioner, not the situation.  Many conditions have escalated and deteriorated because mindlessness took over and got the better of everyone.

My son has been driving the family car for almost six months now.  It’s something he looks forward to, every single opportunity to be the driver.  People who know us and who have observed his driving give him compliments.  I, as his most frequent passenger, nod politely.  In private, I tell my son it takes more than knowing how to start the engine and stay within a certain speed limit to be a good driver.  The other day, I yelled at him and almost grabbed the wheel from him.  He honked his horn to warn a pedestrian who seemed undecided about whether to cross the street or not.  My son almost clipped the pedestrian.  “You saw him, why did you not move away?” I asked.  The language I used was actually stronger and more colorful.  “I honked,” he replied defiantly, “and it’s his problem if he doesn’t want to listen!”

It took a more sober time – more sobriety from both of us – for us to be able to revisit what happened and mine the lessons from it.  I knew I was right for reading him the riot act and I told him I was not apologizing – if I have to yell to save lives, I would: his, mine, another person’s.   Yelling at him after the fact was obviously to me not going to add anything of value, except to fuel any self-righteousness in me.  He smarted from being yelled at and from having the car keys taken away from him.

The job incident I described earlier feels to me a lot like this scene.  If my son were more talkative with more people, he might sulk and tell them I was being unfair for deciding when and where he could drive.  Since my son is no angel, I am sure there are those who would listen and fake sympathy.  They might ask, “It must feel awful not being able to drive, especially since you’re such a good driver…”   but deep down are gloating .  They might even say to their own friends, “Serves him right!  He’s so arrogant, thinks he’s such a big shot!”

Or they might goad him on, especially when he starts complaining about how unfair I am, what a mean parent he has.  “I feel bad for you,” they might say.  “If I were in your place, I don’t know what I’d do – maybe run away, declare my independence, tell him off… I don’t know… but he’s been known for humiliating people and disabling them just like he did with you…”

I’ve been a bloodhound of both ilk.  I have been the receiver of the unkindest and unfairest cut.  I have also made unpopular decisions that made me the (bad) talk of the family or the town.  It’s quite possible everyone who has not gone through all these roles will, ultimately, eventually.  It seems fated, scheduled on all our calendars, except no one warns us.

Because we are human, we are subject to all the feelings that all the players feel – lacerated and broken-hearted, firm and fair, a friend indeed, abandoned and forgotten and all the spaces in between.  The drama can hold us in its vise and play us like a pingpong ball depending on what version of whose story we want to entertain.

Mindfulness is the only thing that can make a difference for all the players.  Everyone of us has knee-jerk reactions to everything, impulses aroused involuntarily, unconsciously.  We cannot help the thoughts and feelings that cross our minds and hearts.  What we can help is whether we serve them like slaves to a king, or whether we invite these thoughts and feelings as strangers we would like to get to know better.  It is only when the mind has been released from the prisons of fear, attachments, control, and entitlement that it can offer anything of lasting, affirming value.

“Who was right and who was wrong” plays into our need to control not only events but even the minds of others.  We often think we know “better” than the people involved in a situation we are not part of.  So long as we play God, we just feed more fuel to the drama with our take on what should have happened instead.

Fear for ourselves could make us ask inappropriate questions that not only do not help but make matters worse for the emotionally injured.  “So, if you decide to run away, are you going to rat on others who have also driven your dad’s car?  Please don’t – they might get fired.”

Our attachment to either victim or executioner could make us build a case for why they are “right” and the other person “wrong.”

Our personal need to feel in control of things could lead us to take steps that cause more harm than good for ourselves and others involved.   If we want to control the press, public opinion, even how people would feel, we could go to lengths that enmesh and entangle ourselves and others into a torturous web.

Feelings of entitlement can make us vulnerable in any role we play.  Even bystanders who are watching everything like audience to a sideshow could feel entitled to knowing the beginning, middle, and end of story.  They might even insist on being given the entire plot, even when told repeatedly “this is a private matter between two people.”

Life is not fair.  Change is a fact of life.  Our best laid plans and fondest hopes could be pulled from under us without so much as “pardon me.”  People we were convinced were on our side could turn out to be turncoats.  Sympathy offered to us could taste like as fake and tasteless as cardboard food.   Through all this, pain is unavoidable.

