Archives for October 2013

Week 9.

Things are turning up here on my home front, pressure-wise.  These last two weeks of The Presence Process are also two weeks in which I am taking GRE’s, starting 2 classes, being in a wedding, starting a volunteer gig, spending time with some folks in town from far away, and still managing my life.  So I am doing my best to keep my figurative shit together, and so far I have to say that it’s going okay.  I have to give some of the credit for this to the work of these last eight weeks.

This week’s statement is supported by reading that centers around the underlying drama that blows up relationships.  It asks that you go through your relationships and notice what the common thread is in them that put them to bed as it were.  It asks that you notice what the dynamic was in which you played a part, and then connect that to what you learned as a child observing relationships around you.

This has been rich territory for me so far, noticing that my “I can’t be myself in relationships because then I get lambasted and rejected and then I wear myself ragged trying to be the person that my other wants me to be” story line is one that I can spot from my childhood.  So that’s helpful.  I noticed also that I was intolerant and withdrew my affection when my other would display characteristics or tendencies that I didn’t like.  This got me to the place of seeing my fear, a fear that by tolerating and accepting those behaviors I would assume them as well and become someone that I am terrified to become.

The next step is to define what love is by considering it to be the opposite of the definition you had instilled in you as a child, so for example, “Love is changing who you are for the other person” becomes “Love is being authentically yourself in relationships and deeply accepting and treasuring others for who they are.”  So I considered what might happen if next time I see those behaviors I find my compassion and extend the olive branch of understanding rather than withdrawing.  It’s scary but kind of exciting.

My friend this week said to me, “Whatever you do in your next relationship, just make it different than what you’ve done before.” I can work with this.

So then how does this connect to spontaneous joy?  Essentially Brown concludes that our pain and suffering is entirely under our domain, and that once we realize that our approach is all we need to tinker with, we can then choose joy in any moment.

Yesterday I was on my way to meet with one of my out-of-town friends and starting the litany of all the have-to’s in my head while I was driving.  Then I remembered the statement.  And I looked around me, saw the immense beauty of the Catalina mountains, felt the delicious kiss of Tucson October air on my skin, listened to the music that suddenly became not just background noise but the soundtrack to my incredible moment and let the joy flow through me.  It was magical.

I realized that even in this very dense time I don’t have to have the nose-to-the-grindstone chiseled jaw of steel to make it through.  I can remain joyful and grateful even as I am busy, and laugh as more obstacles come my way. And then no matter what happens, even if I don’t get the outcome I want immediately, I can know that the process was a joyful one, and will continue to be.

One of the things I find interesting about this process is that the Presence Activating statements do not necessarily imply what the reading supporting them will be about.  It’s refreshing.

In this week’s case, the reading centers primarily around forgiveness.  Brown speaks to the idea that while we hold judgments in our minds and hearts toward other people we remain imprisoned in the emotional holding patterns of un-forgiveness.  So even if we feel justified in holding others responsible for our pain, it only hurts us by keeping us in it.  Realizing and reinforcing in our minds and hearts the idea that we really are all doing our best, that we are all working with wounds and blind spots formed by our experiences in this world, is key to being able to forgive and free ourselves.

Every one of us at some point was a small child doing our best to make sense of the world.  The only things we had to work with were the examples around us and what little skills we may have already developed.

I remember as a child noticing when it became appropriate in social settings to act like things didn’t matter.  I remember feeling pain inside when other children or adults told me to calm down or made fun of me for caring about things too much.  I remember being really sad that this was how things were going to have to be from now on, that caring was no longer something that was ok to do, that loving something too much or being too excited about something was just no longer an option within the social realm.  That to me was the loss of my Disney dream moment.

I look back at that child now and I want to tell her that loving things and being sad about things and being angry sometimes is absolutely ok.  She can have all those feelings and not have to push them away or act like they’re not there. I understand that many of us are taught that feelings are shameful, immature, un-ladylike, childish, foolish, all the things we are told about our feelings.  Or at least about expressing them.  This includes our parents.  Our parents were those children too, doing the best they could to form themselves into people in the world.  They looked to the examples around them to determine how to be.  Perhaps their examples had wounds and blind spots as well.  Can we hold our parents responsible for recreating some of the same things that happened in their consciousness before they were old enough to understand what was happening?  And by the time they were old enough, the patterns and beliefs were already so entrenched that they FELT LIKE TRUTH.

