Another year begins

The New Year is always a time of reflection of the past and an attempt to guide the future with resolutions and new found (or not so new) intentions.  The last few years I had decided to have no goals or intentions because I have always used the intentions as a way to feed my inner critic and start the cycle of failure, disappointment and self criticism.  As a goal driven person it was a little unnerving to go without a plan for the year, but then really where had all those prior year plans really gotten me?  So I took the risk and I spent the last few years not sure where I was headed and no strict goals but instead I tried to make choices that felt true and right to me. When I started to reflect on this year I felt a little down thinking I had nothing to show for it several steps backwards and no real steps forward.  Did I need goals to live a fulfilling life?  What was my life path and was I headed in the right direction?

My life did not stop just because I had not made goals or intentions and even though I felt a bit groundless and without direction maybe even a little lost.  I wanted to have confidence in my heart and my authentic nature but the voices in my head the voices that I considered "me" were rarely generous or kind towards me.  I am thankful for my meditation practice that is more than just mindfulness but about the ethical way to live your life as it helped build my confidence in my heart. The awareness of the perceptions and thoughts that controlled me was like a slap in the face but the longer I sat with them the less they hurt and the more I could really breath deeply into my life. Who would ever think letting go would bring more peace and stability than holding on tight?

Through my meditation I also started to hear what the voices were saying to me and realized that I was stuck in some tapes that played over and over again and they were cruel and difficult to live with.  I went back to therapy to face myself and see how I could reprogram my mind to be a kinder gentler self.  I had been terrified of becoming a victim of my past, so much so that I cut off and disavowed all the feelings from these old wounds.   I could speak of terrible things in my history as if they were someone else's story but even more surprising there was not a drop of empathy or compassion towards the victim.  I had protected myself from the stories so fiercely I identified more with the perpetrator always feeling empathy for their troubled ways that would make them do such horrible things while ignoring the victims pain.  Leaning in has been hard work basically rewiring my brain to think, feel and perceive things based on new information rather than the worn grooves of experience.

These are the subtle changes that make a life worth living.  They do not stand up against things like race medals or adventures travels in the light of a facebook status but they bring a real joy for each moment.  Already I have seen unexpected things happen in my life, family come together in ways I never could have imagined and relationships fall apart in ways that were way overdue.  I have built more connections and friendships and feel like I am authentically engaged in my life for the first time in a long time.  My life looks different than I ever thought it would.   I never dreamed I would be alone spending my time meditating, running, writing, practicing guitar and actually happy about it.  I stopped running so hard from my life and leaned into it.

I think about 2015 and I know I have quite a year on my hands: leaving my home, finding another and building a new existence and continuing to work on my own self-compassion and learning to be vulnerable.  Living is not easy regardless of the year and it is good to dream and to be inspired but I think this year is another year where the only goal is to live as authentically as I can.

ALL THE TRUE VOWS:

All the True Vows

are secret vows,

the ones we speak out loud

are the ones we break.

There is only one life 

you can call your own

and a thousand others

you can call by any name you want.

Hold to the truth you make

every day with your own body,

don’t turn your face away.

Hold to the truth

at the center of the image

you were born with,

don’t turn your face away...

Remember, 

in this place

no one can hear you

and out of the silence

you can make a new promise

it will kill you to break,

that way you’ll find out

what is real and what is not.

I know what I am saying.

Time almost forsook me

and I looked again.

Seeing my reflection

I broke a promise

and spoke

for the first time

after all these years

in my own voice,

before it was too late

to turn my face again.

Excerpt from ‘All The True Vows'

From RIVER FLOW: New and Selected Poems

Many Rivers Press. ©David Whyte

A grain of a thought that something had to change started during Thanksgiving holiday, I wanted things to feel different.  However, you could argue that it is not a new thought for me because if you managed to find the last 20 years of journals and perhaps even in the bowels of this reinvigorated blog I have spent years thinking about changing myself.  How can I be good enough to finally be loved?  When would I make the *right* decisions?  The list was long on the things I needed to do and the reward was always supposed to be love and happiness.  Of course I could never *always* make the right decision and my mistakes would lead me to a path of hurt, loneliness and mostly self-hatred.  The difference was this was not a thought of how I could change but how I could change towards myself.   What if for a whole month I took effort in trying to be kind to myself?  What if for the month of December I stood up for me in my bleak disappointments and my rousing victories, I stayed true to me?

I pronounced my intention that I was going to go into 2015 after a month of being gentle and kind as

I would to a friend towards myself.  I even made a pack with a friend that we would keep each other on this path and find our way together.   The first week was full of shiny bright optimism in my ability to stay true and keep my focus and yet I cannot even remember when I completely forgot about this intention.   Somewhere between the first week and today my mind completely dropped my intention and I had almost no recollection of it and my friend and I never spoke of it again.  Why did it just disappear and vanish from our many conversations?  Why did my mind bury it deep in the recesses of my consciousness?

I could blame the insane two weeks at work or even the break up with my ex for the 5th time but those seem like the days that this practice could have been the most helpful to deal with.   There was something different happening though because even in those moments of real emotional distress and challenge I found myself not relying on my old patterns and finding new ways to care for myself.  I found myself today writing in my journal and suddenly surprised by the revel of my intention set a mere 29 days ago.  In reflecting on the month, I was surprised to find that in many ways my intention although silent and obfuscated from my day to day thoughts has come to fruition.  How had something I had lost been working its way through my thoughts and actions into a month that I reengaged with myself?  Was the mere thought of the need to change enough to put me on a path that would change the way I thought of myself?

I feel myself needing to clarity and caveat that I am not perfect and doing this all well, but there is not a competition here to be the most generous.   I have found myself this month treating myself like a good friend supporting my choices when they were authentic needs and be gentle with myself when I knew they were not.  There were weeks of crazy dreams and now I wonder if my subconscious grabbed this intention and took it under ground in hopes of it surviving.   I find myself where I wanted to be going into 2015 with a view of myself and my life that is full of joy, curiosity and generosity.

The Dream by Pablo Neruda

Walking on the sands

I decided to leave you.

I was treading a dark clay

that trembled

and I, sinking and coming out,

decided that you should come out

of me, that you were weighing me down

like a cutting stone,

and I worked out your loss

step by step:

to cut your roots,

to release you alone into the wild.

Ah in that minute,

my dear, a dream

with its terrible wings

was covering you.

You felt yourself swallowed by the clay,

and you called to me and I did not come,

you were going, motionless,

without defending yourself

until you were smothered in the quicksand.

Afterwards

my decision encountered your dream,

and from rupture

that was breaking our hearts

we came forth clean again, naked,

loving each other

without dream, without sand,

complete and radiant,

sealed by fire.