Archive for category: Consciousness/Thriving

Tips for Dealing With Other People’s Opinions

They say opinions are like noses — everyone has one. Whether you like it or not, people have opinions about you. What you do with those opinions is entirely up to you.

Consider a coaching client of mine who had a really tough time dealing with her family’s opinion of her over the holidays. On the surface everything looked fine, but she was living in her own personal hell, reliving the drama of her childhood. It seems that her brother’s life has been filled with one notable mainstream success after another — the stuff of which parents are very proud. As his younger sister, my client has lived in his shadow, feeling as though she could never measure up or elicit the level of enthusiastic approval her brother generated from their parents. Now as a grown young woman whose life path is ambiguous compared to her brother’s, she is still thrown for a loop when asked “What’s new?” or “What are you up to these days?” These seemingly harmless questions evoke a cold sweat and terror for her, and the otherwise confident and delightful person she is becomes flooded with self-rejection, unable to stand in support of herself. The truth is she has a great vision, passion and plans that will take years to develop. She is doing a wonderful job of finding her way off the beaten track of the mainstream to create a new kind of school that will provide a wonderful education, caring community and magnificent opportunities for a largely marginalized segment of our population. But, that is tough to talk about enthusiastically in an elevator speech to people who measure success in terms of concrete recognizable achievements — or worse yet — don’t even care.

When a situation that is this emotionally juicy comes up in your life, it is a wonderful opportunity to gain some life wisdom. In this particular case, there is much to be learned about dealing with life in a social context where everybody is having opinions about themselves and each other all the time.

Here are the tips I gave my client. Perhaps they will help you or someone you know as well.

Tip #1: Form your own honest opinion about yourself.
If you fall apart for fear of what others will think of you, then your sense of self-worth is contingent on the opinions of others. While your truth may not be very popular, to abandon yourself is the worst possible response you could have. No matter what anyone else thinks of you, no one’s opinion of you has more power than your own. If you abandon your own ship at the least suggestion of a negative response from others, you need to be doing some deep inner work to identify your point of vulnerability so you can heal your relationship with yourself. Your attitude toward yourself has the power to define the quality of your inner and outer experiences. So if you are not thinking highly of yourself, get to work on that.

Tip #2: Check out your expectations about other people’s opinions of you.
The difference between expectations and reality is a good measurement of the amount of suffering we cause ourselves by holding unrealistic expectations. Do you expect everyone to like you and have a positive opinion of you? If so, you are going to have a lot of unpleasant experiences. It is important to develop tolerance for a variety of reactions to you and what you are doing in your life. If you are walking a mainstream path of success like my client’s brother, you are likely to get lots of positive reactions and not have too much trouble in this area. If you know yourself to be a good person, value that knowledge more than the vicissitudes of the opinions of others.

Tip #3: Develop a great elevator speech.
The fact is, polite conversation is not typically all that deep. When someone asks you how or what you are doing, consider the source of the question. Is this someone who really wants to know the depths of your growing edges or are they simply being polite? A good place to start your response is with a terrific elevator speech. In 30 seconds to two minutes, you want to get your point across with confidence and enthusiasm. If your message is “I’m at Harvard Medical School and I love it,” you are likely to get a wonderful response from just about anyone. However, if your path, like that of my client, is more of an exploration without having reached a notable destination yet, it might take a bit more effort to develop an effective elevator speech. Play with this and learn to by your own best public relations person.

Tip #4: Remember that most of communication is nonverbal.
If you are falling apart trying to answer the simple question of “How are you doing?” then most likely a major nonverbal communication has already taken place before you even open your mouth to respond. Consider your nonverbal communication in terms of your body posture and gestures, voice tone, eye contact or lack thereof, etc., as well as what feeling you are getting from this other person. Let these clues guide you in your verbal response. If necessary, find a way to make a quick exit and go to the bathroom or somewhere else where you can pull yourself together.

Tip #5: Pay more attention to your inner dialogue and what button in you the other person pushes.
Learn from your own behavior. Play detective within yourself to figure out what your point of vulnerability is and get to work on it. Remember these emotional buttons we have that other people push are simply pointing out to us where we need to do some inner work.

Tip #6: Smile and change the subject when you have said what you want to say.
A nice smile goes a very long way. Learn to be a clever conversationalist so you can steer the conversation away from areas that are difficult for you. Celebrate who you are and don’t let others rain on your parade.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

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Why You Should Stop Making Snap Judgments

Dictionaries specify that the word “judgment” refers to the process of forming an opinion after careful consideration. Judgments have their place in a court of law where, by social agreement, authority is granted to a judge or jury to determine whether or not someone’s behavior is or is not in accordance with the law. However, while no one has granted us the authority to play judge and jury in our personal lives, most of us make snap judgments all the time declaring our approval or disapproval of whatever and whomever we are observing or experiencing. The problem is that these snap judgments forgo careful consideration, and are typically merely the automatic expression of our personal prejudices and pet peeves. They happen so fast that we often have trouble distinguishing between our judgments and reality, and sometimes we are not even aware of the fact that we are judging ourselves or others. These little judgments, whether we say them out loud or not, are often extremely damaging to those we judge.

