Anthony Rella, MA, LMHC

Category: Therapy

  • Don’t Try to Be Calm

    Relaxation, peace, and calmness are not goals of mindfulness and meditation practices. They are often common and welcome side-effects, but in a sense they cannot be the desired outcome of practice. The wisdom of this is often hard to grasp from a Western perspective, where relief of pain is an ideal goal of medical treatment. More deeply, contemporary Western culture seems to view a crisis as something to be resolved with urgency and without regard to how the solution might perpetuate a later crisis. When one vein of oil dries up, we dig for another. The suggestion that we slow down, sink into the crisis, and let it transform our way of life so that it is not longer a crisis is antithetical to how we do life.

    Often, when I lead someone in meditation or mindfulness practice for their first time, they will report a feeling of calm and serenity. This was my early experience as well. I remember that I had meditated daily for about three months when, one morning, I suddenly realized that the muscles in my legs were tense. I realized, furthermore, that they were often tense. I realized, further-furthermore, that I could simply allow them to relax and there was no more tension. I had no idea of any of this because I’d spent very little of my life being present to my body. I spent much more time avoiding my body and all its “undesirable” sensations.

    Troubled Water, Denis Helfer

    My theory, which is not so much “mine” as it is one I’ve discerned from encountering Buddhist thought, Western Esoteric thought, and a lot of psychology books, is that one underlying source of tension arises from all the ways we humans avoid the experiences we label as bad or undesirable. It is like when one has a broken toe and learns how to limp to reduce the intensity of pain in the toe. With time, that person might begin to notice pain and tension in their upper back, their neck, their other leg. The body has an optimal way to move, and any variations on that movement has a longer-term cost.

    So too, I think, with the mind. If I’m trying not to feel sad, not to feel vulnerable, not to feel angry, not to feel hopeful, not to look bad in front of others, not to feel too anxious, not to feel lonely, not to feel hopeless, not to feel ugly, not to feel desired, not to feel criticized, not to stand out too much, not to feel scared… There is a wide array of undesirable experiences and one person’s heaven is another’s hell. But if we are whole people, then there will be moments when we’ll have these feelings and more. And when someone says, “I don’t want to feel this way,” I often hear, “Part of me feels this way and another part of me is trying to push it down.” This inner conflict creates tension and dis-ease.

    Meditation is the antidote to this, as it cultivates unconditional acceptance. Often there is an object or focus of meditation, but quickly we learn how much the wind wanders from the object of attention. The practice is to learn to notice when the attention has shifted and gently bring it back to the object of focus. Simple but not easy. When we sit in stillness, often we encounter everything unresolved in our hearts and minds, all of our habits of being, all of our tensions, essentially everything that we want to avoid noticing. The more that we can accept these as simply being there and gently return to the present moment through bringing attention to the object of focus.

    Often, after doing this for the first time, many people report feelings of relaxation or tiredness. I think that comes from the ease of being present and not constantly striving to avoid one thing or pull toward another. Discomfort is simply discomfort and not something to rail and struggle against. Hence the benefits of ease. The problem comes when someone go back to meditation hoping to get back to that relaxation. Now they’re stuck avoiding some feelings and trying to grab others. They want a specific outcome and push away all the experiences that aren’t that outcome. Even this is great information, illuminating yet another habit of thought and being that one can approach with acceptance.

    That is what is meant when someone refers to happiness as a trap. If all we’re concerned with is preserving things as they are and dismissing anything that doesn’t fit the experience we want to have, we’re stuck. If we only choose to listen to some opinions, look at some information, acknowledge some problems and condemn the rest, we’re stuck. Acknowledging more of the wholeness of experience gives our knowledge, wisdom, and ideas more depth and integrity.

  • Painful Habits

    I am a fan of the song “Habits (Stay High)” by Tove Lo. In it, I hear a portrait of a person living through the self-harm that comes from emotional avoidance that I’ve written about in earlier entries. The speaker of the song is living in hell. The loss of an important relationship in her life has left deep pain and grief, a grief she avoids through anonymous sex, binge drinking, and eating in the bathtub. In the refrain she repeats a defensive mantra, “I’ve got to stay high all the time / to keep you off my mind.”

