What’s your story? (Vision boards – Part 1)

What’s your story?

Formulate it. Narrate it. Compose your personal narrative.

This is often too difficult, for various reasons. So therapists use methods that more gently approach it, like trauma eggs and vision boards.

I believe we find it difficult because we crave simplicity, and abide mystery discomforted, with unanswered questions, craving validation from persons who will never give it. Maybe because they themselves haven’t composed their own narrative either. What’s interesting is how ready we are to simplify *their* narrative, while, at the same time, avoiding our own.

So, instead of writing our story, we just *pray* for it: For serenity about the things we can’t change. For courage. And for wisdom.

We celebrate examples of courage among ourselves, Though I wonder how much courage uninformed by wisdom is true courage.

We seek serenity by lambasting our transgressors as examples of “things we cannot change.”
“They’ve always been addicts, weak, manipulators, narcissists, cheaters…”

Sometimes we do turn that mirror on ourselves. “We always did what *they* wanted, like we were doormats.” Yet, there is no serenity in accepting that we cannot change our victim status.

In relationship crisis, we face outrageously complex and mysterious failures. Every impulse to simplify ourselves or our adversaries stems from what psychology calls cognitive distortions and biases (more in Part 2). We therefore should be cautious about identifying “things we cannot change.” Without deeply exploring your own distortions and biases, wisdom remains distant.

Authentic wisdom is outrageously difficult to come by. It is never fully achieved, nor is it static. Not authentic wisdom. It is not a holy grail you can possess and keep in your possession. It is as fleeting and ephemeral as all things authentic, like authentic love, compassion, the different mode by which divinity is known – Sophia, the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, your narrative should not be static. And that makes it difficult. So we oversimplify our failure, and share platitudes as substitutes for on-boarded wisdom, because authentically internalized wisdom is too elusive for us amidst our suffering. The gentler approach to the runway of wisdom is less abrupt and sharp in our tender, wounded state.

We seem to often lack enough courage to pursue wisdom wholeheartedly, which conterproducrively keeps serenity at bay. That’s what a victim mentality is. That’s where, why, and how blaming our transgressors keeps us stuck.

Enter: Vision boards.

Vision boards come with two indispensable instructions. Neither is optional. Both are required. It must be something you want for yourself, and it must be possible. Now, recite the serenity prayer in your mind, and think about those two requirements.
Serenity.
Courage.
Change.
Wisdom.
Difference.
Possibility.
Wish.

You will not accidentally get the courage to change the things you can. You have to want the change, and believe the change is possible. Both. You can’t just want it accidentally, like mana falling from heaven. But you also don’t have to chase it rabidly, like a possessed madman.

I am convinced that if you can internalize these two motives harmoniously – aspiration, and imagined possibility – you are already on a wisdom path.

But in the wake of relationship failure, it’s hard to believe in the possibility of harmony between possibility and desire. They are seen as the ground from which our current suffering was born.

In many senses, vision boards turn out to be trauma eggs also. The things we imagine as possible tend to reflect the wounds we have suffered. But not entirely.

For example, say you’ve always wanted a dog. But an ex-partner forbade it, explicitly or implicitly. Now you can imagine the possibility of having one.

There’s a twofold effect in the story you tell about that board. [1] You are imagining something that is possible – and remember, you don’t have to chase it doggedly:-) [2] You are telling your narrative as an imprisoned victim. Notice how that is a gentler approach to what you can’t change, and it lowers the challenging steepnesss of a directly honest personal narrative.

An approach to wisdom – gentle or not – is only an approach. It does not put you on the path of wisdom. You’ll have to do the hard inner work – to look at your failed relationship with eyes that do not divert blame elsewhere. That’s hard.

Because wisdom is ever dynamic, you need a draft to reread periodically as you tread the dissonance of the Serenity Prayer applied to you. Successive editions narrate less about your transgressor and your victimization, and more about your shortcomings and contributions to the failure. You cannot get to the final, happy chapter about wisdom, without first writing an earlier chapter about hypocrisy.

The tango took two. Even if you don’t repeat that dance with a different partner, there is always that other partner you cannot escape. Inside. Your ego and your soul are custom-tailored partners in the ever-dynamic dance of wisdom. Your glee as a witness to the wisdom dance is only as large as the eyes that can first imagine the boundless possibilities of your soul, and see how that divine dancer can embrace its ego partner and sweep it off its illusory terra firma.

(“Terra firma” is my fanciful reference to the “firm ground” on which an ego thinks it stands. Part 2 explains how unconscious you likely are about the illusions of this fantastical firm ground. There is NOTHING firm about the wisdom path. Authentic wisdom is the opposite of the certainty that’s nothing short of passionately misdirected LUST. Authentic wisdom is never situated in any belief system that values the simplicity and fundamentalism comfortable to the ego; it is instead the realm where complexity – aka mystery – is the supreme value. Part 2 expands on several of these steps toward the self honesty which can be sideshows on your wisdom journey that fortify your passion to remain on your path for your own sake, all else be damned.)

