Monthly Archives: August 2010

It’s all about Soul

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I wrote this passage around ten years ago – perhaps more than ten. I reread it recently and found myself appreciating my early work in writing what was calling to me. The words still ring true for me now, I guess I would say more about it all now if I were writing it again. But it isn’t necessary to say much more, although I will add a few comments at the end. Here it is.

What is soul? I have been studying, contemplating and exploring this question for the last ten years. As a psychotherapist I consider it my job to work with an individual’s soul. The prefix “psych-“ or “psycho” comes from the Greek “psychein”, meaning to breathe. The first description in Webster’s dictionary for “pysch” is soul or spirit. How does work with the soul take place? The work happens almost naturally when we become quiet and listen to our inner or higher self. Sometimes we need a guide in this exploration. A guide can help us get started or support us in the more difficult aspects of this voyage. This is what I have discovered so far in my journey of the soul.

We are more than our physical bodies. Our minds reside not in our heads but rather in our hearts, so living from the heart is essential for feeling fulfilled. In order to live from the heart, we must get out of our heads and get fully in touch with our bodies. The paradox is to understand that we are more than the physical but we must enter fully into the physical in order to get in touch with the soul’s callings.
When we are suffering, unhappy or discontent with our lives, it is a message that our soul needs attention. In order to shift our circumstances or create change in our lives we must acknowledge what is not working. Until we do this, we cannot take steps to find a fulfilling life.
We must be quiet or connect to our limitless potential through our creativity in order to discover what feels right for us. Our culture is full of noise and constant distractions from our internal peace. At any moment we can choose to become quiet and listen. Shutting off noise – the radio, television, and constant communication with others – not filling our lives with activities – can be frightening at first. Creativity allows us to connect with our souls. Creativity can be anything from painting or cooking to refinishing an old piece of furniture.
Performing soul work is self-healing, and spreads healing throughout the world. Just as negativity spawns negativity, healing manifests healing in the world. Each day we have a choice to move toward or away from helping ourselves. Once we begin the process of healing and creating a life we love, the process takes over. The work you do will affect everyone with whom you come in contact.

Once in touch with your soul and its callings, give yourself permission to respond. The next time you are dissatisfied with life, don’t ignore the messages. Rather, listen to your heart.

My additional comments start from the beginning. 1) Startling is the connection between breath and soul. The prefix’s and root of the words link breath and spirit or soul. I have discovered that breath is a portal to the soul and experiencing its wisdom. 2) As concerned as we seem to be in our culture with the physical, our appearance, and our physical health, I have found most clients that I work with ignore the messages they receive from their bodies. In this ignorance, we lose the opportunity to listen to the deeper messages from our body. An example would be having an uneasy feeling about something or someone, ignoring it, and later on finding out the something or someone became a problem to us. 3) Our self-made unhappiness is calling to us for deeper attention, not a quick fix. 4) Any creative activity that feels satisfying will be an avenue of self-discovery as we become more committed to the process. 5) Soul work is about attending to ourselves deeply, staying with more than the superficial and looking inward for answers, not externally. 6) Ignoring our life dissatisfaction means more of the same. Willingness to look at it full on, owning how we engaged our part in it, is the key to recreating life.

Trust the Process

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I say this often – very often with clients. It was a mantra that I could barely believe, had to keep repeating as it tested me, when I was in my slow change process for years. The lesson of learning to trust the process is serving me well right now as I gather more long-term plans with family and goals for myself, my work. Because my process has evolved, and I can see it in a life I love today, I more readily, now, trust the process.

Trust, let’s see. Who do you trust? Firstly, do you trust yourself? Trusting in someone means we rely on them to make positive choices and decisions, in line with who they say they are and what they value. Generally we believe in their way of thinking or reasoning as they make their way along the road called life. And even if we don’t agree with their method of getting places all the time, we honor their good intentions and their heart for being considerate or wanting the highest good. So looking through these statements, do you trust yourself? How about the people you have put around you in your life – your friends, colleagues, and family members? How much trust do you put in others and their overlapping life process with yours? Are you choosing wisely where you put your trust? In choosing wisely we increase our trust in ourselves, or in choosing poorly, we diminish it.

Now – the process. I would say that I have become mainly process oriented. Even in my writing I focus on my experience of writing, opening to ideas, allowing the theme to take some shape, then putting words to the energy of what seems to be happening as I engage with it within me. I have found if I am working too hard at making my thoughts appear on paper properly, then I have become overly product-oriented and generally do not feel good about what I have written; most times it gets dumped. This other way of accomplishing, by staying in process, allowing it to almost come to form through me, seems to offer the best results. Seems to be this way for my life in general, any attempt to force things to happen to quickly, in a particular manner, just doesn’t seem to end all that well.

