I’ve burned with anger this week, both from occurrences in my personal world and in our society. Anger shows up to say, “This is not OK,” and there are many things I’m not OK with. I know every spiritual teacher, including mine, says it’s important to cultivate non-anger, that we shouldn’t allow anger to overtake us, and on one level I agree. On another, I don’t.
I am a human being, not a robot, and that means every feeling under the sun I’ve felt, including anger. For me to not feel angry would be an act of suppression and repression. It wouldn’t be real. If I pretended anger never coursed through me, I’d become a passive doormat OK with anything and everything that happened to me. Anger gives me agency. It demonstrates in a visceral way what’s important to me. Anger, like all emotions, acts as a messenger.
Fiery anger is also allowed. Photo by raquel raclette on Unsplash.
I also think about how my spiritual teacher behaved, not only what he said. In practice, he became angry when someone lied, cheated, stole, or disregarded a directive. At the same time, someone else could lie, cheat, steal, or disobey, and he would smile and laugh. Spiritual teachers are complicated and obviously understand every person and situation is different and requires a different response. However, his behavior demonstrates to me he wasn’t attached to anger. Anger could flare up but it could also dissipate easily. One minute he could rage against someone and as soon as they showed contrition, he would soften and shower the person with love. He wasn’t attached to anger, but it still showed up. I mention all this because it’s clear to me anger is a tool that everyone uses.
When I think of my spiritual teacher, I see he used anger with finesse, which is also something I’m learning. If I keep anger locked away in a drawer somewhere, when it comes time to use it, I may hurt myself or those around me because I’m clumsy and inexperienced. I wouldn’t let a toddler handle a knife until they developed more dexterity, and that’s what I think is happening with me right now. I’m becoming more dexterous with anger so I may wield it appropriately as the situation allows.
I also want to express I have a theory as to why spiritual teachers talk about cultivating peace instead of anger. It’s easy to get stuck in a rageful place, to hold a grudge. People become angry, spiteful, and bitter all the time. By not fanning the flames of anger on a macro level, spiritual teachers are pointing us toward subtler emotions, such as love. I’m reminded though, you can be angry at someone you love. That love is big enough to hold anger as well. And expressing anger is sometimes the most loving thing a person can do.
I dream of a world where we allow the expression of anger in a healthy way, even in spiritual circles. A world where we understand anger is a tool in our toolbox and it’s important for us to learn how to use it. A world where we express anger to the degree a situation calls for, and then let it go when it’s time.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
In the more than nine years since I started this blog, I’ve written about impatience approximately a million times. Just kidding, but it does come up a lot. In fact, I wrote about impatience a month ago. What’s interesting is I’m noticing how I’m impatient not only about external factors like my career, but also with my internal states. When I’m sad, I want to be over the sadness as quickly as possible. When I’m afraid, I want to skip to serene as soon as I can.
This week my therapist told me, “You can feel sad as long as you need to feel sad. Take as much time as you need.” In that moment I realized even though I’ve recently starting allowing myself to feel all my feelings, I’ve still added in a time element. I want to move through them as quickly as possible, and that often means I don’t feel them fully because it’s a rush job. If you’re painting a house and slap on some paint as quick as can be, it’s bound to happen that you miss a few spots. A thorough job takes time and that’s precisely what I haven’t been giving myself. Instead, I’ve been giving myself a whole lot of judgment.
We can give ourselves space internally and externally. Photo by Todd Quackenbush on Unsplash.
I watched a television sitcom the other day that had a funeral scene, and I started crying because it reminded me of my co-worker. My first response was, “Really? It’s been four months. You’re still sad? You didn’t even know him all that well.” And my next response was, “OK, go ahead and cry,” but it held a tinge of someone standing next to me, tapping her foot, waiting for me to finish. So much of my life is like that right now, tapping my foot, waiting for the next thing on a small scale as well as a large one. I’m counting down the hours until I have to take my next pill, or have to leave to catch the bus, or when my health will improve, or when my dreams will come true.
I could easily veer into the beauty of staying present, of being where my feet are, but while related, instead I’m valuing spaciousness and ease. I’m starting to give myself permission to take all the time I need. To not rush my internal process. To stop giving myself self-imposed deadlines of when I should feel better or my life should look different than it does. Deadlines are helpful for some things, but in others they’re detrimental.
