Not Wicked

Not Wicked

Pure as the driven snow. Clear as a bell. Innocent as a babe. Innocence is such a nice feeling, all clean and light and free. Isn’t it funny that, when innocence feels so nice, we seem to work so hard to sully it up with guilt. In fact, the word itself started out meaning “not wicked.” How’s that for a whammy!

It seems like wherever we look, something is pushing us to feel guilty, or ashamed, or dirty somehow, or bad. We get generalized criticism about everything from our housekeeping to our appearance, to our child rearing skills, to how we drive, even the kind of cars we drive. We are told we should be helping starving or dying children, abused animals, adults with many different diseases, and if we don’t, well, there you go. I think you know what I’m talking about.

We may even feel like our own people are letting us know how much we disappoint, or are bad or selfish, or unkind.

Sometimes, we are so in the habit of feeling guilty that we feel guilty for breathing, for just being born. We may feel guilty for how we live, what we consume, or even the manner in which we consume it.

Have I hit on yours yet?

Thing is, we can make amends for some kinds of guilt, but other kinds of guilt just seem to eat us up. It spurs us to work harder and longer, to deprive ourselves of the things we love, people we love.

And that guilt is based on lies, on mis-learnings. Poor we.

Things is, the only way to relieve that kind of guilt is to change our thoughts because nothing we do out in the world will assuage it.

Did you catch that? Nothing we do outside us will change it.

So how do we do that? Creative Questions! Why am I innocent?

Our perfect self, our core self, or whatever you want to call it, is not only pure, but unmarkable. It comes from Source, and Source is pure. Or energy, or spirit, or whatever you want to call that.

One of the ways I look at it, as a visual, is like this. My perfect self is at the core of my being, like a perfect pearl. There is a clear, empty space around it, and then the layers of accreted crud; mis-learnings, lies, betrayals, abuses, wrong ideas, guilt, worry, shame, fear, anger, and all the other yucky stuff we experience in our lives, all glunked down around our perfect self, blocking our own glorious light.

So, in order for me to let my light shine into the world, I have to clear out the gunk between the world and it. And I need to slow down my production of that gunk, so I can get ahead of the game.

I can work at it from both sides when I use Creative Questions. When I ask, “How do I feel when I am innocent?” I am on the perfect self side, loosening up all that dreck.

I need to relax into making my choices from a place of joy and love rather than from that tight, frightened place of guilt.

How have I changed from believing I’m besmirched to trusting in my perfect self?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 05312013

How Easy Was That?

How Easy Was That?

Wow, that was easy. And so was that! Oh, I sure love it when it’s easy. Easy is fun. Easy is satisfying. Easy is so easy.

When we relax and let go, when we are present and aware,  when we stop worrying and feeling guilty, when we trust the Universe will provide, stuff gets easy.

There are so many rewards for living our natural life. Effortless is only one of many, but for most of us, just effortless would be wonderful.

For many of us, our whole lives we have been subjected to the idea that life is supposed to be hard. We are taught that we should expect to suffer, that it is part of the human condition. Strive to survive, no pain-no gain, life’s a bitch, and on and on ad nauseum.

What do you think when I tell you that it is a lie? Who knows who started it, back in the dark times, maybe.

Easy is simple. It’s mostly a matter of attitude.

I know some of you don’t believe me. I didn’t believe me, either. Well, not me, but all the people in my life who talked to me about my bad attitude. I had the idea that my attitude was immutable, that it sprang from the soil of a doomed fate. (I could spell DRAMA QUEEN.) When people told me I could change it, I thought they were being hostile, judgmental and cruel. Turned out they were right.

So I had to do some stuff to get to easy. I had to let go of my drama queen. I had to let go of the idea that miserable was right. I had to address some topics from my past, and let them go. Doing those things dissolved a lot of old resentments, busted up some bad thought-habits, and led me to Creative Questions.

Why is it so easy? Why else is it so easy? With Creative Questions, I don’t need to “hear” the answers, I just need to ask the questions. These questions get into my unconscious mind, and start working their magic. Why is it so easy?