Typically, our point of view is built upon thousands of little snap judgments and assumptions we make about who and what we encounter in our lives. This amalgamation becomes so familiar to us that we seldom question its veracity. Here’s an experiment for you. Spend about five minutes observing your mind chatter while out in public without judging what you hear yourself thinking. Notice how often you make snap judgments. For example, “He could afford to lose a few pounds,” or “I really love the color of her hair,” or “Oh, yuck, it’s raining.” Now, you might say those aren’t judgments, they are observations. On closer inspection, notice that each of these statements probably carried with it a level of approval or disapproval, which is what makes them judgments. Observations have no emotional charge — no personal vote for or against what is being seen or experienced. For example, “It’s raining. I’ll get an umbrella,” has no charge.

Snap judgments are a form of positional thinking — right/wrong, good/bad, desirable/undesirable. Energetically, each time we make one of these judgments, we are either accepting or rejecting someone or something. When the vote is positive, there is no harm unless it occurs in a relationship where one person’s sense of self-worth is dependent upon the approval of the other. When snap judgments are negative, they are a form of emotional pollution and depending on the intensity of the judgment, they can impart psychic violence. For example, just recently, I was with a friend and her husband. She did a few things that annoyed him. While I understood why he was perturbed, I was shocked by the vehemence of his verbal reaction to her. I literally felt my body automatically contract in fear, and his remarks were not even directed at me.

Whether spoken or not, snap judgments have a powerful influence on us and the emotional environment we share. Psychologists and linguists have estimated that about 80 percent of communication is nonverbal, with one UCLA study finding that as much as 93 percent of communication is dictated by nonverbal factors.

Energetically, imagine how much damage all these judgments are doing to people. Consider the overweight man. Don’t you think he knows or feels that people are judging him? What would it be like for him if he received an overwhelming amount of compassion rather than judgment? Do you think he would notice the difference?

For many, judgment is a way of life. Did you ever meet one of those people who thinks he or she is always right? They can be very convincing and so emphatic that it can be disarming to stand in a different point of view. Even without an audience, we can be so used to our own points of view that anything or anyone who doesn’t agree with us can be immediately seen to be false and be rejected like a knee-jerk reaction, without consideration of possible merit.

Imagine what might happen if we all started to hold ourselves accountable for the impact our snap judgments have on others. What if my friend’s husband observed her behavior with more neutrality and saw the situation as a time when he needed to dig a little deeper to access his love for her rather than thoughtlessly attacking her in front of her friend? We always have kinder options available to us. The trick is having the sense to choose them. This takes practice, but just as snap judgments can become a habitual behavior, so can kindness. We just have to choose to be conscious and responsible for our behavior and practice, practice, practice kinder reactions to each other.

A negative snap judgment carries with it some kind of rejection and punishment. It may simply be the act of pulling ourselves back from the other person, creating separation. Or it can involve the spewing of a lot of negative attitude and lack of cooperation, or fists might fly. The kinder alternative is to establish the habit of reacting with greater neutrality by simply observing what is happening and calmly communicating your concerns and preferences with clarity and kindness. People aren’t wrong because they don’t agree with you. They just see things differently from their point of view. Cultivate an attitude of curiosity to better understand why others look and behave in ways other than what you prefer. You might be surprised how much compassion you feel when you choose to contribute to a safe emotional environment for everyone.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

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When Friends Don’t See Eye-to-Eye

Did you ever have a really good friendship where everything was just rolling along until one day you hit an impasse that you couldn’t seem to get past? I’ve been hearing a lot of stories like this lately and have had my fair share as well. So let’s take a look at what could be happening and the options for resolution.

Many of us suffer from the faulty assumption that others — particularly those we befriend — are “just like me.” We think that because things go smoothly between us they must therefore think like us, process their emotions like us, and share our most cherished beliefs and values. Not so! And therein lies one of the biggest challenges in friendships. Coming to terms with the “otherness” of your friend — especially those parts you find undesirable — can be the hardest, yet most rewarding part and the source of some of life’s greatest lessons.

I’ve learned that when a big problem surfaces in a friendship, I need to raise my consciousness above the level of “I said, they said” where I am blaming and judging one of us — usually the other person because that’s the territory of the ego. I want to lift to a higher place where I have enough altitude to see the bigger picture we find ourselves in. That’s where I can find compassion for us both struggling to find some solid ground and where it is possible to remind myself what has been good and abiding between us. That’s where I can see that we all just want to be loved and to matter to each other. When I get to that place, I can usually let go of my judgments and hurt feelings and figure out how I want to move forward in terms of the other person. It is also from this higher perspective that I can see and learn from whatever life lessons the situation has brought my way. However, it can take me a long time to get there because my ego can be quite tenacious at times.

Here are some guidelines for getting through the territory of the ego:

