Hi
there! It's a new week in our lives, and here
we all are, sharing this planet
with all its possibility and potential. . . thanks
much for being here with us!
Courage
is doing what you're
afraid to do. There can be no
courage
unless you're scared. -
Eddie Rickenbacker
The
main thing in life is not to be afraid of being human. -Pau
Casals
The ultimate
test of a person's conscience may be his
or her willingness to sacrifice
something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be
heard. -
Gaylord Nelson
Success,
recognition, and conformity are the bywords
of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the
anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority.
-Martin
Luther King, Jr.
Fear is passion without breath. How do we mother our
passion? To be fully alive, we have no choice but to
finally move closer toward what we usually veer away
from. I have habitually ignored the black hole into
which everything seems to disappear, the sterile void
that, in my worst moments, I am afraid is at my
core. It causes me to approach life as if I always
had to escape from some danger.
What would it be like to open our hearts to our fear, to
befriend it with wonder, as one would a deer in the
forest? What if you could bring it right into the
hearth of your awareness instead of ignoring it and thus
allowing it to become an undifferentiated mass of demons
that gang up on you in the murk? Stuffed behind
walls, fear becomes a horde--the Demons of Doubt who will
trample you under stories of what others think, of your
endless failures, impending humiliation, and lost
control. Together and ignored, they will drive you
out of your own life. But when you invite them into
the layered light of your awareness, they can't join
together and rule you from the shadows.
I am practicing opening to fear as often as I can when it
arises. I awkwardly release the constrictions and
control I usually I usually use to numb the fear
out.
Breathing
in and out, I slowly become present to myself and my body,
coming to my senses as I would with a terrified baby,
noticing my breath, noticing sensations, refusing any
interpretations. I imagine the warmth of compassion
sinking deep into the cold place where all of that fear
and confusion lives, as if a woodstove is lit on a frigid
hard morning. The warmth from the stove fills the
room, transforms the cold.
I imagine Wonder Woman here teaching all of us. She
holds fear at the edge of the unknown, which just happens
to be our growing edge, what we most need to learn.
She peers over. She feels fear, but she also feels
alternating currents of fascination. A bubble
appears over her head as she asks, "What am I more
curious about than I am afraid of?"
There is something highly passionate about living in
conscious relationship to fear. I have been
practicing daily by venturing into the unknown and risking
a reach. Not just any old risk. Only
interesting ones. Sometimes I do it on skis or
snowshoes, crossing snowy terrain in early morning or
right after sunset when there is a huge tense blackness in
the world, when the wind seems like a language the
mountains are speaking, when my wild feet break new white
snow and write messages in large, exuberant prints.
Sometimes I do it with paint on black paper, not trying to
make anything, but rather just for the experience of
noticing what happens on that edge of uncertainty, what
emerges from the black hole of the unknown.
Sometimes I just sit still with my eyes, hands, and ears
empty, letting my thoughts warp, floating in the space
between my breaths, my periphery getting wider and wider
as it does at the ocean.
These little practices with risk and reach, fear and
promise at my edge give me daily shots of vitality, the
pump of adrenaline. Everything else disappears,
including any notion of identity or roles or images of who
I'm supposed to be. There is only the experience of
being passionately alive. Still, each time, prior to
setting out, fear seems more justified than trust.
The hardest thing is to keep your horizons open, to keep
exploring that green growing edge. As I tremble
there, I find myself wondering, "What do I love more
than I fear? How can I motivate myself by what I
love?"
When I die, I want to remember the pulse of life. I
want to be well practiced in letting go over the edge of
the known, holding on to that golden Wonder Woman rope
woven of threads of love, and feel it untwining into a
thousand directions.
When I die, I want my heart and soul fully seeded with
rich stories and experiences. I want to be moving
forward, falling upward, leaving my body well worn.
I want to know presence, staying with what is hard until
it softens, staying with what is narrow until it
expand. I want to know how to float in the silences
between breaths and thoughts. I want to know how to
lift above and sink below the flow of life, to drift and
dream in the currents of what cannot be known. It's
not so much about being prepared for death as it is being
full of life. I want to be so well practiced in
crossing thresholds that dying is merely another step in
the dance. I want to be so comfortable with
stillness and silence that I can root in them.
