Sunday, April 28, 2013

Guest Post! Finding Ease and Awe

This post comes from another member of the community, Tanya Williams.

Last night Charlotte came into my room.  She told me she had waited til she was in a generative space to talk about the situation of the need for space for guests during the upcoming Ontario Jam weekend and her need to continue to stay in the spare room.  She didn’t, however, BEGIN with saying this: that she needed to stay in that room, for she told me later she didn’t want it to be felt as: this is my need, so too bad for you!  She wanted first to reveal her process, hear mine, and to think together about what might be possible to create what we all wanted and needed. 

She described her experience of being in a delicate unfolding process, and how staying in that room in the heart of this community allowed her to experience her fears and discomfort in a context that held them as fuel for learning.  And she had been having coercive thoughts too: such as, feeling like she was taking up space that should be going to someone more deserving from the Jam.  When she paused and said she wanted to make space to hear my experience, she dropped her eyes for a moment.  I then saw her discipline lift them back up to meet mine.  Not a discipline that forces her gaze, but a discipline that reminds her of the reasons why it makes deep sense not to pull in, to stay open.  There was no tension in it.  I could feel the smile spreading on my face with the delight in her revealing all of it.  I knew she had worked hard to be aware of all the layers, and to be able to lay them all out for me to see, with relative calm. 

I felt that the impacts of this work she was doing would be part of the rich experience that people would have here.  I told her this and that I had actually already worked out something with another member of the community to meet the particular need for a spare room for one of the people staying here.  Charlotte said she had been ready to offer her apartment as well.  We sat and marveled at the ease of the conversation, and Charlotte reflected on the shift from seeing herself as a burden: “I will be this broken person hiding in the spare room” to: “I will be part of the powerful learning that will unfold.”  She said this changed everything.

There is something in this ease that is at my learning edge right now.  I reflected to Charlotte that I had opted out of work tonight, and this feels like very different behaviour for me.   I had been feeling a sense of urgency and anxiety stemming from the idea that I should seize the opportunity to work, and a generalized sense of scarcity.  And also a desire to seize the moment to work with the youth in the youth theatre company on certain things, and I have been having an experience with the co-director where I feel like I get a mixed message that if I have an idea to go for it, and then in practice it seems like he would rather do it himself.  I had the thought that I could reveal this to him and ask him what his experience is and what he wants, and, like Charlotte, I will wait til I am feeling the flow of the generative coursing through my veins.

I have been noticing the effect of this subtle coercing of myself, and how it relates directly to the tension that mounts in my body, manifesting mainly as pain in my jaw and shoulder.

The same day, on a walk with my partnre along the Grand, we were talking about our relationship and I let myself rest in a pause as we looked out onto the expanse of swiftly moving water.  (A meta-pause.)  I breathed out the thread of tension that had risen in me as my partner accelerated in his points and questions… and this feeling like I HAD TO keep up, but couldn’t… “I HAD TO…” was the clue: the tension was stimulated by the thought that I HAVE TO respond, have answers, reassure him, at the very least stimulate an epiphany or revelation, illuminating a tectonic shift to Humanity 3.0!   I shared this with him and he laughed and said that he wouldn’t expect that from me, and I noticed myself stiffen a little.  “What do you mean??” came out of my mouth, fueled by the thought that “I am someone who regularly stimulates revelation in people!”  Oh, the identity that hooks me!  Filled with a sense of fascination, I could just reveal that to him and then he revealed that he just meant that there are times when he asks me questions and I confound him with more questions.  We both laughed. 

I see the structure: I HAVE TO because THIS IS WHO I AM.

Charlotte brought up the old commitment: “Offer no praise and no blame.” and how she has conversations with herself, where she says: “you are not wrong for _____” and “you are not right for_____”.  I found myself relating to that old commitment in a new way: apply it TO MYSELF.
It is so damn subtle!  I feel amazed and deeply excited to be noticing these ways I am blaming or praising myself, as well as having a part of me strangely in awe at the tenacity of the old thinking in my system.  And there is a tenacity in the practice of meta-pause and the sensation of awe.

Friday, April 26, 2013

Asking without shame

Something I'm practicing, and this was incredibly inspiring and came into my life at the exact right time:

An 8-Foot-Tall Woman Is Destroying The Entire Music Industry

As for me, as I continue to spend my nights in the small spare room at the Household as Ecology, surrounded by boxes that have their contents marked by such labels as "Current Unfolding Knowledge", being able to sit on my bed and look through two doors and hundreds of books into the kitchen, the central hub of the world and work as it unfolds at this time, knowing this room in this hosue is where I want to be right now, in completely new territory, the white walls reflecting the simplicity of my experience, the rawness of my experience, the spartan presence of just being here, vulnerable, in the kind of need that watches with big loving eyes, eyes that are able to contemplate and consider yeses and nos and maybes and sort ofs

... and in all this, the coercive, the shame, the feeling that I "shouldn't be here", the constant urge to give my housemates money to make it ok for me to be here, to balance life's books in some way, the fear that I am in the way of bigger and better and more important activities that should take place in the room, that this room should somehow be not a cocoon, but a butterfly in flight, that I should turn myself inside out and fly away, rather than be percolating in the deep, the still, the inside.

I am learning how to ask, fearlessly. What a gift to the world my asking is!


Saturday, April 20, 2013

I have a good reason for doing this, even if I don't know what it is.

Recently I have found myself eating badly, watching Netflix excessively, and surfing Facebook addictively.  I can see myself doing these things, and I'm thinking to myself, I don't want to be doing this, it isn't serving me, it's making me unhappy, it's having a negative impact on my life, and yet I keep doing it. I feel myself unable to stop. When I think about why I am doing it  I feel that somehow I need to do it in that moment, because I am uncomfortable or unhappy in some way. This addictive behaviour is a response to my suffering, rather than a relief from it. It's also perpetuates my suffering, and thus the familiar cycle of addiction.

When I'm about to make a choice between an addictive behaviour or a healthy one, it is a conscious moment. It is quite rare that the cookie goes to my mouth before I even think about it.. In that moment of decision, which is also a moment of my suffering, I look for a reason to do or not do the addictive behaviour. And in my suffering, I feel a sort nihilism or despair, and I can't think of any reason not to fulfill my urge and to continue on the path of suffering. 

The other day it occurred to me that in that moment of choice, although I can't think of a reason not to continue to destructive behaviour, the very fact that I am thinking about reasons for making choices means that I do know there is one. Or, to put it another way, some part of me DOES know why I should make a healthy choice even if I can't remember what it is in that moment.

After realizing this, I started an experiment. When faced with the choice to engage in addictive behaviour, I said to myself, "There is a reason to choose the healthy behaviour, even if you do not know what it is right now." That was on Wednesday, and this is Saturday, and I had a great week. I didn't eat bad food once, I didn't spend any extra time on Facebook, and I didn't watch too much TV. By Friday I didn't even feel the urge anymore. I feel more awake and more calm. Most of all though, I feel the strength of self-discipline. It's a liberating feeling of joy and centredness. Reminding myself that there WAS a reason to choose the healthy behaviour was enough to motivate me to choose it.


I'm going to keep using this practice to keep me on the reasonable course. I have discovered that when I am faced with the desire to engage in addictive behaviour to alleviate suffering, I do want to make the positive, healthy choice, and I just needed to find a way to give myself a reason to do so. And feeling as good as I do now, after only a few days of these healthy choices, I am viscerally experiencing the reason why I would choose to make these choices - greater happiness and confidence leading to a more positive impact within my community.