Loving Ourselves: Theory or Practice?

I have been puzzling over my interactions with my son, who is 6. Noticing that I have begun to dislike my interactions with him, I began exploring the morning ritual of dressing, eating and getting out the door. It had become unpleasant, either my husband or me hounding Avi, rushing or pressuring him at every step. I have been noticing the unpleasant feelings associated with these daily interfaces and today asked out loud: “Is there a way to have this process be pleasant?”

It all has to do with love and self-love. If I do unto another that which is hateful to myself (rushing and pressuring), it is merely a reflection of what I am feeling (feeling for myself is redundant, if still clarifying.) It is coming from a lack of love in myself and is projected outward onto another.

So our real work is to fall in love with ourselves again. I say again because as children we already were in love with ourselves. We came in as love. Love of the self is love. No one taught my son to love himself, he just does. This is the ground of his being, his operating principal: His software program is love, and it came factory-installed. So what he does is a reflection, or a projection, of love.

What makes any iota of “not-love” is some disapproving adult (usually that the child is identified with, meaning not separate from, nor individuated from), casting from his or her own “not-love” such a projection onto the child. The child then feels the adult feeling bad about himself and takes it personally, which is the only way a child can take it. The child now has a piece of software downloaded that is “not-love”, feels that “not-love” and then acts from it.

As we have seen before, each time we act from “not-love”, we feel badly about ourselves, which creates more “not-love”, both inside of ourselves and in the negative reactions we experience from others.

The only way out is to love ourselves, not a theory but as an operating principle. That means that our every action, no exception, has the possibility of increasing our feelings of love, or decreasing them. If we act from love, in our every minute interaction with ourselves, we build a love-infused system in ourselves, which then spills out onto people outside of us. Acting from loves means cleaning up every spot in our lives where we are feeling bad: places we procrastinate and feel bad about; inconsiderate thoughts of ourselves or others; neglectful behaviors such as overeating, overdrinking or any overindulgence; manipulative or angry actions or words toward others.

Anything at all that makes you feel bad is creating more feeling bad. Anything at all that makes you feel good is creating more feeling good. It is a moment-to-moment awareness; is it warming you and turning you on, or leaving you out in the cold?

More about this to come…

I like Daddy more than you.

It was a beautiful time.

There was a time when the world lay close around us, like a blanket over our pair of shoulders; his tiny, mine grown. Into that world, others could come, but the bond between us was clad with the solder of motherhood, and it held us firmly.

That bond of blood, milk, scent, helplessness and dependency, left my heart forever changed. And like change, forever coming, going, beating like our circulatory system, times have changed again.

I have seen it in so many ways. The young boys sides with his father. He swaggers, flexing his masculinity. He takes up martial arts and is happy to spend entire days with his father.

It’s them now, and I am the mother, outside of their boys’ club. My words may be heeded, but often I am considered to be a hindrance, with my opinions and my regulations, like the widow was to Huck Finn.

I experience this on two levels. One is a relief at being released into my next, that part of my life where I can explore and claim the riches of these years and the gifts I have developed over time. As my heart has been forged in the fires of unconditional loving that is motherhood, I have so much to offer beyond what my schooling is.

The second stage is the poignancy of leaving this time behind, this time of being loved, prized and cared for above all. It was so sweet. I felt so connected, in service to a deep current of humanity in the form of my young son. It is a time I have not wanted to let go of.

But it is over. As with so much in life, it is time to let go. He needs me now for different purposes and it is up to me to find my place for myself. This place includes the deep love and connectedness that I have felt as his mother. It also encompasses a larger audience than my one son.

Yesterday my young boy said, “I like Daddy more than I like you.” Not the first time he has said that to me and of course it is true for him right now. I appreciate the child’s honesty and complete candor.

The comment stimulates me like the loosening of a tether; I feel freedom pulling me. My heart will always be with my child: I discovered its true function with him. Now is a time to take that heart and give it new scope.

I am grateful for the lessons that life continues to offer me.

The Virtues of Selling

After many years, and being asked hundreds of times by my coaches, “what do you want?”, yesterday I had an answer!

I want everybody around me to sell.

When a person is selling, they have a cause to promote. They are interfacing with another individual. They are putting attention on another person. They are in action, moving something forward. They are sharing a point of view, in order to help another person get something that that other person desires.

So I want everybody around me to sell.

Some sour alternatives to everybody selling: people in their heads, complaining about problems or people in their life. Being righteous, rather than persuasive, and getting their way by spoiling the party for everyone else. Making other people wrong, instead of finding out what they want and getting it for them.

Been there, done that.

A novel approach would be to adopt something that we love as our preferred topic of conversation. Let that be your preferred topic of conversation with other humanoids. Preferably something that has made a big impact on our lives: a person, place, object, book, piece of music, work of art, animal, restaurant. Karaoke. Belly dancing. Disneyland. Meditating. Your law professor in college. Your junior high English teacher. The dog next door. Find out what has moved you.

Then talk about something that has moved you and really get into it. Tell a story. Entertain yourself and make it a contribution to the person you are speaking to. Go ahead, dare to move them. Invite them to try whatever it is you love. Invite them to find a passionate equivalent in their experience. The main thing is to get your energy across to them.

There is no energy shortage. All there is: either giving energy or being an energy vampire. Let’s voluntarily cut back on complaining, whining, gossiping and criticizing and instead, let’s sell. Surveys have shown that the happiest people in the world are salespeople, (above doctors and lawyers, even).