What is avoidable is adding more and unnecessary pain to an already painful condition.  The Busy Mind is seduced by rehearsing the should have, could have, would have’s – mine as well as others.  If only they had done this, said that, told me, asked me instead, given me feedback, warned me, gave me advanced notice, etc.   If only I had more foresight, were more careful in my choice of words, had spoken more gently, had become more aware, etc.   These products of the Busy Mind are self perpetuating and recycle automatically without help from anyone.  These are the thoughts that generate even more pain and suffering.  So long as we have not created a space of quiet inside ourselves, we will become unwitting and unconscious victims to Busy Mind.

If, however, we are daring enough and are willing to stop the automatic rewinding thoughts, and if we are willing to create a quiet space, what is available to us is the opportunity to just observe our own mind.  To pay Attention to our thoughts and feelings as they come and go, as they take turns being Judge, Executioner, Victim, Bloodhound, Caregiver, Caretaker, Nurturer.  Mindful, quiet Attention is the only way to get out of our tangled emotions.  Freed of entanglement, we are potentially considerably healthier and wiser.  In the quiet of our minds, we can sort out which issues belong to us and which ones come from projection, from blind identification with someone else, from unexamined assumptions which could turnout to be false, from impulsive and reckless actions which could further harm either ourselves or others.

Our physical, professional, and financial injuries often have a larger component where the core of healing resides – the spiritual.  For every plan that misfires, gets aborted, and is heartbreakingly quashed, consider the possibility of a grander, more elegant plan for something much, much better.  The Busy Mind cannot entertain this because it wants its answers right here, right now and wants answers that ‘I can control and monitor.’  The Divine Plan, unfortunately for us, egomaniacs, does not operate by our rules for fair play.

Ascent to Obscurity

From age ten on, I learned how to squeeze, jostle, and sneak my way into the spotlight.  I had siblings who were instant stars to everyone because the cameras loved them — handsomer, more athletic, brighter, sweeter, funnier, sights for sore eyes, as comfy as an old pair of socks.  At age ten, I developed a fear of obscurity and discovered ways of grabbing some of the kleig lights.  The one that worked in a bigger way than any others was going for the gold in academics.  I wasn’t the brightest bulb in the family, but worked harder than anyone (and cheated some) to make the grade.    In adulthood, I quickly transferred going for the honor roll to going for promotions at work.  Over the decades,  I went from a regular employee with no title to earning titles like Supervisor, Manager, Director, Vice President, and Chief Learning Officer.

A major challenge of the senior years of life is how to let go of hanging on to a lifetime in the spotlight.  It feels like stripping for an ex-exhibitionist who now has nothing but flab to show instead of toned muscles.  It’s embarrassing, it’s humiliating, it’s downright depressing.  So long as I think I am my title and my achievements.  What’s a workaholic to do when he runs out of work, when no one recognizes his work?  Why, he works harder, of course!

This will be my condition, as long as I’m frozen in the habits of a lifetime.  I have a window of optimism in the words of David Richo, from his book “When Love Meets Fearm Becoming Defense-Less and Resource-Full”  (Paulist Press, 1997) that goes as follows:

“In the spiritual view the void is also presided over by the Holy Spirit that brooded over the original waters of chaos to bring about the creation.  The Holy Spirit is the female power counterpoised to the trickster — male energy.  The female dove broods over the unhatched young in order to bring them to life.  During this gap, the old is dying but the new has not yet been born and our limited consciousness does not even know if it will be born.”

My entire life was about working hard to prove my worth.  “Lazy” is one word that never ever felt insulting to me because I don’t even know what it means.  I am also beyond feeling proud I am not lazy because I don’t know any other way to be than to work.

The problem has never been whether to continue working or not, but whether to work for the spotlight of recognition and appreciation or be able to do without the perks of feedback and acknowledgement.  It took a while for me to adjust to a life without titles, but continuing to work where no one says anything good or bad feels like the equivalent of being in total isolation.

My choice is to rattle people’s cages and demand a yay or nay or else, or to make my ascent to obscurity, where what matters is what is beyond and outside of publicity.  All my life, I wanted my work to be a form of service, not realizing that at least half of that service was to the dysfunctional,  controlling, fear-driven ego.  The other half was inbred, authentic, and comes from a pure place, a natural God-given drive to find my relatedness to others.

Now, I am entertaining this question:

What if there has been a Divine Plan all along that saw me through bouncing around like a pingpong ball from achievement to recognition?   What if all that thrashing about that fed my ego served a grander plan beyond my ego?  What if the absence of spotlight and feedback remains part of a grander plan?  What if my ego noise has also been accommodated by that plan, one that would follow its own course, whether or not I behave like a pig squealing its way to obscurity and  enlightenment?

