This is Our Phoenix Moment

“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.” – Joseph Campbell
“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes
it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”  – Maya Angelou

I’ve had a difficult time writing this week’s post. There is so much acrimony in the air over the government shutdown. I live in an area that is deeply affected and many of my friends and acquaintances are understandably fearful, angry and full of resentment about what’s happening. I sympathize with them. The world is changing rapidly and it’s hard to keep ones equilibrium. I think we’re at a turning point. Events all over the globe indicate to me that humanity is changing. Thousands, maybe even millions, of people are standing up and saying “I’m not going to take this any more,” while others are pushing back trying to keep the status quo. But, change is here. We can’t stop it, so we might as well embrace it.
When my friends say, “I’m so angry, I can’t see straight.” or, “I’m afraid of what’s going to happen,” I understand why they say that. All they see is our physical world. They don’t see what lies behind it. It’s times like this that I rejoice. Because, it’s when things fall apart that something new can be born out of the ashes, like the Phoenix.
You may say I’m crazy, but I think we’ve got a fantastic opportunity to get rid of old patterns and structures and build a new kind of world. A more authentic world. One where people are valued and honored above money, power and prestige. Creating this new world isn’t going to happen over night. It’s going to take commitment. It’s going to take a willingness to look deep within ourselves at our values, traumas, darkness and light and to do some healing. I can speak from experience, doing healing work is worth it.
My conscious spiritual journey began in the mid-80s. Barry and I were recent college graduates, but our life didn’t look at all the way we’d dreamed. Our jobs were unfulfilling and the familiar comforts of our church community no longer fit who we were. We longed for the stimulating atmosphere we’d loved about our college community. The more we talked about how we felt, the more confused we became. We needed someone impartial to help us find the way.
One day we saw a flyer for psychic readings with Neale Donald Walsch. We made the appointment feeling apprehensive. We’d never done anything so daring. Neale was welcoming and put us at our ease. During the session, we got the answers we needed. It was time to leave the church and live a bigger spiritual life. Wow! How scary to leave the familiar cocoon of the church. Of course, we faced what writer Steven Pressfield calls, resistance. Resistance happens when we have an opportunity to take a big evolutionary step. When that happens, we’re faced with two choices. 1) We can step into the unknown and trust the process, or 2) we can shy away and close ourselves off. Neither Barry nor I wanted to continue being miserable, so the decision was clear. I’m not saying it was easy informing our family. But, when we made the break, we were so much happier.
As Barry and I started a new spiritual practice of study, meditation and talking with other friends who’d also left, our life was better. But something Neale had said in our session was nagging at the back of my mind. “Contemplate these words.” he said, “Nothing matters, and you think it does.” What on earth could he be talking about? Of course everything matters. People are dying, starving, being oppressed, abused and disrespected. How could that not matter? The idea that nothing mattered was like sand in an oyster. I couldn’t let that idea go, so I contemplated those words in my journal, meditations and prayers for years until just before my fortieth birthday.
I was visiting my Naturopathic Doctor for a spinal adjustment. He was telling me about the skiing trip his best friend had gifted him for his fortieth birthday just a few months before mine. From the outside, the ski trip looked like a disaster. Their old equipment malfunctioned and broke and they were unable to ski. Then he laughed and said, “But it didn’t matter. We had such a great time being together on the snow covered mountain looking out at the gorgeous vistas. It’s a birthday I’ll never forget.”
When he said that something snapped in my head and heart. “That’s it!” I said.
He was startled. “What!”
I told him what Neale had asked me to think about years before, and said. “I understand now what he meant by nothing matters. It’s our response to what’s going on that matters. It’s our willingness to accept and trust. But more than that, all this,” and I patted the table I was on, “All this is illusion. It’s like we’re all in a play that God wrote and there’s some larger purpose to the events than we can understand.”
He squinched up his face and then relaxed it and said, “Oh, yeah. I see that too.”
“Thanks for helping me figure that out.” I said, “I’ve been trying to understand what Neale was getting at for years now.”
“You’re welcome. And thanks for sharing that with me. I wouldn’t have understood it either until you explained it to me.”
Since that day, no matter what disaster happens, there’s a part of me that trusts that Divine Oneness is in control and there’s a deeper purpose for events than my little human brain can comprehend. My job is to try to grasp the lesson, to move forward, to overcome resistance, and to commit to growing into a more open, loving person. That’s only possible when I let go of attachment to a particular outcome. What Neale saw in me was the need to know how things were going to turn out before I’d be willing to take the first step. I wanted to take God’s place and be in control of the final outcome. That’s just not possible.
We’re living in a scary time. Lots of people are fearful. We’re facing a great unknown. The only way we’re going to get through it, is to look inside ourselves and see where we’re being led and allow Divine Oneness to take care of the rest. It’s okay to feel the fear and anger. It’s okay to be uncertain about our future, as long as we also continue to seek guidance for our next step.
© Lucinda Sage-Midgorden, 2013