So stop comparing and get selling!

Take A Risk

Take the time to take a risk and do something new more often than you think you can.

Why the heck would I risk: looking bad? Failing? The frustration of not knowing/having to learn? Being rejected?

Because of the high!!

Now I may be someone who goes to outrageous lengths for the highs. Admitted, my refreshingly juvenile life philosophy has been with me, somewhat moth-eaten, but largely intact, since my teenage years: Life is one high after the other.

My beloved mother, well-intending, tried to disabuse me of this naive perspective and yes, to some degree she succeeded. But I am getting my radical dander back, getting my groove on, reclaiming my moxie and shouting in the face of suburban boredom and complacency: Get high, everybody, get high.

This may seem like crazy talk. I am probably out of control. Maybe I should visit Pilgrim State.

Let’s just get back to the new.

Driving from the east end to my fabulous apartment this evening, I had the startling realization that for the past 10 years, the whole time that I have been married, I have treated my husband like he is inferior, with a degree of arrogance that I can’t even face, but did begin to glimpse.

As soon as we got to a place in the evening where I could admit it, I confessed. Just a simple sentence, an acknowledgment of what I had noticed, and a joke: “not that I’m gonna change.” We laughed, then, and hugged each other. Fact is, just by noticing, and ‘fessing up, I had changed. I can feel it deep inside my skin, in my heart, whose guidance I revere.

That was risk #1.

I felt so high after that, I could not go to sleep.

Risk #2. I created an event on Facebook. Now anyone who knows me, knows that my medium is people, not computers or technology. But I figured it out! So now you can go to Facebook and find the event “Love in the City” and consider yourself invited.

I am so happy to be learning, playing and living life. I love the feel of the energy as it lights up different parts of my body.

It all depends on where you focus, right? If you put your attention on the highs, life really can be one high after the other!

OFF Of The Battlefield. ON TO the Playing Field.

Our current daytime drama, which passes for life, is literally littered with fatalities in the battle between men and women.

Check your numbers.

In the business world, women are earning 79 cents to the dollar on what men are earning. The costs of succeeding in the business realm have far too often outweighed the carrots being dangled and have women compromising what is most important to them: the quality of their close connections and the quantity of time they can spend with their loved ones.

The rate of successful first-time marriages in the United States is only about 59%, with the rates for second and third marriages dramatically lower. Divorce rates have increased, inverse to the numbers of women entering the workforce.
And a 2009 survey, The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness, reports women in general have a lower sense of well-being and life satisfaction than they did 40 years ago.

These costs of doing battle between the sexes are staggering. We hope you agree, they are too high.

We propose a simple solution.

Let us, as a gender, agree to move our relationships, with men and with other women, off of the battlefield and onto the playing field. It is time for a new paradigm of relating between men and women and it is up to us, as the emotional and biological caretakers of relationship throughout time. Nowhere has it been truer: if it is to be, it’s up to me.

Such a new paradigm will require vision, discipline, commitment, connection, education and community, yet all these things will benefit women and society in both the short term and for generations of women and men to come. It is not only possible, but vitally imperative now as never before, to create the understanding, structures and practices that foster women’s success, contribution and ecstasy.

As we move in these directions, we will see a renaissance of life-giving institutions, businesses and innovations which will enrich us as individuals, couples, families and societies. Come on to the playing field.

Let me know how you would like to play.

Priming the Pump or Courting the Muse

Today I write like Ernest Hemingway used to write. Legend has it that this giant of literature sat down each and every working day in front of his manual typewriter and wrote a certain number of pages. He wrote until that number of pages was complete, not stopping to edit or evaluate. Then from his production, he culled what he had written, sorting the value from the drivel.

Having started this blog gang-busters last week, I’m noticing that the muse of determination seems to have taken a break to warmer climes. She does not seem to be in attendance to me this week. So I have determined that I must go courting her.
Just as fortune eludes all but the most determined, apparently so does creativity. So I am setting this time aside, a few minutes before my 8 o’clock on the east coast, to write for 30 minutes, the results of which I will share with you on my blog.

But, my mind interjects, what about the writing that comes directly from the heart that flows and merges with the river of creativity, in an effortless manner. What about that writing that comes when you suddenly have something to say, not just as a result of an exercise in determination?

In some ways, my mind wants me to entertain the idea that the writing that spontaneously flows is better, more worthy, more valuable, than the writing that I am currently, doggedly, pursuing. But my heart smiles happily inside my chest. The heart knows that giving me over to a passion is, in and of itself, a valuable act, both self-affirming and validating: A reason for celebration.

Much as the body does not want to rise and shine in the morning, wants to extend the torpor of sleep rather than face the day and its tasks of service to others, so is the creative spirit apparently lazy at first. So this is a prime of the pump, a serious muscling of the will (and the won’t) into a form that fulfills my own promise.

I am surprised by what lies beneath the surface of my laziness, this wellspring of expression that causes tears to come to my own eyes. I am moved not only by my writing, but by my spirit, the universally human spirit that acts in service to a dream. IN this case my dream is to express myself and to touch a resonant place within the human spirit that inspires action. Right action in the service of a dream is my intention with whatever I am doing: action to stir the energetic body that has been so long neglected in our culture, to our short-term detriment.
Find out soon, on these pages, what this has to do with the economic downturn our nation is passing through.