.
Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.
- Vaclav Havel
POEM
a
Flowers for Michael
I want to buy seeds at True Value Hardware;
petunias, like I saw growing in planter boxes
across from Valencia Gardens on Guerrero, the
dogwood bloom snowing pink on dirty cement.
I used to play in my Father's garden among
spyorria and sweet alysum, yellow tongue iris
and jungle red dahlia, fat blushing peonies,
double white lilacs, a rose covered arbor.
I studied each blossom, leaf, shape, vein, stem.
Four o'clocks, their shiny black seeds dropping
down, ensuring themselves in the earth against
harsh winter, safe until spring after croccii and hyacinth.
My words may not always be as fragrant
as you would like, or as lovely as my Father's garden.
But you know how I have grown, and you let me.
The wind does not blow the seeds far from our bed.
© Mark Hannan
Flowers for Michael
I want to buy seeds at True Value Hardware;
petunias, like I saw growing in planter boxes
across from Valencia Gardens on Guerrero, the
dogwood bloom snowing pink on dirty cement.
I used to play in my Father's garden among
spyorria and sweet alysum, yellow tongue iris
and jungle red dahlia, fat blushing peonies,
double white lilacs, a rose covered arbor.
I studied each blossom, leaf, shape, vein, stem.
Four o'clocks, their shiny black seeds dropping
down, ensuring themselves in the earth against
harsh winter, safe until spring after croccii and hyacinth.
My words may not always be as fragrant
as you would like, or as lovely as my Father's garden.
But you know how I have grown, and you let me.
The wind does not blow the seeds far from our bed.
© Mark Hannan
Narrative Therapy
a
Every individual has a unique story of value worth telling and hearing. The characters, plots, themes, and action of the story are created by the individual. Throughout life we have adopted stories told to us by others, by the culture, and by past experiences. Sometimes those stories do not match the life stories we hope to develop for ourselves. We get caught up in the problem and forget all the things we know and have acheived, our successes and talents. Within a trusting relationship, based on respect, honesty, and cooperation, it is my aim to assist individuals, couples, families, and groups to explore and understand their own personal stories - especially their preferred stories. Often, problem stories blur and negate the value, strength, possibility, and potential of one's essence and his or her unfolding life story. Telling, hearing and understanding both kinds of stories is important to the process.
Narrative Therapy offers a context wherein a person has the opportunity not only to free himself or herself of the constraints of the story authored by others, but to appreciate ways he or she can free himself or herself of these constraints in other contexts as well. Narrative Therapy can be helpful not only in the pursuit of symptom alleviation, but also in affecting personal growth. It invites clients and therapists to notice who they are, who they want to be, what they want to do, and the context in which each and all of these considerations occurs. It focuses on personal competency and authorship rights. It is expansive and appreciates the lived experience of clients, preferring their stories and their evaluations of their stories even in the context of the dominant story and objective reality.
In the context of Narrative Therapy, people can co-create an environment wherein they can notice and harness their own powers, capabilities and competencies, heal themselves, and provide new contexts for their experiences of themselves and in their lives.
from A Narrative Context for Conversations with Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse
Every individual has a unique story of value worth telling and hearing. The characters, plots, themes, and action of the story are created by the individual. Throughout life we have adopted stories told to us by others, by the culture, and by past experiences. Sometimes those stories do not match the life stories we hope to develop for ourselves. We get caught up in the problem and forget all the things we know and have acheived, our successes and talents. Within a trusting relationship, based on respect, honesty, and cooperation, it is my aim to assist individuals, couples, families, and groups to explore and understand their own personal stories - especially their preferred stories. Often, problem stories blur and negate the value, strength, possibility, and potential of one's essence and his or her unfolding life story. Telling, hearing and understanding both kinds of stories is important to the process.
