For My Daughter's Daughter

My Daughter Asleep by David Whyte

Carrying a child,
I carry a bundle
of sleeping
future appearances,
I carry
my daughter adrift
on my shoulder,
dreaming her slender
dreams
and
I carry her
beneath
the window,
watching
her moon lit
palm
open
and close
like a tiny
folded
map,
each line
a path that leads
where I can't go,
so that I read her palm
not knowing
what I read
and
walk with her
in moon light
on the landing,
not knowing
with whom I walk,
making
invisible prayers
to go on
with her
where I can't
go,
conversing
with so many
unknowns
that must know her
more intimately
than I do.
And so to these
unspoken shadows
and this broad night
I make
a quiet
request
to the
great parental
darkness
to hold her
when I cannot,
to comfort her
when I am gone,
to help her learn
to love
the unknown
for itself,
to take it
gladly
like
a lantern
for the way
before her,
to help her see
where ordinary
light will not help,
where happiness has fled,
where faith
cannot reach.
My prayer tonight
for the great
and hidden symmetries
of life
to reward this
faith I have
and twin
her passages
of loneliness
with friendship,
her exiles
with home coming,
her first awkward
steps with
promised onward leaps.
May she find
in all this,
day or night,
the beautiful
centrality
of pure opposites,
may she discover
before she grows
old,
not to choose
so easily
between past
and present,
may she find
in
one or the other
her gifts
acknowledged.
And so
as I helped
to name her
I help to name
these
powers,
I bring
to life
what is needed,
I invoke
the help she'll
want
following
these moonlit lines
into a future
uncradled
by me but
parented
by all
I call.
As she grows
away
from me,
may these life lines
grow with her,
keep her safe,
so
with my open palm
whose lines
have run before her
to make a safer way,
I hold her smooth cheek
and bless her
this night
and beyond it
and for every unknown
night to come.

…
My Daughter Asleep
‘River Flow : New and Selected Poems’

Love, Authenticity and Vulnerability

 

Keep breaking your heart until it opens. – Rumi

Spiritual growth comes from being Brave enough to open your Heart

Keep breaking your heart until it opens. – Rumi

The word “open” has always conjured, for me, scenes of expansive space, broad horizons, reception and exploration. What I often forget is that, in such beautiful ways, the world works in contrasts, and they are often stark. Everything is cyclical, just like the tides and the phases of the moon, we go in and out of expansion and contraction.

So too, does the heart.

Openness is often provoked by an explosion, a sudden blast of heat, a disarming presence, or a situation that leaves you without much to say. In these times, we fear darkness. We forget about contrast. We beg for the light. In practice, we know that all things are temporary; we know that there is a symbiotic relationship between our perceived pain and our desired outcomes. There are always lessons in store.

Openness is often provoked by an explosion

Choosing Heart over Ego

The heart is a great teacher in this way. It leads us into depths we had no idea existed so far within us, it shows us the parts we pretend are not there, and waves them in our face.

The heart has its own intelligence, its own methods for exploration and teaching. It is at once its own entity, and an integrated leader with the other systems of the body and energy. Those who are tapped most fully into their ability to love (their heart energy), radiate this outward. It magnetizes. Other people can feel it, and even if not consciously, they are changed because of it.

We are impacting each other all of the time, in waves and great starts, in words and wordless interactions, in embraces and calculated mistreatments. The choice remains to lead with the heart over the ego, when the aim is to have the most interesting life. The richest experience. The most irrefutable aliveness. The most comprehensive humanity.

The heart has its own intelligence

Laying Down your Arms

There is an insistent bravery in living when you are broken open that is hard-pressed to be found elsewhere in many instances. Love is the fuel for so much of our experience, all of it, really, and we live and die to experience this ultimate alignment. We take passionate action and enraptured planning to an all time high in the quest for this vibration, this elevating form of pure source.

What is incorrigible information underneath it all is that we needn’t work so hard. We must simply surrender. Those of us on a spiritual  path tend to resonate with this word on a variety of levels, but many of us who are drawn to exploring the outer limits of ourselves are born with a fierceness that can be quite unshakeable. We love challenge – of ourselves, of our beliefs, of our bodies, we love the opportunity to grow. What this can also mean is that we love to fight, we love to embody the warrior.

We think of the warrior as being emblematic of strength in compassionate warfare, but so often, being a warrior means laying down your arms.

In the greatest sense, to awaken the open heart, to invigorate your full potential, you must let the intensity and heat of leading with your heart burn off all of the other things that are getting in the way – like the desire to struggle.

