The risk of spirituality

I came across a phrase today: "The will of God will never take you where the grace of God cannot keep you."

Substitute Higher Power, The Universe, Love Intelligence, or whatever else you call the power in your life that's greater than you, if indeed you have such a thing. (If not, click here.)

I Googled the phrase, and found this poem, attributed to Anonymous:

The will of God will never take you,
Where the grace of God cannot keep you.
Where the arms of God cannot support you,
Where the riches of God cannot supply your needs,
Where the power of God cannot endow you.

The will of God will never take you,
Where the spirit of God cannot work through you,
Where the wisdom of God cannot teach you,
Where the army of God cannot protect you,
Where the hands of God cannot mold you.

The will of God will never take you,
Where the love of God cannot enfold you,
Where the mercies of God cannot sustain you,
Where the peace of God cannot calm your fears,
Where the authority of God cannot overrule for you.

The will of God will never take you,
Where the comfort of God cannot dry your tears,
Where the Word of God cannot feed you,
Where the miracles of God cannot be done for you,
Where the omnipresence of God cannot find you.

What I appreciate about this poem is that it suggests that even from the worst of situations and during the darkest of times, I need not despair.

During my darkest times, faith (inherently risky in that it requires believing without evidence) has been my biggest opportunity.

When I believe without evidence that all difficulties and challenges in my path are there to benefit me, anger, disappointment and despair can fall away.

When I believe without evidence that I will ultimately get what I need, in fact, that I already have exactly what I need to be happy and to progress as a human being, then forcing, struggling, resisting and hopelessness become unnecessary options.

After hanging on to skepticism for as long as my rational mind would permit, I've come to the conclusion that Faith is not a crutch, it's a shortcut. A shortcut to the surrender that results in peace and serenity.

All that's required is believing without evidence that there is a higher purpose for everything.

What if that's not true?

I don't care. Because from that perspective, my experience of life is better.

The difference between "letting go" and "giving up"

A little light bulb went on for me tonight in my 12-step meeting. Not something completely new, but something that finally clicked.

When I was younger, my mother often counseled me to "let it go." She was typically referring to feelings of anger or upset. "You don't gain anything by being angry. Just let it go."

It seemed reasonable, seemed to make sense, seemed to be something a nice, understanding person would do.

And as a child growing up in an authoritarian household it was her only option.

But it didn't ever feel right. If you're violated, how do you simply "let it go?" Isn't that just denial? Isn't that just stuffing it down, taking it, being a door mat?

Turning the other cheek never felt right to me inside. It felt like giving up, giving in, shortchanging myself. And it never felt honest. And it was never really gone.

So tonight when we were talking about "let go and let God," that phrase was snagging me.

But then our speaker phrased the question in a way that landed in my gut.

"How do you let go and let God? How do you take an appropriate action without being attached to the result?"

Clouds parted! That's right! That's the difference!!

What was missing from my mother's advice was the part about taking an appropriate action.

When someone is an asshole, the healthy way to let go is not to deny or oppress your feelings or response; it is to TAKE AN APPROPRIATE ACTION and then turn it over to your higher power (in other words, not be attached to the result.)

That is not giving up.

That is standing up for yourself, taking care of yourself, without being attached to a certain outcome (in other words, not expecting someone to change because you're pissed off, or validate your perspective - which they may not) and being willing to do it again as necessary until you feel heard and complete.

Letting go in the denial sense leaves me feeling angry, resentful and unresolved.

Letting go in a healthy way leaves me feeling empowered and peaceful.

Ahhhh.

On being receptive to truth

"The trouble with the world," said the Master with a sigh, "is that human beings refuse to grow up."

"When can a person be said to have grown up?" asked a disciple.

"On the day he does not need to be lied to about anything."

Anthony de Mello

When I read this, I realized that one of the things I have been learning about is my ability to be with difficult truths.

I still have moments, stretches of time even, when I wish for that bliss I had when I was living inside lies. I often wonder if I'll ever be able to rid myself completely of that longing.

But I have also come to know with a certainty I never had before that part of myself that cannot be shattered.

There is nothing that can be revealed to me that can stop the gentle, lapping quiet of a clear dawn over Puget Sound. Nothing that can lift the smell of the ocean from a coastal breeze, or silence the rhythmic caress of the waves on the shore. No truth can take from me the beauty, joy and peace that exist in each moment if only I am willing to be open to them, even in times of great sadness or pain.