  1. Whatever level your discomfort is on (mind or emotions), go to the other level to work it out. For example, if your mind is saying, “She has some nerve suggesting I would ever…” then ask yourself, “How does this make me feel?” Alternatively, if you find yourself feeling really sad and bewildered by what has happened, ask yourself, “What do I think happened here?”
  2. Fundamentally, these stalemates usually boil down to hurt feelings, misunderstood motivations, or seeing something in the other person’s behavior that doesn’t fit your idea of who they are. Ask yourself which of these three you are dealing with and be ruthlessly honest with yourself about your thoughts and feelings around what has happened.
  3. Take some time to be present with yourself and pay attention to how the disturbance reverberates within you. Don’t be too quick to try to resolve the outer problem with the other person when you haven’t first figured out what is going on inside of you. Talk to yourself first before attempting to seek resolution with the other person. Ultimately, our relationships with others are reflections of our relationship with ourselves, so it is essential that we seek clarity and peace within ourselves before trying to heal the outer situation.
  4. Consider the pros and cons of talking about the situation with your friend. It’s not always the best answer. Sometimes there is just too much emotion to be able to consider the other person’s point of view yet. Talking might only polarize you further as each of you tries to force the other to see your point of view. Remember that at first we are not seeing the other person’s point of view because we can only see our own. If you need to talk about the situation to try and gain some perspective, pick someone who is neutral and doesn’t know the other person, or talk it through with a professional. Don’t talk about it with mutual friends, where you are likely to be seeking agreement rather than insight and opening up a whole new can of worms.
  5. Recognize — as humbling as it may be — that the situation is not all about you and how you think and feel. There are many levels to healing a broken friendship. Each participant goes through his or her inner process of seeking to understand what has happened and what to do about it. Usually, each is looking at the situation from an entirely different point of view within a larger context of his or her own personal and shared history. We tend to be biased in our own favor, blinded by our own way of seeing things. Yet, any true resolution requires having a large enough perspective to encompass the reality of both individuals and their respective points of view.
  6. Consider your options regarding the future of the friendship. Either it will end or limp along unhealed or evolve to a better place. You and your friend might not agree as to which fate is likely or desirable. Do your best to heal the discord that you hold within yourself and give your friend the space to do the same. You may need to take a break from each other with no definitive resolution for a while. If you do talk the situation through and agree to disagree, be careful if there is a lingering issue of trust or respect. Be honest about that with yourself and each other.
  7. Judgment is the territory of the ego and is never the ultimate answer. Challenge yourself to move past that and to seek the higher ground where you and your friend might reach into that which is stronger than your judgments and hurt feelings.
  8. If ultimately you decide to leave the friendship, let it be because you see no other way to love, honor and respect yourself moving forward. If that is your choice, go in peace wishing your friend every happiness you seek for yourself.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

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Generosity or Greed — It’s a Matter of Choice

“There is a struggle that is more interesting than pleasure or ego satisfaction… There is something far more interesting than what money can buy.” — Jacob Needleman

I find it fascinating that 92 percent of Americans claim belief in God yet current politics suggest that only 1 percent of us have it all while the other 99 percent share in experiencing not enough. If we are all equal in the eyes of God, how come we are so far from that in the eyes of man? What have we created, promoted and allowed to happen here?

All major religious and spiritual traditions urge us to live our lives from the inside out, expressing outward into the world instead of in reaction to externals. We are urged to ground our consciousness in the core of our being where we find a oneness with others that allows us to be together in a loving, caring and cooperative manner. Whether one believes that this core of our being is God or love or something else, when we touch into this place an urge to unite is aroused. Some fear that this urge to unite is diametrically opposed to personal material wealth and comfort. Others suggest that as in the two parables of the loaves and the fishes where Jesus is said to have fed a multitude with just a few small barley loaves and fish, compassion creates possibilities that are invisible to those driven by self-interest.

Since we are social beings, we are individually and collectively faced with an existential challenge regarding our level of concern for the welfare of others. Each collective, whether a family, a country or our entire global community, contributes to the state of our consciousness through the creation of a particular set of social systems and culture. Each collective encourages us towards certain beliefs, desires and behaviors, and discourages us from others. Each inclines its members towards competition or cooperation in relationships with others.

Unfortunately, in contemporary American society the two major relationship models are co-dependency and competition. Neither fosters a strong sense of self-worth, equality or caring for one another. As a result, most individuals end up as losers in these models.

Money and material wealth have become the language and measurement of human value. Our economic system, which necessitates growth to survive, serves as the bedrock of society. The structures and norms of our society are designed to ensure the survival of our economy and have cast us in the roles of producers and consumers, ceaselessly barraged by commercial enticements to stimulate and indulge our desires. This entraps us in a system that serves too few at the expense of too many and leaves us with little time or energy to explore other dimensions of our selves. For too many of us, our material success has brought with it a poverty of spirit.

Distracted by the external world, we lose sight of the intimate dance of the relativity of our mental, emotional and spiritual selves with one another. Yet, it is the social dimension of our lives that gives moral meaning to our individual and collective choices. Perhaps this is why the fundamental teachings of all the major world religions contain a version of the Golden Rule to guide us in our social interactions.

When we look outward instead of inward, it is easy to become disconnected from a deep sense of the relevance of our being and our connection to one another. Too many of us are caught up in the illusion that our personal happiness and success in life will be achieved through the acquisition and accumulation of monetary wealth and possessions. Yet, ultimately, we come to realize that financial and material riches are empty and unsatisfying in the absence of a state of consciousness that deeply connects us to others. Indeed, a diamond ring or a Hummer is of little comfort on your deathbed.

Ultimately each of us is responsible for the priorities we set in our lives, the choices we make and the effects they have on ourselves and others. We come to realize that financial and material riches are empty and unsatisfying in the absence of a state of consciousness that deeply connects us to others.

Many of us, disillusioned by the empty promises of the gravy train, are instead boarding the generosity train, delighting in its riches of loving, caring and sharing and are finding ourselves humbled and surprised by the abundance that is achievable when we first ground ourselves in a consciousness that is concerned about the highest good of all concerned. As the signs and wonders of this powerful shift in consciousness take hold, it manifests in new attitudes, beliefs and actions and a commitment to reach for something higher and nobler within and among ourselves.

