Dr. Hull's Blog: Adventures in Life-Shifting!

The Dirty Secret

2007-03-30T09:40:00.000-04:00

By now, many of you have seen the film,"The Secret", which is all the rage among New Agers and Oprah fans. There is much to like about this film. It explains, perhaps for the first time to a mass audience, the powerful "law of attraction" and how you can use it to manifest success and abundance in all the domains of your life: money, career, relationships, etc. Of course, the idea that this law is a secret is more than a bit hyperbolic. The law of attraction has been well known for ages and well documented by many philosophers and theologians. The fact that the film and its accoutrement--books, CD's, and the like--pull on the rising credibility of quantum physics for sustenance is also a bit of a stretch. Quantum physics theories demonstrate that the mind of the observer does, in fact, impact the thing observed, but only when doing experiments at a sub-atomic level.

It has never been shown that our thoughts can actually influence a plane flying overhead (thank God for that, eh?) or stop a car crash. The idea that focusing your thinking on manifesting a bigger house will actually bring you a bigger house, well, no quantum physicist is going to consider this anything more than New Age bunk. No matter. The point of the film is still valid: what we manifest and experience in the world is very much a result of how we think/feel about it, and this is something that we can actively CHOOSE on a minute-by-minute basis.

So, in sum, I like the film. I will recommend it to my clients, especially the parts about practicing gratitude, visualization, and believing. In fact, the part of the film where the narrators talk about how to use these practices in a practical way, by starting each day with an attitude of gratitude, visualizing life as they would like to live it, and then feeling into that experience, in real-time, AS IF it has already occurred--these are powerful practices, and they work.

But--and this is a big BUT-- there is a catch (of course, you knew that I wasn't going to let this pseudo-Hollywood extravaganza get off the hook that easily!). Underneath all the fabulous imagery of fancy cars and big houses and sex-doll girlfriend/boyfriends lies what I consider to be the dirty secret of "The Secret": no matter how powerful the law of attraction may be, using it to acquire more stuff does not necessarily bring joy, or happiness, or calm or peace or anything else remotely close to what we might call "human fulfillment".

In fact, constant attention on HAVING MORE may bring just the opposite: stress, effort, fleeting pleasure then emptiness, and a gnawing, anxious feeling of "never enough". I don't think it particularly hyperbolic to say that the shadow-side of "The Secret"--the emphasis on always wanting MORE--may be downright hurtful--to our souls, to our intimate relationships, and ultimately, to the fragile earth itself (imagine a planet where 6 billion people all clamor to live in a $4 million dollar mansion like Jack Canfield!!).

So where does the film go off track? Not with the description of the law of attraction, that is all well and good, if not particularly scientific. No, the basic theme of the movie is fine and laudable. Where it disconnects from its own goal and integrity (which the skeptic in me thinks was intentional--designed to SELL MORE books/DVDS) is with the question: "what do you want?"

If you watch closely starting from the point where the narrator instructs the viewer to use the power of the law of attraction to "get what you want", you will notice that from here on out what we want (what the producers of this film would argue) is a new bike, a fast car, a mansion, a sexy, beautiful girlfriend/boyfriend (read: object), etc. Nowhere did I hear that we might want any of the following: to be loved, to make a difference, to help others, to give back, to share our talents, to love more fully, to live in peace, to relax, or just to have more time for fun. The focus of the film, and the use of thinking, feeling, and intention/visualization (the "toolset" of the law) is all on how to "acquire" a life-style...and specifically one that would show well on "Lives of the Rich and Famous". Yikes!

Well, you may say, what's not to like? We all like having nice things, and the nicer the better, right? Well, true enough, but here's my beef: many of my clients already have fancy cars, nice homes, vacation condos, and more than their fair share of sexy significant others (at least for a short time). Yet, are they happy? Are they feeling fulfilled? Hardly. Many of them become so attached and identified with the "life-style" of prosperity that they think/behave like addicts (more, more, more) losing sight of who they really are and what they really want.

