Category Archives: Life

God and I

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I had forsaken all priests. . . and those called the most experienced people; for I saw that there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. George Fox founder of The Religious Society of Friends

My  parents took my two older brothers and my younger sister to church and Sunday school every week. I went to summer church camp a couple of times and was confirmed.

I never really took to church.

Over several generations of my adult life, I tried church again, several times. I felt disappointed in my experiences and left.

Church, religion and religious leaders didn’t often “speak to my condition.”

In 1974 I spent a month in an alcohol treatment center. I’ve been chemical free for almost 41 years now. Treatment was a spiritual encounter—one of the most enlarging experiences of my life. I connected with fellow suffers and had a powerful experience of love and community. The Twelve Steps of AA discuss a higher power. I thought about my higher power. I realized that I prayed to the traditional God of my youth throughout my adult life–church or no church.

No one knows if God exists or if we have consciousness after death. Part of me believes in God. I continue to pray. But I have doubts. My relationship with God can be contentious at times as I struggle to understand how an all-powerful God can allow such evil and suffering in our world. Injustice and unfairness cause me to believe that God, if real, does not intervene in our lives so I don’t ask for things in my prayers. Instead I pray for strength, wisdom and courage. But on occasion the urge feels so strong that I ask for outcomes too.

Like George Fox, I don’t look to outside authorities for guidance. I follow no religion. I am my own learning laboratory. If God guides me, his direction and voice come from within me–from my deepest authenticity. But who can know for sure whose voice I hear?

I was born with consciousness. I can ponder my purpose in life, the values that I live my life by and I can imagine and create visions for my life. I can reflect on my experiences and learn and adapt from them. I strive to know and understand myself and to live true to my best self. I demonstrate my faith when I live my values and purpose even when times are uncertain and difficult. My belief in God is strongest when I am in nature and see her wonder and amazement.

I respect the beliefs and choices of people to take their own spiritual journeys and to express their beliefs in their own ways. I feel contempt for those who use religion to justify their evil deeds and stupid beliefs.

I can see, know and understand so little.

My spiritual journey continues.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Am I Doing the Right Thing?

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The meaning of our life will be found precisely in our capacity to achieve as much of it as is possible beyond those bounds fear would set for us. James Hollis What Matters Most

In the summer of 2000, I decided to move to Ouray, Colorado: a little part of Western history nestled in the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado. I had visited Ouray many times over the previous decade and vowed to myself that if I ever had the chance, I would like to live there for a year just for the experience of the adventure.

My marriage had ended that spring and my mother had died about the same time. My best friend died shortly after. I worked for myself as a consultant. The time was right to take time to think, grieve, and reflect in the beauty of Ouray and the San Juan’s where I could sit in the warmth of the natural hot springs, drive the 4-wheel mountain roads and photograph the mountain beauty.

At first, I felt exhilarated by my decision. But then, as the first flush of excitement faded, the anxiety of uncertainty and the fear of the unknown crept into my soul. Negative possibilities filled my mind–all possible but improbable. For six months, I pondered many scenarios and contingency plans to gain a sense of control.

On December 26, 2000, I loaded my Jeep and a U-Haul trailer and headed west. I didn’t know anyone in Ouray. I had no clients anywhere near there. I had rented the second floor of a large A-frame home on the side of a mountain that looked over the Uncompahgre Valley between Ridgeway and Ouray, Colorado.

When I arrived, I exclaimed triumphantly, “I did it!” Then I thought fearfully, “What did I just do?”

“Did I do the right thing,” I asked myself.

I called Kenny Moore aka “Kenny the Monk.” Kenny wrote, The CEO and the Monk.

I asked, “Kenny, if I live on the mountain for the next 10 years and write, think and strive to become humble and wise and do some good deeds along the way and if I end up old, alone and broke, do you think a monastery somewhere would take a spiritual seeker in?” Oh, how I wanted certainty and security.

Kenny laughed, we had a long conversation and he sent me a prayer by Thomas Merton:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

I struggle always to grow more comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity.

