Choosing the Choose

Choosing the Choose

I pulled the ¨Why do I choose?¨ card this morning. I just pulled it recently, so I tucked it back into the deck and tried again, and got it again, and a third time! I know when I’m licked, so here we go!

This is my favorite card, my favorite Creative Question. I think that it is the beginning of a most amazing, dynamic, powerful life.

When I decide to start consciously choosing, a lot of good stuff happens. I start paying attention to what I am doing. Wow. Just that single choice can make a world of difference in my life. As I pay attention to what I’m doing, I start to notice what I am thinking. Isn’t that interesting! Wow! As I start to pay attention to my thoughts, I begin to bring up my unconscious thoughts. That is amazing. Now I have the opportunity to make some compelling changes in my thinking, in my ideas about stuff, in my beliefs. Wow!

Why can I choose? What makes me decide? Why would I pay attention? How do I know I can change?

When I decide to choose, I am choosing freedom. I am choosing to own my own power, choosing to respect myself. When I decide to choose, I am deciding what I want rather than being buffeting by whatever is coming along.

When I decide to choose, I decide what I want. Knowing what I want makes life so much easier. How do I like to spend my time? Who do I like to spend time with? What do I enjoy? How do I want to live? How do I feel productive? What do I want to achieve? Where is my passion? What do I want to learn? What kind of an example do I wish to be?

As I practice choosing, I find more and more things are actually in my control. Wow. So many of us feel powerless deep inside, and so act in controlling ways to the people in our lives as though that will give us a sense of power where we need it. It never does, so we get more and more rigid, more demanding, more damaging to our relationships.

As I practice choosing, I notice my behavior more, I notice how my behavior impacts the people around me. And I find that I can choose to change my behavior. That’s power. When I cease to feel like my behavior is ¨just the way I am¨ and realize that it is the result of my thoughts and beliefs, I can choose to change those thoughts and beliefs to ones that are aligned with what I want, what I choose.

How am I powerful? What makes me strong? How do I know I am competent? How do I know I am capable?

When I decide to choose, I may find that I want to choose a teacher to help facilitate my transitions. It has been my experience that often just the act of deciding I want a good teacher will bring that teacher to my awareness.

When I find my good teacher, I do what they tell me to the best of my ability. I have had a lot of trust issues, and learning to trust a good teacher was a wonderful way to start choosing trust.

How have I changed from feeling I can’t decide to enjoying the freedom to choose?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2015 all rights reserved 08302015

Closing the Harbor of Resentments

Closing the Harbor of Resentments

I am continually amazed by how much unhappiness, misery, and suffering I can bring down on my own head. All by myself. It’s easy. I just have to think certain thoughts, believe certain things, act certain ways and I can suffer to my heart’s content. Isn’t that weird?

One beautiful example of this is resentments. Holding a grudge is a great way to feel crummy. Self-righteous, but crummy. The dynamic is really simple; it’s right in the word, ¨resent.¨ The word literally means to feel again, and that’s exactly what we have to do to harbor a resentment; feel it and feel it and feel it again. Oy!

Scientists say that most of our thoughts are both unconscious and routine. That is, we mostly think the same stuff over and over again and don’t even know we are doing it. I don’t know about you, but that freaked me out a little. I mean, I like to think that I know what I’m thinking.

We can get a pretty good idea of what we are unconsciously thinking by looking at our lives. We are living the results of those thoughts. Am I living a life I like? Or is the life I am living hard, or crummy, or full of misery and pain?

I get to choose what kind of a life I want, regardless of my circumstances. I start by paying attention to my thoughts and bringing those unsupportive, unconscious thoughts up to my conscious mind.

If I feel like I deserve justice for a hurt and that justice will make me feel better, chances are good that I am harboring a resentment. This keeps me stuck in the past. It makes enjoying my days more challenging. Feeling that hurt, re-feeling that hurt, takes a lot of energy.

Why do I forgive? How do I feel when I forgive? How do I naturally let go?

