Faith and Hope

Faith and Hope

This is another one of those rather controversial topics. That means it’s important, so let’s see what happens when we poke around in the topic of trust.

Why do I trust? How do I know the universe provides? Why am I peaceful?

A lot of us think that faith and hope are the same thing. They really aren’t.

Hope and wishing are pretty close, way closer than hope and faith. With wishing and hoping, we have to be thinking about the situation we want to leave to wish or hope that it will be better.

We say things to ourselves like, “I wish I had more money (than the little money I have now,) I hope I get more money.” “I hope I get better (than the sick that I am, or the addiction, or behavior I want to change) or I hope I get better.” The underlying thoughts are that I am poor or sick or that I am in a bad relationship, for example.

We say things to ourselves like, “I hope I get that job.” But both hoping and wishing kind of stop at the wish. They don’t tend to motivate us; they tend to stop us, like worry, in that hoping so hard, or wishing so hard, or fretting so much feels like we are doing something.

We aren’t.

When I trust, when I have faith, I am believing in something, and believing in me. Trust and faith create an environment where we are supporting our desire with action. The actions may be subtle, we might not notice that we are choosing toward what we trust will happen, but we are.

When we think about that trust as a Creative Question, we are setting our unconscious mind on the task of bringing our goal about. Why do I trust that money comes easily to me? Why do I trust in my own health?

Notice how different you feel between “I hope things work out.” and “I trust things will work out.” and “Why do things go my way?”

These are subtle differences, but the Creative Question is working deep inside, it doesn’t even need an answer to come to the surface to change the underlying beliefs.

Faith and trust lead us to making choices that can move mountains. I can sit around hoping for that new job, or I can trust that I will get it, and that makes me act. Action will bring about more of what we want than wishing, or hoping.

It’s asparagus. We can hope for asparagus when we plant it, and then be sad when we don’t have edible asparagus. We can wish we had asparagus, and then feel kind of despondent when we don’t get it. Or we can have faith that our asparagus patch will produce delicious asparagus, and when it doesn’t the first year, with faith, we may find ourselves talking to friends with asparagus who let us know it takes a few seasons to start producing. So we trust that tending our patch with loving care will make wonderful asparagus in it’s own time.

How have I changed from hoping to having faith?

(c)Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 09282014

Lightening the Load

Lightening the Load

How do you feel playful? How do you feel light? What makes you have fun?

So many of us have gotten away from having fun. We pile things on to our todo lists, we stay up late making it perfect, we get up early to do the same. We go go go all the time, and barely know what we are feeling, much less whether we are having fun.

Our lives flow with continuous experiences, and within those experiences is so much potential for joy. We can’t feel joy when we are heavy with responsibility. We can’t feel joy when we are burdened with seriousness. Gravitas and play tend not to go hand-in-mitten.

We often get the idea that if we are responsible, if we are important, we need to be serious. We have learned that play is for fools and we don’t want to be seen as a fool, especially if the person seeing us that way is ourselves.

We want to feel like we matter, that the things we do make a difference, that we count. We learn that important people are serious, they work hard, they are diligent and dedicated, and don’t take things lightly. We learn that if we want to be taken seriously we have to be serious. We abandon the play we enjoy.

We know we feel good when we move our bodies, and so we get serious about exercising. We set about improving our health with grim determination. We strip out the things that bring us joy, and approach our movement as though it were a matter of life or death. We do the same thing with food, cutting out the food that we think is fun, and substitute all manner of things that we don’t enjoy, but that we know are good for us.

There is a big difference between being serious, and taking things seriously.

Why do I play? How do I know I matter? What makes me enjoy being alive?

What we find as we start to relax into being grownups is that we want to play. We take playing seriously, and dump being serious. We notice that we feel important, we feel how we matter.  We see how we make a difference, and we take joy in that. We let go of the gravitas, we lighten up.

We discover that we enjoy our work, we enjoy our movement, we enjoy eating, and we enjoy radiant and abundant health. It may not be all the time, it may not be for every task, it may not all be cake and ice cream, but we satisfied, we feel content. At the end of the day we are grateful, and appreciative of what we have accomplished.