It is only when you step out of the acquistion game for a moment, and ask the deeper question--who do you want to be?--that the law of attraction really goes to work FOR you. By focusing your thoughts and visualizations on WHO AND HOW YOU WANT TO BE in your life, rather that what you want to HAVE, the universe responds with large and small gifts--bringing us teachers, taking us places, and offering up opportunities for us to practice being what we most value in the world.

I am all in favor of people living prosperous lives. There is nothing inherently "bad" about having nice things or living a life of abundance. But what, deep down in your heart, gets you out of bed in the morning? The house, the car, the wardrobe? For me, what I most want to attract--using my thinking, my intention, my gifts, and my passion--is the opportunity to help others live lives of joy, ease, and vitality. What about you? What question might really foster a "life-shift" in your sense of who you are and why you are here? Is it "what do you want...to have?" I doubt it. Instead, try living, breathing, and using the "law of attraction" to discover your own inner secret. Ask yourself: who do I really want to be in the world?!

Check out the film and let me know what you think...

Cheers!

Dr. J

ps. I want to share a little vignette with you as an "add-on" here...because in retrospect I see that it spawned this entire blog:

Yesterday as I was riding the crosstown bus in midtown Manhattan, all the while thinking about the film, "The Secret", and pondering why it left me so unsatisfied, I happened to witness the following scene playing out before me.

Glancing up from my seat in the third row of the bus, I noticed a very old gentleman with a cane sitting across from me. He had to have been about 80, maybe older, but he still looked pretty vital, if rickety on his cane. Just then a younger man--around 60 or so--ambled on to the bus, and facing down this older guy, seemed to do a double-take. "Excuse me sir," said the 'young' one, "Are you the Dr. Hamilton that used to teach classes in archictecture at the New School?" Looking up from his perch, the old man smiled--as if he'd heard this a thousand times before--and simply said, "Yes, I suppose that's me. What can I do for you?"

"Well, wow!" exclaimed the new arrival, "I always wondered what happened to you and whether I would ever see you again...and here you are. I always wanted to thank you for your wonderful class and tell you how much it meant to me. I wound up going on to graduate school and becoming an architect and I have really loved my career. In fact, I'm actually now wondering what to do in the face of retirement because I don't really want to quit. And in no small way, much of my success can be traced back to you!"

I never did hear the response that the old teacher gave to the no-longer-young student because my bus stop arrived just as he finished his little soliloquy. But as I stepped off the bus, I glanced back to see a swelling smile, and a redolent glow of joy (and a little embarassment) surface on the wrinkled face of the teacher. At that moment I knew exactly what was missing from "The Secret": a deeper truth--perhaps a deeper secret that the blossoming countenance of this octagenarian revealed for all to see: WHAT REALLY MATTERS at the end of life. What will you be smiling about when you're 80?

Be a Tree

2007-03-20T09:36:00.000-04:00

Sitting here on a sun-drenched, crystalline spring-is-on-the-way kind of morning in New York City, it is hard to believe that only 72 hours ago the snow was flying, the wind was blowing and the temps were sub-zero. Notwithstanding the debate about climate change or global warming, it clearly was an erratic winter. With January being like June and March being like January and June from one day to the next, one thing is for certain: nothing is for certain. It seems that unpredictability, in the weather, in the world, in life, is the order of the day. Reflecting back on that last blast (hopefully) of winter and its aftermath, I can't help but wonder: how do we stay centered? How does one stay grounded, prepared for anything, and flexible in the face of so much change?

Now, I'm not sure that I KNOW the right answer to these questions, nor do I necessarily believe there is one answer, but I do know one thing: if all the change that we find ourselves experiencing is on the outside, the solution will have to be found on the inside. In times of deep turmoil and transition we all need to LOOK INSIDE ourselves and get connected to something that grounds us and holds us steady. The phrase I love for this idea, which I borrow from Dr. Steven Covey (of "7 Habits" fame), is "the changeless core". It is that place inside of you that never wavers, a place of core essence, of peace and calm and KNOWING, that everything will be ok, that you are ok, that all is as it should be. It is the place from which we accept life on its own terms, drop the struggle, drop the complaint and just allow life, nature, people, the weather, and ourselves, to be just as they are. But how do we connect to this elusive place that lies at the center of our being?

