Neither Here Nor There

When I was growing up and sitting in church every Sunday listening to my dad or anyone else speak about Heaven, I remember thinking to myself on more than one occasion, that it sounded awfully boring to me.

I mean, it was a nice enough idea to imagine pearly gates and gold bullion boulevards and no pain or sorrow and angels floating around in full view . . . But I kept wondering, what I was going to do up there for all eternity. You can only imagine so much singing and rejoicing before the novelty wears off.

This train of thought actually came up for me because I’ve been wondering off and on about whether the bliss I’m trying to follow is really some place on a map that I can get to and once there, really feel that I’ve arrived. Do I ever reach a point where it feels like I’ve made it? Do the pearly gates ever close behind me as I drive up to my version of a mansion where I’ll just kick back and chill from that point on? So I asked the Shower Team about the idea of the journey versus the destination. Where’s the “there” I want to be—and how close to heaven can I get?

You have correctly felt or suspected for quite some time that there is no real endpoint to your existence or some sort of graduation and awards ceremony that marks the completion of what you keep coming here to do—which is to joyfully and vigorously and energetically and passionately continue the expansion of who you are. And while the idea of a long break or vacation from the stresses that you often fill your life with can understandably seem like a nice idea for a while, pretty soon the notion of eternally not doing much of anything can get old fast.

Some part of you has understood that there is a kind of truth to the statement, “Heaven is a place on Earth.” because you recognize that when you are really experiencing your life in the fullness that is available to you, when you are creating that life from a place of absolute joy and passion and zest and eagerness . . . then you truly are in Heaven.

Even more important than that, is the recognition we would offer you that not only is Heaven not some place you are waiting to go in order to slip into a shiny robe and play a harp for the rest of eternity, but that Heaven is not a place, period. Heaven is not a destination in any sense of that term. You often hear the words spoken that, “It is the journey not the destination that matters.” But like most words that smack of platitude, you tend to pay lip service to it and then, typically, dismiss it and get right back on your treadmill to presumed glory.

What we would like you to understand is that there is no there there. And in fact, there is really no here, either. What you want is neither here nor there . . . where you stand or where you hope to go. What you really really want is on the way from here to there— to wherever or whatever you are currently imagining Heaven to be. But we promise you—it wouldn’t matter how grand and glorious, how stupendous or spectacular that destination turned out to be . . . sooner or later you’d start to get bored there and want to move on. Or you would want to change it somehow. You’d want to make some improvements on Heaven because that’s just how you are—constantly evolving, constantly forming new preferences, constantly deciding on new directions or dreams . . . It is what makes you eternal and what makes you part of the eternal expansion of all that is.

It is also the reason we are always encouraging you to enjoy yourself more, to strive less, to make your life the joyous journey that you intended it to be. And it is the reason we keep saying that it doesn’t matter where “here” is . . . or where “there” is . . . you can and will get from here to there . . . and then you’ll straight away want to be heading somewhere else. And will.

So when you concluded long ago that Heaven sounded boring you were right in the sense that any heaven—any destination you arrive at no matter how delightful—will still yield to you new desires, new dreams, new destinations. Heaven will always be another point on the horizon or another addition or new look to where you live . . . some place or some thing you’re looking and moving toward . . . and the heaven you can feel is always yours to choose, yours to celebrate and savor—as you continue to pack your bags and launch the next leg of your journey.

I do hear that. And I like the idea of a life continually in motion, of always being on my way, even as I recognize that not everyone embraces the traveler archetype quite so readily. But at least until I forget again that what I really want is neither here nor there, I/We shall remain—even as I/We continue our constant journey—transitionally complete.

Don't Look Down!

I love the Shower Team. They put up with a lot of moaning and groaning from me sometimes and they just keep coming back around with their own brand of (sometimes) tough love. Not long ago I was whining extra long and loudly about wanting to once and for all put some particular issues behind me that had been getting on my nerves. More to the point, I was getting on my own nerves for not being able to let go of some discouragement and worry that I was feeling.

In the course of waa-waa-ing again about all this to the Team, I first got a very clear and pointed suggestion (command?): “Look where you’re going—and don’t look down!” And in that same moment, much to my surprise I got a vivid mental picture of a story from the Bible that I’d heard many times in my childhood.

It was the story of Jesus walking on the water. His disciples were in a boat and the seas were rough and they looked up and saw Christ walking toward them on the stormy surface. He called to one of them, Peter, and urged him to step out of the boat and walk toward him. Peter obeyed and found himself walking across this stormy sea toward Jesus’ outstretched hand—until he took his eyes off Christ and started looking down at his feet and at the choppy, churning waves. At which point he sank like a stone.