When I am taking things seriously, I do what my teachers tell me to do. I meet my commitments. I take responsibility for my promises. I treat myself with respect, and practice self-care automatically. I don’t take a bad mood seriously. I look at what I can change, change it, and let it go. Often that is just my attitude. I don’t take things personally. I trust more.

When I feel how I matter, to me, to you, to my communities, I take that seriously. I recognize that my behavior and attitudes have an impact on the world. I see that bringing a light heart to my day makes everything easier, and I find the resources I need, I find compassion, and I open my heart to all my life brings me.

How have I changed from being serious to feeling light?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 07202014

You Ol' Sofite

You Ol’ Softie

We all have stuff, big stuff, little stuff, stuff. We have current topics, we have history. We have old, well-established patterns that are so ingrained in us we don’t even notice them. We may even think that everyone feels like we do.

One of the ways we can uncover our hidden patterns is by talking with other people.

Why am I intimate? What makes me feel close? How do I connect?

As we talk about ourselves, as we disclose our thoughts, our feelings and beliefs, our loved ones may question what we believe. They may give us opportunities to question our ideas about how the world works. They may help us find ways to think about relationships, about people, about our own histories, that make way for us to feel more comfortable, happier, and to get along better.

Sometimes the stuff that comes up as we talk is scary or painful. Integrating these memories is one of the ways that we grow. As we address these topics, we develop resiliency. Our self-esteem grows stronger as we see what we have survived. We find our sense of personal power as we are able to let the past go, break those old, destructive patterns, and replace our mislearnings with wisdom, understanding, compassion, and self-respect. I needed a lot of help to do this, and I found that each time I needed a wonderful teacher, a wonderful teacher showed up.

Why do I like me? How do I know I am strong? Why do I choose to be vulnerable?

Choosing to be vulnerable is an interesting thing. I used to say that being vulnerable was like giving someone a pointy stick and telling them where to poke you to hurt the most. When I had friends who didn’t really like me, I would open up, and they would poke. Owie. I felt justified in thinking that people were basically cruel and self-serving.

I am so glad I was wrong about that.

I have had to leave a lot of relationships over the years for a lot of reasons. I have made a lot of new friendships with lovely people, who listen carefully when I tell them where to poke, then say, “You can keep that pointy stick, I don’t want it.” They treat me kindly, compassionately, and don’t poke.

When I am vulnerable with untrustworthy people I can get zapped. There are lots of trustworthy people out there, and one of the things we get to do is find them, and trust them.

When I find my trustworthy people, I don’t have to trust all at once. I don’t have to scare myself. I can take baby steps, and trust on my own timeline. I can practice trusting. Well, that’s what I did, anyway. Making that effort is worth it.

When I trust my trustworthy people, I can choose to be vulnerable with them. I can choose to disclose, I can choose to be soft, I can choose to be comforted. I can choose to receive help, and compassion, and let their love into my heart. As I do this, learning to receive, I can also choose to feel gratitude, and appreciation. I can choose to notice how nice my life is. I like that.

How have I changed from feeling distant and shut down to opening up to intimacy?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 07092014

Secrets, Intimacy, and Trust

Secrets, Intimacy, and Trust

What does being intimate mean to you? I was so intimidated by that word. Physical intimacy was easy, but emotional intimacy? I couldn’t get my head wrapped around the concept. I had the feeling that exposing my feelings, my thoughts, my very self, that I would end up flayed. Not very encouraging. I was so sad that I had failed at intimacy.

I chalked it up on the side of Stuff I Can’t Do, and went on with my rather lonely life. I was in a couple 12 step groups at the time, and working on step 4, I took a moral inventory of myself as fearlessly as I could, then told a chaplain what I had done, and how I felt about it. I felt a little better. I found a sponsor and told her secrets. I felt a little lighter.

I told my secrets and shared the attendant feelings. And as I uncovered more secrets, I told those. My secrets, not yours. I made some kind friends, I found a wonderful therapist (my eighth, if you were wondering) and told my therapist everything, and I had a ton of secrets in my life, and I told my dear friends a lot. Little by little I turned my poisonous secrets into something benign. Little by little I integrated the traumas I had kept hidden. Little by little, I cleaned out my emotional basement. Lonely is often a result of a crowded emotional basement, and so I found myself feeling less lonely. (I define lonely as disconnected from ourselves, and lonesome as disconnected from others.)