As with most challenging spiritual questions the solution is found by seeking out a good teacher. This past weekend, as I retreated to my cozy lair and just watched the parade of snow and sleet and ice and wind float by my window, I noticed something else: a spiritual teacher in action. Holding steady, calm and changeless under the onslaught of Mother Nature's tirade, were the trees. Solemn, uncomplaining and stately. In the space of 24 hours, I watched as a giant oak went from sun-dappled to rain-drenched, to bowed over in the icy wind, to snow-capped, to finally, upon waking on Saturday, fully chrystallized with icicles dripping from every branch. Emerging from the underworld of the storm, the tree burst forth as a diamond, a delicate glass-blown Christmas ornament shimmering in the breeze. And through all the transmogrifications, the mighty oak stood its ground, unmoved, unshaken. Peaceful. A perfect role model for how to be in the world.

At the time, observing the tree in full regalia, I only thought of how beautiful it looked, how stately. It wasn't until the next day, during my yoga class, that its profound message hit home. Standing before a wall of glass that looked out onto a frozen tundra of ice-laden trees (ok, not exactly a tundra at the intersection of 14th st. and Union Sqaure, but you get the idea), my yoga class was instructed to stand tall and straight, legs hip-width apart, with our hands clasped in prayer at our heart-center.

For a long moment, I stood perfectly still, listening to my breath, gazing out at the icy wonderland, enjoying the delicious contrast of the warm, spacious yoga studio juxtaposed against the burning chill of frost and ice that lay only a few feet away. The instructor then told us to find a tree outside the window and focus on it. Holding, for balance, our gaze on the tree outside, she told us to lift one leg off the ground and place the bottom of our foot against the other leg, against the upper thigh if possible, the higher the better. Then, standing on one leg, breathing deeply from our core, we were told to raise our hands towards the ceiling and spread our arms outward and skyward in full, if awkward mimicry of the trees which held our gaze. "This is 'tree pose'", the instructor said, "Your opportunity to balance, hold center and breathe from a place of grounded connection to your inner core".

"As you hold steady on one leg, breath deeply," she said, "and think of the nerves and blood vessels coursing through your body, from the tips of your toes to the tips of your fingers. See if you can feel the pulse, the circulation, the essence of life, moving and flowing, at all times and in all circumstances. This is just life, in you, doing its thing, with ease, no matter what is happening all around you."

Like a tree in a storm, I thought to myself. The perfect teacher, wherein the weather may swirl around in constant agitation and upheaval, but the sap of life just continues to flow, uninterrupted, undisturbed on the inside. Life doing life.

So the next time you feel ungrounded, reactive to others moods or behaviors, when you feel yourself being blown off course by circumstances beyond your control, stop for a moment, stand on one leg, take a deep breath (or two) and be a tree! It is a powerful practice. Hold steady for as long as you can with one foot pressed against the upper thigh of your other leg. Find a tree to serve as your role model. Bring yourself fully into the present moment...and reconnect to that place in you that is unwavering, steady, still. Allow the tree to show you the way to your changeless core, to help you find the way home.

In closing today's post I want to share a favorite short poem of mine. It is by the wonderful and moving poet, David Whyte...and it goes like this:

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead
and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here.
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger.
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers.
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it you may come back again.
saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you.
You are surely lost. Stand still.
The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

Cheers,

Dr. J

Chicken Wings for the Soul

2007-03-14T10:01:00.000-04:00

Why is it that so-called "spiritually awake" people are often the ones who trip, fall, and end up in the papers? Just this week I was reminded of the hubris of many so-called spiritual teachers who just don't walk their talk...I went to my local Zen/yoga center where I've been practicing meditation and yoga for a couple of years only to discover that the feds had closed the place down. According to my yoga instructor, the owner (a yogi, meditation teacher and massage therapist)was arrested for "inappropriate behavior" with his clients. She didn't know the details, but something fairly egregious must have happened in order for the FBI to get involved. My suspicion is that the massage component of the center was a cover-up for something with slightly less integrity. Oy, will we never learn.