Narrative Therapy offers a context wherein a person has the opportunity not only to free himself or herself of the constraints of the story authored by others, but to appreciate ways he or she can free himself or herself of these constraints in other contexts as well. Narrative Therapy can be helpful not only in the pursuit of symptom alleviation, but also in affecting personal growth. It invites clients and therapists to notice who they are, who they want to be, what they want to do, and the context in which each and all of these considerations occurs. It focuses on personal competency and authorship rights. It is expansive and appreciates the lived experience of clients, preferring their stories and their evaluations of their stories even in the context of the dominant story and objective reality.
In the context of Narrative Therapy, people can co-create an environment wherein they can notice and harness their own powers, capabilities and competencies, heal themselves, and provide new contexts for their experiences of themselves and in their lives.
from A Narrative Context for Conversations with Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse
Surrender - giving up the egotistical "I".
a
Surrender involves the letting down of individual barriers to merge into the otherness of experience. True surrender comes by knowledge. Untrue surrender comes by fear. I think that surrender begins by accepting our negative side.
Surrender can only begin by accepting that the dark nature is ours.
The dark nature lives in the secrets we create and keep.
Surrender is an unpopular word, disliked almost as much as the word submission. It implies losing, and no one wants to be a loser. Surrender evokes the unpleasant images of admitting defeat in battle, forfeiting a game, or yielding to a stronger opponent. The word is almost always used in a negative context. Captured criminals surrender to the authorities.
In our competitive world we’re taught to never quit trying, never give up, and never give in - so we don’t hear much about surrendering. If winning is everything, surrendering is unthinkable.
Surrendering is not passive resignation, fatalism, or an excuse for laziness. It is not accepting the status quo. Surrendering is not putting your brain in neutral and giving up rational thinking. Surrendering is not repressing your personality.
There is a great deal of fear surrounding surrender, especially if we reveal our secrets - see them, acknowledge and accept the content of them. When we deal with our fears, bringing them to consciousness and releasing them to love, we can then allow trust. In this state of being we are magnets of the highest love, light and joy available to us here on the planet. We have the choice.
Usually an in-depth view of our shadow leaves us feeling tender and washed out, and often with a sense of failure. It even might leave us with a sense of disorientation as to who we are and where we are in relation to the world around us. In this state of not knowing, we are the most likely to have an experience of surrender.
Most of us are terrified of surrender because we think it implies no longer being in charge, no longer being in control of our lives. In actuality, that is exactly the goal. A state of surrender means we no longer make claims such as "I did this or that" or "I accomplished this or that." Instead we recognize that everything we do is the result of divine energy moving in and through us.
"Non-surrender hardens your psychological form, the shell of the ego, and so creates a strong sense of separateness...Not only your psychological form, but also your physical form, your body, becomes hard and rigid through resistance. Tension arises in different parts of the body and the body contracts. The free flow of life energy through the body, which is essential for its healthy functioning, is greatly restricted. Bodywork and certain forms of physical therapy can be helpful in restoring this flow, but unless you practice surrender in your everyday life, those things can only give temporary symptom relief since the cause 'the resistance pattern' has not been dissolved. There is something within you that remains unaffected by the transient circumstances that make up your life situation, and only through surrender do you have access to it. It is your life, your very Being, which exists eternally in the timeless realm of the present. Finding this life is 'the one thing that is needed'."
- The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle
Ishvara pranidhana is usually translated as "surrender or devotion to God," a practice that is at the core of every spiritual path. But another name for God is "reality"--the life energy that flows through every circumstance and makes things happen the way they do. Much of our suffering comes from the simple refusal to accept that reality. So, moment to moment, Ishvara pranidhana is the choice to open up to what is actually going on inside us and around us.
It's the attitude of deep acceptance that lets us experience the inevitable hardships and disappointments of life without resistance, without constantly wishing that things were different. Surrendering instantly gives us back the energy we have been spending in resisting our lives, in feeling victimized, frustrated, or despairing. It is the most profound form of alignment with reality--and it opens us to love.
In physical terms, you practice surrender when you consciously relax into full awareness of a part of your body that hurts, rather than resisting the discomfort. Surrender can also mean, in the language of the 12-step movement, "turning over" your situation to a higher power, with the understanding that there are things your personal will does not have the power to change on its own.