Burn off whatever is getting in the way

Saying ‘Yes’ to Being Open

Spiritual growth is so often like taking up residence in a furnace, in a cosmic bonfire imploding in on itself, the path is the undaunted ownership of one foot in front of the other, in the most stacked of flames.

When we answer the call to live fully, we accept that this means in great joy and in great sadness. When we welcome intensity, we trust that it means nothing is going to be subtle anymore. We learn to find stillness in this, on our mats, in our meditations, with our breath – yet, still, the experience of heightened awareness and sensation is there.

It will always be there, as a reminder that we have bodies, yet we are not just bodies. We are interconnected and raw and vibrating and reaching out to each other without using our arms at all. We are walking force fields, little lightning bolts of everything imaginable, pared down and packaged into lovely vessels that can kiss and fuse.

If we choose the road less traveled, the one where we say “yes” to being wide open, we know that we are, in effect, choosing to be challenged. We are nodding our heads to being thrown and surprised as well as embraced and made warm. We are exclaiming with wide eyes and clapping our hands at the opportunity to face everything and rise.

Surrender is key. Persistence is necessary. Bravery is fuel. Courage is emblematic.

Open up your heart and you’ll find the sky is yours

Agreeing to an Explosive Life

Awakening the open heart has very little to do with being undiscerning about where you throw your loving energy. It has much to do with being discerning about remaining open even when you feel like you have been grated clean and left in the rain. There is a lesson there, in that wetness.

Each experience we have is simultaneously being had or has been had by everyone around us. It is impossible to feel alone in this, in the openness of being, in letting heart lead the way, in allowing it to be the guiding light and the conjurer of our everyday comings and goings, reachings and failings.

When we choose to rouse our open heart, to awaken her, to let her beat at the front lines – we are agreeing to an explosive, extraordinary life. We are agreeing to push past what we are often told is acceptable in terms of range of feeling.

Agreeing to an explosive life

How open is your Heart?

We are consciously choosing to deviate from the mundane, the restricted, the oppressed, and the self-censored. To be truly open hearted is to beat with the pulse of the divine, in light and dark, in challenge and ease, in acceptance and turmoil, and always in surrender to whatever may come.

The truly adventurous life leaves no stone unturned, and the path of the explorer begins with the commitment to grow wider between the ribs every day.

Boat Burning

Burning The Boats

Have you ever questioned your commitment to a loved one, your profession, your faith or a lifelong goal? Have you created a situation where you have one foot out the door, just in case things don't work out? Or, maybe you just want to keep your options open for a better alternative. This seemingly prudent and reasonable position of keeping one foot in and one foot out may actually be a recipe for failure in both scenarios. Here's why.

Our mind has many components. One of those components is often called the "higher mind." The higher mind operates much like a hard drive running in the background of your computer. It whirls away crunching information and numbers while you play Halo or Tetris. Its purpose is to help you solve problems and to attain specific goals. Therein lies the dilemma. Re: your love relationship, if you are sending it the message that you are open to a possible divorce, it will begin to work on those instructions and, by extension, stop working towards coming up with creative solutions to make your relationship more satisfying.

Burn the Boats

So you may be asking how in the world do the "burning boats" come into this commentary?

In 1519, Captain Hernando Cortes and a small army left Cuba and set out to conquer Central America. Cortes was going to accomplish his goals, no matter the consequences. The myth states that once Cortes' troops landed in what is now Mexico, he ordered the ships destroyed by fire.

In burning his ships, Cortes took away all options to retreat and, I am sure, got the full buy-in from his troops to make it a successful campaign. They had no choice. Either drown in the sea or conquer this new world.

Do you allow "what-if" scenarios to dominate your thinking? Do you find yourself questioning your marriage, job or other significant decisions or commitments? Sometimes what is needed is not an external change but an internal one. Burn the boats in your significant relationships or in your vocation and see how creative you will become in making them great.

By committing 100% to them, your higher mind will be able to work far more efficiently in helping you to figure out the rest. A lack of commitment not only creates apathy, but it is emotionally draining and erodes your creativity. Without a clear commitment, you will be defeated even before you start.

Burn the boats.

Five Keys to Boat Burning

1. Create a “have to” goal like a terrific relationship with your spouse - one that will glow white hot within you. Then, burn all the other boats.
2. Action is key so act as if success is certain. By burning your boats, you will tap into your faith and create a laser-like clarity that brings everything into distinct focus. Your next steps will just flow since they will be so obvious.
3. Enlist the help of others. Nothing truly significant in life happens without other peoples' help. We are social beings and are meant  to do things together. An individual with a burnt boat is nothing more than a castaway, so tap into other sources of wisdom and energy and be open to the great unseen forces of consciousness and Spirit.
4. Trust your “higher mind” to formulate connections that you never saw before. By burning your boats, you are simply freeing yourself to do something that you have been most likely been preventing yourself from doing all along.
5. Unconventional success calls for unconventional approaches. We all have hard-wired habits and ways of doing things in our life that, in time, can actually become roadblocks to success. Try completely new, unfamiliar approaches and see what happens. Charts and maps are terrific but, quite often, incredible journeys start by someone acting on one seemingly crazy and paradoxical hunch.