My spiritual teacher says, “Suppose, immediately after planting some saplings and seeds, someone digs them up to find out if they have taken root or sprouted. That would not be considered wise.” I always thought he meant literal saplings and seeds, and he likely did, but now I’m understanding we have internal saplings and seeds too. And for those as well, I have to wait for them to take root and sprout.
I dream of a world where we give ourselves the time and space we need. A world where we no longer rush our internal processes or judge ourselves harshly about where we think we’re supposed to be or how we’re supposed to feel. A world where we recognize the value of internal spaciousness.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
The other week I wrote that all any part of me wants is love and presence. Ever since I said, “I love you” to my fearful part, it’s as if I triggered a rock slide, and now other parts are popping up and saying, “What about me? Do you love me, too?”
The practice is a difficult one because so much of my life has been geared toward fighting, toward struggling, to talking back. For instance, if I think I’m fat, my response will be, “No you’re not.” I don’t allow for the thought to even exist. Since the other week though and learning to love a part I previously only pushed away, instead of fighting back, I’m saying, “OK Rebekah. So what if you are? I love your body no matter what. If it’s fat, if it’s thin, if it’s not functioning the way you want it to, I love it, and you anyway.”
I feel vulnerable even typing that because it’s true, what I long for is unconditional love and I’ve withheld it from myself in a never-ending quest toward an unattainable ideal. I think there’s also a fear if I shower myself with unconditional love that I’ll become an inert blob, but the truth is, love doesn’t mean constant indulgence. Love means compassion, understanding, acceptance, allowance. It means saying to myself, “I see you as you are, right now, and I love you anyway.” From that place, real change and transformation occurs. Loving my fearful part didn’t make me more afraid, quite the opposite. Loving my fearful part gave me a sense of relief and peace unlike any I’ve experienced before.
Can I love it all? I’m working on it. Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash.
My spiritual practice promotes the cultivation of love. Of viewing everything as an expression of an infinite loving consciousness, of trying to grow the internal feeling of love. Our goal is to love all living beings and to merge ourselves in the source of that feeling. To swim in an ocean of love. The thing is though, if I keep believing some parts of me are not worthy and deserving of love, there’s no way I can give myself over to that ocean. It’s like saying, “Your legs are allowed to wade into the water, but your arms have to stay dry.” I can’t experience complete merger until I’m completely submerged.
What I’m coming to here is recognizing, again, all parts of me want love. My body wants love, my mind wants love, my emotions want love. The cool thing is I can give that to myself. I don’t have to wait for some imagined future that may never come. I don’t have to wait for someone else to come along and say, “I love all parts of you unconditionally.”
If you had asked me five years ago whether I loved myself, I would have said yes because I said affirmations and treated myself with kindness. I checked all the boxes people listed when they spoke of self-love. Now though I’ve reached a new level of love because it’s not just looking in the mirror and saying I love you. It’s saying I love you to the part of me that says mean things. It’s saying I love you to the part of me that’s disappointed. It’s saying I love you to everything, regardless of my judgment of the part. Now the answer to the question, “Do you love me, too?” is “Yes.”
I dream of a world where we love all parts of ourselves, even the parts we don’t particularly like. A world where we recognize every part is worthy and deserving of love. A world where we work toward loving ourselves unconditionally.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Fear is an interesting emotion. In our society, we treat it like a plague – something to cure, attack, avoid. We say, “Screw fear,” or, “Don’t let fear get in the way.” Oftentimes our message about fear is simpler: “Don’t be scared,” as if telling someone to stop being scared could stop them.
In my own relationship with fear, I’ve also treated it like an annoying inconvenience, or an enemy to defeat. For many years I used food to anesthetize myself. Or I escaped into fantasy, books, movies, television. When I realized none of those things would fix my fear, I started using other methods like affirmations, tapping, visualization, etc. Basically, whatever I could do to not feel afraid, I did. And every time I realized fear hadn’t left, I felt discouraged, disappointed, as if I’d failed. As if fear had won and thus I’d lost.
