Anxiety and fear aren't the same.It's important to see this, because they lead to different places. Anxiety - felt, allowed and responded to - can be an invitation into a new way of relating to the world. But fear so often leads us into actions that cut us off from ourselves, and from others, and from what's called for.It's David Steindl-Rast who makes this distinction in his wonderful interview with Krista Tippett at On Being.Anxiety, he says, is the feeling of being pressed-in by the world. It comes from the linguistic root anguere meaning 'choke' or 'squeeze'. The first experience of it in our lives, the primal experience of anxiety, is that of being born. We all enter the world through a very uncomfortable occurence in which we are squeezed and pushed and all there is to do is go along with it. In a very real sense going with the experience is what makes it possible to be born into life in the first place.And though we're born through an experience of anxiety, Steindl-Rast tells us, at that moment we do it fearlessly. Because fear is exactly what comes when we resist feeling anxiety, when we try to deny it or push it away. Anxiety can bring us into birth, while fear - our denial, our resistance to what we're experiencing - is a different move altogether: life-destroying, a totally different direction for our minds and bodies to take."And that is why", he says, "anxiety is not optional in life. It’s part of life. We come into life through anxiety. And we look at it, and remember it, and say to ourselves, we made it. We got through it. We made it. In fact, the worst anxieties and the worst tight spots in our life, often, years later, when you look back at them, reveal themselves as the beginning of something completely new, a completely new life."And what, he says, makes the biggest difference between anxiety and fear is learning to trust - trusting life, trusting the capacity of our own hearts, trusting others.We live in times that give many of us good cause for anxiety. But instead of collapsing and narrowing ourselves with fear we can choose to feel, and choose to practice trust. One step, and another step. And perhaps this way we can allow to be born in us a capacity to respond to our difficulties without turning away, and a greater ability to live without choking off our own lives or the lives of others.
Cell walls
Human beings are not infinitely extensible.We cannot keep on taking on more, saying yes to more, stretching our efforts into the late hours, getting up early, piling it on, squeezing it in, pushing ourselves harder and harder, without soon hitting limits.First, perhaps, we reach the outer limits of what our relationships can take. But we say to ourselves that it's not too bad, that it's just the way life is, and we push on.Later we encounter the limits that our bodies and minds can take, and we return home first ragged and exhausted, then increasingly unwell. We're adaptable though. It doesn't take us long to get used to be stretched as thin as we can go. And before long we carry with us lasting damage from the stress hormones coursing through our bodies.And even though this kind of yes-to-everything is endemic in our culture and in many organisations, it's largely there because we have not yet learned how powerful 'no' can be.'No' is a boundary-making move. It's a declaration that separates this-from-that. It's through 'no' that we distinguish the important from the unimportant, what matters from what does not, and what we care about from what's trivial.We can learn much about this from living systems. In cells, for example, it's the boundary-making properties of the membrane, that which distinguishes inner from outer, that makes the self-producing and life-generating processes of the cell possible.A cell without a cell wall is just a splurge of protoplasm and organelles.And just as there is no outside without inside, there is no proper, genuine, sincere 'yes' upon which we can act without the necessary, powerful boundary-making of 'no'.
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Oh Beautiful Sky, and The Cradling
Episodes 11 and 12 of 'Turning Towards Life' are now available on our new Turning Towards YouTube channel, and are also included below. We'll be live on facebook here as usual at 9am UK time each Sunday morning.In Oh Beautiful Sky we begin with a poem written by Lizzie's husband Matthew for his daughter. Our conversation turned into the topic of power - how we try to have power over others and over the world, and the difficulty this brings. And how cultivating awe and connection with something bigger than ourselves - the sky, nature - can remind us of a much truer power we have, power-with, in which we turn towards others and bring ourselves in a way that brings out the possibility of mutual commitment. And what different world of organisations, family, community and politics we'd cultivate if power-with was our central commitment in the world?[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mQfyovlGl4[/embed]And in The Cradling we begin with a beautiful and powerful meditation from the work of Joanna Macy. We ask ourselves what possibilities there are when we remember the extraordinary and unlikely evolutionary background from which all human beings come, and when we remember also that everyone - even those people we judge most or are most afraid of - arises from exactly the same background and shares with each of us the same biology. Would we respond so easily with the impulse to hurt, or distance ourselves, or turn away? And if we did not, what then?[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KLTwajaO7I[/embed]
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What will it take to give up our busyness?