Why am I happy? Why else am I happy? If I feel resistance to a Creative Question, all I have to do is add the word “would” or “could” and I can keep going. Why could I be happy? Why would I be happy?

Why do I choose? How do I feel when I choose? Choice is the starting point for any change, for any stagnation, too. I need to remember that I have choice all the time. Sometimes I need to think about what the choices are, there are always several, even if I can’t see them, even if they are outrageous. My power is in my choice.

The power of Creative Questions is so great. If you haven’t done so yet, buy your own deck now. Fifty-two topics, fifty-two sets of Questions, and the priceless Guidebook that helps you get the most benefit of each set of Questions, plus a variety of ways to use the cards. Take the next step into really using Creative Questions, and get the results you are longing for.

And it really is just that easy.

How have I changed from believing my life must be a struggle to being delighted that it so easy?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 05302013

Thwarted or Supported?

Thwarted or Supported?

Sunburn, windburn, frostbite, heat stroke. Ice, wind, storms, floods, drought. Our environment. We fortify ourselves against it. We curse it, we blame it, we modify it. We fight and fight and fight it. We complain about it all the time; it’s too hot or cold, it’s too noisy, it’s too crowded.

There are several ways to look at the environment, from our personal standpoint. One way is that it is simply something to be borne, like a pox or a plague. We grumble about it, whatever is going on, but it’s more of an inconvenience than anything else.

Another way is that it is out to get us, that it gets too whatever to annoy and thwart us, we take its states as personal affronts. The weather is too hot AT ME! It’s too rainy AT ME! Road construction is here to bedevil us. It’s all personal and it’s all about something polluting our personal space.

Or we look at our environment as a constant gift from the Universe offering us opportunities to grow, to enjoy, to expand. As the seasons run through their courses, we appreciate their varied beauty. We appreciated the sensations we can enjoy. We see the beauty in light and shadow, in man- or nature-made vistas. We appreciate the noise as a tool to help us learn focus. Inclement weather helps us expand our comfort zone. The lushness of summer and the black bones of winter teach us to see beauty in many different ways. Traffic affords us a time to relax and still our inner selves. The people around us give us opportunities for compassion and understanding.

Curiously, the way we perceive our environment often mirrors how we see ourselves in the world. Is the world there to thwart us or support us?

From time to time I find myself clenching up against my environment. I feel tight and antagonized, or angry and impatient. Since these feelings are not my norm any more, I notice them pretty quickly these days, and look at what I’m thinking. It’s usually the same thing going on.

Expectations.

I get ideas about how stuff should go. It’s spring, so it should be mild and sunny. It should be fragrant and peaceful, and everyone in my life should be happy about it. Aren’t I cute? When I come up with ideas about how things should go, I am often disappointed. These ideas are fantasies about the present, like worry is, like guilt is, and they work against my enjoying my life.

When I can let go of my expectations about how I think things should be, I can relax into how things are. When I relax into how things are, it is easy for me to see the gifts the present is offering me, gifts I couldn’t find in my expectations.

Expectations get in our way a lot. Like many other tools, we can use our expectations to enhance our lives or make them harder. We have expectations about everything, from how our loved ones and public servants should behave to how the weather should be, how we should feel, what our lives should look like.

When we can align our expectations with our natural life, we have a good idea of what we want. When we know what we want, it’s like paving our path in life, instead of feeling like we are chopping our way through a jungle full of pitfalls and danger and disappointment.

Most of the time, I expect that I will have a good day. I don’t have expectations about how I will have it. I expect that I will love to spend time with my people, I expect that I will have a sense of joy, of peace, of appreciation. When I have these expectations, I am rarely disappointed.

How have I changed from feeling like my environment is against me to relaxing into it’s bounty and treasures?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 05292013

Where I Live

Where I Live

I love where I live. It’s comfy-cozy, cute, fun. I feel happy, peaceful, protected, well, I feel everything there. I’ve lived here my whole life, and I have to say, there were times I didn’t want to. It was too tall, too big, too this and too that.

