7/9/12—Decluttering Our Baggage

Today's Draw: The Edge of Awareness and Unencumbered by Memories from Illuminate Life Journey cards by Linda Clayton. What kind of baggage do you bring into your relationships? Have you ever unfairly judged a current partner based on your experiences with a former partner? How often when you're with your friends or partner are you fully present?

Today is Day Two of "How to Feel More Love in Your Life" week. Today I mindlessly shuffled and chose a card...without the question in mind. So I chose a second card, just to be sure. And both cards—The Edge of Awareness and Unencumbered by Memories—seem to lead me to the same place.

You hear people batting around the word "baggage" a lot when it comes to relationships. The general feeling seems to be that baggage is bad and you shouldn't bring it into any relationship, whether a romantic one or a friendship. Well, here's the thing. We all have baggage. And that baggage makes us who we are today. So it's impossible not to bring it with you. But there is a kind of baggage that stands between us and feeling more love in our lives.

What I think both these cards are getting to is this—former relationships are memories, and memories can sometimes be painful. But the gift of the actions that created those memories are lessons. These lessons can renew and heal our sense of discernment when it comes to choosing new partners. They can help us sort out our boundaries for the next relationship. And they can also clue us into red flags that we might not have seen in the past.

The key is to bring the *lesson* into the next relationship, but not the emotional memory.

I make this distinction, because I think it's important. Lessons empower us and allow us to treat the next person objectively, like an individual. Emotional memories, especially strong ones, whether positive or negative, cause us to make comparisons and assumptions, react inappropriately, take our head out of the now, place expectations on our partner, and not see them for who they are. 

Using the word "memory" might be confusing here. What I mean by that is really the attachment to what went on in the past...memory with palpable pain, joy, whatever behind it, as opposed to "ahhh, what a nice memory, but that was then and this is now" or "ack, what an awful memory, but I learned a great lesson from it."

It's not that you can't hold the memories of, say, a beloved deceased husband, or that you'll ever forget abuse that may have happened as a child. But those memories are for you, not for your relationship. Because those memories aren't ones you shared with the other person, they have nowhere else to land but between the two of you. You're bringing someone else into your relationship. Which is not to say you can't share your memories or deep-seated pain with your partner or friend. They just can't live between the two of you. You need to heal the emotions attached to those memories or they will place a barrier between you and love. Even if they're good memories. The kind I'm talking about carry unhealed emotion. Lessons carry knowledge. Lessons are the baggage to bring into a relationship. Not the emotionally charged memories behind the lessons. 

Also to the point of this week's theme is what it says in the book about The Edge of Awareness. It describes the picture as "a shapeless clashing of colors and emotions...floating, just outside and on the edge." Then it says "are they creeping in, or is she pushing them away?"

This question reminds me of the process of osmosis. In osmosis, a cell membrane will allow inflow and outflow of molecules with the surrounding solution until the concentration or pressure on both sides is equal. This is called dynamic equilibrium.

In the context of our relationships, it's a place where memories, defense mechanisms, boundaries, fears, etc.—all the stuff that gets in the way of a true exchange of love—are in balance. We're neither losing ourselves while our new lover creeps in, as is the case where we're overly needy in a relationship. Nor are we pushing them away, as is the case when we're overly fearful in a relationship. The love and emotion flows freely and in balance.

But in order for that to happen, we need to find a way to enter into our relationships whole and healed. As much as possible. If we look to the new person to heal us, what we exchange between the cell membranes of the relationship creates an unhealthy victim/savior dynamic. We're not fully present for the other person because we're still lost in the memories of someone else and some other time. And if we can't be present, we can't be in that place where we feel love and loved. That only happens in the present. And it only happens in a meaningful way when the person we're with is the person in front of us and not some twisted hybrid of them and every asshole that ever broke our heart.

So to boil it all down, we will feel more love in our current relationships when we can release the emotional attachments to relationships that came before. This works for both friends and lovers. The amount of love we receive in a relationship is directly proportional to our own ability to heal and be present. As long as you're putting your head in the past...or painting others with your past experiences...you're not being in the present with the person giving you love right now. And that's where the love you're seeking resides...right here, right now.

6/16/12-6/17/12—Feeling Your Abundance

Weekend Reading: Queen of Pentacles from the Art of Life Tarot. The quote on the card says it all—true riches come from a contented mind. So this weekend put your worries aside and be wealthy of mind. Show gratitude for what you have. And practice being in the moment. In this moment there is so much to be grateful for. In this very moment, there is nothing lacking...no creditor ringing your phone, no child tugging at your pants leg. There is just you and life and the moment. In this moment, you have everything you need to fully, richly, blissfully experience this moment! We spend so much time wishing for riches and alluring new lovers, but the one thing everyone wants more is just to be happy...to be content. The mistake comes in thinking anything of those things can do that for you. Only you can do that for you...by putting aside the things that clutter your mind and just enjoying this one moment of wonderful life. Then another. And another. Can you feel the abundance flowing?

6/14/12—Letting Yourself Just Be

Today's Draw: The Wheel from the Gaian Tarot by Joanna Powell Colbert. How many times today would you say you were fully engaged in the moment? How much of your day is spent in a fog of to-do lists, distractions and thought? Are you ready for a challenge?