Can we blame the people in our lives now for enacting their versions of these childhood plays that became part of the their consciousness before they could make any sense of things?  Who is there in their lives to help them? Quite possibly no one. And there’s no reason it has to be you. But what you can do is try to be as kind and understanding with them as you can be to your own inner child, the one who did the best (s)he could. It can free us from the tyranny of judgment, the prison of un-forgiveness.  And it helps us realize that we really ARE responsible for our own peace of mind.  Not our parents, our boss, the government, the weather, no one outside ourselves has that kind of power over us once we can see this.

Can I get an AMEN?

This week’s Presence Activating Statement is accompanied by a couple of additional practices, primarily that of getting into the water.  Water sessions of 20 minutes are encouraged before the 15 minutes of connected breathing to stimulate the process of emotional reconnection and growth.

This is taking place at a time for me when things are heating up busy-wise, both because it’s October in Tucson and everything gets popping here in October, and also because I am in the process of applying to grad school, which involves time-sucking hoop-jumping tasks like taking GRE’s, taking a few prerequisite courses, tracking down recommendations, doing some volunteer work, writing essays and also continuing my life.  I haven’t been this kind of busy in a long time, but I feel calm and focused, eyes on the prize.

I think this is primarily the case at the moment because I just finished a 5-day workshop with Christina Sell, which is always a wonderful thing to do.  Christina has this way of encapsulating the practice into words that are so eloquent and accurate that I feel brightened by just being in her field.  The 5 days included a fair amount of yoga asana, which is a wonderful vehicle to explore the ways in which I can stretch and push my body to its limits, but with safety and awareness.  Thus the phrase I Feel Safe in This Body was continually supported throughout the 5 days as I learned more about the practice and more about my body in the practice, my self in the practice.

Including the water sessions has worked out in a number of ways because I needed the soaking (I was sore!) and I love taking baths anyway.  Memories have surfaced of a retreat I attended around rebirthing which pushed all of my cult buttons as well as other random memories from long ago as well as recently.  The intention of the water is to provide a womb-like environment in which the process of remembering and integrating can be readily accessed.

I can feel the volume of pressure getting higher in my life at the moment and, much as the book said it would, putting pressure on my commitment to follow through with this process.  Interestingly enough, the 10 weeks of the process conclude just after I take the GRE’s and just before my first application is due.  Gotta love timing.

I am grateful for the continued opportunities that this process offers to stay in the moment.  Spending too much time dwelling on the mountain of tasks ahead is not only unhelpful from the vantage point of not being able to do anything about it, but also in that it adds undue stress to my moment NOW.  So I continue to breathe, to welcome the peaks and valleys of my emotions, and stay in this Process, all the way through.

I notice that each of these statements sounds a little jargon-y.  This week is about integrating the previous 4 weeks of statements into one protocol that serves to handle intense emotional experiences as they arise.  Brown discusses in the reading (which is a bit voluminous this week compared to the previous three) that what prevents us from experiencing pure joy is the judgment that we place on the experiences that we are having.  So attempting to view different emotional states as equal allows the flow of joy to proceed unimpeded in our lives.

Interesting thought, that by not seeing sadness or pain as bad, joy can be present.

The protocol goes something like this:

Dismiss the messenger (notice that something is coming up, acknowledge it and know that the emotional experience is intense because it is unrelated to the object, person, and even the time in which it is taking form)

Get the message (figure out what childhood thing it is echoing)

Feel it (let yourself feel it fully and identify the feeling in as simple terms as possible: sad, angry, afraid)

Compassion (give your inner child time and space and love as the feeling flows through you until it moves on)

I thought I had done this the other morning as I began this week.  I did my breathing, had some stuff come up and got a little teary and then moved on.  Then I heard my dog chewing on something and cracked open an eye to see him decimating a pen I had taken from him several times the night before.  This added to the four pairs of underwear he had destroyed the night previous as well, and it tipped me over the edge.  I got angry and stampy and then ended up sitting in the middle of my bed in a meltdown for the next 15 minutes or so, during which time I did my very best to just identify the feelings, have compassion for myself and just give the wave its time to crest and wane.  I felt alone, and defeated, and pitiful.  And I boo-hooed my way through it.  And on the other side of it I just picked up and moved forward.  I didn’t hold on to it, just left it behind and went through the rest of my day.

Later when I looked back at it I couldn’t help but laugh at myself for having such a big feeling over such a small thing.  And I not only realized this then, but I actually saw in the moment of it all happening that I was having child flashbacks, feelings of being overwhelmed and sad that my things were destroyed or taken away, and that they couldn’t be replaced.  Feelings of not enough and being alone, set adrift in the world all by myself, came up as well.  Good stuff.  Good stuff.

I’ve made it to week 6.  This means I am past the halfway point.  I feel okay.  Not that it’s a question of that, but I’m still in the game.