Today, I want to write about spiritual hubris, or what my friend Judy, co-author of our forthcoming book, Life-Shifting: Mastering the 6 R's of Self-Renewal, (yes, we are tinkering with the title!) likes to call, "ego masquerading as spirit". All too often, it seems, we find ourselves engaged with spiritual teachers, friends and partners who somehow come to believe that once you've meditated for a few years, done lots of yoga, practice a healing technique, or become a therapist, that somehow you're finished with your ego, and that base human behaviors or your almighty shadow (!) are a thing of the past. Think again.

One of the shadows of the New Age approach to spirituality seems to be that we come to believe that we can somehow transcend our humanity, to shed out base humanness. This is pure fantasy, of course. The deeper truth is that all the spiritual work in the world will not help you to stop burping or shitting or farting or reacting or raging or nagging or judging or any of the myriad animal behaviors that comprise the human BEING doing his or her thing in life. To my mind, the pay-off of real spiritual work is integration, not transcendence.

With this in mind, I want to share a personal story with you, a shadow story of sorts, one that won't find itself in "Chicken Soul for the Soul" anytime soon, but nevertheless may offer its own gifts--of humility, humanity, and humble pie. I'm writing this today so that I will remember it myself the next time my ego tries to convince me that I'm "beyond that stuff". Perhaps you'll recognize yourself here, or someone you know, and take to heart the soul teaching in this rather mundane, but poignant "chicken wing" story.

This past Sunday night my partner and I hunkered down in front of the tube to watch a movie. We ordered in sushi (very New Yorker of us, no?) and also brought to dine some of the leftover fried chicken wings that we had stored up from the less healthy night out the night before (Saturday night indulgences). All relaxed, cozy and comfy, we drank wine, talked, and munched away. Towards the end of the meal, there was one chicken wing left on the plate. I reached for it and, about to take a bite and tear it apart, said something to the effect of, "don't you want this last wing? If not, do you mind if I eat it?" Of course, my teeth were already sinking in to the tasty flesh before my partner had mouthed his answer, which was, something like, "no, I was saving that piece to have for lunch tomorrow." Oops, too late. I had taken the bite, eaten the poison, and ruined the evening.

As I recall, in response to my having taken the fatal bite out of his precious next-day repas, he rolled his eyes and sighed, becoming pretty pouty. Of course, I felt like a schmuck inside (guilt, guilt, guilt) but on the outside I said something sarcastic like, "well, why didn't you say something before. I didn't know it was that important to you. I thought we were sharing!" Now what actually happened in these heightened moments was probably quite different from what I am now recounting, but no matter. The upshot is that he was pouty and disapppointed, and I was sulky and irritable. Yuck. We proceeded to both shut-down and sit in silence for a long time. Finally, I put down what was left of the chicken, told him coldly to take it home, and basically stewed in my reactivity. Yikes, where's the punchline? Where was the fun, tickly, response that I could have chosen instead, one that would have lightened the air, affording us the chance to laugh at ourselves and our pettiness and dissolve the entire episode into giggles? Nowhere to be found. And what's worse is that much later, when we were more ready to "process" what had happened, he calmly and succinctly told me that he thought that I'd been "more angry" in recent days than usual. Ouch. Me? Angry? I don't think so. I've done my work, seen my therapist, chanted my mantras and stretched out upside down against the wall enough times to know: I am no longer angry! Ummmmm.

