It is difficult to write about certain aspects of my work with Jennie. While it has been the best thing I’ve done for my personal growth, the process has been challenging and painful in many ways. It has required that I ‘walk through the fire’ to get to the other side, to a life
What does it feel like to live an authentic life? I’m just learning, but I can tell you the more I move toward it the better my life feels, and the healthier I am in the world – with my family, my friends and the world at large. I can also tell you about what it looked like to live an inauthentic life. That’s what I’d been doing for most of my life, right up here into middle age.
I turned fifty-seven this year and with sixty on the near horizon, my thoughts have more than ever turned to aging and what it means to me. I find myself marveling at how fast days become weeks, months, years, and decades. Doing the math with my memories frequently shocks me – as in, “It’s been fifteen years since I broke up with him?!,” “My mom died nineteen years ago?!,” “Whose face is that in my mirror?!,” “What exactly is retinol, anyway?!,” and so on…
“Rarely has humanity faced such a convergence of challenges to its survival and its spiritual integrity. The changes that are upon us will demand an unprecedented degree of emotional maturity and spiritual commitment. Those who choose to be in the vanguard, leading humanity through these changes, will shoulder an enormous responsibility for the way in which they support others in their search for wholeness during this great transformation.” — Spotted Eagle
So often we drift through our days in various states of trance-like distraction and habit of thought and action. Then there are times when all that falls away and we find ourselves very much alert to the raw power of our core fears.
The other day I was having a conversation with a group of friends about ‘evil.’ Most of us had strong definitions and opinions on the subject, calling up various personal and historical examples of violence, hatred, exploitation, atrocity and abuse to make our points. What didn’t come so easily was what, if anything, to do about it? How to process our emotions around it? Where and how to place this concept in our world view?
When we speak of what we want out of life, we are tapping into the powerful spiritual principles of intention, attention, and tension. I have found that much of the process of actualizing what we want tends to focus on the forms we desire our lives to take, which, while oh so tempting, is more a function of employing our imagination in the service of fear and fantasy than in our desire for growth.
Writer and Buddhist meditation teacher Susan Piver recently posed the question on facebook: “What do you think would happen if just for one hour, you stopped trying so hard?” Subsequent comments were both humorous and poignant. Here are a few that stood out for me:
