Be It Til You Feel It

In a recent conversation, a client said to me that he never really liked the phrase “Fake it til you make it.” Me neither. So we coined a new phrase (at least new to us!):

Be it til you feel it.

I like to think of times of challenge as being in our spiritual dojo. When the challenges show up, it doesn’t matter that they’ve shown up - what matters is how we be about it.

In many ways, most of us are hateful to our discomforts. We suppress it. We fight it. We avoid it. We resist it. We want and pray for it to be different. 

We be this way to our feelings. We be this way to our minds. We be this way toward other people. 

We be hateful and hope that it resolves the discomfort. 

Does it work for you? (It doesn’t work for me.)

Just because I feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean I have to be uncomfortable. Just because I feel resentful, doesn’t mean I have to be resentful. 

That’s the beautiful thing about being - it doesn’t depend on our feelings, and it doesn’t depend on the default thoughts our brains are spitting out. 

You know how lawn mowers have the cord that you pull to get the engine going? For me, a single thought can be that way. It can pop into mind and then rev my emotions right up.

When I’m being compassionate, though, or patient, gracious or loving, the energy doesn’t get stuck and it can move. 

By being more compassionate, I eventually feel more compassion.

By being more loving, I eventually feel more love.

By being more patient (peaceful), I eventually feel more at peace.

Do we have to feel compassion to be compassionate? No. 

Do we have to feel love to be loving? No. 

Do we have to feel patient to be patient? No. 

Here are some powerful questions worth considering when you’re faced with your next challenge:

How can I be more understanding toward this challenge?

How can I be more patient with this challenge?

How can I be more loving with this challenge?

How can I be more curious about this challenge?

How can I be more gentle with this challenge?“

(This challenge” may be a student, a family member, a colleague, the weather, traffic, or yourself.)

Your challenges are your spiritual dojo. Be intentionally toward them. 

Be it til you feel it. Then keep being it.

(As always, 100% human-written.)

The Details vs. The Mechanism

One of my teachers, Michael Singer, likes to remind his students that we’re spinning on a ball of dirt around a star that’s 93 million miles away. It’s hot out? That’s the star’s radiation warming our planet enough for life. It’s raining out? That’s the star’s impact on weather systems that allow life to flourish.

By zooming out a little, we begin to appreciate the mechanism instead of being distracted by our judgments, opinions, and insecurities about the details. 

When I get hooked by a thought or a feeling, my attention focuses in on it, and I suffer. When I can back my awareness off the detail and witness the mechanism, I get free again.

Regardless of the details of my experience - a particular feeling or thought, a memory or a projection into the future - the mechanisms of human being are beautiful.

For me, meditation isn’t trying to attain the absence of thought or feeling. One way I meditate is by relaxing my awareness beyond the boundaries of the details - I'm practicing witnessing the mechanisms. 

The mechanisms of being human are beautiful, powerful, miraculous. That we think, that we feel, that we move. Beautiful, powerful, miraculous.

It’s backing up from a single brush stroke and seeing the whole painting on the canvas. It's moving back from a single leaf to see the tree.

There’s freedom, peace, and insight in backing off the details a little to recognize the mechanism at work.

What I most want for myself in this life is an experience of being unconditionally in love with being alive. So my explorations, studies, and practices are usually in service of that desire (and my purpose: elevating the well-being of all life, no one left out). Uncovering the mechanism behind the details of my experience is one of the ways I find myself accessing more love in my life - witnessing and then expressing gratitude for the mechanisms, I get to fall more deeply in love with being alive.

Much Love. ❤️

(As always, 100% human-written.)

The Most Important Practice

21 years ago, I lived in the mountains of California for a year. My brother and I would plan mountain biking or hiking activities, and I would sometimes have to wait for him - he had a full-time traveling job and ran a local business. 

Being back here on a visit for the first time in over two decades, I enjoy the wait. I stand around or sit down. I look around. I breathe in this fresh mountain air. I thank my body, I thank my senses, I thank nature. I thank the opportunity it is to hang with my big bro.

Of all the practices I’ve learned and taught over the years, the most important and impactful is the practice of patience.

In patience, we can listen. 

Patience is a space. It’s a welcoming of the experience of being human. It’s an invitation for opportunity to show up.

Whether it’s challenging emotions, unmet expectations, or difficult circumstances, patience gives us room to relax - to relax our minds, our hearts, our nervous systems. In that space of bio-psycho-social-spiritual relaxation, we get to reside in a more full and fulfilling experience of right now.

There are no ordinary moments. 

The moments I’m waiting. The moments I’m seething. The moments I’m scared. Each moment is extraordinary.

Patience gives me the space and the listening to be with it all, and when I’m truly listening, there isn’t a part of my experience that I need to run from, avoid, or change.

I have a client who’s struggling with a potential big change in her life. Her suffering isn’t coming from the possible change, though - it’s coming from what it all means. Patience gives her space to be with her experience, to relax her mind’s stories and concerns and worries, and to settle into trusting herself and her innate capacity to thrive no matter what.

That’s the power of the practice of patience - trusting and cultivating our innate capacity to thrive in life, no matter the circumstances. 

With the practice of patience, waiting becomes an opportunity to fall in love with myself and the universe, frustration becomes an opportunity to compassionately give to another, and fear becomes an old friend just looking out.

(This is patience, by the way, without distraction - without our eyes in our phones or on our TVs.)

May we each be blessed with the power of patience, and the willingness to practice it unconditionally.

Much Love. ❤️