I learned as a kid that my body was unacceptable. So I starved it, over-exercised it, stuffed it, ignored it, cut it, burned it, hurt it. As I tried to fit in, I learned that I should wear my hair this way, that my pants should look that way. My breast should be like hers, my bottom should look like that girl’s. I kind of hated it.

My poor body. I abused it so much. When others judged it, I took that on, and would rehearse their judgments to tears. I hated the way I felt in it so much that I put too much coffee, and drugs and alcohol to excess to change the feeling, I would stay up all night to get that weird, woozy feeling. I looked for things that would make me numb, blackout, sleep. Oblivion.

You may know what I mean: Why am I so ugly? Why am I so fat? What makes me hate my body so much? What’s wrong with me? Why am I disgusting?

Oh, man, those are bad bad bad creative questions. Asking questions like that just makes us feel worse and worse and worse.

So I asked bad questions, and started to deny myself all sorts of things. I decided that the outside was bad for me; sugar, wheat, alcohol, cooked food, carbohydrates, animal protein. At different times I would force myself to give up whatever it was that I had decided was making me so miserable and disgusting.

I had no idea how bad for me I was being.

The world was not the problem, my thoughts were the problem.

I decided to stop trying to correct my body, I decided to like my body as it was, to love it. I started to dress it nicely, and take better care of it. I decided to love it the size it was, and moved it, and fed it better. When I said or thought something mean to me, I apologized to me, and turned it into something positive. I practiced finding things I liked and loved about my body, things I appreciated. How do I know I am beautiful? What makes me attractive? Why do I appreciate my body?

I started to pay attention to what my body was saying to me, and learned about healers who had studied the language of the body to the self. I learned that my back pain was about feeling unsupported. I learned that my tummy stuff was about feeling scared sh*tless. I learned that my achy shoulders meant that I felt like I was carrying the weight of the world. The wrinkles on my nose were about being too responsible, the turned out foot meant I was ready to leave.

Oh.

My wonderful body was trying so hard to tell me what was going on in my life, and what topics I needed to address. My body is my silent partner who speaks volumes about ways to make my life nicer, easier, more fun, more peaceful. All I have to do is listen. Why do I listen to my body? Why do I trust my body’s messages? Why do I take care of my body? Why do I treat my body with love, kindness, and respect? Why do I love to have fun with my body?

My body is my home, with a built-in VPN that tells me what I need. I just need to pay attention, and it will be my comfy-cozy, peaceful, happy playground.

How have I changed from hating and abusing my body to treating it like my very best friend?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 05282013

Happiness Inside-Outside

Happiness Inside-Outside

Happiness. One of the three big wants most of us have, including health and wealth. Everything else falls into one of those three categories. That trifecta is a primary feature of a natural life; one free from mislearning, bad habitual behaviors, and poor filtering. and what it means is that it’s available to anyone willing to choose and commit to happiness.

I used to think that happiness was an accident of birth, like blue eyes or a mole; you either had it, or not. I knew it didn’t automatically show up with enough money, or beauty, or education, because I knew lots of attractive, degreed people who were rolling in dough who weren't particularly happy.

I also knew that happiness was what I wanted more than anything.

So I tried drugs and alcohol and sex, since TV seemed to indicate that they would make me feel good. Hedonism, they called it. I did the bar and club thing, stayed out too late, ate nasty food, and threw up a lot. It seemed to distract me from my misery for a while, but it also seemed like I felt worse afterwards. I figured there had to be a better path to happiness.

I discovered that I had a lot of junk in my past that made me feel bad. When bad things happened, I hid inside, tucked stuff away, and the events sat there in my unconscious mind, festering. They distorted my view of the world, and those distortions made me think and act in ways that hurt me, hurt you, and made the world seem like a terrifying, place; cold and lonely.

I don’t know why I thought I could feel better than I did. Maybe some part of me remembered being happy, or maybe I heard enough stories of people who had gone from a place of misery to a place of joy. Whatever it was, I stuck with it.