Let’s Talk, and Listen

“Whether clear or garbled, tumultuous or silent, deliberate or fatally inadvertent, communication is the ground of meeting… It is, in short, the essential human connection.” – Ashley Montagu and Floyd Matson

“Talk and change the world.” – Slogan espoused by a group of U.S. Senators who happened to be female. (as reported in Communication Works tenth edition, by Teri Kwal Gamble and Michael Gamble.)

My husband’s six year old computer finally died. He gave it a hard workout with all the high powered graphics programs he uses and it served him well. But, that means he and I are now sharing my computer, which reminded me of when we first moved here. We had only one car. That meant we drove to work together every morning and home together every night. We did that for about six years until we moved out into the country, twenty miles or more from town. Then I took a job forty-five miles in one direction and Barry continued to drive twenty-one miles in the opposite direction. That made two cars necessary and everything changed.

Once we were driving in opposite directions, the nature of our communication deteriorated. We didn’t talk as much as we had before, because our schedules were so different. I had to leave very early in the morning and usually got home three hours before having to go to bed so I’d be fresh for the next day. Every weekend I was working on school projects and Barry had his activities. We barely saw each other and little by little got out of the habit of talking, except for vital communications.

The thing that was so wonderful about driving to work together was that we got an extra twenty minutes to an hour to be with each other every day. Barry and I enjoyed that extra time. If we’d been having a conversation at breakfast, we could finish it in the car. At the end of the day, we could decompress. We both missed that. There’s something cold about going out for dinner, or going to some event and having to interrupt your lovely conversation to drive home in separate cars.

Recently,when I began to teach an introductory communication course at the local community college, I realized that Barry and I had lost some of our communication skills.  As the students and I talked about the skills necessary for good communication, I realized that I needed to do as much work to improve my skills as my students did. It takes practice to have meaningful conversations with your spouse, or anyone for that matter. It’s so important to see body language, facial expressions and to truly listen to what another person is saying. It’s also important to be able to put your own feelings aside long enough to try to understand what the other person is saying.

When I look back over the years Barry and I’ve spent together, some of the moments I cherish most are when we’ve had a good talk, or worked together on a project and were communicating well. It’s been a challenge to get our communication mojo back. Fortunately we were lucky to have good teachers in how to communicate well. My dad was an exquisite listener and communicator. By observing how he listened, considered and then responded to people, I learned how to be fully present for someone else. Our home was a great learning lab. My dad taught me that listening is at the heart of good communication. Thinking about what you’re going to say before you’ve heard what the other person is saying is not communicating. Maybe that’s part of our problem at the moment. We don’t listen to each other. We don’t take time to try to understand each other. We don’t trust each other because we think that everyone else should see the world the way we do. But that’s impossible. A good communicator tries to understand how the person their talking to sees the world and then find common ground.

Maybe my communication students are right, we need to redevelop our face-to-face communication skills again. I’m in favor of that. Having good technology skills is important, but being able to understand and be understood by your family, friends and colleagues is so much more important.

Just Keep Going

Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness. Brené Brown

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been struggling with what to write in this blog. Now that I’m teaching, I have less time to ponder, write and revise my entries and after five months of entries, I feel dry, with nothing to write. But, I got the message from several sources, just keep writing. I knew that if I stopped writing this blog this week, it would be easier to make an excuse next week and the next and then stop writing it all together. So, I resolved to write something even if it was bad.

