Helping Someone Help Themself

Have you ever tried to help someone who doesn’t seem able or willing to help themselves? Frustrating, isn’t it. You might see clearly what changes your friend could make to alleviate or completely remove their stress and emotional pain. But what they seem to want is for the world to change around them, to enable them to remain as they are, and still have their situation improve.

You might even try to point out all the positive things your friend has in their life – a home, family, or a job for example. What you hear back is, “The roof leaks, my family is in constant conflict and the job is running me into the ground”.

The world can change around all those things. The roof can be mended. The family can undergo counselling. Your friend can find a new job. Does that make your friend feel better, or do they find new problems on which to focus. “The house needs painting. I don’t like my son’s girlfriend. I miss the coffee shop around the corner from my old job.”

This could go on for many iterations. Many people have a great capacity for focusing on the negative.  There is always something that could be better, something more to be done, something else that needs to change before they can be happy.

The issue isn’t that the world is not perfect. If that was the key to happiness, no one would ever be happy. Ever. Our feelings come from inside, they are not thrust on us from external sources. Our thoughts and perceptions about the world are built on those feelings.  When we focus on positive thoughts and feelings, we are open to receiving positive feedback from the world. The reverse is also true. What is inside us manifests around us to reinforce what we already believe.

Which is how you came to be sitting at your friends table, drinking coffee, trying to explain to them what they see is not what you see. And why they are not listening.  The world can change all it wants, but your friend won’t notice any of it unless they can make a fundamental shift in how they feel and think , in their way of being in the world.

And it’s not your fault that you can’t make your friend see that.

You can’t find someone else’s inner peace for them.  You can help them, but that person has to be willing to help themself. You can work with them, but you can’t do their work for them. You can be there for support, but you can’t make them accept that they are creating their own reality. Only they can do that.  What you can do is be an example of what change looks like, you can send light their way in the hope that they can eventually receive it, and you can be a constant in their lives who refuses to give up.

Just for today I will be kind to all living things

See a list of Reiki precepts.

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Changing the World

Physical Political World Map
Physical Political World Map (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From childhood I took for granted that I interacted in the physical world with other people who believed likewise. I wasn’t particularly aware of that, nor did I articulate it consciously – it was just reality. The individuals who populated my corner of the world had more similarities than differences – it was a fairly homogenous small town. There was a community spirit – people could work together for the common good, but even in that environment there was an understanding that there were limits. People had their own problems and issues, their own families to support, their own jobs, drives, ambitions. And so I learned that it was fundamentally a separatist world.

My world has expanded but hasn’t changed all that much, except for the scale, the degree of separatism, and the escalation of conflict around it. Politics and religion across the world seem especially entangled and entrenched, with different factions unable or unwilling to compromise with, have respect for, or even tolerate other factions. Even in the land of the free there seems to be a civil war along those lines, although it is being fought with money and power instead of guns, tanks and missiles.

Yet there is an underlying wave of change that has been growing from grass roots. A way of being, of perceiving the world, of realizing its holistic and spiritual nature.  There’s a growing awareness that we are all part of the same interdependent community of earth, and that we each have a role in that community.  But I reckon you already know that.

Maybe that dichotomy between the holistic and the separatist point of view has always been there. I suspect that what’s really different is that I’m more aware of it now.

My perception has been changing over the last couple of years along with my spiritual development. I’m increasingly aware that everything I once took for granted as physical reality is created from a single, universal life force.  That means we are all connected. Of course, not everyone can or wants to see that interconnectivity.  Old paradigms die hard, which may explain some of what the world is experiencing these days.

The “us and them” perspective is a contrivance to create the diverse panorama of earth.  The diversity is for us to explore and celebrate. It can also challenge us. Unfortunately, diversity is also used to draw battle lines. Suspicion and fear turn to anger, resentment and hostility. We see it on a large scale, and it can feel overwhelming.   But if you break that down into its components, isn’t large scale conflict an amalgamation of the interdependent interactions between the individuals of the world?

We cannot change the world to match our ideals. We can only change ourselves to be the people we aspire to be in that ideal world. And in doing so, we change the world.

Be True to You

We all have a desire to love and be loved. We want to share our lives with someone, not live them alone. We want to have the kind of intimacy where someone thoroughly knows us deep down inside and we them.  Yet, in an effort to find that special someone, we often try to pretend to be someone other than who we really are – someone “better”, to lesser or greater extents, whatever that might mean.