Bon voyage and God speed!

A Rumi Afternoon

Letting Go

The Journey

By Mary Oliver (1935 – )

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

— from Dream Work, by Mary Oliver

Antonio Machado

Last Night As I Was Sleeping

 

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

Projection - You Spot It You Got It And The Ironic Monitoring Process

Projection: What You Spot is What You’ve Got

Martha Beck, PhD

 

“There are two kinds of people I can’t stand,” says Michael Caine’s character in the epically low comedy Goldmember, “those who are intolerant of other cultures, and the Dutch.” I love this line, not because it slams the Dutch (for whom I feel great admiration) but because it slams hypocrisy—specifically, the baffling double standards of people who condemn in others the very offenses they themselves are committing. My fellow life coach Sharon Lamm calls this the “you spot it, you got it” syndrome. In other words, whatever we criticize most harshly in others may be a hallmark of our own psyche; what I hate most in you may actually be what I hate most in me. 

This style of thinking is so illogical, you’d think it would be rare. Because of the peculiarities of human psychology, though, it’s actually more the rule than the exception. Understanding the “you spot it, you got it” phenomenon requires some focused thinking, but the effort will bring more peace and sanity to your relationships and your inner life. 

Why We Spot What We Got
 

Let’s start by replicating a little thought experiment devised by psychologist Daniel Wegner: For the next 30 seconds, don’t think about anything connected to the subject of white bears. Don’t think about bears of any kind—or the Arctic, or snowy terrain, or white fur coats, etc. Ready? Go. 

You probably just had more bear-related thoughts than you typically would in a month of Sundays. They’re still coming, aren’t they? You may distract yourself for an instant, but then another pops into your mind—see? There’s one now! 

This is a universal truth: We invariably experience more of any thought or feeling we try to avoid. Why? Because when our brains hear the instruction to shun a certain topic, they respond by seeking any thoughts related to that topic, in order to escape them. (After all, if you decided to throw away every blue thing in your closet, the first step would be to go looking for blue items, right?) 

Wegner calls this search the “ironic monitoring process,” which has the perfect acronym: “imp.” When we try to repress awareness of anything, we activate a mind imp that zeroes in on every memory, every sense impression, every experience related to the forbidden subject. 

The “you spot it, you got it” phenomenon occurs when we do things that are in opposition to our own value systems. To feel good about acting in ways that are reprehensible to ourselves, we must repress our recognition that we’re doing so. Our imps go into high gear; we become hyperalert to anything that reminds us of the behavior we’re denying in ourselves, focusing with unusual intensity on the slightest hint of that behavior in others, or imagining it where it doesn’t even exist. 

This is why people can, without irony, say things like “So help me, Billy, if you keep hitting people, I will slap you into Thursday!” Or “I only lie to him because he’s so dishonest.” Condemning others for our worst traits turns us into ethical pretzels, hiding from us the very things we must change to earn genuine self-respect. Articulating such false logic is the key to resolving it—but this is always easier when we’re talking about someone besides ourselves. So let’s start there.

Project And Reject: The Hypocrite’s Two-Step

When we’re the ones doing the spot-it-got-it tango, we don’t see the paradox; we simply feel an unusually ferocious antipathy to someone else’s actions. When someone else is perpetrating the very acts they claim to despise, we may feel confused, sensing that there’s something crazy going on, unable to pinpoint exactly what. I have some recommendations. 

Be Suspicious. Be Very Suspicious.
One of the friskiest babysitters I ever hired was a sweet little grandma I’ll call Beulah. Despite her age, Beulah had endless energy; she could keep up with my three preschoolers far longer than I could. She was also touchingly concerned that my children not become “addicted” to anything: Sesame Street, ice cream, pop music. She volunteered to police my bathroom cupboards and remove any leftover medication the children might consume. Even so, she worried constantly that they would get drugs somewhere. 
One day I came home from work to discover that Beulah had wallpapered half my daughter’s bedroom with hideous paper she’d found at a discount store. She’d also single-handedly moved our piano to a new location, and (though I wouldn’t discover this until weeks later) ordered four hundred dollars’ worth of Girl Scout Cookies at my expense. 