Why am I intimate? What makes me connect? How do I engage?

One of the answers I get for all three of those questions is, I trust.

I sure wasn’t good at it, but I had to start somewhere; I was great at trusting the wrong people. So I went to professional people who seemed like they would have being trustworthy in their job descriptions. Babysteps. We want to move forward, but we don’t want to go too far too fast. If we scare ourselves, we will often just stop.

I didn’t trust me, I didn’t trust my gut, and I sure didn’t trust my judgment. And as I told my secret stories, and felt my feelings with someone, that started to shift.

Why am I soft? How do I enjoy feeling vulnerable? What makes me drop my defences?

I will say, I am not always running around defenceless. I am not always soft and vulnerable, but I am more often way more often than I used to be. I also have a lot of trustworthy friends now. I also know that I feel easier when I am vulnerable. I trust me, I trust that I can cope, I trust the universe will provide what I need to take care of me.

I enjoy a bunch of intimate friendships. I am good at them. Intimacy is now easy and pretty much second nature. I appreciate it as part of my natural life, but also as one of the paths to my natural life.

I now have a personal rule, namely, I have no secrets of my own. The secrets others tell me aren’t mine to tell, but my secrets get told to any one of several people. Sometimes I tell all of them. It keeps crap out of my emotional basement, it keeps me feeling fresh and light.

How have I changed from feeling isolated and lonely to feeling connected and close?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 05042014

Have you found your trustworthy people to tell your secrets to?

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Becoming an Appreciationist

I don’t think of myself as an optimist, someone who sees the glass half full. I am certainly not a pessimist who sees the glass half empty. I am an appreciationist who rejoices in having a glass. Not only can I drink from it, and share drink with you, but I can use my glass to hold ice cream, cut out biscuits, trace big circles onto things, and make polka dots, a place to root plants, a temporary place for bugs, stash my gold coins, well, you see what I’m getting at.

Lavish, luscious, sumptuous, opulent, plush.

The opposite of love, they say, is fear. It is also the opposite of trust, of positivity, maybe even of living. Fear devours our spirit little bite by little bite, and leaves us worried, anxious, guilty, angry, and sad. It grips us by the throat, roils our stomachs, squeezes our lungs, and steals our sleep.

We can unchoose it.

Why am I positive? Why can I trust? What makes me confident?

When I remember that I can change my feelings as easily as changing my socks, my life gets better. I can unchoose being annoyed. I can unchoose being scared or worried. I can unchoose feeling bad. I can do that because I am responsible for my thoughts, my emotions, my behavior.

I can choose to trust. I can choose to trust that I will find a solution, a resolution, a way out. I can choose to trust that there is a silver lining, and I can find it. I can choose to trust that I can change my ways. I can choose to trust that I can have all the support I need.

When I am feeling lost or scared, or lonely, or dark, or something like that, I can choose to remember than I am an appreciationist. I can find things that matter to me. I can find things I like. I can find things that I enjoy.

Here’s a little secret I will share with you.

When I am feeling kind of stuck, choosing gratitude can break that up pretty fast. Sometimes, for me, gratitude is easier to get to than relaxed, peaceful, or happy. Part of that is, for all my stuff, I own that my life is nice. I have seen enough to know that, even at its worst, my life still had things in it I could appreciate.

Why am I so positive? Why can I trust? What makes me confident?

I have made amazing progress in my life. I have worked through stuff, moved beyond stuff, overcome stuff. One of the most important reasons that I have been able to do that is because I found trustworthy teachers to trust. And then I trusted them, and did what they told me to do. Not one hundred percent, but way more than half.

When I have needed a teacher, a trustworthy teacher, one has always come along. Sometimes, twice, maybe, I’ve had a teacher who turned out not to be trustworthy, but the painful lesson brought me to a much better place. I trust that I am here to grow, to evolve, to really live a life of joy, and bliss, and connection, creativity, peace, satisfaction. I believe that you can have a life like that, too. Why can we choose to live our natural lives?