Even when we see that our endless busyness is stifling us, holding back our creativity and contribution, narrowing us - even when we see that in many ways it's killing us - it's so hard for us to give it up.Why is this?It may be in part that we're unwilling to stand out from those around us - to risk the feelings of shame and awkwardness that come from taking a stand that we call our own.And it may well be that we're unwilling to cease our busyness as long we're unwilling to face loss. Because to give up rushing will indeed be to lose a particular identity, a way of keeping our self-esteem going, and of course the end of all those activities with which we stuff our time. And we human beings can have a hard time with loss.It's only through turning towards inevitable loss that we open the chance for life to reach us.I think we ought to do that sooner rather than later. Because loss will be forced on us in the end in any case. And by the time it comes there's a real possibility that we've missed our lives because we weren't willing to choose to face it earlier, of our own accord.
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On account of nothing we did
Ordinary life can seem so - ordinary - that it's natural to slip into taking it for granted, as if it were obvious and straightforward that we're here, and as if it will go on this way for ever.Many traditions have practices to remind us that it's anything but ordinary to be able to move, breathe, think, make breakfast, travel, work, love, argue, sleep, produce, write, speak. And that it's anything but ordinary to have a body that can do all this again and again, which can heal itself so often without us having to do anything. And that none of it lasts nearly as long as we might hope.Here's a morning blessing from Judaism, said by some as they use the bathroom for the first time in the day, that I think is particularly brilliant for its combination of straightforwardness about life and death, piercing insight, and gentle humour.
Blessed are you, Eternal One, Creator of everything, who formed human beings in wisdom, creating within us openings and vessels. It is revealed and known before you that if any one of them is opened or closed it would be impossible to remain alive and stand before You. Blessed are you, Eternal One, who heals all flesh and performs such wonders.
Finding daily practices to remind us of our bodies' unlikeliness and wonder - even in the most ordinary of circumstances - does not require religious belief of any kind of course (and in Judaism, by the way, belief is secondary to practice, the actions that shape the world of possibility and relationship again and again).All it requires is opening to life. And reminding ourselves that we are each here on account of nothing that we did.And that by one of the most unlikely miracles imaginable we each find ourselves for a brief time, embodied, in a world ready and waiting for our participation.
Feels just like me
That familiar feeling again. She said “You’ve let me down” and something dropped in your belly, your posture collapsed just a little, and the world seemed to lose its solidity. You know how this goes. You’ll deal with the deflation by apologising and the energy for all your projects and plans will slip away until long after you get home.Or you’re five minutes late for the meeting. Pulse racing. Tightness in your chest. You’re holding your breath, mind whirling, all the excuses and ways you’ll save face working out as you dash down the hall. You arrive hot, out of breath, mutter an excuse that blames the trains or the email system or someone else for holding you up, and then stay disengaged from the conversation, wrapped up in your shame and self-judgement.Or maybe he sent you an email telling you he wouldn’t be seeing you as you’d arranged. Fury and resentment knot your stomach. Your jaws clench, your shoulders tighten. “It’s always this way,” you tell yourself, “he’s so self-centred”. And already your fingers are tapping out a reply: cold, distancing, laced with judgements and sarcasm.Those feelings that are so familiar, that ‘feel like you’, are where your freedom can begin. Because every emotion conjours up a world, in which certain people loom close and others become far away, in which some actions become obvious – necessary even – and others seem impossible. And from the world that’s revealed to you by your moods you act: the combination of the familiar feeling and well-rehearsed action giving you a sense of who you are. In a way, over time, your way of responding indeed becomes who you take yourself to be.You can see that this is the case by observing yourself for a while. What kind of possibilities become available to you in love, hate, resentment, joy, boredom, anger, frustration, sincerity, cynicism, fear, panic, anxiety, gratitude? And what familiar actions do you tend to take? What results do they bring?The first steps towards your freedom are taken when you find out that there is no right ‘thing to do’ to respond to what you’re feeling. What seems so self-evident might just be the result of years of practice that’s conditioned you to react in a particular way. Don’t confuse its familiarity with appropriateness.Next time you find yourself propelled into action like this see what happens if you make a change – and just a small one – in your response.What happens if you do the opposite of that which your body seems to compel you to do? You may just find that new possibilities begin to open for you and those around you… that the world starts to open up in ways you’d never imagined.