    What becomes clear in the song is the unwinnable situation the speaker creates for herself. She seems aware that she is living in a “haze” and a series of unsatisfying moments, temporary reprieves from her underlying pain, but she also knows that to become sober means experiencing her loneliness and pain. Unwilling to experience this, she retreats into her escape routs. The unspoken hope fueling this behavior, one might infer, is that if she simply avoids the pain long enough one day she’ll wake up and it’ll be gone. The truth, in my experience and observation, is that her behavior only locks the pain more firmly in place. Detachment from our body and heart’s capacities to experience and process emotion means losing a profound source of understanding and integrity.

    My saying this should not be construed as morally condemning the singer of the song or anyone who finds themselves in that situation—a situation that is not at all rare. We do not know the life story of the singer, we do not know how she experienced pain as a child, how her family taught her to recover from or suppress the pain, whether her culture provided validation or condemnation. We do not know what traumas she might have suffered that make her pain even more unbearable.

    Melancholy, by Andrew Mason

    Our culture does not train us to deal with grief. Our culture of relentless positivity and happiness labels pain as undesirable and celebrates “strong” people who proclaim (or pretend) that they don’t feel vulnerable. If we look back to the singer of “I Will Survive,” we see her willingness to acknowledge her vulnerability before moving into strength: “At first I was afraid / I was petrified.” This is a strength of integrity, accepting herself as she is. The singer of Habits is pure vulnerability unable to accept her strength, her capacity to feel. She is the shadow of the “I won’t even miss you” singer in songs like Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable”: “Baby I won’t shed a tear for you / I won’t lose a wink of sleep.”*

    Several people responding to the video on YouTube seem to think that “young people”—who are often invoked as people somehow more susceptible to the imprint of a pop song than the culture of their families and communities—will listen to this song and take it as an instructional video for how to deal with problematic emotions. I like this song because it is honest, because it speaks to something in the heart and in our communities that is uncomfortable to acknowledge. It’s easy to dismiss and criticize the person who made the song and much harder to wonder how we might support the people in our lives who are living that song—or look at the ways we stay high to avoid pain. Having compassion for a person’s suffering is not the same as agreeing with or accepting their self-harming coping strategies. This is the kind of art that provides an opportunity for connection and recognition, for someone suffering to realize they’re not alone in this.

    * Of course I had to mention Beyoncé.

    I am on vacation and will likely not produce an article for next week.

  • Unbalanced Personalities

    As children, we crave attention and mirroring from our caregivers. The more we receive this attention and mirroring, the more capable we are of developing healthy little egos that help us to grow and develop into healthy, autonomous, and connected adults. Inevitably, however, there are ruptures. No one can be present to another all the time, particularly human beings with adult lives and responsibilities carrying around their own psychic wounding. Even the best of parents can have lapses of attention or make mistakes that result in psychic wounding. Some people argue that the birth process itself is a wounding event, a core wound that we carry with us.

    by Bengt Oberger

    Much of our wounding occurs in relationship and can heal in relationship. We long for connection and we feel hampered by our shame. We learn early how to protect ourselves in our environments while trying to get the attention and love we need to survive. Some kids learn how to make their parents happy, make them laugh, lighten their emotional burdens, and their personalities form around that personality which celebrates laughter and flirtation, but anything heavier or darker feels threatening and scary, best ignored. Other kids learn to become withdrawn, preferring to disappear or sarcastically disregarding any attempts to engage with love. These kids might grow into people who seem to need no one, or to hate everyone, burdened with their own mysterious and painful need for connection that feels so intense that it’s safer to avoid it. Some kids learn to do everything perfectly to elicit praise and avoid criticism, and grow up afraid to make mistakes, or become so judgmental of themselves and others that there is hardly room to breathe. Some kids become the parents to their parents, and grow up serious-minded and concerned with others’ well-being and utterly lacking in their ability to value or care for their own emotional well-being.

    These personality structures are profound strengths and inherent weaknesses. I often think of the role-playing games I had when I was a kid, in which each enemy was an elemental class, and those elements determined the enemies’ strengths and vulnerabilities. Fire elementals were vulnerable to ice; water elementals were vulnerable to lightning. Try to hit a fire elemental with fire and you only make it stronger. But people are more than one-sided elemental beings. We can grow into our weaknesses and restore dynamic balance to the self. Our emotional and mental problems show where our personalities have fallen too far out of balance, and could help us to find where we need to grow.

    Mental and emotional problems compound by the strategies we use to manage these lopsided personalities. Almost every behavior that harms us or those around us arose as solution to the core problem. If our “solutions” come from avoidance of pain, then they are more likely as not going to create even more problems that need solutions. Healing is a process of moving layer by layer through these problems and solutions, seeking to embrace and dissolve the pain at each layer. More on this next week.

