Are You Still Sitting On the Edge of the Dance Floor?

(Excerpted from the forthcoming Waking Up to the Heart of Care)

Many years ago, at your high school dance, you sat on the edge of the dance floor, soaking in a strangely intense mixture of longing and anxiety.

You were longing to be a part of the dancing masses, smiling, laughing and writhing so carefree. You were also anxious for all the same reasons, because to get off your chair meant you would also be exposed and vulnerable to rejection and ridicule.

So there you sat, waiting, hoping…

Maybe you were watching another sideline sitter, who was also watching with longing and anxiety, sitting and waiting, hoping…

You imagined approaching them a hundred times, playing out a hundred different scenarios in your unkind mind, each ending in your rejection and humiliation.

So you sat there waiting, hoping …

Occasionally, you came close to standing up and risking it, your courage almost overcoming your fear. But the waves of discomfort and fear were always a bit stronger, and the thoughts in your head never allowed you to imagine how easy it could be, and how wonderful if could be.

Instead, you remember that one terrible night not long ago when you did risk it, when you did stand up and step forward, and you NEVER want that to happen again. So instead, you sit safely on the edge of the dance floor soaking in a strange mixture of longing and anxiety.

The DJ announces last dance and, finally overcome by a sense of urgency you leap to your feet and begin frantically looking for the one you have planned to approach. Your eyes are darting as you sift through the happy faces, all connected in teams of two, partnered in pairs, holding hands…

You’re still looking for that one as the music starts and everyone comes together, everyone except you it seems.

You rush back to your seat, partially relieved because, “I didn’t really want to dance anyway” you tell yourself. You even mock the ones on the dance floor, resenting them while also secretly longing…

Now, many years later, you find yourself sitting on the edge of the dance floor of the Great Dance of Life, waiting, hoping…

The DJ is about to announce the last dance.

What are you going to do?

Your Life is the Size of Your Awareness

How often does your entire life, shrink to the size of the thoughts in your head?

I’m walking through the forest, breathing deeply, relaxed. There are no thoughts, only the direct impressions of my experience. Light, warmth, sensation, movement, perception, silence, openness.

The experience is one where there is no desire for anything that isn’t already happening. There is nothing missing. Attention is free floating, touching on various aspects of experience but never staying anywhere for too long.

Touch and go, sense and move, perceive and drift, notice and know, touch and go…

How big is your moment to moment experience Life?

The Life Traveler and the Multidimensional Life Journey

 
Most problems are not so large
but that we have become so small.
~ Aaron (AKA The Wake Up Guy)

 

 The metaphor of ‘life as a journey’ has always been used throughout the world’s wisdom traditions and psychological systems.

 It is easy to see why.

 Like any journey, life has a start, an end, as well as many different possible paths, intended destinations, unexpected experiences, and unanticipated adventures joining the two.

 One of the most life corroding problems of many of the people I work with in my seminars and coaching, is the absence of any clarity regarding where they are in their journey, what their destination is, why they are going where they are going, and how they will get there.

 Imagine waking up on a road with no knowledge of where you are.

 You don’t know how you got there, and you don’t know where you could go, much less where you want to go.

 Even if you did know where you want to go, you don’t know what direction you’re facing, and you don’t even know what your options are regarding how you could travel.

 You are completely lost.

 Now imagine waking up this way everyday, and you have the ingredients for a full spectrum of life eroding conditions, from mild depression and anxiety, to apathy and meaninglessness, to emptiness and despair.

 As you may know, in my talks and coaching I define being asleep as ‘living without awareness’ and suggest being asleep is the biggest cause of unnecessary suffering I know of.

 Second to being asleep, being lost, or ‘living without purpose and direction’, is a massive cause of suffering that is completely unnecessary.

 There are five main areas, or what I call, Life Dimensions, that I like to look at with clients who admit to being lost, and I have begun to see these dimensions as essential for anyone looking to live a deep, authentic, and meaningful life.

 After a brief description of the five Life Dimensions, as well as the order they are most effectively explored, we will look at each in more detail.