One of the super cool things about Creative Questions is that they work on our unconscious mind. The unconscious mind loves to find answers to things, and Creative Questions are very dynamic things.

As I have lived my most recent year, I have from time to time found myself resenting the bad things that have shown up in my body. I blame my body for making them. And then I don’t treat it well. Interesting how that works, isn’t it. When I notice that I am not eating, or taking my supps, or doing my loving movement, I know that I am re-feeling that blame. I change my bad creative questions for good Creative Questions.

Why am I interested in what I am learning about me? Why is this moment perfect for me? What makes me love being alive? Why would I embrace my circumstances?  How do I take care of myself?

By asking myself Creative Questions like these, I am giving my unconscious something else to do besides re-feeling that old hurt. This is a very effective way to let go. Catch the thought, change the thought. Feel good about taking care of you and your mind!

How have I changed from harboring resentments to choosing to be free?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2015 all rights reserved 08282015

Taking the Conn

Taking the Conn

There are universal truths. They way you know you have found one is that it is true for everyone everywhere. People breathe to live. That is a universal truth, but did you know that there are scientifically documented cases of people who never eat or drink and are perfectly healthy? Amazing.

I believe that choice is a universal truth. I believe that we all can choose. I do think that many of us choose not to choose, and brother, does that make trouble for us!

In the course of a day, we make a thousand tiny choices. Each one of those choices points us in a direction. Is it a direction we want to travel in? Am I choosing activities and thoughts that support me or harm me? Am I choosing activities and thoughts that promote my goals and solidify my dreams, or hamper my progress? Do I even know what I want?

How do I know what I want?

I think it is remarkable how many of us don’t spend time thinking about what we want beyond, perhaps, very general things like good health, more money, nice relationships. If I don’t know what I want, chances are good I will be disappointed regularly, that sort of vague sense of dissatisfaction.

What stops us from deciding what we want? It can be a sense of resignation; I never get what I want anyway. We may have a feeling of not deserving, or of wanting too much. The thing is, we get what we put our energy into. If I spend time thinking about how I never have enough money, that is the ¨vibration¨ I put out and what I get back is not enough money. If I often think about how unhappy I am, I get back more of that feeling. If I am focused on not feeling well, I get more sick. We can call it the Law of Attraction, or we can think of it as just filtering our reality.

What happens if those thoughts are out of our consciousness? Creative Questions to the rescue! Because they are dynamic questions, they go to work on our unconscious minds. We can look at our results to see what the bad creative questions are that we are asking. We can then set up our new Creative Questions to get the results we want, but we do have to know what we want.

When I think about how I want more money, I could find a penny and that would count, but it’s not really what I mean. If I think, I want my income doubled, we have a measurable goal. That is something I can make a Creative Question from. I need to put the actual dollar amount in the Question. If I am making forty thousand dollars a year, I can start asking: Why am I making eighty thousand dollars a year? How am I making eighty thousand dollars a year? What makes me have an income of eighty thousand dollars a year.

If I am spending my time focusing on my aches and pains, that is what I am filtering for. The more attention I give them, the bigger they get. That’s how filtering works. I could use a Creative Question like, Why do I feel great? but that might not get me far enough away from attending to my discomfort. Asking a Question like, Why do I live a joyful and vibrant life? can get me deeper into living, helping me to focus on the activities that bring me joy. When I bump into objections, I will put the words would or could into the Question, Why would I be happy today? How could I feel joy today?

By paying attention to what we are choosing as we move through our daily lives, we can take charge of our thinking, and steer it into the directions we want to go. By spending a little time thinking about what we actually want, we can make those corrections much more easily.

How have I changed from drifting in dissatisfaction to directing my life as I choose?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2015 all rights reserved 08232015

Finding the Soft Spot

Finding the Soft Spot

You know I like easy. You know I like simple. There are so many ways I incorporated those values into my daily life. One of the perhaps unexpected ways is in being vulnerable.