I  walk into the mystery of life with all the integrity and authenticity I can muster. I leave security to take my uncomfortable soul’s journey.

I do my best to follow my purpose in life, live true to my values, and pursue my vision. I seek counsel from wise people. I reflect on the outcomes of my choices, and adapt as I go forward on my journey in life. I cannot know what lies ahead of me or how I will handle life’s challenges. Life remains unpredictable and beyond my control.

Faith is living my deepest authenticity despite fear (My late friend, Bob Terry believed authenticity was God). As afraid as I first felt on the mountainside, I didn’t deviate from my purpose or throw away my values. I continued to learn and adapt to life. I didn’t allow fear to stop me from this and many other leaps into the chaos and mysteries of life.

I’ve come to believe that there is not one right way to live. That would be mass conformity and such a human community would be unsustainable. I believe that the way to live is in a courageous and authentic way unique to each of us. Each soul authentically expressed has gifts to contribute to life. That diversity has the required variety to keep our human community vibrant and creative.

I Like Him Better the Older I Get

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Allan Dale Heuerman (Scoop to all who knew him) died on this date 10 years ago. He was 90 years old.

I loved him then and find that I like, love and respect him even more the older I get. It’s amazing how much wiser he got the older I got.

I wrote shortly after his death:

It was Valentine’s Day—our deceased mother Harriet’s birthday. Dad had a chest cold and was congested. He went to bed and felt strange. He laid down and tried to call for help. He could not get up, and no one heard him. He laid alone for 8 hours until he was found in the morning. He had, months ago, told the staff not to check on him at night as they woke him up.

The dreaded call, anticipated for years, came at 7:00AM on February 15, 2005. A nurse from the Masonic Home was on the other end of the line. She said dad had suffered a stroke. Dad was conscious and coherent. His speech was garbled, and he had some paralysis on his right side. The ambulance was on the way.

Dad was alert and in high spirits at the hospital. He joked with the staff and bragged of his advanced age (he never imagined he would live so long) although his speech was slurred and not understandable most of the time. The early prognosis was good: he would make a full recovery and return to independent life. A day later everything changed.

Tests revealed that what he swallowed went into his lungs, not his stomach. He would require a feeding tube. Everyone said he was a good candidate for the procedure and might still make a full recovery. Then again he might not regain full use of his ability to swallow, and there could be other problems.

My dad was a proud, dignified, and independent man who still lived on his own. His mind was active and engaged and he wanted to die knowing who he was. He was mostly wheel-chair bound and his sight was slipping away. He had lived in a nursing home long enough to see what his future was. He had watched his wife fade away slowly as the medical profession tried to fix her for too long. He wanted to go out on top.

He listened to the doctor’s advice—pro and con–and said “No” to the feeding tube. He then changed the subject and talked of his great-grandchildren. He was ready to leave this world. We respected his decision and admired dad for his courage and deep sense of dignity.

Dad returned to the Masonic Home and was put on “comfort care.” Family came from near and far to be with him. His mind was sharp and he recognized family and friends although communications were difficult. A great-grandson visited. Dad reached out to him, pulled him close, wrestled his watch from his arm and slipped it on the boy’s wrist. The room wept.

I cried as I watched the Masonic Home resident’s pilgrimage to his room to say their final goodbyes. Their aged and broken bodies traveled by walker, scooter, and wheel chair. With full spirits they shared their stories of our father with his family. I could tell they were experienced with death. His dinner companion of three years told how he had to be interviewed to sit with dad. He said, “Your dad wanted a dinner companion who could carry on a conversation.”

Dad seemed to be in the place between this and the next life. He drifted in and out of each world. He felt no pain. He did not suffer. Once he looked upward and said, “Harriet, Harriet,” paused and said, “Open the door.”

My wife Melanie felt compelled to express her emotions. She said, “Scoop, I love Tom and will take good care of him for the rest of his life. He is a good man although from the stories I hear he was not always a good boy.” Dad managed to say clearly, “Good man, good boy.” His final approval of me will strengthen me always.

A son said a last goodbye. Dad spoke. His words were mostly incomprehensible but the word “son” was clear. Dad raised a fist and encouraged his oldest son to go forward.