Then two things happened. I asked for help in my journal, because I was stalled on my novel as well, and I watched Dr. Brené Brown on Oprah’s Lifeclass. Ideas about my novel started coming to me and keep coming, and I was reminded why I started this blog in the first place. I started it because of Dr. Brown’s book The Gifts of Imperfection.

One of the things she writes about in that book is how to practice vulnerability. We think of vulnerability as weakness, but it’s actually strength. When I read that, I knew she was talking to me personally. We moved a lot when I was a growing up and I got used to being the new kid. I didn’t like having all the attention, because I was new in small towns where everyone had known each other since Kindergarten. So I practiced being in the background. Oh, I always had lots of opinions about what was going on around me, but I rarely voiced them. If I did, it felt weird and I felt apologetic, like my opinion didn’t matter. The truth of the matter was, I didn’t want to be vulnerable. I didn’t think what I thought mattered, I didn’t think I mattered.

I’m older now and have done lots of personal work learning to love myself. Interestingly, I’ve sought out careers and situations that have forced me to use vulnerability a great deal. For a number of years I was involved in theatre, often as an actor. Then I was a teacher, I’m still a teacher, and now I’m a writer.

You can’t get much more vulnerable that those activities. I know many teachers who don’t practice vulnerability, but to be an excellent teacher you have to be vulnerable. Being vulnerable allows your students to be that too, and risk asking dumb questions, or exploring and expressing their ideas. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with our educational system. Not enough teachers are vulnerable. I just thought of that as I was writing it. That could be an entire blog post on it’s own.

Having been an actor and now a writer, I can say that the process requires me to dig down into my soul and bring out my deepest experiences to create the work. That’s not easy, it not comfortable and it takes time and effort. I often fail, or at least don’t quite hit the mark. That’s okay. I’ll never hit the mark, if I don’t try. So, I’ve decided to keep writing, even if it’s not my best work. I’ll just keep going.

Why I write

I firmly believe that all human beings have access to extraordinary energies and powers. Judging from accounts of mystical experience, heightened creativity, or exceptional performance by athletes and artists, we harbor a greater life than we know. – Jean Houston

This week, I’ve been thinking about why I write. I write to change myself. I write to change the world. I write to touch the deep, unseen mysteries of life.

When I was a child, I thought I saw a fairy footprint in the dirt. The other children scoffed at me and ran off to play. I stayed studying the foot print and looked out over the vacant lot across from our house trying to see the fairies dancing in the grass and trees. I longed to connect with that invisible world. I thought they had messages that would help me with my problems. To this day my favorite stories are of heroes who find they have courage and strength they never dreamed they possessed, of wise women guiding the young heroine, of super heroes saving the planet, of boy wizards defeating the dark lord, of the stranger coming to town and ending the feud. I need those stories to help me look for my own courage and strength. To me those stories are evidence that some extraordinary energy, or power is guiding us to a happier future. I write to touch the invisible, yet powerful mysterious world.

Like the events of this week, horrific things happen in the outer world. We’re shocked again and again. The problems seem too big for us to solve. When we feel overwhelmed, we retreat into the fantasy world of heroes. They might be ordinary people doing extraordinary things, or they might have super powers. The point is, I’m not the only one who seeks out heroes to help me cope. Those stories sell because they help us gain courage. Because, to become the hero we have to face scary challenges. We have to learn the lessons our trials are trying to teach us. We have to become vulnerable. I write to become vulnerable so others can find courage.

During my teenage years, I lost my innocence and my vulnerability as I watched the news during the Civil Right’s movement. I saw the devastation of the Vietnam war, the shock and sorrow after President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated. My family was watching the news before going to church when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot, on live TV, by Jack Ruby. We talked, as a family, about those enormous events which have shaped history. My father always warned us not to look at the surface events, but look at the effect they were having on the world. And so, I kept looking. I was lucky to see other events, heroic events, like men walking on the moon, or being brought home safely after a life threatening malfunction on their space craft. Because I witnessed the good and bad events of my generation, I write to understand the world around me.

Many people moan and say that things’re going to hell in a hand basket. But don’t despair there is a force moving us toward more peace, more love and care for each other. Gary Zukav wrote in The Seat of the Soul, that we’ve chosen to learn through crisis. For some reason when we became conscious beings, we decided that we’d let the problems around us, get worse and worse until one day, we hit bottom and then we’d take action to change. But it doesn’t have to be that way. I write, because I don’t want to let my life turn to utter chaos before I heal my wounds. I write to make a new decision and learn from my mistakes before they grow into catastrophes.