In Buddhist teachings, greed, hate and ignorance are considered three poisons in human consciousness that lead to the evil we create in the world that is the ultimate source of our suffering. The practice of generosity is the first stage of the Buddhist spiritual path and an opportunity for any of us to reverse a greed-based view of life. Giving with a kind, loving heart opens the human spirit to fulfillment through nonattachment and loving kindness. It lightens our mind, makes us more available to insight and sets us free from our greed.

Perhaps I sound like a Pollyanna socialist to some. I assure you, I am neither. I am simply someone who thinks we have taken a devastatingly expensive wrong turn in our search for happiness. My goal is to raise consciousness about this so we can do something constructive that has the potential to bring us a whole lot more happiness in our lives.

I have a request — please watch the following two videos about generosity.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

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What Is Karma and How Does it Work?

The term “karma” is often used with great casualness, with little understanding of its profundity. People dismissively say “it’s my karma,” suggesting that their destiny or fate is merely the luck or bad fortune of the draw. This use of the term suggests a lack of personal power or responsibility for being at both the cause and the effect of what occurs in one’s life. Using the phrase “it’s my karma” suggests victimhood, and karma is anything but victimhood.

In Christianity, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, the term “sin” is commonly defined as missing the mark through “deliberate disobedience to the known will of God.” This missing of the mark, also called karma, is the spiritual accountability for our actions. Thus, “karma” is not what we commonly think of as “good” or “bad” fortune, but rather the causal responsibility for those results.

This deeper understanding of karma rests upon our essential identity as souls — spiritual beings who are animated by a vital and divine force. As souls we are spiritually held accountable for what we create, promote, and allow in our lives. We are constantly in the process of accruing and/or balancing out karmic debts of responsibility for our creations. Karma is not physical, it is spiritual, and we carry karma forward through time within a given lifetime or, as some believe, from one lifetime until the next. Once accrued, the balancing action of karma plays out on the stage of our everyday lives through our bodies, thoughts, feelings, relationships, circumstances, and experiences. The name of the game of life is to pay off our karmic debts rather than accruing new ones so we can come to know ourselves and others as divine beings and enter into the consciousness of God.

Just as gravity is a law of the physical world, so is karma a law of the spiritual world. We are held responsible for our actions and, more precisely, for the intention of our actions. This responsibility exists within the context of an individual soul’s relationship with God. When one deliberately disobeys the will of God, karma is accrued. It is the intent of one’s actions that generates karma. All major religions have some version of the seven deadly sins to caution followers in avoiding yielding to desires, illusions, and choices that take us away from the will of God. The causal relationship between our current actions and future occurrences is referenced in Galations 6:7 (King James Version) “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

Spiritually, as well as physically, the type and quality of seeds one plants will determine the quality of the crop to be harvested. As souls, what we do comes back to us according to God’s design. If we have imbalances in our consciousness (known as karmic debts), we either find ourselves presented with the same lesson again and again within one lifetime until we gain the wisdom and value of the lesson being presented, or we re-embody, carrying the karma over from one lifetime till the next. Spirit is forever patient with our process of learning.

Karma is not about retribution, vengeance, punishment or reward, but a reaping of the harvest we ourselves have planted. Through our thoughts and behaviors, we sow seeds that are later harvested.

When karma comes present in our lives, it is because we are being given the opportunity to reap our harvest. There is no such thing as a good harvest or a bad harvest. It is just our harvest. It is our opportunity to make different choices in life than those that caused our karmic accrual in the first place. Karma is at once the consequence of past actions and the opportunity for healing and balancing in the present. It is a balancing action that offers us chances through life circumstances, situations, and relationships to learn important spiritual lessons. It has been my experience that gaining understanding of how the karma has been manifesting in our lives comes only after the balancing and learning have already occurred — like a kind of 20/20 hindsight. Understanding these lessons sharpens and clarifies the lens through which our consciousness perceives, and in so doing, elevates our awareness of the presence of Spirit in our lives.

If you espouse the belief that this world is somehow a classroom and we, as souls, are here to learn, then you probably appreciate the law of karma as an exquisite design to tailor our lessons to our own personal needs. The irony is that the personality and mind of our ego self is subject to a higher authority when it comes to determining the nature of the lessons to be learned and how and when they will be taught.

If you believe in God, you probably think that the unpredictability of karmic payback is pretty smart too. While we are in total control of whether or not we create new karma for ourselves, we don’t get a say in how and when payback comes. So, a worldview with God in it is rather like being a kid trying to behave because Christmas is coming. You know your behavior has consequences and that you are accountable for your choices.

The goal here is not to have an absence of karma. We are here because we have karma to work out and lessons to learn. However, learning our lessons and seeking a healthy relationship with God seems to be a really smart strategy.

Here are a few great quotes about karma:

Men are not punished for their sins, but by them. — Elbert Hubbard

Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny. –Tryon Edwards

There are the waves and there is the wind, seen and unseen forces. Everyone has these same elements in their lives, the seen and unseen, karma and free will. — Kuan Yin

There is a destiny that makes us brothers: none goes his way alone,
All that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own. — Edwin Markham

Like gravity, karma is so basic we often don’t even notice it. — Sakyong Mipham

I would love to know your thoughts about karma and how it informs our lives.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

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Karma, Karma Everywhere

Sometimes, I walk through this world and just marvel at the fact that we are all souls with individualized karmic agendas. Our lives and stories are woven together in a perfect complexity of clearing our individual and collective karmic accruals. It is as though we have a kind of karmic DNA built into our physical, mental and emotional makeup, as well as our identity as male or female, our socioeconomic circumstances, relationship patterns, membership in a particular family, race and religious tradition. I have come to believe that before we incarnate each lifetime, we, as souls, choose the role we will play on the world stage that offers us the best possibility of clearing our karmic accruals.