When we choose happiness, and practice being happy on the inside, the outsides get better. There are some things you can do right now to help get there.

You have to decide you will be happy. That means giving up being miserable, and if you are like me, it was like losing a long-time friend. Misery was familiar, and painfully comfortable to me. But I had to let it go, and grieve it. I had to choose to let go of people friends, too. The ones who loved to worry misery with me. I had to change other behaviors, too, that supported me feeling bad like not eating or sleeping enough, not getting any exercise, and watching or listening to the news all the time.

I had to look at my habits and see where I chose misery or anger or the blues. Then I had to notice when I was choosing them, and choose something else to disrupt the habit. Sing a song, jump up and down, call someone who wants me to be happy, too. Sort of like an AA sponsor, I needed Happiness sponsors.

Practice Practice Practice.

Choosing happiness, choosing to be happy from the inside out, isn’t a choice for the weak. Misery, suffering, may be unpleasant, but, once we’ve settled into them, they are so easy. Making the transition from the darkness to the light is challenging, and worth it beyond imagination.

You are worth it.

How have I changed from practicing misery to practicing joy?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 05272013

Realizing Relationships

Realizing Relationships

It’s so nice to feel wanted. It’s one of the fundamental features of being a part of a loving community; feeling like our skills and talents are appreciated, feeling loved for who we are, feeling like the real we is seen and accepted. Without condition, without restraints.

Because we are human, we need relationships. But, oh, they are interesting, aren’t they?

It took me a long time to figure out some really important stuff about you, or rather, my relationship with you. This stuff makes our interactions so much nicer, so much easier.

Thing number one. The same way that no one can read my mind, or my emotions, no one, often me included, knows what I’ve been through, I can’t know anyone else like that. What we do is make up a map, a story, an idea, about the other person.

That is so wacky, it blows my mind. The relationship I have with you is actually with a version of you that I have in my head. It has to be. That’s why we disappoint each other, because my version of who you are isn’t you, so my expectations can be wonky.

Thing number two. I can’t change you. I can encourage you, I can manipulate you, I can nag you, I can hound or threaten or cajole, but if you don’t wanna change, nuthin I do makes any difference. If I can’t love you as you are, if I feel like you need to be different for me to love you, I need to find another love. Also, if I think I can’t love you as you are, it doesn’t hurt to really look at that, and see why I feel so strongly about it.

Thing number three. When it comes to adults, it takes two to have an abusive relationship. I really hated learning this one; being a victim was so familiar, and responsibility-free. I had to stay in the relationship because of (fill in the blank.) My excuses for staying were buried deep in my unconscious, and it took me long, diligent work to pull them out, and dump them.

I’m not saying that no one around me is abusive anymore; I live in the world. What I am saying is that I don’t bite anymore when they offer me some abuse. The difference is that I don’t feel abused any more. I tend not to join the yelling. I tend not to take on shaming or blaming. I do take responsibility for my actions, and my mistakes and own them, and do what I can to correct them.

Thing number four. I consider it my responsibility to clean up my act. If I discover a character trait that causes me pain or trouble, I will do what I need to do to shift it to behavior that enhances my life. I choose to be happy time after time. I choose to relax, I choose to choose.

I treat myself respectfully. I treat myself with kindness. I seek my truths, inside, and work diligently to evolve as a person. If you will be my friend, you and I are doing the same for ourselves and each other. You kind of set the tone for how I will perceive you (see thing one.) If I see you exhausted day after day, frazzled to a crisp, snapping at people, always skipping meals or eating junk, I will be kind, but chances are good we won’t be good friends. Chances are good that if you treat yourself like crap, you will treat me the same way.

I love to be wanted, but I need to remember that it will never seem enough from you until I find that appreciation and love for my own self. When I love and value myself, it is easy to feel that from you, and it is easy to return it to you.

