In the Flow

God is...

Joy Cardin’s Wisconsin Public Radio, March 12, 2014 morning show, Unlocking "Ultimate" Human Performance, featured Steven Kotler who spoke of the amazing advances athletes are making by being in the flow, a mental state that maximizes human performance as they struggle to attain higher and higher levels of accomplishment.  He also used the word now, interchangeably with flow, and said it can apply to all of us as we go through life.  He cited heightened states of creativity in artists and writers as examples.     

I really appreciated Kotler's tie to non-athletes and how being in the Now relates to our advancement through struggle.  I posted a comment on the show, “Sound's like God energy to me.”  He wrote back, “Thanks Marcia.  Not sure what you mean by God energy, but we do know that there's considerable overlap between the neurobiology of flow states and the neurobiology of so-called mystical experiences.  What that means—hard to say for sure….”  I can relate.

In “God Never Hurries” I wrote: 

Tension was an almost unbearable constant for a year.  How does “the responsible one” care for her aging parents?  I devoured books on spirituality and self-help.  I paid attention to my dreams.  I prayed.  The right questions began to surface from my pain.  My relief was in my pain; my safety was in my questions.

Then at the end of May 1995 I made a promise to God that I would write something about each day for one year.  The drive to write was a lifesaver.  Knowing that I would put something of each day’s struggles, joys and ordinariness on paper focused me more in the present alongside my ache for truth.  And nowhere was I more present than in the natural world.  There the connection and comfort I felt from my surroundings seemed to be an inverse of my tension and pain. 

What if we could all accept our struggles in the Now and know eventually they will lead to growth, transformation, and forgiveness?

Balance

God is...

Balance is not easy to achieve or describe and yet it is probably the most critical element of successful living, loving, means to world peace, and environmental wholeness.  It is women and men coming to balance their shadow and light—their anima and animus—their male/female light and darkness. Darkness sheds light on needed change.  Too much darkness over powers the light. Too much light denies change is needed.  Imbalance in either leads to destruction.  Creativity flows from balance.

In Carolyn Baker’s “Reclaiming the Dark Feminine” she writes:

 “When women can develop a relationship with their feminine shadow, they are invariably empowered.  When men dare to explore the negative and positive aspects of the anima, the courage to be vulnerable evolves, along with intention to protect and serve the vulnerability of all beings.  Northern California author and soul-centered psychotherapist, Francis Weller, emphasizes that the darkness wants us to ask it what it wants from us.  If we can actively, consciously engage with the darkness, we are transformed from victims into vital, autonomous human beings.”

Transpersonal psychology forms the basis for Carolyn Baker’s book that integrates psychology with spirituality.  In looking up transpersonal psychology I learned it has only been around since the 1960’s.  Outside of taking a class in 1997 titled “The Shadow Knows” given by Philip Sternig, a Transpersonal Psychotherapist, I can’t say I’ve heard much about it lately.  It seems the learning it promotes would be of such value to the human race and our planet we would want to incorporate it in our teaching from grade school through college.  It also seems it would be the basis of any religion worth its salt.

We have all inherited some imbalance.  For me it came to a crisis with my aging parents’ care needs.  After watching a video tape of my parent’s 50^th wedding anniversary I wrote in God Never Hurries: 

“But most amazing was seeing and hearing myself on the tape and how unaware I was.  I began to realize the critical need to embrace my shadow.  It is there to keep me balanced.  But it was scary and hard to sort out because of the many bright masks my shadow had been made to wear.  I understood it was those masks that help make abuse so systemic.  And it seemed a clue to becoming aware of a mask is when there is only one answer or one way.  I felt hope that if I continued to work on myself, someday I could come to honor both my mother and father.”

Life can be hard.  There are choices to be made.  Writing my story helped me figure some things out and pointed me toward more balance.  Life is relational.  We learn from our own light and darkness and the light and darkness of others.          

What if we daily asked our darkness what it wants from us?        

Contemplative Muffins

God is...

