Living in the Circle of Self

The thing about working with the image of Circle of Self is how all-encompassing the process is.  Tonight, I reflect on my day from the Circle of Self perspective.  I started out this morning feeling a bit of struggle in balancing my goals for my Personal Self (all elements are in flux at the moment), the family element of my Relationship Self, and the work element of my Creative Self.  This month my major focus is in my work element and my Creative Self.  As the waning moon continues for this first month of Autumn, I am feeling the creative flow out into the world.  There are complications, though, which vie for attention and time! Balance, balance, balance! And a sinus infection and sore back call for slower moving and more sleep.  Family needs, family conflicts (and family fun as well) also require attention. 
They are all in the circle of my life, of my being, of my Self. How I respond to each commitment, to each demand and to each piece of drama or experience keep my circle moving.  It is a living process.  A process of living.  It's a circle, a spiral.  It takes effort to keep centered, which is necessary to keep from getting off kilter and spiralling out of control. 

A day for gratitude times three

Three things were really special about today.

Today I spent the entire day painting for people I love-just because I love them.  Do you know how good it feels to do something totally out of love-regardless that the work was hard, the day long, and my neck and shoulder muscles ache.  I am happy, happy , happy.

Today I learned an important thing about the use of breath:  How to use breath to focus and refine movement.  I was given the job of edging up against the baseboards and the ceilings.  I found if I used my out-breath with the movement of the brush, my paint lines were smooth and even.  Nice to be able to do a good job painting. Even better to have new knowledge for working with the breath. 

AND today I can hold the paintbrush with a steady hand.  The joy of having steady hands again is nearly overwhelming.  Perhaps I’m a little melodramatic, but I have so much gratitude for this gift.  Steady hands, steady life.  This, the result of integrity, commitment, discipline and God.

Truly a day for gratitude.

Serendipity

My experience with myself and with many people I have worked with over the years is we all stop doing what supports us and would take us in the direction our spirit and soul calls us to go.  The visual is that of a trapeze artist who at some point has to let go of one rope in order to take hold of the next one.  As I observe my own work, I see myself stop coaching sessions, skip my daily practices, and commit other forms of self-sabotage, just when I am ready to reach a goal or take an idea from decision to creation. I’ve seen the same behavior in clients as well, taking a break from counseling just as they are about to round the bend on some difficult issue. I’ve seen it in my students working on their dissertation-giving up when in the final chapter, or not completing  a required re-write after their defense. Clients will say something like-oh, I'm going to take a few weeks off, I'm so busy (or whatever reason they have).  Unfortunately, just like the trapeze artist who fails to take the bar, the ricochet effect of not going forward causes an even bigger set back and requires more hard work, time and energy, than before.

The day I forgot to publish my blog I happened to be writing a new segment on discipline and commitment for the Circle of Self ^® website. When I went back and read the above paragraph, I really did have to laugh at myself!  I was writing about what I was about to do again-derail myself.  Only this time I haven’t.  And I pray daily for divine intervention around my attempts to self-sabotage.  This is one difference.  There is another difference as well.  My thirty day blog commitment is not so much a goal in itself.  Rather, it represents a very deep personal decision, and a profound knowing and commitment about the absolute necessity to make a permanent change in my life.  I believe that every one of us experiences a couple of times in our lives when we know for certain we are at a crossroads.  This is one of those times.

Distraction, Disappointment, Discipline,

This morning I realized I had not published my blog post from yesterday.  It was written, just not published.  Does that count in my commitment to blog every day fro the month of October?  I am disappointed in myself. I find myself resenting the ease with which I get distracted, even when I am behaving in a way that feels like I am disciplined.

I chide myself about not being able to keep a thirty day commitment-just one day of getting slightly off track ruined it.  A few distractions was all it took.  I am so disappointed in myself, for being just enough out of alignment with my intention on my quest for discipline. 
I tell myself I can't help my disappointment and judgment and self-flagellating.  Part of this in NOT true-the last two I can help and I can stop. I can acknowledge my disappointment (that is a feeling that came as a reaction). I can choose to have disappointment without the negative judgment and without beating myself up. 

What is it about ME that I can't make even a week of a thirty day commitment (requiring less than a half an hour a day!).  This morning I heard on NPR th estory of a woman marine lieutenant who has committed to make it through 86 sixteen-hour days to prove herself.  When the story aired she's on day one.  She is committed to 85 more so she can set a path for other women.  The only other woman marine in the class did not make it through day one. Neither did 30% of the male marines.  Then I heardthe story about the butterfly professor who committed to 40 years of study to create the I-max film on butterfly migration.  40 years-I couldn't even make four days before being tripped-up! Wow!  I was realy getting down on myself!

