Friday, July 9, 2010

The Empty Box of Zen

So today was one of those days.  It seemed like everywhere I turned, little things were happening to delay me, to make sure that I really wanted peace.  I'd like to share what I think is the highlight.

After a busy day of little things going wrong (or not meeting my expectations) I went home knowing that I had a hospital visit to make.  The visit was at 6.30.  However, on the way home I received a call from a courier telling me that they've got a package for me.  Thinking through how things could be timed I figured I'd wait for my wife to get home, go pick up the package, and then head to the hospital. 

However, in between some emails I was trying send before I left not going through (computer problem) and the trip itself taking longer than I expected to get to the courier I arrived at around 6.25pm.  I guess a part of me was feeling a little uncofortable with being late.  Imagine my surprise when I get inside and after searching for the package they hand me an empty box!

Opening the unsealed box to find some bubblewrap I looked at the customer service rep and asked them why the driver couldn't have left the box outside my door.  With an ernest expression she asked me, "Did you have a notice on your door saying a signature is not required?"

"No," I answered.  "I wasn't expecting an empty box and the problem with such a sign is that the laptop I'm waiting to receive would be left unattended."

"Well, we can't leave any boxes because someone may get upset."

"Of someone stealing an empty box?"

"Well, that box may be valuable."

"But it's empty and unsealed?"  However, at that point I stopped myself and smiled.  Looking at her with that smile I closed the conversation, with the statement "I think this is silly, but thank you."

I left with my empty box.  Sharing this story at meditation tonight I was asked what I could have done that was different.  In thinking about it, I think a better approach would have been:
  • To be aware that everything is perfect, and that I would arrive at the hospital exactly when I needed to (thus removing the self-perceived pressure of arriving to visit my friend when she was expecting me)
  • To laugh upon opening the empty box, and with a humourous tone of voice and heart tell the customer rep how perfect it was to be slowed down while trying to visit a friend in hospital to pick up an empty box (thus bringing some humour to both our days)
Everything is an opportunity for awareness and transformation.  I am compassionate toward myself.  I recognize that in the past, after a day of continual delays and things going wrong that at some point I would have gotten frustrated.  I kept my centre today and I celebrate that.  But far from resting on my laurels, I gently remind myself that this is just a beginning.  There's always an opportunity to be more aware, to be a greater field of grace.  I am learning, one empty box at a time.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Personal Learnings in Relationship

It is amazing how learning can occur.  After yesterday's blog, Lessons of Relationship, I found myself including key ideas with the daily meditation circle I lead in Second Life.  As a part of the sharing I related a little about my mother and my experience of relationship.  One of the participants asked a most profound question.  "How do your words relate to your relationship with your mother?"

Oh yes, even those sharing meditation are in relationship with each other, and here was a participant reflecting to me and asking a powerful question to teach me.  As I answered I realized that the true learning for me was that relationships are indeed all about us.  My mother may have made transition over 5 years ago but here I was, looking within, at myself, and seeking to understand what I had brought to the relationship.  Her death in no way prevented me from bringing the relationship to a close and doing the work I needed to do.

When you gain that perspective suddenly ideas like, I wish I'd told them I loved them before they'd died take on a whole new feel.  If anything, someone dying is actually the perfect opportunity to look within and to complete your work of awareness around the relationship.  The other person is no longer in that expression and will not distract you with their own expectations on relationship.  You are freed to do the work in the most perfect of ways (assuming you can see past a broken heart; this may take time).

I then got to thinking about other recent contemplations.  I had recently exposed, and have been working through, a belief around abandonment.  At first my reflection had centred around the fact that my single mother had had to go to work behind the bar each night (or go out and drink), and would literally abandon me, the solitary seven year old, in our tiny flat to entertain myself.  As I write this I am reminded that it got to the point that around the time I was ten or so I would find myself actually avoiding my mother returning home (and this remained for many years).  I'd gotten so primed by fear of a drunken mother coming back from the pub (either working or drinking) that when I would hear her coming up the stairs I'd turn off the lights and the gas fire, and pretend I was alseep.  Is it any wonder then that I learned as a child that relationships were to be avoided; after all, if I would either be abandoned or abused through a stupor of alcohol why would being in relationship draw me?

However, upon reflection I realized that the lessons of abandonment didn't stop there.  My father had also abandoned me when I was 4.  He'd chosen heroin over me, and had allowed my mother to leave him, thereby abandoning me.  How many times had I lied to other children at school saying that he'd died of bone cancer.  As a young boy I remember hearing that bone cancer was one of the most painful ways to die; I projected that idea of a painful death on his part to mask the buried agony that was being ineptly handled by a scared child.

And with this latest realization I am now empowered to find fulfillment with my father.  He's not been in my life since a young age but that does not matter.  Both he and my mother have, amongst other things, provided me with the gift of awareness.  I am so very grateful to have awoken to my Sacred Self in this moment.  Thank you Roger; thank you Judie.  I love you both!

In my previous blog I commented that no relationship is an accident.  Everyone we have in relationship is there for a sacred exchange of growth.  My relationship with my father is about me; it is about me forgiving him completely, and knowing that he did the very best he could.  I know that when my mother came home each night and found me asleep that that part of her that was God knew that I was pretending to be asleep and she felt pain.  I hold a knowing of love for her right now, asking her to forgive that scared little boy, for he did not know what he was doing, nor was he equipped to deal with his fulfillment of that relationship in that time.  I know she was doing her best, and I am sorry that she had to suffer so that I could remember in this moment.  I know that God is with me, that I could not truly be abandoned, and that I am now healed of the hidden beliefs of being abandoned by my parents.  I claim love for myself, and for them both.  I thank them for the opportunities they have given me.  After all, they gave me the gift of abandonment so that I might in this moment come to savour the lessons of relationship so much more right here, right now.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Lessons of Relationship

Ram Dass once said that if you think you are enlightened you should spend a week with your family.  I smile every time I think of this.  For my experience with family has been like a tale of two cities.  The first city was with my mother.  By the age of 21 I had left England to follow love and adventure.  However, whilst I never really returned it took until my mother's transition for me to fully embrace the life I was meant to live.  Interestingly, I didn't discover the Centre for Spiritual Living, Edmonton, until the Sunday after I had buried my mother.

