Goals for the Life you Really Want

Week Two, Day Six: Enlightenment as Choice

Concept # 13: Complaints keep us weak and stuck

Goals give us a direction

This is fun.

This is life changing.

This is so obvious it’s amazing that not many people do this.

It’s simple.

And we are so habituated to complaining and blaming and worrying, we almost never think of this.

And yet, with all this naked making out, and forgiving and talking about gratitudes, we can realize:

HEY, THERE REALLY IS ANOTHER LEVEL OF LIFE I COULD BE LIVING.

TIS TRUE.

IT’S THERE.

AND WHAT DO YOU WANT IT TO BE?

And now, we return once more to June 20, 2015. I am walking down the street, half a block away to a woman’s house, Carol Williams. I admire this woman, and have known her for ten sessions of the Feldenkrais Method® I mentioned earlier. The lessons are mainly in silence, mainly about creating learning in her body/ brain. And there is room for talking , since the program is neither therapy nor massage/ relaxation based.

It’s paying attention.

It’s trying new things.

It’s learning at a subtle and non-verbal level.

I’ve gotten to know that she is a generous woman, that she helped start a non-profit in St. Louis. I’ve gotten to know that learning is deeply important to her. I’ve gotten to know she is interested in centering prayer, which a good friend of mine uses as a way of combining his Christianity and a somewhat Buddhist stance of silence and inner awakening.

So, she seems interesting.

And I don’t have a romantic interest.

But I do have goals.

I have a crazy specific goal: a woman friend within walking distance. (Part of my be weird, be myself in Austin, was not having a car. Prior girlfriends had all complained about driving to get me. My solution was not to get a car. It was to write a goal: a girlfriend / womanfriend/ deep partner/ significant other—- what do you call it after 50?— within walking distance.)

Other goals were a girlfriend / womanfriend/ deep partner/ significant other who was kind and generous and smart. A non written goal, but something I’d discovered way back: a woman who not only could put up with my authentic/ eccentric nature, but would enjoy that. I never went on dates and never tried to prove myself as anything other than who I was.

And I had a goal of finding a lifetime partner.

And I had a goal of staying in the neighborhood I was in, easily. At a time in the history of burgeoning Austin, when this was getting harder and harder to do.

And I had a goal of a girlfriend/ potential life partner who would be thrilled to be present with me. Without presence, life is a waste. Very few women realize this. I wanted one who did.

And Carol, unknown to me, satisfied all these goals, and more (Sex every day, anyone?).

And I didn’t know I was searching for her.

We just started talking, in the present, in the five minute turns.

We found out more and more that intrigued us about each other.

And then that we liked about each other.

And then that we were really excited about each other. 

And by the end of the night, sharing in equal time our gratitudes and teasing out our goals, and being honest and open, we “almost” knew, we’d found the almost impossible mate we’d “almost” given up looking for.

The goals pointed me, and her, who had her own version of daily goals, toward what we Really Wanted.

It’s obvious, so obvious that if you want a better world, you have to know at least to some extent what that better world might or could be like.

And yet, so very few people do this, at least as a regular practice. They might have goals in work, but then they come home and complain about their boss and their fellow workers.

They don’t write a goal: my boss and I will get along great, and she’ll understand how much I have to offer, and I’ll help her be a much more calm and expansive person.

Or, I’ll get along with Joe, and together we’ll get to be friends and co-workers who will make amazing contributions to the company and will both get huge raises.

And, when I go home, my partner and I will have great communication, and lots of fun with the kids, and joyful and continually expanding sex when it’s time to put the lights out.

And get a great night’s sleep after that.

And wake up invigorated and in love and full of joy and creative juice for the next day.

And….

And why not?

When has worrying and complaining ever helped your life?

When has worrying and complaining ever helped anyone’s life?

Never, right?

So, goals are a way of getting clear what you DO want.

It puts your focus on what you want reality to become.

This is actually a vital subset of parenting.

Any time you tell a child, “Don’t run in the street.” They just hear “the street” and that is where they want to go.

Instead. “Hold my hand and stay on the sidewalk with me” and they can have a picture of what you do want.

I could have complained: “Modern women are too wimpy about always going somewhere in a car, and should be excited to be with a man on a bike.”

Instead the goal: “A great girlfriend/ / / within walking distance.”

I didn’t know it was going to be as little as half a block, but it sure did make moving in with her the most silly and easy move of my life: we just walked most of the stuff down the block, using the trunk of HER car, only a few times.

Now we have OUR car, and that’s fun too.

And GOALS need at least a small ACTION STEP. You need to know that this is more than just a wish. The Universe needs to know this is more than just a wish.

And action helps you get more clear on what the journey is going to be like.

