Everything Is A Metaphor ...

••• EVERYTHING IS A METAPHOR •••

Have you ever noticed how when you clean out your closet, or straighten up your desk, or even wash your car, that you feel lighter, clearer, open to new ideas and ready to take action? Just like your desk is now occuring as an invitation to work on something new, and your car is a pleasurable invitation to drive, life experience occurs as freer and there is an invitation to become curious about what next inspires you. 

"If you want to know what you're thinking, look at your life."

I completed painting the interior of our home this past holiday season. It took months to decide on which colors to put on which walls. I am an artist, so I figured it would be easy and fun! What I realized shortly into the project was that this was a whole different world of expression than creating paintings, and there was an inventory of house paints and colors about which I was basically ignorant. This was work! About six months after starting, the last wall was complete, and our two floors of Navaho White are now transformed into a enveloping realm of warmth and beauty.

What I wasn't prepared for was the deep and satisfying experience of being home that this new many-hued house suddenly elicited. Having grown up in a family where abandonment was the culture, I had always felt that I didn't have a home, and over the decades have experienced myself as always looking for home, feeling like I never belonged. I came to realize that I didn't have to keep looking for a place, because I was a place, and I learned to "bring home" with me. But this new expression of warmth radiating out of the bold palette reminiscent of pumpkin and aubergine and green pear, is like stepping into one of my paintings, and suddenly the "inside bringing" of home is reflected in the outside structure of the house. Finally, the completion of a long search born of much self-reflection, emanating through this lovely house. Everyone who visits loves stepping into this environment and feels its enveloping cheer.

"If you want to know what you're thinking, look at your life."

I took a wonderful class last year through the University of Berkeley's "Ollie" curriculum. It was a course on dreams and consciousness. We shared dreams as part of the coursework, and as we all sat in a circle, we took one voluntary decribed dream and we all interpreted it. The caveat was, however, that we had to interpret the dream as if it was our own - we could not analyze the dream as if we had the answer for someone else. Well, of course, each of us saw so much value in our own interpretation of another's dream, because the symbolic nature of the other's dream got interpreted through our own filters, born of each of our own unique past experiences. It didn't matter which of us had actually dreamed the dream! Very powerful.

As I reflected on this classwork over the weeks, something occurred to me. What if I were to describe an event that happened during my waking hours, an event that caused me some kind of dilemma, concern, or perplexity, and reviewed it myself as if it were a dream I had had, or even a dream that another had had? And what if my interpretation of this waking event as if it were a dream, resulted in a fruitful illumination of the issue? 

Well, there followed many good harvests.

If you want to know the source of your life, consider what you are thinking!

Are we sure this life is the waking walk and the dream life is the sleeping walk? Is it worth considering that everything is a metaphor? With this perspective through which to peer, life experience takes on even richer hues, even clearer vision. The deeply wise essence of who I am is always trying to tell me something, but I have been limiting myself to listening only to the language my tongue can speak.

~•~•~ Ten Thousand Blessings to You  ~•~•~

Loneliness and Longing: "Who Weeps for God?"

"The singing and dancing over, the Master took his seat and all sat around him.

'Sir, how can one develop Divine Love?

Through restlessness - the restlessness a child feels for his mother. The child feels bewildered

when he is separated from his mother, and weeps longingly for her. 

If a man can weep like that for God

he can even see him.'"

~ from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna

Every now and then I would have to say that I suffer from a deep sense of loneliness. It used to haunt me but now it gives me pause to get quiet and reflective. I have a wonderful life with many friends and family, and I have very good work that is well suited for me which I have generated over many years of training and practice. So there is no real reason for me to experience such loneliness. 

For many years I thought that the loneliness had to do with others and old experiences and resulting patterns of abandonment. I am not saying that such experiences and patterns don't have their impact. They do. But what I have been able to discern over time is that by paying attention to these old patterns I have actually cultivated them into an ongoing reality, re-creating them into having their own ongoing life, and re-creating relationships which prove the validity of being the victim of the perceived and actual losses. 

