Chasing the good feeling.
Seeking the positive outlook.
Affirming a positive outcome.
All manners in which I have operated for years.
Much before Louise Hay, Abraham Hicks, Neville Goddard or Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie wrote about the important principle of not criticizing someone (and, he added, expecting them to cooperate or change).
In light of the positive outlook I have sought to hold through many years, I have had a rough reminder from reality.
The reminder is this: Shit happens.
We can have some input in how we roll with that fact.
But, we are not able to avoid human experiences such as living loss, death and pain.
In light of this I have been contemplating the nature of reality, and what we choose to believe.
As the days roll by after the death of someone I loved endlessly (read about the moment of acute grief in last weeks newsletter), is the truth about the way humans hold and maneuver opposing metaphors (all the time).
In the days following this unexpected death, I noticed a need to find a way to understand and explain it:
“they were preparing us for some time”
“I think they knew”
“they are still alive in my heart”
“it was meant to be like this”
And yet, as I contemplate the other side of this giant metaphoric coin, I can see that this is simultaneously nonsensical.
A lot of the time experiences of Pain and Death - make no sense.
We all know of stories of the auntie who never smoked or drank in all her life and died of lung cancer before retirement age, when that one uncle is live and kicking enjoying their pipe and scotch at 87.
Turns out, the human experience is not personal.
A friend put it to me bluntly last week when she said:
you are NOT the center of the universe
She said this as I unhelpfully attempted to see how I had caused all the consequent complications and difficulties which are unravelling parts of my life in the wake of this wake.
Death reveals the need for sense making AND it asks us to accept the way in which human experience is based on a certain meaninglessness.
Every country in which there is WAR right now (in order of casualties during 2024):
Ukraine, Palestine, Myanmar, Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia, Burkina Faso, Mexico (the drug wars), Syria, Mall, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Yemen, Pakistan, Halti, Colombia, Israel, Iraq, South Sudan, India, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Niger, Philippines, Central African Republic, Uganda, Mozambique, Chad, Benin, Russia, Ghana, Togo, Libya, Ivory Coast, Tanzania, Algeria, Mauritania, China, Tunisia.
Right now, TODAY, there are millions of people involved in these wars, and many are entirely innocent to the acts.
They are Good people.
For all we know they may have practiced the Law of Attraction for years.
They may very well have lived lives based on principles of compassion, love and self work.
Yet war came.
Yet war is taking place.
And war makes little sense.
I have two young boys, and I often think of all the mothers whose sons are sent to fight in wars.
On both sides: Mothers, sending their male children to kill each other.
It makes little sense.
On the other side of this coin we have evidence of how the ability to hold onto principles of goodness may be key to survive the wars (actual and personal) which we face in our lives.
Like Victor Frankl (who survived a Nazi concentration camp), there are tools and strategies that allow us to eventually prosper.
Yet what we may miss in Frankl’s story is that he prospered in the midst of war.
At the very core of it, he was able to choose.
Because war comes upon us all.
Just as death came upon me and will eventually come upon you.
Despite our commitment to practice, our willingness to change, the fact is that the other side of the coin means we do not and cannot effect everything that happens.
We are not the center of the universe.
90% of the time we are recycling the same thoughts over and over again.
One side of this coin is to practice other thoughts and thus installing positive sides of the same coin.
The other side is to admit all the ways in which we actually “enjoy” or compulsively run these programs.
In some ways the thoughts are not the issue. The issue is our relationship to our thoughts.
What paradigm am I hanging onto that allows these thoughts to “run” away with me?
If you are facing the loss of a job.
The loss of a lover.
The loss of your savings.
What you do with the thoughts that come up, is where your salvation lies.
Some suggest to push them away.
Others ask us to change them.
Two weeks ago, in the middle of the night the pain of my grief was such that I felt like I was about to die myself.
Curled up in a ball on my bed, I rocked myself forward and back, softly banging my head against the cushioned headboard - I faced the sensation of death in myself by softly saying:
The opposite is also true.
The opposite is also true.
The opposite is also true.
The opposite is also true.
It did not make my feeling sense change.
It did not lower my cortisol or my flight state.
But somewhere, in the spacetime of my experience, I held onto a small glimmer of the other side of the coin.
However painful this death has been, I have asked myself, can you live this as an answered prayer?
As I ask this of myself, the part of me who loved deeply falls apart.
They do not want to accept this side of the metaphor.
The good news is, I do not have to accept anything.
I do not have to deny anything.
I can experience the grief as death, and I can hold the notion of light, all at the same time.
Pain and pleasure (joy, elation, happiness, contentment and love) are one and the same thing.
What I write here is not original.
It is not new.
The questions we ask, are so often more valuable than the answers we give.
Yes, people in the process of grief around me are to some part showing their teeth.
Just like small children, adults in grief are taking out all their heavy artillery and discharging their pain, however they can. Myself included.
And, what do we say about little children?
When children act at their worst, is exactly when they need our love the most.
And my question now is, if not now when?
When will I choose love?
When will I watch myself loose my patience, or lash out in some hissyfit (to feel something on a numb grief day) and accept this human condition?
I am not the center of any universe.
In the scheme of things I do not matter.
Life may very well end at any moment.
So when, I ask myself, will I surrender my stories, and incessant thoughts, and choose kindness. Choose love. Choose to accept the moment as it is?
When will you?
What will you have to loose to make the final choice?
Make it over and over again.
No matter what suffering and pain presents itself.
And this decision to be kind, to choose love, it must be made despite the other side of the coin.
Despite the fact that much of the pain in the human experience may very well not make sense in the end.
It must be taken even if we did cause our own suffering by succumbing to negativity, to poor diet and to poor choices.
We must own up to our side of the experience.
Being awake means choosing our stance, despite circumstances.
And exercise in manifestation may very well result.
But as the Buddhist suggest: we must find the middle way.
It both is and isn’t.
It both makes sense (you do effect reality) and it doesn’t (reality is out of your control).
In letting go of a fixed idea that we create our reality into the future_
I may choose to play (like a game) with the act of imagining.
Yet being sober means knowing, if pain comes, and suffering arises, it is impersonal, just as success may be impersonal.
It is part of the human potential to change our course in life.
And at the same time we are certainly innocent to external occurrences.
Both are truths (but not absolutes).
By both committing to a principle (kindness), and allowing the world to be free from our expectations (expect things to turn out well), we embrace the fuller expression of humanity.
And at best, we hold onto kindness at the heart of that experience.
and that’s ok
At worst, we spend time in unconscious reactivity, until we don’t.
and that’s ok
And when we wake up - we steer the ship back on track.
and that’s ok
Whatever you are going through right now_
allowing yourself to hold both sides of the coin will allow you to have a little bit more space to be human.
And being human makes sense.
And it doesn’t.
If we survive or not hinges on our ability to hold onto these to opposing ideas and knowing we still have the power to choose kindness and love.
Love, as always,
K
p.s. If you would like to talk more about how understanding embodiment and the way our mind works book a free 15 minute call and Choose Chat with K- 15.
p.p.s. I have a few freed up slots for Mindful Embodiment Coaching, book a free curiosity call here.
p.p.s. Want to know more about me, check out my website.
I lost my Mom 10+ years ago to lung cancer, though she never smoked a day in her life. Thanks, Dad, a former 3+ pack a day smoker who is still alive at 91 and who I now care for. It’s just not fair sometimes.