  • Becoming Adult, Becoming Free

    “No one can pressure you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

    I recently heard this in a setting in which I had sat through two hours of the speaker attempting to persuade me to do something that I was not willing to do. The speaker was effective and powerful, and I walked away with greater personal insight and inspiration, but I decided at this time not to engage further in his organization’s work. This post is not about that, though.

    The speaker spoke to internal conflicts around domination, about which most adults have some ambivalence. Perhaps this arises from a cultural pattern of parenting, in which struggles between domination and submission are integral. Caregivers set boundaries, and children do not understand why. Eventually, children feel the urge to start pushing for more freedom, more individuality, while parents learn to keep adjusting the boundaries to keep their growth safely contained. That seems something like an ideal, however some parents respond to the steps toward autonomy with greater punitiveness and control. Or parents fear their power and responsibility and submit to their children. Some children lean harder toward avoiding being dominated, either by over challenging or surreptitious acting out. Other children lean harder toward submitting to dominion, perhaps out of fear of punishment or a longing to be loved. This is tricky, and parenting is hard work, and I honor those who have taken it on.

    Flower growing on I-5 overcrossing in Albany – Chris Weigel

    These conflicts only continue to escalate through adolescence to early adulthood, in which the growing young person wants to push off and launch into adulthood, though may be experiencing fears and resistance. They want to be seen as adults by their parents and treated as adults but they do not realize that they’re not yet completely acting like adults. Even in the most stable of family dynamics there can be some conflict here, emotional landmines that get set off by seemingly the most innocuous of situations. If a parent doesn’t approve of something, the adult child might become enraged, upset, tearful, or protest against their asshole parent who never did enough of something.

    When these conflicts are unresolved, they tend to manifest in our relatoinships. I remember the day in my own therapy when I was discussing how upset I felt when criticized by my partner, and my therapist pointed out that I was criticizing him. What???

    In a discussion with someone, they snapped at me, “Don’t tell me what to do!” It occurred to me that this person was in effect telling me what to do!

    The point is not that we’re all hypocrites, the point is that our hypocrisies tell us a lot about what is unresolved within us and what needs to be resolved so we can become more free, more creative, more joyful in life. We can think of these dynamics as the child parts of us still trying to become free of childhood dominion, not recognizing that it’s over. The friction of launching is an important component. Small rebellions, assertions of autonomy, all of these generate the heat, power, and strength necessary to push away. In that respect, the touchiness about “don’t criticize me!” and “don’t tell me what to do!” serve as rungs on the ladder to help us move toward the greater self-realization: when you’re wholly yourself, it does not matter whether someone criticizes you, tries to dominate you, or tries to tell you what to do.

    In this respect, an important caveat: there could certainly be consequences to not doing what a person says, especially if that person is your boss, a police officer, or otherwise has power and privilege that you do not. People who experience marginalization are well aware of the barriers that these systemic factors raise. We cannot wish our way out of structural inequality and systemic violence, but we can start freeing ourselves from within so that we can respond to with greater power and creativity. We can take the tools of personal oppression away from our families and loved ones and remember that the pain and irritation comes from within. Our closest relationships generally offer the material we need to become more adult, that is, to take more responsibility for who we are in the world.

    I want to clarify, though, that this is an aspiration, something we work toward. Until we start practicing this self-responsibility, then we are susceptible to being dominated, to being pressured to do what we do not want to do, to being diminished by others’ criticism. Regarding this, Toko-pa has wonderful things to say.

  • Seven Scorpions, Part 2

    Read Part 1.

    Claiming the parts of us that are disruptive, toxic, and at times underhanded is not easy or pleasurable, though it is empowering in the best sense of the word. Whenever we find ourselves repeatedly experiencing the same conflict, rejection, hurt, or even a simply bizarre and confusing relationship, the early tendency is to surrender power by blaming the other people or some vague fate or “universe.” “I don’t know why the universe keeps sending me passive-aggressive people.” If some outside fate is responsible for doing this to you, the best way out is to wake up to your participation in the problem. If every partner eventually turns passive aggressive toward you, perhaps your scorpion is an aloof assertiveness without listening to what the other person says or needs. Identifying this role is challenging, it requires our willingness to accept that we have flaws and blind spots and to work hard at letting those come to awareness, but once known, we have our power back. Now it’s not someone else doing something to us. We can change the script.