Jump tape to next day's yoga class. The teacher is sharing with us the theme of the class: how to manage your resistance, your reactivity, and your impulse to flare up with negative energy if things don't go your way, by staying centered, breathing deeply, and observing your mind's tendency to react. In that grounded and aligned space of balance and openness, you have options. You can react; you can feel your reactions, then you can let it go. A fine teaching. We were to watch our bodies and see how our mind (our egos) sometimes reacts with judgment, criticism, even anger when the pose becomes too difficult or the instructions get too complex or come too quickly. (Reminded me of a time when one of my own yoga students at a retreat told me after a class that during "crow" pose he thought my voice reminded him of screeching chalk on a chalkboard...um, humbling.) Anyway, lo and behold, I didn't even have to wait five seconds into our wonderful teacher's directions before I had an opportunity to practice: my teacher was on the next mat.

Within six inches of me, gangly and unfettered by social grace, the guy on the mat next to mine proceeded to sweat, grunt, and move in every direction except the one being offered as an instruction. His energy was all over the place, his physicality was imposing and he was anything but grounded. During the class, no less than four times, he got up and left the room, stomping by me (in smelly socks, yikes!) with grunts and groans, muttering complaints about the class being too dificult. He had obviously had a bad day, and was committed to making sure that I would be joining him.

I just tried to focus, to breathe, to stay centered and unmoved by his presence. It worked, sort of. I got through the class without any major disruptions, but truth be told, by the end I was ready to throttle this guy. I knew in my heart that I should just "let it go" and relax, but the New Yorker in me was pissed: I had paid my money, I wanted my personal space to be inviolate; I wanted to be LEFT ALONE! Yikes. Where was my compassion for this guy? Well, the good news was that I did find a bit of loving energy in me towards the end. After all the stretching and breathing and centering--and attempting to stay inside rather than focus on him--I did feel a well of a giggle coming up through my throat as he fumbled to roll up his mat. And with the humor came the empathy and with the empathy came the compassion. I smiled sympathetically at him as we stood waiting to put away our mats, and lo and behold, he abruptly APOLOGIZED for disturbing my practice, saying that he had, in fact, had a bad day. I was bowled over, and awakened instantly to his humanity, and to mine. We wound up laughing together about the trials and tribulations of being a "spiritual" New Yorker...

The good news about me, for those of you who are now wondering whether I really should be practicing in a healing profession, is that I do not need three strikes on the head to get the message--two good blows to my ego are usually enough. I am just human--sometimes demanding, controlling, even difficult and judgmental. AND, I am more often compassionate, sensitive to others, empathic and deeply loving. I am here to heal and be healed, and there are glorious teachers placed before me on a daily basis. Like this guy on the mat, and my partner.

The gift of our "chicken wing" moments, for those of us committed to becoming more fully compassionate and loving human beings--which for me are the goals of a spiritual path--is being reminded of our innate humanness, our limitations, our blindspots. Through practices such as meditation and yoga, we can become less reactive, more centered, more able to respond in ways that support constructive outcomes when things go awry. But we should never fall into the trap of thinking we are invulnerable or ego-less. We are all susceptible to a momentary flash of selfishness, rage, or pique. With practice these reactive moments come less often, are less severe, and linger less long...but they will still come, and for that we should be thankful. Likewise, let's be thankful for the brothers, lovers, partners and friends who bring them to us, for unlike the guy who runs (ran) the Zen/yoga center, they keep us on track...and...out of jail!

So take heart. Be human. Be humble. Next time you have a "chicken wing" moment, take a deep breath, giggle at your ineptitude, and give yourself a great big spoonful of compassion. Doctor's orders.

cheers,

Dr. J

A Raisin in the Sun

2007-03-11T16:46:00.000-04:00

"What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun?" From "Harlem", a poem by Langston Hughes (1902-1967)...

Recently, I discovered a wonderful new book called "Mindfulness and Psychotherapy", edited by christopher K. Germer, Ronald D. Siegel, and Paul R. Fulton. In this book, perhaps for the first time, fully credentialed clinical psychologists explore the applicability of mindfulness practices derived from Eastern contemplative traditions for the treatment of depression, anxiety, and other serious psychological disorders. Basically, this book tells therapists how, when, and why to use meditation techniques as an adjunct to psychotherapy, something that I've been doing for years. As a therapist who has respectfully practiced and studied the healing ways of Eastern, Native American and indigenous cultures for a number of years, it is a revelation to finally see these disparate worlds colliding in a positive,and affirmative manner. I highly recommend this book to anyone whose interests span the chasm between Eastern spirituality and Western psychology.

