Mental Fitness
Every Breath A New Beginning
I live on one of the great European rivers. It is, indeed, a blessing to live within five minutes’ walk of the flowing torrent, one of the main arteries of our beautiful continent.
An Oasis is a good place to pause and reflect. Each of my weeks provides ample inspiration in terms of topics; from coaching sessions, conversations with family and friends, my own reading, or one of the many podcasts I absorb when on the move. A topic will resonate with me early in the week and I get great pleasure from the iterative process of drafting, revising, polishing, and finalising each essay. Then comes the selection of a suitable photo, usually a product of yet another creative hobby of mine. I invite you take a little time out, to create your own six-minute oasis, find a comfortable chair, and read. You will hopefully find some inspiration from or a degree of identification in these Weekly Reflections. If you do, feel free to subscribe to this section. You will then receive future installments directly by email. Also, feel free to share the link among your circle of friends and associates. Finally, feedback and comments are always most welcome.
EnJOY!
I live on one of the great European rivers. It is, indeed, a blessing to live within five minutes’ walk of the flowing torrent, one of the main arteries of our beautiful continent.
While attending a silent (vipassana), week-long meditation retreat many years ago, my upper back and shoulders filled with so much pain on day two that I decided to ask for a short meeting with the facilitator. My intention was to inform him that, due to the excruciating pain, I was going to drop out early and go home…
When working with people who have decided to make major changes in their lives in the context of giving up behaviors which, though clearly detrimental to themselves and those they love, they seem to have great difficulty in leaving behind on a permanent basis, the phenomenon of the ego invariably arises. These people often find themselves baffled by their own destructive behaviors which, unlike many other areas of their lives, seem immune to the direction of their often very substantial willpower.
On looking up `sober´, in addition to the more obvious meaning of `not being intoxicated´, a second definition is listed, namely; `based on sound reasoning or information´ as in `a sober assessment of the situation´.
Webster´s gives us two definition of oasis, as follows; `A fertile or green area in an arid region (such as a desert)´ and `Something that provides refuge, relief, or pleasant contrast´, as in `the small park is a welcome oasis amid the city’s many factories´. The roots go back to an Egyptian term wḥꜢ.t with the meaning; `fertile area in the desert´.
`You need to quit playing God!´ This is what I heard more than once in my early years of recovery from alcoholism. It precipitated an undifferentiated jolt, like an earthquake deep under the sea bed, although the meaning of the statement, and the associated possible consequences, went way over my head. Perhaps I did not want to understand.
Generally speaking the meaning of this (nowadays emotive) term, with its roots in Old Greek (apokalyptein – “uncover, disclose, reveal,” from apo “off, away from” + kalyptein “to cover, conceal,”) refers to `drawing back the veil´ in order to see things differently, perhaps even moving from `perception´ to `vision´, and hence from `illusion´ to `truth´. This rang a bell with me when I remembered what Wayne Dyer used to say about `not seeing the world as it is, but rather as we are´
The issue of boredom came up in a conversation during the week. A young friend was complaining about it, saying that he was plagued by the long days in lockdown, feeling depleted and guilty about how he was squandering his time. Only later in the day, long after we had parted, did it hit me that the real issue was apathy, a topic not often discussed.
“Apathy is the belief, `I can´t´. It is the feeling that we cannot do anything about our situation and no one else can help. It is hopelessness and helplessness.´´ Thus writes David Hawkings in his magnum opus `Letting Go´
While it is true that the spiritual path is open to everybody, not everybody follows the call. Some never even get to hear the call. This remains one of the great mysteries, to be simply accepted as a characteristic of the human condition.
For most of my life, I fell prey to the very widespread illusion that the cause of all my problems is ‘out there’. In practical terms, it unfolds roughly as follows: Whenever I experienced `irritation´ in the world `out there´ (when my plans fell through, when I didn’t get my way, regretted the past, feared the future, or when I adjuged that I was being treated unjustly of unfairly, etc.), I reacted by exerting more force to `kick the world into shape´. Despite my heroic efforts, it rarely worked.
Despite having lived in Continental Europe for decades, my inner clock still marks time as I first encountered the concept in my Irish childhood. While, in early adulthood, the hard Bavarian winters often froze our garden pond from early December through to late March, my soul would begin to yearn for the first flashes of colour even before January came to an end. The snowdrops, crocuses and narcissi spung up before my mind’s eye, causing a palpable perception of temporal misalignment between the inner and outer worlds.
The most challenging years of life are, by definition, those early formative ones. Clinical research points to the fact that the fundamental wiring of our neural networks is almost completely laid down by our fourth birthday. These networks determine our temperament, our behavioral patterns, and belief systems well into adulthood. They will remain dominant until we consciously begin the practice of rewiring, of rewriting the script – if we are so lucky to realize the possibility of doing so…
When we experience pain, whether due to current issues (a bereavement, a setback, the break-up of a relationship, etc.) or the reactivation of an old episode of pain from the past (e.g. childhood trauma), a common reaction is to want to “unmake” the pain — to make it go away. This is a very human reaction and thus quite understandable. Who wants to experience pain? However, when we learn to shift from being reactive to being “response-able” (a practical definition of Emotional Sobriety), we can accept the painful stimulus as is, and then utilise it as a cue — usually in the form of a new patterns of thinking, feeling, and taking action — which will help us move forward in a healthy manner.
“Living in the echo chamber of my childhood” is how I would describe the unfolding process. The impacts experienced today are, in some way, reverberations of the “old ideas” initially formed in childhood. It is a beckoning for attention, to address those elements — hitherto hidden — that still require healing, the progeny of which are constrictive patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving which no longer serve me. This is where old beliefs about money once more appeared on my mental radar screen. I believe they can be traced back through the paternal line…