Monthly Archives: July 2009

As I see it in others, I must work on it in me.

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Ever get all bothered and annoyed and peeved when someone brings up their same old tired been worked on shoulda solved that by now problem yet again?  Whatcha do with that?  What was your first reaction?  How did you end up dealing with it?  What was your attachment to the outcome, if any?

Well, I just had a run in with a case like this, right after I heard my friend Tennie say, “What I see in others are what I have to work on in me,”  during a recent Real Love meeting.  It really helped pivot my thinking and feelings into a positive frame just about as I was going off into the “I can’t believe you want to show me your monkey again” syndrome. 

I was all teed up to have judgement on “someone else’s stuff” and was getting into my back swing, getting ready to grip it and rip it…. when internalizing this phrase allowed me to look into me as to what was “triggered within me,”   How it really was and always is all about me.  

In this case, without getting into specifics, it was probably something like… well, I already know what your issue is… why don’t you go fix it…  not the first time we talked about this… etcetera.

Like we don’t all know what the answer to our issues is.  Study any new age philosophy and the answer is always to be found where?  That’s right, within each of us lie all our answers.  The lie is, that the answers are without, when they are within.

So, I was by judging this other person judging myself.  How often have we known the answer to one of our own problems, and still not gone with the answers we knew?  Guilty as charged…  and yet, it can be so tempting to blame another for knowing or should have been knowing the answer… and to bring us the same problem again and again and again to fix for them…

Well, I guess we cannot fix any problem for anyone else.  However, we can love them where they are stuck.  And, we should notice, if they trigger us, the issue is in us that we are triggered.   That is where the monkey becomes ours.  Where the problem becomes ours.  Not that we have to fix their problem.  That we have to recognize that in being triggered, we have judged ourselves in judging them. 

Gotta have patience and love.  When I changed my perspective to one of patience and love, I felt better, and so did everyone else in the room I think.

What y’all think?

Peace and patience,

Yucel

 

Transformative Media

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Thought I’d do a little survey on what are the three most transformative media in our lives to date.   For me, this is an evolving list, as I have always been a voracious media consumer.  Movies were my diet of choice when a youth and were a treat consumed weekly with Dad followed by a bowl of yummy sticky rice.  A bit older, I moved on to TV.   TV and more TV.  Dad removed the TV.   I started to read books, magazines, soup labels, you get the picture.

Books have  through life been friends providing much of my outside fodder for thought.  More recently, these include a greater mix of books on tape as well as the written variety.

The three most transformative media for me as of today have been “Real Love“, by Greg Bear, “No More Mr. Nice Guy“, by Robert Glover, and “What The Bleep Do We Know“, a movie slash documentary starring Marlee Matlin.

I started these three with “No More Mr. Nice Guy.”  What I learned here was that if I’m in a bad relationship, it was somehow a mirror of myself, and so change had to be made inside me.  There went my Mr. FixHer mode….

Then I believe came “Real Love,” from which I learned further about being responsible for myself and allowing others their choices as I was also ALWAYS allowed, and in fact responsible for my choices.  I also learned a whole host of other things from participating in Real Love meetings and phone calls and still attend them regularly.

“What the Bleep…,”  was transformative in that before “What the Bleep…” I was an atheist.  After, I started diving into spirituality. 

I took two key things I took away from “Bleep.”

The first of these is that we have an universe with laws that behaviors of fundamental particles, like electrons, can change their character on a quantum level, in some cases acting like a wave, in others acting like a particle, depending on whether we watch them or not….

This answered for me a question I had for some years:  “What were a possible set of laws of the universe, like gravity etcetera, which would allow for true free will, instead of just the semblance of free will?” 

If by our focus, we can effect the universe on a quantum level, this made it plausible, to me, that we are each little god creatures, able by our focus, our choice, to effect the world.  In effect free will.  And, a whole lot more.

The second thing I got, was from an interview of a Buddhist monk.  He said, pleasure leads to suffering.  Either because of fear of loss of pleasure or actual loss of pleasure.  Suffering can lead to more suffering, or to the search for enlightenment.  Enlightenment provides inner peace.  I feel I was suffering fairly greatly right around this time.  And, this suffering lead to my search and journey.  Today, I am the happiest I have ever  been, regardless of the mundane challenges I face.  True inner peace is a choice, regardless of outer peace.

Please share your current list of  the three most transformative media in your life to date and briefly share how?

Two of my three were recommendations from friends.  Always on the look out for good ideas.

Peace and gratitude,

Yucel