This is such a huge change in my life. In my days of yore, I would do anything to feel protected. I was always fine. I did spend a lot of time talking about my misery, but it was never what I was really miserable about. I was so well-defended that I had that truth hidden even from myself. It took years of the gentle ministrations of a wonderful teacher to help me get at my own truth. I had to learn to identify what I was feeling as an adult. Wow.

Why am I intimate? What makes me feel close? How am I safe to be vulnerable?

Many of us get the idea in our head that to be vulnerable is to be weak. We think that asking for help makes us less than. We think that feeling our feelings, letting them flow through and out, is childish. Oh, we are so wrong. This is such a big and common mislearning.

Our feelings, like our physical symptoms, let us know when something is happening in our thoughts. We may be aware of that something, but as often as not, it may well be unconscious. When I feel healthy and happy, chances are good that my thoughts are wholesome and supportive. When I feel unhappy and unhealthy, chances are good that my thoughts are dark and unsupportive.

A lot of nice things happen when we open up. We feel more integrity. When we say, ¨Fine,¨ when we aren’t fine, we feel dishonest. As we change our answers to match our insides, we feel more congruent within ourselves. My new favorite response for many days has been, ¨Good enough.¨ I like it because it reminds me that I have a lot of latitude in how I can feel light and peaceful.

When I tell you that I am feeling scared or angry, ashamed, or guilty, you may choose to respond to me. I have good friends who will often repeat back to me what I am saying and it sounds ridiculous out in the world, while in my head, well, it can be enough to make me sick!

When I choose to be vulnerable, to be open, I am choosing simple. I am choosing easy. I don’t have to censor, or edit. I can just say. When I do this, I consistently feel more love, more support, more compassion both coming and going.

Sometimes we think we are being vulnerable by ¨telling it like it is¨ but we are wielding our vulnerability like a bludgeon, almost daring others to challenge us. Perhaps we are feeling victimized by our feelings or physical stuff, and so we lash out with our truth to punish the world for our discomfort. Usually, we have something buried in our unconscious memory that is influencing this behavior. Getting help to find out what this is, addressing it and finishing it up will allow us to release the topic and enjoy feeling vulnerable instead of being afraid.

Sometimes we think we are being vulnerable when what we are doing is saying the same thing over and over, rehearsing our misery almost by rote, like playing a recording again and again. We do our recitation but feel no compassion coming back to us, no love, no support.

If I think I am being vulnerable, but I am not feeling more connected, more engaged, more love, and so on, there is a good chance that I have something else going on. It’s a good time for some self-inspection.

How have I changed from feeling closed off to feeling open and soft?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2015 all rights reserved 08202015

AFOGS

AFOGS

You know how annoying I can be here, throwing out outrageous ideas, shaking up our familiar status quo with radical ideas about radical responsibility and radical acceptance. What you may not know is how diligently I am working on this same stuff myself.

Yesterday I had a nice juicy AFOG, another f*cking opportunity for growth. My choices, with variations in between, were to sink into a big ol’ pity party, feeling like a miserable victim, or take responsibility, process the feelings through, and choose to feel good.

I had a lovely day.

Why am I responsible? Why do I choose? What makes me capable?

One of the things I have learned is that when I allow those kinds of feelings to flow, things will often come up from my shadow side, dark stuff that can be uncomfortable; shame, guilt, anger, fear. Like a toddler, if we don’t pay attention to it right away, it will get louder and more obnoxious until we’ve got a full blown tantrum on our hands, and suddenly we are acting out, or having bad physical stuff, or attracting all sorts of strange stuff. So do I let it flow out and away, or push it down to grow stronger and bite me another day?

The card I drew today was the “Why do I commit?”

This was the big shake-up for me this past year, asking that question, “To what am I committed?” I can tell you, I did not like looking at that. The exercise requires looking at our lives as they are to see what we are committed to.  The way things are shows us our commitments. The longer things have been that way, the deeper the commitment.