And you, my friend? I am wondering, if you were
writing these pages, if you crossed a chasm of hesitancy
and there were an immense release in you, what words would
flow from your pen, after beginning the sentence,
"When I die, I want. . ."
May we all learn how to love well. May we all find
something to love that is larger and more powerful than
anything we fear.
Little yellow house sittin' on a hill
That is where he lived
That is where he died
Every Sunday morning
Hear the weeping willows cry
Two children born
A beautiful wife
Four walls and livin's all he needed in life
Always giving, never asking back
I wish I had a simple love like that
[Chorus]
I want a simple love like that
Always giving, never askin' back
For when I'm in my final hour lookin' back
I hope I had a simple love like that
My mama was his only little girl
If he'd had the money, he'd have given her the world
Sittin' on the front porch, together they would sing
Oh, how I long to hear that harmony
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If worrying were a paying job, I would be a rich
woman. Somehow during my childhood, I got
the idea that worrying could actually stave off
future disaster, and as I entered adulthood, I
became convinced that if I were to stop
worrying, took my eye off the ball, as it were,
that something dreadful would happen. If I
worried enough about being poor, I wouldn't
be. If I worried enough about my partner's
safety, nothing would happen to him. If I
worried enough about my stepson's health, he
wouldn't get sick. There was no room in my
heart for happiness because worry took up all
the space. (Indeed I was convinced that if
I were too happy, it would somehow hex the
situation. If I got too happy about love,
for example, I wouldn't worry sufficiently and
therefore it would be taken away from me.)
In my forties, I have been working on letting go
of my compulsive worrying, and I have been
amazed at how swiftly a sense of gratefulness
banishes the worry warts. And I've tried
many other things--asking myself what is the
worst thing that could happen and imagining
going through that to a new place; noticing
without judgment my worry; indulging it; pushing
it away. None of these has been as
effective as tapping into a sense of
appreciation in this moment for what I do
have.
Worried about money? I focus on the
fact that so far, I have always had what I
needed and right now, I have enough.
Worried about health? I focus on the
amount of good health I'm thankful to be
experiencing right now. Worried about--my
favorite--a loved one being taken suddenly in an
accident? I focus on how grateful I am
that they are in my life right now.
I think tapping into the wellspring of gratitude
works for two reasons. First, worry is
always about the future, if only the next hour
of minute, whereas gratitude is in the here and
now. Cast over your list of worries.
Aren't they always about what might or might not
happen? You are worried about the reaction
of your boss tomorrow to your
presentation. You're worried about how you
are going to afford to send your son or daughter
to college. You're worried about the test
results. In every case, you project
yourself into the future and imagine something
bad happening. As André Dubus points out,
"It is not hard to live through a day if
you can live through a moment. What
creates despair is the imagination, which
pretends there is a future and insists on
predicting millions of moments, thousands of
days, and so drains you that you cannot live the
moment at hand." Gratitude brings you
back to the present moment, to all that is
working perfectly right now. Tomorrow may
bring difficulties, but for right now, things
are pretty good.
Gratefulness also eliminates worry because it
reminds us of the abundance of our
universe. Yes, something bad might happen,
but given all that you have received so far,
chances are that you will continue to be
supported on your journey through life, even in
ways you would never have guessed or chosen for
yourself.
Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement. Our
articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do
we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live
life. Take
from them what you will, and disagree with
whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you
each week.
Autumn
is youthful, mirthful, frolicsome--the child of summer's
joy--and
on every side there are suggestions of
juvenility and mischief. While spring
is a careful artist
who paints each flower with delicate workmanship,
autumn
flings whole pots of paint about in wild carelessness. The crimson
and scarlet colours reserved for roses and
tulips are splashed on the brambles
till every bush is
aflame, and the old creeper-covered house blushes like a
sunset.
Roger Wray
The Cults
of Personality
When I was younger, I thought that we as a society would outgrow
our fascination with so-called "stars"--the actors and
athletes and writers and models and other people who are fortunate
enough to become "famous." Unfortunately, though,
as time has gone on we have become even more obsessed with
these people, and we're spending more time and money and energy
now focused on other people who just happen to be in the
spotlight. In the meantime, we're spending less time focusing our
energies and resources on our families and friends.
