Gazing in the Mirror

February 27 - A Perfect Mess

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing, there is a field.
I will meet you there.
~ Jalal ad-Din Rumi

As we realize the spiritual truth,
everything else will take care of
itself because it becomes causeless
cause ... All there is of you is God.
All the real you that there is,
is some activity of God in you
because there is nothing else it
could be ... All we have got to do
is recognize it.
~ Ernest Holmes, Love and Law

I believe that our desire for order around us is driven for our desire of security – everything as it should be and everything in its place. We feel unsettled by clutter. Living with an artist is messy. Living with packrats is messy. Living with a constant inflow of matter is messy even if that matter is also always on the way out and order is constantly being established on little beach heads around us. I've had to cope with so much mess due to living in such a small space with two children and all of the above that I actually bought a book entitled "A Perfect Mess" by Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman. They seek to prove "the hidden benefits of disorder". I'm convinced.

I am a distractible person. My mind apprehends unifying and related "patterns" in the diverse and unrelated stuff all around me and these inform some of my perspectives as well as yield discernment, guidance and sensibility – regarding a world that sometimes makes very little sense and that is so full of content and information we must filter some of that out simply in self defense. The authors mentioned above say "People tend to imagine that they are getting the most out of their brains when their thoughts are well organized and focused, when they are able to clearly spell out their goals and intentions, and when the confusing world around them has been sorted out according to a distinct scheme. But actually, the mind is built around disorder on several levels, ranging from the processing of raw sensory data to the juggling of complex ideas. Our brains evolved to function in a messy world, and sometimes when we insist on thinking in neat, orderly ways, we're really holding back our minds from doing what they do best. In fact, it is when our brains seem to be efficiently putting the world around us into perfect order that they are most likely to be leading us astray."

Perfect order may not look perfect but the perfection is there never-the-less. Ernest Holmes focused a lot on seeing "perfection" where it appeared not to be. My friend Kathy shared her thoughts in a blog today about how she sometimes struggles with thinking there is always a perfect choice to be made but at the same time realizes how comforting letting go of any idea there are such things as "perfect choices" is. "It's OK to be imperfect. We don't have to get it 'right'. We can embrace the mess of it, the crazy perfect imperfection of our actions. We can just...sniff...do the best we can, day in and day out, even though we don't know if we should drink coffee or tea, or check our email again, or–gasp–start our day with Facebook."

I don't actually believe we are ever wrong. We just stress so much about getting it right that we judge ourselves to be somehow clumsy, inadequate or utter failures. Sometimes because of some reaction that we get from someone else we will think we said the wrong thing to them. For one thing, we can't really know how the other person will hear, discern and interpret whatever we have to say. We each have an internal filter that I believe is delivering to us exactly what we need each and every moment. So when we react because we don't like what someone else has had to say to us what we really need to do in that very moment of being triggered is go into contemplation. Rather than looking outside of our own self we need to look within.

Lately, my family has encountered an interesting problem with my youngest son. He will repeatedly say "Stop". Most of the time it is directed at his older brother for some mis-perceived hostility he thinks is coming his way. This youngest child of mine will insist that his brother is doing something to him and that he ought to be punished or ostracized for doing "that". He has responded similarly to his father as well. Yesterday our morning started with total disruption because of this. The oldest one woke up and was dismayed at the late hour for he had intentions for an early day. He admitted that it was possible that he made some kind of "face" in response to that awareness. However my youngest took it "personally" by viewing whatever he thought he "saw" in his brother's face as being directed maliciously at him. Rather than simply soothing him, I spent the longest time in trying to explain to him that the whole situation is under his own control regardless of whatever face his brother might be intentionally making AT him. He can simply not look, ignore it and not give it any power and he can also realize that simply making a face does not actually do him any harm. He can choose not to be a victim of his own perceptions. He brings suffering upon himself needlessly but in the very real experience of that suffering he is also bringing disharmony, chaos and suffering into the life of his whole family.

At our center is an integrating natural principle of wholeness. In harmony we realize the truth that we do determine our own destiny. I'm not saying that things will always go the way that we think they ought to. In living with an artist I often experience his frustration when the actual reality does not match the inner vision. Yet what we choose to see, how we interpret that, how we choose to respond to any situation – comes from realizing that there is no preordained "right" way for anything to be. There is simply whatever is. How we choose to view that "whatever" is a choice.

~ perspective

I have learned to recognize
the truth that whatever is
is exactly what it should be.
I am enough – there is no
penalty to face at the end of
my life for my having not
been somehow more perfect.
I simply do "my best" knowing
that it is truly good enough
even if I appear to fail to
live up to my own or other
people's expectations of me –
the truth is never that I
"should have done" it better.
By allowing the messiness of
Life to be what it is without
resistance I am a happier,
more adventurous and a less
fearful person – I enjoy living
much more.
I take a moment to consider
before acting and then I do
not second guess but go forward
from that place into whatever
comes next in perfect peace
with my decisions.

#artist #children #choice #clutter #control #emotion #family #judgement #overwhelm #perfection