In being willing to be curious about the loneliness, I developed a tolerance to actually be present with it, and I have come to see something. I can see that the loneliness is actually a longing for the freedom of authenticity, the grace of aligning with my own essence, a resonating call for self-acceptance and self-expression, such that I am bringing communion rather than looking for it. 

There are some places where this is fulfilled, and I can speak from experience that the longing of mother for child and child for mother is certainly one place. Sometimes we are blessed to find it with another partner, and whole worlds of love unfold within and without. 

But we can have that experience of whole worlds of love unfolding within and without, even if we are walking through life without a significant other. The fulfillment of such longing is actually a birthright, a realm which is equally everywhere present, permeating and penetrating and saturating all of the ethers. As we are willing to take a deeper dive into the source of the unrest, seeing the unrest as an aspect of longing, listening to it as a request that is preceding the fulfillment, we can resonate with the quietness and profundity and the peace of contentment. The longing is the promise of fulfillment.

"Let me tell you something. What will you gain by floating on the surface? 

Dive a little under the water. The gems lie deep under the water; so what is the good 

of throwing your arms and legs about on the surface? 

A real gem is heavy. It doesn't float; it sinks to the bottom. 

To get the real gem you must dive deep." 

~ Sri Ramakrishna

~•~•~ !Ten Thousand Blessings to You! ~•~•~

Be What You are Looking For

  ~~~ •  Be What You Are Looking For  • ~~~

Have you ever considered the possibility that there is no one out there? Meaning to say, there is only you, walking around in your life, experiencing life based upon how you perceive things? Have you considered that the people you interact with may or may not be the way you understand them to be, but rather only occur that way to you because you have a certain vantage point from which you view them, and then you make up that that must be the way they are?

What if that wasn't really the way that they are? What if you actually caused people to be the way they are with you by overlaying your vantage point of who you see them to be on top of them, like a veil, so they didn't actually have a chance to be anything other than the way you saw them? They would be caught in the script of your design, trapped into reacting a certain way because you set the stage for them to be the character you created.

Is this a stretch? Well, last fall I chose to create a way of being for myself that inspired me. I chose to stand in the psychological vantage point that I was a remarkable human being who would be a clearing, a space if you will, for other human beings to be remarkable. This inspired me.

I had just found out from my sister that my father was ill. Life with my father had been a terrifying experience for me as a child. I would say that I experienced my childhood as one of alienation and despair. When I heard he was ill at the age of 90, I thought long and hard about whether or not to go and see him. He had, after all, after the last time I spoke with him, requested that I never call him again. This, after a loving conversation!? But then, that was my father, and we had only spoken twice in the last 30-plus years. He wanted it that way. My sister and I hashed it out and we both decided to, finally at this age,  decline seeing him and putting ourselves through what had become the "routine" of being rejected once again by our dad.

Then I remembered this possible way of being I had created for myself. What would the woman who was being a remarkable human being who was a space for other human beings to be remarkable, do? Well, she would not decline a last request for the fear - or righteous indignation - of not being accepted. She would not be LOOKING for acceptance, she would be BRINGING acceptance! 

Big shift in vantage point. 

I shared this with my sister and she agreed to give it a try. No matter what his response, we could at least BRING what we were looking for. So we called him! Unbelievably he was a different man. He couldn't believe we wanted to see him and said absolutely to please come. So off we flew to Portland, Oregon and then drove 2 hours to his house.

The looming image of my terrifying father evaporated, as a very old and frail man came to the door to greet us. My sister and I hugged and kissed the father we hadn't seen together in 40 years. There were a couple of moments when the old ugly personality that we knew as children reared its head, but she and I looked at each other with the resolve that we were going to continue to BRING the joy and love we wanted in the face of anything he could dish out. The comraderie between she and I was powerful! We both smiled as the daggers briefly flew our way, and then dissolved as our smiling and loving countenances met them halfway. They didn't have a chance!!

We visited for about 5 hours before we drove back to the airport. We were incredulous at our own results. My father was so grateful and loving, and, even though the childhood was what it was, we now have a memory to take with us to OUR graves, and we now know that anything is possible. I have an experience that I never had before: being loved by my father. I have spoken to him several times since, and though he cannot hear well on the phone, despite repetitive yelling on my part, he always hears the words "I love you, Dad".

We really can create an environment that we bring with us which establishes a field of resonance to which incoming energy vibrates. It's physics: the highest vibrational rate catalyzes other lower vibrational rates around it, and either raises them to the same frequency, or turns them away.

Don't take my word for it. Are you looking for something in relationship with someone else? Is there something missing that you want? Be the gift you want to get. This is why it is better to give than to receive - what you are giving has to come through you first before it can be given to another. If you want love, give love. Period. This is not about fairness - fairness is an illusion if you are looking for it outside of yourself. This is about being a leader and being empowering for yourself and others, and creating the world that you say you want.

GENERATE the way of being you are looking for. 

And watch what happens!!