It's important that we realize just what we're focusing on.
There's a reason that these people are in the news and on the
screens, and it doesn't have to do with their talents or the
contributions that they're making to the world. The reason
is simple: other people are making lots of money off of
them. The airways are filled with mediocre songs by mediocre
singers because those songs sell because people like the singer or
group behind them. We see poorly made movie after poorly
made movie because people like a particular actor or actress for
the time being.
These people, though, are just like you and me. Most of them
struggled to get into the business they're in, and they're very
fortunate to have what they have. Somewhere along the line,
somebody else with money realized that they could make even more
money with this actress in their movie, or having this singer make
albums, regardless of the quality. (We see that the
abilities of singers is limited, for example, when we look at the number
of artists who use what's called Autotune, a computer program that
actually corrects a singer's pitch when he or she misses
notes.) While many of them do have tremendous talents, the
truth is that they're just like you and me, and our obsessions
with them simply aren't justified.
When I look around me, I see people wearing more and more
overpriced shirts that are basically ads for their favorite teams
or singers. I hear people spending time talking about TV
shows or singers or athletes instead of talking about themselves
and each other. We focus a lot of time on the latest song or
album from our favorite group or on how a team got robbed by the
refs yesterday, but little time talking about our own hopes and
dreams, little time talking about our own problems and trying to
come up with solutions to them.
When I was young, I had hoped that this sort of phenomenon would
have passed, but it's getting stronger and stronger as the people
who want to make money spend more money advertising and trying to
convince us to follow their team or their stars. They create
television shows that they call "reality" shows that
really have little or nothing to do with reality, but which
function basically as ways to get performers' names and images in
the public eye so that they can sell more songs or movie tickets
and dvd's.
More and more of our money each year goes towards the goods and
services that these people offer. Less and less of our time
each year goes towards our families and friends as we focus more
and more of our time and energy into following the
"stars." Why would I write a letter to a friend
when I can watch a new episode of American Idol? I
can't buy my kid a new coat because it cost us $300 to go to that
football game last week.
Being a fan isn't necessarily a bad thing. Being obsessed
with someone we've never met, though, is. As time goes on
and we become more aware of the ways that we spend our time,
energy, and resources, I hope that people will one day be spending
less money on tickets to baseball games and more money on their
communities; less money on movies and home entertainment systems
and more time and money on their kids and their friends.
Perhaps it's just a pipe dream of mine, but it definitely is a
dream.
It is very
often asserted that
fear is destructive. Yet this is
not
entirely true; when fear is felt
about things that truly
threaten
security, it is protective. It is
very fortunate
that humans have
an almost unlimited capacity for
learning
fears; otherwise
we
would have been eliminated long ago.
Smiley
Blanton
Two
friends were walking through the desert. During some point
of the journey they had an argument and one friend slapped the
other one in the face.
The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything,
wrote in the sand: "Today my best friend slapped me in the
face."
They kept on walking, until they found an oasis, where they
decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got
stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved
him.
After he recovered from the near drowning, he wrote on a stone:
"Today my best friend saved my life."
The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him,
"After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write
on a stone. Why?"
The other friend replied, "When someone hurts us we should
write it down in sand where winds of forgiveness can erase it
away. But when someone does something good for us, we must
engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it."
Notice
what happens when you doubt, suppress, or act contrary to
your feelings. You will observe decreased energy, powerless or
helpless feelings, and physical or emotional pain. Now notice what
happens when you follow your intuitive feelings. Usually the result
is increased energy and power and a sense of natural flow. When
you're at one with yourself, the world feels peaceful, exciting, and
magical.
Yes, life
can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's
actually rather dependable and reliable. Some principles apply
to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called
universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use
them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever
learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning. I use it a lot when I
teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to
the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.
What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or
generous, compassionate or arrogant? In this book, I've done my
best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life,
writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.
Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too! Universal Principles of Living Life Fully. Awareness of
these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration
out of the lives we lead.
Explore all of our
quotations pages--these links will take you to the first page of each
topic, and those pages will contain links to any additional pages on
the same topic (there are five pages on adversity, for example).
™