Buddhist psychotherapist Mark Epstein would probably agree. Epstein has said that what makes a person resilient is "accepting the truth of impermanence"--that is, the fact that life is ever-changing and that the self we think we are is actually just a shifting kaleidoscope of temporary thoughts and feelings.
The sages of Hindu Tantra would express the same idea in different language. They would say that when our egos let go of their need to control reality, we align ourselves with the intrinsic power at the heart of all phenomena. That's when solutions arise, spontaneously, to seemingly insoluble problems.
How real are your secrets? How real are your reasons for keeping them? Think of a secret you have aboutyourself. Where are you holding it? It must be kept somewhere - where are you keeping it? By it's nature, thesecret is a dis-ease. The longer and more deeply the secret is held the more power the dis-ease has. Surrendering to the truth, the reality (i.e. "I come from a poor family - I am not really as rich as I look", "I've had an abortion", "I am gay", "the scars on my arms are from a suicide attempt - not flying through a window whenI was fifteen like I tell people") disempowers the disease.
Once we become balanced and have the basics of our needs met within the wholeness of who we are, we are ready to move further into an expanded state of joyous celebration and freedom.
This freedom is created at the core of being that is unencumbered with attachment and resonates with openness and harmony with universal flow. It allows us to completely live in the moment and to manifest our desires without any attachment to the outcome. This is true surrender to magnificence and allows the universe to expand upon our desires beyond our wildest dreams. We move into the unlimited possibilities and magic for our lives and co-create the harmonious and peaceful world we all envision.
From "Talks With Babaji" © 1995 Sri Rama Publishing
Surrender involves the letting down of individual barriers to merge into the otherness of experience. True surrender comes by knowledge. Untrue surrender comes by fear. I think that surrender begins by accepting our negative side.
Surrender can only begin by accepting that the dark nature is ours.
The dark nature lives in the secrets we create and keep.
Surrender is an unpopular word, disliked almost as much as the word submission. It implies losing, and no one wants to be a loser. Surrender evokes the unpleasant images of admitting defeat in battle, forfeiting a game, or yielding to a stronger opponent. The word is almost always used in a negative context. Captured criminals surrender to the authorities.
In our competitive world we’re taught to never quit trying, never give up, and never give in - so we don’t hear much about surrendering. If winning is everything, surrendering is unthinkable.
Surrendering is not passive resignation, fatalism, or an excuse for laziness. It is not accepting the status quo. Surrendering is not putting your brain in neutral and giving up rational thinking. Surrendering is not repressing your personality.
There is a great deal of fear surrounding surrender, especially if we reveal our secrets - see them, acknowledge and accept the content of them. When we deal with our fears, bringing them to consciousness and releasing them to love, we can then allow trust. In this state of being we are magnets of the highest love, light and joy available to us here on the planet. We have the choice.
Usually an in-depth view of our shadow leaves us feeling tender and washed out, and often with a sense of failure. It even might leave us with a sense of disorientation as to who we are and where we are in relation to the world around us. In this state of not knowing, we are the most likely to have an experience of surrender.
Most of us are terrified of surrender because we think it implies no longer being in charge, no longer being in control of our lives. In actuality, that is exactly the goal. A state of surrender means we no longer make claims such as "I did this or that" or "I accomplished this or that." Instead we recognize that everything we do is the result of divine energy moving in and through us.
"Non-surrender hardens your psychological form, the shell of the ego, and so creates a strong sense of separateness...Not only your psychological form, but also your physical form, your body, becomes hard and rigid through resistance. Tension arises in different parts of the body and the body contracts. The free flow of life energy through the body, which is essential for its healthy functioning, is greatly restricted. Bodywork and certain forms of physical therapy can be helpful in restoring this flow, but unless you practice surrender in your everyday life, those things can only give temporary symptom relief since the cause 'the resistance pattern' has not been dissolved. There is something within you that remains unaffected by the transient circumstances that make up your life situation, and only through surrender do you have access to it. It is your life, your very Being, which exists eternally in the timeless realm of the present. Finding this life is 'the one thing that is needed'."