I have always puzzled over the idea that we are all equal when our capabilities and opportunities vary so greatly. Prior to comprehending that we are divine beings, I thought equality was a nice idea destroyed by human greed. In fact, our equality exists regardless of human greed because it is as individual expressions of the divine that we are truly equal. Spiritual energy flows to us and through us as an equal-opportunity employer — like the sun. However, given our unique karmic accruals, we vary in our awareness of ourselves as spiritual beings and in our capacity to open ourselves up to the wisdom, guidance and upliftment of the divine. It is, therefore, for the highest good of our respective souls’ progressions to select unequal status in human form in order to work through our unique karmic agendas. So, on a spiritual level, a drunken bum is equal to a wise king, yet in physical and social status, he is not. Our equality is spiritual and manifests itself in physical form as an equal opportunity to fulfill our personal karmic agenda.

Our families usually provide fertile ground for encountering some of our heaviest karma. I was in my 50s when I started to see some of the actual karmic patterns and lessons presented to me through my family and woven into our lives together. Things that never made sense about our relationships suddenly made sense, and the childhood emotional wounds I had carried until then melted away in the light of this spiritual perspective. A resonance of truth and inner peace replaced all the years of anger, fear and frustration I had built up, especially in relationship to my father. I came to appreciate that we needed to be exactly as dysfunctional as we were in order to be presented with the opportunity to heal the karma involved. When I finally looked at my family relationships karmically, I saw them in an entirely different light which shattered many of my previously held beliefs, illusions and judgments about myself and my family members.

Here’s a specific example. Early on, I learned to give my father a wide berth. It was as though we had a personality allergy to each other. I could never get his approval, and spent a lot of time seeking it. He was a my-way-or-the-highway kind of guy, and I was one who needed to walk to the beat of her own drum. It was a strained relationship at best and I never felt loved by my father. Then, in my 50s, several years after his death, I had a spiritual experience where I encountered him in the theater of my mind. I was blasting him for never having shown me any love, and I watched as a tear formed and fell out of his eye and rolled down his face. This disarmed me, as I had never seen him cry in real life. He looked me straight in the eye and told me that his assignment as a soul in relationship to me was to be my father and to never show me any signs of love or affection. This was intended to serve me in learning to turn inward and upward to find my truth rather than seeking it out in the world. My anger fell away, and something let go within me that had restrained me all my life. Somehow, I knew that what he was saying was true. I also knew that for the first time in my life, I was seeing my father as a soul. We were communicating soul to soul, and that changed me forever after.

The reality of our essential identities as souls came through in that moment in a way that redefined me and my history with my father. I no longer saw him as the heartless, self-centered ogre who could not and would not love me. Rather, he was a fellow soul, who in the most extraordinary act of love, took on this awful role in my life, knowing that I would hate him, and that he could never demonstrate his love for me or receive love from me. A deep root of anger, tension and self-rejection was pulled out of me as I rose into my soul and knew us both as innocent and pure souls rather than as damaged people. We were right on course with God’s perfect wisdom, timing and plan, balancing our karma and learning our lessons.

Where or when I incurred this spiritual debt, I do not know or need to know. What is clear is that it was an enormous blessing and I had to walk through the karma to prepare me to recognize the truth when it was finally revealed to me. So, when I looked into my father’s crying eyes in that momentary eternity, I was looking into his soul from mine and seeing a truth far more real than all our battles as father and daughter over the years.

I don’t obsess about karma, but it has completely changed my way of understanding our lives. There’s karma, karma everywhere and I’m beginning to see it as the compost of our learning, growth and spiritual upliftment.

Australian Aborigines are reputed to go on a six-month walkabout as a rite of passage when they are 13 years old. Spiritually, I now see us as a bunch of souls on a great, karmic walkabout on planet earth, where we are given the opportunity to learn important spiritual lessons as balancing actions to our karmic debts. We are so many souls traveling side by side, passing each other by, perhaps connecting with one another and reaching into that oneness that is so familiar — for a moment or a lifetime — yet elusive somehow. Each of us marches to the beat of our own mysteriously unique drum. As fellow travelers in a giant cosmic labyrinth, we take the same journey into the heart of it all and out again, ebbing and flowing, alone, yet one. Day moves into night and night to day. We are born. We live and learn. We die. We are recycled.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

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Surviving Technical Support

Over the past week, I have spent more than 15 hours on the phone with technical support for Apple, Time Warner Cable and Microsoft. I’ve spoken to about 30 different people in the U.S., India and the Philippines, and I have lost my mind on several occasions. I started out with one “simple” issue, which grew to about seven interrelated problems and my original problem and several others still remain unresolved.

I’d like to be able to say that I maintained my usual good nature throughout this experience. The fact is that I became a nasty and angry person who had no right to be so unkind to the innocent people who were trying to help me. I am not proud of that fact, and continue to take a good look at myself and my behavior to find a way to behave better in the future.