I wasn’t expecting Biblical imagery in response to my predicament and so I asked the Team to ‘splain themselves .

It can be a very difficult thing for you to hear and accept that you never really improve any situation by focusing on what’s going wrong. You never really solve a problem by focusing on the problem. You never get yourself to a place that feels better by focusing on what feels bad (but don’t tell the psychologists that).

A more precise and important way of putting it is that you cannot move forward in the direction of your dreams and desires when you are focused on the fear or the worry of failure. You cannot move in the direction of what you want when you are insisting upon staring at what is, where you are.

In fact we would encourage you to never pay attention to what is unless it is delightful to do so. Never give your attention to “what’s real” or “what’s true” unless that reality or that truth feels joyful or hopeful or comforting or reassuring or encouraging . . . For as long as you are giving your attention to anything that distresses or concerns or confuses or frustrates or scares you . . . then you are holding yourself in a place where the joy or the fulfillment or the love or the appreciation or the satisfaction cannot flow freely to you. You are stuck in a place that feels bad and you are stuck there for no reason other than that being what you are choosing to focus on.

There are any number of examples or stories or illustrations of this fact, including the one you’ve remembered. Anytime someone says to the one up on the roof or the ladder or crossing the rickety rope bridge: “Don’t look down!” they are essentially saying the same thing. The very best way to get where you want to be is to fix your gaze on that point—if only in your imagination—and don’t take your eyes off it. Walk steadily in the direction that you are looking . . . because the second that you take your attention off where you want to be and start looking at what’s going on around you, then you falter or fumble or stumble . . . or sink.

No genius inventor ever conjured up a revolutionary new approach by getting stuck in his or her fixation on what was not going well. No one ever amassed a fortune by focusing on their poverty. No one ever got well by ruminating on how awful they felt or found themselves in a satisfying relationship by obsessing about their loneliness.

You are as continually and completely supported in your progress—in your stepping out of the boat—as any apostle in any parable or story real or mythical. You have access to that same outstretched hand and those same reassuring eyes if you will allow yourself to remember that You are part of a Universe that wants only your success and joy and satisfaction.

Keep your eyes on that point on the horizon that calls to you. Let nothing and no one distract you from where you want to be. Make any other facts or figures, problems or conditions, “truths” or "realities” irrelevant . . . Remember where you are going and no matter what’s going on around you or beneath you . . . don’t look down . . . and you will step easily and assuredly across any raging sea toward your desires.

My minister dad would be so pleased to know that I am still learning lessons dating back to Sunday School. I think. In any case, I’ve felt much freer of that discouragement since getting this message. I know too well that keeping my eye on the horizon rather than on whatever’s raging or nagging or nipping at my heels is easier said than done sometimes. But now there’s a clearer image of that outstretched hand—or hands—and the seemingly miraculous calm that accompanies moving toward it or them. It leaves me so much less to worry about . . . so much more to step faithfully toward . . . and all that leaves me/Them stepping much more lightly and feeling for the moment, reassuringly complete.

Keeping Score--The Perils of Progress

There are days when I wake up feeling like the world is truly my oyster. These are days when my mood starts out at good and just gets better, when all the colors of my life look brighter, when all the flowers smell sweeter, and I am noticing one compelling piece of evidence after another of the magic of being alive on this planet.

And then there are days when I seem to start out wanting to pull the covers over my head and it just goes uphill from there. I notice only the things I don’t like. I struggle and strain against the conditions or circumstances of my experience and I feel afraid or sad or worried or frustrated. I conclude that my life is a mess. I feel like I’ve been left behind or like I’m stuck where I am when I want so much to be somewhere else. And worst of all---I am royally pissed at myself for feeling that way. Nothing I want seems to be coming fast enough and so I start to worry about what will happen if it never comes? What if this is it?

And so in the midst of all this fretful me-bashing, I ask the Shower Team: “Why am so afraid of nothing changing? How can I be at peace where I am when I so don’t want my life to stay the way it is?”

To begin, there are some questions in response to your question. What conditions would you need in order to feel safe? What conditions would you need in order to feel comfort? Or joy? What needs to be, in order for you to look at you and feel good? Feel at home? Who or what decides your worth? What are your criteria for judging yourself a success or for judging your life a successful or happy life? How will you know when you have achieved this worthy, happy, successful, joyful life you want?

You continue to believe that you need this or that to change in order to feel complete or to feel that you’ve accomplished the level of success or fulfillment or abundance or connection that meets whatever standard you are accepting as the one that applies to you. You are believing that you must prove yourself. You are believing that there is a panel of judges or one supreme judge somewhere evaluating your progress and that you will be rewarded or punished in one way or another for the extent to which you carry out some task or mission or even to the extent to which you manifest some dream.