- The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle
Ishvara pranidhana is usually translated as "surrender or devotion to God," a practice that is at the core of every spiritual path. But another name for God is "reality"--the life energy that flows through every circumstance and makes things happen the way they do. Much of our suffering comes from the simple refusal to accept that reality. So, moment to moment, Ishvara pranidhana is the choice to open up to what is actually going on inside us and around us.
It's the attitude of deep acceptance that lets us experience the inevitable hardships and disappointments of life without resistance, without constantly wishing that things were different. Surrendering instantly gives us back the energy we have been spending in resisting our lives, in feeling victimized, frustrated, or despairing. It is the most profound form of alignment with reality--and it opens us to love.
In physical terms, you practice surrender when you consciously relax into full awareness of a part of your body that hurts, rather than resisting the discomfort. Surrender can also mean, in the language of the 12-step movement, "turning over" your situation to a higher power, with the understanding that there are things your personal will does not have the power to change on its own.
Buddhist psychotherapist Mark Epstein would probably agree. Epstein has said that what makes a person resilient is "accepting the truth of impermanence"--that is, the fact that life is ever-changing and that the self we think we are is actually just a shifting kaleidoscope of temporary thoughts and feelings.
The sages of Hindu Tantra would express the same idea in different language. They would say that when our egos let go of their need to control reality, we align ourselves with the intrinsic power at the heart of all phenomena. That's when solutions arise, spontaneously, to seemingly insoluble problems.
How real are your secrets? How real are your reasons for keeping them? Think of a secret you have aboutyourself. Where are you holding it? It must be kept somewhere - where are you keeping it? By it's nature, thesecret is a dis-ease. The longer and more deeply the secret is held the more power the dis-ease has. Surrendering to the truth, the reality (i.e. "I come from a poor family - I am not really as rich as I look", "I've had an abortion", "I am gay", "the scars on my arms are from a suicide attempt - not flying through a window whenI was fifteen like I tell people") disempowers the disease.
Once we become balanced and have the basics of our needs met within the wholeness of who we are, we are ready to move further into an expanded state of joyous celebration and freedom.
This freedom is created at the core of being that is unencumbered with attachment and resonates with openness and harmony with universal flow. It allows us to completely live in the moment and to manifest our desires without any attachment to the outcome. This is true surrender to magnificence and allows the universe to expand upon our desires beyond our wildest dreams. We move into the unlimited possibilities and magic for our lives and co-create the harmonious and peaceful world we all envision.
From "Talks With Babaji" © 1995 Sri Rama Publishing
Constructive Living
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Accept your feelings, know your purpose, do what needs to be done.
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“The key is not to resist or rebel against the symptoms or to try to get around them by devising all sorts of tricks, that is, to accept them directly as they are without shunning them.”
- Takahisa Kora, MD
Accept your feelings
Accepting feelings is not ignoring them or avoiding them, but welcoming them; Vietnamese poet and writer, Thich Nhat Hanh recommends we say, "Hello Loneliness, how are you today? Come, sit by me and I will take care of you." Morita's advice: "In feelings, it is best to be wealthy and generous", ie, have many and let them fly as they wish.
Know your purpose
Implicit in Morita's method, and the traditional psychological principles of zen which he adapted, is an independence of thought and action, something a little alien to the western ideal to "follow our whims and moods". Morita held that we can no more control our thoughts than we can control the weather, as both are phenomenon of most amazingly complex natural systems. And if we have no hope of controlling our emotions, we can hardly be held responsible any more than we can be held responsible for feeling hot or cold. We do, however, have complete dominion over our behaviour, and for Morita, that is a sacred responsibility. "What needs doing now?" is like a mantra in his methods.