Behind that pretence is the underlying question: Are you happy with yourself. “Of course I am”, you might think. And maybe you are, but then why are you trying to be somebody else? Maybe you’ve done some internal stock taking and decided you come up short. We are, after all, our own worst critics.

When it comes to that crucial first impression it can be tempting to appear to be more successful, more refined, more developed mentally, physically, socially, spiritually, etc. than we actually perceive ourselves to be, which begs the question ”who are you trying to impress”. The “you” behind your ego might think, “Isn’t it obvious. I’m trying to impress myself.”

Time goes on. Your façade becomes more embellished.  “Yes, I love Monet”, you say, while making a mental note to Google Monet when you get home. Your interest in yoga elicits a an invitation to join in a yoga class, which you turn down because you’re a little rusty, neglecting to mention that your entire experience of yoga consists of two classes in college twenty years ago. They want three children and you want two Ferraris. “We’ll talk about it later”, you say. You want to talk about it never, because you don’t want to shatter the illusion of this prefect…pretty good…well, good enough relationship.

Sometimes the pretence fails before the clock strikes midnight. Sometimes people can sustain it over several dates, into a full-time relationship, or long enough to move in together. In some cases the pretence can be sustained into marriage. When there is any longevity, there is a good chance that your partner is complicit in the pretence.

True natures eventually dominate. The facades begin to crack. Discoveries are made.  There is a pack of cigarettes in the night table that must be ten years old, because you’ve both been non-smokers for over a decade. The muesli box has been refilled with Captain Crunch.  The alledged Thich Nhat Hanh book on the Kindle is really Football Digest. You’re jokes are no longer funny, if they ever were.  You just can’t take one more episode of DR. Phil.

When the end comes, your partner looks at you sadly and says, “You’re not the person I fell in love with.” And they’re right. You never were that person.

Maybe some of us are so afraid of rejection that we would rather be rejected for who we are not than take the chance of being rejected for who we are. It can be a bit scary to be yourself, especially when so much of the outside world seems geared towards reinforcing the belief that you’re not good enough, then telling you what you need to buy or try to change that.

Stop listening to those people. They don’t know what’s best for you, nor do they care. Listen to your friends, but don’t feel like you have to agree with everything they say. The person you should be listening to most is you, the person who ignored the “ding ding” of the alarm going off back on that first night when you’re date seemed to be just a little too interested in “The X Factor”.

To find the soul mate relationship you were dreaming about back in the first paragraph before everything went pear shaped you first need to have an open and honest relationship with yourself. When you are authentic in yourself, you invite people to be authentic with you. When you are comfortable and accepting of who you are, you attract that comfort and acceptance from others. When you can love yourself as you are, you are open to being loved for who you are. Be true to yourself first, and the rest will follow.

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Changing the Emotional Weather

 

It’s one thing understanding that peace and joy come from within. It’s another thing to actually feel the radiant glow of those positive emotions when clouds of negativity seem so determined to cast their shadows. Emotions can feel as uncontrollable as the weather. While reading Anthony De Mello’s book Awareness, I was inspired to work with managing my own negative emotions as I describe in this post. The more I work with them, the better able I am to keep the clouds away, or at least diminish their effect.

My current practice for dealing with negative emotions involves:

  • Acknowledging them
  • Owning them
  • Not being them

For emotional wellbeing I find I need to acknowledge all my emotions, not just the ones I like. You can’t change what you won’t acknowledge. Ignoring, repressing, pushing away or covering up emotions just doesn’t work. Emotions are the way in which we receive messages from our higher selves, spirit guides, angels and each other. The messages will not be ignored, and the feelings will remain persistent until you get the message.  It’s also a good idea to try to determine what, if any emotions you picked up from someone else along the way, because the message might not be for you.

Once I identify my emotions, I accept that they are my emotions. They do not belong to someone else. I own them. We live in a world where people too often blame others for the way they feel, and for the pain they cause because of those feelings.  We’ve probably all heard the phrase “you made me feel this way.” Indeed, it can often happen that our feelings are brought about because of our experiences with certain people or in certain situations, and I may feel better in myself when I remove myself from those people or places. However, I opened myself to those emotions by placing myself in those situations, whether or not by conscious choice. Even when I pick up emotions empathically, I must own them, even if only temporarily. That means, among other things, they are my responsibility.