What you are doing is practicing conditional love. You are saying to yourself . . . I will love you, contingent upon your satisfactory progress toward the determined goals. I will grant you temporary approval or temporary affection, provided you are moving forward at an acceptable pace, provided there is sufficient evidence of your following through and making an appropriate level of progress. But understand, that this approval or affection or acceptance that has been granted to you can be suspended without notice at any time if your performance begins to suffer in any discernible way.

This is the kind of ‘love’ that you are offering to yourself. And this is the reason why your relationship to yourself so often feels so shaky and so unstable and so insecure. You are constantly looking over your own shoulder, constantly keeping score, constantly tracking and monitoring yourself—and constantly ready to take disciplinary action when you judge yourself to be falling down on the job or not meeting any of your established performance standards.

What we so want to encourage you to do instead, is to see and to find your way to the belief that you cannot fail. You cannot screw up this life you’re living here . . . because no matter where you find yourself, no matter what conditions you may be observing or experiencing, the You that sees and knows you from a broader perspective, can ONLY feel unconditional love and approval and acceptance for you. There are Universal forces continually offering you such an expansive and powerful stream of adoration and approval and appreciation that you can’t even imagine it.

The You that is always connected to that stream always approves, always offers love and support, and always waits for the you that is here banging around in all this variety of experience to somehow remember that you cannot get it wrong, that no one who is connected to All That Is is judging you, that there is nothing you must do . . . nothing you must accomplish . . . nothing you must prove . . . in order to receive the love that is yours to feel, whenever you can stop holding yourself back from it.

Unconditional love is perhaps the most difficult thing for you to grasp from your physical perspective because so much and so many conspire to persuade you that love only comes as a result of your lovable actions. What you seldom truly understand is that the “love” you are believing comes to you as a result of lovable action is not really love at all. It is payment for services rendered. It is an exchange—you do this for me and I will reward you with my approval or affection. That is as far removed from real, genuine, unconditional love as it gets. You do not require your children, fresh from the womb, to behave lovably in order for you to hold them in your affectionate, appreciative embrace. You love your pets even when they behave badly. And yet you still hold this belief that you are only as lovable as your behavior or your progress or your attitude.

The Universe offers you truly, eternally unconditional love. The You who is connected to All That Is offers you truly, eternally unconditional love. You see yourself as flawed and lacking and needing to be better. The Universe sees you as perfect just the way you are. You see yourself on a mission to prove your value and to push yourself to achieve some arbitrary standard of excellence or to reach some imagined next rung on the evolutionary ladder. The Universe sees you as a divinely complete being having a joyously expansive experience that is yours to create in whatever way you choose. When you understand this, when you begin to remember and to receive this knowledge and to feel it flowing into your awareness, then you can begin to release the fears you have about this condition or that condition changing or not changing, about this connection or that connection needing to be or to be different.

When you understand how unconditionally loved you are, then you can begin to live your life from a truly perfect place of peace and you can begin to create your experience with the kind of joy and anticipation and expectation of fulfillment that is your true legacy as the blessed, beloved children of God, of Source. of the Universe that you all are, no matter what kind of magic—or mess—you think you are making.

Is it just me, or is it taking longer and longer responses for me to really get it? It never ceases to amaze me the lengths that often seem necessary for me to hear—and believe—the message that I am fine just the way I am. The skepticism and/or amnesia around that topic is truly astounding. But in those moments when I manage to remember it or hear it—and if I’m really lucky—feel it and believe it . . . what a sweet sweet gift it is. It’s a gift that keeps on giving . . . and that gives me the blessed relief of feeling—for the moment—unconditionally complete.

Tricks My Mother Taught Me

My sister has never been an early riser. When she was in junior high and high school, she had a particularly tough time of it getting herself out of bed in the mornings to get ready for school. Now and then when my mother would go to her room to wake her up, my sister would complain that she wasn’t feeling well and thought she should stay home.

Mom’s response was almost always the same: “Well, get up and take your shower and then see how you’re feeling.” Call it mother’s intuition or whatever but she knew that more often than not once my sister got up and showered she would feel miraculously better and she would find the energy needed to start her day.

I was reminded about this recently as I was giving some thought to what picks me up when I’m dragging or feeling down physically or emotionally—and specifically, to the idea of there being routines or rituals or actions I can take that reliably lift my spirits or help to restore some sense of balance when I’ve been feeling a little off my game . . . so I asked the Shower Team about the idea of tricks or gimmicks that somehow work as triggers. Do we have switches that we can learn to throw that can reliably and effectively snap us out of our doldrums?