How have I changed from a glass half full or half empty to rejoicing in having a glass?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04012014

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Parasite Control

Parasite Control

Vengeance, retribution, settling the score, revenge, tit for tat, an eye for an eye, retaliation, maybe even justice.

What do you think about getting even?

Me, I don’t believe it’s possible.

Sometimes we do things that hurt each other. Sometimes we do it by accident, sometimes we do it on purpose. Sometimes it’s a small thing, sometimes it’s a really big thing. Sometimes we don’t even know we’ve done anything at all.

When I decide that you can make me feel stuff, I’m in trouble. I throw away my free will, and end up as helpless as a toddler in her playpen. Now, I am subject to the whims of people who may have no idea of the power I’ve given them. I perceive that I’m being hurt, or done wrong, and I lash out, looking to feel better, but it doesn’t happen.

After venting, I may feel relief. and I may think that relief feels better, but I still have that wrong you did me festering inside, and I will need to find relief from that over and over.

Since the hurt is inside me, I may find that I pull it out and rehearse it, nourishing it, fostering it, until it grows. Thing is, my resentments feed on me, parasites who consume my well-being for their survival.

In our society, in our communities, in our families, we have agreed on consequences for certain actions. In general, positive actions garner positive consequences, while negative actions result in negative consequences. When I trust that “what goes around comes around,” or that the Universe will provide, I can let go. I can release my resentments, and reclaim my power.

Why do I let go? How am I free? What makes me trust?

It’s kind of like resentments take up space in our psyches where we could hold resources, solutions, support, and love. When I let go of my resentments, I can let go of my story, too. It’s kind of surprising that I keep my resentments in my story, my story about how bad my life has been.

Why am I strong? What makes me competent? How am I capable?

When I nurture my resentments, I am coming from a place of fear, anger, guilt, blame, and worry. When I decide you have the power to make me crazy, or angry, or scared, or helpless, I give up my personal power. I am not saying that we should be reckless in dangerous situations, I am saying that we can choose to reclaim our power by attending to our good Creative Questions.

In every situation, we have a minimum of three choices. We can accept that this is how things are, let go into the flow of life, and find the lesson we are meant to learn. We can change the situation, by changing our thoughts, our behaviors. We can leave the situation and notice if we find ourselves in the same place again, a pattern for us. Sometimes one or two of those choices seems impossible, and we choose to respect our judgment, or, if we aren’t sure that our judgment is sound, then we go to our trustworthy advisors and check in with them.

How have I changed from feeding the parasite of resentment to choosing to own my power?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 03232014

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From Crappy to Happy

From Crappy to Happy

One thing we can count on is change. The circumstances of life ebb and flow, wax and wane. Like riding a wave through its crest and trough, and the curl. O, the curl.

When we let life flow, we can surf the changes, enjoying the whole wave. When we let life flow, we find our resources easily, we find things to appreciate in any circumstance, we feel peaceful, and relaxed.

Why would I let life unfold? How do I go with the flow? What makes me ride the wave?

Sometimes, it happens that I tighten my grip on that flow, so to speak. I have scary or angry thoughts about stuff, and start to worry about things. When I tighten that grip, I get all clenched, and, bam, there goes my peaceful center. Bam, there goes my relaxed mind. Bam, there I am, swept under that wave with salt water up my nose.

If I continue to clench, to continue the surfing metaphor, I will sink. If I learned nothing else from swimming lessons, it’s that to float, one must relax.

That’s our first step back to happiness. I need to relax. The more I can relax my body, the more I can relax my mind. My thoughts can’t churn if I am relaxed, and that means my worry will cease, my fears can subside, and I can get back to trusting that I can handle the surf again, easily and comfortably.

Why would I relax? How do I choose my peace? Why am I safe to be soft?

When I remember that I can choose to trust that things will work out, that I can manage, or cope, or contend, with whatever happens, when I remember that I have resources, and that my resources include amazing, wise, loving you, I know I am okay, and I will be okay. I may be sad, or have other feelings, but my feelings aren’t me, my thoughts and behavior aren’t me, and I can love me unconditionally regardless of how I feel about that stuff. In fact, I will do better when I do. That’s my second step.