As Beulah gave me a disjointed, rambling explanation at a rate of approximately 900 words per minute, I noted her many small scabs and that her pupils were dilated. I recalled an article that mentioned these were symptoms of crystal meth abuse. The light finally dawned: Beulah was a speed freak. 

As I regretfully fired my babysitter, I realized that her obsessive talk about addiction had always been a “you spot it, you got it” behavior, and it should have been a signal to me that Beulah herself was a drug-stealing addict. Everyone makes comments about other people from time to time, but those who focus on one topic continually, irrationally, and inexplicably are often describing themselves. When someone seems unduly preoccupied with a certain flaw in others, it’s time to do a once-over to see if it’s taken root in Mr. or Ms. Obsessed. 

Sidestep Mind-Binds 

If you want to experience insanity, observe a relationship with a hypocrite: the unfaithful lover who sees endless evidence of a partner’s nonexistent infidelity; the rude, hurtful coworker who expects to be treated with kindness and respect; the political extremist who violently opposes violence. Opposite moral imperatives that come from the same person, called double binds, are so crazy-making that they were once thought to induce schizophrenia. If you try to have a close connection with someone who vehemently attacks flaws in others while demanding that you accept, overlook, or excuse those same flaws in him or her, you will feel a blend of anxiety, extreme bafflement, self-blame, anger, and hopelessness. When you see people abiding by a big fat double standard, step outside their duplicitous perspective by telling yourself that the craziness you feel is coming from the critic. Once you’ve had this perceptual breakthrough, you may be able to use it on the one person whose behavior you actually can change: yourself.

See It And Free It

The impish nature of our psychology ensures that we all occasionally spot what we’ve got. However, we rarely see our own delusion; we just find ourselves ruminating on the vices of others. If Joe weren’t so lazy, we think, he’d always bring me breakfast in bed. Or Chris is such a miser. Expected me to split the check for coffee—like I’m made of money! When these thoughts become especially dominant, there’s a high probability we’ve got what we spot. But we can turn our own unconscious hypocrisy into a wonderful tool for personal growth. Here’s how: 

Phase One: Write Your Rant
To begin, list all the nasty, judgmental thoughts you’re already thinking about Certain People. Who’s offending you most right now? What do you hate most about them? What dreadful things have they done to you? What behavior should they change? Scribble down all your most controlling, accusatory, politically incorrect thoughts. 

Phase Two: Change Places
Now go through your written rant and put yourself in the place of the person you’re criticizing. Read through it again, and be honest—could it be that your enemy’s shoe fits your own foot? If you wrote “Kristin always wants things her way,” could “I always want things my way” be equally true? Could it be that this is the very reason Kristin’s selfishness bothers you so much? If you wrote “Joe has got to stop clinging and realize that our relationship is over,” could it be that you are also hanging on to the relationship—say, by brooding all day about Joe’s clinginess? 
Sometimes you’ll swear you don’t see in yourself the loathsome qualities you notice in others. You spot it, but you ain’t got it. Look again. See if you are implicitly condoning someone else’s vileness by failing to oppose it—which puts your actions on the side of the trait you hate. You may be facilitating your boss’s combativeness by bowing your head and taking it, rather than speaking up or walking out. Maybe you hate a friend’s greediness, all the while “virtuously” allowing her to grab more than her share. Indirectly you are serving the habits you despise. 

Your rant rewrite may look like this example from one of my clients, Lenore: 

Phase One: The Rant
“My kids take me for granted. They expect me to drop whatever I’m doing and focus on them, anytime. I’m sick of them taking me for granted.” 
Phase Two: The Rewrite
“I take me for granted. I expect me to drop whatever I’m doing to focus on my kids, anytime. I’m sick of me taking me for granted.” 
This exercise was a watershed for Lenore; once she realized that by devaluing herself she was teaching her children to devalue her, she could begin getting respect from them by respecting herself. 
We can often learn such priceless lessons by remembering the “you spot it, you got it” dynamic. Recognizing this impish quirk of human thinking helps us peacefully detach from crazy-makers who might otherwise drive us nuts, and jolts us free from the places we get most stuck. We automatically become freer, less caught in illusion, less obsessed with other people’s flaws. That’s good, because there’s nothing worse than people who are always talking about what they hate in other people. Boy, do I hate them. 

---

P.S. “You spot it, you got it” syndrome also applies to positive qualities or traits that can incite jealousy or envy of another, specifically when we aren’t acknowledging these qualities or traits in ourselves. Ever been jealous of someone else’s success? Chances are you aren’t owning up to the fact that you, too, can create that kind of success if it’s something you really want.