Matthew Fox describes compassion as a creative force and also states it is critical to our and our planet’s survival.  He cites physicist Fritjof Capra's observations that all energy flows through and connects all things and one another.  Our planet and we are one in this giant web of energy.  Fox states that successful life is therefore a cooperative, interdependent venture not a competitive struggle and calls compassion the true creative life force.  He states, …there is no compassion without creativity.

Thomas Moore says it another way as I relate in my memoir as follows:  The idea of caring for myself was so foreign but I sensed it was imperative.  I read Thomas Moore’s “Care of the Soul.”  His assertion that everything has soul—people, trees, buildings, cars, etc., and each is a part of the larger world soul—let me look at everything in an exciting new dimension and feel a part of something bigger than myself.  And I experienced the sense of the world soul later on a walk to the beach.  I wrote:  Coolness was all over that early morning—overcast inland and a gray thick blanket of fog at the now warmer lake.  The water smelled heavy in the curtained air, too heavy to move.  Tall gray herons waded near the shore and seemed only a darker color of fog in the shape of stately birds.  It was easy to sense the seamless world soul in the all-encompassing softness.  …That day I learned, as part of the world’s soul, I create an atmosphere wherever I go. 

Fox cautions against too much introverted meditation and advocates for extrovert meditation saying it is centering by way of creating.  In extrovert meditation we learn to trust our deepest insights about images new and old and thus we learn from these images.  They become our teachers.  He cites the potter with clay, the musician with notes, the dancer with movement, the baker with dough, etc.  So this morning I made blueberry muffins contemplatively with my kitchen radio and TV left off.  Afterwards I washed the dishes by hand being present to the water and the task.  And the muffins I created, I shared.

What if we each tuned in to some creative extrovert meditation everyday?  Could we eventually create a just and peaceful world through our compassionate creativity?  Could we come to function cooperatively as a whole? 

My Spider

God is...

Who among you reading this would like a spider as your totem helper?  You might want to think about that for a while as I did this past weekend while on a Women Gathering retreat sponsored by Way of the Willow.  We were told we would journey with a drumbeat, our breath, and come to know our totem animal.  I wondered how that might happen.  I had some preconceived notions of animals that hold special meaning for me and I wondered if it might be a wolf, deer, coyote, fox, or armadillo.  But no, it was none of those.  With my eyes closed in the shaded room, and the steady beating of the drum, a spider showed up.

I didn’t want to believe it at first, but there it was just a darker shade of the dark, plump and fuzzy, suspended from a thin dark thread. I asked myself what it could possibly teach me and then began thinking:

Suspend judgment of others and myself.

Suspend anxiety for things undone.

Suspend the need to be perfect or right.

Look around and know that all is good.

When the exercise was over I eagerly sought out a book in the room, “Animal Speak--The Spiritual and Magical Powers of Creatures Great and Small” and began to fall in love with my spider as I read:  “Spider is the keeper of primordial alphabet.  Spider can teach how to use the written language with power and creativity so that your words weave a web around those who would read them.”  Spiders were also said to be a combination of gentleness and strength, and part of spider’s medicine is to maintain balance between life and death, waking and sleeping.  Who wouldn’t love that?

Each woman attending this retreat had a different totem animal come to her with unique and appropriate gifts and medicines.  It was a serious, but also very fun weekend, as we shared pieces of our lives and helped heal one another through our laughter and tears.

In a Saturday evening ceremony we each put on our wise woman shawls and spoke words that told what was important for us to remember.  I prayed, Dear God, Thank you for the gift of these women.  I know my serenity will be subject to forgetting so may I always remember the way back to it.  Help me trust what comes, comes because it needs to; show me ways I can celebrate what doesn’t get done so I can enjoy the present; help me let go of feeling too responsible; help me hold the questions with infinite patience and learn from them; may I find joy and new ideas in the accomplishment of others; remind me there is always a choice versus the victim role.  Thank you for being my power within and reminding me to “Be not afraid.”  And thank you for my spider.

What if everyone had the opportunity for a fun and healing time and could remember the way back to it when it fades?  I think we would all heal our planet.