Finally, it’s important to distinguish between having the emotion and “being” the emotion.  The emotion is something I feel, it is a part of me, but it is not me.  I don’t need to hand over my personal power and control to an emotion no matter how strong or negative it is. I find it can help sometimes if I look at emotions as though they were weather reports: Tonight’s weather is irritable, with a chance of anxiety by morning.  When it’s raining outside, I know to wear a jacket to stay dry. By tracking my emotional weather, I can prevent there being any negative impact because of it.

In the end, the emotions are still there, but I don’t live in their shadows. Not focusing on the clouds, gives me more opportunity to focus on the sun.

I’d be interested in hearing about your experiences with dealing with your own emotions.

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Healing a Post-Marriage Relationship

There’s a couple I know who divorced a few years ago, separated over ten years ago, and have several children together. They both have good relationships with their children.  The couple relate to each other by avoiding each other as much as possible.

When they first split, there was a mixed ability to have reasonable communication between each other. There were bad days, but there were good days where they still seemed to be able to get along. The more time went on, and the less they communicated, the more they seemed to demonize each other to the point where any communication from one only prompted defensiveness and confrontation from the other.

They must have loved each other once, although you wouldn’t know it now. She claims she never did love him, and never wanted to marry him – he made her do it, although it isn’t clear exactly how he went about doing that. She doesn’t seem to be the sort of person that one could easily make do anything she didn’t want to do. He says he used to think they were in love with each other, but now he believes they couldn’t have been.  He didn’t feel loved, and tried to find it elsewhere. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. So is revisionist history.

They both hurt each other– betrayal, mistrust, distance, lack of respect and intimacy, pushing each other away. Neither of them is innocent.

Here’s the thing. Even though they separated over a decade ago, they are still clinging on to each other. At least they’re clinging to the bad parts – the hurt, the pain and the anger. It’s a grudge match that has gone on so long it seems to fall into the category of, “that’s just the way it is.”

How can they heal this relationship? Clearly, it is a relationship, even if it is thoroughly negative, and exists with barely any interaction.  Well, maybe they can’t heal it, at least not directly.

In order to heal the relationship, I think they need to first heal themselves. They need to find the love and joy within themselves that they did not get from each other.  Indeed, if you can’t find those things in yourself, then you are not going to be able to receive them from anyone else in any enduring way.

As part of that healing, I think they need to find a way to release the negative emotions about each other conjured up by the chatter in their heads that filled the space left by their lack of communication, and realize that most of their relationship is now based on the assumptions conjured up by their imaginations.

I’m sending sacred symbols daily to help them get there. I’m praying that they can achieve that clarity, that healing, forgiveness for each other and themselves and reach some resolution while their children are still young enough to benefit from it.

Taking a Few Moments

So, early this morning I’m in the shower calling in Reiki for the day. I start to hear the babies, awake and crying, impatient to be fed no doubt. It’s hard to tell whether it’s both twin boys or whether our 1 ½ year old daughter is in the mix. My partner is downstairs – she must be waiting for me to get them out of bed.  My natural parental instinct is to do just that – when the call comes you answer. But I also know that I need only a few more minutes, and if I stop now it could be a couple of hours before I can have a bit of solitude to start again (although I’m well practiced at calling in on the run, I prefer being able to focus solely on what I’m doing).

“The babies can wait a couple of minutes,” I tell myself. “They’re fine”. Then I continue on with what I’m doing.  I can still hear the babies in the background, loudly wondering why no one has picked them up yet. After all, It’s been two minutes, maybe three.

I complete a send, step out of the shower and towel off. It’s quiet – my partner must have been up to collect the babies already. I check the bedrooms. All three babies are sound asleep.

This was a test, right?

It’s easy to get distracted. Between work and family responsibilities, I could go from the time I rise to the time I go to bed without stopping for even a cup of coffee and still not get everything done. That would be my excuse for stepping off the path, for not walking the walk.

I’ve learned that it’s crucial to find time to take care of myself, to do the things I want and need to do to nurture my own growth and development. And that feeds back into being able to be more positive and effective when working or taking care of others.   Everything you send out into the world comes from within you, what is within you is what you send out.

