Spiritual Reboot

When I was in my 30’s, I became aware of spiritual bypassing. “A spiritual bypass or spiritual bypassing is a "tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks." The term was introduced in the early 1980’s by John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist.” (Source)

Unfortunately, I was an expert at spiritual bypassing. I used my beliefs to cover up pain and deny dangerous situations and unhealthy relationships. Meditation unlocked the deeper realms, but wisdom pulled me into co-dependence recovery. I tried almost every kind of 12 Step recovery group, including Overeaters Anonymous and AA (I didn’t have an alcohol addiction, but attended some open meetings; I ran into some wise people there.), and found that each group offered a unique twist to my healing journey.

Below is a list of unhealthy behaviors that signal poor interpersonal boundaries. The first rule of thumb in recovery is to handle the substance addictions: get clean, get sober, and then heal the deeper emotional causes of one’s struggles. This is called personal work. One cannot be spiritually fit when they are unable to pay their bills, get along with others, or feel taken advantage of all the time. These signs of unhealthy personal boundaries point to deeper problems that must be addressed before we can fully accept our spiritual heritage.

• Telling all.
• Talking at an intimate level at the first meeting.
• Falling in love with a new acquaintance.
• Falling in love with anyone who reaches out.
• Being overwhelmed by a person - preoccupied.
• Acting on the first sexual impulse.
• Being sexual for your partner, not yourself.
• Going against personal values or rights to please others.
• Not noticing when someone else displays inappropriate boundaries.
• Not noticing when someone invades your boundaries.
• Accepting food, gifts, touch, or sex that you don't want.
• Touching a person without asking.
• Taking as much as you can get, for the sake of getting.
• Giving as much as you can give, for the sake of giving.
• Allowing someone to take as much as they can from you.
• Letting others direct your life.
• Letting others describe your reality.
• Letting others define you.
• Believing others can anticipate your needs.
• Expecting others to fill your needs automatically.
• Falling apart so someone will take care of you.
• Self-abuse.
• Sexual and physical abuse.
• Food and chemical abuse.

The above list is from Recovery.org and it covers boundary issues, but there are many other issues one finds in codependency. Codependency is a result of not learning how to take care of oneself while growing up. This sets one up for covering up and denying problems and personal dysfunction. Poor boundaries are signs of codependency. Other signs include:

• Rebellion against healthy authority figures, such as an employee or the police. Of course, one needs to rebel against abuse, but not all people in power are abusive.
• Not handling money properly. This includes overspending, not planning, buying too much, always being broke.
• People pleasing.
• Being consistently late to work.
• Denial patterns.
• Compliance patterns.
• Low self-esteem patterns.
• Revenge patterns - failing in one’s personal life because their parents wanted them to succeed. Or they might try to get even with parents by subconsciously setting up their spouse or other close personal relationships to be their parents and they take out their unresolved anger on them as parent substitute figures.
• Hoarding and cluttering.
• Poor personal hygiene.

If you identify with the above symptoms and want help, start with Pia Melody’s seminal book, Facing Codependency. Once you read the book, you can follow up with the workbook, Breaking Free: A Recovery Workbook for Facing Codependence.

In 1990, I went to Gurumayi’s ashram, which is north of Mumbai, India. One day a group of ten people, all Americans, were sharing, and eight of the 10 attended a 12 Step recovery meeting. While I no longer attend a meeting, the 20 years I spent in the meetings provided immeasurable support and many healing opportunities. Many cities have codependency meetings and there are even online resources. You may also find the following prayer helpful.

Co-dependency Prayer *

God, grant me the grace to let others have their addictions, upsets, and imperfections, without trying to fix them, change them, or solve their problems. Give me the courage to say “No” when I want to and the wisdom to reach out for help when I am in denial. Heal my need to please others or control them. Help me to accept with serenity my imperfections. Open my vision so that I know I am precious, and make me aware that my expression is valuable. Amen.

* Excerpt from Offbeat Prayers for the Modern Mystic © 1989 Easy Times Press, Anne Sermons Gillis, AnneGillis.com.

If you are tripping over your life, regardless of all your meditations, your affirmations, and your assertiveness classes, you may need a spiritual reboot. The ground on which we stand must be filled with common sense and the ability to live in the world and take care of ourselves.

 

Keeping Tabs

Too often we keep tabs on the problematic issues in life. It’s a limited viewpoint: life is a problem. This is how we make life hard. This is how we become Hardaholics – through our perceptions. For numerous companies, Y2K was problematic, but for hundreds, if not thousands, of well-paid programmers, Y2K was a job. It meant employment.