Today was an unusually spectacular day for summer in Washington, DC. High of 80. Breezy. No humidity. The same weather will take us out the week. Usually by this time of year, I'm just about to pack it in and not exit the house for the summer. But our unusually warm spring has given way to a pleasant summer so far. So how I could choose any other deck than the one named after Gaia herself today?

The Wheel comes to remind us that everything has a season. Everything is part of a cycle. The weather I'm enjoying? It will change. The feelings you're feeling today? They will change. The people and relationships around you? They will change, too. In fact your only chance at having all the same variables in place just as they are now is in this present moment. 

This morning I went to my favorite park to sit after I visited the farmer's market. As I was sitting there enjoying the view, a lady came to the table next to me, opened up her phone and proceeded to have a 15 minute conversation about nothing of consequence. I eventually moved to another table where I couldn't hear her. By that time, however, her conversation was ending and she sat down with her back to the river...so that she was facing the parking lot...and read a book. Haha. 

Really, it's not my place to judge her visit to the park and it's none of my business what her purpose there was. But as long as she wasn't even going to LOOK at the park, I wonder why she even left home. See, I struggle with people who go to the park just to talk on the phone. There's another park I go to where, in the center of the park, you can't hear anything but nature. That's so rare in this highly populated area. No traffic sounds. No sirens. Just the occasional airplane. Otherwise, it's profoundly silent. And I will hike deep into that park on an isolated trail and, invariably, someone will walk by on their phone complaining about the cell coverage....haha. 

The view from my "office" around noon today.

The ironic thing about the woman this morning is that one of the things I heard her say to the person she was talking to was about how she needed to take better care of herself. And there she was in an incredibly healing environment...talking on the phone! Then putting her back to the river so all she saw was the traffic on the parkway! Again, her reasons for going to the park and her way of enjoying herself don't have to be mine. So it's none of my business. Which is why I struggle with this. It's a control issue on my part to a certain degree. And it's also a frustration because it just so happens I don't go to the park to her her phone conversations.

But one of the things The Wheel comes to tell us is about being in the moment. And you can be in the moment on the phone. Or reading a book. Or sitting in silence in front of the river. You can be in the moment during all those activities. But often, we're not. We're thinking about yesterday and tomorrow and what to say to so-and-so... and what people shouldn't do and where they shouldn't do it....haha. 

The thing is, the only chance either she or I had at that specific time of magic when the sun was glinting off the water just so, the fish were jumping for insects, the breeze was blowing cool, the vista was crystal clear, the coffee was warm in my hand and the clouds were still shifting from yesterday's gray to today's white and fluffy, was in that one moment. I got to be there to experience that moment...and then I got to be there to be distracted by her phone call and my cell-phone-at-the-park issues....and then I got to experience the peace and healing of the river again. I don't know what Chatty Cathy experienced, but from her restless distraction, I doubt she was in the same moment I was. 

Each day we're faced with countless moments and opportunities to just be happy in what is. Again, just today I got home from the park, gave each dog the bite of scone I'd saved them from the farmer's market, then sat down and checked my emails. I probably didn't look up for 15 minutes and my dogs were just staring at me in a way that said "OK, we got the scone, but we didn't get you." So I put my laptop down and loved them. But I missed the moment they REALLY wanted to love me. I do that all the time.

A secret path leading to places quiet and beautiful.

I would think it would take great discipline...or great surrender....to live in the moment all the time. So I'm not suggesting that. But I know all of us can live in the moment more. Honestly, there are entire days in each of our lives where our head is everywhere but here, in this moment, right? Yet, if we subscribe to Buddhist thought, and I do, then that's the only place we can find true bliss. So then the question becomes "why do I choose to place bliss aside in favor of the neurotic ramblings of my mind?" 

I've spoken a lot about forming a daily practice of meditation. I've had one for close to 30 years now. Its intent is usually to put me in the now. But being in the now doesn't need a special place or a special time or a special ritual. All it needs is for us to start forming a habit of stopping the madness in our head and observing where we are, how our body feels, what we smell, what we see, etc....getting into the moment and noticing all the stuff we don't when we life moves by at a million miles per hour. For most of us, none of the crap we worry about all the time is relevant and/or imminent in THIS second. 

In this very second I'm writing a blog, yes. But I'm also stopping frequently to feel the breeze on my cheek, smell the flowers so sweet at this liminal time of day and take a peek at my dogs who are 10 feet away watching me because that's their favorite thing to do. And there's this one tree that's across the street from the house behind me. Right at this moment, it's catching the full dose of a slowly setting sun while all the other trees behind and around it are already in shadow. It's just a freak of light and shade that exists only in this moment. In the time it took me to write about it, half the tree is now swallowed in the shade. Soon the whole tree will blend with the ones behind it and it will be as if it never was. 

As I see the first of the lightning bugs blink on this GORGEOUS evening, I challenge you—how many times can you stop and Just. Be. Here. In the next 24 hours? You don't have to go outside. Heck, you could be watching TV. But how many times can you remember to stop and be fully engaged in the moment? And if you did that, how might it change the way you perceive your life? How might it, over time, change your physical health? How might it prove to be just the answer you've been looking for in your life?

The view Chatty Cathy dissed today. She's the white dot at the far right...nearly out of view/earshot. Where she belongs. :D