When considering an overall process, as in life in general, somehow we often find ourselves in the realm of the spiritual. Do we trust in a higher order, a wisdom that is deeper, more transcendent than ours to influence the events, the energies flowing about us? Do we trust in a proper outcome, one that serves us in some way that perhaps we cannot presently make sense of or see in the moment while the events are taking place, even when we don’t like it or resist it? Do we recognize that there is a bigger picture, one that we cannot take in from our relatively small, limited individual perspective, so that we come to trust that in the bigger picture life indeed will make sense? Do we incorporate a theme of learning through mistakes, struggles and pain as a mode of growth, rather than suffering in that process?

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to trust the process if we don’t trust ourselves. We are the critical cog in the wheel of our individual life, so we must come to count on our decisions, our intentions and our attitude as we move through our days. We must come to believe we can rely on ourselves to lead us to a place that resonates as our place of belonging, meaning where we reside, whom we spend time with, how we work and play in the world. When we truly trust ourselves, we engage with others in a way that transmits this, and invites others to learn to trust themselves. Our travel companions in our lives are trusted too, because we trust ourselves to choose wisely, and to make changes when we see that it is necessary for the highest good, even when these changes are difficult to make happen.

Assessing how you trust the process can be an interesting and eye-opening exercise of looking in the mirror to see what your life is reflecting back. If you see someone looking back that you do not trust today, make a commitment to change that and start re-evaluating how you are “doing” your life. It is never too late to alter the course, to shift the direction in which you feel you are headed and to develop trust in yourself by making choices that cause you to feel honorable about your life. Learning to trust yourself and the process can be the change that takes you into the life you really want to be living.

Thanks Dad

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My father is dying. We are all dying or rather, hopefully, living. But my dad is now living in his last months; perhaps he will out beat the odds and live more than a year. What I see when I am with him, is a man who is living in this moment, not dying into the next. Death is not a subject that he has shied away from talking about with his five children. We all know how my dad feels and what he thinks, have all heard him say, if not once than a dozen times, “I am not my body. When I die, I simply will be casting off this body for this lifetime.” I think I have heard this for as long as I can remember.

For years he has said this, and for many of those early years I think I rolled my eyes inwardly. “I know, Dad. You’ve said that already”, was my thinking. My father follows some eastern philosophy, talks about yoga, and not the kind that means holding awkward poses, but the whole philosophy of living as breath, in truth. He practiced meditation long ago when no one said the word and few in our culture had any idea what it really meant. For me, it would conjure up images of people of a different culture sitting cross-legged, closed eyes and peaceful. My father frustrated me for many years, feeling he just talked at me when he spoke about the topic. I didn’t really learn anything. Or so I thought.

It is true that I did not learn concepts about meditation and yogic philosophy from my father. Until recently we had not had spiritual discourse; more often than not, it was him bestowing information to me, his truth. I have never seen my father sit in meditation; he did it in an area of the house separate from us. I have no visual to go with the idea of my dad meditating. His lifestyle often made me question his authenticity about his beliefs; something seemed incongruous. Because of this perception I could keep what I knew to be his deep beliefs superficial somehow. And other than knowing he has practiced pranayama, a breathing technique, I haven’t a clue if he has ever done down dog.

Here I am today, an instructor of the ancient art of Tai Chi, a moving meditation. I have had the honor of leading classes in sitting meditation as well. My own meditation practice has reached the two-decade mark, and my life has transformed because of it. I do not fear death. I have practiced for it in the many workshops and reflective journeys I have experienced. A main staple of my therapeutic process with clients entails speaking openly about death, helping others to face their fears and open to a sense of wonder about it instead of resisting it wholly. I thrive when learning about life philosophies, when engaging in spiritual discourse. The apple did not fall far from the tree.

Many years ago I attended a Zen retreat weekend. I think that was when my dad realized I was committed to my meditation process. He called me not long after that weekend. Asking me about it, I felt he really wanted to hear from me, that there was genuine interest on his part. He told me he thought it was great, he was proud of me. I hung up the phone, and for the first time, I knew deep down, that my father really was proud of me. Since that phone call there have been more moments like these, when my father looked at me and shared his pride. And with that pride, I have felt his deep love and admiration for me. For years I had imagined mostly indifference in his feelings towards me, therefore these precious interactions have been incredibly healing.