I went to my father for my final private moments with him. I expressed my love and gratitude for him. I thanked him. I said he should not have any regrets. He had lived a good life with a powerful legacy. He had taught us well. His work was done. I loved him.

Finally the last son arrived from a world away. He went in and spoke to his dying father who responded to his presence. The goodbyes were done. Everyone had their own moments with dad and have their own personal stories and memories they will cherish. Everyone was ready.

My brother later recalled the end of the movie “Saving Private Ryan” when an aged Ryan visited the grave of the soldier played by Tom Hanks, who had saved Ryan. Ryan was an average man who worked, raised a family, and lived an everyday life. Ryan knelt at the grave and said to his wife: “Tell me I’m a good man. Tell me I’ve led a good life.” My dad lived a good life and was a good man. And we told him so.

Dad drifted off to a peaceful sleep never to awake again. My sister spent dads last night with him and comforted her peaceful father in her arms.

The next morning the hospice nurse said the time was near. Children and grandchildren gathered around dad who was at peace. We spoke to him, wept together, kissed and touched our beloved father and held his hands as he gasped twice and took his last breath.

And then he was gone. His was a good death.

We buried our father’s ashes with our mothers two days later. My dad loved sports, especially baseball as it was “a thinking man’s game.” At the end of the brief interment service, we put on baseball hats, passed out Cracker Jacks, and sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” A family member reached over and dropped a baseball into the hole. Dad had hit a home run in the game of life. We dropped our roses into the hole with dad and went home with our memories and the exquisite pain and love of a powerful 11 days together.

Dad’s energy now flows free, his consciousness encompasses all, and he is connected to all of life. Our sorrow is joined by gratitude for our time together and pride in dad’s leadership.

I feel a deep alchemy taking place in my soul. I feel a churning of many strong emotions as I redefine myself without him here for the first time in my 59 years. My dad’s nobility inspires within me greater courage, greater passion, and deeper authenticity. This is the greatest of dad’s many gifts to me. I thank him for it. I wish it for everyone.

So long dad.

What Really Matters

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Having a more interesting life, a life that disturbs complacency, a life that pulls us out of the comfortable and thereby demands a larger spiritual engagement than we planned or that feels comfortable is what matters most. James Hollis in What Matters Most

In his recent column, Building Better Secularists, New York Times Columnist David Brooks wrote that secular writers…”are so eager to make the case for their creed, they are minimizing the struggle required to live by it.”

Brook’s list of tasks a secularist would have to perform to live secularism well:

• Religious people inherit their creeds; secularists have to come up with their own convictions,
• Religious people inherit a community with rituals and practices that bind people together; secular people have to create their own communities and come up with their own practices to give them meaning,
• Religious people are directed to drop worldly concerns one day a week or for specified periods of time; Secular people have to create their own times of solitude to reflect on their spirituality, and
• Religious people are motivated by the love of God and their desire to please him; Secularists have to find their own motivation that will bring forth sacrifice and service.

Brooks concluded that secularists place unprecedented moral burdens upon themselves and risk drift and a loss of meaning in their own lives.

Paternalism is a belief system that requires that wisdom, knowledge and creativity come to people from others with greater power and authority. Most people grow up in paternalistic families surrounded by paternalistic clergy, bosses, coaches and teachers whose dictates they conform to. “Don’t think, just do what I tell you to do” is the spoken and unspoken command.

When young adults leave home, the organization often replaces the parent as the paternalistic force in their lives. Conformity is the first rule of organizations and institutions. Sometime around the middle of their lives, they may begin to rebel against such paternalism and enter the scary domain of thinking for themselves where they begin to doubt, question and challenge all those authority figures as they begin the process of becoming a mature person. Such a journey into a life of authenticity is difficult: a courageous and emotional odyssey of exploration to find who we really are—not who someone else tells us to be.

Religion and secularism aside, Brook’s burdens are everyone’s responsibility to ponder in life.

I do not want to mindlessly and without question follow creeds created by other imperfect men long ago; I want my life to be my own learning laboratory. I want to discover and articulate my own purpose for my life and the values I will live true to.