In an effort to gain some value from this experience, I decided to open up a discussion about this problem that I am certainly not alone in. Here are some questions I have. I am sure you have other ones. If you work for any of these companies, or other companies that have technical support departments, maybe you could do us the favor of passing the link to this article and reader responses along to your management team.

  1. Why is it necessary that every time one technical support person transfers a call to another one, the caller has to repeat their name, phone number, and other information? Why can’t the information be captured and forwarded as well?
  2. Similarly, if the problem is explained to the first techie, why can’t he or she forward that information as well so the customer doesn’t have to repeat it again and (all too often) again and again and again.
  3. How come, despite the fact that the previous techie has provided notes regarding what they did to try to fix the problem, the new techie repeats the same steps that have already been done?
  4. Why are these products and systems we are using seemingly so complicated that technicians specialize in such narrow areas of expertise that the customer has to keep being sent to other technicians? Why don’t these companies provide simple instructions for customers to use for the first 10-15 possibilities that the technicians are going to try and then let the big guns take it from there?
  5. How come these companies seem to have the same script of responses to customers who express their frustration, but none of these responses are delivered in a way that gives you the impression that the representative really cares about what you are going through?
  6. Why is it that when a customer says that he or she has reached their limit of tolerance, no option is offered to continue at another time? Why isn’t there an offer of some validation of the customer’s feelings and frustration?
  7. How come technical support people have no idea how long solving your problem is going to take? For example, one person transferred me to another, assuring me that the task to be done would take at most five to 10 minutes. The second technician estimated a maximum of 20 minutes. and 2.5 hours later it was still not resolved.
  8. How come techies commonly ask if they can put you on hold for two minutes, but typically leave you there for at least five to 10 minutes before checking in to say it will be a little longer?
  9. How come there is not an option to be put on hold without the tinny music or with some soothing music instead? Or why not let the customer have a few moments of freedom away from the phone and call them back when ready to continue?
  10. How come there is no value placed on the customer’s time or compensation given if the technician(s) fail to resolve a problem within a reasonable amount of time?
  11. How come it is called “customer support” when it is designed to torture you in the process of seeking help?

OK, it’s your turn. Do you have any other questions you would like to add? Do you have any answers that would make the experience more tolerable for the customer?

Again, I am not proud of how I behaved this past week. I wish I was the kind of person who didn’t get so frustrated and angry under these circumstances. Believe me, I tried meditating on hold, talking myself down off my anger, and lots of other techniques. Unfortunately, I’m not there yet. I do offer my sincere apologies to all those technical support people with whom I was less than delightful. And, I forgive myself for judging myself for being so darn human. Now, if we could only fix customer support services!

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

Also, if you know anyone who might get value from this article please email or retweet it or share it on Facebook.

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How’s Your Existential Maturity?

Existential maturity (is) a kind of peaceful acceptance of mortality
and of the relationship between generations of life
that mitigates the pain of our transience
by allowing an understanding of how we can die
without entirely ceasing to exist.
— Linda Emmanuel

I must admit that I have fallen in love with this new term — existential maturity. While no measurement scale yet exists, I think it is safe to say that our culture would receive a very low score. An all-encompassing fear and avoidance of death permeates our culture and misdirects much of our energy into:

  • seeking the fountain of youth through “age management,” rather than fully embracing all phases of life;
  • being silenced rather than speaking up about our beliefs, thoughts, fears and concerns around dying and death; and
  • postponing and avoiding end-of-life planning rather than seeing the opportunity to influence the quality of life’s end and to minimize confusion, stress, and suffering for loved ones.

The fear of death is at once culturally pervasive yet deeply private. The process of developing existential maturity involves recognizing and diminishing what Pema Chodron and her root teacher Chongpa Rinpoche refer to as “ubiquitous anxiety” — the underlying fear of uncertainty and not knowing what is happening or what is going to happen. It is a desire to feel safe, secure, and comfortable having all the answers in a world. Yet, our existential situation does not provide us with any certainty. Developing existential maturity requires moving our fears and anxiety to the background while enabling our love, courage, compassion, and authenticity to come to the foreground. It is what Pema Chodron calls “cultivating bravery,” so that we can be OK and not shut down in the face of our fears. When we choose to develop our own existential maturity, we also make a personal contribution to the collective process of transforming the culture of death from one of death-denial to one where we encounter death in a way that lovingly supports us as individuals, families, and as a society.

The origin of the term “existential maturity” can be traced to two individuals — Paul Wong and Rivca Gordon. In 2004, Wong posited an expanded vision of existential psychology in which “ethical, political and social considerations are inseparable from individual human existence.” On an individual basis, he urges us to find our true identity and to fulfill our most cherished dreams. “On a socio-cultural level,” Wong asks, “what could be done to change the conditions that perpetuate injustice and how can we facilitate community development?” And from the religio-moral perspective, he asks that we consider “what it means to treat others with respect and how we are to understand the meaning of suffering, pain and death.”

In Existential Thinking: Blessings and Pitfalls, written in 2007, Rivca Gordon discusses the idea of existential maturity within the context of the writings of Berdyaev. Existential maturity is said to occur “when a person undertakes the commitment to constantly choose to be a free human being” rather than being enslaved by external authorities. It “obliges a person to courageously and passionately strive to realize the utmost of his or her being, and to live the fullness of human existence.” The person acts “from the deepest core of his or her existential centre.” This act is an attempt to realize one’s human dignity as an end worthy in itself.