 Five Life Dimensions

 1. Values: What are the day-to-day values or virtues you most admire, desire, and aspire to uphold?

 2. Purpose: Based on what you value most, as well as everything you know and have experienced, what is the ultimate reason for your existence?  What is the mission of your life?

3. Vision: What will your life look like when you are living in alignment with your Life Purpose, in 5, 10, 20 years?

 4. Vocation: How will you live and work, as an expression of your Purpose and your Vision?

 5. Goals: Knowing your Values, Purpose, Vision and Vocation, what are the short term accomplishments most necessary to live in a way that honors what you know?

 

  100 years from now we’ll all be dead.
What is important to you?  ~ Unknown

 Values: What is important to you? Values are our inner qualities and guiding principles we use in our moment-to-moment decisions and actions in our lives.

 Values are qualities such as honesty, patience, kindness, and compassion, and are recognized by all cultures and societies as desirable because they promote goodness, harmony, and peace.

 When we are unclear about our values, it is impossible to know how to make decisions or choose one course of action over another. Unknowingly living in conflict with our own values is a recipe for inner disaster.

 

 A useless life is an early death. ~ Goethe
The purpose of life is a life of purpose. ~ Robert Byrne

 Purpose: When we know our values, or what matters most to us in our day-to-day lives, we can begin to consider the bigger picture. What is the ultimate purpose of your life?

 No, I’m not suggesting you were born for a particular purpose. I’m asking you what you feel like you were designed to do, and what every experience in your life has led you to see as your calling in your life?

 This is no small question. In fact it is one of the biggest questions you will encounter in your life, and certainly one of the most important.

 Without a sense of purpose, life can feel meaningless, pointless, worthless, or purpose-less.

 

 The most pathetic person in the world
is someone who has sight, but has no vision. ~ Helen Keller

 Vision: Knowing your ultimate purpose, what does your life look like when you live in alignment and source your life from that knowing?

 One very powerful way to explore your vision is to imagine yourself 10 years into the future and ask yourself, “how does my life look now?”. This gives you a present tense vision, even though you are imagining into the future. 

 

      Each man has his own vocation; his talent is his call.
There is one direction in which all space is open to him.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

 Vocation: Many people mistakenly define vocation as a career or job. Vocation in the sense I’m using the word here is much larger. Vocation comes from the root, vocare, which means ‘to call’. Thus, a vocation is a calling to a certain kind of life, and is closer in meaning to purpose.

 While there are many idle people who know their purpose, vocation implies action and an expression of that purpose.

Vocation is your particular way of expressing and living out your purpose, and your particular way of being in the world.

 For example, someone may determine that their purpose is to, “open the hearts of the world, by sharing the gifts of my artistic beauty”.

 Their vocation may be to paint wherever they are called to, on canvass, sidewalk, wall or flesh. Knowing your purpose generally comes first, and how that purpose is expressed in the world follows.  

 

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather
the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. ~ Victor Frankl

 Goals: Easily the most talked about and studied of the five Life Dimensions we are looking at here, goals are simply milestones or objectives that we set out to meet. The difference here is that we can create goals that are in alignment with a much more vast and complete set of principles as I’ve outlined.

 Goals that are connected to an ultimate purpose, a vast vision, an encompassing vocation, and deep values are goals that are supported on many levels, and much more likely to be attained.

  *   *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

 Human beings are multidimensional creatures existing on several planes at the same time. When we have a multidimensional map, which includes the bearings of Values, Purpose, Vision, Vocation and Goals, we know where we are, where we are going, how we will travel, and why we have chosen the destination we have.

 Conversely, to be unaware of these essential Life Dimensions is to be lost without a map, without a compass, without a destination, and without a clue.

 
What will it be for you, my fellow Life Traveler?

 SWACK!

For information about a Free Next Step Life Map Session, valued at $197.00,  check it out here.

Your Essential Facts of Life?

There are only a few things we can say about life with any real certainty. In fact, if we look at our lives honestly and unflinchingly we will see that we live according to many assumptions, beliefs, and view points that we accepted many, many years ago.