Rather than building problems with our minds, we might do better building emotional and mental scenarios of gains, rather than those of loss.

Please consider playing some of my favorite building games:

• Expected and Unexpected Income I start the day with this thought: “Today I receive expected and unexpected income.” Each day I keep tabs on my income, based on that intention. Recently I found $12 between some papers. One day a friend gave me a book. Another day we got one free bag of dog food for making our tenth purchase. That same day we received a free bottle of flax seed oil. My husband was told by a store worker that the store did not carry flax seed oil. My husband checked out, but before he left, the employee caught up with him and handed him a bottle of flax seed oil. “I was wrong. We had it. Just keep it for free.” That was $10.00 worth of oil
• What good happened today? At the close of the day, review what happened and find at least one good thing that happened that day. Let the last thing on our minds be a life-supportive thought.
•  Synchronicities of the day Synchronicity means meaningful coincidences. One of my most profound incidences of synchronicity happened when I was explaining the concept of synchronicity to a client. “If I am saying something to you and a tree falls in the backyard, that would be a sign that what I am saying is important. It would be as if the tree falling was the Universe’s way of saying, ‘Listen’.” As I was saying that, a tree fell in the backyard of my office. There was a window in my office, so we had a clear view. The falling of the tree pointed out that synchronicity would probably be important in her life. These events are magic and they make wonderful journal material.
•  Keeping up with the miracles – the small ones. A miracle could be changing the way I react to something. The behavior or activity that used to upset me no longer disturbs me. Another miracle would be a deep feeling of peace even in the face of a loss. I remember flying home for my father’s funeral and feeling uplifted on the journey. It felt like invisible arms were holding me. A miracle can be meeting an influential friend or turning to the very page in a book that you needed to read for information or inspiration. Maybe it’s a good night’s sleep when you are an insomniac. Look for those miracles.
•  Keeping tabs on me This involves taking a second throughout the day to feel what it’s like to be me, when I feel me, and I connect my mind and body. “Oh, here I am.” I check in throughout the day and it keeps my mind from too much chatter and calms me. Simple task; profound results.
• Keeping tabs on my breath I check my breath during the day. Just noticing my breath makes me sit up straighter and breathe deeper. If I’m holding my breath or have shallow breathing, it tells me I’m stressed. I relax my body. I let go in my belly and shoulders. Relaxation is the secret simple key to health. (I heard that relaxation quote recently, but don’t remember who said it).

The eastern trinitarian concept highlights construction or creation, sustaining life, and destruction or tearing down. Brahma creates, Vishnu sustains, and Shiva destroys. What does your mind keep tabs on? Is it the constructive or the destructive nature? Are you mentally affixed to the negative side of Shiva’s nature? Life is always falling apart; that’s the Shiva nature, but focusing on that aspect alone will bring despair. Things need to fall apart, but watching the fall may not be the best use of your time.

I have a compost bin in my kitchen. It lives in my pantry. I don’t deny its existence. I use it to dispose of my vegetable and fruit trimmings, but I don’t stand over the compost bin for hours and smell the stench. It really stinks. I know it’s there, covered and tucked inside my pantry, but I don’t let its existence determine my life’s view.

What we keep tabs on colors our world view and either builds or destroys personal realities. What are you keeping tabs on? Tim Bays says it so well in his song, A thousand things went right today and will again tomorrow. The exercises above build the mind and heart and take us from hopelessness and helplessness and deliver us to peace, ease, and happiness. Please join me in creating an easier and safer world. Your world view is up to you, and it’s time to make it easier, freer, and lighter.

Simplicity

“I continue to be drawn to clarity and simplicity. ‘Less is more’ remains my mantra.”
— Stephane Rolland

“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.”
— John Maeda

“If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough.”
—Vicki Robin

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
—Leonardo da Vinci

“Stuff is not passive. Stuff wants your time, attention, allegiance. But you know it as well as I do, life is more important than the things we accumulate.”
— Dave Bruno

These quotes came from the Life Edited blog.

"Simplicity is difficult for twisted minds." A Course in Miracles

Too-Much-itis

It is great to heal our emotional pain. It is freeing to quieten the egoic mind. It is wonderful to learn yoga and meet spiritual masters. It is exhilarating to practice meditation and feng shui. It is liberating to read spiritual literature, to appreciate everything, and to float in a flotation tank, but sometimes we suffer from too-much-itis.