Why do I love me without strings? How am I my best friend? What makes me take care of myself?

Pema Chodron talks about feeling bad as a habit. In fact, she goes so far as to say that whenever we feel bad, we are in a habit. This bears thinking about. Feeling clean sorrow isn’t the same as feeling bad, for example. Fear isn’t always feeling bad, if we use it to spur us to necessary, supportive action, and let it go. It’s when we feel like we are bad, or deserve mistreatment, or to mistreat, when we are stuck in worry or guilt, especially guilt for just being alive, well, I don’t need to produce the list for you, you know your favorite stuck places.

So, here’s my third step. I need to remember that feeling bad is a habit from the inside out, not from the outside in. I am quite capable of riding out crummy situations most of the time, but when I hit an internal ebb, I may succumb. That is, start thinking awful thoughts, worrying, feeling guilty and ashamed. And it may be that those thoughts are just out of my awareness, weighing down my heart, twisting my guts, sitting heavy on my shoulders. It may take me a while, with all that dense feeling, to notice that I feel crappy. And then, it may take me a while to remember that I don’t have to stay there. All I have to do is remember that I can choose to change my thoughts, change my feelings, and get back to feeling good.

How have I changed from feeling stuck in the crap to choosing to lift myself up?

(c) 2014 Pam Guthrie all rights reserved 02032014

Perfect, Schmerfect

Perfect, Schmerfect

Good enough. Words I have come to love. In the yorely days, good enough never was. Being a perfectionist sucks. Well, at least it sucked for me.

There is a huge difference between doing my best and doing it perfectly. When I strive to do my best, I feel satisfied and content with my efforts, and I am relaxed. When I try to do it perfectly, I am frustrated and tense, and may find myself reworking and reworking and never actually getting my project done.

I also found, for me, mind you, that the older I got, the more my perfectionistic tendencies got in my way. In fact, sometimes I would actually be stymied into inaction. Yikes. It turned out a lot of my old procrastination was based on an unconscious fear that I couldn’t or wouldn’t, do X perfectly, so I couldn’t even get started, and would withdraw into time-wasting behaviors. Oy, did I hate that. Especially since I was just baffled as to what was going on.

How do I know good enough is good enough?  

Of course, one of the things I did think was that somehow my divine perfection was tied into my being able to do stuff perfectly. It meant that because I made mistakes, I was inherently flawed. If I were inherently flawed, with no hope of change, what was the point of even trying? Depressing.

How do I see my divine perfection? What makes me good enough?

It seemed to me that I was surrounded by people who were better than I, people who never made mistakes, who recognized my flawed nature, and looked down on me for it.

Oy. What makes me compassionate?

As I let go of my perfectionism, I started to see how much those people who had been looking down on me were suffering, trying to hide their mistakes by drawing attention to me, or anywhere except on them.

As I let go of my perfectionism, I started to see how much leeway we have in how we accomplish stuff. I used to think there was one right way to do things, and either I knew it, and was somehow better than some people for it, or I didn’t, and was therefore, less than.

Oy. Why am I flexible?

The perfectionist thing is all about negative emotional judgments, judgments that hurt both the people we make them about, and hurt us because we stay stuck in the I’m better/less than X.

Exercising our judgment is a good thing. We can make decisions about behavior and consequences, but when it starts slipping into our thoughts about people, we need to take a step back. Often, when we want to make negative emotional judgments about people, we’ve got some topic up that is bringing up feelings of not good enough for us. When we can identify those topics, and address and integrate them, we will go back to feeling fine.

How do I know I am okay? Why do I feel safe? How do I trust the Universe?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 01112014

Abandoning the Emo Ghetto

Abandoning the Emo Ghetto

Today I drew the “Environment” card. Mostly when this card comes up, I like to think about our physical environments. But we have other environments in which we live. We have our internal environment that we create with the quality of our thoughts. We have our spiritual environment. And we have a social/emotional environment that we create with the people we surround ourselves.

Huh. That’s interesting. What kind of a social environment do you live in? Is it warm, and lively, and full? Is it cold, and grim, and full of drama? Is it almost empty? Is it crowded and lonesome?

