Three Truths and One Wish

Truth: Being real is better than being perfect.

“I must learn to love the fool in me – the one who feels too much, talks to much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my fool.” ~Theodore I. Rubin, M.D.

I can’t tell you how tired I am of trying to keep up, comparing and competing. And there really is nothing you can do that will make everyone love you, or even make some people love you most of the time. Approval and appreciation are fickle things, and even if you can get a person to tell you directly what it is they want from you, they might be confused and you most likely will get it wrong in the trying, and in the end neither one of you will be satisfied. This is all good news, because it means that you can give it all up, let go, and just:

art by egirldesign

Truth: You can start now.

There’s no reason to wait. You know what to do. Don’t waste anymore time beating yourself up about all the mistakes you’ve made and time you’ve wasted. Get out of your own way. Be where you are, embody what is real. Take a breath and look around, really look, see what you are seeing. Open your heart. “All the love that we are seeking is nowhere but here, tucked into this very moment,” (Julia Fehrenbacher from her Kind Over Matter guest post, “Peace is Right Here“).

Photo by Steven Depolo

Truth: You can create your life.

You can save yourself. You can accept and love yourself. You can create a life, rather than simply reacting to what happens, rather than denying or drowning in it. I don’t mean to say it will be easy, because most likely it won’t be.

Deep in the wintry parts of our minds, we are hardy stock and know there is no such thing as a work-free transformation. We know that we will have to burn to the ground in one way or another, and then sit right in the ashes of who we once thought we were and go on from there. ~Clarissa Pinkola Estés.

art my Dallas Clayton

One wish: that we all embody and manifest who we are.

Be who we really are, fully and utterly and completely love and accept ourselves, all the messy and stinky and beautiful bits. “Embrace your inner weird. This is the stuff that makes you interesting and gorgeous and exciting to be around. Get excited about the stuff you love. Wear whatever you want to wear. Ignore what everyone else is doing…be one of the gloriously happy weird ones,” Goddess Leonie.

Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. ~from A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson.

For me, love and fear are inextricably linked. There is not one without the other because for every thing I love, I fear its loss. I was thinking about this last night because Dexter was limping, apparently cracked another toenail, this time on his front foot. I love him so much, but know that eventually he will die, so each hint of any physical weakness or injury spins me into a tizzy.

This got me thinking about emotion and how, when we let it take over, it can cause us to generate so much suffering, which leads to today’s Three Truths and One Wish.

1. Truth: As humans, it is in our basic nature to experience emotions. Over the years, there has been a tremendous amount of research done in an attempt to understand this phenomenon. The lists I’ve seen suggest anywhere from 6-48 basic human emotions. The Wikipedia entry “List of Emotions” is really interesting. The artist in me especially loved Richard Plutick’s Wheel of Emotions, a mandala of feeling.

2. We feel emotion in our bodies, embody our feelings. This is why things like fear and stress can be so detrimental. Emotionaly}Vague “is a research project about the body and emotion asking: How do people feel anger, joy, fear, sadness and love? In order to answer this, a simple survey was developed, the results of which were compared and combined to reveal patterns of feeling…Ultimately, 250 men and women from over 35 countries between the ages of 6 and 75 responded.” This research was conducted by a graphic designer Orlagh O’Brien in 2006/2007. It went like this:

Each final survey contained five sheets of A4 paper, one reusable colour swatch board, a red marker pen and a memento card. After the first written questions was a free-form drawing one which led to pages that were more specific, asking for: ‘one spot only’, colour associations and just arrows.

Q1: What makes you feel each of the emotions?

Q2: How do you feel these emotions in your body? Draw anything you wish.

Q3: Where do you feel these emotions in your body? Draw one spot only.

Q4: What colours do you associate with these emotions? Refer to numbered colour chart.

Q5: Do your emotions have direction? If yes, draw arrows.

My favorite part of the findings is the images that compiled how this set of people collectively understood “where” emotions were in their bodies and what direction those emotions traveled. For example, this is love:

And this is fear:

3. Truth: The most fundamental quality of emotion is energy. This energy, by itself, is neither good nor bad. What gets us in to trouble is when we create stories to go with the emotions, to explain them, and when we get hooked by these stories and act out in ways that don’t serve us, that aren’t wise or compassionate. When emotion arises, when we feel that energy, we don’t have to avoid it or push it away, or let it hook us and drag us off somewhere and get us into some kind of trouble. We could instead be curious about it: “Where do I feel this in my body? What does it feel like exactly? What is the specific reality of my experience in this moment, without the story and without acting on it?”

“What happens with you when you begin to feel uneasy, unsettled, queasy? Notice the panic, notice when you instantly grab for something, (51)” ~Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart. In this way, we can learn what triggers us, become aware our patterns and habits, and take time to consider what the wise and compassionate action to take would be, in light of our clear understanding of the situation. “The more we witness our emotional reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain,” Pema Chödrön. We can simply sit with the emotion, accept it and fully experience it, see it as workable, and in the end it dissipates on its own, we are able let it go, or we are able to direct its energy to something more useful.

I wish you ease and curiosity when approaching and working with our emotions today, and for all the days that follow. May you discover the energy and wisdom underneath the feelings, and be able to direct yourself towards compassionate action rather than generating more suffering.