If we look honestly and unflinchingly we will begin to reevaluate and second guess almost EVERYTHING.

If we look honestly and unflinchingly we will unlearn many untruths, becoming naked and clear, deep, simple and alive…

In the words of the Western Sage,  Henry David Thoreau: I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it and to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

What are your essential facts of life? Let’s see if we can cut to the chase here.

Respond here, take a stand, give voice to your truth… I will shout out a few of my deeper revelations tomorrow evening.

Until then, what do you know for sure?

I am a Garbage Man

I am a man who perversely shackles himself to things, so as to enjoy the facade of being an escape artist, riding the high of false freedom just before binding myself to another thing.

Addiction, attachment, obsession, these fixations have served to give form to my soul. Being trapped provides the opportunity to repeat the dramatic cycle of planning then executing my escape. A freedom from a situation I have wittingly and willingly constructed with my own hands.

But of course this is not until I have milked the ‘dilemma’ of all it’s suffering, squeezing out every drop of anguish from my self-constructed plight.

This suffering and anguish is the fuel and flesh of my soul.

‘I’ am fashioned from a feeling of desperation and hopelessness. ‘I’ am a pattern of habit, a swirling sense of wrongness and not-enoughness. ‘I’ am a bundle of craving; craving enslavement, which leads to drama, which leads to escape.

I am bound to the cycle of being bound then unbound.

I wallow in the shallow ditch that holds the mind weeds of jealousy, the angry little beetle bugs, the discarded bags of emotional garbage, and the dirty water of yesterday’s betrayals.

I call this home. This place of discontent and misery I despise, yet it is familiar, therefor I return to it again and again as the source and ground of my identity.

‘I’ am a tired and tiring habit at best. Stale and rotting, like last weeks food.

Like a pair of worn out gloves, covered in dirt, filthy and foul. They seem to protect and repel exposure to the cold harsh winter weathers of life.

Painfully, they also indiscriminately protect and repel the warm summer sunlight of love’s attention; spring’s cool cleansing rains of compassion; and the tenderness of autumn breezes that remind us that  something familiar, yet also new, is on it’s way once again.

The paradoxical parody here is this; to resist the ditch by struggling to clamber out of it, or to resist the gloves by loathing their existence, is to engage in the same game I have been attempting to elucidate through these words before you.

I create more of the same.

This is the realm of habitual patterns of conditioned reactions to what Life presents, in an attempt to find comfort. Seeking comfort in discomfort.

This is to struggle with karma, the hand I have been dealt by Life. Struggling with karma only leads to …yes…more karma. To battle drama is very dramatic. To resist pain is painful.

To avoid fear is an act of fear.

So, what to do?

Information about The Next Step Life Path Coaching is here

Relax and be with ‘what is’ as the stuff of life, noticing the inherent simplicity and non-drama that lay beneath the complexity and drama of the stuff of life. There will always be stuff of life, and resistance is futile, only adding up to more stuff of life. This is karma; the act of creating new stuff of life, and our relational dance of acceptance/non-dance of resistance, with it.

As we settle into a more simple way of Being, our karmas dissolve in the open space of non-resistive awareness.

Is this pretty or pleasant? Often not, but the result of resistance is the creation of much more that is “not pretty” or “pleasant”. There comes a time to stop.

Stop resisting, stop running, stop hiding, stop strategizing or manipulating or maneuvering.

How to stop?

By giving attention or Love, to “what is” and a persistent relaxation and feeling into Life as it presents itself, we come to see clearly that what ever is, already is. Clear seeing enables us to see how we construct our reality and suffering, moment to moment. We do this by believing our lives should be other than they are right now.

How should your Life be?

How does that ‘should’ feel?

Information about The Next Step Life Path Coaching is here

Do You Know About Aborted Development?

The brilliant author and Eco-philosopher Bill Ploktin, one of the World’s great movers and shakers, suggests in his newest book, Nature and Psyche, that most adults in the western world do not get past stage 3 of an 8 stage life cycle.

Almost half way to full maturity.