I feel there is nothing I need to be protected from, because I've experienced the peace that comes from allowing for the ever-changing nature of all things, and from letting go of wanting the past to be different and the future to be a certain way. I try to remember to remind myself of this when I need comfort. When it feels difficult to do this, I pray:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace." - from the Serenity Prayer

"I am surrendering moment by moment to whatever is happening in this very instant of time. With precision and gentleness, I surrender my cherished ways of regarding myself and others, my cherished ways of holding it all together, my cherished ways of blocking bodhichitta. I do this again and again over many challenging and inspiring years, and in the process develop an appetite for groundlessness." - Pema Chodron, The Places that Scare You

This is a different version of "I can take it" than I used to hold before - that feeling of power that comes with hardening and shutting down. This is the peace beyond understanding that comes with softening and opening myself up, with willingness and faith, to whatever is so in a moment.

Because I'm human, and probably more because all things change, sometimes I can do this and sometimes I can't. When I can't, I look for the moment when I'm ready to try again.

What to do with the things I can't change

When I met Husband in 1988, Mom and I were renting an apartment together. After Husband and I became a couple, he moved in with us and we three have lived together ever since, through 22 years, 2 more apartments and a house.

If Husband is my greatest teacher in the spiritual sense, my mother is his. This translates into a very difficult relationship between them. Not very pleasant for me, but, especially over the last 3 years, I've tried to stay out of it.

Husband had told me that he felt trapped, because he knows I'd never be able to ask my mom to move out. I empathize with him, but he's right. It's a cost to me to have her here, but the cost to me of asking her to leave would be greater. And Husband has been compassionate in not asking me to make that choice. But it's important to him that I know how stressful it is for him, that I know his feelings.

The other day as I listened to Husband complain about mom, I could see clearly how he could relieve a lot of the pressure himself.

My mother isn't malicious. At her worst she's passive aggressive, but many times she's just doing her codependent best to be helpful. Mom doesn't have a good set of tools for self-expression, and she's not aware of what an absolutist she is. She rejects anything that starts to feel like an authority figure (even her own decisions) and frequently undermines us as parents by siding with my son on subjects such as bedtime, consumption of sweets and treats, second helpings, etc... She generally focuses on the worst that could possibly happen. And she is very self-righteous, while at the same time vehemently declaring her disdain for self-righteous people. In short, mom lacks self-awareness on many levels. But she tries to be helpful, and she does the best she can. (I'm really trying to cultivate compassion in my relationship with her, to let go of what I think she should be and appreciate the best of who she is. I have varying degrees of success.)

If one gets frustrated with a cat for meowing instead of mooing, who is causing the problem?

I understand many of Husband's problems with my mother. I share some of them, and I also have my own. But something I know that both Husband and I recognize is that there is little if any chance that the things that bother us about mom will change. For all intents and purposes, my mother is an immobile object.

As I listen to his complaints, I see all the things he could do from his own side to alleviate his suffering - for example, not taking her behavior personally, not expecting her to put our son to bed on time when she babysits, not getting upset when she draws our attention to the latest child kidnapping or tragic death, etc. (I don't tell him any of this, of course, because thanks to therapy I'm trying to practice listening without offering solutions.)

"It's like there's this thing in my life that I really, really wish wasn't there, but there's nothing I can do about it," he said. "You know what I mean?"

I felt like a light switch flipped on in my brain.

"Yes! Yes I do!" I said to both of us. "I know exactly what you're talking about."

I realized in that moment that this was how Husband could begin to understand how I feel about his lies and infidelity.

And in the next moment I began to wonder if all the clarity I had about how he could alleviate his own suffering could be applied to me when something triggers me into thinking about the past, or when I have uninvited thoughts and images come into my head.

Husband patted my leg. "I know you do," he said. "I know what you're talking about."

So I've been thinking it through. When there is something in my path that is beyond my control, the thing I can do is decide how I respond. I can get angry with the cat or feel hurt because it doesn't moo, I can feel disrespected when I ask the cat to moo and it meows, or I can say "That is a cat, and it meows." In other words, here is something that I don't have the power to change, and there is nothing for me to gain by wishing it to be anything other that what it is.

Or very specifically, the events of my past are what they are. Triggers and invasive thoughts are an opportunity for me to practice bringing myself back into the present moment, where I do have the power to have an impact.

What is going on in the present moment? Is Husband treating me the way I want and need to be treated? Is something bothering me that I need to address or express?

If things are good in the present moment, I can take a deep breath, surrender to the past that I have that will never be any other way, and enjoy the happiness of the present moment.

I think if one wants to try to change something that can't be changed (like the past) or that doesn't think it needs to be changed (like my mom) one must consider whether the cost of trying to change that thing (or wishing one could) is worth it, or if there is a more productive action that could be taken. I think there is a lot of truth to the saying "What you resist persists."

The trick is to figure out how to grow so that I'm not stopped by immobile objects in my path. Maybe it's finding compassion, maybe it's having a difficult conversation, maybe it's surrendering to my lack of control over something, or maybe it's something else.