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Neil D. 2021-12-16

Biological evolution…to love?

[2 minute read]

Who/what are we? Where did we come from, and how? What is our ancestry and origin? And what is our trajectory – our “why”? How have we survived as fit? What are our defenses? On what strengths are we built?

Remember learning in biology class about endoskeletons (like ours) and exoskeletons (like insects, lobsters, snails)? Our vulnerable tender flesh lies exposed, so we survive by moving away from environmental threats, and toward nourishment, minimizing competition.

Our psyche, mind, hearts, and spirits reflect this evolutionary pattern, don’t they?

Evolution has not fashioned us as sedentary animals with a hard outer shell like oysters (though our pearl, too, lies within). We have evolved by survival as highly mobile (animated) animals.

Our structural form and support comes from the inside, and is moved by contractions that pull on our support system from outside it.

Our firm foundation and strength are inside of us. Sages throughout ages have called it the soul.

Unlike the protective outer shell of cockroaches, our protection and strength come from the inside.

Sedentary clams rely on currents of the ocean to nourish them. Currents outside them dictate their fate. Our origins lie in ancestors that evolved out of the ocean, taking a piece of the ocean in their insides. That ocean moves around inside of us, and the current is supplied by the beating of our heart. That is how we are energized and nourished. That is our fate.

When the heart stops beating, our embodyment is dead. The ocean currents inside of us are no longer animated (“anima” is Latin for “soul”).

When alive, and our ocean container is pierced, we bleed because of our beating hearts, and others see the piece of our inner ocean pour out from inside us, exposing our vulnerable and tender basis for being. And so it is when we authentically love.

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Neil D. 2021-12-10

Related: We harden our shells… Like turtles, not cockroaches

We harden our shells… Like turtles, not cockroaches

Your fingernails are not alive, don’t hurt when you cut them, but protect the living tissue of your fingertips, which is where contact with a nail is sensed.

The shell of a turtle is alive and can feel. Turtles cannot live without their shells; it is part of their skeleton and their skin.

The shells of most smaller animals are not alive. As insects grow larger, they must molt, replacing their old shells for a larger one, or they suffocate and die. A snakeskin is also shed by a growing serpent.

This is biological development, anatomical growth.

What about your psyche, mind, heart, and spirit?

Those too require shells as you grow. To advance from one phase and grow into the next, you need protection. Yet, these are inseparably continuous developments, not dramatic events – except traumas.

If you leave a stage too early, and expose your soft vulnerability before it is ready… you’ll dry up, or predators will traumatize you… uh-oh. But too much protection, too thick a shell that you cannot escape, and you suffocate and die if you don’t shed or molt? Not really…

We do not molt anatomically like insects and crabs, nor shed as dramatically as snakes.

Our emotional shells are like a turtle – alive.

So they hurt.

Just as we would die biologically without our skin and skeleton, a turtle dies without its shell. Whether wounded and scarred – or not – it must carry its living protection on its back, and all around its Self.
Or, no more living turtle.

Neil D. 2021-12-08

Thanksgiving Magicians

If you have deeply cherished memories around holidays, you may cherish the season… *too* much – filling it with a wonderfully complex soul-mix of expectations and hard work to pull it all together, reinforcing the value placed on those memories year after year.

We “make holidays happen.” There’s nothing particularly enchanting about the depths of winter per se. We *make* it so.

The eyes of our heart also see most of society doing the same, and the bustle culminates in the warmth of gathered loved ones. It’s all very magical – a blend of reality and fantasy that can’t be detangled, and so we are almost entirely unconcerned with detangling it.

It’s part illusion, but illusion that promotes and highlights very, very real connection between souls – both amidst the bustle of strangers on city sidewalks adorned with silver bells, as well as feasting with loved ones within four walls.

“It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.” As years roll by, we feel the absence of the departed who have been woven into our deep-heart memories of the season. Some have departed this realm, or some have departed to separate lives within this realm and now have their own circles that make it impossible to gather as one circle again. Or perhaps they choose actively against the old order, which hurts just as much, if not more.

Perhaps you’ve experienced some holiday days alone. The absence of connection amidst the universal spirit of goodwill can be excruciating. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and never before had you realized how highly your own spirit soared by connecting so fondly to other soaring revelers.

Perhaps in solitude somewhat unwillingly, you had a gathering inside yourself. Your full Self gathers your components. The part of you which craves the belonging and love from others had to gather with the part of you which pours out love and welcome on others. At this feast inside of you can gather the guest which senses its separateness in the world, across the table from the guest within you who senses that your being is part of a larger universe of being.

That thanksgiving meal can be quite a delicious blend of flavors. And that complex blend involves no delusional magic or fantasy. It is the *magic* which is you, in your fullness.

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Neil D. 2021-11-26