The tale of my mother will wait for another time, but the tale of the second city is with my wife and daughter.  I also get to witness and experience the dynamics of extended family.  For you see I was a single child to a single mother.  I had a sister by birth but due to a choice on my mother's part Chloe was given up for adoption.  I was the child who my mother kept.  I have had to learn a whole host of definitions of what family is.  And yet at this point in my life I am becoming clearer that those closest relationships I have are here to provide me with opportunities for awareness, to stretch me to fulfillment, and to honour a process of healing.

I had the honour to be asked by a friend to visit her in hospital today.  As I heard her story I realized that in her own way she was moving through lessons of awareness with her family.  And yet as we finished our time together I was inspired to tell her that when she was able to approach her family with acceptance and unconditional love then the lesson would be fully fulfilled.  I am not quite certain why I said what I said, but I am reminded that the lessons of relationship are often the most vibrant springboards for growth of awareness that I know. 

There is no such thing as an accidental relationship.  God is in every event, and every relationship is a series of events that has meaning for us.  Even a brief exchange with a stranger on the other end of a telephone conversation is an interaction with the potential for meaning.  Yet the first and most profound dangers of relationships is when we come to them expecting others in the exchange to fix us, or to think as we do.   Some (or many) of us believe that finding that 'someone special' will improve all aspects of our lives and bring us incredible joy.

I have a theory that when we greet others in relationships that there is a sacred exchange occurring.  The God in us greets the God in the other person.  Subconsciously we are integrated at the most profound level.  But when our own awareness is clouded by so much distraction and emphasis on illusion we find it harder to grasp the Truth.  The clouds take on more emphasis and before we know it the rain is calling the tunes.  The person we are when we began the relationship is the essence of what we will attract.  We tend to attract exactly those that we need to help us realize fulfillment, awareness and healing.  This may be obvious, but I believe that for the most part the sacred exchange that is occurring is much more subtle.  It can take great insight to work out why a relationship exists, and what those involved have agreed to on a Divine level.  However, a conscious awareness of the purpose is not the point.  The opportunity to transform and raise our awareness is.

Relationships can be the mirror that reflect what we need to complete ourselves, and most often in ways that alone we could not accomplish.  We are always moving toward healing those parts of us that are wounded.  Sometimes the road is rocky, and the pain that our relationships surface can be soul-wrenching.  When this occurs with a life partner a great deal of trust and depth is often required for the relationship to survive through to its natural conclusion (as opposed to leaving it before we should, if at all).  God will provide us with everything we need for our healing.  If we have attracted someone who pushes our buttons, then this 'wrong' person will likely be our greatest teacher.  And when it comes to family, those we did not consciously choose in this lifetime, we may find ourselves with parents, siblings, and extended family who can upset us in ways that no one else can.  Family adds an additional dimension in that it is generally harder to disconnect with such people and relationships.  In this fact alone family becomes a special teacher.

Relationships will bring us the deepest lessons that we need to learn, those that we could not learn alone.  And yet as is the case with another person we meet, we are not supposed to change others.  Our opinions on those we are in relationships with serve only as a distraction.  What if they are not supposed to change?  And if we could change them, would we not be dishonouring their journey, their quest for enlightment and growth?  Or to put it more simply, if we would not want our family to dictate who we must be, should we try to dictate to them how they must be in order to fit into our sense of what is right in the world?

The wonderful news is that if you find your buttons being pushed, that means there is a belief influencing that feeling and emotion you are now experiencing.  Belief is a product of experience and can be changed.  And when we gain the insight (either as presented to us by others we are in relationship with or our own) then we can often look to others in relationship to support us.  I cannot count the times my life partner has both called me out on an issue and then been there 110% supporting me.  She knows I love her, and she loves me; our natural condition, our inner desire, is to support and help the other with everything we have. 

Growth is never accomplished by telling another what they must do and how they must change, or making them better.  It is always about you.  And those you are in relationship are always reflecting what you need to see.  And yet all too often we can rid ourselves of the relationship before we have rid ourselves of the problem and the underlying cause within. 

The use of questions can be profound when understanding relationships and our role in them:
  • Is how I give and receive love reminiscent of how love was modelled for me as a child?  Is punishment and reward the manner in which I show and accept love?
  • If abuse exists in my relationships did I experience abuse as a child?  Have I work left to do on my inner child and the unhealed pain that remains?
  • Did we witness our parents caring for each other joyfully and lovingly? 
Whether we are staying in a relationship out of hope for it changing, or because we believe it will work out on its own, we will eventually have to come to a realization; if the relationships you are experiencing are not in alignment with your vision for love and your worth then it is time to change them.  We must also let go of the specific expectations of what the future will look like, how our partner or family will be, and what they will do to change.  A dear friend of mind recently told me that they had realized that their definition of being "in love" was about complete dependance on the other.  Even our expectations of love itself can hold us back from the growth, healing and awareness that we need.

Relationships unfold exactly as they are meant to.  The more we can remember this and place our expectations of others in the relationship aside the more fulfilling our relationships will become.