I am Fergie, Duchess of York

Much of the reading public is aghast, appalled at Fergie, Duchess of York being caught in a sting.  She was lured into a den of baser humanity and caught on video mouthing words that cannot be denied or reinterpreted to mean anything close to “I smoked but did not inhale.”  She not only smoked, but inhaled.

I am neither aghast nor appalled.  I am saddened for her and for me.  You see, I am no different from Fergie.  I have sold my integrity for a lot less than $1 million.

You don’t have to be in dire financial straits to be lured.  The promise of looking good, better, or best has made me trick people to send money my way that would not have found it in my pocket had people seen my hidden agenda.    I have convinced myself that all I needed was to give people just a wee bit of push in the direction they were already headed, anyway.  My innocent but self-serving contribution was to simply make some strategically placed comments, drop some names, blue sky a fantasy future for them, and presto, money in my pocket.

I have done it and don’t feel proud of it.  Finding the Duchess of York in that mess is just my reminder of how she and I are not separate from each other.  We are both made of the same clay.  What she deserves is no less than what I want to give myself: compassion for the mistakes and a resolve to be vigilant against mindlessness.

You don’t fall into this kind of trap when you are present to your life.  You slip only when craving has gotten the better of you, or its underbelly, Fear, has caught you in its vise.  Fear of not making the grade, Fear of losing status, Fear of social disapproval, Fear of not meeting expectations, Fear of not being enough, Fear of not measuring up to some unknown nonhuman standard.  You fall into this trap when you lose the present in favor of an imagined Future where things will be better.

The present is already immensely rich, if I but awaken from the nightmare called habitual desires.

About Time

The Greek word for time is kairos, which to them means “a penetrable opening, one through which, in which to create an opportunity.  I just love this way of looking at time – worlds apart from 9 to 5, or any of the million ways we’re always chasing after time.   When I find myself looking at my watch, I remind myself of kairos.  What’s the rush?  So what if they don’t get here on time?  The space of waiting could be kairos.

I came across a Japanese mantra, “Ichigo, Ichie” or One Time, One Meeting. unprecedented, unrepeatable.  When time is viewed this way, it is as close to timeless as there is.  When I find myself glazing away, I recite Ichigo, Ichie, and a world always unfolds in front of me when I do.

Carl Jung has this take on time:  “In the end, the only events in life worth telling are those in which the imperishable world erupted into this transitory world.”

These thoughts have accompanied me the last few weeks.  I go back to a fall plunging 50 feet and having only my right arm to cushion the rest of my body.   Some people were quick to infer this was a “wake-up call” to suggest, kindly of course, that there might be some responsibilities I was neglecting or some bad trip I was into that I just needed to stop.  I understand this kind of guilt-tripping concern.  No, it wasn’t a wake-up call, but rather a “falling into grace.”

Several months after the incident, I am amazed at how the dots get connected to make a meaningful thread out of other seemingly unrelated events.  Like the fact that the morning of my fall, I sent an email to a guy whose last name was Resurreccion.  Then two days later, in the hospital where I was being treated, it was a Dr. Resurreccion who attended to my needs.

I feel that in a large sense, I could have died in that fall.  The thought that the fall was a mystical experience made me alert to living life differently.  Not that there was anything wrong with the life before the fall.  Except for being a workaholic and forever obsessed with achieving something.  This “died” with the fall.

My resurrection consists of finding kairos and Ichigo, Ichie in my daily life. of being vigilant as I watch for the intersection between the world of the imperishable and the million transitory things I tend to be preoccupied with.

Things I Hate

Next to people we hate are conditions we develop an aversion toward.  It’s quite possible to spend your whole day, your entire life even, going from avoiding one person or thing to another.  I know.  I’ve had a good track record in both.  Hating that it’s summer and the sun’s too hot, and every place not air-conditioned is uncomfortable.  Hating to be served the same food over and over again.  Hating to be in the same room with people who obviously can’t stand you or have no desire to be trapped in the same room with you.  Going out of your way to do things for people only to find out not only that they could care less, but they have nothing but criticism for what you even so much as dared to think of doing.  People who can’t stop talking about what they hate about other people and about life.

Sound familiar?  They are the muck out of which the lotus flower grows, but only when the flower seed becomes conscious and makes a decision – am I mud or am I flower?  As with the lotus, so with us humans.  We can very easily be the muck of life whose role is to challenge the lotus to bloom and grow, by being our obnoxious self, or to own our lotus-ness, our lotus-ship and embrace our divine destiny to be the best we can be.

