The greatest trick and most subtle secret to doing anything really, really well, is loving that you get to do it at all. And I’m pleased to say, you get to – The Universe

I am loving this quote that popped up in my inbox this morning from none other than the Universe at www.tut.com

Next time you are feeling that you “have to” do anything, what about shifting it to “I get to…”  I have to feels so much like bondage and I get to feels so welcoming and expansive.  It’s embracing the moment over opposing it.

If you can’t come by “I get to…” wholeheartedly then look beyond what drives the activity.  What are the benefits it provides for you?  Even the most commonplace humdrum activity can become something wonderful when viewed with a heart that says: I get to.

As always, both the hands that bind us and the hands that free us, are really our own.  Thanks for that lovely reminder today from the brilliance of Mike Dooley, the genius behind TUT.

Sophie’s Choice, as some of you may remember was an American film from the early 80s.  Since then the term “Sophie’s Choice” has come to symbolize a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” standard of choice.  It’s really the no-choice.  As in the movie, Sophie must make the choice between her son living or her daughter living, choose one and the other must die.

Often when we are wrestling with a problem, we don’t see outside of the paradigm of a Sophie’s Choice.  We might see two options and often apart from the framework of our current beliefs lies a third choice.  The one not yet visible to us.  To illustrate an example of this, often creative people, musicians, writers, artists, etc. want to make their livelihood doing what they love but they don’t see how that could happen.  In that case, following your passion may signify losing financial security.  We have even coined a term for it “the starving artist”.  Risk going for your passion and you risk everything or maintain the status quo, bang away at the passion-less job and have some measure of financial security.  That’s the either/or, the Sophie’s choice, the no choice at all.

Yet outside that system of beliefs, lies the third option.  The third choice is not the either/or posture for whenever you are contemplating – to have this, I must risk losing this – you can know instantly you are working within the framework of your own limiting beliefs.  While you may not know what the third option is you can remain open to knowing what it is.   In a world that spins planets, regulates the tides, raises the sun each day and orchestrates countless precise details happening behind the scenes of every living organism, we can begin to see this same Universe can work on our behalf to bring us all the resources that we would ever need and then some.  It requires one thing of us and it’s what we are willing to believe, what we are willing to give ourselves to and what we are willing to open ourselves to.  Okay, that’s three things it requires of us but who’s counting?!

Next time you find yourself smack dab in the middle of a dilemna that you can’t see your way out of, remember – there is a third option, you haven’t seen it yet, you may not know what it is, but you can remain open to knowing and you can begin by questioning any notion that says: to have this I must relinquish this.

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This world is full of miracles.

They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain and suffering.

They are the dream’s alternative, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in making up the dream.

The body is released because the mind acknowledges ‘this is not done to me, but I am doing this.’

And thus the mind is free to make another choice instead.

~ A Course in Miracles ~

This poem by Denise Levertov is dedicated to all of you participating in NaNoWriMo.  Those, who beginning today and for the next 30 days, will breathe life into characters and plots and fashion the words that will illuminate them page by page — for your creativity, your willingness, your commitment and your courage, I salute you.

The Novel

A wind is blowing. The book being written
shifts, halts, pages
yellow and white drawing apart
and inching together in
new tries. A single white half sheet
skims out under the door.

And cramped in their not yet
halfwritten lives, a man and a woman
grimace in pain. Their cat
yawning its animal secret,
stirs in the monstrous limbo of erasure.
They live (when they live) in fear

of blinding, of burning, of choking under a
mushroom cloud in the year of the roach.
And they want (like us) the eternity
of today, they want this fear to be
struck out at once by a thick black
magic marker, everywhere, every page,

Meanwhile from page to page they
buy things, acquiring the look of a
full life; they argue, make silence bitter,
plan journeys, move house, implant
despair in each other
and then in the nick of time

they save one another with tears,
remorse, tenderness—
hooked on those wonder-drugs.
Yet they do have—
don’t they—like us—
their days of grace, they

halt, stretch, a vision
breaks in on the cramped grimace,
inscape of transformation.
Something sundered begins to knit.
By scene, by sentence, something is rendered
back into life, back to the gods.

~Denise Levertov~
Poems 1960-1967

Art by Rassouli

I’m the slave of the Moon. Talk of nothing but moon,
or brightness and sweetness. Other than that, say nothing.

Don’t tell of suffering, talk of nothing but blessings.
If you know nothing about them, no matter.  Say nothing.

Last night I went wild. Love saw me and said:
I’m here. Don’t shout, don’t rip your shirt, say nothing.

I said: O Love, what I fear is something else.
—There’s nothing there. Say nothing.

I’ll whisper secret words in your ears. Just nod yes.
Except for that nod of your head, say nothing.

A moon pure as spirit rose on the heart’s pathway.
How delightful, to travel the way of the heart. Say nothing.

I said: O Heart, what is this moon? Heart beckoned:
For now, it’s not for you to know. Say nothing.

I said: Is this face angel or human?
Neither angel nor human. It is other, say nothing.

I said: What’s this? I’ll lose my mind if you don’t tell me.
He said: Then lose your mind, and stay that way. Say nothing.

You who sit in this house filled with images and illusions,
get up, walk out the door. Go, and say nothing.

I said: O Heart, tell me kindly: Isn’t this about God?
He said: Yes it is, but kindly say nothing.

~Rumi: Say Nothing~
Poems of Jalal al-Din Rumi in Persian and English
Translated by Iraj Anvar & Anne Twitty

*my gratitude to Terri C. for introducing me to this poem and these two translators.