    Relational problems often come from the problematic dynamic between the people involved. This requires a caveat, however, when looking at relational problems between different levels of systemic privilege and power. Abusers of all stripes tend to use their physical, social, and economic power to subtly intimidate and groom their victims, separating them from their supports, isolating them, convincing their victims they have no protection other than to give in to what the abuser wants. A child does not take part in their victimization by an adult, a child cannot “seduce” an adult with the informed consent that adults can have when seducing each other. A victim of domestic violence is not necessarily responsible for their victimization. A person who has been traumatized in this way might have difficulty avoiding being retraumatized due to the injuries to self and psyche sustained during previous traumas. Once the abused person is out of the abusive situation, they need compassion and support while repairing themselves and developing the resources necessary to avoid further abuse. I know this is not a pleasant digression, but I want to be clear that saying “everyone contributes the same amount to the relationship problem” is not helpful when violence, intimidation, and coercion are involved.

    Photo by Chris Huh

    Returning to the power of claiming our scorpions, we often feel the urge to punish ourselves for having these scorpions or try to get rid of them. I find naming more productive than attempting to disown or expel, because these scorpions are not easily cast out nor are they without value. As with many things in the personality, when we can name our poisons we can also find the salves that are also within. If I can recognize that I am avoiding a situation and causing harm, I can also find the power of confrontation and facing the difficulty. Powers of malicious gossip also contain the powers of telling powerful, healing truths. We can meet our tendencies to shame and judge with the powers of compassionate thinking.

    One of my young cousins once called me “Mr. I-Know-Everything” and it was true. He was pointing to my aloof, superior outward disposition that I fell into when I was uncomfortable and insecure. Such superiority erodes connection and trust and nourishes resentment, which of course does not help me to feel any less uncomfortable and insecure. I’ve become aware of situations where I’m likely to fall into this pattern, and when I use the word “Actually—” to start a sentence, I know the likelihood is that what’s about to follow is a know-it-all “correction.”

    The salve to this scorpion’s poison, for me, is equanimity, practicing acceptance that I am okay the way I am and you’re okay the way you are. What I find is that when I connect with the salve, then I can go ahead with less drama and hurt. Instead of “correcting” someone, I might instead ask more questions about their beliefs and information, or state my own beliefs as an offering that they can accept or not. Best of all, if I can name and accept this scorpion as my own, I am more open to being called out when someone else sees its stinger poised to strike. If I can accept that my perspective is informed by a racist culture, such as, then I can better accept being called out for saying or doing something racist without getting so defensive.

    Who are your scorpions? What causes them to lash out? What salves relieve the poison?

     

  • Seven Scorpions, Part 1

    Photo by Andreas Praefcke

    After freeing Isis from Seth’s imprisonment, Thoth advised the goddess to hide in the marshes. To protect the goddess and er unborn son, Horus, Thoth provided Isis with seven scorpions. Isis disguised herself as a beggar and began the long journey. When she needed rest, she stopped at the house of a rich woman to ask for food and a place to sleep. The rich woman slammed the door in Isis’s face, not knowing who the goddess was. Isis continued searching for shelter and found a poor fisherwoman who welcomed her, fed the goddess, and gave her a place to sleep.

    As the goddess slept, the scorpions shared their rage over the rich woman’s refusal. They combined all the poison into the stinger of the leader, who went to avenge their mistress. The scorpion snuck into the wealthy woman’s house searching for her, but came upon her infant child first, and poisoned it. When the rich woman found her child suffering, she ran into the town crying out for help. Isis heard the child’s cries and felt compassion. Realizing what had happened, she commanded the poison to leave the child’s body, calling out the name of each scorpion. When her child recovered, the wealthy woman showed her gratitude by giving a portion of her wealth to the fisherwoman who had sheltered the goddess.

    There are many facets to this story of the old gods of Egypt, but one that always comes to my attention is the relationship between the scorpions and Isis. The scorpions protect and shield the goddess from harm while she is pregnant and hiding from her enemy. Isis is not known as a timid or powerless deity, but her position at this point is vulnerable and she is best served by concealment and relying on the strength and generosity of others. What I find interesting about the story is that it does not show Isis revealing any personal outrage at being turned away by the wealthy woman, indeed she offers little commentary at all. Imagine—her husband has been murdered, her kingdom is lost, she has to hide from the man who wants to imprison her and would destroy her child if he learned about it, she has humbled herself to keep safe, and she finally musters up the will to ask someone for mercy only to get the door slammed in her face. One might understand if she would want to shed some tears, or scream, or say unkind things about the woman, but we see nothing. Instead, the scorpions gather all her rage unto themselves and, while she sleeps, take vengeance for the slight.