How have I changed from criticizing and condemning myself to valuing me, evolving me, and loving me with all my heart?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 05262013

The Beliefs of a Child

The Beliefs of a Child

Gratitude, compassion, love, and trust. Oh, are they wonderful or what? When we live our lives with these feelings flowing within us, we are having a nice time, we are living our natural life.

Sometimes things happen to us, and these feelings go away. Sometimes, when we are little, people with power do things to us, or around us, or don’t do things, and we feel angry, or frightened, or left behind, or unloved, or any of a number of very sad things. Poor little we.

As small children, we have childish minds. We have far fewer internal resources than we will as adults. and so we learn things, and mislearn things, about how we think the world is. It’s like we are little explorers drawing our maps as we feel our way through uncharted lands and seas, like the maps of the old adventurers who, at the edges of the world they knew, wrote “there be monsters.”

Because we are small, we often don’t quite get what’s going on, so, because we are people, we make it up, about the dark, about thunder, about the grownups’ behavior, about our personal value.

The monsters live in the closet/ under the bed/ in the basement.

God is bowling.

I am not good enough and deserve this bad treatment.

What happens sometimes, is that the lessons we learned, or mislearned, are so powerful that many examples of the world being different from our beliefs about it don’t make any difference.

And so, we lose our compassion and become indifferent.

We lose our gratitude, and feel entitled.

We lose our love, and feel afraid.

We lose our trust, and feel adrift and beaten.

Or other stuff, those are not the only equations.

The point is that we come to conclusions based on bad information, misinterpretations, or guessing, and then internalize it as the truth. Those internalized conclusions then become our belief system, and that’s how we live our lives, based on the misunderstandings of a small child.

Wow.

But, my very dear one, all is not lost. Because this is what growing up means. When we grow up, we recognize that we are feeling indifferent, or entitled, or angry, or afraid, or beaten, and because we are adults, we say, “I will change this. I will choose my natural life.” And then we commit to talk therapy, or any of a dozen modalities, and we enhance each of them with our use of good Creative Questions.

Why am I grateful? Why can I feel compassion? How do I feel when I love? Why can I trust?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 05252013

Softening Reality

Softening Reality

Have you ever experienced eternity? If you have, then you know what I’m talking about, that sense of everything all at once, everything in soft focus from universes down to the smallest bit of stuff that makes up a quantum particle.

I have had the experience a number of times, but never quite known why, or what I did to get there, but I have come up with some ideas about stuff from them.

Thing number one. Reality is really not what we think it is. Quantum physicist, John Wheeler, says this about that, “There is no law except the law that there is no law.” What does it mean to us if a big deal scientist believes something like that? At the very least, we have way more choice, way more power, a much greater potential, probably than we could imagine. I want to imagine that reality. (We should still pay attention to judicial law.) (At least until we change our reality.)

I make up my own rules for my reality. When I chose to believe the world was a place of suffering and death, that’s what I saw. When I chose to be happy, I came to the the world as a place of joy and peace and interesting stuff. It takes way less energy to live in this world, so I have the juice to do a lot of fun stuff. How do I know I am the boss of my own reality?

Thing number two. If reality is not what we think it is, time is really not what we think it is. On the one hand, for example, everyone’s week has 168 hours in it. On the other hand, some people feel exhausted and like they never have enough time. On the third hand, some people work 60 or more hours, play, sleep, engage with friends and family, and still have time for contemplation, time for their own company.

There is an exercise I have found enormously helpful that messes with time. I imagine being my current self; strong, resourceful, calm, happy, compassionate; going back in time to a moment in my past when I despaired. I imagine sitting close to my former self, and telling her/me exactly what I needed to hear at that moment. I mean, who knows better than I what that was. I have softened many painful memories in that fashion. How do I know time is flexible for me?

Thing number three. In these experiences of eternity, I have a sense that I am a tiny and crucial part of it all. We are connected in ways we can’t even fathom. We are part of a whole that perhaps we can only imagine together. If I believe that is true, then enmity is stupid. The same way that I don’t punish my hand for dropping something, we are part of a whole, huge organism, maybe, so be nice, to yourself, to us.

