Revealing the Concealed

How do we understand truths that liberate us? We can all relate to having heard or read things that grab our attention or that resonate in our minds in a way we cannot ignore.  Someone’s comment, an excerpt in an article, a sentence that makes us pause and think a little more deeply. These are all experiences of truth. Those things that move us forward, get us unstuck, and create a little more freedom and space in our souls. These experiences leave us feeling refreshed, even if we don’t always understand why.

My experience with truth is that it usually goes deeper as opposed to wider. Meaning, I haven’t found that it is as much about learning “new” truths as it is about going to a deeper level with what you already know to be true. There are levels of understanding. So, it’s like going down a descending ladder to new layers and new depths of things that are already familiar on some level.

In some ways, this itself is liberating, as it can free us from the addiction of needing to find out more, from the pull to be  information junkies that is encouraged by our consumeristic culture. Letting what we already know penetrate more deeply can produce a freedom far more substantial than a surface skimming of an ever widening pool.

“When we focus on all that goes wrong, others look upon us with pity. When we focus on all that goes right, others envy our good fortune” - Simon Sinek

This is so true, is it not? With just one glance in either the half-glass-full direction or the half-glass-empty alternative, my perspective on life can switch just like that. How important, then, is it to life satisfaction to train our minds to focus on what is going right. Those of you who know me well know I am not referring to becoming a rose-colored glasses wearing Pollyanna. I am far too much of a realist for that. However, where we focus our thoughts and minds really does have a profound impact on how much we enjoy life and how much we are aware of what is good. And honestly, there is a tremendous amount of good. We just need to get better at training our eyes to see it.

It saddens me when I encounter people who are unable to receive love. I think various limitations and skewed lenses keep some people from really ever receiving it. They remain trapped behind blockades that prevent it from entering their souls. Love gets misinterpreted or goes unnoticed, or is assumed to have an ulterior motive and perhaps gets rejected all together. But this is the marker of REAL love. It is selfless. It does not seek its own gain. It is not self-absorbed or deceitful. It only wants what is good for the other.

People who are truly motivated by actual love do not want something in return. This is so counter-cultural, it is no wonder that so many do not recognize love when it presents itself. It is far too suspect. Yet, despite misunderstanding or mis-steps along the way, “Love perseveres even when opposed, rejected and misinterpreted. It is centrifugal – it always tends outward from its center.” (J. Andrew Kirk)

This is both revolutionary and a life-giving alternative to the many “non-love” options the world offers up on a far too frequent basis.

I often have dreams that mean something. So, I thought I’d share this dream I had the other night that related to my transition to becoming an artist. In the dream, I was sitting at a round table of former clients from past social work jobs (my former occupation). I was describing my childhood to them, my educational path, and then my job history and why I had chosen the jobs I had. Then I ended my description with a simple line describing how I felt about now being an artist: “It’s the first job I’ve had where life is coming in instead of just going out.”

I thought that last line was pretty profound and just about summed up the whole thing. Life coming in AND going out. I think a lot of creatives would say they experience this as well.

I don’t usually post many quotes on this blog, but both of these caught my eye and seemed to relate to one another. I like the idea of the action mentioned in the second quote being inspired by the sentiment in the first one.

“The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”  – Jane Addams

“The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.”  – Diane Arbus

How helpful it is to have perspective from people who know us well. I’m benefitting from some of that today, courtesy of my husband. Sometimes I feel the hard edges of myself, those things that still need refining, rub up against my soul and try to convince me to give into discouragement. Thoughts like “This is hard, I have to grow in this area again?” circle around my mind. Sigh. “How often do I have to keep practicing x, y, or z (name your growth angle)?” But I am actually farther along than I think I am. I’m actually living out my life in such a way that reflects a great deal of internal change. Who I am today and who I was ten years ago, even five years ago, is quite different. Someone who has known me for as long as Dave has can testify better than anyone else to the ways in which I have evolved as a human. And perspective like that lifts me out of the kind of thinking that gets me stuck. Perspective gives fresh energy and a sigh of relief and new thoughts that buoy me with their optimism, thoughts that help me settle in the truth that I am farther along in the process of life than I think.

I was talking with a friend the other day about the whole concept of living more fully in the present. Those much wiser than me refer to this idea quite often. I think it is because the present moment is where life is. The present moment is actually the very source of life. True life is here and now (not yesterday, not tomorrow). But how many people spend their whole lives either living in the past or dreaming of the future?

A friend of mine is driving down from Northern CA to spend a day with me and get a tattoo for her 40th birthday. As she was telling me about this plan, she was describing how the design of her tattoo, the symbolism of it, and her overall impetus for getting it is a marker of how she currently views life. In essence, she was saying that it didn’t really matter if the meaning of the tattoo doesn’t resonate with her in exactly the same way several years from now, because it is meant to serve as a marker of where she is today, at 40.

Now, before you start to think I’m subtly advocating that everyone get a tattoo at mid-life, I’m not. The tattoo, of course, is not the point. It’s more an example of the whole idea of living life today. Neither our bodies nor our lives were meant to be preserved. They are meant to be used up in the grand plan of life. They are given to us for a reason – to be used, lived in, and offered to the world for some grander purpose, not tended to carefully and set on a shelf. To do this, we need to pursue life, and it can only be really enjoyed on a moment to moment basis. But we forget this in our constant planning and scheming about the future (or in our massaging of fond memories from the past).

It’s not that the past or the future don’t play a part in where our minds settle from time to time. As L. LaRoche writes, “It’s the future that gives our dreams viability and helps keep the candle of hope burning brightly.” But she goes on to say that when “we spend too much time using our hopes for the future as a way to take us away from the realities of the present, we turn our expectations into disappointments.”

So, we have to work a bit to silence the voices of “I will be happy/more fulfilled when…I get married, I have kids, my kids go to college, I get that new job, I move to this state, this city, that country, I finally take that dreamed about vacation, etc.” Western culture places such a strong emphasis on this kind of magical thinking and instant gratification. But, as anyone who’s lived more than a few years knows, it’s not true. No matter what we achieve in life nor how many different roads we take, it doesn’t change the fact that life can only really be lived now. There is no way around that. Every moment is “the” moment. To live otherwise is to be out of touch with reality and to deny the nature of our existence. True contentment lies in allowing the present to satisfy us, choosing to see the fullness that is there and allowing ourselves to dwell on it.