We must enter the cave that we fear. Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash.
The other week, intense fear reared its head in response to the fires north of me. I could see smoke drifting into San Francisco and some days it wafted into Oakland as well, creating a preternatural calm, a sun so hazy and orange I could look at it directly. Fear came up for many reasons, one of them an acute sense of powerlessness. I bought a mask to protect my lungs from the smoke, but I couldn’t control whether the air remained smoky.
In my therapy session, I noticed I wanted my therapist to fix and solve my fear. I wanted him to take it away from me, to make it better. Instead he suggested I sit with it. I’m not sure what happened in the session because days prior I tried the same thing and just couldn’t, but during the session I finally stayed still. I let fear wash over me saying, “It’s OK. It’s OK that you feel afraid. It makes sense. It’s understandable.” For two days, fear erupted from me like a volcano, not due to any thoughts in particular, rather the feeling of fear itself. My heart palpitated, my breathing quickened. I tried all my usual tricks to no avail until I again said, “OK. I’m here with you. I won’t leave you alone with your fear.” And then at group meditation last week I said to my fearful part, “Not only is it OK that you’re here, but also, I love you,” and that brought on the tears.
All every part of me wants is love and presence. I can’t ditch fear and anxiety. As a human being I will inevitably feel scared and anxious again, but since I said, “I love you” to my fearful part, I feel fearless. Not because I’m without fear, but rather because I know when fear pops up again, I’ll allow it, I’ll sit with it, and I’ll say I love you. And then the fear will pass like a storm cloud.
My spiritual teacher says if a person takes shelter in the divine, one need not be afraid of anything. He says, “[F]ear requires two entities for its expression – the one who fears and the cause of fear. Where there is only One entity, because there can be no cause, fear cannot exist.”
In the past, I would have taken that to mean I’m not meditating enough because I still have fears. For today at least, I’m recognizing by loving my fearful self, I am taking shelter in the Cosmic Consciousness. I’m recognizing this fear, too, is a part of me, a part of God, and the way to dissolve fear is by showering it with love.
I dream of a world where we treat our fearful selves with love. A world where we recognize we are not at war with fear, but rather fear is like a small child, begging for affection. A world where we embrace our fearful parts, give it as much love as possible, and in that way become fearless.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
What a week. Lots of grief on a societal level, but also a personal one. I’m reminded of how human we are. Of how we’re all in this together. As Ram Dass says, “We’re all just walking each other home.”
His quote kept ringing through my head this week. In times of trauma and grief, I want to do something. Sometimes there are actions to take, but sometimes all we can do is hold each other while we cry.
With painful feelings, I’ve often wanted someone else to take them away. To siphon them off as they would drink the last of a milkshake. I wanted someone, anyone, to make me feel better. Speaking as someone with loads of experience trying to escape her feelings, I can say without a doubt the answer is “That’s not possible.” No one else can cry my tears for me. No one else can take away my pain. Other people and things may distract me for a while, but just as with storm clouds, they darken the sky whether I acknowledge them or not.
Walk with me? Photo by Hannah Donze on Unsplash.
Ram Dass’ quote reminds me no one is supposed to take away my pain and sorrow because we are all humans. We are not machines. We can’t write a code that says, “We will never feel sad ever.” Furthermore, it’s no one’s responsibility to make me feel better. We are fellow companions on this path. We are pilgrims going on a pilgrimage. There may be times I sprain my ankle and have to rely on others for help, but the responsibility for forward motion is still mine, and the responsibility to move through my emotions is still mine.
My spiritual teacher says, “[A] true society is like a group of pilgrims who attain a deep psychic affinity while traveling together, which helps them solve all the problems in their individual and social lives.”
That’s us. A group of pilgrims traveling this rocky path together. I’m speaking in metaphors a lot in this post, but what I’m trying to get at is it’s not my responsibility to solve or fix someone’s emotional state, or vice versa. I don’t have all the answers, or any of the answers, really. I can’t tell a person how to live their life or what they should do to feel better. All I can do is say, “I hear you and I’m beside you. I’m walking this path with you as a companion.” And that’s it. We’ll address problems as they arise – blisters, sprained ankles, etc. – but the emotional states? I’ll be with you during them, but the tears are still yours to cry and the steps are still yours to walk. And maybe that’s enough.