And the journey will keep shifting around.

And you can have goals to have fun following the shifts and being happy and creative and present all along the way.

At the very least, goals give you increasing clarity on what you want: That co-worker with whom you have friendship and creativity and both get great raises, helps really focus away from the negative.

And if you start, which I hope you will, a GOALS JOURNAL, with a date on each page, and a new page for each new day, this helps keep the goals part of your enlightenment pointed to where you want it to go.

JUST WRITING DOWN GOALS IN A GOALS JOURNAL CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

And even better, let’s play this Enlightenment Game.

Enlightenment Game #5:

Start a Goals Journal

Turn all complaints and all worries into Goals

On one side write the goal

On the other side, write one ACTION STEP, NO MATTER HOW SMALL

So, you have a complaint: my job sucks.

You write a goal: I find an amazing and wonderful job that makes twice as much money and is three times as much fun and in which I can learn a ton and make lots of really great friends.

You write this on the left hand side of the page. 

On the right hand side of the page write any action steps: 

Like:

Make a list of ten jobs that might be great.

Ask three friends what they think I’d be good at.

Make a list of all the places I’ve like most to work.

Take a walk and ask the universe to give me intuitive inspiration in what job I’d really thrive in.

And so on.

You’ll get better and better at goals.

You’ll get better and better at actions steps.

And there’s only one really great time to start:

Now.

So, do it:

Get a journal, or a piece of paper while you wait to get another journal (you already have your gratitudes journal, right?), and write three goals.

And three actions steps.

Enlightenment Game #6: Write Goals with the Delight of the Journey as Part of the Goal.

You can go back to the three goals you’ve written and make sure that it’s not just the end result you’ve written.

Make sure you’ve got the way you get there as part of your goal.

Include fun.

Include discovery.

Include surprises that help you.

Include meeting and enjoying great people along the way.

Include that things turn out easier and better than you can every imagine.

You’re asking the Universe for what you want.

Go ahead and REALLY want what you REALLY WANT.

Have fun.

PS: You can write goals anytime you wish to. It’s fun.

Part of Enlightenment: Four stages of Forgiveness and Fun and Freedom

Enlightenment as a Four Stage Delight

or

Forgiveness as Fun, Freedom and … Discovery

So, here’s the deal.

If we are a slave to the past, we are a slave to the past. We are stuck.

We are living in a myth.

The myth is that the past can be different, or should be different, or even, “we would have been better off,” if the past had been different.

All this is both unknowable.

And most of all, undo-able.

Can’t undo the past.

So, here’s the four stages of forgiveness :

First, write down your gripe with the past. Make it one sentence long, with a “should” or a “shouldn’t” in it. Cut the the chase of what you most consider their fault and sin and awfulness.

Someone should have treated you better.

Someone shouldn’t have been mean, critical, abusive to you in the past.

It can be little: they didn’t return your call.

It can be huge: they were your parent and they swatted you around. (Yeah, Mom.)

It can be persistent and annoying: they were your parent and they couldn’t get out of a critical mode with you. (Yeah, Dad)

As before, have two chairs.

The SUFFERING CHAIR.

And

The PRESENT LIFE AWARENESS CHAIR.

Sit in the Suffering Chair, and look at the words you’ve written. Count the words.

Feel the pain of believing those words.

Realize the power of however many words: Mom shouldn’t have hit me. Five words.

Dad shouldn’t have criticized me so much. Seven words.

In the suffering chair, really “get into it.”

Feel as emotions, what happens. Write them down: feel sad, feel angry, feeling cheated, feeling small.

Write down the laundry list of these six or five or seven words, when you believe them.

And go beyond the emotion.

Feel the sensations in your body. All negative emotions have a constricting and painful effect on your body.

Feel these as in the present sensations.

Realize the power of believing these six or seven words.

Shrink your body even more.

Tense up even more.

Feel as sensing and emotional level what the Suffering Place is all about.

Now, stand, and shake it out a little. Hop or go up on your toes and flop down on your heels, a bunch of times. Shake your hands happily at the wrists.

And move now, to the Present Chair.

Sit here and feel your pelvis against the chair.

Maybe even do a little pelvic rocking.

Look around.

What do you see?

Listen around.

What do you hear?

You are in a body.

What shape are your legs in? Not like getting in shape shape, but if you were to draw them, what shape would it be.

Same with arms: what shape.

What are the legs and feet feeling and touching.

Same with arms and hands: what are they touching and feeling.

Good to feel.

Right now.

See what that does to your mood and your love of life.

And, as before, go back and forth.

So, come to a third chair: let’s call it the Realization Chair.

