05 Sep August, 6, 2011 Looking For A Road Map?
Have you ever wondered which turn to take as you walk through life? You know, those times when you get to a crossroads and don’t know which way to go.
Those are the times when there doesn’t seem to be any inner guidance or if there is you have
no idea how to excavate it, let alone listen to it.
How do you know where to go?
This question seems to be up for so many people I work with that it has caused me to reflect
back on those times when I was floundering about unsure, uncertain. Doing so sure brought up a lot of questions:
- What would be good for me to do?
- What’s best when all avenues look awful in one way or another?
- What is life wanting of me?
- How do I change what gets in the way even when I don’t know what gets in the way?
- How do I be myself when I sometimes feel caught in a role of how I am supposed to be?
A number of weeks ago as I was pondering these questions I went to visit my very good friend Celia Grand in Portland, Maine who is both a therapist and a black belt in martial arts. That combination in Celia offers a unique and wise perspective on life, transformation, and learning to trust in ineffable. Fertile territory for conversations.
Driving into the city, listening to the radio I heard Obama being interviewed by a radio reporter
about the debt ceiling. The reporter was asking the President if he ever lost hope in the process. Obama had a quick quip: “Hope? I don’t lose hope. Don’t you remember my campaign?” Everyone in the audience laughed.
I was half paying attention, aware but also focused on looking around at the beautiful city of Portland. Looking out in front of me a saw the car ahead of me had a vanity plate from Maine:
Hope
What?
I chuckled, filing that away as an interesting coincidence.
Continuing on my journey, getting closer to my destination, my mind drifted away to the Tour
de France. The day before Thor Hushov, one of two Norwegians in the Tour de France had won another stage (which is a big deal in the long event.) Norwegians were delighted. Thor was once again in the Maillot Jaune (“yellow jersey”) which is worn by the leader of the Tour and changes day to day.
Checking the street signs as I got ready for a turn, I looked across the street.
“Savings Bank of Norway.”
Goodness. What are the chances of that?
Now I was really chuckling. What was going on in my head was instantly visible out in the
world.
Think “x”.
Boom.
There it is.
What if that is what life is like? What is that’s the road map?
What if that’s a way to course correct?
What if I were to practice filtering out what I want to see from what is there?
What if there’s not that much difference between our inner worlds and what happens outside?
We’re prone to seeing what’s not happening, what isn’t working, what’s missing. What if,
instead, we actively started culling through our experience to see what we want to see, like the good stuff instead of the bad stuff?
Changing Perspective
I explored this out with one of my clients (let’s call her Matilda) who has been in a deep inquiry in her life – about life. With her permission I’m writing a bit about what we talked about.
Matilda asked this incredibly powerfully question: “How do I change looking out of brown eyes if that’s all I’ve looked out all my life?”
There’s the question in a nutshell.
I decided to explore this with her. When something is so familiar and comfortable how do we shift it? There are some beliefs and perspectives that feel as if they are true. In these instances it is the mind boggling question: How do we change our perspective (look out of other eyes) when that’s all we’ve ever known?
The inquiry with Matilda explored these kinds of questions: What if she started looking for evidence of things working, moving in the direction she wanted? What might she find?
She has (as we all do) these parts that rebel and talk back and have a lot of examples of what doesn’t work or why this won’t work. Through our conversation she decided to give this a try (all while rolling her eyes and thinking I was full of ka-ka!)
The next week she came in laughing, light hearted in a way that I hadn’t heard in a while. She proceeded to tell me stories of how she had gone to this event and all the incredible good things that came out of it, all the positive attention she was given, the delight that was showered on her.
She was laughing thinking I had wished on a falling star!
Wouldn’t I give a lot to have that kind of magic touch. But no. It’s a lot more simple than that. It’s about trusting that our internal world is aligned with what happens outside. As my meditation teacher says, “There is no outside.” (Whew. That’s a topic for another day.)
How about you try it? I’ll write some thoughts in the practice section below and really look
forward to hearing what you find out.
Thanks, Matilda, for being so open to sharing your life and your experience with all of us.