Surrender

Okay so I surrender to that pain in the lower back.
I finally reach the point where I give up and hand it over to a higher power.
There is nothing more I can try or do.
It just is there and I must accept that it may never go away.
That is when I have the best shot at having it go away.

But then when that pain in the shoulder comes up, first I try to see if it's the new bed - it started right around that time.
Then I try the computer desk, the office changed right around that time.
But then there was a whole lot of emotional work going on at the same time with big changes in thinking, emotions and relationships.
Maybe it's about that.
If I could just find the cause of all this, then maybe I'll find the cure.
If I can uncover the karma and release it, then that will end the karmic pattern.
I know better, but this is what I do anyhow.
In the end, we're making new karmic patterns all the time.
Causes are much farther reaching than we may know.
Pain management may be impossible.
A solution may never be found.
Yet,
Solutions are always as simple as acceptance.
But we do fight that.
Over and over.

We don't really know what all our attachments are until we give them up.
Even then, they may not be revealed.

Being a Wimp

Right now even though the sun is shining, there are snow flurries off and on and the winds are high. This isn't usually a problem, but I live in an area where whiteouts are common. Blowing snow is one thing. Being unable to see past the hood of my car is another. There's only two fairly short stretches of road between my place and the highway that get bad. But one of them, the one closest to where I live, blows in a lot. When entering a whiteout there, it may only be half a km long, but the snow might be half a metre deep in drifts. You don't know until you're in the thick of it. If a car ahead is stuck in a drift you won't know it until you're on top of it. There often is.

In my neighbourhood, local culture demands people drive through the whiteouts anyway. When I told a friend who lived nearby how nervous I get about this, she confidently said, "Whiteouts don't bother me." And they didn't until one day when the wind was up and she had to drive that one short stretch of road north of me. She arrived safely, but shaken.

Until then I tended to agree with the local culture. They must be right, I must be a wimp. After that day, I realized I was the sane one. Common sense said, "Anyone who willfully enters a whiteout with zero visibility has a few screws loose."

My choice, then, is sanity. I look at the forecast and if Environment Canada says there'll be snow and winds over 30 km/hour, I pause and do a gut check. If my gut is unhappy, I change my schedule so I don't have to drive.

Call me a wimp if you like. I think I'm the opposite. It takes nerve to stand up against local culture.

Morality

Okay, so the other day on the way home, a woman driving in the opposite direction to me on a snowy country road flagged me down. She and her friends told me they were almost out of gas and asked for help. "There's a gas station just back a bit," I told her. "I know," she said, "But the electricity is off."

I quickly assessed the situation. She'd had enough gas to let the car idle while she spoke to the driver ahead of me and then me. So she'd have enough to get back to the main road, where she and her friends could be warm and dry while they solved their problem. I mentally worked out the logistics: distance home and back with gas, someone to assist me, time this would take. This wasn't going to work. Better for her to use what gas she had left and get back to a warm and dry place. This was not an emergency, but a convenience. When I said, "I have no gas and no easy way to get some," she drove off to flag down the next person.

Done. Finis. Shrug shoulders and move on.

But I felt a bit conflicted. My childhood training insisted that if I can help it is my duty to do so - not my responsibility, but my duty. Yet I knew there was a deeper morality. Knotted in the conflict were other subtle factors: sympathy or lack of it, judgement about their wisdom, fear that they could harm themselves further, dislike of being taken advantage of ... the list goes on. It could take me a lifetime to untangle those knots.

In the end, I needed to remember that if the women were in genuine danger, even from their own poor choices, each one of us who came along that snowy road would have jumped in without hesitation, without a thought. We live out here and are aware how very quickly things can get serious.

This day I didn't help. Another day I might have. Yet neither choice can be used as a measurement of my morality. Authentic morality doesn't rise out of rules that I must live up to, it rises out of the deep loving connection I have - that we all have - with the divine and with each other. We are all one. Spiritual practice and reminders like "Love your neighbour" can put us in rhythm with with the truth of that unity. But truth itself - the unity itself - is what guides our actions. Our job is to connect with that truth, trust it to direct us, and let it untangle any inner conflict.

The correct moral action to take on that day was to not be the solution to their problem. It was to bridge the gap between "I should" and "I am."

Right or Wrong

In her email to my group, the writer said, "I feel I need to correct a misperception. Just because it is cooked on a grill, it does not make it barbeque. To cook something on an open flame over direct heat is to grill. To barbeque is to cook something slowly over indirect heat, flavoring the food with smoke." At first, I wondered if she was joking, but no, she's a Certified Barbeque Judge from the southern USA.

What makes us need to correct other people when we believe they're wrong?

Sarah, who is gay, corrects people to 'educate' them. Her barely suppressed anger covers her hurt feelings, her vulnerability, and her need for acceptance.

Harry corrects people to bolster his self-esteem. He may even think it's his ideas we must agree with, but he just wants his beliefs and ideas to count for something.