And from that: look at the present chair and the suffering chair, and realize that the “problem” isn’t about the words you wrote, but is about which chair you want to sit in.

So, in this Realization Chair, look at the words on the paper and say, “So what?”

If you really feel this, then you’ve reached the first level of enlightened forgiveness.

If not, hang out in the two chairs some more and see what happens.

Step Two:

This is a little wild, but stand up and hop a little first.

Smile.

See if there’s a way of learning about the words, that puts in the category of thankfulness that this happened.

Sound strange, but it’s like this:

Mom was pretty mean and critical and even physically abusive as I was growing up and then the mean and critical kept up.

From the realization chair, I can see that this was her stuckness, and in the present has nothing to do with me.

And from the learning and loving chair (might as well have a fourth chair), I can be thankful that she was the way she was.

Because I can actually love her.

And if I can love a woman who was in many ways not the kindest or nicest person, then the love feels even stronger in my heart.

Put it like this:

Say Mom was awful 60% of the time. If I can love here even with that, how much easier to love my wife, who is awful 5% of the time.

Or myself, who is awful 10% of the time.

It’s practice.

And Stage Three is one great and easy, and relentless, way of sharpening this love for the “bad” person.

It’s the famous “turn around” of the work of Byron Katie.

It’s the “see the beam in your own eye, instead of the tiny splinter in your neighbor’s eye” of the Bible.

It’s the famous, “mirror” idea of the New Age folk.

It’s the folk wisdom truth of the saying that “one finger pointing out means there are three pointing back.” 

Or, it’s good old fashioned psychology: Projection.

Whatever I see wrong with you, is something I don’t want to see as wrong with me.

And almost always is.

If I see you as selfish, I probably am too.

If you see you as negligent, fearful, grumpy, disrespectful, critical, and so on, again, almost always, that’s me.

To really slam this home, try to preach your sermon directly to their sin.

Which means.

You shouldn’t be so angry.

Goes to:  I shouldn’t be so angry about your anger.

You shouldn’t be so grumpy.

I shouldn't be so grumpy about your grumpiness.

You should respect me more.

I should respect more you for your lack of respect for me.

Don’t rush that one.

Wrap your head around it.

With me, it was Dad and his criticalness and Jeri Lynn and her running off with another man, that really brought the power of this home to me.

Dad was fairly relentlessly critical.

I did the two chair thing, and realized that without the words in my head, his criticalness was his thing, and I didn’t have to take it personally.

And then at the “turn around” I was shocked to realize how many years I’d been critical of him, either in my head, or to my friends, about his criticalness.

Alas, I could pass out the sermon, the medicine, but wasn’t practicing what I preached and wasn’t taking my own medicine. This can be both humbling and humor making.

With Jeri Lynn, taking off with another man: it’s a long story, and we were both ready for it, and I had it coming.

When I was present, I could appreciate the lack of arguing and the end of something we’d both grown weary of.

But with the “Jeri Lynn should love me more” story, I could be greatly miserable.

And then one day, I did the reversal. “I should love her more.”

For awhile it was just words. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course I should.

Then it lit up and became real.

Oh, my: she’s with a new lover that she really likes.

If I loved her more I’d be happy for her happiness.

And in that state I was truly free.

She was free of me and our fighting.

I could love the freedom and happiness that was bringing her.

This was a huge shift to say the least.

So, that’s the third stage of forgiveness:

First:

So what?

Second:

Loving what you are learning.

Third:

Humility or revelation or even humor about realizing that you are a sinner, too.

And fourth?

I think I’ll go into this more later.

But for now, it’s kind of like this: What we think happened, either was different than we remember.

Or, the motives and the overlay of what was happening was vastly different.

I saw this one day with my father.

Looking at a memory of him from the Being Present chair, I suddenly got this realization of the immense sorrow that was behind his criticism. How he really was trying to love me, and was too cut off from his own self-love to be able to do this.

He was still critical. Yes. This was something he was very stuck in him.

But he wasn’t malicious, though his words and tone seemed to imply that.

He was sad and desperate for love and going about it in all the wrong ways.

Poor Dad.

Sad and compassion for him, and then….

Time to live a life of love and forgiveness that he couldn’t.

How?

That’s what this is all about.

It’s work.

And without it: we aren’t free.

From Anat's book, Essential One: Movement with Attention, for parents of special needs children, and ALL of us

Harper learning about gravity,

I'm going to do a series, writing about the Nine Essentials from
Anat's book.
Move Into Life

If you don't have it yet, it's certainly a fine addition to your life,
whether a parent of a special needs child,
a practitioner of Feldenkrais or the Anat Baniel Method,
or "just"
one more of that amazing group of human beings who realize:
hey, I'm alive,
and when I know I'm alive I can transform almost anything.

