Hi all you great people. This week's NEWS is about How to Dispose of a Feeling and T.I.A.A. (=Throwing It All Away. I've written about this before). Join me, join me, join me and let's find out where we can go next.
The other day, Sawyer received his first package from Lego Brickmaster. This is something for which my parents signed him up - as a birthday gift - something he desperately wanted. Every two months, Lego Brickmaster sends him a small build-able toy in the mail. He also receives a copy of the Lego Magazine. So, when he received it, he was very excited. Inside the padded manila envelop was also a letter (quickly thrown aside) and two five dollars-off coupons, brought to me with many fervent questions. He wanted to know how they work and when we could use them. After explaining that they were for on-line purchases only (so we couldn't use them in the store), I mentioned that they have expiration dates on them, but that the expiration dates are not for a long time (one lasts almost a year).
His interest in the coupons died down to a dull roar until the next morning, following a discussion he had with Max, unwitnessed by me. Later, when I launched an investigation as to why my youngest son had traipsed outside in his pajamas, barefoot, and left a cardboard shipping box with the coupons inside it on the doorstep of our neighbor's house, I discovered the nature of their exchange.
Turns out Max had shared his experience of once receiving like coupons. Apparently, he had waited so long, that the expiration came and went and he was no longer able to use the coupons by the time he wanted to. Hearing this story, Sawyer became alarmed. "What if," he worried, "this happens to me?" And he cooked this idea until he soon came to the point where his concern over the coupon expiring before his desire was met became unbearable. He had to get the coupons out of his sight in order to end the torment of this possibility.
After sending him back out to retrieve the package of confusion and garbage he'd left for our innocent neighbor, I had to stop and think.
Why hadn't he just thrown them away? After all, using the trash can is faster than delivering a package.
But the thing is, Sawyer didn't actually want to extinguish the coupons and their potential for getting something he wanted, he simply wanted to dispose of the FEELING of fearing he wasn't going to be able to get what he wanted. So, the best he could come up with was to safely package and abandon them - like a baby left on someone's doorstep - and hope they would be cared for and come to no harm. Somewhere inside he knew he was seeking relief not from the coupons, but from his own problematic thinking. In this light, the garbage would have put much too much of a final end to something that wasn't even the actual problem.
When Max was very young, I noticed a pattern in his behavior that was to endure throughout the years and went like this: something went wrong; something happened he didn't like; he felt something he didn't like feeling, and then he would, what I would later term : T.I.A.A. (which stands for Throw It All Away). I can recall his being around five years old and very upset with me over something ( I cannot remember the specifics) and wanting control over the situation - control that I seemed to have taken. In his fierce and determined little hand was a delicious chocolate chip cookie that he had wanted very much. As he argued his point vehemently, I remember him opening the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink and threatening to throw his cookie away. It made me crazy at the time: why would he throw away something he wanted?
Perhaps he too was looking for a way to dispose of, not that great cookie, but how he was feeling. And the quickest thing, for Max, seemed to be to Throw it All Away. In other words, if there was no tangible item in sight involved in the current conflict, he would seek out anything he had ever wanted and look to throw it away. I have witnessed this impulse in him many times, as he marches through the house with his box of game-boy games and paraphernalia, on his way to the garbage or ebay in his dramatic but erroneous effort to get rid of WANTING in general.
And he wants to get rid of wanting because he believes he has witnessed evidence that says: You Can't Have What You Want and You Don't Have the Power to Create It. And there is nothing harder on us than wanting something and thinking we can't have it. And in many of us the impulse to throw away or ignore anything we want can become strong in order to try to squelch and be done with the torment of wanting in doubt and fear.
Our lives are filled with evidence of having things we want; they surround us, but we must allow ourselves to have and feel having them. And in that having and appreciation, comes the sense of power that both Sawyer and Max and I seek - the knowing we can create whatever we want.
So, enjoy the cookie, and hold onto that coupon. You might already actually have what you want or be able to get it sooner than you think.
Hope you're all great.
Lots of love.
All is Well,
Jen
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
On Falling & Landing (written 1/3/08)
Happy New Year to you all! This week I want to talk about Falling, Landing, and what to do in between. Let's begin with a dream I had.
