Inward Quest

Doing a workshop this weekend called “How To Feel Good About Yourself.” Besides our workshop, there will be all kinds of interesting events going on at this festival. Look in the Events section to the right to learn more, or just click here!

Interesting conversation with a friend, spurred by this site on Vedanta. She posits that the concept of karma is disempowering, because it can be (and has been) interpreted as, “This is your lot in life, and you did something to ‘deserve’ it at some point, so you have to deal with where you are.”

I have always treated karma as a concept of growth. That if you don’t like where you are, and don’t like your conditioned responses, you have the power to change them. When you become aware of your own Divine nature, you can free yourself from your conditioning and choose to respond in ways that encourage growth, healing, peace, and love.

Our discussion led to the concept that we create our own reality. Creating the good stuff may be empowering, she pointed out, but what does that say to the person who gets cancer? Should we then tell them it’s “their own fault” that they got it, and that if they’d been manifesting ‘perfect abundance’ well enough that they would be healthy?

I agree. I don’t like the ‘flip side’ of ‘we create our own reality’. Part of my mind, the part that almost instinctively grasps ‘big pictures,’ understands that the two may seem linked but really are not: that to say we can have responsibility and power in our own lives doesn’t necessarily invalidate the ‘random bad luck’ response. But philosophically, I don’t know how to refute that. I can grasp it intuitively, but can’t find the words to explain it.

What about you? What do you think? Is karma a fatalistic philosophy, or a way to simply say what you want, you should give out? Does “The Secret” empower us to make choices, or make us feel like it’s ‘our fault’ when something bad happens? I’m really interested in hearing discussion…

What do you expect of a high school with a 30% drop-out rate, where 89% of the students live in poverty, a fifth do not speak English as a first language, and only 5% of the parents have a college education?

Well, this high school in Indianapolis proved what can be accomplished through the power of positive expectations: each of the 78 members of the Class of 2009 has been accepted to college.

This is a high school in a neighborhood that has one of the city’s highest rates of violent crime. No one expects anything good out of Haughville. It’s the “don’t go there after dark” neighborhood. Certainly the ‘common wisdom’ is that kids in that area are going to be ‘gangstas’ and ‘thugs’.

And yet: this high school managed to turn the ‘common wisdom’ around, and replace it with true wisdom. They created an atmosphere of encouragement, and helped the students see themselves as people for whom college is not a far-fetched dream, but a completely reasonable possibility. By saturating the school with the message that the next step after high school is college, by setting an expectation for success, they created that success.

This to me is the perfect example of how changing our perceptions can have a dramatic impact on what we achieve. What kind of person do you THINK you are? What do you, deep-down, believe is possible for you? If you were willing to let go of those self-imposed limitations, what could you do? These kids reshaped their perceptions of themselves, and in doing so, opened doors for their future. What could YOU do with that kind of encouragement?

Thank you, Washington High Class of 2009, for touching my heart today, for inspiring me, and for providing such a potent reminder of how much we can accomplish — as long as we believe in possibility!

We’ve just joined the Earth House Collective, a peace and wellness community, that will give us a location to hold regular classes! Watch this space for more information…

If you haven’t yet registered for our workshop on April 25, the discounted registration price is still available until April 17. It’s an opportunity to spend a day discovering who you really are, learning how to let your authentic self shine forth, and exploring your mission in life. I’m really excited about this, and hope to see you there!

(You can learn more by clicking on the Events link to the right, or just click here…)

‘Vulnerability’ has gotten a bad rap, because it is usually associated with being hurt.

What if we re-framed that concept as ‘accessibility’?   Being emotionally accessible to other people can open up many doors to joy, peace and love, without having to open us up to hurt.

We have seen ‘intimacy’ spelled out as ‘Into me - see’. Although not all people can be trusted to be ‘let in’ without an intent to hurt us, many can.

In the song ‘Lean on Me’, we are reminded, “For no one can feel those of your needs, that you won’t let show.”

Follow your bliss. If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.

–Joseph Campbell

In honor of Joseph Campbell’s birthday today, I share this marvelous quote from The Power of Myth. In teaching my relationships class over the last several weeks, I have been reminded of just how powerful this is. I teach these classes because it’s my bliss: because the light that goes on in someone’s eyes when they see through their own beliefs and realize that they are worthy, they are valuable, and they are Love, is the most beautiful expression I can imagine on any human face.

So, I follow my bliss, and help empower others. What’s your bliss? Do you follow it? If not, why not?

@Bodhipaksa on Twitter shared with me a deeply moving blog post that was based around the same quote I posted recently:

http://www.wildmind.org/blogs/quote-of-the-month/anais-nin-getting-unstuck

I was immediately impressed by the emotional honesty in this post. So often when we practice meditation, or teach personal growth workshops, or counsel others, it becomes easy to get caught up in feeling like we can’t display our own weaknesses, that to do so somehow invalidates our own practice, implies we don’t “walk the talk.”

Yet I have found that when I am the most emotionally honest and vulnerable, when I admit, “Look, I teach this because it is my passion, and, I am still learning every day just like you are,” I reach people more deeply than when I proudly spout my latest theory on how we can overcome all our obstacles to emotional health and wholeness.

And you’d better believe I’m still learning! I’d love to say I have it all together and my emotional life is perfect, but that’s not always the case. Some days, that’s not even often the case.

But what I think practice teaches us is awareness. I may respond to a mistaken belief. I may act out of that belief instead of being my authentic self. But no longer do I do that unconsciously. Even when it happens, a part of me is aware and observing. And far sooner than I would have in the past, I can address the belief and the behavior; compassionately accept myself for still being — after all — a human being; and turn once more towards beliefs and actions that I choose, instead of conditioned responses.

I am “at choice” in my behavior. I am aware of my feelings. I am conscious of my responses.

Maybe that’s what it means to blossom?

..and then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
–Anais Nin

Often we stay in the emotional “status quo” simply because it’s easier and less frightening than changing. No matter how difficult, no matter how much emotional drama we’re going through, no matter how dissatisfied we feel… the known is familiar. The familiar feels safe.

However, as my IQ colleague is fond of saying, “The feeling you have in your comfort zone isn’t comfort: it’s numbness.”

At what point does the pain of staying the same outweigh the fear of change? Do you really have to furl up and tie yourself in knots rather than risk the unknown?

What would it take for you to blossom?

I searched for a quote for today and found, not only a quote, but a fabulous article by Dr. Judith Rich, who blogs in the personal growth field for the Huffington Post. In the middle of  our current climate of crisis, when all we seem to hear is DOOM! and DESPAIR! and RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! — she reminds us that NOW is a better time than ever to dust off our dreams and make them happen.

The quote:

“So many of our dreams at first seem Impossible,
then they seem Improbable,
and then when we Summon the Will,
they soon become Inevitable.”

Christopher Reeves

And the article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-judith-rich/impossible-to-inevitable_b_168779.html

What do you tell yourself about your dreams? When you hear yourself think about them, do you hear mostly encouraging, inspiring thoughts, or discouraging, self-defeating thoughts? What might you have invested in those self-defeating thoughts? Do they keep you safe from the risk of failure? What would you be willing to try if ‘failure’ was a meaningless word for you, if each experience could be accepted on its own terms as a learning opportunity, without being judged as a ’success’ or ‘failure’?

It may be a bit of a misunderstanding of the language, but whether or not it is true that the Chinese word for crisis contains within it the word for opportunity, it is true that within any crisis lie the seeds of opportunity. What are you doing to plant and fertilize your own seeds today?