Zen - Fear

Teacher: What is the thing you feared most?

Student: That I will not be there when my family needed me the most.

Teacher: Is it really?

Student: That I am not there when my friends needed me the most.

Teacher: Is it really?

Student: That nobody is there when I needed them the most.

Teacher: Is it really?

Student: That I am not there for myself when I needed it most.

Teacher: Ah, there it is.

Understanding perspectives

One of the things I like about my drive to DC on 95 is catching a glimpse of this temple just outside the beltway. As you are coming in from the north, it suddenly looms in front of you, and you think it is dead ahead. Then as you follow the curve of the road, it feels like it is going to be on your left. Then, once you get even closer, you realize it is actually going to be on the right.

I have always been tickled by that, how our perceptions can be so easily manipulated, and that true understanding only becomes clear as we draw near.  Life is filled with such incidences where we feel we know something or expect something just by a precursory glance, but then as we approach closer to the subject, study it, we find our objectives altered.

So... be open to the fact that our perspectives can be changed. Understand that misunderstandings can occurred simply because there is so much to understand - about people, about lives. Our realities shift based upon where we stand, where we are along the journey. What is real to us at a moment in time can be different to the next.  Remember that when speaking with others about their realities.

Kuntsugi -The Art of Being Broken

Growing up I like taking things apart. Clocks, radios, calculators, if they have screws, I have a screwdriver ready. In the process I have voided many warranties while never quite able to put things back together the way they were, not to mention getting them to work ever again. I think it was a source of frustration for my parents.

I suppose it is a sickness, the curiosity to want to know how things work without the wherewithal to ensure they stay working once I have taken them apart. They say if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Boy do I have trouble with that first part. I seem to have the proclivity to break things, take them apart. Things that were perfectly working well ruined because I couldn't leave well enough alone.

One would have hoped that I have become adept at fixing things, but the truth is all I have become is being really really well-acquainted with brokenness. I am a connoisseur of damaged goods, and chief amongst them, myself. I know a lot of the mistakes, missteps, and mishaps. Probably because I have made most of them at one point or another.

I have acquired a whole myriad of ways to be wrong, utterly and profusely wrong. And when I look deep into my soul, I see the many patches that covered old voids from when I crashed, burned, and shattered.

That being said, I hope I never stop having the courage and the curiosity to tease things apart, or risk being hurt in the search for better understanding. No matter how much it may backfire. We can't always fix things, we may not even be able to glue back the pieces together. What matters is we dare to do better. And maybe, just maybe, we keep all the pieces together in the likelihood a fellow tinkerer comes along and fix it once and for all.

Children are empaths

 Here's my secret with working with children. It is mostly about energy. It is understanding that children are generally empaths who can sense the energy around them. The goal then is to meet them at theirs, and project the safest energy you can. 

I know you are supposed to do that for every patient regardless of age, but for me it comes easier with kids. There is just something pure about being in that moment. Nothing else matter. What you are going through outside, however you are feeling, that goes out the window when you are in front of a child.

That child is your whole world, and your goal is to synch energies. Project calm and compassion... it doesnt always work, but it is so rewarding when you find that breakthrough. Only when you allow a child to "see" you, then will they let you see them.

Weakness

The past few weeks have seen me encountered setbacks after setbacks on several fronts, the experience of which has left me feeling drained.  I became tired of trying to be strong, realizing that I am actually weak, and hating myself a little bit more for it.  And my heart took me to some pretty dark places.  

And then, I realize, it has never been really about being strong.  It was not about proving I am worthy, or that I am self-sufficient.  What I went through, that was just life being life.  It is not about deserving or not deserving. Life just is. You live it enough there's going to be highs and lows. What matters is you get through, smiling or crying, intact or damaged. More importantly, believe in your soul. Trust that it will thrive like grass seeping through concrete - it will find a way.  

We keep thinking the soul is this fragile thing, that it can be hurt, and maybe it does, but it always grows back.  That is the beauty of it, insofar as you breathe, the soul revives. Our physical being can be hurt, our hearts broken, but the soul is infinite.  That vastness that we feel when we are alone and down, is the very same expanse that reaches out to the universe.  

Sure, the universe can be frightfully silent at times, but there is actually quite a bit of chatter once you learn to listen.  We just have to trust it.  When all fails, remember our souls are strong, and that it is dialled into something much deeper, older, and humbler.  

So, hold your head up high if only to use the elevation to give your head butts more momentum as you bear through.  And trust in your soul.