~~~ • Ten Thousand Blessings to You • ~~~

The Wisdom of Not Knowing

"True freedom

is living as if you had completely chosen

whatever you feel or experience in this moment.

This inner alignment with the Now

is the end of suffering."

~ Eckhart Tolle

I have been teaching a class over the last years called "The Wisdom of Not Knowing", and I will be turning it into a webinar series for a corporate client this summer. I thought I would share a bit about the essence of "Not Knowing", as it may be of interest to many of you wanting to experience more freedom and ease in life experience.

The wisdom of not knowing is very much related to being present in the "Now". Being able to identify one's intellect, or essentially, one's memory, such that you can turn your attention away from it to listen from nothing and be completely present with what is happening around you in the moment, or to be completely present to how another human being sees life, is at the heart of accessing wisdom. To be actually fascinated with how another human being sees life, having the humility of realizing that every human being is a unique culture of which we know nothing, creates inspiration and profound relatedness.

Listening deeply enriches all conversations and gives people an inroad to intimacy and compassion. For the practitioner or consultant who has the ears to diagnose, it reveals the clues to where the knots are, where there's a place that doesn't make sense. It expands organizational creativity as people begin to see that differences are what you're looking for in order to open up conversations for organizational evolution.

This approach is particularly effective when applied to listening to one's own thinking. Is it personal thought - our own memory and intellect - from which we are taking our cues? Or is it Impersonal Thought - Infinite Intelligence - Wisdom, which informs us of our understanding and choices?

Through listening deeply enough, the one you are listening to hears their own perceptions in such a way that there is a vacuum created into which rushes the solution which has been waiting to be heard! Every question is preceded by the answer wanting to come up to consciousness.

Deep listening with nothing on our mind is at the core of any true effectiveness we catalyze with others. My life's journey from here on out is to develop more and more gracefulness in Not Knowing.

Wanna play?!

• ~~~~~ • ~~~~~ •  Ten Thousand Blessings to You  • ~~~~~ • ~~~~~ •

CLUTTER: Somewhere, Right Now, Someone is Playing Music

This past year I completed what has essentially been a four year project of managing the build of a new addition to our house, and then having the exterior and interior painted. That project in itself is cause for a separate musing...

In any case, as you walk into the house you are greeted now by earthy hues that sing with warmth and resonate with invitation. Coming down the curving staircase onto the first floor, what then awaits you in the middle of the dining room is a pile of neatly organized boxes, smack in the midst of this welcoming beauty. I decided to pull all of the boxes out of the closets and the office and basically, out of hiding. Rather than make believe I have it all together I now introduce the pile to our visitors as "And here's My Stuff. This is actually my life. I trip over it. Eventually I will organize it and let go of these old belongings and My Stuff will no longer be here in the dining room."

By the way, just behind this heap of valuables is a panoramic view of the San Francisco Bay Area. However, I no longer really notice that as there is so much other "stuff" to see which is blocking the music of this stunning vista.

I was reflecting on this state of affairs over the weekend, and what I began to see was that every time I walked through the house I really resented that I had to deal with this mess. It took my time, it got in my way, and I felt that I couldn't actually get to the things that I wanted to get to because I had so much stuff to sort through. I felt that I had to go through every piece of paper; turn over every stone, so to speak, in case I might miss something and that if I didn't save it I would be heart-broken, or worse, that something terrible might happen.