Your mother’s accurate understanding of how to respond to your sister in that situation was based as much or more on attentive observation as it was on any special intuition. She did with your sister what many of you do too little of with yourselves and that is, pay attention to what gets energy flowing and then apply that knowledge in a deliberate way. It was a thoughtful response based on repeated observation rather than a knee jerk reaction. She could have taken your sister at her word and called in a physician to examine her. She could have searched for symptoms and probably would have found something that qualified and immediately prescribed some remedy. She could have ignored your sister’s complaints or dismissed them out right but instead of any of those responses, she offered one that invited your sister to move into a place of releasing resistance and allowing her own energy to resume its flow, even if it was done somewhat begrudgingly.

It’s a simple example of a profound truth about the way that any of you can at any time utilize what you’ve observed about yourselves in order to get your own energy flowing and to allow yourselves to begin to feel a little better relative to any topic. If you pay attention to yourselves over even a fairly short period of time you will easily come to see “what works” for you in terms of actions, either external or internal, that in effect, recharge your battery or give you a much needed boost of morale or offer you a bridge to a better feeling train of thought.

What you are essentially doing in any of those cases is clearing or cleaning up your own vibration . . . as though you were literally standing under a cleansing shower and letting the thoughts or patterns of thought clinging to you that weigh you down, rinse off, and leaving you feeling lighter, and cleaner and more easily able to see yourself and your circumstances from a fresher and more energized perspective. When you succeed at this, you’re allowing yourself to be reminded of what you always know on some level—that all is well. You’re actually allowing yourself to once again be the remarkably resilient and innately optimistic and buoyant beings that you are.

These ‘tricks or gimmicks” are as varied and diverse as you are. It can be any game you like to play. Any music you love hearing. Any scene or vista you love looking at. Any uplifting book you like to read. Any physical exertion that increases your pulse and in the process, pumps vitalizing blood through your veins. It can be a fragrance that reminds you of something or someone you cherish. It can be a connection with someone who stimulates or soothes you. Or in your case (and your sister’s) . . . some time in the shower . . .

It doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is that you notice. What’s important in this as in so many other things you want, is to pay attention to what brings the feelings you want closer to you . . . When are you happy? When are you content? When are you
satisfied? When are you stimulated? When are you feeling alive and eager and optimistic? What are the conditions that lend themselves to these feelings for you? When you notice the transition from down in the dumps to feeling on track again . . . also observe and make note of what helped facilitate that shift.

The key is to pay attention to how you feel and to what moves you in one direction or the other. When you understand better what facilitates those shifts for you then you begin to have the tools---the tricks, if you will—to more consciously and more deliberately orchestrate or engineer those shifts for yourself, just as reliably and effectively as your mother managed to get your sister up and out the door to school on those days when she could just have easily stayed in bed.

So apparently tricks aren’t just for kids who don’t feel like going to school in the morning. And apparently it’s never too late to learn something else from one’s mother. Clearly my sister wasn’t the only one getting the message that jumping in the shower could be good for the old attitude. Nevertheless, I think I’ll start trying to expand my list of tried and true triggers. In the process, perhaps I'll manage to remind myself more often that all is well, and that I am, in or out of the shower, one very capable and fresh-scrubbed trickster who is, for the moment, buoyantly complete.

You Wanna Be Loved By You

Ah love songs. Gotta love ‘em--or hate ‘em. I was telling a friend not long ago that there used to be certain music by certain artists that I would listen to as a teenager or young adult, whenever I was feeling especially lonely or lovelorn. I called it my “wallow music”.

I’m much healthier than that these days (seriously!). And even though you would think that by now the world actually would have had enough of silly love songs, we still can’t seem to get our fill. Probably it’s because we can’t seem to get enough love—or in some cases, to find it at all, even though we are always looking.

What is it that makes love feel so elusive? I asked the Shower Team . . . why is it that it seems we are perpetually seeking and so seldom finding the love we long for?

With the possible exception of dollars, there is no topic that more consistently trips you up than the subject of love—both in the romantic and in the broader sense of the word. You are continually asking for some greater or fuller or more satisfying expression of it in your experience and more often than not, lamenting or complaining or longing for more of it than you feel that you’re receiving.

The good news about that is that it means you are recognizing on some level that you should have more of it than you are allowing. The You that understands love understands that you have an endless supply of it, a bottomless well, a limitless reservoir of love and adoration that is yours for the receiving but for whatever reason, you’re not letting yourself see or believe or live that, and so you are understandably upset about this gap between what You know is yours and what you are allowing you to have. That gap ticks you off and rightly so.