Ken Wilber, whom many call the greatest living philosopher, says research suggests that only a very small number make it to the upper levels of development, and that most people spend their lives wandering the lower realms of their own developmental possibilities.

Potential oaks, dying as saplings….

Roses left in the bud…

Half way up the developmental ladder…

How could this be, you ask?

There are many, many reason’s for our collective aborted development.

If you are interested in looking at yours, and want to re-engage your life so that you can discover who and what you are beyond where you currently are, then I invite you to check out Next Step Life Path Coaching here:

http://www.wakinguptolife.com/NSLPCoaching.htm

I will help you realize dimensions of your Life you may not even know existed.

http://www.wakinguptolife.com/NSLPCoaching.htm

An Invitation To Stand Free

It isn’t out of maliciousness, but out of ignorance that we’re taught the delusions that persist in our lives today.

Reality, for the most part, is not at all as we believe. Beneath our layers of belief about ourselves, others and the world, lies another reality far more magnificent than the one we have accepted as real.

We can’t really blame Mom and Dad. They were only passing on what they believed to be true. We can’t accuse society of a conscious collective conspiracy. Society is far to disorganized for that.

No, the deception was passed on innocently enough.

Just because we might imagine that more people should have caught on to the frailty of a ‘belief based Life’ doesn’t make it so. After all, appearances are deceiving. It is certainly understandable how one could be fooled, accepting beliefs like hand-me-down clothes; outdated and maybe even silly.

How could we know?

Beliefs hang in the musty closets of our mind. Long outgrown, yet difficult to part with because it’s all we have. Having long forgotten what it feels like to be naked in our experience, we instead clothe ourselves in the garb of belief, insulating ourselves from direct contact with the tender throb of existence. For that there is no need of belief.

Only a willingness and an open mind.

Fear, uncertainty, comfort, familiarity.

These are our reasons for refusing to stand free and open.

These are our reasons for refusing to invite experience to touch us in ways we secretly dream of.

These are our reasons for clutching beliefs that once comforted us, but now confine us.

Although the cell is purely fictional, unreal, fake, it matters little. It matters little because it will take courage to step out and stand free, and that is a task for tomorrow.

Or is it?

Next Step Life Path Coaching is here

Four Steps to a Life Experience That Sucks

“If you want reality to be different than it is, you might as well try to teach a cat to bark.  You can try and try, and in the end the cat will look up at you and say, “Meow.”  Wanting reality to be different than it is, is hopeless.  You can spend the rest of your life trying to teach a cat to bark.”  ~ Byron Katie

You spend much of your life in conflict with reality, arguing with reality, at war with reality.

Reality, in the way I am using the word here, means ‘what is’, before you think about it, before you judge it, before you have an opinion about it.

Reality is just the facts of the current situation, before you become involved.

Reality is just the true state of affairs, before you make it personal.

Reality, in the way I am using the word here, is impersonal, is objective, is whatever is happening or appearing now.

Reality is simply ‘what’ things are before you determine ‘how’ or ‘why’ things are.

An easy way to get in touch with reality in the way I’m describing here, is to subtract yourself from your experience by imagining you do not exist.  Whatever is left over is reality, because it is no longer colored by your personal likes/dislikes, opinions, beliefs, and judgments.

Much of your life is spent resisting reality, arguing with reality, fighting with reality, at war with reality.

What is worse, you are at war with an opponent you can never defeat and that does not even want to fight with you. Reality does not fight back.

Reality does not care about how you feel about it and is never in conflict with you.

This ongoing war with reality is usually happening beneath your awareness, and unfolds in a consistent and predicable way.

1. You fall asleep, which means your attention deteriorates in one of two ways.

First, your attention becomes greatly diminished, clouded, fuzzy, and hazy. You are not really paying attention to anything, instead your attention is drifting uselessly.

Some other words to describe this kind of sleep are zoned-out, absent, lost, disconnected, and unfocused.

Second, your attention becomes greatly intensified, exaggerated, frantic, and distorted. Here, your attention is being held captive by your experience in an unskillful and involuntary way.

Some other words to describe this kind of sleep are emotionally reactive, over-involved, flooded, regressed, and hyper-focused.