Do what needs doing
You can feel crushed and alone or hurt and homicidal while pulling up the weeds in your garden, but you won't be there at all if you hadn't intended to raise flowers. Morita's way of treatment is very different from our western diagnosis/disease model. Morita's methods lead his 'students' through experiments, and in each assignment, the lesson is not explained by a master, but learned first hand, through the doing or 'taiken', that knowledge gained by direct experience.
.
Accept your feelings
Accepting feelings is not ignoring them or avoiding them, but welcoming them; Vietnamese poet and writer, Thich Nhat Hanh recommends we say, "Hello Loneliness, how are you today? Come, sit by me and I will take care of you." Morita's advice: "In feelings, it is best to be wealthy and generous", ie, have many and let them fly as they wish.
Know your purpose
Implicit in Morita's method, and the traditional psychological principles of zen which he adapted, is an independence of thought and action, something a little alien to the western ideal to "follow our whims and moods". Morita held that we can no more control our thoughts than we can control the weather, as both are phenomenon of most amazingly complex natural systems. And if we have no hope of controlling our emotions, we can hardly be held responsible any more than we can be held responsible for feeling hot or cold. We do, however, have complete dominion over our behaviour, and for Morita, that is a sacred responsibility. "What needs doing now?" is like a mantra in his methods.
Do what needs doing
You can feel crushed and alone or hurt and homicidal while pulling up the weeds in your garden, but you won't be there at all if you hadn't intended to raise flowers. Morita's way of treatment is very different from our western diagnosis/disease model. Morita's methods lead his 'students' through experiments, and in each assignment, the lesson is not explained by a master, but learned first hand, through the doing or 'taiken', that knowledge gained by direct experience.
.
The relation of thought to action is explored with the journal, a random sample taken three or four times each day to note our behaviours and the feelings that accompanied them. We quickly see for ourselves we are not just depressed, or shy, or alone, but all of these and more; something we all experience, but like your computer fan, something we habitually overlook. Within weeks, we see how our feelings are not "being caused by" our situation or our forgotten past, as many conflicting feelings fill the pages. Our log-book dispells any notions we may have of traditional and narrow "personality types", and does this directly in the context of our everyday life.
Human beings remember about 10% what they read, 20% what they hear, and 90% what they do. In CL, We grasp our lesson by practice in our own gardens, whatever our personal flowers may be. I often met my teacher in the nearby playground where my 2 year old could play while we talked; lessons can easily happen over shopping or apartment hunting. A friend of mine was asked on his first meeting, "What would you do first if you were cured today?" and they went straight out to do it. For Morita's purposes, in his words, "Effort -is- the good fortune"
"Each time you feel shy, it is a new shyness"
Our brains change, by some accounts 50 to 60 times per second, and each is a new change, a new configuration ... by western pattern-personality standards, it is physiologically a new 'you' never seen before. Each moment is a new branch point, a new start exploding with possibilities toward the next new you. We know now our brains do what they do not by the count of cells, but by the connections rewritten on each new experience.
"Trying to subdue a wave by striking it only results in a thousand waves"
Kipling's line on wanting the wisdom to know what can be changed from what cannot echos through the "quiet therapies". Many exercises taunt us to attempt controlling the impossible. No one has yet asked me to put a camel (or rope) through the eye of a needle, but I swear it cannot be as hard as simply sitting for 20 minutes watching my mind and body!
Constructive Living aims at helping a person see the world realistically and act on that knowledge in practical and constructive ways. In assessing any situation a first question that we ask is: what is controllable and what is not? If we hunt for the Constructive Living "bones," as Santa Rosa, CA instructor Gregory Willms called the 'essentials of this paradigm,' a good beginning place is with the issue of controllability.
Human beings remember about 10% what they read, 20% what they hear, and 90% what they do. In CL, We grasp our lesson by practice in our own gardens, whatever our personal flowers may be. I often met my teacher in the nearby playground where my 2 year old could play while we talked; lessons can easily happen over shopping or apartment hunting. A friend of mine was asked on his first meeting, "What would you do first if you were cured today?" and they went straight out to do it. For Morita's purposes, in his words, "Effort -is- the good fortune"
"Each time you feel shy, it is a new shyness"
Our brains change, by some accounts 50 to 60 times per second, and each is a new change, a new configuration ... by western pattern-personality standards, it is physiologically a new 'you' never seen before. Each moment is a new branch point, a new start exploding with possibilities toward the next new you. We know now our brains do what they do not by the count of cells, but by the connections rewritten on each new experience.