Combining the perspectives of Paul Wong, Rivca Gordon, and Linda Emmanuel, suggests that we enhance our existential maturity by living with conscious and compassionate commitment to evolving a fully developed way of dealing with our individual and shared existence. It is about living authentically — sourcing our thoughts and actions from the central, unbiased core of our being. It has to do with choosing an action not just because it is deemed to be the moral or socially “right” or “appropriate” thing to do, but because it reflects the truth as one knows it in the core of their being, and they choose to be a person who behaves in this way. It is a personal commitment to engage in the entirety of one’s life rooted in a sense of personal responsibility, accountability and integrity that is in alignment with what one perceives as truth. It is about personal authenticity and collective caring and compassion.

For so many of us, our lives pass by in an uninterrupted race against time with more things that we feel we simply must do than hours in the day, weeks, or years at hand. Life consumes us with very little opportunity to explore how we are living our life. Who among us records periodic appointments on our calendar to assess our existential maturity? Where is there a space in our lives to ask questions like:

  • How’s my integrity?
  • What really matters to me deep in the core of my being?
  • What do I really believe about human life and death?
  • Am I living my life from a place of personal authenticity, or am I being driven by external forces in an effort to live up to someone else’s idea of how I should live my life?
  • Am I proud of myself as a human being?
  • Am I paying attention to the lessons that are being presented to me in my life?
  • Am I living with deep purpose according to the truth as I know it?
  • Am I gaining wisdom?
  • Am I maturing existentially?

I like to imagine what our lives and society would be like if we lived in a world that encouraged and valued existential maturity. What would it be like if we were taught and motivated to connect to a deep sense of self and to live our lives from that place? What if we actually talked to each other in a curious and inquisitive way about such existential matters as the meaning of life and death? What if there were no external pressure to conform to a particular point of view, but rather we were encouraged to deeply think about and voice our deepest beliefs so that a collective response could truly reflect the individuals involved? What if we did not silence certain members of our society and give megaphones to others? What if everyone’s voice and well-being really mattered?

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

Also, if you know anyone who might get value from this article please email or retweet it or share it on Facebook.

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5 Keys to Cutting Your Mental and Emotional Umbilical Cord

Do you feel like you are 5 years old again when you visit with your family? Do you feel like everything is the same somehow? Have you maintained the same role in relationship to your family throughout your life? The shining star? The black sheep? The outcast? The one who just can’t seem to do anything right? Think about how it is when you and your family gather together. Do you meet each other anew as the individuals you have evolved into since you were last together? Or do you all somehow fall into the same old familiar ways of being with each other?

When the physical umbilical cord gets cut at birth, you are just beginning to develop your mental and emotional umbilical cord — the invisible ties that bind you to your family’s dynamic way of being with each other. Whoever raised you gave you your first worldview in terms of what kind of person you are, what you could expect in and from the world, and what you need to do to be loved. It’s not as though anyone sat you down and laid this all out for you — it was put in place in a thousand ways each day. Perhaps you were taught how far you could go before generating a negative response by your father’s tone of voice or a certain glance your mother gave you. Just like an actor in a drama, you were cast in a role relative to the others in your family, and that role defined you, yet some part of you always knew you were not that role. Whether you were cast in a favorable or unfavorable light in your family, you will continue to see yourself that way until and unless you recognize this point of view for what it is and evolve your own authentic sense of self.

Here’s an example. Sasha is in her early 20s, having graduated from a prestigious college several years ago. She is highly creative and not suited to a traditional path. As her life coach, I am delighted by her progress in establishing her own identity after a lifetime of struggling with her place in her family. When away from them, or not looking at herself through their eyes, she is confident, productive, and clearly on track in her personal and professional development. Yet, when under their influence her sense of self-worth crumbles. She becomes sad, weepy, and completely unsure of herself and unable to speak confidently about what she is doing with her life. On closer inspection, it is apparent how this happens. Sasha is the younger of two children. Her brother has always been the family star — everything he touches turns to gold, and his parents have always radiated with pride in every little and big thing he does. With the roles of Mommy, Daddy, and Star Child already taken, Sasha assumed the role of the family’s Black Sheep at a very young age. By outward appearances, Sasha’s family are lovely and normal people who love her dearly. As with any family, however, the dynamic that exists between Sasha’s family is complex and challenging.

It is essential to recognize that these family roles are not “the truth,” but simply the roles we assume in our relationship to other family members. Typically, there is a sense of self that doesn’t match the role, and the individual struggles to reconcile the two. Having felt confused, misunderstood, infantilized, and alienated from her family until now, Sasha, in her early 20s, is right on course to be doing this work of establishing her true sense of self. She is learning to look at the family drama with compassion for them all. She is even seeing how her brother has struggled with his role as the star. Ultimately, everyone wants to shed these roles and just be seen as loved ones who are doing the best they can in life. After all, don’t we all just want to be accepted and loved?