There is an old Taoist parable.  It begins with a poor farmer in ancient China who worked a small plot of land with his teenage son. During this time horses were considered a sign of wealth; the richest person in the province owned no more than a few of them. One day a wild horse jumped the poor farmer’s fence and began grazing on his land. According to local law, this meant that the horse now rightfully belonged to him and his family. The son could hardly contain his joy, but the father put his hand on his son’s shoulder and said, “Who knows what’s good or bad?” The next day the horse made its escape back to the mountains and the boy was heartbroken. “Who knows what’s good or bad?” his father said again.  On the third day the horse returned with a dozen wild horses following.  “We’re rich!” the son cried, to which the father again replied, “Who knows what’s good or bad?” On the fourth day the boy climbed on one of the wild horses and was thrown, breaking his leg. His father ran to get the doctor; soon both of them were attending to the boy, who was upset and in a great deal of pain. The old farmer looked deeply into his son’s eyes, and said, “My son, who knows what is good or bad?” And on the fifth day the province went to war.  Army recruiters came through the town and took all the eligible young men to fight the war.  All except for the young man with the broken leg.

This is such a beautiful illustration of why it’s relevent to suspend judgment, conclusions and assumptions about anything.  Judgements and the like don’t reflect the bigger picture.  We don’t always know in the heat of any moment, what is good what is bad.  What is a blessing, what is a gift, what is a challenge in the moment that provides further expansion for us later.  We don’t always know, but we can remain open.  We can lay aside the impulse to make any seeming fact mean anything.  We can trust that the nature of all things is continually unfolding – and perhaps find a lot more ease in this open and receptive place.

One Sand Grain Among The Others in Winter Wind

I wake with my hand held over the place of grief in my body.
“Depend on nothing,” the voice advises, but even that is useless.
My ears are useless, my familiar and intimate tongue.
My protecting hand is useless, that wants to hold the single leaf to the tree
and say, Not this one, this one will be saved.

~After: Jane Hirshfield Poems~

When you come before me, rejoice, because rejoicing implies that something
has happened which you desired. Come before me singing, giving praise, and
giving thanks, for these states of mind imply acceptance of the state sought.
Put yourself in the proper mood and your own consciousness will embody it.

If I could define prayer for anyone and put it just as clearly as I could, I would
simply say, “It is the feeling of the wish fulfilled.” If you ask, “What do you mean
by that?” I would say, “I would feel myself into the situation of the answered
prayer and then I would live and act upon that conviction.” I would try to sustain
it without effort, that is, I would live and act as though it were already a fact,
knowing that as I walk in this fixed attitude my assumption will harden into fact.

~Neville Goddard~

I love that – come before me singing, giving praise, and giving thanks.  This is the
essence of gratitude.  And what it lays witness to is the you that has embodied the desire.  No more lingering doubts now, it’s so much a part of you.  This is more than faith and greater than hope, it’s embodying the wish, the desire fulfilled.

Giving yourself to it as if it’s your one true love, fully and without reservation. So much so, that the dream fulfilled is no longer at arm’s length somewhere in the future.  Your internal landscape reflects the you that is living it now.  You feel it in
how you breathe and how you walk, there’s a lightness about you and an ease.
What is left now but to rise up singing and giving thanks!

God couldn’t be here himself
so he clothed his Helpers in fur
and sent them to Earth

be soft he said
and they were

lick he said
and they did

purr he said
and they did

love, love, love he said
as if nothing else ever mattered
and o, how they do.

©heartsdeesire

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Joy Harjo’s poem, appended in part below, really speaks to me at this stage of my life.  I love the honesty and the readiness to take herself back in this poem.  At the end of it, she captures the essence of why we hold onto things long after they’ve outlived their usefulness.

Fear is the language of ways in which we learned to cope earlier on, protective shields we developed.  And when we are ready or shall I say, when I am ready to step into the me who is fearless and fully trusts herself what has held me back is that which is afraid of dying.  This dying is abandoning what has contained me inside the illusion of safety.

All versions of ourselves already exist in this vast Universe, this is what Seth wrote of and the new quantum physics seems to support.  So lately, I’m in conversation with the me who is fearful and the version of me who fully trusts herself.  We are negotiating, you could say.  What is there to lose except a life that constricts and confines, I ask the afraid me.  Fearful me answers that it finds refuge in that very constriction.

Every day I continue the conversation, waiting for my willingness to abandon the old order in favor of the new.  As yet, I’m not willing.  Just for now, I’ll honor the one who is not yet willing.  Ironically, I continue to boldly trust that I will be willing one day soon.

There’s a me who leaves no consciousness stone unturned.  I shall not turn this stone over and then set it safely back down in its place and I shall not live with a heart that opens just enough.  One day soon a new conversation will unfold:  remember when you were so afraid?  Yes, I remember when.  It had its time, its reason and its story.  I released her in favor of being the one who is wide open, boundless and free, she trusts herself and herself in the world.  Where I was once so afraid of losing myself instead I found the fullness of who I Am.

* * *

I release you, fear, so you can no longer
keep me naked and frozen in the winter,
or smothered under blankets in the summer.

I release you
I release you
I release you
I release you

I am not afraid to be angry.
I am not afraid to rejoice.
I am not afraid to be black.
I am not afraid to be white.
I am not afraid to be hungry.
I am not afraid to be full.
I am not afraid to be hated.
I am not afraid to be loved.

To be loved, to be loved, fear.

Oh, you have choked me, but I gave you the leash.
You have gutted me but I gave you the knife.
You have devoured me, but I laid myself across the fire.

I take myself back, fear.
You are not my shadow any longer.
I won’t hold you in my hands.
You can’t live in my eyes, my ears, my voice
my belly, or in my heart my heart
my heart    my heart

But come here, fear
I am alive and you are so afraid

of dying.

~Joy Harjo~
what have you lost?
Poems Selected by Naomi Shihab Nye