I don’t want to be put into a community by others and inherit its rituals and practices—rules and practices I must follow to be accepted; I need people but I want to choose my own community and seek counsel and fellowship from those who ring true to me.

I don’t want to act spiritual one day a week; I want to live my spirit daily, however imperfectly.

To be motivated by love and the desire to do good works is noble but so many seem to be motivated by fear, guilt, obligation and public appearances. I am motivated by the deep personal engagement I’ve had with myself over four decades pondering these and many other issues and questions of life (I’ve only scratched the surface). The higher emotions that motivate me, the passion that drives me and the aliveness I feel flow from that work as I seek the moral life.

I believe Brook’s burdens are among the lifetime work of an authentic life.

James Hollis: “…to have taken one’s journey through this dark, bigger, luminous, wondrous universe, to have risked being who we really are, is, finally what matters most.”

How Many Suffer for Us?

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New York Times Columnist David Brooks:

Maybe you’re familiar with Ursula Le Guin’s short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” It’s about a sweet and peaceful city with lovely parks and delightful music.

The people in the city are genuinely happy. They enjoy their handsome buildings and a “magnificent” farmers’ market.

Le Guin describes a festival day with delicious beer and horse races: “An old woman, small, fat, and laughing, is passing out flowers from a basket, and tall young men wear her flowers in their shining hair. A child of nine or ten sits at the edge of the crowd, alone, playing on a wooden flute.”

It is an idyllic, magical place.

But then Le Guin describes one more feature of Omelas. In the basement of one of the buildings, there is a small broom-closet-sized room with a locked door and no windows. A small child is locked inside the room. It looks about 6, but, actually, the child is nearly 10. “It is feebleminded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition and neglect.”

Occasionally, the door opens and people look in. The child used to cry out, “Please let me out. I will be good!” But the people never answered and now the child just whimpers. It is terribly thin, lives on a half-bowl of cornmeal a day and must sit in its own excrement.

“They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas,” Le Guin writes. “Some of them have come to see it; others are content merely to know it is there. They all know it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children … depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.”

That is the social contract in Omelas. One child suffers horribly so that the rest can be happy. If the child were let free or comforted, Omelas would be destroyed. Most people feel horrible for the child, and some parents hold their kids tighter, and then they return to their happiness.

But some go to see the child in the room and then keep walking. They don’t want to be part of that social contract. “They leave Omelas; they walk ahead into the darkness and they do not come back.”

How many in the world suffer and have endured deprivation and humiliation for the riches enjoyed by a relatively few of the planets inhabitants?

How many hundreds of worthy cultures have died because of the greed and addiction of one dominant culture? (See Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael.)

How is it that the majority of American school children (K-12) live below the poverty level with many or even most doomed to lifetimes in the shadows of the American Dream?

How do we keep others in the basements of our organizations and institutions as each day we live out dysfunctional cultures?

Have my values, empathy and compassion become shriveled and desensitized and become the basement of my soul?

We are each innocent and guilty.

Few, if any, can simply walk away from the world view and culture we were born into and that envelops us and reaches far beyond our ability to control. Life today is too complex, unconscious and intertwined for us to escape.

We can, however, strive to be as mindful as possible of the harm we do to others by living the way we do. We can do what we can to illuminate the basements of our way of life. We may not be able to escape the systems of our lives but we can take small steps every day to see those systems clearly and move to the edges of them.

We can at least begin to learn how to live.

A Life-Affirming Community

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In and through community lies the salvation of the world. Nothing is more important. Yet it is virtually impossible to describe community meaningfully to someone who has never experienced it-and most of us have never had an experience of true community.
M. Scott Peck, M. D.

Perhaps John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, provided as good a definition of community as anyone. Shortly before his fellow colonists set foot on land in 1630, he said: We must delight in each other, make others conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our community as members of the same body.

A story of a community from unexpected people:

The leader had suffered from depression most of his life. He continued to smoke, even as cigarettes killed him. He wrestled with his ego and his need for approval. He lived in poverty most of his life. But what a group he created. His honesty about his flaws provided the humility to lead.