People I Hate

The exceptional thing about the lotus flower is that it grows out of muddy waters.  There is something about us civilized humans that wants things clean, pure,  and pristine.  I see that especially in my son who is in this antiseptic clean stage.  He sprays every room, hates to see specks of dust, inspects food for bugs, and avoids restaurants with open fly zones for flies.  I understand his obsession with clean.  I had my own handwashing three times a day ritual about the same age, early 20′s.  That was when I segregated the world very strictly and rigidly into the Good and the Bad, and the Right and the Wrong.  I am trying to find a wiser way of weaning my son out of this way of thinking.  At this stage, it’s a continuing challenge.

As it is with everyone else around me.  I am surrounded by people with quick Right/Wrong, Good/Bad judgments about something or other.  This is the muddy condition of the lotus flower.   The lotus flower is not bogged down, not weighed down, not defeated by the criss-crossing of judgments, but emerges and rises, blooms out of these muddy waters.

The Lovely, Lonely Hydrothermal Vents

Way deep down close to the ocean floors are hydrothermal vents, once thought to be so toxic that nothing could survive.  Yet with the use of modern equipment, scientists have been able to discover new life forms that have been able to withstand the heat and the toxin.   I’ve always liked deep sea diving.  Of the intrapersonal kind.  From a very early age, my playground was going into what seemed like a netherworld, the kind no one ever talked about.  The kind I got remarks and looks that said, “You silly boy, that’s so….” and you can fill the blank with whatever dismissive words people could come up with.

I thought something was wrong with me.  I thought it had to do with sexuality.  Or sin.  Or both.  However, when I got my sex and sin issues taken care of, and got a lot older, people still had the same kind of reaction.  Except they were a bit more polite.

I found the answer in hydrothermal vents.  When I get near certain topics, even as I begin enjoying the swim, people rush the opposite direction and give me the “Oh, please don’t go there” kind of look or they just freeze in fright.  I didn’t always recognize the signals for what they were.  I thought people were simply bored with me.  Boredom is another way of staying frozen, I know.   I took it personally.  All I really wanted was to have company in my swim.

However, a normal swim for me is a frightening ordeal for most other people.  A lot of people are certain they will be swallowed by their shadow, so they reject shadow work as, well, again, that very accessible word, “boring.”  This blog is one way I locate fellow swimmers.

The hydrothermals are my Wonderland.   It was there that I recognized instantaneously that my last injury was a mystical experience, not an accident.  It is there that I find all kinds of riches in my physical therapy.  One example.  My right hand was badly mangled in my fall.  It was so bad that I could barely move any of my fingers without wincing in pain for more than a month.   My physical therapist inspected this hand, manipulated each finger, and when she touched the most sore of them all, I let out an anticipatory gasp.  Instead of leaving that finger alone, she did the exact opposite – she pushed that finger to touch the palm.  The very last thing I would do, wanted to do, thought I could do.  Yet, the more knowing therapist who knew there was nothing broken in my hand also knew (though I didn’t till she told me) that I had been overprotecting myself from pain that I literally froze my hand in the pained state.  The cure was not to continue babying my pain but to disregard the pain and move my hands the way they would, normally.  I jerked my body in pain, but lo and behold – that sore finger could actually make it to its natural reach!

In my life above the hydrothermal vents, I find this little experience to have a lot of applications.  Like people who insist on not doing anything that’s “uncomfortable.”

I’m always making some people uncomfortable, which is why this blog is very useful to me, personally.  This little insight, when shared in my normal public, makes people squirm and cringe.  “You talkin’ about me?” is one look I get.   Past observing social grace, what I really want to say a lot is, “You betcha, you fucking moron!”  But someone in an esteemed role is not supposed to think those thoughts, much less say those words.  It makes people feel, well, uncomfortable.  I have those thoughts.  Not that I think they are stupid, but I am so flabbergasted at the feast they can’t, won’t partake of!

When that happens, I let things be.   I respect that the hydrothermals aren’t for everyone.   You have to be a little bit crazy, or to have had some learning experience that enables you to confront the scary, to understand my fascination with hydrothermals.    I’m lucky to have a few people in my life who have more than a nodding familiarity with this underworld.  They always add to my experience by revelling in mine and then pointing out to the other things I haven’t tasted or seen.  There is so much in the hydrothermals – it’s a place beyond rightdoing and wrongdoing, as rumi would describe it.