In the chapter on treating depression, there is wonderful anecdote about how one therapist used the power of one single raisin to break through the diagnostic barrier we so matter-of-factly call "depression". I loved this story because it perfectly illustrates one of the foundational principles of my "Life-shifting" approach to transformation and self-renewal: we are not our LABELS. So much of our self-worth and self-esteem is wrapped up in how we identify ourselves--our titles, our addresses, our resumes, our family ties, even in some cases, our diagnoses! Yet, it is only when we wake up and realize that we are much more that our surface identifications that we become open to possibility and free to choose other options for our lives. The label "depression," it seems to me, is rapidly becomeing one of the most egregious examples of this process of over-identification. In this case, following a tactic openly propogated by pharmaceutical companies, more and more of us are self-identifying as "depressed" and reaching for the pills! Eventually, if big Pharma has its way, we will ALL be diagnosed as depressed and the market for anti-depressants will cover the entire population. Now that is a marketing coup!

But I do digress. Ok, I'll get off my soapbox now and share the raisin story: a patient comes to a therapist with a rather severe case of depression, that he states has drained him of vitality, happiness, and joy. He says that he has been depressed for years, and knows no other state of being. After a few sessions in which they work to create a sense of relationship and safety, the therapist asks him if he is willing to do an experiment with mindfulness. The patient rather reluctantly agrees, willing to try anything to "get off those drugs". In the experiment, the therapist has the patient practice ten minutes of silent sitting, focusing on his breath, guiding him into a state of deep relaxation and calm, becoming aware of himself, his surroundings, and especially, the sensations of his physical body. The therapist then takes a single raisin, and asks the patient to put it in his mouth, to slowly roll the raisin around in his mouth, to feel the sensations in his mouth, and to focus all his attention on the experience of flavor, texture, and movement as he savors the raisin.

After swallowing the raisin ( we are assuming here that the patient LIKED raisins!) and bringing the patient back slowly into the room, breathing lightly, and staying relaxed, the therapist asks the patient to describe what happened with the raisin. In recounting the experience, the patient uses words like pleasurable, sensuous, tasty, and delicious. The therapists asks the patient if while he was tasting the raisin he felt depressed. The patient sat back and reflected for a moment and said, of course, he was ALWAYS depressed. Yet, when asked again to truly reflect on those ecstatic moments of raisin heaven, the patient had to admit that the experience of tasting the raisin was one of pleasure, not depression.

This experiment between raisin, therapist and patient probably lasted ten minutes. Fifteen tops. Yet, it changed everything. The patient literally woke up to a new reality: he was not always depressed. Depression may have been a good part of his experience, but it was not his whole reality. It was as if the raisin brought in the sun and shined a light on this over-identification with the label, "depressed". Think about it. We are all unhappy at times, sometimes longer than others. Sometimes we find ourselves in pain and the need for help is real. BUT, the window of possibility, the opening to something else, also ALWAYS exists. We sometimes just need a tiny, wrinkled nugget of golden sunshine to remind us of who we really are.

One of the foundational premises of "Mindfulness and Psychotherapy" is that the practice of meditation is designed to bring our experience of ourselves out of our swirling thoughts about the past and the future, and, at least momentarily (and for longer and longer periods as we practice) into the present moment. By sitting quietly, focusing our attention on our breath and the sensations in our body, we become more awake to our present state of awareness. In time, we become aware of the transient and chaotic state of our thinking mind, learning to simply observe our thoughts, feelings and sensations as they shift constantly. In this manner, it becomes possible to begin to detach from our thoughts and connect to our vital and vibrant core--to momentarily glance through the fogged window of judging and labelling out onto that pristine landscape of joy and self-acceptance. Ultimately, the goal of mindfulness practice is freedom; freedom from our attachments to our thoughts about who and what we think we are...even including, possibly, depression.

