Next time you feel poorly about yourself, go deeper

You are innocent and beautiful inside. If you go deep enough, there is nothing but light and love in there.

Our innocence and beauty just gets walled off with mistaken beliefs about ourselves. We are told there is something wrong with us- that we are deficient. We are told that we are born of sin. These self-beliefs create onion layers around the light and love.

After a while, we cannot access the light and love anymore. All we can feel are the onion layers or mistaken beliefs. They feel icky. We believe that the ickiness we feel is who we are inside.

These beliefs are 180 degrees from the truth. Those mistaken beliefs are not who you are. Someone sold you a bill of goods. You believed them.

Next time you feel poorly about yourself, go deeper. Meditate, pray, fall in love, follow your passion, explore. Just do whatever it takes to get beyond the onion layers to the light and love.

Your beauty is still in there waiting for you to discover it. Beneath the layers of self-beliefs, you are still as innocent as the day that you were born.

But don't believe me. You will have to experience it for yourself.

I am nothing, I know nothing

Whenever I want to be really present, I say, "I am nothing, I know nothing." It is a declaration taught to me by my teacher to be clear when doing Native American ceremony. I use it in all aspects of my life. Saying this (and meaning it) allows me to detach from all the things that I thought I was and thought I knew. Then I can discover who I am in my present experience.

It allows me to "empty my cup," so there is room for something new.

It allows me to be "teachable." I can learn something.

Then I do not have to reinforce the things I thought I was or thought I knew with my new experience. I can be free to see and experience things way they are.

It is the most powerful teaching and tool that I was ever given.

Try it sometime. You will be amazed at what you discover.

Look for opportunities to address emotional issues

When looking to have experiences that have emotional content involved, the timing and energy of the people involved is essential.

When taking care of business, you are primarily working with your rational, analytical mind to make decisions and address situations. It works to have meeting about such and such topic at 10:00 am on Tuesday, for instance. The rational mind or intellect is relatively detached from our emotions and can deal with the task at hand on demand.

But for emotional experiences, it is much more effective to address them when the timing and energy is right. It is important to discern the emotional energy of the person and yourself to see if it is conducive to such a discussion or experience.

So when you are wanting to address something with someone you care about, send out the intention, and then look for opportunities to present themselves to address or experience it. Trust your instincts to know when the energy is right. It is a matter of letting things unfold rather than forcing them.

Another skill to do this is to allow the subject matter that you wish to discuss to arise naturally. My Zen teacher would wait months for me to bring a topic up before he would discuss and give me counsel on it. That way he knew that I was ready and open to it. He found it more authentic to address things that were in the "present."

By finding the right opportunity, you will find the person you wish to connect with more open and available to what you want to share with them.

Complete your experiences by doing "Closure"

In our busy lives, one experience tends to blend into another. Often we do not complete the previous experience before starting the next one. This keeps us from being present. The unfinished experiences start to build up. They keep us feeling anxious and overwhelmed.

One way to complete experiences (and not drag one into another) is called "Closure." Bart Anderson articulates the 6 steps of Closure as following:

1. Acceptance of the reality of the situation.

2. Reconciliation: Learning something.

3. Asking: What can I do about it?

4. Determination to have things differently.

5. Look at your possibilities.

6. Put your focus in front of you!

Closure can be done immediately following the experience, at the end of the work day, or before bed to complete the day. At the end of the day, it is useful to identify and do closure with all of the experiences that affected you significantly that day.

Within second step of closure lies the key to resolving any past experience- true reconciliation. You cannot undo an experience or "make it right". You can, however, learn from it- so that experience adds value to your life. This is called "blessing the lesson" (see previous blog).

Once completing these steps, you are free to be present for your next experience. You can sleep and dream peacefully. You can start a new day without dragging the unfinished business of the previous day into it.

And... don't forget to do closure at the end of your Friday- so you can have a good weekend.

Clear mind, Open heart.

When you are feeling, you cannot see things as they are. You become attached and lose your objectivity. But becoming attached is not bad- it is part of feeling. Both seeing clearly and feeling are essential to have rich, beautiful life experiences. You just can't do both at the same time.

So... clear mind, open heart. See things clearly first. The I Ching or Book of Changes refers to this as "The Creative" or masculine dynamic or "yang." So, at the beginning, clearly see things as they are. See if what is in front of you is a good place for you to be. See all the possibilities that are presenting themselves to you.

Then... surrender to the experience and allow yourself to feel. This is the open heart part. The Creative surrenders itself to "The Receptive" or feminine dynamic or "yin". Loving, feeling, and engaging in life require losing some objectivity and clarity. Feel and be part of it. Then... after the feelings of the experience have passed, allow yourself to see clearly again so you can understand and learn from the feelings and experience that you had.

The concept of non-attachment is one of the most misunderstood concepts in Buddhism. Being non-attached and seeing clearly is essential to having a rich experience. Being detached from the outcome is also essential. But trying to stay unattached while we are experiencing feelings is an exercise in futility and frustration. You end up not being very clear or experiencing anything fully.

So get clear. Do a meditation retreat. Do a vision quest. Soul search. Find clarity for your life. But then take that clarity and focus with you as you come back out in the world to experience life again. Fall in love. Get involved. Feel. We are here to experience things. That is the only way that we can understand.