I Do Believe

I Do Believe

We’re right, you know. We’re right about all sorts of stuff. We’re right about all the stuff we think we are right about, except what we aren’t.

Huh?

We are so cute.

Right and wrong are fundamental to our being happy in the world. We need to know the difference, as our schoolteachers used to say.

Thing is, there is a certain degree of subjectivity involved. Morals, ethics, ethos, law, doctrine, dogma; we have a million ways to dictate our ideas of right and wrong to each other. The big strong ones are often the ones who get to decide on the law. They are often the ones who decide in our families, too. This can make things skew, putting some before others. It can create a lot of troublous situations for us down the road.

I have some fundamental ideas that I will share with you. Take what you like, and leave the rest, as the saying goes.

Truth is only Truth with a capital T if it is true for everyone. Every. One.

It is one thing for me to believe you are mistaken. It is another thing to believe you are bad. We are not our behavior.

People, at our core, are amazing and wonderful. Sometimes we get very far from our core. The farther we get, the stranger our behavior.

Thing is, we all think our beliefs are right.

It’s the nature of belief.

Thing is, a lot of our beliefs are bull bananas. (Do you like that, bull bananas? I made it up just for you.) We know that’s the case when our beliefs say that we suck, or that we are better than each other. We know it when our beliefs say that someone‘s self is bad because of what they believe, rather than their beliefs are bad.

Think is, while we can have really awful beliefs, still, we can change our beliefs. Really. We can decide what we want to believe. Really. A belief is an idea that we have rehearsed so much that it has gone deep into our unconscious minds, and affects our behavior and feelings from there.

We don’t much think about what we believe, because we believe it. we know it’s true. I need to start to pay attention to what I believe about how the world works. When I notice that I think the world sucks in some way, I have found a fixed delusion, a bad belief. I can poke around in it and find the deets, then I can dismantle it, and replace it with a belief that supports me, supports us, in living our natural lives of joy, bliss, satisfaction, contentment, and happiness.

Creative Questions are the easiest, cleanest, fastest way to get a new belief into play.

How have I changed from believing awful things to believing my life gets more wonderful all the time?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 12232013

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How to Shine

How to Shine

One of the ways I’m pretty brilliant is about us. I get us, poor little we, with all our stuff. So much fear, and anger, so much mislearning, and grief, so much self-hate. I get us.

I’ve been doing what I do since I was a kid. I have always cared about you, I have a good ear, a big heart, and have always had a pretty good sense of what we are about. It got messed up during the dark ages, but I healed that up nicely.

I also draw pretty well, can do music-y stuff pretty well, and I can write.

As an expert on people’s stuff, I will tell you that, in my experience, everyone is brilliant at something, and even good at other stuff.

Oh, boy, am I hearing some interesting objections. I am not talking about being brilliant at screwing up. I’m not talking about being brilliant at failing. I know this, remember, and just because things don’t seem to be going your way doesn’t mean you suck.

How do you know you are brilliant? What makes you smart? Why are you so wise?

You know you are, deep in your heart of hearts, you know you are. How am I brilliant? What makes me use my smarts?

When we settle down, and just accept that we are brilliant, and in our particular way, we can start to enjoy it. Owning that we are brilliant is fun. Using our brilliance is fun. Being really good at something is fun.

I used to think that being brilliant was about being able to do math. Period. There are so many ways of brilliance, like stars in the sky. My balance of brilliance is unique to me, and yours is to you. Maybe you are brilliant with languages, and can communicate with tons of people. Maybe you are a genius with money, or can write songs that people love. Perhaps your genius is painting, or you are a baby-whisperer. Maybe your cooking is your genius.

Why do I own my genius?

When I settle down, and just accept that I am brilliant, I start seeing your brilliance, and seeing how brilliant you are is a joyful thing. And when we combine our brilliances, our collective magnitudes shine dazzlingly bright, and we can accomplish miracles.

I found that using my brilliance was one of my favorite things to do (“Pam! Stop that socializing!”) even if it wasn’t being valued by others. When I tried to stifle it, I felt miserable, and hobbled. I bet you have, too.

We need to find places to let our brilliance shine, where we get to enjoy our smarts, and feel satisfied with our cleverness. It may not be the job we are doing, but we will be so much more content when we give it a place to run.

How have I change from hiding my light to letting it shine all over?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 09192013

Stillness

Stillness

Who are we? Well, I guess I mean, who am I? And, right off the top, I think of the person who owns the hands and mind that is writing to you write now, but that’s not really what I mean at all.