So what, who and where are the raisins in your life? Are they golden nuggets of sunlight that serve to remind you of your beautiful, vibrant, life-force? OR are they just dried up grapes--symbols for lost dreams like in the Langston Hughes poem--withering and hardening under the glare of loathsome labels like "depression". Either way, the "life-shift", the shift of perspective away from the darkness and out into the light of possibility, is always only a moment away.

You only need to sit still, relax, grab a box of raisins, and breathe...

Happy Munching!!!

Dr J

ps. I am not in cohoots with the California grape-growers union, no matter what the papers say...:-)

The Paradox of Hope

2007-02-06T08:12:00.000-05:00

Do you ever feel like life works like a pendulum? You swing one way for a while...up, up, up...(or down, down, down!) and then, inevitably you find yourself and your life swinging back in equal measure in the opposite direction? No wonder it is so difficult to find a solid place to stand! I often find that when I write about a theme or principle of life-shifting in this blog, that within a short period of time the universe usually compels me to contemplate, read, or re-discover the opposite end of whatever spectrum I happened to be hanging out on. Go figure.

In this instance, having recently written about the power of hope and peak experiences, I suppose it was inevitable that I would stumble across the equally profound and essential dark underbelly of those topics: hopelessness and despair. Why would that have to happen you might ask? Well, in the context of the "life-shifting" approach to transformation and renewal, we have to acknowledge that hopelessness and despair -- and depression, grief, and loss as well -- are the cornerstones on which renewal, joy, and peak experience of any kind are usually built. It is one of the great ironies, and deep paradoxes of life, but true: hope is built on a foundation of hopelessness.

Let me explain. Just as I was completing my blog entry about the "audacity" of hope, I happened upon a favorite book that I hadn't looked at for a while,
When Things Fall Apart: Heartfelt Advice for Difficult Times, by Pema Chodron. Pema is a wonderful Buddhist writer and teacher, who is especially talented at taking esoteric concepts and themes from the Eastern tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, also known as "The Dharma," and applying them in a succinct and user-friendly manner to life in the West. Her voice is compassionate and her ideas in the context of dealing with life's trials and tribulations, are, for the most part practical and inspiring. Some of what she says, however, feels radical and can be quite unnerving. Take hope for instance, she doesn't buy it.

Hope, according to Pema, is a false idol, a cover-up for fear and a resistance to truth. She says, quite bluntly, that we must "give up hoping that there is somewhere better to be, that there is someone better to be, otherwise we will never relax with where we are or who we are, right now." Sounds reasonable until you realize that she means it full-on: we should embrace hopelessness, not hope. Hopelessness, by which she means a totally and complete surrender to the truth of impermanence, change, groundlessness, and ultimately, death. In the context of the Buddhist tradition, everything else is a form of denial, a cover-up for unexpressed fear. And so with hope.

Is this really the case? How can we believe in "life-shifting", in self-renewal and re-birth, if we let go of all hope for "something better"? This is a difficult place to land, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. In some ways, the intersection of hope (West) and hopelessness (East) divides the cultural construct of two different worldviews. Yet, the ironic twist is that in the end the Eastern perspective of hopelessness may be more hopeful. Here in the West, what I observe in my clients (and sometimes in myself) is a tendency to hold so tight to our fantasy of happiness and achievment and success, that we live in misery with the absolute unattainability of our endless aspirations. We wallow in unfulfillment...and sometimes drown in despair. My sense of the view that Pema is advocating cuts through the despair and surrenders to a deeper truth, that we are not in control.

