Dare to go Deep

Dare to go Deep

Where did my messengers go?

During this week’s vacation, I anticipated long periods of quiet time and a myriad of great insights.  Did the quiet times inhale the messengers? Or were my spiritual ears on AM when the dial was on FM?

The silence can be scary.  It can bring doubt, second guessing, challenge and discouragement.  That adds up to unhappiness.

And THAT is the message.

Soul Journer C – (I will ask these women if I have permission to use their first names) – shared a Numerology link and a message that March is the month to GET GOING:  http://gailminogue.com/newsletter.html

Out of that link, one of the excerpts spoke to me:

John Perkins in his martial arts teachings and his “Preparing for a Warrior” articles states that “Hope is not a plan.  Pinning your hopes on someone else to come to the rescue is not an option.  Survival entails personal tenacity and will. ……The sooner you are able to change the way you view yourself, the sooner survival options will present themselves.”

Is that what is making me unhappy?  Am I pinning my hopes on being rescued?  Is it time to go into my depths and use what has been absorbed, chewed and assimilated?  Is there stuff in my depth that is worth sharing?

I meditated differently.  Instead of sitting in an invitational mode, I sat IN my being  – with as much nothingness as possible – to see what would be revealed.  What a discovery.

A few days ago, I listened to a young woman, a Pharmacist, describe how she has been riding the “When…I will be happy” train.  She listed all the items she has been placing in that blank space.  While I listened to her, I was busily convincing myself that I live more in the present than her and that I was pretty happy.

Then during one of these deep meditations, truth revealed that this young woman showed me exactly what I needed to see in myself.

As an Irish nun once said at a speech given to people in recovery, “The Twelve Step process has taught me the best prayer in the whole of the universe.  It is a very short prayer and it’s very simple.  It is this: Please, God, don’t let me believe my own bullshit.”

I have been heavily in the throes of believing my own bull durum.  My list of items that need my attention in order to be happy is daunting.

Fortunately, I happened to find a video on Ted.com – by Srikumar Rao.  He’s an adviser to senior business executives, whom he helps find deeper meaning and engagement in their work.  He created a celebrated MBA course, “Creativity and Personal Mastery”.

Mr Rao’s video  “Plug into your hard-wired Happiness” begins with a statement that there is NOTHING I have to do, be or get to be happy.

No one need be embarrassed about having a poor memory.  We’ve all heard this before.  However, thankfully, people like Mr. Rao come up with new ways of presenting valuable truths that help us clean the caverns of our life.

Mr Rao reminded me of my “things-I-have-to-do-to-be-happy” list.   He explained that is a list of Mental Models…all of the IF and THEN scenarios that I use to lie to myself.  I was caught red-handed when he added, “And stop fooling yourself by thinking you just need to change the IFs.”

The list can be eliminated in every instance when I accept everything just as it is. No more IFs.  It is what it is.

Actions are largely in my control, but I cannot control OUTCOMES.  Wanting to control outcomes forces me  out of acceptance and into IFs.  I need to invest in the PROCESS!

Since outcomes are rarely perfect for anyone, at the end, I can look in the mirror and ask one simple question, “Did I do my best?”

If the answer is yes, I am in the state of acceptance and getting scarily close to being happy.  If my answer is no, I can alter the direction as long as I keep my focus on the process.

When I change my focus from the outcome to the process, the universe responds lovingly and overwhelmingly in kind.  That’s a promise from many sources, right?  What makes this fact fall to the bottom of my memory bin?

Do I feel happier now?  Well, did I do my best?  I loved being on our coast with my camera, experimenting with settings.  I’ve loved writing this blog with my black angora cat purring beside me.  Yes, I gave this my best shot.

Guess my messengers didn’t go anywhere.  They just change forms at times.  I am the one who gets lost.