Today I tripped over the 500 GB hard drive cord at work (the one that holds the backups for all the computers and the 12000 or so photos that need to go onto flickr) and sent it flying across the desk to stop finally, inches from the floor, held only by its usb cable. Then I lost my friend’s debit card with her pin number stuck to the front of it and didn’t realize until 6 hours later. At that point it was pretty easy for me to lose all sight of calmness and go into full on guilt filled blame for my own stupidity, carelessness and insensitivity for other people’s things. Read the complete Post.
My mom was right, I only do things when and if I want to do them. This is the precipice blocking my journey to conscious evolution. Not only that, but I have denied it for my whole life - hence a precipice and not a small brick wall. For years, I blamed it on her and her timing. ‘No mom, its jut that you always want me to do what you want when you want me to do it.” Read the complete Post.
Wow, I haven’t written a blog post in a month and a day, well, two days if you count February 29th. I think it is time to step it up a little bit. No wonder no one comments!
Today I had the realization that I have been on the verge of for a couple of weeks. Are you ready? My highest purpose has to be bigger than me. I know this sounds simple, and theoretically it is, but in practice… no, it is not simple.
Having a purpose that is bigger than you means that you answer to that purpose, not to you and your ego. For example, my marriage. Justin and I are happily married, everything is going fine and then wamo, month 10 into our first year and we are looking at the baby idea. Now, if the baby thing was about me, or about Justin, we would have had an argument that went something like this:
“Justin, I want a baby.”
“Wow hon, I don’t think I am quite ready for that yet. I have just started my masters, last week I retired from the company and I am feeling like I finally have some time to really explore who I am.”
“Well ya, but I really want one. I feel ready. How come you get to have the final word?”
“It does take two to be parents hon, and I don’t feel like I am prepared to fully take on that role.”
“Alright, well, I am not interested in watching my cycle anymore, so if you don’t want to have a baby, you will just have to go without sex.”
Ouch. Ego’s clashing, claws out we might have just gotten one step closer to a divorce. If we have a purpose, or third thing, in our marriage that is bigger than us, then we can avoid hurting eachother in discussions like this. For Justin and I, we are still discovering and defining exactly what our third thing is, but we have decided that to make any decision we must first ask the question: will this bring us closer in our marriage. This is how the conversation really went.
“Hon, I think we need to have a conscious discussion about weather we want to start trying or not. I feel like we have been careless in watching my cycle, and I don’t want to get pregnant out of carelessness, even if we are ready.”
“I have been feeling the same way. Since we have started working with Don (a buddhist monk) and I have quit work, I feel like I have a pretty full plate with school and my own spiritual work. I don’t think I am quite ready, maybe in a couple of years?”
“A couple of years? Ack! I am soooo ready now. I feel like we could manage… I don’t want to be old when we have kids” (looking back on that now… this is me whining a bit - understandably.)
“Remember what Don said? (He mentioned that he had never seen two enlightened people have children together) I want that. I want to be those parents”
*I’m thinking - enlightened? But that could take years!
“I agree… I want you to feel like you have had the time to do what you need to do, but I don’t really think we need to wait two years. ”
“We are quick learners. But I want to finish my degree.”
“Okay. I agree that having a baby right now would be hard on us with the current circumstances. Can we revisit this conversation in a year?”
“Yes. A year would be great.”
I have a tendancy to think about me, and my needs, where Justin has a tendancy to be a little bit more global. He wants to provide a secure home with parents that are as karma free as possible for a child. Where thought I normally think along the same lines, I am feeling the maternal instinct, which makes me impulsive. I recognized when he mentioned Don’s comment that I was not thinking about our well being as a couple, nor was I thinking about the well being of a child coming into a stressfull home, no matter how maternal I am feeling. So I shut up and answered to our purpose as a couple: What is best for the marriage?
As I mentioned, today I realized that my highest purpose is bigger than me. Along with our purpose as a couple, I have my own purpose - to serve the earth and to serve the people on it by contributing to an elevated state of consciousness. This morning I had to get up really early and go downtown for a tv spot about our green wedding. I was being really victimy about how long it was taking, and how late we were in the schedule. As I tried to express my feelings about it to Justin I realized that I was being asked to go on TV so that people will be inspired to serve the earth. This opportunity was directly aligned with my purpose and I was whining about having to sit and enjoy my book for an extra hour! VICTIM!
After this realization, I felt torn between the way I had been carrying on - and the need to maintain it to try and justify my irritiation, and relaxing my grip on what I wanted to be completely humbled by what I really wanted. Eventually, (thank god before we went on tv) I dropped my ego trip and was truely humbled by the idea that our little wedding was something that inspires people to go green.
I get it. It’s not about me.
Last year, a spiritual teacher prompted me to do the exercise: “How do I stay separate?” It was a fascinating experience for me because I had never considered what it meant to be separate or what effect staying separate might have on my life. Today, the exercise popped into my head again, and I thought it would make for an interesting post.
How I stay separate:
- I try to appear like I have my life together
- I judge others (”They are better than me”, “They aren’t as spiritual as I am”, “They don’t eat organic food and thus clearly care less about their bodies that I do about mine” etc.)
- I observe others without opening myself up right away
- I decide that I don’t want to be friends with certain people.
- At school I stuck mainly to myself, convinced that I don’t need to make friends because no one was “on my level”.
The list could go on. One thing that my teacher pointed out after the exercise is how similar staying separate is to arrogance. Arrogance is the ego’s way of keeping a person separate, be it spiritual arrogance, intelligence arrogance or fill-in-the-blank arrogance, it is giving yourself permission to judge someone esles process so that you don’t have to see that we are all the same ore more precisely, so that you don’t have to see that you are the same as the person you are judging. The same works within the self: if you are constantly judging yourself as less than others, you are staying separate from yourself!
So, this week I havne’t written a post. I have thought about writing a post, I have started posts and deleted them, in fact, I have a post draft sitting there, unsent, because I couldn’t seem to get my ideas clearly lined up. I also avoided connecting with my reiki group - everyone else seemed to be having these amazing experiences after the training, and I couldn’t even bring myself to try reiki on my own.
Why did I spend my week like this? The truth is, I don’t want others to think I’m not clever or to see that my thoughts don’t come out clearly right away. I don’t want others to know that it takes me a lot of hands on experience to learn something and I especially don’t want others to judge me or disagree with what I write.
In my opinion, a perfect example of both staying separate from myself and from others! Its an interesting complex that I think a lot of people have developed, so here’s my ten cents: look for when you are being separate, and possibly arrogant then, open up a little, maybe share something with someone you feel you can trust (or you could blog to the entire internet population!). Within the self is a little bit more tricky. What I have found works is to look at that thing you judge and find the positive polarity of it. In my case: I dont’ want others to not like what I have to say, which means that I care about what I write and I don’t want to have something I care about rejected. However, if I never share it, no one else will ever have the chance to relate to what I think, bad or good and honestly, that’s worse than someone not agreeing with what I write.
Thanks to my ego, for without it there would be no need for this earth school.