    Looking at the microcosm of the human personality, I think of the scorpions as those barbed, poisonous parts of us that formed for our protection but can quickly and easily turn hostile and destructive. The scorpions have a job to do, but their guardianship turns toxic and aggressive, particularly when she is unconscious. These are the little slights, microaggressions, even the large oversights that come out in ways from which we could plausibly distance ourselves. The sarcastic compliment, the faint praise, the condescending correction, the malicious gossip, “mansplaining,” the offensive comment that was “just a joke”! Even sometimes the “accidents” that are not fully accidents, those subtle provocations and digs that spur the moment to a crisis.

    When we cling to resentment and pain and refuse to face the problem, the toxins emerge nevertheless, as fatal to a relationship, a project, a team as any aggressive confrontation.

    Isis-Serket as the Scorpion, between circa 663 and circa 346 BCE

    I remember working in a somewhat visible community role with another person who had joined the group after repeatedly and publicly criticizing our work. We attempted to include this person and their critiques into the process of changing community, but this person had a habit of veiling his critiques by referring to authorities who were not in our community or alluding to a mysterious group of people who hated us. “So-and-so thinks that this is the way things should be done.” “A lot of people out there hate our community, and we need to change their minds.” I experienced this as demoralizing and frustrating, and soon I no longer wanted to listen to this person. I realized that it is impossible to address complaints from invisible people who were unwilling to speak for themselves—if indeed they existed and were not convenient ways for the speaker to evade making his own stand. Several of us on the committee asked him to speak from his own perspective and voice his own complaints, but he rarely owned his own opinion and it became impossible to work constructively with him. This pattern repeated itself over numerous conflicts involving him and other members of the community. I advocate working as though people are acting in good faith, but good faith is hard to gauge when a person is unwilling to step forward and address conflict directly, take responsibility for their own actions and contributions, and take responsibility for their piece in resolving the conflict.

    This is one example, but I think each of us has our own set of scorpions, and like Isis we would do well to learn their names and become conscious of how they work and what harm they can cause. Next week, I will talk more about naming and salving our poisons.

  • Seeking the Way of Integration

    Decisiveness is not a strong suit of mine, but for much of my life I’ve had this drive to do something. The problem was settling on what something to do. At times, I could envision multiple ways to use my energy, all of them exciting and crystal-clear in my mind as possible. Other times, I felt void of ideas, and even the ideas I already had felt lifeless or beset with barriers and problems. Taking a step in one direction called up all the inner voices that spoke against that step. This weakness can be a strength.

    Not everyone seems to have that problem. I’ve met folks who seem to have the opposite problem, to stride forcefully and purposely with outward confidence and no overt reflection. Perhaps this post is not about them, or perhaps their own inner contradictions are lying beneath conscious awareness. Instead, the people around them try to reach out with advice and challenges and feel unheard, unacknowledged, even as the person walks right off a cliff. This strength can be a weakness.

    Duality is useful but false when taken too literally. In truth, the multiplicity of options before us is so vast that thinking too much can overwhelm us. Reducing things to two polarized possibilities can help to focus our thinking, but it becomes limiting when we try to make one option “win” over the other. If two ends of a polarity pull on us, then certain aspects of ourselves have attached to either end, and to choose one at the cost of the other is difficult and self-defeating.

    In his commencement speech at Wesleyan, Joss Whedon made a useful and well-stated observation about choices and identity:

    When I talk about contradiction, I talk about something that is a constant in your life and in your identity. Not just in your body, but in your own mind in ways that you may recognize, you may not. Let’s just say hypothetically that two roads diverged in a wood, and you took the path less traveled. Part of you is just going—look at that path over there! It’s much better. Everybody’s traveling on it … Not only is your mind telling you this, it’s on that other path. It’s behaving as though it is on that path. It is doing the opposite of what you are doing. And for your entire life, you will be doing, on some level, the opposite, not only what you are doing, but what you think you are.

    I speak of this inner opposite often, which correlates to the Jungian notion of the anima or animus. We have this sense of who we think we are, but within us we contain the opposite. If we can breathe into this and hold polarities, new possibilities emerge that are creative, dynamic, and integrated. Instead of trying to choose between passion and security, what would it look like to honor the parts of me that desire both and let that tension open the way?

