Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
GK Chesterton
Warning: Some boring personal disclosure used to share some important learning
It is a bit cloudy out there today...but the blue sky is beneath it. I just need to remember that. All the committed practice, all the devoted effort...and I still often get lost in the cloud cover. That reminds me that I am not taking Life lightly. There are plenty of times I did, I am sure, when the heaviness of circumstance was lifted and I could breathe and laugh easily. The first thing I want to do when that heaviness lifts a bit is laugh. Man, I love to laugh. Why does life circumstance have to change in order for us to laugh freely, I wonder. Why can we not just find it all humorous? I want to be able to stop taking life so seriously and just laugh at it, you know? I grew up in a family that did that. Why can I not tap into that response so easily now? There were times in my life when laughter was so much easier than it is now ( don't get me wrong...I still laugh a lot...just not as much).
There were also times when things seemed to be going right and they kept going right for a good long stretch...like I was caught up in the play of the universe that spreads the banquet of abundance before you. (Deepak Chopra). The more positive things I noticed, the more I could have fun with Life and laugh at Life. The more I did, the more positive and favorable situations appeared around me, as if to support me.Deepak Chopra, in his meditation series listed below, calls this "synchro destiny." I am recalling such a time.
I am also thinking about how we ride negative waves sometimes and they too can seem long. It seems that one challenge hits, and before you have time to catch your breath, another one hits and another and another. When one rides this wave it is like we are picking up every negative element in the universe. I have the perception and it is likely a "wrong perception" that I am riding a negative wave of synchro destiny and I just can't seem to get off of it. I am longing to ride the wave of positivity I recall.
Why am I so prone to getting lost in the negative, attracting more negative, after all the work I do to stay positive? I am taking a positive psychology practitioner course, for goodness sake. Why can I not take Life more lightly and fly like the angels?
I Got a Knife in My Heart.
Thich Nhat Hanh, in Fear, writes that many of us are walking wounded, going around with a great big knife in our hearts from the past. It is really embedded in us, yet we fail to even see that it is there. That is until someone bumps into those knives or certain life events jiggle or add weight to the handle. Then we feel the searing pain and become "reactive" and defensive. I was a knife-carrying person most of my life and unknowingly did whatever I could to protect myself from more pain. Even during the good times, I was very often sensitive and reactive without truly understanding why. I also had a tendency to be consumed by wrong perceptions.
Knife meets Knife -Respecting- Positivity
I recall when I rode the positivity wave for a few years in a row. After a lot of struggling, I "spontaneously" landed my dream job "teaching" in 2004 and I was partnered with this friend... someone who had an infectious and positive personality. We connected and built a history together with an awful lot of laughter in it. She was a person who took Life lightly even if she took her job very seriously. Though this relationship certainly had its share of ego interruption and reaction to life circumstances, and there have been several "changes" occurring both in the work environment and our lives outside the environment over the years that impacted many things including the relationship...work was fun! Life was fun! I was enjoying being in the rhythm of Life's cosmic dance. (Chopra) Good things seemed to happen (despite the challenges that also popped up)...I earned a really good income doing what I loved to do, I had great students who liked me, I got a house, I got a car, I got pets, and I got my life back it seemed after a marriage that was not healthy. My "personality" and "my life" were becoming things I could be proud of. What was being built was certainly "ego's" idea of success and not necessarily what I am now seeing as important...but man it made things easier. I felt this connection to life's goodness. I trusted that Life had my back. I didn't realize until yesterday just how much that flow had to do with my friend.
Positive Psychology Practitioner
This friend had/has remarkable communication skills and she had a way of making you feel like your positive points were always being lit up and your mistakes somehow were not so bad. I always felt, that I could do many things well largely due to her cheerleading,encouragement and support...I am sure. She seemed to see something in me I did not see in myself...At first, I did not recognize the character strengths she would point out in me ...but I actually began to look at myself differently, in a more positive light. My personality and my ego were flourishing.
So as I learn about Positive Psychology from my course, I have this realization that she was and is a "Positive Psychology Practioner" without ever trying to be. She may not have put me on that wave of positive synchro destiny but she certainly helped to keep me there for as long as I was there.
Broken Inside
I was riding the wave, it seemed, of good fortune when I met her and it seemed to last a fairly long time. The whole time I knew her, however, I was, like many of us, also very "broken" on the inside in ways I did not even understand. Even though I was only vaguely beginning to understand in that stage of my development, that I was very broken and beat down by Life, this internal brokenness impacted everything I did. I had that knife in me. It didn't go away or fall out. I just wasn't focusing on it or "pain" so much during those good times. I am not sure if my friend ever noticed the knife handle sticking out of my chest or the blood I dripped everywhere because she seldom bumped into it. It was like she was intuitively sensing it and respecting it. I didn't feel quite as broken, in those earlier years I worked with her. I felt stronger, more capable. External challenges were still there, in fact, they seemed to be increasing but Life was something I had come to believe I could handle. There was this flow of positivity under everything Life offered in those years.