The dream goes like this (although there was some before that I will not bother with here): I have returned to my car. It is a dark green Subaru Forester (which is what we actually own). All the doors to it are wide open and I am digging through as though in the middle of cleaning it or searching for something. Just then, I realize that it is rolling forward. At this point, I am standing right beside the car, towards the back passenger seats. I believe the rolling is no big deal as there is growth - bushes and trees - in front of it which seem like they would keep it from going very far. But before I know it, that growth seems to sort of part or disappear and the car continues rolling. Then I see that it is on the edge of a precipice. The drop is dramatic. Although I have the perspective of standing outside the car, looking down this cliff, I am in the car, lying down in the back, as it rolls off the precipice. As I realize what is happening I cry out, "NO, NO, NO!" And then the car and I begin to fall. As it falls (slowly), I hear a voice saying to me, "Relax and be still. Relax and be still." over and over again. I focus on relaxing myself and quieting my reaction and I lie there as still as ever I've been. I am aware that if I relax deeply, the impact will not jar or hurt me, but if I tense up, I think of how my jaw might be injured or my teeth damaged. So I am to not fight it at all and, the implication seems to be, if I don't, I will be okay upon landing.
The other night, Bill awoke in the middle of the night and had a very hard time going back to sleep. Earlier that day he had discovered the heel of one of his feet was cracked and dry. He'd never had this before and so Googled information on it. The site he went to spoke of a particular ointment to use but warned that one shouldn't use it if one has diabetes. They then went on to describe some of the symptoms of diabetes: cracked dry skin, and poor circulation. So, Bill awakens in the middle of the night having been sleeping with his hands in a somewhat odd position and they're tingling. His mind jumps to the description on the website and the Worry About Whether or not He Has Diabetes Party begins. From where he is in his life at that moment, from his feeling of vulnerability at the moment (because of other things, perhaps), his mind goes on a hunt to fill in reasons why he should feel vulnerable and frightened. And this diabetes stuff is handy information.
So, he finds himself in a car (= a thought) that is rolling off a precipice. So, what to do?
If he fights against the thought, it will probably become stronger because trying to turn away from something out of fear or stomp it out, just creates more energy around it. So, for every, "Oh, I probably don't have it." There could easily be a , "But I might." So, there's no movement there. And from a position of being challenged, his mind races off to retrieve other bits of examples and evidence that support the diagnosis or at least the anxiety. But what if, he lies still and relaxes? What if he just let's himself free fall through that thought, lying there very still and relaxed, knowing that he is upping his chance of being unscathed when he lands if he takes a non-resistant position? Because the truth is we always land. It is as inherent a law to our inner landscape of thought and feeling as gravity is to our outer landscape of action. Thoughts always land. And when they're airborne, we feel ungrounded and unsafe, and afraid, and when they land, we feel better. The question is how beaten up do we wish to become in the process?
I've heard that in automobile accidents, it is best to relax your body upon impact as you are less likely to sustain an injury and so, I think the same thing applies to a thought accident or really, anything that seems to be going in a direction we don't want.
Recently, I returned from a trip and arrived in the train station expecting Bill to be there to pick me up. He was not. I stood around for a bit, thinking he'd arrive any moment. I considered calling him on the pay phone. I needed to go to the bathroom very badly, but was concerned that he would arrive, not see me, and go off on a hunt. So, I stood there, considering all my options, feeling the medical emergency my bladder was about to produce, when I decided, actually, there was nothing to do, that I would just go to the bathroom and let the situation resolve itself. And so, into the ladies room I went and when I returned, there was Bill.
It's not that this is remarkable, only that there were many tacts I could have taken in Thought. I could have convinced myself that going to the bathroom was too risky, that I had to call, that something was really wrong as Bill is always early for these kinds of things. But that would have been tensing up, that would have been resisting and that would have left me a bit bruised upon landing.
In my dream, I land. And in the next part, I am shaken but fine, and I am in my old Rhode Island childhood home, telling my Mom about my experience of falling. And so you see, we can make it through any fall, any kind of thought or experience that has us frightened, and we can make it through unbroken and unhurt. But it's up to us.
For 2008, let us take all the accidents (thought or otherwise) of the previous year, and let us be still and relaxed and let them fall. And let us land safely and begin from a place we love.
Here's to New Great Things coming your way.
Lots of Love.
