Get Familiar with This Place

I have written here about a couple of simple yet profound ways to effect the change we most want and most deeply need. The approach is different from almost everything else that we do. And the results emerge so organically, they can go unnoticed. We live life with our teeth sunk in. We take on our tasks, our challenges, even the pursuit of our dreams with tenacity. And when we don’t, we are disappointed. We expect a measure of intensity to pervade our endeavors. 

When living from spirit there is an absence of intensity. There is an absence of worry, embroilment, confusion, an absence of attachment to any particular outcome. Instead you bask in exquisite neutrality. And it brings an abiding clarity and a sense of well-being unequaled in any other experience.

Living from spirit only happens in snatches, we fall into it and ride its current momentarily, only to bounce right back out from sheer unfamiliarity. We are accustomed to intensity. So, in the beginning, the current is an underground stream, only perceptible as an inkling and easily dismissed. 

Don’t dismiss it! When you fall into the flow of your spirit, your essence, and are momentarily riding the current, notice it. Remember it. It may seem like nothing. Like nothingness. Your brain has no thoughts to offer, no words of comment. But you will know it is a place of sheer brilliance. Get familiar with this place. 

It may start as an underground stream but when you bring attention to it, the stream surfaces. The more you acknowledge time spent in the flow of your essence, the more you know what it feels like to live there. The imperceptibility gives way to nuanced richness and suddenly it is glaring when you are not there. You get back there more and more often and live more and more of your life while riding the flow of your spirit. You find fulfillment. And an effortless efficacy in your endeavors that inspires you and the world around you. 

So how do you get there?

Here’s what to do:

• Intend- Set an intention to live from spirit. Intention aligns your essence with your everyday life. This gets results in the outer world. Even if you don’t believe it, set the intention anyway. 

• Experiment- Wonder about when you have fallen into the flow of your spirit. What works for you to begin to sense that underground stream? Maybe it’s stopping yourself in mid-intensity. Maybe it’s calling in sick and giving yourself a day off or a day of play. Be experimental. Find out what gets you there. 

• Play- Keep it light. Although it feels urgent and imperative, this is a joyful pursuit. If you’re not getting where you think you should be, remembering to not take it so seriously can help. 

• Trust- You almost certainly have been on that stream. Simply because it is who you are. Growing your spirit can feel elusive. And irrelevant. Trust yourself and your path, no matter how wayward. Your spirit is always pointing you toward the stream. Entertain the idea of trust as a practice, even if you doubt it mightily. 

How we most often operate is completely different than living from spirit. If things aren't going the way you’d hoped, operate differently. When you ride that flow, you’ll find it better than the best intensity you can bring.

Noticing

Sometimes it seems that no matter what we do or how we try, we can’t change things. Some of us don’t even know what’s wrong. And others could write an eloquent, deeply self-knowledgeable description of all we face, knowing the essay could likely be reprinted the following year exactly as written. Either way, the things that keep us unchanged are not moved by our thoughts.

I remember years back, when we both had young children, my cousin sent me a little article entitled, “The Lowly Stick Makes it into The Toy Hall of Fame”. It made me laugh. It’s true. If you watch kids playing you see that they most often abandon the elaborate toys made for a specific purpose in favor of a simple object that can have myriad uses. The stick ain’t glamorous. You wouldn’t present it in festive birthday wrap. But it is always there to offer rich and joyful play to any kid who picks it up.

Noticing is like that. It is exquisitely simple and always at hand. And it guides you directly to the buried treasure within that allows true change and healing.

To notice, you stop everything for a micro second. Stop everything you’re doing. Stop everything you’re thinking. And then take that micro second to notice the state you’re in. It could be, “I notice I’m amped and nervous.” Or, “I notice back pain I’ve been ignoring.” Or, “I notice that this noticing feels stupid and unhelpful.” Whatever it is, the act of stopping and noticing, and continuing to stop and notice, cascades down into your being in a healing chain reaction. You might be still living mostly from your usual MO but in the micro seconds that you are not, you are moving heaven and earth inside you.

There are two big keys to noticing. One is to not stray from noticing. The moment you stop noticing and start analyzing, you are in thinking mode. And your thought patterns have been honed and perfected your whole life. The part of you that goes into thinking mode is a specialist, an expert in it’s field. But it is not the field you need right now to get you where you want to go.

The second, and most important key to noticing is self-compassion. It is an intention to judge absolutely nothing about what you notice, to unconditionally accept whatever comes up. So noticing without self-compassion, and with some analyzing, may go like this, “I notice I am angry at my friend. I think I’m actually jealous of my friend. How horrible of me.” And simply noticing with self-compassion would go like this, “I notice I am angry at my friend. I notice jealousy. Oh boy, I notice it is difficult to feel jealousy. I feel yucky about myself being jealous of a friend. Okay.“ The “okay” in self-compassionate noticing is huge. It is unconditional acceptance. “Okay, this is just how it is.” Not forever, but in this moment. All your dislike of it, and your discomfort around it, will not change it. But just noticing it and accepting it will.

Noticing is an experiential phenomenon. You just gotta try it a handful of times and see where it takes you. You may be skeptical. You may say, “It is completely unclear how this works.” Okay. Like the lowly stick, it’s always there for you to pick up and play with when you feel like it.

Just Say I Don't Know

Like the color red that Jonas saw on the apple in the colorless world of the book The Giver, we are meant to see more. In Lois Lowry’s work of young adult fiction, color was always there. The people just had to remember it, expand their narrowed consciousness and let it in. We have deeper ways of seeing, bigger ways of knowing that we have forgotten.

All of the solutions we seek, the resolutions we hope for, the changes we imagine, they are not out of reach. But they are in a place we completely overlook. They are right in our midst, just like the red apple, but obscured by the fog of what we think we know, what we are sure we are.

Just say I Don’t Know. Jump the old circuit of beliefs and conclusions your mind runs. You will start a new pathway. The fog will clear. You will see in color.

There is profound power in I Don’t Know. It is a 3 word opening to all that you really do know. And it is a simple practice you can do while washing your hands or while on your way to work. When you find yourself trying to work something out along the same rutted road your thoughts have traveled before, gently stop. Stop and say, “Hmmm, maybe I don’t know.” In that moment you throw the doors wide open to allow your consciousness to expand. And it’ll do the rest. It’ll rearrange your inner landscape so you can access your true knowing and then see clearly just how to proceed.

The esoteric, vague part of this process, the part that likely makes a lot of folks roll their eyes, isn’t the relevant part here. The relevant part is the simple, simple practice of saying, “I don’t know”. Intend to notice your rutted thoughtways. And when you do notice them say, “Well MAYBE this is different than I have believed. Maybe I don’t know.” It is a no commitment exploration that can have profound effect in your life and the lives of all around you. Try it for a day or a week. See what happens for you.