I’m going deep, fellow philosophers, so grab your oxygen tanks and let’s dive in!

I talk a lot about our natural life, and the perfect self. I don’t talk about the perfect self in the abstract. I have experienced it, the first time way back in the day, when I was sitting around, alone, fantasizing ways to commit suicide (oh, yeah, I was a barrel of laughs.)

A feeling came upon me, and there I was, at the heart, at the core, of perfect self. Perfectly calm, perfectly happy, no worries, no anxiety, no pain. Inhaling joy, exhaling joy. I felt infinite, and connected, and whole, completely a part of everything. Perfect self.

I have no idea how long the experience lasted, but it totally changed my life. Because, whenever I remembered to think of it, there it was, at my core, my perfect self, my point of stillness in the chaos, misery, and suffering that was my life.

I saw all the crud I had accreted around it, like a pearl covered in nasty, crusty crap. All I had to do was get rid of the crap. And there you have my philosophy in a nutshell.

Who I am is my perfect self. What I do is chip away at the crusty gunk around it. Perhaps my perfect self, and yours, are one and  the same. Perhaps Perfect Self is the core of the universal mind. That would be cool.

Meanwhile, at my core is that stillness of Perfect Self. Because I’ve been practicing for awhile, I can get there pretty easily, From that place of stillness is born our natural life. It’s easy. It’s fun. It’s creative; it sounds like a great toy from Whammo! Like a Frisbee or a Slip ‘n’ Slide.

That stillness is like the tank that holds my baby snails. The space within the tank is seething with life; the snails, their celery trees and romaine bridges, the food in their picnic area. The water in the tank is teaming with life. But all around it is the stillness of the tank.

We are like that, only our stillness is inside, at our core, fundamental to our Perfect Self. It’s not about silence, or absence, or darkness, or non-sensation, rather it is the defining point, the core, the center of our universe around which everything turns.

When I am aware of that stillness, I lose a little of my attachment to the stuff of my life. I see the movement, the ebbs and flows, the waxings and wanings.

I use Creative Questions to make the path clearer, easier to follow back to my core. Why is it so easy?

I use Creative Questions to chip crud off the pearl of my Perfect Self. How do I know I’m good enough?

I use Creative Questions to live my natural life. Why am I peaceful?

Why do I choose to experience stillness?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 09172013

From Apathy to Sympathy

From Apathy to Sympathy

Meh.

Who cares?

I would hazard a guess that we all get here from time to time, for a thousand different reasons.

Perhaps I’ve agreed to do too much, ala Martyr Me, and so I’ve used up my caring. Perhaps I have been choosing the blues, and so my caring is all plugged up with apathy. Perhaps I am using all my care up on my own self, my problems, my victimhood, my disappointments.

Not caring isn’t a fun place. Apathy is kind of bleak. It’s also a wonderful indication that we’ve gotten off track somehow.

I’m not talking about caring about specific stuff, mind you. There are lots of things in the world I will most likely never care about. We all have those things. It’s a marvelous use of our judgment.

I am talking about that general kind of malaise that sets in, not quite depression, just, well, meh.

Why do I care? How do I know that it matters? What make me make a difference?

When I am feeling meh, I can often flip it around by helping someone else. This technique is really useful for busting up a pity party. In fact, it’s a cornerstone of 12-step groups, helping a new person find their way.

It is sometimes really useful to be around others who have more topics up than we do. (And I will own that when I was deep into my own pity-party, knowing others had it worse than I just pissed me off big time.)

When we relax into our natural lives, caring about each other comes naturally. Compassion is a fundamental component of our perfect selves, and when we let ourselves soften into our core, it is just how we are, it’s just what we do. We choose the places that matter the most to us, and we give of our time, our energy, our resources as a matter of course.

When we relax into our natural lives, we seek solutions rather than worrying our troubles to death. When we relax into our natural live, we are aware of life-enhancing resources and pay attention to those, we are aware of the members of our communities who can help each other, support each other.

When we relax into our natural lives, we see possibilities. We come up with creative ideas to help us all, we enjoy being present for each other, to lend a hand, an ear, or a raft of ideas.

And, weirdly, caring, and then helping, often generates feeling of gratitude for being able to be of service to others. And isn’t that nice!

How have I changed from apathy to making a difference?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 09162013