Actually, when we are alive,
and aware of the present moment, we can transform
the quality of our experience,
always,
though we may or may not be able to transform the effects
of our actions.

What's that mean?
You are trying to improve your tennis serve.
You become aware of the tightness of your grip,
and you try tighter, and less tight.
You place awareness on your feet, and add extra awareness
sometimes to your big toes, sometimes the baby toe,
sometimes the inside of your feet,
sometimes the outside.

As you do these variations,
which is another Essential down the line,
you have a better chance of being aware of just
how the whole swing,
the whole serve
the whole action takes place.

So: your experience of your serve will change.
Maybe more relaxed.
Maybe more powerful.
Maybe both.

Certainly, by shifting awareness in your fingers
and then in your toes, you will get a more global sense
of what this "serve the ball" action is about.

For you.
Now.

And this could be done without variation.
We could just keep serving the ball,
and shifting awareness from our toes,
to our ankles,
to our knees,
to our pelvis,
all the way up,
and with this awareness in the moment again
get a clearer picture, feel, sensory understanding
of how we do something that might have
been habitual.

And we don't have to be "into" sports.
We can walk to the next room, and pay attention to
that movement.

We can move our spine gently right,
left,
up and down,
forward and back,
and see how that "feels," where feeling can mean
both emotional (feels good, feels happy) and sensory:
the actual "feel" of the muscles and bones and movement
as it happens.

This is obvious when we do it,
and yet so often our movement is just
"getting it done,"
and we have wasted a chance to be present
and to give attention to ourselves in the moments of our life.

Think how rich making a meal,
or even washing the dishes could be,
if we took it as a meditation, a chance to be present
to the movement of our arms and spine, and the shifting
positions of weight bearing through our feet,
and our use of our spine and ribs and shoulders.

There is a reason for the famous Zen phrase about:
before enlightenment: chop wood and carry water.
After enlightenment: chop wood and carry water.

It's the everyday living attended to,
in the moment that is the path to
enlightenment
and
IS
enlightenment.

Good, I hope, so far.

And what about our children,
if you are a parent?

The usual, and the usual is so amazing as to be the miraculous
if you think and or realize about it,
that we aren't a tree, aren't a chair, aren't a fragment of star dust
drifting in the Universe.

The usual is that you can lift and hold and touch
and talk to your child.

In any of those movements,
see what happens,
become your own laboratory,
if you are sensing and awaring of your movements
as you lift, hold, touch or talk to your child.

And then, sometimes you will want to play
with them,
to caress them,
to move them gently and sweetly.

Then the slow and the gentle essentials
come in,
One: for the sake of the child's experience
of enjoying it
Two, for the sake of your child's being able
to pay attention as you are moving them,
Three, for the sake of your ability to feel the different
places your touch is transmitting through their
bodies.

It's like you are doing a dance,
the fox trot,
the tango,
something slow and sensual with your child.
This is a form of love,
and with awareness from you,
will help be one more of the learning moments
that they use to build their increasingly
proficient future.

Even the smallest amount of awareness
on their part
is a wonderful addition to the thousands
and perhaps millions of bits of information
that they are using and will continue to use
to move and thrive and learn and transform themselves.

So, it's a good, good, good situation.

You bring yourself more toward the state of enlightenment in action,
which will be relaxing and pleasurable in and of itself.

You increase the quality of your interaction with your child.

The child's experience of herself or himself as loved and nourished
continues and flourishes.

And your child's learning keeps going and growing.


Okay, that's enough for now.
I'll read the chapter, and maybe tomorrow add on an additional thoughts.

Happy attentive moving.



Chris

why move with awaeness and learning?

Why move with awareness and learning?

I started to write: why the Feldenkrais work
why the Anat Baniel.

Decided instead to write: why move with awareness
and learning?

Because to be present
is to be happy
or to be very close to the possibility of ongoing happiness.

Because to move with attention requires us to be preesent.

Because to move with learning requires us to do
something besides what we always do.

Because life is a lot of fun when we learn.

Because there is a lot of suffering in the world,
some from greed and structural injustices,
and lots in the have too much world
comes from being stuck in a life
that seems like life,
but is really a lot closer to being a robot.

Say it again:
to move with attention and awareness and learning:

wakes us up to being alive
gives us a grand chance at ongoing happiness
will create conditions under which we can be
useful

useful
to ourselves
the Earth
and each other

and here's an anat baniel class
where one can
systematically do
this kind of delightful
learning


good




P.S.
An online ebook
is now finished.
First 12 pages =
12 activities/ meditations/ learning games
is free if you email
and ask.

Check out
Almost Enlightenment

if you wish.