A feeling of overwhelm comes over me when confronted with this stack of stuff. Incidentally, this pile of boxes is just the first string. There's a whole storage unit under the garage full of the past, again - stuffed in boxes, and most of this doesn't belong to me - it belongs to our children. And oh yes, the garage ... well, that space just fits the cars plus all the valuables that aren't even in the organized boxes yet. And then there's my closet ...

So - I saw how overwhelmed and distracted I was with the clutter I had accumulated. I also know that Life Itself is always humming, always Joyful, and somewhere, at any given moment, someone is tapped into that Resonance that is Life and is listening, allowing, or playing music, either literally or figuratively.

Then it hit me! These boxes that I have dragged around from place to place, full of perfectly good stuff, by the way - not junk - are the perfect metaphor for how I have been living my life. I had a challenging and unhappy childhood. I learned to read the psychological undercurrents of every situation in order to be safe. No stone unturned!

Over time this developed skill has created in me a brilliant capacity to diagnose what is troubling in certain circumstances, situations, people's lives and personalities. This need to turn over every stone gave rise to an inner tenacity of perception that had me do quite well in getting my Ph.D. in psychology: driven to know the truth of the matter! Not a bad deal actually, and has been quite a contribution in many ways. However, what I saw this weekend is that I have been living my whole life with a need to ferret out every piece of information that might otherwise trip me up, all so that I could be happy and fulfilled. The arduous nature of going through the boxes is just a representation of the arduous way I have been living my life!

Now you wouldn't necessarily know this from looking at me or sitting down for a good session or even a chat. However, inside my head lurks the same never-ending monologue that goes on pretty much inside every human being's head that I've ever met, read, or heard of. Human beings are designed to think. Endlessly. Without ceasing. We are indeed thinking creatures!

SO - what if I just grabbed a latte and opened a box and perused it as if I was shopping? Took out of the past collection just what I wanted to keep and tossed the rest, without having to look through every item, check every detail.

And what if I started living my life in the present moment - singing, already happy, taking from the past only those items and memories that have contributed to the amazing and wonderful life that I am living today? Everything else has been grist for the mill, really, and thus the portal for my transformation. 

Let go the rest.

WHOA! Clutter: The access to freedom, happiness, and full self-expression!!!

Not to sound preachy but heh! How about if I just let go in gratitude, and keep enough to remember that the blessing to still be in the journey is all earned, and that all that suffering is what allowed for compassion to bloom.

How about "Clutter: The Path to Enlightenment". Well, ok, that's a bit much, but maybe it's at least a way to whistle while you work.

I feel a Broadway musical coming on ...

Ten thousand blessings to you until next time.

Reflections ...

THE RESONANCE OF BEAUTY

Beauty resonates through all manifestations, being an aspect of the One Substance out of which all things are formed. Beauty is intrinsic harmony expressed.

Beauty is Truth. If Truth is the unwavering perfection in the universe - the Divine Order which, through association, transmutes everything into its Divine Correspondent - then Beauty is an expression of the Divine Order inherent in all form, all conditions, all life experience. In order to see beauty in this way, we have to be open to seeing it in this way.

We are struck by the beauty of an object, a person, a scene, nature. What happens? The Divine Order within the structure speaks to that higher state of Divine Order within us, and, much like a tuning fork, catalyzes the state of Divine Order that is equally everywhere present. We look at each other through it. The experience of being touched by the beauty of anything is an aspect of Love. Harmony and the experience of Harmony is an aspect of Love, and Love is the highest Truth. So, Beauty is Truth. Beauty is Love emanating, catalyzing.

Listen for Beauty and notice how you are transmuted into the Divine Correspondent of Love, Gratitude and Compassion. These are some of the divine characteristics toward which we aspire to express through our humanity. These characteristics are available to us and through us, simply by focusing awareness toward them. We then awaken to Beauty in struggle, in suffering, as well as in comfort and ease. Listening is seeing.

Seeing Beauty does not condone injustice; it is a listening through which we can access the ability to make a beneficial difference in any circumstance or condition.

Seeing Beauty is seeing the Divine Order in all experience. Listening for Beauty is a stance to take to actualize positive change, and have access to possibility, genius, creativity, and joy.

© 2009 Laura Basha, Ph.D., Founder, White Bird Rising