As I opened up to really looking at the state of my personal world, I found that there were places where I could make some simple change, topics where it would take a bit more, and some stuff where I really needed some help.

I realized that I have a couple topics where I seem to be committed to staying stuck.

Why can I choose? Why am I supported? Why do I let go?

The more we clean up our stuff, the nicer our lives get. That’s just true. Things get easier, more fun, way more satisfying. Our biggest topics will also have more room to come to the fore. We may feel like we’ve done our work, but those big deep topics still want our attention. And we can look at the recurring themes, the things we get called out on, or the stuff that pisses us off, to see what those topics are.

I have what is probably an unrealistic goal. My goal is to have no unconscious material. That means I have made a commitment to spend some time on that regularly, to address what comes up in meditation, or on walks, or when I am sitting in contemplation on my sweet porch.

Or, like yesterday, when an AFOG dropped into my lap, a gift from the Universe.

When a topic floats up, an uncomfortable memory, or just a feeling during those quiet times, I sit with it. I may cry, or shake, or have big scary feelings, but I stick with it all the way to the end, when it stops by itself.

When an AFOG pops, it takes a different kind of attention, because those happen on the fly, often with others, and while I’m doing something. Keeps me on my toes, I suppose!

How have I changed from avoiding the hard stuff to letting it work its way out all the way to the end?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04202014

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Numb and Crazy

Numb and Crazy

As I shuffled the deck this morning, the Purpose card jumped out. Again. The cards always bring new thoughts and fresh ideas to me, when I let them. This morning, the word “lost” was the standout word for me. “How have I changed from feeling lost...”

Each of us has times in our lives when our entire world shifts, when life becomes fundamentally  different.

We have many ways to deal with this kind of change. A lot of them suck, because the situation can feel overwhelming, so we bring out our worst behaviors seeking relief.

How have I changed from wanting to act my worst to choosing to be my best?

I find that it helps to know what’s going on, and why I feel like that.

When I have a huge change happen, or even a very small, very deep change, my unconscious mind starts working like a mad thing to get this change sorted out, understood, incorporated into my world view. And for every thought, there is a corresponding emotion, the physical manifestation of thought. So now I have a million new thoughts, and a million emotions flashing through my unconscious mind.

Plus, I am having a ton of old, tried but not necessarily true, unconscious thoughts and emotions happening, however I tend to run on the topic that’s changed.

As we say in Minnesota, Uff da!

So now we have a spectacular amount of unconscious activity happening so fast we can’t keep track, and we find ourselves feeling numb or like we are going crazy. We can do either one of those, but I tells ya,  I didn’t really like either one of those, just in case you were wondering.

It’s a lot like getting really cold, so cold your toes or legs get numb. It’s not that you’ve stopped feeling, it’s that your insides are working double time to keep your core warm, so normal goes out the window, and you may find your teeth chattering, and your body jiggling like mad.

So then, what the heck do you do?

Why am I patient with myself? What makes me choose to relax? How am I peaceful?

Remembering that I am peaceful underneath the unconscious material helps me a lot.

When these things happen, I often have a lot of extra stuff to do. So what I try to do is work on the extra stuff with all the focus I can muster, then stop, really stop, for a while, and meditate for a bit. All I mean by that is to quiet my body, and let my thoughts flow. If I find that I’m following a thought, I come back to the place of observation.

Taking those moments to zen in, if you will, allows unconscious material to come up, and then I can either address it, or let it go. Most recently, I had an unconscious thought banging around that left me feeling very uncomfortable. It popped into consciousness during a short meditation and made me laugh out loud. Very absurd to my conscious mind, but scary until it came up.

Choosing to practice stillness every day makes it so much easier to choose stillness for the big stuff. Treating ourselves with kindness and respect every day makes it easier to be kind and patient in the big stuff. Practicing respect toward ourselves and each other every day means that we can cope much more easily when we are taxed.

How have I changed from choosing to act out when big things happen, to being gentle and soft and respectful of me and you?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 12312013