Seeds of Change

You know how if you plant seeds,

it takes time for the fruits of the seeds

to push up through the ground’s surface?

Same goes for the changes you want to manifest.

They take time to see.

~Karen Salmansohn

The thing about seeds is that they don’t grow overnight. You can plant them, water them—even talk to them—and you get nothing, or at least that’s how it seems. But there’s business going on underground: roots are forming, intertwining with others for mutual support and growth, while decisions are being made about how many flowers, or apples, or tomatoes will grow from that seed. Then one day, just when you thought nothing was happening—BAM! Signs of life emerge from the ground, reaching for the sunlight. Suddenly, it all makes perfect sense.

So it is with you and me.  Dreams are our seeds of change.  Words are also seeds, and when dropped into the ether, whether spoken or held deeply in our spirit, they grow and bring forth their kind.  Nothing grows without a seed.  Nothing changes without a dream.  And as we move deeper into fall, I’m reminded how temporary it all is. Seasons change. People come and go. Time marches on, waiting for no one, yet moving us forward in rhythm with the silent longings of our hearts.

Just as the Aspen leaves turn green, then gold, falling to the ground with winter’s early warning, I’m reminded that we, too, must first die to one life before experiencing the new growth of spring.  We must clear space; shed a part of what we know and make room for what we want to create. We know it’s coming; we’ve longed for it.  Yet so often we fear the change we seek.

Consider the Aspen—do you think it spends the winter fearing that it will never again experience the joy of having beautiful leaves adorn its branches? Questioning the essence of its being? Wishing things were different? Regretting having done what is in its nature to do? I think not.  It’s rather like they are hibernating, conserving energy for the new cycle of life that will emerge come spring.

Why should it be any different with people? Consider what you do between cycles of change, waiting for your seeds to grow. How do you fill your time? What do you give your energy to?

When you’re moving through change, yet you can’t quite see the end result, do you live in fear that where you are is all your life will ever be? Or do you get busy doing what you can to organize yourself, energize your thoughts, and develop a good plan to support your change as you move forward?

All changes, even the most longed for, 
have their melancholy;

for what we leave behind is part of ourselves;

we must die to one life before we can enter into another.

~Anatole France

Even when change comes from a conscious choice to restructure some aspect of our life—to let go of a dead-end relationship, change careers, start a family, create a new business or embark on a great travel adventure—it is tempting to spend our time in an anxious state, questioning our decisions, worrying that it will all go horribly wrong; expecting signs of new life to emerge immediately on the heels of our decision to change, just after planting the seeds.

But if we could step back and observe ourselves from a distance, we would see that we aren’t done yet: We are still moving toward a destination that we can’t quite see because we’re consumed with the day-to-day experience of our change, slowed by the natural timing of things; like watching seeds grow underground.

Remember: To everything there is a reason, a season, a cycle and right timing. Work with the energy of change, not against it. Be patient and mindful of life’s rhythms.  Use down time to improve where you can, turning weaknesses into strengths.  And prepare yourself, for a bright new tomorrow will emerge just as surely as the snow falls on changing leaves.

Will you be ready?

Come What May

Let go of what has happened.

Let go of what may come.

Let go of what is happening now.

Don’t try to figure anything out.

Don’t try to make anything happen.

Relax, right now, and rest.

~Tilopa

Maybe I was born this way, or perhaps my work as a lawyer informed my instinct towards this particular complex behavior: analyze what’s before me, anticipate what might happen next and plan around it; never be caught unawares.  Name it.  Label it.  Define it.  As if by doing so I can somehow prevent or create the inevitable.  While this may be a real strength for my business clients, or when planning an event, it can wreak havoc in my personal life.

Like when trying to have a baby.  Who knew it would be so complicated?  I monitor my basal body temperature each morning before I get out of bed.  Then I pee on a very expensive stick to see if I’ve ovulated.  My husband and I time “the deed” around all of this data, at the risk of sucking the joy out of sex.  I take fistfuls of supplements to strengthen my immune system and improve egg quality.  I haven’t had real coffee in over a year, worried about the impact of caffeine on my body and future baby, which may or may not come.  When I do get pregnant again, I’m certain to walk on eggshells for fear of losing the baby to miscarriage like the other two.  I spend a lot of energy trying to shape the outcome of something that time has proven I have very little control over. 

