Spiritual Goal
I often say to clients and to myself that it is important that one keeps focused on spiritual goals as opposed to work goals, home chorettes, parenting issues, or other goals. Often, what happens is that we go to work, start tackling home chorettes, parent, or do some community activity and soon find ourselves focusing on getting a task done. It may feel as if my spiritual goal needs to be keeping my boss, my partner, my children, my mother-in-law, the customer, or someone else happy or satisfied. We may tell ourselves that it is our goal just to show up and be the most loving person we can be, but then we get sucked i nto another, often task-related, goal. Soon we may be feeling a tad bit less than loving. Our boss is pressuring us to get projects done (yesterday); our troubled teenager or adult child who is “temporarily” living back with us is being a demanding 13-year-old and blaming me or us for his or her foul mood; someone in the community organization to which we have been generously donating time, energy and possibly money accuses us of doing a poor job; the car breaks down; the computer will not work; or, perhaps a relative or other person gets angry at me for not taking their side in relationship feud. What was my spiritual goal? If those “challenged” people would just get their act, I could stay focused on being who I want to be spiritually. Perhaps I even tell myself that I am spiritually centered, but I still need x to do task y.
Other people do not make it easy to stay spiritually centered. You know those other people who are very challenged. Those “other people” are not just the ones who got an honorable mention in the morning newspaper as the person who robbed the local liquor store, or the one who got another DUI, or the ones who are now suggesting that the vegetarians were right all along and we should not be eating meat. Those “other people” bomb hospitals where Doctors Without Borders are working. Those “other people” are convicted sex offenders. Those “other people” are the crooked politician or the community member whose full-time job is seemingly to complain. Sometimes, those “other people” are not those who names and/or photographs make it into the newspapers. They are the mother-in-law who is always complaining, the bank official who acts as if the trust money for one’s nephew is intended for the profit of the bank, the repair person who does not show up, or the partner who again promised to do x and again forgot.
If only the “other people” would get their act together, do what they are supposed to do or what they said that they were going to do, I could stay spiritually centered.
Sometimes we convince ourselves that our spiritual goal has to be something very profound or something which would rank right up there with achieving world peace before 9:00 a.m. One of the many things which I appreciate about my spiritual teachers, such as Pema Chodron, is that they remind me to keep it simple or as the my friends involved in a 12-step-program would say, “Keep it simple, stupid.” Pema might suggest that a spiritual goal could be as simple as enjoying a good cup of coffee. The focus, of course, is showing up/being present enough to appreciate the taste, smell, and the overall luxury of a cup of coffee. Sometimes that is enough refueling to allow me to hold on to my goal of being the most loving person I can be today. Perhaps the goal could just to be more aware when I am blaming other people, places, or things for my bad mood or for mistreating others..
It often seems to me that reality is external and I am just responding to what is happening out there. If that external reality was different then I could be different. Whether we are an individual, a family, a community, or a nation, we humans seem fond of blaming others for our mood and/or our actions.
Today it is raining. My friend Becky calls this liquid sunshine. Other will experience the day as dark and dreary. While it is true that some geographical places such as the Ohio Valley around Pittsburgh and Wheeling have a paucity of days when the sun is shining, folks such as Becky who live in that area manage to be in a positive mood 99 % of the time. Sure, as is true for all of us, there are moments when she gets frustrated with something or someone, but she quickly returns to taking charge of her reality. Her reality is very spiritually based. She knows that she has to choose her battles, that no battle is that important, that life, at best, lasts only a few minutes, that she can choose to focus on the positives or she can be miserable and make sure everyone around her is miserable. Fortunately, Becky does not live with any sort of brain disorder, such as clinical depression, dementia, thyroid dysfunction or other conditions which has an acute affect on one’s experience of reality. Some of these and related conditions make it impossible to experience the positives. The best one can hope for is to constantly practice reminding oneself that the condition is defining or naming reality. The condition is lying. It is saying that the only reality is negative. If one can, just on a cognitive level, keep reminding oneself of the ‘fact’ that it is lying, then one will not be feeding the negative experience. For example, if it appears that the world is all negative, one can “know” or “trust” that is not the case. Even though it feels as if it is the case one can “know” it is not.
Someone I know was very depressed. Every day I would text her an affirmation which I knew to be true for her. Her task was to text me the same or a similar affirmation back. For example, I would text,”You are a bright, beautiful, competent, compassionate, spiritual person, and a terrific parent.” She would text me back. She might also share how she was feeling which might be, “I feel as if I need to be in a different profession. I feel as if I am a terrible parent. I feel as if there is nothing positive to do; that I am a bad person; that my child would be better off if I was not around.” Wow! These feelings told a very different story than the one my mind told me about this person. She did eventually agree to get back on a low dose of an anti-depressant which took enough of the edge off the depression to allow her to resume more regular exercise, to experiences herself as more positive, to eat better, and to see more healthy opportunities for connecting with others in the community. Nothing externally changed. The only change was how her brain was functioning which made it easier “to feel’ the truth of the affirmations – the same affirmations she is in the habit of readily applying to others, including her daughter.
