John Morgan Newsletter – S P A C E S

BACK TO SCHOOL

This is the time of year when attention turns to going back to school. In sports terminology, back to school means back to the basics. When a coach sees the team consistently struggling, he or she knows it time to go back to basics. Basics, from a human development standpoint, means recognizing what’s getting in the way of moving forward and addressing that fundamental.  

Usually what gets in the way is the story. Everyone has his or her story. I just played golf with a gentleman in his early 70’s. He could really put a lick on the ball and put it in place for his next shot. But when he missed, out came the story and it changed his game for the rest of the round. “I’m not keeping my head down . . . Those kids who played through are aggravating me and I can’t concentrate . . . The pro gave me that tip and it’s not working . . . blah, blah, blah.” It would be easy to say he’s just not taking responsibility and leave it at that but that would not provide a remedy. 

The story is something we learned at an early age that absolves us from any responsibility. “Mommy, I tried to make it to the bathroom,” is a perfect illustration. Story telling gets deeply ingrained as we get older. The folly in all of this is the story keeps us in place. I have a boyhood friend who is a gifted musician and has always struggled in life. My sons and I went on a fishing trip with him in the late ’80’s and on the way home he began to tell the story. The reason he wasn’t successful as a musician was because when he was 17 his father refused to buy him the electronic organ that would have launched him to stardom. This was a man approaching 40 telling a story from his teens that kept him in a jail of his own making. He believed his story and acted accordingly.

Think about this for just a second. How is justifying where you are in life going to launch you to where you want to be? It’s impossibility and everyone does it. The stories are sometimes sad and sometimes amusing but they are all roadblocks to growth. “I’m the daughter of a left-handed nose picker and that’s why I am the way I am.” That story may have validity and if you continually tell it, it will keep you stuck in place.
Tell your story to your physician, counselor or clergyman and tell it once. They will be trained enough to glean from your story a direction to head you in. All the rest of the people, including your friends and family, are tired of hearing your story. The deeper truth is you are tired of telling it. There is a part of you that knows it’s not productive.
Here’s a back to basics tip that will begin to move you forward. Start small. Find a justification story that you’ve been repeatedly telling to anyone who’s willing to listen, and vow to never tell the story again. Just by eliminating that chapter from your book of stories will have a freeing effect on your life. Remember: your story locks you in place and every time you tell it the lock gets bigger. 

The book LOVING WHAT IS by Byron Katie has quite a bit of insight on the burden of the story.

I wrote the following piece as a result of me catching myself caught up in trying to control reality. I hope you enjoy it.

RAGING AGAINST REALITY

Some convenient definitions:
RAGING – intensely furious
REALITY – what’s going on
REVELATION – exposure

This is it (in a nutshell)

The source of all emotional pain (Raging) is being upset by and reacting to what’s going on (Reality). The simple solution seems to be to control what’s going on and you will escape the pain. The never-ending loop presented by that solution is one that will keep you in a state of pain forever because control is an illusion. How can anyone possibly control the universe of reality or any portion of it with the limited conscious resources available to him or her? Exposure to the lighted pathway leading away from pain (Revelation) begins first by recognizing the folly in trying to control the ubiquitously unpredictable, and secondly by applying a wedge between stimulus and response. This is the road to revelation.

RAGING

Raging, simply put, is a conversation going on in your head. It’s noise and it’s continuous. Raging is about the past, the future, and all the stories you dredge up to justify all your positions (reactions) to these conversations whether real or made up. Raging is guilt, fear, hopelessness, sadness, and many other “fill in the blanks” all rolled into one. Raging is any emotion that you talk to yourself about or justify. “ I’m angry, I’m hurt, I’m furious, I’m sad, I’m jealous, I’m blah, blah, blah …” are all conversations in your head called emotions. They are not feelings. There may be feelings attached to these conversations – like a heaviness in the chest, a flushing of the face, a knot in the stomach, a quickening of the pulse or anything else that’s measurable. An emotion is not a feeling. It’s a conversation you’re having with yourself. Follow the emotional trail. It starts with some kind of stimulus followed by a predictable response. The predictable response has some sort of justification to it – a conversation. It may happen so fast that your predictable response will have some automatic behavior attached to it – like retreating, attacking, striking, or ranting and raving. The justification to these behaviors comes in some form of “you made me do that.”

REALITY

Reality is what happens. You’ve heard the phrase “shit happens” but that is biased point of view. The bias is that reality is a negative. Reality isn’t negative or positive – that’s our spin. Reality just is. It doesn’t care how we try and capture it in a jar and bend it to our whims. If reality could laugh, it would be downright giddy at our efforts to harness its “isness.”  No one will ever figure out all the mathematical possibilities that compose reality. Reality is like a casino – the house wins. Just when you have your lucky system perfected, reality shows up and you tell people you’re wearing an invisible shirt. The Buddha talked about impermanence being a part of life. Impermanence is reality in a disguise. You can predict that a daffodil will bloom in your garden every March. You just can’t count on that gopher not eating it. That’s reality. Reality waits for no one including the gopher. A rabbit may beat him to the punch – thus the term “rabbit punch,” which wouldn’t be a bad name for a vegetable drink. You could get punch drunk trying to figure out all the possible combinations of reality.

REVELATION

Revelation is exposing yourself to the light that dispels the darkness. The light comes as a byproduct of noticing the raging while its happening or just before it happens. By noticing that the conversations are automatically generated and repetitive in nature, you will recognize that the real you is the observer of this raging and who you claim to be, (your thoughts), is a victim of this patterned reaction. You are not your thoughts. Your thoughts show up by accident – always a response to a stimulus. Sometimes you are aware of the stimulus; most times you are not. The light and lightness shows up when you recognize there are always additional responses beyond the first one, which is a reaction to the stimulus, and selecting a response that’s further down the line. You are not a robot unless you believe you are your thoughts. Remember, your thoughts are slave like responses to a stimulus. When you notice there are additional responses and you select one of them, the predictability of your response disappears and so does all the raging that goes along with it. You kill two seagulls with one living stone. The escalating response doesn’t happen and you then become the stimulus vs. being the response. The light shows up and the dark corners are illuminated.