My dad is not an emotionally expressive man. But he is spiritually aware. And he gave all his children that gift of spiritual recognition, knowing we are not solely our body. Rather we understand that the body is a vehicle that carries us about as we live this life as human. And although my relationship with my dad has had its ups and downs, just as all relationships do, it is finishing with quite a bit of grace. This grace comes from consciously attending to him when we are together and noticing that he is more present than ever before, that attention has indeed become reciprocal. He and I can look at one another and see ourselves in each other’s eyes, this father and this daughter that came here for a time to dance with one another in this thing we call life. Thanks Dad for the gift of meditation, and for the gift of knowing I am not only my body. And thanks for being a role model of living consciously into the end of a lifetime. These are incredibly precious gifts, and I honor you for them.

My Menopause Miles

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Who is this person looking back at me in the mirror? Am I really this old? Has my body really softened this much, to the point of no return? I feel happily relieved inside that I am not acquiring too many wrinkles on my face, but my neck is another story. My smile seems different: guess that has to do with less plump in my lips, the thing that so many are recovering, and then some, with Botox treatments. Most days I no longer remember the little details of things to get done unless I make a list. Readily remembering the little stuff was something I always enjoyed: I miss it. After eight years of roller coaster hormones which for me included an overactive thyroid, mood swings, aches and pains, sleep disruption, hot flashes, fatigue and grieving life’s losses, I am mainly down to some hot flashes as my lasting symptom. Feeling lucky, I am.

So there is my list of complaints; now for the gratitude.

There are more wrinkles on my face than I can see. I need steadily increasing reading lenses to see clearly up close. I love the glasses for reading, but for just looking around, I really enjoy the muted version of life; it’s softer, more pleasing, especially the details of my aging body. As I more deeply accept my aging body, I am less driven to make it look just right. Becoming less driven in this way is a huge relief of energy, focus and time. I exercise to feel well, to keep my body limber and strong, not to look a certain way any longer. A healthier appearance is simply a by-product of the process. When I smile now, it comes form deep, deep within me. This is because I am at peace with myself and I let go more fully and enjoy each moment, especially the pleasurable ones. That my lips are losing their fullness makes no matter when I am more fully feeling happiness, knowing the possible fleetingness of it, and the joy of having learned to embody joy fully, more abandonly. Making lists to remember stuff is simply a habit now. And what I find is that it slows me down, and I am more present in the moment. This is a thing that until experienced is hard to appreciate. If I forget something now, I know I can do it another time. It helps me to remember not to sweat the small stuff. And I am so grateful, despite the ups and downs and stresses of my menopausal experience, that I was able to approach it holistically and experience it fully, not rely on something outside me to guide me through the process. My greatest asset in the whole process was sharing it openly with my sister, as we walked the path in mirror-like fashion. It almost seemed mystical at times when we would share our current challenge and hear the other one, yet again, say, “me too!” In the end, it has been empowering to know I lived this decade fully and consciously.

As a woman contemplating this physiological passage of life, I recognize the loss of no longer having the ability to bear and birth children. Having had that experience in an enormously fulfilling way, the loss has been minimal for me. Instead, the related surges of creative, birthing energy are still coming from within me, but in a new way with a new focus. My imaginings are not focused on family life in a building sense, but rather in a more whole sense, a more communal sense. My creative energy feels new, an adventure that requires exploration to learn how to utilize it, navigate it and channel it into an end product. In some ways this is an enormous relief. I considered my role as mother very seriously, had concerns about doing it really well ( at times “perfectly” well – yeesh) so that my children grew into well-balanced, relatively happy, capable people in the world. This was a huge responsibility, one that I carried until I could see the job was done; this was a long, long process over many, many years of great responsibility to bear. Now I am learning on the job with my role as writer, and the worst thing that can happen is nothing great. So little lying in consequence when held up to knowing that our role as mother greatly influences the outcome of our children’s early life experience. Plus, I can go back and rewrite, edit, throw it away, start again, keep working at it with my own pace and timing, not someone else’s needs driving the process. This new type of creative experience is different, has its challenges, but let’s face it, just does not inherently hold the stress or seriousness of raising children. My reason for doing it comes from within me, not because I must become a success in the world at large. That, by itself, is a freedom from pressure to perform.

So all in all, despite the older me that I see when I look in the mirror, I can say that I embrace and embody the changes that my menopause miles have put on me. And the more gracefully and fully I accept the changes in the mirror, the more deeply something within me remembers and acknowledges the internal beauty that comes from a life unresisted, wholly accepted, and fully lived and appreciated. And that beauty is what I choose to see and feel each day; because I do remember what I see is a choice.