How many times have I tried to make something happen?  Waiting; so focused on what happened in the past; striving to make something happen in the future; trying to figure it all out.  It’s exhausting. 

We’ve all done it to greater or lesser degrees.  The offices of psychotherapists are filled with people who can’t quit doing it—this inclination to look to the future and dwell on the past; to micromanage the way it will all turn out.  It’s maddening, and quite possibly our greatest obstacle to finding true happiness and peace of mind.

Yet how can we be expected to stay grounded in our experience moment by moment when filled with dreams and desires that require some measure of forward thought, planning, vision and movement to make them real? Anyone who has pursued higher education, written a book, started a business, built a house, had a baby, or lived their dreams with any measure of success will tell you that it doesn’t just happen by waking up in the morning and wishing it so.  It takes action, commitment, planning and patience, while the crop ripens or the idea matures.

I’m learning that while having a vision is crucial to creating the life that I desire, things go much more smoothly when I let them unfold in their own time, when I give up control and let the how and why reveal itself, which is no easy task.  I’m not very good at it.

Still, I try. . . to let go, to not try, to just be; to relax right now, and rest; come what may.

Sweet Surrender

Faith consists in believing

when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.

~Voltaire

Sweet Surrender © 2010 by Melissa Johnson.
________________

My friend Jimmy got into a bidding war on eBay for the purchase of a human soul.  He didn't go there looking for a soul, but he was charmed by the illusion of buying one when he found it was for sale. “Well, I thought it might be nice to have an extra one in my pocket just in case…” he joked when I teased him about his near purchase.  Ultimately, he missed the cut-off time for entering his final bid and the random soul was sold to the highest bidder for $50.

And to think … the Devil went down to Georgia looking for a soul to steal.  Now you can buy one on eBay from the comfort of your living room--and relatively cheap!  The world is flat, indeed.

All joking aside, Jimmy’s eBay auction really got me thinking: What is the value of a human life and the soul that dwells within?

I contemplated the extraordinary capacity of survivors to rebound from tragedy and loss—like those who lived to tell of the atrocities of Hitler’s Germany; children rescued from brothels after being sold into slavery by their families; ordinary people beating the odds of cancer or other life-threatening illnesses; rising from the ashes of violent crimes, disfiguring accidents or financial disaster—and I wondered, what allows these people to surrender with grace to their crushing circumstances?

Sure there are stories of human survival aided not so much by a spiritual belief system but by a strong will to live, rising up from somewhere deep within their DNA—fight or flight. But more often than not, the common thread running through these stories of survival can be traced to a fundamental faith in something far greater than the individual even when the events of their lives made no sense; even when it seemed that they had been forgotten.

When things run amuck in our lives,
without a spiritual root,
what do we hold on to?

What do we surrender to?

How do we hope for something better?

Where do we put our faith?

Consider these equally tragic examples with very different outcomes.

Rwanda in the 90s was a dark place. Tensions ran high as the two main political groups—the Tutsis and the Hutus—were pitted against each other in much the same way that Hitler seized political control of Germany, turning Nazis against Jews. As it was in the 90s, if you had the great misfortune of being born into a family of Tutsis, regardless of your independent beliefs, you were a target for political genocide.

Imaculee Illibigiza was one of the few Tutsi women who survived. On the run, she was taken in by a Hutu minister and hidden from her would-be killers, while her parents and brothers were slaughtered along with a million others.

Her refuge was a tiny bathroom measuring 3 x 4 feet, hidden behind an armoire in the minister’s bedroom; she shared this space with six other women for more than 90 days as they waited and prayed for their rescue. They couldn’t speak out loud or make any noise for fear of being heard. They were instructed to flush the toilet only when someone was using the adjoining bathroom. Believing that the minister was hiding the enemy, Hutu soldiers repeatedly raided his home in search of more Tutsis to kill. Yet they never found the tiny bathroom concealing these women.

While in hiding, Imaculee prayed and meditated for hours each day. In her state of exhaustion and hunger, she saw a vision of herself working for the U.N.; she believed it was a vision from God. And she knew that she would have to learn to speak English so that she could communicate with the other U.N. workers. Trusting her vision in spite of the circumstances surrounding her, she convinced the Hutu minister to bring her a French-English dictionary and some other English-language books. French was her second language; but there, in that tiny bathroom, while hiding from vicious killers, she taught herself to read and speak English without ever saying a word out loud and with no guarantee that she would even make it out alive.