Rather than going on a spiritual journey, we often go on a spiritual race. Early in my spiritual life, I was plagued by a not so helpful enthusiasm. I read the works of philosophers, psychologists, metaphysicians, saints, and scientists. Everywhere I searched I encountered a teaching that disagreed with something I just read. I pushed myself harder to discover truth and to reconcile opposites.

One day, I collapsed – figuratively speaking. I was one tired seeker; so I retired. I no longer cared whether I needed to surrender or to take charge. I couldn’t care less whether I should be meek or expressive. I didn’t care about the existential dilemmas of life. I quit trying to be positive about everything. I stopped being hyper-vigilant about word usage, and expended my lexicon beyond only spiritual or life affirming words. No more figuring out if my desires were egoic or if they had come as God’s will.

At the time, I had stopped trying to be successful. I thought that would cure me, but then I fell into the trap of becoming a successful spiritual person. Obviously the solutions weren’t “out there” in the world, so I plumbed the depths of the inner world. But life didn’t get better. It was more confusing. Some days were better than others, but mostly my life got heavier and I felt desperate.

I never thought this could happen. Ten years before I experienced an extraordinary awakening, but here I was, asleep again, and going faster and faster, so I could recapture Nirvana.

Now, there was to be absolutely no mental agenda. I was finished. I would drink mint juleps on the patio and turn into a lazy, brainless person. I closed the books, stopped listening to my cassette tapes (no mp3s at that time), and started watching the soap opera I had previously abandoned.

A friend commented, “You look so relaxed. I was worried about you. You looked burdened before. What are you doing?” “Nothing.” I replied “I quit reading all my books and gave up searching for the truth.” Until he pointed it out, I was unaware of the shift in my energy. I was feeling lighter. I had more energy and felt happy. My too-much-itis was in remission.

The spiritual path is delicate, fraught with mysteries and seeming inconsistencies. Sometimes we have to do something different, take a chance and move forward, and at other times we have to back down. I had been trying to attain a state of consciousness, rather than being awake to the transcendental awareness of the okayness of life as it was. In that okayness my identity rested, waiting only for me to recognize my Self.

Since that experience of too-much-itis, I have ceased being an avid seeker. I don’t respond optimally when well-meaning people tell me how to do spirituality. I find myself contracting when people try to teach or advise me, and shiver to think of the times I’ve given tepid, unsolicited advice. When I was in the spiritual race, I probably wanted others racing alongside me.

So many people believe the spiritual journey is hard and it takes supreme effort. The spiritual path is littered with pseudo martyrs who wear their hardships like a badge of courage. The idea of endless burden and difficulty is wrong. The less I do, the more I have. I’ve found that it’s easier to love than hate, easier to forgive than hold resentments, easier to surrender than to control, and that our Source doesn’t jerk us around - plaguing us with harder and harder tasks until we pass the test of fire. The spiritual quest is a journey without distance, and we no longer need to be the sacrificial lambs of outmoded beliefs. We are free now. We don’t have to earn a place in the annals of spiritual masters; all we really have to do is love what we can, forgive what we can’t love, and be willing to surrender what we can’t forgive. It’s simple. There are leagues of unseen support we can’t even fathom.

When we stand grounded in the belief that the spiritual path is hard, we will be tested again and again, by ourselves, not by our creator. I’m asking you to stand down and consider that our expectation of difficulty continuously obscures the pristine Presence available in this moment. Are you willing for life to be EZier than you thought it was? Can you let go of the complex, complicated, burdensome perception of life and claim your freedom, because if you can, you will find that life will be EZier and EZier

Get Peaced Off - Practice Kindness of Perception

If you want to see more peace you have to create a context in which peace can shine through. Use the following ideas to jump start your peace. 

• View others and world situations though the lens of compassion. 
• Make a list of your 10 greatest hotspots. You may be a political junkie who puts down others who hold an opposite point of view. You might feel fear and panic when you think about climate change and how it will affect the future. You might go off on what you think is an oppressive government or believe there are lazy bums sucking off the government. You may be an elitist about food and put people down who eat junk food. You might frequently feel abandoned. 

 These hotspots are made up stuff (MUS). You made up the hotspots as a way to make yourself feel safe or superior, or to feed your addiction to emotional drama. You don’t actually make up the events; you make up the drama. When one of your hotspots comes up, repeat this, “I chose to no longer be under the tyranny of this thought or feeling. It is not worth my peace.” When your encounter ignorance, intolerance, prejudice, or unkindness, don’t use these as fuel for angry righteousness or one-upmanship. Don’t get pissed off; get peaced off. Living though hotspots creates emotional prisons, stress, and ultimately destroys the body through illness. Live life from your softspot, not your hotspot.