    (more…)

  • Arising, Sustaining, Dissolving

    From Western alchemy we inherit a threefold process model. One articulation of the Sulphur-Salt-Mercury triad could be these three phases of process: arising, where processes begin or initiate; sustaining, where processes maintain or perpetuate, are nurtured or grown; and dissolving, where processes loosen, decay, transform, and die.

    We can think about our goals, ambitions, and projects as larger triangles in which this process unfolds through many micro-triangles. Two years ago I launched his blog and committed to posting one entry a week, which was its arising. Now I continue to honor that commitment and promote the writing as best I can, sustaining it. Some day I may end this commitment and dissolve this blog, perhaps turning its content into a book, perhaps erasing the content in a fit of piqué, perhaps simply stopping altogether. I’m only listing possibilities.

    In the meantime, each entry of this blog is its own process of arising, generating ideas and starting the first draft; sustaining by continuing the draft unto completion; and dissolving by editing the draft and eventually declaring it “done enough” to publish.

    Being and Becoming 2, by Berta Rosenbaum Golahny

    Each phase is necessary. Dissolution opens the space for something new to arise. Each phase also has its attraction and challenge. How do I know when it is time to move from one phase to the next? Confusion over phases of work leads to conflict in groups. One person commits to sustaining the project as it is, and sees it as their role to protect the project from any threat to its continuance. Another person thinks the project broken, flawed, or damaging, and wants to push for its dissolution. Another person has all these new ideas for ways to change the project, and wants to let those arise. In my observation, the person committed to sustaining tends to have the most power, in part as a function of the role itself. We need power to keep something in motion, and power-over derives in part from fear of changing things as they are.

    Identifying our work phases is like the orienting practice of “triangulation,” finding where one is by picking three visible landmarks, finding those landmarks on a map, and using the angles of vision to approximate where one is. When I think about where I am in relation to my dream, am I still in the process of arising, initiating change? Do I need to dissolve some responsibilities or habits that are taking time and energy away from my goals? Do the processes in place sustain me, do they need sustainment? What’s working? What’s not working?

    One lesson this model offers is that we can inhabit each phase fully and allow the energy of our project to move in its own way, in its own time. I can begin with a simple intention—“I want more intimacy in my relationship.” I can allow intimacy to arise within me, to suggest activities that would increase intimacy, to start new habits, to start conversations. If I can do this without too much attachment to what “intimacy” should look like, I have more flexibility and focus to discover what ends up working in my relationship, and then bring those working strategies into the process of sustainment. I can also discover what does not work, what impedes intimacy, and let those strategies dissolve.

    Presence with the process where it is, as it is, helps us to flow into the next best step with greater ease and less distress. When a process is ready to die, then sustaining it only causes stress. When a process is so deeply entrenched that to challenge would be taboo, we might better focus our efforts on dissolving rather than trying to start something new. At the same time, we might step away from the entrenched process altogether and focus on the arising, bringing something new into the world that might one day challenge things as it is once it has the strength and sustainment to tolerate a direct challenge.

    What is arising in you? What are you beginning or longing to begin?

    What needs nurturing? What needs to be sustained?

    What is dissolving? What is ending?

    If you are looking to reconnect with enthusiasm or integrity in your work or life and in the Seattle area, consider checking out this workshop coming November 6, 2014.

  • Commitment

    In conversation recently, someone expressed, “I have problems with commitment, and it’s stressing me out.” We were discussing a significant change of circumstances, an investment in place to which this person had never committed before. They recognized the value that more permanency would offer them and thought committing to place would be joyful, but instead they felt stressed, thinking about how familiar it was to move about almost at will, with minimal attachment.

    During the conversation it occurred to me that when we say we have a difficulty committing to something, often the difficulty arises in what we imagine when we think about commitment. If I want to make a commitment like “I am going to commit to a month without using a car,” then immediately I begin to have concerns and experiences with even the idea of commitment. I think of all the conveniences I would be giving up. I imagine all the inconveniences. I imagine the relief from finances. I become fearful about times when I might need the car. I begin spinning this idea of what my life will be and then I decide as though this idea was an accurate picture of how things will be. Maybe I decide I could never live without my car because I wouldn’t have the resources to do all I can do now. Maybe I will rush out and sell my car before I’ve really thought through the problems and consequences, because I got hooked by thinking about freedom from financial obligations.