Where you get out of whack about it is in your determined efforts to find the love everywhere but where it really is. You look to lovers, friends, family, colleagues, pets . . . You place personal ads and you post online profiles. You go to the places where you think people who might love you are waiting . . . You send out invitations and measure your worthiness for love by the response rate. And the real kicker is that you convince yourself that your lovability is directly proportionate to the extent to which those around you are telling you how lovable you are. You are constantly taking polls and as often as not, losing the race.

The fact is that you are truly looking for love in all the wrong places. More precisely, you are looking for love from everyone but the one who can really give it to you. But as is so often the case, you resist the obvious or simple answer. If someone suggests to you that you must first understand and believe in and receive the love that You have for you, then you dismiss this notion as another piece of airy fairy, self-love fluff that can’t possibly crack the tough nut that real love surely is. You persist in writing this script where love is an elusive or even cruel master or mistress . . . You choose your baggage or your drama over the simple solution that is always available to you. And it is always available to you because You are always offering it to yourself.

The You that knows better, the You that truly sees you and knows you, the You who can do nothing but adore you and support you and respect and appreciate you is always offering truly, deeply, sweetly unconditional love to you that is yours anytime anywhere anyhow you let it in . . . That You has loved you for longer than there’s been a physical you to love . . . that You will love you longer than this physical you will be around to receive it . . . that You loved you through every cut or scrape or bruise or injury or insult or deeply felt wound or scar or trauma . . . through every smile or giggle or song or dance or shout or squeal of joy . . . through every letdown and through every triumph. That You knows and cares about every dream and desire, every hope and fear, every wish or doubt . . . and that You loves you without qualification and without restriction and without limit and without your needing to do or say or be anything other than who You are. That You even loves the you who is insisting that you need something other than or more than the love that You is always offering.

So you can scoff at the notion of needing to love yourself. You can write it off as so much drivel and go on with your quest for finding the love you seek in some as yet undiscovered pair of eyes or hands. But we promise you, that the love you seek will never flow fully to you until you understand and on some level can allow yourself to feel how deeply and poignantly and powerfully what you really want is to feel You loving you---the way You already do, the way You always have, and the way You always will.

Well that’s an interesting twist on an old standard. “You wanna be loved by You, just You . . . and nobody else but You . . .” Okay, maybe not nobody else. Still this revised love song sounds like it might be one worth humming. It sure beats wallowing, and I figure less wallowing has got to be a step in the direction of being more genuinely, lovingly and lovably, complete.

The River's Still Flowing

Channels never get depressed, right? Oracles never wonder or worry or wish things felt better than they do. Believe that and I’ve got a rainbow bridge to sell you . . .

Discouragement seems to be part of the human journey. As a poet on the mystic’s path I used to think that melancholia was just grist for the word mill. Whoever heard of a perky poet? Not that I really ever needed to be concerned about that.

But if we can’t or perhaps don’t even want to fully escape sorrow or grief or discouragement or wistfulness or longing, what is our best hope for managing those feelings instead of being at the mercy of them?

I asked the Shower Team: “What about the bluer shades of emotion? How can joy lead us when we are sitting in the middle of grief or despair –or even when we are reaching for comfort for those swimming in sorrow?"

The river that is your joy or zest or passion or peace of mind never stops flowing. It does not depend upon anyone or anything and its flow is eternally uninterrupted. There is no dam you can build that is big or wide or strong enough to hold it back for very long. You or anyone else can sit beside that river, refusing to dip so much as a toe in the water. You can sit on the bank of that river with your head in your hands, refusing to see it or with your hands over your ears refusing to hear it . . . but the river still flows.

There is never a time or a circumstance or a condition where you do not have access to this knowledge. It is always within your capability to turn and see the river flowing, to hear that rush of the current of joy moving, and to decide to place yourself in it and let it carry you or to stand where you are, refusing to budge . . . but even then, eventually the river will overtake you. It will move outside its banks and sweep you downstream no matter how much you resist or run from it.

When you or someone you love sits there, refusing to see or experience that river flowing, remember that you know better. Remember that the river is there. Remember that no matter how insistent you or your loved one may be about not getting into the water and moving with it, the knowledge of the river is still yours. Also important to remember is that the river never refuses or reprimands you. There never is and never will be a time when you decide to return to that flow when the river will dry up on you and say, “Too bad—you waited too long and now it’s too late.” Or “You should have jumped in days or weeks or months ago and now you’ll just have to sit there and suffer until we say it’s okay to get back in.” You may blame or punish yourself—and often do—for your own reluctance or refusal to rejoin the flow but the flow never judges you or resists you or does anything but welcome you back when you are ready.