Her spiritual goal started out as very simple. She was going to connect with me on a daily basis via text and weekly for an hour for a scheduled coaching appointment. Eventually she was able to allow herself to get back on medication and then to pick up other pieces of health care.
The external reality did not change. Other humans are still being human. The hospital where she works is still not the most positive healing place she has worked. Other people, such as her daughter’s father, have their own challenges. She still lives in the Ohio Valley where non-liquid sunshine is rare!
I saw another client yesterday who was “feeling” very negative and distraught! At the end of the appointment she was calm, laughing, and able to say that she felt good. I reminded her that we had not changed any of those people whose behavior was causing her to be in such a foul mood when she first arrived.
Her spiritual goal initially was to just show up for the appointment and to do her best to open to the possibility of a different reality. Very simple and achievable.
The other day I wrote about the film, Steve Jobs. Steve was often very miserable when interacting with people. It would seem that his experiences as a very young child shaped his view of intimate relationships. Relationships were not emotionally safe for him. Although he achieved a very laudable goal of putting a personal computer in the hands of everyone so that we could have access to more effective communication and more information, on a very personal level he could not experience a loving concern for people or for his own emotions. Towards the end of the movie he begins to open a bit to the possibility of loving and being loved.
My personal experience is that I can be easily pulled into the space of others or into the belief that reality is external and that external reality is responsible for my mood and my behavior. My belief is that I can be very intentional about the reality I want to experience today. While not denying painful events (I cried watching the movie of Steve Jobs and reading about the killing of yet another teenager by a police officer in Florida, I also do not have to deny the beauty which surrounds me; the beauty which is present in all of us and in the world at large. I still get grumpy and out of sorts. I get frustrated when my computer or other machines do not work as I want them to. I am much better at noticing when I am doing that and am much quicker to smile at myself. For today, that is as good as it gets today. I would, of course, love to have a huge, positive impact on the world or to be a really, really, really good person today. Oh well! That is asking a bit much. For today, I will smile, bring myself back to center 50 times or more if necessary, and leave the rest to the God of my understanding.
Written October 27, 2015
I often say to clients and to myself that it is important that one keeps focused on spiritual goals as opposed to work goals, home chorettes, parenting issues, or other goals. Often, what happens is that we go to work, start tackling home chorettes, parent, or do some community activity and soon find ourselves focusing on getting a task done. It may feel as if my spiritual goal needs to be keeping my boss, my partner, my children, my mother-in-law, the customer, or someone else happy or satisfied. We may tell ourselves that it is our goal just to show up and be the most loving person we can be, but then we get sucked i nto another, often task-related, goal. Soon we may be feeling a tad bit less than loving. Our boss is pressuring us to get projects done (yesterday); our troubled teenager or adult child who is “temporarily” living back with us is being a demanding 13-year-old and blaming me or us for his or her foul mood; someone in the community organization to which we have been generously donating time, energy and possibly money accuses us of doing a poor job; the car breaks down; the computer will not work; or, perhaps a relative or other person gets angry at me for not taking their side in relationship feud. What was my spiritual goal? If those “challenged” people would just get their act, I could stay focused on being who I want to be spiritually. Perhaps I even tell myself that I am spiritually centered, but I still need x to do task y.
Other people do not make it easy to stay spiritually centered. You know those other people who are very challenged. Those “other people” are not just the ones who got an honorable mention in the morning newspaper as the person who robbed the local liquor store, or the one who got another DUI, or the ones who are now suggesting that the vegetarians were right all along and we should not be eating meat. Those “other people” bomb hospitals where Doctors Without Borders are working. Those “other people” are convicted sex offenders. Those “other people” are the crooked politician or the community member whose full-time job is seemingly to complain. Sometimes, those “other people” are not those who names and/or photographs make it into the newspapers. They are the mother-in-law who is always complaining, the bank official who acts as if the trust money for one’s nephew is intended for the profit of the bank, the repair person who does not show up, or the partner who again promised to do x and again forgot.
If only the “other people” would get their act together, do what they are supposed to do or what they said that they were going to do, I could stay spiritually centered.
Sometimes we convince ourselves that our spiritual goal has to be something very profound or something which would rank right up there with achieving world peace before 9:00 a.m. One of the many things which I appreciate about my spiritual teachers, such as Pema Chodron, is that they remind me to keep it simple or as the my friends involved in a 12-step-program would say, “Keep it simple, stupid.” Pema might suggest that a spiritual goal could be as simple as enjoying a good cup of coffee. The focus, of course, is showing up/being present enough to appreciate the taste, smell, and the overall luxury of a cup of coffee. Sometimes that is enough refueling to allow me to hold on to my goal of being the most loving person I can be today. Perhaps the goal could just to be more aware when I am blaming other people, places, or things for my bad mood or for mistreating others..