Today, the organization has groups in every town and city in the United States, and in more than 140 countries of the world, with more than two million members worldwide. Each local group —more than 100,000 — functions with autonomy and has little formal structure. New groups begin and old ones die regularly. The enterprise has no budgets, buildings, or machines. Members make voluntary financial contributions. This “unorganized” body’s marketing plan attracts instead of promotes.

The organization has a powerful sense of purpose and shared values and principles to guide choices. No one gets away with self-delusion for long. Leadership emerges and shifts. All feel included and no member gets fired or laid off. Everyone values everyone else equally.

Every member accepts personal responsibility and accountability. They become humble experts at personal mastery and members do not take their success for granted. Meetings consist of myth, story, and ritual, and in every meeting members discuss the shared values, purpose and vision. All members feel significant and passion abounds. Spirit and commitment emerge from equality, creativity and shared decision-making.

We call this community Alcoholics Anonymous.

The leader was Bill Wilson: a hopeless, defeated and hospitalized alcoholic who faced imminent death. His elemental need to live rose from the deepest depths of his soul. A powerful spiritual experience reordered his psyche. After his transformation, he never drank alcohol again in his remaining 36 years. Out of his despair, he began a worldwide movement that has saved unknown millions of lives. Minds and lives changed. Aldous Huxley called Wilson “the greatest social architect of the twentieth century.” The deepest personal despair imaginable preceded his greatest possibilities and achievements.

Bill Wilson believed AA’s success had to do with the willingness of members to place the welfare of others above their own desires. AA exemplifies a humble and committed attitude of the mind and heart that, unlike most organizational change efforts, survived its leader and sustains itself.

When AA began, alcoholism was thought to be caused by character flaws or personality defects. We know that to be wrong today. Alcoholism is a disease and recovery can be defined as learning how to manage a chronic illness. This change of definition can renew AA, as all organizations must renew themselves, and expand its strengths.

Scott Peck wrote, “The most successful community in this nation-probably in the whole world-is Alcoholics Anonymous.”

How ironic that the lost souls of the world teach us how to live.

Parents: Raise Your Children to be Artists & Entrepreneurs

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From the book, Excellent Sheep by William Deresiewicz:

That is the great question about bureaucracies. Why are the best people so often mired in the middle, while nonentities become the leaders? Because what gets you up the ladder isn’t excellence: it is a talent for maneuvering. Kissing up to the people above you, kicking down to the people below you. Being smooth at cocktail parties, playing office politics, picking a powerful mentor and riding his coattails until it’s time to stab him in the back. Getting along by going along. Not sticking your neck out for the sake of your principles—not having any principles. Neither believing in the system nor thinking to question it. Being whatever other people want you to be, so that it finally comes to seem that you have nothing inside you at all.

This description of life within a bureaucracy describes the dark side of life in organizations about as well as any I’ve seen. Most people accept the primary rules of organizations. They conform and comply and go along to get along. As a result, they fall far short of being the person and the employee they might be. They settle for institutionalized mediocrity rather than risk rejection in the pursuit of excellence.

A few people fight against the rules. Determined to live their values, they strive for excellence and tell the truth to power. It’s hard to be excellent when everyone around you is mediocre. It is hard to be authentic when everyone around you isn’t. It’s hard to be value-driven when everyone around you leaves their principles at the door. But such heroic modeling of what people could be in an organization can be achieved—at least for a time. And at the risk of being attacked, demonized, scapegoated, marginalized and all the other nasty things people do to others to make everyone be the same.

But why would we want to fight such unnecessary battles—not winnable in the end–if we understood life in organizations before we got too invested in an organization or profession? Why not teach our kids to work outside of organizations? And if they have to work in an organization, teach them the values and skills to be able to withstand the pressures to sell out on themselves. And teach them to always have an exit card: a place to go if things don’t work out.

It is, I think, better to abandon anti-human systems than to try to change them.