I see now, how that had a lot to do with her. Even though the life challenges continued to plop down into this river of positivity making it a bit murky and negative, and even though it occasionally got very hard to swim, there was always a current of "I got your back! You can do this! " Somehow and in some way, she added the positivity to the river we floated on even when things got tough. And they got tough! But I flourished. I flourished greatly because of her positivity.
Riding the Ups and Downs
Well Life has a wave-like motion to it, this synchro destiny too seems to have a wave-like motion to it. Sometimes we are up, sometimes we are down. Sometimes we flourish and sometimes we languish.
Well as the years went on...this arrow in my heart continued to get beat around enough so that I could no longer deny its presence. I started to see how "unwell" I was because of it. How it created great fear in me and how that fear was always there affecting my decisions and actions. I got sick. The events in my life seemed to get more challenging and negative ( or at least my focus was on the challenging and negative things). The flow of positivity was still there under my feet but I didn't recognize it, let alone appreciate it, too busy was I on focusing on what was going "wrong"and what I had to fix. Ego, which was starting to die, was clinging to anything it could get a hold of so it wouldn't perish. I found myself full of resentment and anger for people and circumstances who I blamed for not helping me fix my body and my external situations when all along it was this knife that had to come out that was the real problem. I started losing all those things that were a part of my positive wave and I resented it...I was not where I am now in the understanding of the impermanence of things. I felt gently pushed out of the work team picture, out of a group I so loved belonging in. I felt like I no longer belonged. I did not see my incessant need to prevent the knife from being bumped as the possible cause for my sense of not belonging and told myself that it was because my life was too heavy for others. Man I was a mess. I kept getting sicker. I actually thought everything would settle once I left work. It didn't. Sure I am able to rest more and my body feels better, but I cut myself off from a lot of positivity. I realize how I miss that flow of positivity under my feet that my friend inspired somehow. Where is the positive synchro destiny I once enjoyed with or because of ( not sure which) my friend?
Hesitant to Contaminate; Afraid Knife Might Get bumped
So once or twice a year she and I and another friend/former colleague who also added warmth and positivity to my working experience, get together. My Positive Psychology Practitioner friend invited us to brunch yesterday. Since I am in the process of removing this knife that is not yet completely out of my heart and I am a bloody mess, dealing with that and the other life events that have arisen since our last meeting without the pseudo protection of a once intact ego-personality, I debated about going to brunch yesterday. My thought was, "Why would they care if I went on a good day...let alone when I am so bloody "messy" right now? I really don't belong anymore, do I? I don't want to ruin their afternoon. "
I also had selfish reasons for debating if I should go. What if they bump my knife? Judge me for it? Say then and there that I could not belong because of it? I had a lot of "wrong perceptions".
At the same time, I wanted to see them, wanted to pick up some of that warmth and positivity I usually get from them, to be reminded of that part of my life that was filled with laughter and lightness and belonging. So I went and somewhere along the line I blurted out a few of these experiences that were weighing me down, sliming them with "my life". It is bad enough that I am perceiving myself in a negative flow, but I certainly do not want to take others on it.
Regardless, it was a lovely afternoon! There was warmth, lightness, positivity, and laughter and I walked away feeling like, maybe I still do belong and that there is hope for me yet.
Moral?
Anyway...what is the moral of this big long spiel crazy lady?
It was supposed to be about the positive effect, positivity from others can have on our own perception of brokenness and how it can enhance our life satisfaction. This one experience of enhanced life satisfaction can be the beginning of positive synchro destiny. It can take us on a nice long ride down the positivity river. At the same time, however, we need to accept that we may have a knife in our hearts and if we do, we and we alone have to remove that knife. Until we do we are going to be pulled back again and again from the positive flow to the negative flow of synchro destiny.
Hmmm! Big long spiel when all I could have written was: got together for lunch with friends yesterday and it was lovely. I realized how much of a positive influence they had on me, even in my brokenness, and how I missed having it and them in my life. Dealing with the brokenness on top of some heavy situations now, and it is pretty messy. Did not want to slime them in any way but I went to the brunch regardless and dropped a few slime bombs. I must look into the true motivation behind doing that. Hope they can forgive me. I hope I can forgive myself. I must tell them how much I appreciate them.
All is well.
Deepak Chopra (n.d.) 21 Day Meditation Challenge for Abundance. Spotify
Thich Nhat Hanh ( ) Fear. Audio book Spotify.
Eckhart Tolle ( January, 2022) Is Your Awakening Taking Too Long?/Eckhart Tolle Teachings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCcmr6WrrUI
Alan Watts (May, 2022) Lust For Life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HPjUUplIIg
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