If you are reaching to comfort another or for comfort for yourself, let your knowledge of the river be what you are offering even if it is not spoken. Let yourself know—even if you or someone you are comforting cannot feel it in that moment that Well Being flows to and through you and/or them. Let yourself know that in any moment, even as you weep, even as you rage, even as you give your attention exclusively to some loss that you have experienced or some deeply held desire that you have not experienced yet, that the river still flows, still beckons, still offers a sweet, lovely, gentle ride to joy. You can jump in any time—as tentatively or as eagerly, as gradually or as swiftly, as smoothly or as awkwardly, as primly or as wildly as you choose.

I may still be standing back from the rope swinging out over the lake or hesitating at the base of the diving board . . . but I can hear the water moving . . . Even if I need to sit here on the rocks a little longer, letting myself feel the harder edges and the colder surface . . . somehow knowing the river waits . . . hearing it out there . . . takes some of the edge off whatever it is I’m focusing on right here and now. And it lets me breathe a little easier, a little calmer . . . and it leaves me feeling—if only just a little—more encouraged, more optimistic, and more complete.

Just Believe . . . In What??

I used to have a necklace I liked to wear. It was a popular design—just a simple pendant engraved with the word “Believe.” It was a gift from an ex-significant other. Wonder whatever happened to it (the necklace not the S.O.).

In my study of astrology I’ve learned that every sign has some associated word or motto. The one I’ve most often heard connected to my sun sign (Pisces) is “Believe.” Growing up as a preacher’s son, I heard about faith a lot and have tried to get my head around the idea of that “substance of things hoped for” and “evidence of things not seen.”

Sometimes I’ll think I’ve almost got it down, that I’m ready to shout “I’m a believer!” But even in those exultant moments, the question that follows is, “believer in what—or whom?” Never mind the rest of the times when I tend to feel like a pack mule trying to catch up to the caboose on the faith train.

So, to the Shower Team I wondered, “What about faith? What do—or can—I believe in that has any substance I can recognize?”

In your asking of that question you are really asking, in a way, “What is real?” You want to know where you can justifiably or reliably put your faith so that you won’t be disappointed. You want to know what you can count on. And in your case, specifically, you are also asking how to manage disappointments, how to proceed with any sort of legitimate joy when things are not going the way you want them to.

There are two parts to the answer to your question and they are: 1) Freedom and 2) Well Being. First of all, freedom is a part of your experience that you rarely allow yourself to fully understand or appreciate. You are so free to choose your focus, choose your perspective, choose your response to any circumstance and yet you seldom truly ‘feel’ free. You are so free that you can choose to feel bound and as often as not, that is the choice you make. You exercise your freedom, paradoxically, by choosing to believe that you are a pawn or a puppet or a victim or a lucky or unlucky drifter through the random happenstance of life. You choose to believe that you are ever subject to this person or that situation or this incident or that condition . . . and in your choice to believe this, you give up most of your power to create a reality that feels free.

It’s not surprising. You have nearly everyone and everything around you participating in this sort of choosing. You learn from nearly everywhere you look that life is some kind of crap shoot or at best, that the Universe is just too mysterious a place for your limited mind to grasp and so you must resign yourself to feeling tossed about on some inexplicable ocean of events that you can’t make heads or tails of . . . that the best you can hope for is the blessing of a relatively smooth ride for whatever karmic or other reasons that might favor you.

Here’s where the second part of the answer to your question comes in. In all this choosing to see the Universe as a chaotic or unpredictable or even benevolent but unknowable place where you may or may not dodge the big bullets . . . you are choosing not to see a truth that you do know and can feel if you allow yourself to— the truth that Well Being abounds. You talk yourself out of this truth all the time, but you can’t ever truly escape it or completely forget it and no matter how crappy your conditions seem to have gotten, deep down inside there is always some part of you that cannot deny it.

You can lose touch with who you really are to the point where you don’t have easy access to this truth. You can choose so often and so stubbornly to believe otherwise that you can have one heck of a time remembering . . . but there is no corner of the Universe dark enough for you to hide from the Well Being that abounds. As soon as you find your way back to a quiet or calm enough space inside you . . . as soon as you shift ever so slightly your focus away from the trouble you are having . . . you will hear it in a bird singing or a child laughing . . . you will see it in the leaves stirring in the breeze . . . in your garden growing or the river flowing sweetly toward the ocean . . . or the sun setting over the mountains . . . you will feel it in your heart, sooner or later, in a way that you cannot help but recognize and cannot resist. It is that true and that powerful and that known to you at the deepest level of your being.