If I look from a higher perspective is see these all are cycles-16 hours, 24 hours, 4 days, 30 days, 85 days, 40 years...all cycles and cycles within cycles. Cycles:  beginning-ending, receiving-giving, creating-disassembling, holding on-letting go, resting-moving, allowing-stopping.  Cycles are both spiral and at the same time have starting and stopping points, both/and not either/or. There is a connection between cycles and reading between the lines. Maybe the lines are the space within which our cycles occur? Is it more important to know the lines or to know what is between them?

Learning to Read Between the LInes of Life

Right now I'm wearing glasses which invite me to 'read between the lines' at the same time I am aware of integrity and discipline and how I am doing with my WILL.
I recognize it is the little things that keep us from sabotaging our self.  I think of what one of the circle members shared about discipline being 'intergity in work clothes'.  Getting out of bed when it was dark and rainy and foggy and the night before it had been a very late night before getting to bed.  It took some time to get to sleep, trying to get the movie we had watched cleared from my mind. All this made the desire to hunker down under the covers even more seductive.  I got up anyway, an outer expression of my commitment to pray and write every morning.  This commitment will lead to discipline.  This praying and writing helps me more and more with clarity about where I am on my integrity meter. A bit like having my own 'fact chcker'!

Why do I do this; commit to a practice of getting up in the dark? Why is it different this time from the times I've committed before? Can I keep it going this time? Will this become a discipline? Will I continue to be 'teachable' as is the meaning of the root of the word?

These are the thoughts that come out of reading between the lines.  I am not alone, I have God's Will to hold my hand along the way if I choose to take it.

This morning’s word is ‘faithful’

The morning star greets me as I open the back door to let Molly the dog out at 5:30 before I sit to pray and write. I hear the word ‘faithful’ in my head. The morning star is faithful: constant, true andsteadfast. She is there in the eastern sky every morning. She was there last month in New Mexico, and last week in Phoenix. Regardless of cloud cover, fog and rain, every morning for the past month, wherever I have been, she found a way to make herself known to me, inspire me.

Faithful is also the word used to describe a community of believers, a person who chooses not to cheat on their lover, partner or spouse. I ask myself, "How shall I be faithful and to whom?"  ‘To thine own self be true.’ I am reminded of my writing on the use of will and about the will centers.  As I sit and write in the early morning light I ponder the need to be faithful to myself, first and from that place ofintegrity I am more able to be faithful to the will of God/Great Spirit.  I am able to anchor myself in the midst of any amount of chaos and change, to God/Great Spirit to the purpose of my being.  Like the faithful morning star, my faithful morning practice helps orient my life so I more easily be in the ebb and flow of life, as also shown me-faithfully-by the moon’s cycles and rhythms. 

The full moon speaks her piece!

My alarm went off this morning to the misty grayness of early October fog.  I was tempted to roll over and go back to sleep, but notice the glow seeping under the door to my bedroom.  I rolled out of bed thinking someone had left the hall light on overnight. It was the moon, bright and intense.  In contrast to the eastern sky and its’ dark foggy clouds, the moon was hanging out in the western sky, appearing very much like a whole note suspended between thin, cloud-lines forming a stanza. But, I didn’t hear music; I heard “read between the lines”. 

Hmmm. Advice to begin the work of the waning moon.  What does that mean? Was the message just for me? For my clients? For Circle of Self® members?  What does that really mean “read between the lines”?  My experience of that phrase when someone uses it on me is that what I am hearing or reading is not a truth, not real? But I was hearing these words in my moon-mediation.   I focused on the space between lines, where the moon floated.  I felt like I’d put blinders on and was trying to see what is in the ‘emptiness’ of the space.  Key in on the details, look at all the inferences, what seems out of place.

I took a long view, seeing the wholeness of the stanza and how small the moon looked relative to the odd, cloud-lines.  She didn’t say ‘get the big picture’.  But I thought this larger view might help me see what actually was between the lines.  I saw wholeness and detail.  The metaphor and lesson existed in the detail as well as in the whole of the stanza painted sky.  As I watched and pondered, the cloud-lines grew fuzzy, eventually fading into one another.  Eventually picking up some pink from the dawn sky, and the moon drifted down below them and into the trees.  For now, I’ve decided to remind myself to “read between the lines” several times a day until the moon finishes her waning phase and see what comes.