This morning I chose to focus on a few moments of inner peace, and the babies went back to sleep.  I wouldn’t recommend that course of action during a four-alarm fire, for example. Yet even when life is packed and exceedingly busy, somehow there is always time and space if you really want it.

 

 

Newton’s Law of Politics

Yin Yang - Ice Fire
Yin Yang – Ice Fire (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Newton’s law is as good an explanation as any for what is going on in American politics these days.  With two months left to go, the red and the blue armies, the colors of this political civil war, are exaggerating, misrepresenting and just plain lying about each other while accusing the other side of doing exactly what they are doing.

Like many people, I’ve got far too emotionally involved for my own good. Sure, I’ve got an opinion about who I’ll vote for, and who I trust least. I have expressed that opinion elsewhere.  People have either pushed back or agreed with me, depending on their own opinions.  On rare occasions, there might be some actual debate about why someone would be better for America, but mostly what I see are negative image bites (images with written sound bites) that disparage the opposing party and are seldom fair, balanced, honest, or accurate.

Watching the conventions, you can see delegates swept up in a campaign frenzy, like fans at some major sporting event rooting for their team to obliterate the other one. But this ain’t Monday Night Football.  A decision is about to be made that will affect over 300 million people (not counting the rest of the world). At this point it appears as though many people will not be mindful about making that decision. Instead, it will be a reactionary decision, pushing against the candidate least liked, with the other candidate getting the vote by default.

Maybe it’s just the wisdom of hindsight kicking in, but I can’t remember a time when the country has suffered such a debilitating polarization.  I get a sense that people are fed up with the system, the politics, the cynical deceit. There are constant negative messages from both sides, meant to instil fear of the other, to put themselves in power, and to distract people from realizing that no one has a clear answer to the 21st century challenges we all face.  But they do know how to push your buttons.

How long does it take to push against a stone wall before it moves? Longer than November, I think.  We need to get away from this polarization, this “us or them” mind-set.  Frankly, we need to apply that to the entire planet, but what hope do we have if we can’t even get the Republican and Democratic leaders to stop sticking their tongues out and making faces at each other.

What we do have is ourselves. Just for today, don’t push. Listen, be open, empathize, understand, seek truth, find the common ground.

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Do You Want to be in Work Today?

I’m acclimating myself to a day job that is everything that the last one was not in so many ways, including the social culture. Even though there are several hundred people working out of a couple of buildings (or maybe because of it) there is an effort made to get people interacting on a social level.  Some of this takes place out of the office. There is an official monthly outing that usually involves a pub of some description. There are also unofficial outings such as last month’s poker night and orienteering event (note: these were two different events. No one was traipsing through the woods looking for a royal flush).

There’s also an effort made to bring a social element to the workplace. For example, a new cafeteria opened last month, and the company commemorated the event by supplying pizza for everyone for lunch.  Every Wednesday mornings there is a free continental breakfast laid out at about nine, after which you can enjoy a game of pool or foosball.  I have an e-mail that tells me the ice cream truck is coming by at four today with a free cone for everyone.

I realize this might reinforce the perception that people who work in technology are overgrown children who don’t have “real” jobs. But here’s what I notice: People at this company interact with each other congenially, with respect, and even with affection in many cases – kind of like a family. They enjoy each other’s company, co-operate willingly, make a team effort, have a sense of accomplishment and a feeling of being appreciated. The company hierarchy is respected, but unobtrusive. Sure, there is a lot of pressure to produce, but that pressure offset by all the preceding and more. You don’t have to be a network architect to realize that people who like working together tend to be more productive, which explains why this culture is supported and propagated from the top down.

Contrast this with the last place I worked. There was no effort made at improving the social culture.  No organized interaction except for what might happen between a few people at a grass roots level.  No effort was made to recognize people as anything more than drones.

As you might expect, anyone I knew well enough to have a conversation with (a much smaller group than at my current company) saw their work as being just a job.  No one was particularly happy to be there beyond being grateful for having a steady paycheque.  People were stressed about having to interact with others, which was sometimes merited by the rudeness and condescension that could be part of those interactions.  Any extra effort I witnessed seemed to be thwarted by people being at cross-purposes with each other.  I’m not saying that the lack of social interaction was the sole reason the project my department was working on collapsed and was resumed by a different set of people in a London office, but it was a factor. When the end came nobody really cared, provided they had another job to go to.