In her memoir, Left to Tell, Imaculee recounts her long and painful ordeal. What strikes me most about her story was her path of sweet surrender. She didn’t panic or freak out. She accepted the circumstances of that tiny little bathroom as being temporary, while never losing faith in God and what she knew to be true despite outward appearances. She believed with all of her heart that there had to be a reason for her survival--why she was the one left to tell this horrific story--and she was right.

Not long after her release from the refugee camps where she stayed after her confinement in the minister’s bathroom, she was offered work with the U.N., helping to rebuild Rwanda and using her English-language skills in the process. And while grieving the loss of her family, she met the man who later became her husband and loved her through her pain.

But what makes one person surrender to life
and another surrender to death?

In September of 2008, in the throes of financial disaster, Kirk Stephensen, a 47 year-old husband and father of one, and the chief operating officer of a private equity house, stepped onto the tracks at a rail station west of London. He was struck by a train and killed instantly. His death was ruled suicide.

Later that same year, in New York City, just two days before Christmas, Frenchman Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet slashed both of his wrists—found dead at his desk next to a bottle of pills—after losing $1.4 billion of his own money (and money belonging to his family and clients) that he had invested with Bernie Madoff, making him one of the biggest losers in Madoff’s fraud. Having tried unsuccessfully to recover the money, his brother described him as “totally ruined.”

Then at the beginning of 2009, German billionaire Adolf Merckle threw himself in front of a moving train, taking his own life and leaving behind his wife and four children. His spirit broken by helplessness and fears of financial loss and devastation, Merckle’s suicide is yet another casualty of our global economic crisis.

As I watched these events unfold in the news, I felt sick. What is wrong with a society that supports a mindset where an individual’s worth is measured by their bank balance rather than their acts of kindness, or the kind of parent, friend, spouse, lover, boss, or brother they are?  Where financial loss leaves people not just devoid of cash, but bankrupt of all faith in the ability to recover and create something better for their lives?

In his compelling book, Creating a World that Works for All, Sharif Abdullah suggests spiritual starvation as the root issue. He writes:

“Lest you believe that spiritual starvation is the by-product of race and poverty, let me present a nightmare about the children of affluence. From 1992 to 1994, I was on the core faculty of the Oregon Governor’s School for Citizen Leadership (OGS)...The students were predominately white and middle-class.

"One of the exercises we would conduct with them was 'Stand Up If . . .' On a purely voluntary basis, participants were asked to stand up if certain statements were true of them. Among the items was 'Stand up if you have either attempted or seriously contemplated suicide.'

"Consistently, 60 percent of the students would stand up. They wanted to kill themselves. Why would these mostly middle-class kids attempt or consider suicide? As children of material affluence, they are told they have everything this society can provide. But they are still hungry. So they incorrectly surmise that something must be terribly wrong with them. Or they choose to leave a society that seems to have nothing else to offer... They want connection and instead get materiality. They want meaning and instead get a life devoid of cultural and spiritual richness, a life ripped free of context—historical, social, spiritual, communal… America’s middle-class children face spiritual starvation on a mass scale.”

It's not just our children who are starving.

So maybe we're not ready to sell our souls on eBay or throw ourselves in front of a fast moving train, but at some point in our lives—probably more than once—we will face some form of hardship and intense life challenge. And while I am not suggesting a course of pounding people over the head with our religion, I do believe there is a quiet, gentle way of influencing others by looking first within and shoring-up our own faith.  After all, believing in a higher power and actually surrendering to it are entirely different things.

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

~Gandhi

Opportunities surround us everyday to practice faith and surrender in our lives, especially with the small stuff, which prepares us for the greater challenges.  And perhaps in so doing, we will send a calming, healing energy into the world, like ripples in a pond.

Here are some ideas to start:

1. When faced with a challenge, set-back or great difficulty, STOP SPINNING. Take a few deep breaths and remind yourself of at least one time in your life where you have overcome a seemingly insurmountable obstacle or survived a tragedy. Consider the source of your strength and how you made it through your ordeal. Follow that thought with a memory of a good time that came later. Look for the lesson.  Remember, you are strong; you've already worked through many challenges in your life. In every instance you have a choice in how you react to the problem.

2. Stay calm when possible and ground yourself. Seek sound, practical advice before making any hasty decisions. Get clear about what you need to do; stay alert and aware of all that is happening around you. Remember that love engages; fear reacts.