"Trying to subdue a wave by striking it only results in a thousand waves"
Kipling's line on wanting the wisdom to know what can be changed from what cannot echos through the "quiet therapies". Many exercises taunt us to attempt controlling the impossible. No one has yet asked me to put a camel (or rope) through the eye of a needle, but I swear it cannot be as hard as simply sitting for 20 minutes watching my mind and body!
Constructive Living aims at helping a person see the world realistically and act on that knowledge in practical and constructive ways. In assessing any situation a first question that we ask is: what is controllable and what is not? If we hunt for the Constructive Living "bones," as Santa Rosa, CA instructor Gregory Willms called the 'essentials of this paradigm,' a good beginning place is with the issue of controllability.
.
The question of what is controllable is central to realistic thinking and action. It makes no sense to put effort into controlling what is essentially uncontrollable. And yet, this is what many of us do or try to do. Here we use the term "control" in a quite literal way. Control indicates that something is possible. . .all the time. Having control does not necessarily mean that it is easy, only that it is possible. We use the words "can" and "can't" to reflect this meaning. "I just can't seem to exercise lately". She is not speaking accurately. She actually can exercise; she simply hasn't recently.
Lets look at the list of what is not controllable: the weather, other people's actions, other people's opinions, the outcome of events, my thoughts, my feelings, my moods. When we look realistically at life we see that a great deal of it is not directly controllable. What is controllable, then? My own behavior is always controllable. With a very few exceptions (stuttering, trembling and impotence) my behavior, that is, what I do at all times is fully within my control.
The question of what is controllable is central to realistic thinking and action. It makes no sense to put effort into controlling what is essentially uncontrollable. And yet, this is what many of us do or try to do. Here we use the term "control" in a quite literal way. Control indicates that something is possible. . .all the time. Having control does not necessarily mean that it is easy, only that it is possible. We use the words "can" and "can't" to reflect this meaning. "I just can't seem to exercise lately". She is not speaking accurately. She actually can exercise; she simply hasn't recently.
Lets look at the list of what is not controllable: the weather, other people's actions, other people's opinions, the outcome of events, my thoughts, my feelings, my moods. When we look realistically at life we see that a great deal of it is not directly controllable. What is controllable, then? My own behavior is always controllable. With a very few exceptions (stuttering, trembling and impotence) my behavior, that is, what I do at all times is fully within my control.
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Sometimes action is difficult. For example I notice that having the flu as I write this article makes me feel lethargic; it doesn't, however, prevent my fingers from typing the words of this lesson. Writing is possible. It is behavior. I can do that action, even while "not in the mood." I do it because it needs to be done.
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This can be a startling fact for many of us who have believed that "motivation" of some kind must precede action. What a relief to discover that I need not fix my feeling or my self esteem or my motivation in order to act. Realistically we know that life can't be perpetually easy, comfortable, "exciting" all the time. As we gain maturity we accept this as reality. The "good news" is that my behavior is in my control at all times. I don't need to wait for motivation, inspiration, or self esteem to act. I can act on what needs to be done because it fulfills a purpose. I can act now. My behavior is always controllable.
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Homework: Pick one action that needs doing on a regular basis: (flossing teeth, walking, doing dishes, changing the cat's water,etc.) Chose a set time of the day and do the needed action at the same time each day for one week.
For more lessons and activities visit:
http://www.constructiveliving.com/CL1.html
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Homework: Pick one action that needs doing on a regular basis: (flossing teeth, walking, doing dishes, changing the cat's water,etc.) Chose a set time of the day and do the needed action at the same time each day for one week.
For more lessons and activities visit:
http://www.constructiveliving.com/CL1.html
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