Thing number four. Whatever part of me has had those experiences, mystical, religious, whatever you want to call them, that part isn’t corporeal. So there is a part of me that can do stuff without a body. This is really woo woo stuff. What it means to me is that this reality that I’ve created is also a dream. The less attachment I can have to “how things are” the softer everything gets. Everything.

Ok, so now you know some of my really fundamental beliefs that currently seem to serve me well, always subject to change.

How have I changed from believing everything is hard to knowing everything is soft?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 05242013

If you read all the way to the bottom, you get a prize today. Send me your address and I will send you a free CQ fridge magnet.

Hot Stuff, You

Hot Stuff, You

You are pretty adorable. I like that about you. It’s pretty easy for me to notice the stuff I like about you. Do you notice it? Do you notice all the ways you are interesting, and compelling, attractive, and lovable?

Do you let us see how adorable you are? Or do you try to hide it behind stuff, so we won’t know?

Sometimes we try to hide our lovableness because we think it makes us seem weak. We have an idea that we need to be tough, invulnerable. We bluster around, being kind of scary. We make “hard decisions” and support them with our actions. We profess to prefer respect over love, hard over soft, cold over warm, steel over velvet. Poor we.

Sometimes we pretend we are adorable. We put on cute, or sweet, or goofy, or nice. Underneath that is a layer of belief that we are disgusting, or unworthy, or cold, or something else unpleasant. We may end up pretending to be ditzy or dumb to cover up that layer, so we seem cute and simple, or goofy and not quite competent. Poor we.

Pretending to be something we are not is exhausting. In some ways, it’s even more exhausting to pretend to be something we really are, but don’t think we are, because of the extra layers.

Our natural selves are adorable. Our natural selves are lovable, and sweet-natured, passionate about our favorite activities, compassionate, attractive, brilliant, peaceful at our core.

As we gather mislearnings through our childhoods, many of us lose track of our natural qualities. We learn to ask bad creative questions. We, of course, then get bad answers. We ask questions like, “Why am I so unlovable? Why am I so ugly? What makes me so unattractive?” Do you see a pattern? Do you have old, bad questions like that?

By transforming our bad questions into good Creative Questions, we transform our life. You can try them on right now. Ask yourself a question like, “Why am I frustrated?” Notice how your body feels when you ask that question. You are asking your unconscious mind, so you may not “hear” the answers in your conscious mind, but we often will feel them in our bodies.

Now ask yourself a question like, “Why do I feel happy and peaceful?” Again, notice how your body feels. This kind of exercise is very useful for several reasons.

One, because it helps us practice flipping bad creative questions into good Creative Questions.

Two, because it helps us notice emotions and feelings in our bodies. It is much easier for me to get to “peaceful” when I know how I feel when I am peaceful. It is easier for me to get to “relaxed” when I know how relaxed feels.

Three, because practicing good Creative Questions changes our thinking from negative, low frequency thoughts that hurt us, and may hurt others, to positive, high frequency thoughts. These are good for us, and for those around us.

How have I changed from feeling unattractive to knowing I am lovable?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 05232013

Hunting Miracles

Hunting Miracles

One thing I like better than a really good cup of coffee is a nice little miracle. I have loosened up my definition since the dark ages, otherwise I would be waiting for images of the blessed virgin to appear in my cappuccino, and most likely feeling disappointed. A lot.

Now, my definition of a miracle is something unexpected that happens to me that makes my life better. That’s a  pretty soft definition, I admit, but then, it’s to keep my eyes open for them, and it really makes me appreciate the tiny things, the little moments of joy, or enlightenment, or calm, well, the list is long.

I know I talk about this a lot, but we get what we filter for. Once we own that, once we claim responsibility for our filters, the world is our oyster, as the saying goes.

We do it with our bodies all the time. I noticed this sitting on my porch in deep winter. The thought flits through my head, “I’m cold.” In the olden days, I would barely be aware of the thought, get up and go inside. Now, I notice the thought, and question it. What is actually cold? What parts of me are warm?