So when you ask the question “What can I believe in?” you have merely distracted yourself from what you already know. You have exercised your freedom in some way that has momentarily confused or disoriented you . . . You’ve temporarily forgotten where you come from and who you are and where you are going and that this journey you are on is yours to choose freely . . . to experience however you choose. The slightest shift in your focus back to what you already know will never fail to bring you relief from any discomfort you have chosen, and the more you move your focus back to what you already know, the more relief you will feel. The flow back to the fullness of what you know may take a little time and a little practice . . . but your freedom to feel that Well Being anytime you choose . . . will guide you and comfort you and continually remind you what—and who—it is that you can believe in.

Maybe I should try harder to find that necklace . . . My choices seem to be to persist in arguing with what I already know or to let myself remember and recognize, again, how well everything really is being. I’ll take the reminder—and in making that choice I/We are already feeling relieved and at least until the next distraction, complete.

Keep the Keys in Your Pocket

There’s nothing like a relationship with another member of my species to make me feel like I’ve forgotten every spiritual principle I think I’ve learned (not to mention every top dollar’s worth of therapy). Just when I think I’ve made some real strides on the road to more evolved relating, some new connection comes along that manages to reflect back to me a me I barely recognize. It can leave me feeling like a clueless bundle of worries or frustrations or insecurities.

In addition to wondering why channels aren’t immune to such woes, I asked the Shower Team to help me understand how it is that I can so easily lose my bearings and forget myself in the context of an important connection to another? Where am I missing the mark?

You typically approach relationships from the standpoint of believing that the success or failure of the relationship will depend largely upon the extent to which someone behaves or responds to you in a way that pleases you. And when something about the relationship displeases you, your typical approach to resolving the problem is to look at what the other person is doing that you don’t like and to try to either get them to change or to force yourself into a position of compromise where you resign yourself to being unhappy about this thing or that thing that they can’t or won’t change in order to please you. In essence, you either push or you pout. Or both.

What you often don’t stop to think about is how backwards that all is, and how you are constantly setting yourself—and others—up to fail or to fall short. The fact is that no one can do all the things that they would need to do to continually be pleasing you nor can you do all the things that you need to do in order to be continually pleasing another. And yet you treat your relationships as if this is the standard, and you punish yourselves and each other when either of both of you discover—as you inevitably must—that you can’t cut it.

What we would like to encourage you to do is to understand that when there’s a problem with someone you care about, when you’re not feeling good about a relationship that you’re in, it ultimately has nothing to do with anything the other person is doing or not doing. If you are not liking the way you feel in your connection to another, it is always because you have for some reason decided to make the other person responsible for how you feel. You have made it their job to see to it that all is well with you—a job that no one is equipped to manage, except you.

It’s as if each time you become involved with someone on some level, each time you decide that you care about someone, you hand over the keys to your house and in effect say, “Here come on in and do what you will . . . change anything you don’t like, redecorate as you please . . . make any improvements that you see fit . . . just don’t leave a mess . . . be sure you don’t break anything or put anything out of its place . . . make yourself at home just make sure that I like whatever you decide to do . . .

You give to someone else the authority to decide what goes where and how you feel and then you are surprised that it nearly always ends up feeling unpleasant for you. And then when things do go wrong, you don’t rest for trying to figure out why they would do such a thing—when the problem all along was that you gave them the power to do it.

What we’re saying is that you must recognize that anytime you start to hand over control of your well being to another—no matter how benevolent the other may be—you will sooner or later feel the warning from your Inner Being reminding you that you are once again pretending not to be the one who’s in charge. You are once again headed down the path of using someone else as your excuse for being unhappy when all along, all you needed to do was to keep the keys in your own pocket where they belong.

When you are feeling unhappy in your connection to another, stop and recognize that you’ve given away something that is yours . . . your power to choose your own happiness . . . your power to be the one who decides where the furniture of your life goes . . . what color scheme works for you . . . how soft or loud the music should be . . what feels like home. You were never intended to be a guest in your own life. Take ownership of your abode . . . realize that you are the only one with real access to and control over your happiness and then you can be the sort of host that is truly comfortable in your own space and in your own skin—and who is truly appreciated by anyone you invite to share it (space or skin).

Clearly in my case, the keys are a figure of speech, since there hasn’t been an occasion to hand the real ones over in quite some time now. But there’s a key point here about keeping my power in my pocket that has the jingle of truth about it. Maybe if I can stop forgetting where to put the keys to my well being, I’ll actually come to a place where I’m no longer locking myself out of my own peace of mind. I’m reaching into my pocket now just to make sure they’re where I left them . . . and just that simple act—real and symbolic--leaves Me/Us, for the moment, safely and securely at home—and complete.