2. When you are asleep as described above, you unknowingly go to war with reality. Because you are asleep, you see how things are and you often have a belief that things should be otherwise. You see how things are and you believe you know how things should be instead.

It is here that you begin to argue with reality by believing you know how things should be and begin resisting, denying, refusing, pushing, pulling, contacting, or otherwise fighting with how things already are!

3. Your war with reality starts with the conflicted thoughts in your head, but then moves to your body by creating a continuous state of semi-tension. Your body begins reacting to the thoughts in your head, causing you physical tension, anxiety, and countless forms of physical suffering. You begin constricting blood flow and depleting yourself of the energy it takes to sustain that tension.

4. Your mental war in your head and your physical tensions cause your breathing to become constricted and you begin to function with far below adequate oxygen supplies. This means your fight/flight system inadvertently kicks in.

Asleep, zoned out, emotionally reactive, futile resistance, tension, not breathing.

If you wanted to actually create the conditions for a lousy experience right now, just follow that 1-2-3-4 recipe for suffering above.

If you wanted to actually create the conditions for a lousy life experience, just follow that 1-2-3-4 consistently day in and day out until it becomes, ‘normal’ for you.

I invite you to try it now if you like.  I dare you.  I challenge you.  I beseech you. Hold your breath, tense your body, and say aloud, ‘no!’ while really trying to reject your experience.

Now, could there be a more obvious exercise in futility?

(See my forthcoming Waking Up to the Heart of Care for a basic, simple to use guide to mental and emotional management and heart open care and communications, for care providers, educators, parents, leaders and lovers, and anyone else who cares about HOW they care.)

Searching For Understanding, Finding My Heart

For a long time I wondered how I could have strayed so far from the love and light of my first 18 years of life. I grew up with a very close relationship to amazing parents, an awesome brother, and no trauma. I always had a girlfriend and lots of friends. I had all the talent I could have hoped for, a star in hockey, baseball, and track, and had for a time dedicated myself to bodybuilding with amazing results. I succeeded at everything I put myself into. Ideal.

So why in my late teens did I assume the moniker of ‘Mr. Misanthrope’, and begin writing poetry about death, hatred and anger?

“I never seem to smile much, I’m happy when I’m sad,
pain can always bring a grin, I’m good at being bad…”

Why did I turn to massive amounts of drugs and alcohol, dress in all black and leather, and steep myself in a lifestyle of darkness, horror and contempt?

Why did I become an intimidating, mean, 210lb, long haired deathbanger? (the name given to an unsavory character who listens to the most extreme music imaginable. Actually, it’s beyond imaginable…)

Who knows.

At this point in my life I have no interest in stories and the only reason to ever recall mine is to share it here. The good news is, looking back it seems I may have finally become tired of the dark. So tired.

In my mid-twenties I had become so accustomed to the dark, that my eyes had become acutely sensitive to the light. Like a prisoner in a black jail cell, any light that accidentally creeps in through a crack was captured and held.

Saturated by the dark, I began to wonder about that light. Soaked by the dark, I began to hunt for the light. I secretly called myself The Light Hunter (a name I have shared with only two others, till now). I began my journey out of the darkness of ignorance and confusion, in search of the light of understanding and wisdom.

In my travels I encountered countless perspectives regarding what our basic problems are as human beings, and why we cause ourselves and those we care about so much unnecessary suffering. Often the perspectives I was exposed to offered a kind of 1-2-3 understanding.

1. The problem – which was often a lack of understanding, and the confused way of life that results from that lack
2. The solution – which was often a new understanding that needed to be implemented repeatedly
3. The result – which was often clear seeing and wisdom, which leads to a new way of life

I found that many of the wisdom traditions also promoted the benefits of increased compassion, care, and concern. These benefits were not only a goal of the traditions, but also the path, which means compassion could be seen as a practice or way of life in and of itself.

It is at this point especially relevant for the purposes of this book that I must be honest that I had absolutely no interest in the ideas of compassion, care, and concern. In fact, the ideas of compassion, care, and concern sort of repulsed me. Sappy, flaky, bleah!