What I discovered was very interesting. My shins being chilly could produce, “I’m cold,” while the rest of me was warm as toast.

What am I filtering for? Why do I choose enjoy my physical sensations?

If I love to surf or slalom ski, living in the desert will be disappointing. If I love seasons, living in San Diego will bug me. If I am gregarious and outgoing, living alone in the woods might not suit me.

What am I filtering for? What makes me support my own well being?

Looking for outside reasons for our feelings is another filter we use. When I blame you for how I feel, I am avoiding taking responsibility for my feelings. When I blame you for my behavior, I’m avoiding taking responsibility for my behavior. It’s my life, my choices, my results.

What am I filtering for? How do I know I’m responsible for me?

I need to take some time on a regular basis to figure out what I want. Most of us have a really good idea of what we don’t want. Isn’t that hilarious? I can rattle off long lists of what I don’t want to have, don’t want to do, don’t  want to be, but when you say, “What do you want?” I am often stymied.

How do I know what I want?

I want satisfying work with people I love and respect. I want close friendships with people I trust and who make me laugh. I want sacred spaces where I can meditate and contemplate the stars. I want to feel peaceful at my core. I want the resources to be generous in many ways to loved ones and strangers, both. I want to see miracles every day.

How have I changed from being my problems to being my own solutions?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 05222013

Life Unscripted

Life Unscripted

I wonder if you have had this experience. Something is happening in your life that is big, and maybe kind of scary, and your response is, “Wow, this is really interesting!”

The first time that happened to me, I was so surprised.

For most of my life, I had been living with the belief that the more drama the better. The more I could wail and moan, the better. The worse, the better. (That’s funny; “the worse, the better. But it was kind of awful to live it.) I could turn a minor situation into a national disaster in three seconds. I used horrible creative questions, “How could this get any worse?” was a favorite.

I was exhausted. Drama may be entertaining, but it sucks the life right out of you. And I didn’t get this part until later; it’s also only entertaining for Drama Queens and Kings. The rest of the population just doesn’t get it. Kind of like lady mud wrestling.

Part of the equation for me was that I had my emotions clamped down really tight. You know the seven universal emotions; happy, sad, angry, scared, disgust, contempt, and surprise. I couldn’t have told you the emotion I was experiencing at the time if you’d given me a teleprompter and a dialog coach. But I could do drama, that was acting.

And then I decided I wanted more than anything to be happy. And then I found a wonderful teacher.

The more I aware I became of my emotions, the less I seemed to need the drama. The more I felt my way through my particular topics, the less I seemed to need the drama. The more I integrated my past experiences, the less I seemed to need the drama. The more time I spent in the present, the less I seemed to need the drama. Why am I genuine?

And. Lo, I found that I enjoyed life way more than I had enjoyed the drama. Life is amazing. Drama is always pretty much the same. Life is so varied, so lush. Drama runs the same pattern; a build-up to the crescendo, and then the collapse into a heap. Live is like driving in the mountains, you never know what lies ahead. It’s lavish, it’s extravagant abundant, bounteous,.

Why am I alive? Why do I choose life? What makes me curious? What enchants me?

When I am engaged in life, when I am present, whatever is happening is interesting. When I have clean emotions, all my emotions are enjoyable. When I refrain from practicing negative moral judging, life is so profound, and satisfying, and fun.

We, each of us, is trying our very best to do what we think is best. Except when we aren’t . Sometimes, I am committed to things that are really gross, or hard, or nasty. As I engage with my life, I can see these commitments more easily, let them go more easily, commit to what I really want way more easily.

I have found that, for me, when I can find a way to enjoy an experience, I will live it as fully as I can. I will step into it, open up to it, revel in it. It doesn’t have to be a “fun” situation, it can be walking home from the store. It can be sitting on my stairs holding my dislocated shoulder in my hand.

Which gives me the chance to use “Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death.”

How have I changed from dramatizing my life, to living the real thing?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 05212013