Making Peace With Where You Are (Repost)

There are times when the very best thing we can hear is something we've heard before . . . a loving, perfectly-timed reminder that just rings true--again.

That's where I find myself today . . . and this was The Team's gently--offered response: a message that I've heard--and posted--here before, and one that I apparently can't hear too many times . . .

One of my favorite quotes is from psychologist Carl Rogers, who said, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I can change.”

That statement has always had a sort of zen quality to me. Lately it’s also become a recurring question in my mind relating to things I hear or read, especially in spiritual literature, about making peace with where I am. In fact a friend wrote to me recently after a blog post, and he was wondering if I really buy into this business about the best way to improve a bad situation being to let go of needing things to be different in order to feel better

I’m a sucker for a good paradox, so I asked the Shower Team, “How are we supposed to make peace with where we are when where we are sucks?” (Note to self: Reduce usage of word “suck” in future blog posts) . . . .

Making peace with where you are doesn’t mean what you tend to assume that it means. You hear that and you interpret it to mean that you’re just supposed to be resigned to whatever fate you feel is being thrust upon you or you are just supposed to grin like an idiot and babble affirmations no matter how miserable you are. A much better way to say it is, “Make peace with YOU—wherever you are.” Because the point is, that YOU are truly fine . . . truly okay . . . truly blessed . . . truly loved and supported . . . no matter where you are. No matter what you’ve created. No matter what kind of mess you feel you’ve made. No matter how long or hard you’ve been struggling. No matter how beaten up or abandoned you feel. No matter how worthless or stupid or inept or foolish you feel—or believe others feel that you are.

Too often what most of you try to do is to improve how you feel from the outside in. You observe the conditions or circumstances that you are experiencing and your knee jerk reaction is to say, “I’ll feel better when that’s different.” Or “I’ll feel better when this is no longer the case.” So you change your hair style or your wardrobe. You go on a diet. You buy a new house. You quit your job. You leave your mate. You move to another neighborhood or city or state or country. Some of you would head for another planet if you could—always trusting in the same illusion: that it’s where you are that makes the difference. “If I can just be over there, not here—everything will be fine. I’LL be fine as soon as I’m over there.”

It is very hard for you to hear us say, “It doesn’t matter where you are” and understand it much less believe it. You hear words like “wherever you go, there are you are,” and you laugh and you recognize some truth in it but then you go right back to shopping for your new clothes or your new partner or your new career . . . What we want so much for you to understand is that, while these externals may distract you from how bad you feel or in some cases, even allow you to take the much longer route to feeling better about yourself—there is a much simpler, swifter way for you to get your bearings and to feel the power that you always have to feel better no matter what’s going on in your life.

YOU are never a mess. YOU never need a makeover. YOU never need to be anything other than who YOU really are. And until you allow yourself to be at peace with YOU—apart from any circumstance or condition or situation . . . until you understand that YOU are blessed and adored and supported and perfect as YOU are, then you will be constantly striving for some other way to be. You will be constantly trying to remodel your life based on the mistaken belief that how your house looks to passers by has anything to do with how it feels as a home. You can create a showplace that anyone looking at from the outside in will admire and applaud. And it will still feel like an empty, hollow, cold, lonely space until you understand that YOU are the life in it. You are the warmth in it. You are the spirit that inhabits your life and makes it livable. What you must understand is that YOU are your home, that peace is a choice you make . . . . . it is a recognition that what matters is how you feel in your skin and in your heart . . . and that everything you really want is right there where you are.

When you understand that you don’t need anything to change in order to be at peace, that there are no renovations needed, no permits to apply for, no sins to confess and atone for, no sentences to serve or fines to pay, then you are free to change anything you want, simply because you enjoy the changing of it. It becomes a game you’re free to play because it’s fun to play it . . . not an act of desperation or a deception that anything going on around you in any way determines who you really are or a driving need to match your life to something you’ve seen in a catalog or a movie or an infomercial or a sacred text or a self-help book--or for that matter, a blog. Make peace with YOU, wherever you are because if you don’t, you’ll have no real peace, no matter where you are.

Hm. Wonder if that blog crack was intended for anyone in particular . . . I’ve certainly learned the long and hard way that I can’t move far enough away from anything that’s holding me back from feeling the way I want to feel about my life. I’m still not sure how much happiness money might buy—it’s a theory I wouldn’t mind having the opportunity to test somewhere down the road. In the meantime, it seems worth the effort to see how much I can like the me in the middle of whatever it is I’m not liking. And that leaves me, for the moment, paradoxically complete.