I was very clear at that time that it was understanding I was looking for, and I could care less about other people and the world I lived in. As far as I was concerned I was looking out for number 1, let everyone else figure it out on their own.

Fast forward after almost two decades of ruthlessly practicing what I call being Awake, or energetically connected to my present experience with awareness and attention in all situations and circumstances. What I have found is very surprising to me and forms the basis for this book. What I have found is that, in accordance with the world’s wisdom traditions, Understanding = Compassion

I went in search of understanding and finally found my heart.

Last night, as I did my rounds in the Continuing Care Unit I am so fortunate to spend time at, it is Understanding that compels me. It is Understanding that compels me to …

… enter the rooms of those I care so deeply for and offer comfort, touch, concern and humor.

… hold a loving eye contact beyond the point of my own comfort, ensuring them that I see them completely.

… hold priorities that place time with my residents far beyond the administrative duties that crush so many care providers.

… open my heart in the midst of a world full of chaos, confusion, and suffering, knowing that soon it will all be over and that any love and kindness I have left ungiven will die with me.

Yes, Understanding = Compassion.

May these words help you and those you care about in some small way.

Preface to Waking Up to the Heart of Care

Preface

Due to my relentlessly consistent teaching and single-minded promotion of one life enhancing theme, I have become known as The Wake Up Guy.

If I were to attempt to summarize what it is that I have been pushing for almost 20 years, into three points, it would look like this:

1. For a variety of reasons, we live much of our lives Asleep, which means with an attention that is inappropriate for the circumstances we are in. This means attention is almost always, either:

a.)  too weak, leading countless forms of suffering including a lack of focus, distractibility, and/or misinterpretation of experience.
or
b.) too strong, leading to countless forms of suffering including over-involvement, attachment and/or distortion of experience.

2. Because we are Asleep, we live in a world in our mind (Dream World), engaged in a variety of self created pain and problems (Sleep Suffering), believing we exist in ways that are very small (as Dream Characters) and surrounded by others who are also asleep (The Sleeping World).

No, this is not a pretty picture, but hold on…

3. For a variety of reasons, sometimes we can become attracted to the idea and process of Waking Up (hopefully, I can be a reason).

Waking Up means to have your attention anchored and grounded in your present life experience with awareness and clarity. When attention becomes anchored and grounded in your present life experience with awareness and clarity, everything becomes much more simple and obvious.

This means we begin to see things as they are, rather than how we’ve always unquestioningly believed and assumed they are. When we begin to Wake Up and see things as they are, everything changes, as it must.

The white noise in our heads that we often mistakenly call ‘thought’, but which is actually useless habitual chatter, is greatly diminished.

At the same time the ability for true thought, which is insightful, creative and focused, is greatly enhanced and clarified.

Self created suffering diminishes and simple satisfaction increases. We act more effectively, relate more authentically, love more openly and live more deeply.

We see more accurately, think more clearly, and we relax more fully…
and we breathe more fully…
and we love more fully…
and we live more fully.

Most of us only live a small part of the life we were given.
~ George Leonard

One reason I have been so single minded about this topic is because I cannot deny the obviousness of the value of Waking Up. When one begins to Wake Up, a deeper intelligence takes over and everything becomes amusingly clear. As clear as your own face when you look in a mirror.

Look and see.

Gratitude’s and Dedications

I joyously submit to you that Life is the Great Teacher, and that your own life is the classroom.

Much of your suffering is a result of your own truancy. You fail to show up for class, even though every life lesson is tailored just for you, and is being impeccably taught by a master and guru, at exactly the right moment.

When you do show up, you often sleep through your classes, eyes open or closed.

How do we know this is true?

We know it is true because she repeats the lessons you are not getting, over and over until you do. Over and over.

Look and see.

Life as it is, the only teacher.
~ Charlotte Joko Beck

This book is dedicated to Life.
Thankfully, She has always had Her way with me.

All around us Life’s Great Song, drifts upon the breezes,
as She slowly waltzes by, without a care for who She pleases…