 

 

Time to Think

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Anne Lindbergh told the story of Andre Gide who was traveling fast through the jungles of Africa. One morning the native guides sat in a circle and refused to leave the camp. When Gide urged them to get moving they looked at him and with firmness said, “Don’t hurry us–we are waiting for our souls to catch up with us”

We live in a frenetic and connected world. We fear anonymity. Everyone wants to be known. We live chronically overscheduled. We conform without thought. And we lose our ability to be alone. Too many of us have left our souls far behind us.

I lived for 14 months on the side of a mountain above the vast Uncompahgre valley between Ridgway and Ouray, Colorado. I lived alone and spent much time by myself. Ouray has wonderful hot springs pools and I spent about 250 sessions in one of them. Sometimes I read. Other times I sat and thought. Once in a while I talked with another person.

My dog and I drove the 4-wheel drive mountain roads in the San Juan Mountains that surrounded Ouray. I photographed the mountains and the valleys. I took long and quiet walks on dirt roads and looked down on the farms and ranches in the valley. And I had authentic conversations with my friend whose home I shared and with clients who visited me. I felt connected to the life around me.

I grieved the loss of my mother, my mentor and my long marriage in the mountains. I thought about life and leadership and reflected on what really mattered to me. I went face to face with my inner demons, doubts and decisions to be made. I contemplated my values, vision and purpose. I deliberated about what, for me, constituted a life well lived.

This time in the mountains was a time to be alone and to slow down–a time for reflection and thought. I wanted time to think and ponder — to try to see the patterns and order of life in a chaotic world where making sense of so much nonsense may not be possible. The time of solitude in the mountains, away from conformity and on the edges of the systems of my life, brought forth new perspective and new possibilities for me. My commitment to my idealism grew stronger.

Time alone sowed the seeds of my next adventure. I felt new and deep stirrings. I felt connections grow stronger and deeper. I did not know where my new sense of calling would take me, but I would listen and heed the message because I must if I wanted to feel alive.

Creation requires the fear, discomfort and loneliness of separateness. In isolation we listen to our inner voice. Silent concentration and contemplation provide the place for connections to be made and insights to be gleaned. From quiet reflection inspiration grows, intuition surfaces, and understandings emerge. We reflect on our experiences and imagine possible future scenarios. Solitude became a comfortable friend.

I go too fast for my soul sometimes. My spirit gets angry. I need time to catch up with myself. I want time to think. I crave solitude. I look forward to upcoming extended time in the natural world.

Relieving Our Pain

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Why would I judge you for needing relief from the pain you feel inside?

(Terrence Real in I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression.

 

We do live in times of great pain and suffering—locally, nationally, and internationally. And with television and social media we can see and feel all  of the world’s angst—often more than we can bear.

Some of us use chemicals to alter how we feel and become addicted. Others become dependent on sex, porn, food, power, money, status, gambling, video games, the Internet, “likes” on Face Book, our children’s successes, and scaling the corporate ladder. And most of us appear driven to consume the biomass of the planet as fast as we can despite the threat to humanity.

Anne Wilson Schaef and Diane Fassel wrote in The Addictive Organization, “An addiction is any process over which we are powerless. It takes control of us, causing us to do and think things that are inconsistent with our personal values and leading us to become progressively more compulsive and obsessive. A sure sign of an addiction is the sudden need to deceive ourselves and others, to lie, deny, and cover up.”

Addiction is not the way to end our inner angst nor is profound denial of reality. For those of us with addictions (most of us), we must first manage our dependencies. We see reality honestly and stop the compulsive behavior, we feel the pain within us that we avoid so strenuously and we set out to learn how to live and how to feel alive naturally. We embrace the support of others and we get right with ourselves. We embark on a lifelong journey of human and spiritual development. We become wiser and better people.

Change is hard.

We must fight against relapse (the failure to maintain our improvement) as we work to learn new ways to deal with emotional pain. Research shows that 90% of open-heart surgery patients fail to sustain lifestyle changes longer than 90 days. Diabetics relapse when they eat too many sweets. Most offenders fail to learn how to live and go back to prison. Alcoholics “slip.” Few organizational change efforts sustain themselves because people fall back into old habits when under stress.