Finding new ways to think about our old stuff can help us shift out from places we may be feeling stuck. So, let’s take a look at the people we fill our lives with.

In the dark ages, I knew some wonderful people; kind, loving, wise and generous, crazy talented. I also knew dark, grim, abusive, terrifying, miserable people who seemed to shun the light in favor of the dismal dank. They were often really interesting, and also crazy talented. Compelling. Seductive.

The deeper in I went, the fewer lovely people I knew, and the darker the folks were whom I was spending time with. A day that was just dark was a good day.

Soon, I’d stopped working days, and started working nights. In the winter, I never saw the sun. We were all so starved for attention, but all we could ask for was negative attention. I felt like I was full of a heavy, huge, black hole where my heart used to be.

When I decided to change my life, one of the things I had to do was change my social environment. I wanted to stop using alcohol and recreational drugs, so I needed to stop spending time with people who did. I wanted to be soul-happy, so I had to start looking for friends who got that. They didn’t need to be happy, just wanting to get there, willing to do something to get there.

For my own growth and well being I had to walk away from all my friends not once, but twice.

Why do I respect my people? What makes me choose to grow? How am I supported?

When I look at my people with an open and honest eye, what do I see? Do I see people who encourage me in my best? Or people with whom I love to trash talk, or misery merge, or share activities but not intimacy? Do I have friends, or bad-behavior buds?

It meant that I had to do some stuff. I had to choose people who seemed respectable, kind, and real. I had to choose to trust that, if I gave them a pointy stick and showed them where it would hurt me the most to poke, that they wouldn’t. I had to open my heart. Boy, was that door creaky!

On the one hand, I made a lot of mistakes. On the other hand, I found some wonderful friends who have weathered all my changes and interesting adventures for years.

Choosing our social environment is another step in choosing happiness, another piece of becoming a grownup. Choosing intimacy is an act of courage. Taking responsibility for all our environments helps us make our lives easy, makes it easy to relax, to move into peaceful, to accept and allow our lives to flow.

How have I changed from living in an emotional ghetto to choosing to live in a place of warmth, understanding, and love?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 01032104

On Being Resource Rich

On Being Resource Rich

One of the myriad things I love about being a grownup is the resources. Another thing I love about being a grownup is knowing how to use my resources. These are two very important things.

In years of yore, I felt like I had no resources. Except maybe my wits. Poor me. My wits were pretty addled back then, with pain, and suffering, drugs, sleep deprivation, horrible diet, and very non-supportive thoughts.

Little by little I began to ask for, and receive, helpful help. No, I mean it. I’ve been the recipient of very unhelpful help, and have most likely doled out my share of unhelpful help as well.

I would imagine we all have.

I didn’t used to imagine that, that maybe we were alike.

I used to imagine that I was different. I used to imagine that I was weird, and unique. I imagined that I was a freak and that no one sucked as much as I did.

In 12 step programs they call that Inverse Grandiosity, and boy oh boy did I have it.

Nobody knew the trouble I’d seen. No one suffered as I suffered. No one was as messed up as I was. Blah blah blah.

It was, of course, on the one hand, ridiculous.

It was, on the other hand, great back-of-the-hand-to-the-forehead drama of the sort that Drama Queens pay good money for.

It was, on the third hand, hugely effective for helping me isolate: not a resourceful place.

Why do I enjoy the fruits of my resources?

As I began to heal, I began to connect, and as I connected and relaxed, I started finding resources. Turned out I had a ton of resources inside me. That was nice. And I found out that you have resources, and you know stuff I don’t, and that you would help me. That was really nice. Thank you.

As I got more comfortable with my new-found resources, I realized that I wasn’t limited to doctors of western medicine, and took acupuncture treatments for the debilitating headaches I got. I got better.

I moved to the city, which is loaded with resources, and baby step by baby step, I started using them, and my whole world got nicer.

I started to trust that I would always find the resources I needed for whatever might unfold, and so I was able to really start relaxing. Why am I okay? What makes my life nice? Why can I feel safe?

How do I know the Universe provides?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 10232013