3. Connect with the comforting rhythm of a routine; yes, even in the midst of difficulty. Think about Imaculee in that tiny little bathroom with 6 other Tutsi women for more than 90 days. Even though she was hiding for her life, she still devoted herself to prayer, meditation and studying her French-English translations rather than surrendering to the fearful mind. Especially in difficult times, routine can bring peace and help us feel as if we have some command of our life. Eat nutritious meals whenever possible, take care of your hair and skin, exercise, sleep, pray, meditate, read books that inspire, and believe in good times to come.

4. Meditate on the image of a lion; contemplate his strength as you connect with your own spiritual strength—life-giving and eternal—radiating out from your heart like the energy of the sun itself.

5.  Be gentle with yourself.  As the saying goes, Everything will be okay in the end.  If it's not okay, it's not the end. (Unknown)

And as you move through the world, be ever mindful of the true value of Life and the precious liquid of your soul:  PRICELESS. . .

Beautiful Dreamer

Dreams are illustrations from the book

your soul is writing about you.

~ Marsha Norman

Dreamweaver © 2008 by Melissa Johnson.

Once while traveling in Brazil, I was approached by an elderly woman in the town of Ipanema. She grabbed my arm and began wrapping my wrist with a pink ribbon inscribed in Portuguese. I had no clue what the words meant, but I couldn’t ignore her urgency. She looked deep into my eyes and spoke in hurried, exaggerated tones, demanding something of me.

Sensing my confusion, a local bystander explained that the woman wanted me to make a wish. I love a good wish! So I closed my eyes and silently wished with all my might that the vision I held of my best life would come true.

She tied a knot in the pink bracelet, urging me to make a second wish, then a third. Each time she tied another knot in the wrist band, I closed my eyes, trying desperately to think of a different wish so as to maximize my wish potential, but all I could summon was a repeated prayer that my greatest dreams would come true.

After tying three knots, the wish-granting lady rambled some long, deliberate admonition, and in a flash she was gone. Again, my benevolent bystander translated her warning: I was not to take off the ribbon. It must come off on its own. If I removed it myself, my wishes would not come true and I would have bad luck. He also told me that the last time a similar band had been tied around his wrist it took more than two years for the ribbon to wear thin and fall off on its own. Great! Two years, I thought. This neon, hot pink thing clashes with most of my wardrobe.

Then one night about a month later, while lounging around the fire with some friends, my pink wrist-band became the topic of conversation. They wanted to know why I was wearing it and what it meant. I told them the story and, though not one for superstition, I joked about how I dared not remove the bracelet lest I destroy my wish.

One of the guys appeared to be napping throughout this conversation; however, when I finished my story, he jumped from his chair in one swift movement—grabbing a knife from the kitchen counter in one hand and my wristband in the other—and cut the damned thing off! But what happened next astounded me even more: Defiantly, he shoved the ribbon in his mouth, chewed on it for a minute, spit it out, and then dropped it down his pants. Then he flopped back down in his chair to resume his nap, mumbling something about “stupid visions” and “bad luck.”

Keep away from people who try to

belittle your ambitions.

Small people always do that,

but the really great make you feel

that you, too, can become great.

~Mark Twain

It was all very dramatic. And all I could do was watch in horrified amazement as my sincere wish to fulfill my highest vision was chewed on, spit out, and shoved down this guy’s pants. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But I vowed then and there that I would never let someone destroy the vision I held for my life—literally or metaphorically—and I promised myself to be more discerning when choosing my friends.

The moral of the story:  Your dreams are your own. Safeguard them and never surrender your vision to the reckless disregard of others.

Points to Ponder:

As we move deeper into this new decade, into this new year, and into another month of possibility, ask yourself:

1.  Have I been true to my goals and dreams? Do I even know what they are?

2.  Is it possible that the comments or opinions of others have jaded the vision I hold for my life, or my belief in what is possible?

3.  Have I denied some aspect of myself that longs for expression?

4.  What can I do today, no matter how small, that will move me one step closer to the fulfillment of my dreams?

Remember, your greatest desires plant seeds of thought deep within your mind that, when cultivated by the imagination and nurtured with unwavering belief, grow the vision of your soul. Open your eyes. See with unlimited vision. Free your mind. Do one thing every day that supports your desires. Be willing to correct your course as you learn new information and move through obstacles.  And watch as your garden grows.

By Melissa Johnson