Relapse happens to most of us in one way or another — chronic disease or not. How many times have we failed to live up to our commitments for change in our lives?

When we stumble, we get back up, learn our lessons and go back to work.

We want relief from the emotional pain we feel. But quick-fixes only deny reality, refuse new learning, make our pain worse and are never sustainable. We’ll live wiser, better and longer if we do the hard work to manage emotional pain in healthy ways. Some things to begin with: daily exercise, a healthy diet, acceptance of the things we can’t change, change the things we can, cultivate healthy relationships, gain the perspective of time, meditate to calm our minds and make room for new insights, learn to feel and express our feelings appropriately and detach from materialism and nurture the spirit within us. And sometimes we just have to feel the pain of life’s realities.

Colleague Myron Lowe, said, “I learned to live with pain and joy at the same time.” We live with the pain of greater awareness and deeper empathy for all that lives and continually transform that sorrow into even greater compassion for others. And we see the joy of  moments of authenticity and glimpses of the potential that exists in each of us.

We may not change the world. But we will live true to the best within us and do what we can to stop the life-destroying ideas, lies and behaviors that destroy our spirits.

No one said life would be easy.

 

 

Feeling Alive

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I survived without purpose, identity or community for a time in my life.  A dark cloud enveloped me. Imprisoned in a dark Plato’s Cave, I was lost and could not find my way. Alcohol had made me feel good. Now it no longer worked but I couldn’t stop. Such a betrayal. It was a time of despair; I felt dead.

Then the patients and counselors at a tough alcohol treatment program unshackled my chains, confronted my defenses and taught me how to feel alive without chemicals or the other addictions so prevalent in our world. They turned me from facing a wall of darkness to seeing the light from the entrance to a potential-filled world of spirit and possibility. Their love and acceptance of the worst of me gave me hope and a community with the drug addicts and alcoholics of St. Mary’s Hospital.

Joseph Campbell wrote in The Power of Myth that more than seeking meaning for our lives, we seek the experience of being alive. We feel alive when our life experiences align with our own inner worlds. I set out to live a life of spiritual, emotional and intellectual adventures; to live true to my values of courage, authenticity and excellence and my vision for the future I felt called to.

I felt alive leading renewal and change in many positions at the Star Tribune newspaper over 18 years, especially my last leadership experience that engaged the hearts and minds of people and opened my eyes to a new world view. I never felt more alive (I also felt a deep loss when this creative work of art was mindlessly destroyed after I left).

I left the corporate world and felt alive in a Ph.D. program that I completed at age 52. I began to write. With each piece I wrote, I felt energized inside. I  lived on the side of a mountain in Colorado for 14 months  where I grieved the deaths of my mother, marriage, and mentor and wrestled with the big questions of life and the difficult emotions within me. I then fell in love when in Fargo, ND. Those were times of emotional expansion and exploration.

Feeling alive isn’t just the big experiences in our lives that excite and fulfill us. I feel alive when I sit down on a cold winter day with our dogs at my feet, a blanket over my legs and read a book by a favorite author. I feel alive when I take my daily five-mile walk with Melanie and when I venture into nature to photograph wild life and beautiful scenes. An introvert, lots of people tire me. But an authentic conversation with another adventurer enriches me.

We are not entitled to feel good all the time. Feeling alive means we experience and ponder all of our human emotions authentically: fear, guilt, grief, anger and anxiety as well as love, passion, gratitude and high energy.

Feeling alive requires us to renew ourselves over and over again by learning new things. We get comfortable feeling uncomfortable much of the time. Our journeys are messy, inefficient and we make mistakes. We feel alive more of the time as we get better at learning how to live.

Finding who we really are  is not so easy in an often anti-human world that treats people as  machines without values, spirit and emotion. We will suffer from others and from ourselves on our unique journeys that expand our souls.

James Hollis wrote in What Really Matters that a more interesting life, a life that demands a larger spiritual engagement than we planned on, to have engaged the big questions, been defeated by ever-larger things and to take one’s journey through this universe and to have risked being who we really are is what matters most.