Even though we work two floors away from each other, and have little or no business contact during our workday, my supervisor rounded up a few of the other tech writers and trainers and came and got me for lunch the first day at my current job.

On the last day of my previous job, I sat at my desk blogging (see The Gift of Time) like any other day while my overall manager sat at his desk on the other side of a window that was part of my desk partition. If we both stood up at our desks, (and the glass was removed), we were close enough to reach across the partition to shake hands.  Instead, with about an hour left to go, my tech writer colleague and I got a rather generic e-mail from this person to say farewell and thanks for the service. My colleague was deeply offended. I just shrugged – what can you expect?

It’s just common sense to create a company work environment in which people feel valued, comfortable, and confident.  That’s where people do their best work.  We all have a part to play in making our work environment what it is. Some have more control over the environment than others.  In some cases you can convince those people when changes need to be made. In other cases you may need to move on and find a decent environment. They are out there.  Especially considering how much of your life you spend in work, you deserve to be in an environment where you actually want to be.

Just for today, I will be kind to all living things.

Including myself

See a list of Reiki precepts.

Reiki and Calpol

Last Saturday my three year old son woke up unwell. He was listless, even his lips were pale, and there was vomiting.  We considered taking him to Kdoc, since our GP was gone for the weekend, but we thought we’d monitor him for a bit first before taking that step.

When his tummy settled the two of us sat on the couch watching CBeebies. He cuddled in to me and I gave him Reiki. It’s the first time he ever sat still for it, usually he’s off like a shot in two seconds, and I have to send it across the room.  We sat like that for about a half hour, during which time his mother came in with the Calpol.

About an hour later my son started to perk up. He wouldn’t be 100% ‘til the next day, but he had a smile on his face and was in good form.

So, was it the Reiki or the Calpol that made my son feel better? I supposed we could have done an empirical study where we used one relief method on this occasion, then another the next time he got ill.  I would have been more of a scientist, but I wouldn’t have been much of a father.

When our children get sick, why wouldn’t we use whatever tools we have to heal them?  Why wouldn’t we combine the conventional with the unconventional, use whatever works.   Was it the Reiki or the Calpol that helped my son?  It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that he felt better.

Office Reiki

Some of my regular readers might be wondering at this point, “So how is the new job going? Y’know, the one that you said was going to keep you from blogging for a couple of weeks, which turned out to be more like six. Just sayin’.”

Mea culpa. I should know myself well enough to realize how easily stressed I get at the beginning of a new job. Not just because I work in the technology sector, although that brings a certain potential for stress with it. And it’s not because I mind starting in with a new group of people – I mostly enjoy the social aspects of work. The stress is from acclimating to the change to nearly every detail of my functional workday, ranging from finding stationary, to finding the document I just printed to figuring out the new version of a dysfunctional network file system, to finding out who is really going to provide me with the information I need to document, to documenting the WSDL (six weeks ago, that last bit didn’t mean anything to me either).  All the little bits and pieces you take for granted are replaced with a new series of products, templates, and practices, and a new set of things that everybody knows except you.  For the first while, there is a relatively steep learning curve. It can feel a bit like slogging through mud to accomplish things that others seem able to do easily.

So it can be a little stressful starting a new job. Even when the people are pleasant to work with (which they are) and there is ample training (which there is.).

I had the good fortune to be placed in a cubicle in the corner of a room, sharing with someone who is out of the office half the time, and seems to be in meetings half the time he’s here.  That I would call this good fortune may seem to be a little misanthropic on my part, but consider the opportunity that provides me for Reiki self-treatment over the course of a workday.  Before it all gets to be too much I can just stop, draw a few breaths, call in and go to work on myself.

If you ever want a dramatic validation of Reiki self-healing, I strongly recommend practicing in the workplace if you can do so.  In my case, the cubicle walls are high enough to keep my practice from becoming a spectator sport even when I’m drawing symbols – as long as they’re small and tidy at least.  By last week I started feeling comfortable enough to send requested Reiki during my lunch breaks.

I have to accept that it’s possible I’ve been spotted, or will be, when someone stands up or walks into this area of the floor (I’m safe enough when everyone is seated), but so be it. Let’s not forget, I work in the technology sector, where eccentricity seems to be fashionable, or at least “normal”. So if anyone has noticed, no one is letting on.

Who knows? Maybe my office Reiki will even draw some clients.

 Just for today I will not worry

See a list of Reiki precepts