    This mental work is not bad. It is useful. What I realized is that it’s important to remember that what I imagine is not going to prepare me completely for what the experience will be. When I commit to something, especially something I’ve never done, I am committing to uncertainty, risk, and adventure. This is the opposite of what most of us think when we talk about “commitment.” Many people think of commitment as drudgery, being tied down to something, an eternal monotony.

    Commitment does require discipline and regularity to be effective. When I commit to a relationship, then I am likely committing to showing up and not disappearing at whim, although that depends upon the relationship and what agreements make sense. Either way, there is a structure that holds the commitment in place. When I commit to a job, I get up five days a week at the same time and go to the same place for eight hours. What happens within that span changes from day to day, moment to moment.

    City of Troy Labyrinth, Simon Garbutt

    What I think scares us about that kind of commitment is that it brings us into presence with ourselves in a way that is new and uncomfortable. There is a part of us that constantly avoids confrontation and seeks comfort, and that part loses power when we engage in the discipline of showing up to the same thing. We get to see all of our parts, the ones that thrive in commitment and the ones that despise commitment. We see our heart in all its messiness. Perhaps there will never be this sense that life is as it’s supposed to be. Perhaps there will always be a fear that I’ve committed to the “wrong” thing.

    Commitment is be an act of daring and self-creation. When we think of commitment as this eternal chain, we can look at it instead as a choice we make every day to show up to what is there. Some commitments become toxic, and we can show up to that and act accordingly. Some commitments become dry because we’ve stopped showing up, and we can show up to that. Some commitments are mysteries that grow as we grow, deepen and evolve as we walk them, like a labyrinth.

  • Vicissitudes

    Nothing the works the way I want it to. There, I said it, and I ended my sentence with a preposition. There’s an impatient, grouchy, childlike part of self that gets frustrated with this. It wants what it wants, it wants it the way it wants it, and it doesn’t want to wait for what it wants.

    That part of me has dreams for my life, and my adult ego sets goals to make those dreams real. I put will and effort toward those goals, and sometimes I achieve them. Other times, I fail. That’s when the child part of me has a fit.

    Failing is hard when I’ve put so much heart and effort into the work. When I really commit to making something happen, I follow my passions, I listen to guidance and still it doesn’t work. Then the child part of me wants to make meaning out of the failure. “I’m on the wrong path.” “I don’t have what it takes.” “I’m broken.” These stories do not make the hurt feelings easier to bear, and they do not make it easier to recommit to my goals and dreams. They are attempts to convince myself that it’s okay to give up, so I don’t have to risk failing again.

    This could be an end. I could give into despair and cynicism. I could let my life’s energy pool and stagnate with resentment and discouragement, insulting myself or blaming everyone around me. I could give up the passion that helped me to live the life I loved living.

    Energy does not move in a straight line. Attention cycles from task to task, even with deep focus and intention. Say that I want to create a beautiful garden and all I have is a plot of bare soil. One day, I go out to till and fertilize the soil. One day, I plant the seeds. One day, I weed. One day, I prune. One day, I harvest. When the time comes for each task, if I really want a garden, I need to do the work even if I do not feel like it. I also need to learn how to wait for the right time to work. The seed and soil have work to do, and it would be a shame if I sat staring at them, trying to force them to blossom with pure attention and will. There is so much other life to live.

    Say I reach the end of the season and my garden has languished. The fruit is bad, the flowers died. Could I have known this would happen when I started? Was all the effort of preparing and planting for nothing?  Would not starting at all have been any better? What am I to make of this? Was the soil bad? Am I lacking in skill? Was it a fluke? Was it bad weather? Did I learn anything? Can I try something different next season? Or should I give up my dream of a garden?

    Failure shows us a truth about ourselves we would never otherwise see. Feeling discouraged, hurt, and disappointed is hard. We might want to ignore it and punish ourselves by working twice as hard. We might want to numb out and detach. If I can sit with the discomfort for even a moment, allow the hurt to just be, then I pull that energy back into the shifting movements of life. The lessons flow into the next act. Perhaps I do not go back to gardening immediately. Perhaps I start smaller, with potted plants. Perhaps I go seek some teaching. Perhaps I spend the winter knitting.

    Despair can be the falling fruit that rots to seed new life. Despair can be the surrender to the larger cycles in which we live, knowing we have a small but significant part to play.