I dream of a world where we recognize we are all pilgrims on a pilgrimage. A world where we sit with each other when we’re in pain. A world where we realize all we can do is be there for each other. A world where we remember we’re all just walking each other home.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
When my co-worker died unexpectedly about two months ago, it rocked me. It shook my sense of stability and security, and I’ve been working hard to get back to feeling safe and secure ever since. Unfortunately, all of my usual methods haven’t worked. I still feel insecure and life still doesn’t feel stable.
I spoke with a friend about this and she reminded me life isn’t certain. We pretend it is, but it’s not. We think we know what will happen next, but we don’t. Usually that notion fills me with anxiety because when the outcome is uncertain, I err on the side of negativity. I know, that’s funny considering this blog is called “Another World is Probable” and I spend so much time talking about a bright future, but it’s true. For myself, I assume the worst – rejection, scarcity, death. On a visceral level, gazing into my future I foresee death, destruction, and despair. It makes sense then why I want to keep uncertainty at bay. The way I’ve done so is to plan. I plan for joy, for connection, for the future. That way I know I’ll engage in something pleasant. Or at least, that’s what I told myself. And it mostly worked, except also not really because I’m sure you’ve heard that saying, “When we make plans, God laughs.” Most often my plans went awry, but I made them anyway and I quelled my anxiety for the most part. I could be certain of most things and that was fine by me.
We’re on the biggest thrill ride of them all. Photo by Park Troopers on Unsplash.
When my co-worker died, my notion of certainty shattered. I couldn’t keep pretending life could be certain, no matter how much I planned. His death was not something I anticipated. Nobody gave me advanced warning. He was here one day and gone the next, and that hurts.
In this moment I’m grieving him, and I’m grieving the loss of certainty. What my friend reminded me though is that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Good things are uncertain too. A new relationship, a new job, a new life are also things we cannot predict. We pretend we can by applying for new jobs, scouring dating websites, and having unprotected sex, but we don’t control what the company is, who we’ll fall in love with, or when we’ll get pregnant. We make an effort, we do the footwork, but when any of those things manifest is ultimately a surprise.
In December, friend and Soul Couch Jayantii Lawless told me she wished I felt thrilled. Not about anything in particular, not like she wished I felt thrilled about dinner that night, rather that I had the experience of “thrill” in general. I laughed and said, “Yeah, me too.” I envisioned “thrill” in the form of falling in love, but instead, the universe is illustrating life itself is thrilling. We are on a roller coaster replete with peaks and valleys. The roller coaster will go up and it will come down. The future is just as likely to be awesome as it is awful. It’s important for me to remember that because anticipating the future will be terrible isn’t working for me. I’d rather anticipate the future will be terrific because that’s just as likely.
I dream of a world where we recognize uncertainty can be exciting. A world where we remember it’s just as likely pleasant things will happen to us as unpleasant ones. A world where we realize life is the biggest thrill ride of them all.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Historically, one of the ways I’ve dealt with uncertainty and ambiguity is to become controlling. If I didn’t know what was going on, I’d make a plan or force a decision so that I did, because then at least I’d know, and knowing was more comfortable than not knowing.
It should come as no surprise I was a stage manager in high school, and for a couple of years in college. For those unaware, the stage manager is the person behind the scenes of a show who is calling all the lighting and sound cues, the person who makes sure the sets are moving when they should, the person who determines when the show starts, even. This is not done without input or help, but the ultimate responsibility is the stage manager’s. I loved stage managing. At last my character traits of controlling and perfectionism were put to good use. Instead of being disparaged for them, I was lauded.
Will this person hitch a ride or not?
Unfortunately, while all the world’s a stage, I’m not the stage manager. Nor did I get the script in advance. For someone prone to anxiety, and who likes to know what’s happening beforehand, this is not a good combination. To manage this, I could have become the type of person who does the same thing every day, who sticks to a schedule rigidly, who never tries anything new, who lives in a safe container of the known and the familiar, but I get bored and restless. Well shucks. What’s a gal to do then?