It often seems to me that reality is external and I am just responding to what is happening out there. If that external reality was different then I could be different. Whether we are an individual, a family, a community, or a nation, we humans seem fond of blaming others for our mood and/or our actions.
Today it is raining. My friend Becky calls this liquid sunshine. Other will experience the day as dark and dreary. While it is true that some geographical places such as the Ohio Valley around Pittsburgh and Wheeling have a paucity of days when the sun is shining, folks such as Becky who live in that area manage to be in a positive mood 99 % of the time. Sure, as is true for all of us, there are moments when she gets frustrated with something or someone, but she quickly returns to taking charge of her reality. Her reality is very spiritually based. She knows that she has to choose her battles, that no battle is that important, that life, at best, lasts only a few minutes, that she can choose to focus on the positives or she can be miserable and make sure everyone around her is miserable. Fortunately, Becky does not live with any sort of brain disorder, such as clinical depression, dementia, thyroid dysfunction or other conditions which has an acute affect on one’s experience of reality. Some of these and related conditions make it impossible to experience the positives. The best one can hope for is to constantly practice reminding oneself that the condition is defining or naming reality. The condition is lying. It is saying that the only reality is negative. If one can, just on a cognitive level, keep reminding oneself of the ‘fact’ that it is lying, then one will not be feeding the negative experience. For example, if it appears that the world is all negative, one can “know” or “trust” that is not the case. Even though it feels as if it is the case one can “know” it is not.
Someone I know was very depressed. Every day I would text her an affirmation which I knew to be true for her. Her task was to text me the same or a similar affirmation back. For example, I would text,”You are a bright, beautiful, competent, compassionate, spiritual person, and a terrific parent.” She would text me back. She might also share how she was feeling which might be, “I feel as if I need to be in a different profession. I feel as if I am a terrible parent. I feel as if there is nothing positive to do; that I am a bad person; that my child would be better off if I was not around.” Wow! These feelings told a very different story than the one my mind told me about this person. She did eventually agree to get back on a low dose of an anti-depressant which took enough of the edge off the depression to allow her to resume more regular exercise, to experiences herself as more positive, to eat better, and to see more healthy opportunities for connecting with others in the community. Nothing externally changed. The only change was how her brain was functioning which made it easier “to feel’ the truth of the affirmations – the same affirmations she is in the habit of readily applying to others, including her daughter.
Her spiritual goal started out as very simple. She was going to connect with me on a daily basis via text and weekly for an hour for a scheduled coaching appointment. Eventually she was able to allow herself to get back on medication and then to pick up other pieces of health care.
The external reality did not change. Other humans are still being human. The hospital where she works is still not the most positive healing place she has worked. Other people, such as her daughter’s father, have their own challenges. She still lives in the Ohio Valley where non-liquid sunshine is rare!
I saw another client yesterday who was “feeling” very negative and distraught! At the end of the appointment she was calm, laughing, and able to say that she felt good. I reminded her that we had not changed any of those people whose behavior was causing her to be in such a foul mood when she first arrived.
Her spiritual goal initially was to just show up for the appointment and to do her best to open to the possibility of a different reality. Very simple and achievable.
The other day I wrote about the film, Steve Jobs. Steve was often very miserable when interacting with people. It would seem that his experiences as a very young child shaped his view of intimate relationships. Relationships were not emotionally safe for him. Although he achieved a very laudable goal of putting a personal computer in the hands of everyone so that we could have access to more effective communication and more information, on a very personal level he could not experience a loving concern for people or for his own emotions. Towards the end of the movie he begins to open a bit to the possibility of loving and being loved.
My personal experience is that I can be easily pulled into the space of others or into the belief that reality is external and that external reality is responsible for my mood and my behavior. My belief is that I can be very intentional about the reality I want to experience today. While not denying painful events (I cried watching the movie of Steve Jobs and reading about the killing of yet another teenager by a police officer in Florida, I also do not have to deny the beauty which surrounds me; the beauty which is present in all of us and in the world at large. I still get grumpy and out of sorts. I get frustrated when my computer or other machines do not work as I want them to. I am much better at noticing when I am doing that and am much quicker to smile at myself. For today, that is as good as it gets today. I would, of course, love to have a huge, positive impact on the world or to be a really, really, really good person today. Oh well! That is asking a bit much. For today, I will smile, bring myself back to center 50 times or more if necessary, and leave the rest to the God of my understanding.
Written October 27, 2015
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