I write because I have feelings deep inside my being that need to be expressed. The feelings are nebulous. I can’t define them. I don’t know what they mean or what good they’ll do. All I know is I must attempt to express them, even though there are days, like today, when it takes courage to so.

What I’m trying to say, is that there is a wide, stunningly beautiful world out there and we’ve been focusing on the gutter. We need to look for the good in people. We need to look for love in ourselves and share it. We need to trust that the world is getting better. We need to allow ourselves to be the heroes by finding ways to help others feel good about themselves When we do that, we change the world. I’m saying that as Shakespeare wrote, “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” I write to change the world.

Forgiveness and Compassion

“When you forgive, you in no way change the past – but you sure do change the future.” – Bernard Meltzer

“Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world. But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.…So, the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all. Life is a procession you walk together towards your god-self. You are the way and the wayfarers.” “On Crime and Punishment” The Prophet – Kahlil Gibran.

When I began the rough draft of this blog, I realized this is the twelfth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. What a perfect time to write about forgiveness and compassion. Then serendipitously, I had an opportunity to revisit an incident in which I’m working on those very things.

Last night one of my college acting students, who was also a high school student of mine, asked me why I was let go from teaching at her school eleven years ago. She knew there was a big hoopla about it, because she was still attending the high school and taking drama classes. Those who’d seen to my demise never failed to tell the students about my faults and even indiscretions regarding money, which of course were not true. Being loyal to me, however, she didn’t believe the stories and wanted to know my side. I told her what happened from my point of view. I also told her that I had recently been working on forgiving the people involved. It was a political situation, and I was made to look like the villain. Funny how wolves can hide in sheep’s clothing and make the sheep look like the wolf. I told her how I’d held onto the pain of that horrible event for ten years, but how freeing forgiveness could be.

I didn’t give her details, but what happened to change my desire for revenge to one of forgiveness was studying A Course In Miracles. As I studied, I was faced with the reality that by holding a grudge, I was in a very real way, attacking myself. I was hurting myself by wanting revenge, so I let go of that anger and hurt. I’m still letting go of it. I had to admit, that were it not for the attack on my character and competence to do my job well, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this post. I wouldn’t be writing a novel. I wouldn’t have found the thing that makes me supremely happy. I’d still be teaching drama and find myself in constant battles. I’d be stressed out.

That brings me back to the 9/11 attacks and my use of the Kahlil Gibran quote.

Any attack, whether it’s personal, or on a group, or on a nation, is not a one sided affair. I wasn’t the innocent victim of an attack on my character and teaching ability. Something in me attracted the attack upon me. Now I understand that it was my soul trying to get my attention. I wasn’t fulfilling my purpose. The only way I’d see that fact was to lose the job I thought was meant for me.

Just like my personal story, the 9/11 attacks weren’t perpetrated on an innocent nation. Something about who we are, called those attacks to us. Maybe we don’t see it, because we live in the most powerful nation in the world. But we’ve influenced the art, fashion, politics, religion and cultures of almost every country in the world with our movies, literature, music, financial aid, and even things like the Peace Corps. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, except that we have the attitude that our way is the best, so, of course, everyone everywhere should be happy to be changed by us. We’re a little bit like Ancient Rome, except that we don’t conquer with armies, we do it with all the things I’ve listed above. The thing is, we don’t open-heartedly respect what other countries and cultures have to offer us. And that makes me weep, because it contributes to more conflict in the world than any of us want. The conflicts that we’re faced with today are our chance to make a new choice, to change our attitudes, and to forgive ourselves and those who’ve transgressed against us.

On this September 11th anniversary, I hope we’ll focus on forgiveness, not rehashing what was done to us. I don’t mean we should forget those who died. But I hope we’ll give up some our arrogance and open our hearts and minds to the richness of the other countries and cultures of the world. I hope we appreciate the view points of other people at home and far away and consider the wisdom found there. I hope, we’ll be humble enough to give up our arrogance and entitlement. If we do, we can change the future and contribute to peace in the world.