After Sharon insisted that the documents we needed for the lawyer were in my possession, and I knew they were in hers, our conflict was about more than simply who was right, it was about how we perceived ourselves, each of us seeing ourselves as well-organized and efficient.

We need to be right to maintain our grip onto self-identity, personal or cultural. The barbeque lady is a good example of cultural identity. That's how things are done in the 'south'.

The I'm-right, No-I'm-right, kind of conflict doesn't produce any winners, though.

After I got off the phone with Sharon, I rushed to my notes to see who was right about the documents. I was. Yes! That felt gratifying, but only for a second. My conviction that I was right ran deep. But she was just as convinced that she was right. My ego may have been gratified by being right, but at what cost to hers?

Being right didn't make me happy.

After that, I changed my mantra to "Do I want to be right or happy?"

It was a good next step. It made room for me to choose not to get caught up in an unnecessary conflict. Yet, it didn't go far enough. If I smiled graciously and let them 'continue to deceive themselves,' my need to be right meant I was still caught up in ego gratification.

Too often we mix facts and beliefs, forgetting that just as beliefs can and do change over time, facts can too. Galileo. Need I say more?

And each of us from our own unique perspective, conditioning and experience is bound to see things differently from others. Someone who is colour-blind will not see yellow the same way I do. There's a good chance nobody sees yellow quite the same as I do, even though the variations may be small.

So what can I do when beliefs conflict?

It helps to eliminate all ideas of right or wrong: Right or wrong? There's no such thing. Whatever the belief they have, it's theirs. They came to this belief through a lot of living. They earned every bit of their belief. It's as true to them as my beliefs are to me.

Recognize that their beliefs are not my responsibility: These beliefs could all change at some point, but someone else's beliefs are not really my business unless actions taken as a result of these beliefs do me harm. I don't have any responsibility to find consensus. I don't have to mediate, educate, or persuade anyone. I don't need resolution.

Let it be a bit uncomfortable: Lack of resolution can be uncomfortable. Ego doesn't like that. And ego likes to be right.

Choose how much I want to become embroiled in conflict: If it turns into a conflict, know that I can withdraw at any time. I am entitled. If I long to jump in and persuade, then it's my own ego trying to take control.

Then finally, see us all with tenderness: Sharon was facing the tough fact that she might not have been quite as in control of the paperwork as she thought. Harry was facing the tough fact that he didn't have as much influence on the world around him as he wanted. Sarah was facing the tough fact that not everyone cares about her pain.

My intention now:

• Find a chair that is easy and comfortable to sit on.
• Regard her or him with tenderness.
• Sit and breathe.

Do I want to be right or happy? It doesn't matter. By getting ego out of the picture, right and wrong dissolve into the flow of life.

A link to an XKCD toon about being right.

Channeling and Creativity

I am coming to believe that things like channeling, mediumship and other things psychic are really a form of creativity.

Artists and writers who are aware that when greatness happens in their work, realize that it comes from a connection to something greater than their immediate selves. They know they do their best work when they allow that openness. That very same openness is a prime characteristic of things psychic or mystical or inspired.

Inspiration often comes through the easiest outlet. For me, it often comes through in language, metaphor and poetry, and through body sensations. For someone who is a feeler, that greatness may come through as a healing touch or a beautiful garden. For someone who thinks in space and place, it may come through as design or direction. Each of us has our strengths and our passions. When we play with them, we open naturally to the greatness that is available to us all, that is a part of us all. Our very being is creativity in action.

By seeing the process of channeling as having another separate thing/being/entity enter my separate physical body, while my own mind and will step aside somehow, I think we may miss something important. The connection is made through opening, combining, through meeting other essence and life and energy in a friendly and equal way.

And here lies the paradox. To make the connection, there can be no separateness. Yet separation is required as a distinction.

If I focus on “The Divine Entity is over there and I am over here,” I do not honour the Divinity in myself even though the connection can only be made through my divinity. Many channellers use this way of seeing their work as a way to perceive the difference between “Themselves as just themselves” and “Themselves as the intelligence that comes through them.”

The stronger they assert that they are stepping aside, the stronger they want to believe that they can give voice to a message that is more pure than they are. Jane Roberts went from hearing quiet suggestions and having inner feelings to the development of a distinct Seth personality that did not need her reading glasses to see. She fought with her need to maintain integrity in her work with “Seth”, and so the persona of Seth was needed to satisfy her doubts. Many other channellers believe that the persona of their own version of “Seth” is an actual other separate entity and not a construct of their own mind, developed to protect them and to protect their integrity. This type of separation mentality can actually hinder the creative process involved.

Channeling, mediumship and other psychic things are not about chopping life up as though everything were separate bits. They are about including all life, energy, beings and and working with the innate interconnectedness to touch upon the fantastic, the curious, the mystical, the informative, the muse.