All Is Well,
Jen
The dream goes like this (although there was some before that I will not bother with here): I have returned to my car. It is a dark green Subaru Forester (which is what we actually own). All the doors to it are wide open and I am digging through as though in the middle of cleaning it or searching for something. Just then, I realize that it is rolling forward. At this point, I am standing right beside the car, towards the back passenger seats. I believe the rolling is no big deal as there is growth - bushes and trees - in front of it which seem like they would keep it from going very far. But before I know it, that growth seems to sort of part or disappear and the car continues rolling. Then I see that it is on the edge of a precipice. The drop is dramatic. Although I have the perspective of standing outside the car, looking down this cliff, I am in the car, lying down in the back, as it rolls off the precipice. As I realize what is happening I cry out, "NO, NO, NO!" And then the car and I begin to fall. As it falls (slowly), I hear a voice saying to me, "Relax and be still. Relax and be still." over and over again. I focus on relaxing myself and quieting my reaction and I lie there as still as ever I've been. I am aware that if I relax deeply, the impact will not jar or hurt me, but if I tense up, I think of how my jaw might be injured or my teeth damaged. So I am to not fight it at all and, the implication seems to be, if I don't, I will be okay upon landing.
The other night, Bill awoke in the middle of the night and had a very hard time going back to sleep. Earlier that day he had discovered the heel of one of his feet was cracked and dry. He'd never had this before and so Googled information on it. The site he went to spoke of a particular ointment to use but warned that one shouldn't use it if one has diabetes. They then went on to describe some of the symptoms of diabetes: cracked dry skin, and poor circulation. So, Bill awakens in the middle of the night having been sleeping with his hands in a somewhat odd position and they're tingling. His mind jumps to the description on the website and the Worry About Whether or not He Has Diabetes Party begins. From where he is in his life at that moment, from his feeling of vulnerability at the moment (because of other things, perhaps), his mind goes on a hunt to fill in reasons why he should feel vulnerable and frightened. And this diabetes stuff is handy information.
So, he finds himself in a car (= a thought) that is rolling off a precipice. So, what to do?
If he fights against the thought, it will probably become stronger because trying to turn away from something out of fear or stomp it out, just creates more energy around it. So, for every, "Oh, I probably don't have it." There could easily be a , "But I might." So, there's no movement there. And from a position of being challenged, his mind races off to retrieve other bits of examples and evidence that support the diagnosis or at least the anxiety. But what if, he lies still and relaxes? What if he just let's himself free fall through that thought, lying there very still and relaxed, knowing that he is upping his chance of being unscathed when he lands if he takes a non-resistant position? Because the truth is we always land. It is as inherent a law to our inner landscape of thought and feeling as gravity is to our outer landscape of action. Thoughts always land. And when they're airborne, we feel ungrounded and unsafe, and afraid, and when they land, we feel better. The question is how beaten up do we wish to become in the process?
I've heard that in automobile accidents, it is best to relax your body upon impact as you are less likely to sustain an injury and so, I think the same thing applies to a thought accident or really, anything that seems to be going in a direction we don't want.
Recently, I returned from a trip and arrived in the train station expecting Bill to be there to pick me up. He was not. I stood around for a bit, thinking he'd arrive any moment. I considered calling him on the pay phone. I needed to go to the bathroom very badly, but was concerned that he would arrive, not see me, and go off on a hunt. So, I stood there, considering all my options, feeling the medical emergency my bladder was about to produce, when I decided, actually, there was nothing to do, that I would just go to the bathroom and let the situation resolve itself. And so, into the ladies room I went and when I returned, there was Bill.
It's not that this is remarkable, only that there were many tacts I could have taken in Thought. I could have convinced myself that going to the bathroom was too risky, that I had to call, that something was really wrong as Bill is always early for these kinds of things. But that would have been tensing up, that would have been resisting and that would have left me a bit bruised upon landing.
In my dream, I land. And in the next part, I am shaken but fine, and I am in my old Rhode Island childhood home, telling my Mom about my experience of falling. And so you see, we can make it through any fall, any kind of thought or experience that has us frightened, and we can make it through unbroken and unhurt. But it's up to us.
For 2008, let us take all the accidents (thought or otherwise) of the previous year, and let us be still and relaxed and let them fall. And let us land safely and begin from a place we love.
Here's to New Great Things coming your way.
Lots of Love.
All Is Well,
Jen
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