Rest
It has been hard to write these past two months. The familiar flow of words and ideas have slowed to a trickle. My body has not moved into the work with the grace and flow with which I have become familiar. It's as if some kind of gridlock has taken hold, with each part - mind, heart, body - pressing against the movement of the other.It has been tempting to try to force myself into action, to believe the inner judgements and slurs that whisper into the vacated spaces. You'll never be a writer this way. You've run out of anything to say. You're not brave enough, smart enough, honest enough to do this.But this time, I am not so convinced by all the inner chatter as I once might have been. This time, I've been waiting - patiently, quietly - to see what wants to write itself through me.We make production and consumption the highest measure of value in our culture. But we are part of nature, born of nature, and we are subject to its cycles just as much as a field, or a tree, or a river.I am remembering that fields must lie fallow in order to be fertile,spring must turn to summer and autumn to have any chance of returning,and human beings must rest and nurture themselves - often - in order to flourish.
Messiness
We like to think we're over messiness. Done with it.That the world - our families, the organisations we work in, found, lead - can be ordered by the sharpness of our reason, by the power of our technology, by our sophistication, categorisation, and strength.That all disorderliness will be excised. That the world will bend to meet our will. That change - in ourselves, in others - will happen on our schedule, to our specifications. Like the world is a machine. Like we are too.And when it does not happen - when the mess of it all seeps between the lines, bulges out around the edges of our spreadsheets and to-do lists, whips the corners of our carefully planned timetables and calendars, unravels our hard-planned goals - we think someone must be to blame.We blame others, fuelling our frustration that they don't get it, won't get with the programme, won't make themselves into the image we have for them.We blame ourselves, turning the blade of self-doubt and of self-criticism. If the world can't be kept to order then we must not be trying hard enough. So we redouble our efforts - the inner wheel of perfectionism, the outer wheel of agitation. We tighten the armour across our hearts another notch. And we feel our bodies grip as the mess spills out behind us, just when we're not looking.And what we've missed in all this is that messiness is inevitable. Messiness is the underpinning of the world. Messiness is life's sacred heart. Messiness is the only way this crazy mix of quarks and protons, atoms and molecules, people and conversations, firing neurons and imagination, poetry, pulsing blood, falling rain, money, children being born, ethernets, tumbling rising markets, music, dust, pencils, love and egg-shells can be.
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When tiredness speaks
Let yourself listen to what your body has to say.For it surely has something to say. Honour its wisdom, even if you can't yet tell what it is.Start with tiredness. The tiredness that suddenly sweeps over you in a meeting, in a conversation, on walking into a room, when an argument begins, when you're not getting your way.What kind of tiredness is this? Surely not the late-at-night tiredness, the not-enough-sleep tiredness.But maybe the tiredness of bending yourself out of shape, the tiredness of fear, the tiredness of goals that aren't sincere and commitments that aren't genuine, the tiredness of saying yes when you mean no, and no when you mean yes.And maybe the tiredness that your body brings you when it needs to point out that, despite what you're telling yourself, here is not where you genuinely want to be.
With thanks to Jonny
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How we learned not to trust ourselves
A recipe for learning not to trust ourselves:Step 1 - Kindergarten: Play! Encourage freedom, creativity, feeling, and its expression. Explore the world through the immediacy of the body and senses. Make a mess. Hop and jump. Listen to stories. Tell them.Step 2 - Infant school: Start to leave parts out. Sit down on the rug, or on your chair. Learn not to fidget, to pay attention, to respect others - necessary skills for life in our culture. Play, yes, but not too much now. Big school is coming.Step 3 - Junior school: Keep still for many hours. Stop talking. The movement of bodies - an interruption. Play is only for prescribed times - not while we're learning. It's your job to pay attention always, regardless of how you feel, or what you care about. The adult world is coming.Step 4 - Senior school: Learning is knowing facts or models in a way that's increasingly detached from my first-hand experience. Do I care deeply about this subject? Does it move me? Can I connect it with my life? This, and other matters of the heart, are no longer so relevant, and rarely addressed in the classroom. The heart and the body - subjugated to the world of the analytical mind. The highest mark of educational achievement - that I learned to pass the exam, that I can produce what's measurable.When we follow a path that progressively leaves out parts of ourselves, it should come as no surprise that we have a hard time trusting the parts we've abandoned. Our hearts: how we tell what matters to us. And our bodies: the means by which we relate, create, explore, encounter, move the world. And it might explain how we've convinced ourselves that models, frameworks, and techniques are a substitute for a real, live, scary, exhilarating, fierce, risky and life-giving engagement with ourselves in the pursuit of the work that matters to us.