Lately, instead of defaulting to controlling, I’m allowing all of my feelings. I’m letting it be OK that I’m scared. I’m letting it be OK that I think things should be this way or that. I’m also letting it be OK that there’s a part of me itching to decide one way or another. These days I’m letting all my parts co-exist and that means accepting uncertainty. The truth is, for all my planning, nothing ever happened the way I thought it would anyway. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop planning altogether – I will never be a person who’s comfortable flying into a foreign city without knowing where she’s sleeping that night – but it also means I’m allowing for flexibility.
According to my spiritual teacher, and many teachers, adjustment and flexibility are essentials for human progress. My teacher says, “Intelligent people will not cling to old, outdated ideas. Rather they will wholeheartedly embrace that theory which adjusts with time, space, and person, and will continue to exist forever.”
He’s speaking about societal theories here, but I think the same principle applies on an individual level. I must discard old and outdated ways of being in the world. Handling uncertainty by clinging to a fixed plan no longer serves me. Dealing with ambiguity by forcing a decision before the answer is clear no longer works for me. The only person I have any agency over is me, and treating myself with gentleness, humor, love, and respect sounds like the best plan to deal with uncertainty that I could ever concoct.
I dream of a world where we accept uncertainty. A world where we realize nothing will ever go exactly the way we planned. A world where we embrace flexibility and adjustment while we move ahead on the path of our lives. A world where we allow all parts of ourselves to exist in peaceful harmony.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Lately I find myself wading deeper and deeper into the realm of emotion. That may sound funny because people often describe me as “emotional,” but what I mean is instead of flirting with an emotion, I’m embracing it. The despair, the anger, the disappointment. All of it. Not only am I embracing my feelings, I’m also no longer trying to fix them.
For me, whenever I felt really down, or lonely, for instance, I turned to something to make myself feel better: I called a friend, turned on the TV, picked up a book. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with those activities, but they became compulsions, ways for me to avoid diving deep. To avoid the emotional pain of fully embodying my emotions. These days I’m learning to sit with my feelings, no matter what they are.
These days I’m embracing everything, even the prickly bits.
Matt Licata, a psychotherapist, has a blog I read every couple of weeks. In one blogpost he wrote:
[T]he question during these times is: Are you going to use these reorganizing and shattering experiences as vehicles though which to befriend yourself, to attune to the unprecedented flow of feeling with you, and to weave a sanctuary for the wisdom-pieces of the broken world to be held and illuminated? Or, will you fall back into your habitual, conditioned history, attack yourself, your tenderness, and your sacred vulnerability, spinning into the habitual fight-flight urgency of shame, blame, resentment, and self-aggression?
In another he wrote:
The invitation is into intimate communion: to move closer, and even closer still, into the feelings, the emotions, and the sensations as they surge. To surround the surging material with curiosity, warmth, and most importantly with kindness, as an inner explorer of the galaxy of your own body, of which there is no temple more sacred.
Communion. Yes, that’s what I long for. And communion means befriending my pain, befriending my sorrow, befriending my disappointment. Every cell of my being longs for love, and that means the pain, the sorrow, and the disappointment too. In my journey toward wholeness, toward the divine, I must embrace everything within me.
In my spiritual practices, we view everything as an expression of an infinite loving consciousness, and that means me too. Not only the me in this physical form, but the internal me as well. The one that feels pain, the one that feels lonely, the one that feels disappointment.
These days I’m practicing loving those parts too and I have that wish for others as well.
I dream of a world where we embrace all parts of ourselves. A world where we feel every emotion as it arises. A world where we sit with our pain because we recognize it, too, is divine.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I notice there’s a tendency in me and in society to avoid the deep and dark places. We are uncomfortable with displays of depression and despair.
The other day, a friend posted on facebook that she felt depressed and the majority of her friends said, “Are you getting help? Are you taking medication?” I’m not saying people shouldn’t take meds and shouldn’t seek help, but it’s interesting to notice their reactions. How quickly people turned to solutions instead of saying, “I hear you,” or “Me too.”
I understand the rush toward solutions. I know in myself, the minute I feel depressed or hopeless, I want to leave those states as quickly as possible. I don’t want to sit with the feelings, I don’t want to acknowledge them, I don’t want to give them air time. If I could bypass all the uncomfortable feelings, that would be great, thanks.