I believe it's possible to progress without resisting that which I have no power to change.

It was a nice opening for me. I could feel the space created by seeing this parallel between Husband's situation and my own, and I could feel the peace that came with my willingness to surrender.

Ready or not...

Husband recently gave me a book he's been using in his therapy group. "I think you'll like it," he said. I just finished reading the introduction, and was completely inspired by the last few sentences of it.

"A whole new level of being present to life can result with recovery. Life is never the same. There is no going back. Consider yourself called." - Recovery Zone by Patrick Carnes

That definitely resonates with my experience.

As I read on, I realized that I have chosen to try to stay with my family, I have chosen to try to stay with my marriage...but I don't know if I've actually chosen to stay with Husband and I think until I make that choice, I won't be able to do some of the deeper healing that I feel is available to me. I think I'm still holding Husband at a distance (not surprising considering that he decimated the world as I knew it, and his actions were the source of deep pain and anguish for me) but that is painful because the intimacy that I want to have is not there.

I do feel a whole new level of being present to life. I do feel that life will never be the same, and that there's no going back. And I do feel called into something greater than I ever imagined. But something is still missing. And I think that missing thing is the intimacy that I can have with Husband now that we're both actively in recovery, and continuing to reap the discoveries made possible by that work and by therapy.

I think that distance is layer of protection, and that layer as well as my realization of it are all part of my process. Nothing to regret, but something to ponder.

How do I achieve that intimacy with someone who feels so threatening?

As always, I think the answer is surrender. Surrender to the possibility of loss and grief and pain, and to the fact that no matter what, I can't protect myself from those things 100%, especially if I want to live my life to the fullest.

I get that, but it's scary. It feels like the hardest miles of a marathon, and I don't know if I'm ready. But it's probably more a matter of finding the willingness to surrender, rather than the readiness.

What I see about my fear

So I look at my last post and what I see is that I have some desire to control what Husband is thinking because I use what he's thinking to define myself.

That's part of where the fear comes from.

I know that for me wanting to control what I can't is a form of resisting what is so, and leads to nothing but unhappiness and dissatisfaction. So I'm willing to give that up (and give it up again and again and again, because it's not going to come easily.)

The other part of the fear is a fear of trust.

I'm afriad I'll be lied to again, even if it's only that his mind is somewhere else when I believe it's with me.

And I'm afriad of what would happen if he lied again. Although oddly, we've already been through a small slip with lying (about something other than sex with prostitutes) and I lived through it.

I guess I'm just afraid of the pain. I don't want that kind of pain again.

But I'm also reminded about the gifts of pain by reading Sophie in the Moonlight and Willow posting about being right where one is supposed to be.

After reading a lot of Buddhist and related spiritual literature, I've decided to take the position that I'm always right where I'm supposed to be, and either surrendering or resisting.

In the past I've gotten caught up in the thinking that "where I'm supposed to be" is a going to be a place that I'd want to be. Now I see this isn't necessarily true.

This is a note to myself to take this mantra with me wherever I go, wherever I find myself, into to the sunshine and into the darkness: I'm right where I'm supposed to be.

And now for a Stuart Smalley moment

The questions in church today were "How can I grow?" "What can I give?" "What can I celebrate?

During the service what came to me is that the origin of all forms of self-loathing rises out of my perception of self as separate from the divine. And that what I can do in the face of that is to surrender to being an instrument of divine expression. To view myself as a unique expression of universal consciousness, group mind, love-intelligence - I still don't know exactly what to call it (and perhaps it doesn't matter.) To live as if this is true - whether or not it is - because I'm freed by that perspective to live a better life.

What does this mean?

For me, it means that everything is as it is and that to resist is a waste of life and a waste of energy. So rather than trying to fix what is wrong I can embrace what is so and generate, or create my life from what I want for the future rather than from what has transpired in the past.

More briefly, to be pro rather than anti.

Pro good health rather than anti-fat.
Pro bring-out-my-best rather than anti-flaws.
Pro peace rather than anti-war.
Pro love and tolerance rather than anti-Republican.
Pro expression, compassion and personal responsibility rather than anti-conflict.
Pro creating a healthy, happy relationship rather than anti-betrayal.
Pro connection, growth and vulnerability rather than anti-perfectionism.

I can grow by surrendering over and over again to my true divine nature; surrendering to my path with the grace and strength of water to the river bed; and remaining but a loving witness to others on their paths.

I can give by joyfully and unabashedly sharing myself as a unique expression of the divine; practicing love and compassion for all; and understanding fear as a manifestation of ego and letting it be.

I can celebrate that I am alive in this moment.