So, how do we break free? Here are the five keys:

  1. Recognize that this process is perfectly normal. Successfully establishing our autonomy can take many years, and many people never get out from under the mental and emotional patterns they learned as children that no longer serve them in adulthood.
  2. Be willing to pay attention and play detective with how these patterns show up in your life. Does your boss remind you of your father? Do you have the same relationship problems with your girlfriend that you had with your mother? What are your triggers that make you feel out of balance? How do you respond? What specifically do you do that works for you or against you feeling good about yourself?
  3. Intentionally develop and experiment with new thought patterns and behaviors that support you in maintaining a healthy sense of self-worth. Do more of what works and less of what does not.
  4. Have compassion for yourself and your family. It is not necessary to make anyone wrong when breaking free of these patterns or to try and get others to change their behavior. It is all right to give feedback about how you respond to certain behaviors that set you off, but don’t demand that the other person change — just let them know that their behavior has consequences in your relationship with them. Be kind about it.
  5. Practice, practice, practice and have patience. These ties that bind didn’t show up all of a sudden one day, and they will take time to dismantle. Just keep your eye on the vision of your own freedom to motivate you along this journey. It is a pearl of great price.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

Also, if you know anyone who might get value from this article please email or retweet it or share it on Facebook.

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How to Be an Awesome Human Being

I always thought that babies should come with operating instructions and that parents-to-be should be required to pass a parenting test. After all, a license is required to drive a car. Surely a course in the basics of taking care of a baby’s physical and emotional needs would help. Beyond these basics, I dream of a world that acknowledges and nurtures the spiritual dimension of our being and teaches us how to be awesome human beings. It’s really very simple. It’s just not very easy. It takes a lot of focus, willingness and practice, practice, practice.

Being an awesome human being requires mastering the fine art of being a human being. The “man” part of being human has been carefully defined to distinguish us from “other primates.” Man/woman comes equipped with opposable thumbs, an erect posture, a highly developed brain, the capacity for abstract reasoning, and the ability to communicate and organize information based on a symbolic system of language. The “hu” part is best understood when we realize that it is a Sanskrit name for God that predates the anthropomorphic image of God as a fatherly, human figure. So, to be “human” means to be both divine and earthly at the same time. What a balancing act — to be a soul or spiritual being having an earthly embodiment.

To be an awesome human being requires three things:

  1. To know that you are both spiritual and earthly.
  2. To live consciously from the inside out, deeply connected to the truth as you know it.
  3. To love yourself and others regardless of any considerations.

That’s it — just three things!

First, let’s look at what it means to be simultaneously aware of our spiritual and earthly existence. Wrapping our brains around this means grasping that we are at once limitless yet limited, of God yet earthly, finite yet eternal. We have the freedom to explore the vast complexity of our being as much or as little as we choose. Unfortunately, for many people there is no structure or stimulation in their lives to motivate such an exploration.

The world’s great religious teachings are filled with passages about what it means to be fully human. In The Wisdom Jesus, for example, Cynthia Bourgeault suggests that the incarnation of Jesus served the purpose of showing humanity how to fulfill “our only truly essential human task here … to grow beyond the survival instincts of the animal brain and egoic operating system into the kenotic joy and generosity of full human personhood.” Bourgeault notes how this claim of Jesus as the Christian role model for the human challenge of synthesizing physical and spiritual existence is affirmed in the gospels. Jesus frequently uses the term “I am,” as in “‘I am the shepherd,’ ‘I am the door,’ ‘I am the vine,’ ‘I am at your heart’s door knocking,’ ‘I am in you and you in me’ … In so doing, Jesus has identified himself with being itself.”

Whether looking through the lens of Christianity or some other theistic perspective, the challenge to know ourselves as both divine and earthly is there to be reconciled, and as Bourgeault suggests, it is our only essential human task. To know and to welcome God’s presence in ourselves is a worthy and essential vocation for us all.

The second requirement of being an awesome human being activates our conscious intention and choice. To live consciously requires the willingness to hold oneself responsible and accountable for one’s thoughts and behaviors. This eliminates such excuses as “I wasn’t thinking” or “I wasn’t paying attention.” To live consciously means to hold the intention of keeping your awareness present in the moment and building the ability to notice when your attention wanders to the past or future and then bringing it home to the present. It takes practice.

To live consciously from the inside out, deeply connected to the truth as you know it, means connecting the observations of your conscious awareness in the moment to the wisdom and truth that has been activated in your consciousness. A far richer life can be led from this deeper place of truth rather than the egoic external orientation of personal preferences and approval-seeking. When we reach outside for gratification, we are telling ourselves we are not enough and thus reside in a consciousness of lack. When we express outwardly from that deep inner place of truth, we have the ability to recognize what is true for us in the world because it resonates with the truth within us.

Finally, to love ourselves and others without conditions is the crowning achievement. This is not a matter of romantic love, but rather the feeling and expression of devotion to the well-being of ourselves and one another. It is a recognition of our kinship and underlying oneness. When we love in this way, we make nothing more important than loving one another. This kind of love is the most powerful force in the universe. It unites us as one through the trials and triumphs of life. Without it, we are separated by our judgments and personal, positional preferences. With it, we are magnificent. This kind of love is achieved through compassionate and caring choices made repeatedly day after day until it becomes who and how we are.

To be an awesome human being is not a matter of being perfect, for perfection does not exist in human form. We can only strive to do our best, humbled by the knowledge that we do in fact stumble and fall, and that those seeming “failures” are usually our most wonderful life lessons. To be awesome is to recognize and accept the challenge of being the very best “you” that you can be. Those who live this way serve as an inspiration to others to do and be the very best they can.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

Also, if you know anyone who might get value from this article please email or retweet it or share it on Facebook.

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