Even small acts of love can have great effects.
As my therapist reminds me, it doesn’t work that way. I can’t pretend certain feelings don’t exist just because I’d rather they didn’t. The only way to move through the feelings is to first have awareness of them, and second to feel them. In thinking of my spiritual practices, I’d like to add a third step.
I am reminded of the work crafted by a monk I knew. He used to say every cell of our body is longing for liberation, is longing for oneness with something greater than ourselves. Not only the parts we acknowledge, but the parts we push away as well. He went to graduate school for psychology and developed a mantra therapy technique combining what he learned there with the principles of our yoga and meditation group. In these heart circles, as he called them, people would sit in a circle. One person would sit in the center of the circle and think about an emotion or belief they wanted release from. Then everyone on the perimeter sang to the person in the center. They verbally bathed the person with a Sanskrit mantra, sending them love. They imagined love coming through them and directed it to the person in the center of the circle.
I’ve been in many a circle, and people often weep or their expression softens or they start beaming. Something happens. Something happens because all parts of us want love. All parts want acknowledgment. All parts want us to say, “I see you, I hear you, and I love you.”
This week as I’ve sat with my own hard feelings, I’ve directed love their way. Not to drown them out, but in an act of tenderness and care. As Doreen Virtue says, “Love is the miracle that heals all things,” and that includes me. Instead of hating certain emotions, instead of pushing them away, instead of pretending they don’t exist, instead of skipping over them, I’m sending them love. I’m going to the deepest, darkest places within me and saying, “I’m here and I love you,” because that’s ultimately what I want. And what we all want.
I dream of a world where we give all parts of ourselves air time. A world where we embrace all parts of ourselves and say, “I’m here and I love you.” A world where we recognize love is the miracle that heals all things and it’s a miracle we can give to ourselves.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I’ve come to believe that to be alive means to experience trauma; and I don’t mean things like war, or car accidents (although those things too) — I mean things like death, divorce, and anything else that shakes us up and makes us feel unsafe physically or emotionally. Trauma can also be secondary, by the way. It can be hearing or seeing someone else’s traumatic experiences. When you take into account the majority of news stories, I’m pretty sure we’re all walking around a little traumatized.
We all deal with trauma in our own ways, but I’ve noticed I deal with trauma by minimizing it, dismissing it, or doing whatever I can to distract myself from the depths of my feelings. Who wants to feel sad or angry or insecure when there are movies to watch, people to call? Who wants to feel sad or angry or insecure when there are places to visit and dreams to chase? I certainly don’t. But the reality is, we can’t outrun our trauma; it clings to us like a shadow. Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you’ll call it fate.”
Go with emotions like flowing down a river.
Carl, why you gotta be so spot on? I don’t want to make the unconscious conscious, but I’ve reached a point in my life where I can’t ignore it anymore. As someone said to me once, “What you resist, persists.” I wanted to punch them in the face when they said that to me, but I found, yes, it’s true. I kept working so hard to resist, but my resistance didn’t banish the problem, it only served to keep it alive. The question then becomes, how is a professional emotional runner, so to speak, supposed to all of a sudden stop running? How can a person face their demons instead?
When I brought this up to my therapist, he said to me, “Just lie down. Instead of actively trying to skirt the perimeter, yield, and let the flood wash over you.” And wash over me it did. When I stopped actively trying to do anything, all of the emotions overtook me. I didn’t enjoy it, it wasn’t “fun,” but I feel relieved. It takes a lot of energy to run away from feelings. A LOT. By stopping, by turning around to face my feelings instead, I feel drained, but in a good way. Like after a full day swimming.
To tie all of this to a spiritual concept, people talk a lot about being in the flow of life – me too – but I think it’s important to remember, getting into the flow is not always an active process. Sometimes being in the flow is allowing ourselves to be carried by whatever is here. Just like flowing down a river, it’s a lot easier if we don’t resist, and also, we have no idea where it will take us.
I dream of a world where we yield to what we’re resisting. A world where we feel our feelings instead of pushing them away. A world where we put ourselves into the flow by understanding sometimes that’s a passive process.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.