But all is not lost. My view is this: hope is a valid experience and a uniquely human attribute. It is a gift available to us at any moment, but its price is hopelessness. We must let go of our self-centered belief that we are actually going to get somewhere, achieve something, or, in fact, single-handedly change the world. These are all fantasies of the ego. The crucial turning point is, to use the cliche, "letting go and letting God". Yet, this doesn't have to leave us bereft, lost, or alone. Consider for a moment, the sun, our sun. We know that it is but one of a billion stars just like it in a billion gallaxies that fan across the dark recesses of space, yet the sun is hardly unimportant: it gives us life. It makes a difference, AND SO DO WE. What about our amazing ability to experience consciousness, to feel hopeful in the face of certain death, to derive MEANING from the beauty of a single flower? We are co-creators in the dance we call "reality". Without us, the sun is a burning ball of gas; with us, the sun fuels the cells that bring beauty, passion, love and joy to the world. We may be mere drops of water in the vast sea of the universe,yet we are also the divine craftspeople of a world that matters.

Ultimately, we may have no idea why we are here or what it all means. From Pema's perspective, only by staring directly into the mystical face of this deep truth, can we begin to relax, lighten up, even chuckle about the absurdity of it all...and allow the next moment to unfold unencumbered by our fantasy or need. In that moment of spacious unknowing, we are free...to live...to create...and to behold joy. To my mind, a rather hopeful perspective.

What do you think? I'm hoping for a solution!!!

Cheers,

Dr J

The Audacity of Hope

2006-12-04T11:38:00.000-05:00

Ok. so I'm a thief, but I know a good title when I see one! Those of you in the know will recognize "The Audacity of Hope" as the new book by one of our rising political stars, Barack Obama. Unfortunately, I must confess that I haven't read the book yet, but I can only assume that it refers to the power of hope to pull us through difficult and tumultuous times...in our lives and in the country.

I love this title because it strikes me as nailing one of the challenging emotional realities of "hope": the fact that it has a hubristic, almost fantastical quality at times. I know that when my clients hit emotional low points due to circumstances, life, or depression, it is almost impossible to get them to have hope for a brighter future. At those times, it often falls to the therapist or loved ones to hold the hope for the client, until he or she is ready to reach out--or better said, reach in--and begin to get in touch with possibility...and hope...once again. Hope offers no guarantees. Hope can be whimsical and fleeting. Hope is also contagious and expansive. It is a purely human invention that somehow, audaciously, seems to work.

Recently, I had the opportunity to witness first-hand how the power of hope to heal and transform actually operates in the real world. A good friend of mine has an amazing job: he is the director of "Project Rebirth" a non-profit initiative that is chronicling the aftermath and re-construction of Ground Zero, through film, video and story-telling. The film-makers have set up cameras all around the World Trade Center site in downtown New York City. Using time-lapse photography, they will film the on-going re-construction of Ground Zero over a ten-year period. At the same time, researchers are interviewing and video-taping ten survivors and their families, telling their stories up close and personal, as they move from devestation and recovery to re-building their lives...again over a ten-year period.

This film/video project is now in its fifth year and I had the opportunity to see the product in its latest incarnation at a recent fund-raising event and screening. To say the least, the story is compelling, heart-wrenching and moving. The film juxtaposes interviews with the survivors and family members--a wife, a son, a fireman--with time-lapsed photography of the construction site that is now Ground Zero. What is most striking about the parallel processes that we witness in the film are the long stretches of time where it appears that very little is happening--both at Ground Zero and in the lives of those in recovery. The cameras pan the site of the original World Trade Centers, and for months, now years, there is literally no change, virtually no activity--just a huge, dark, ominous hole in the ground. The hole appears immovable, endlessly deep and foreboding. Only four years after the event do we slowly begin to see the site come alive with activity. Crews begin to show up and start excavating, lighting is put in, construction scaffolding slowly appears. Yet still, years after the tragedy, the site still looks empty, hollow and grieving, a huge gaping wound in the side of the earth.

Likewise, as we trace the lives of the survivors and families through interviews each year on the anniversary of that tragic day, we see the process of grieving and suffering writ large. Time passes and the wounds remain visible, close-to-the-surface. Tears flow quickly, memories remain vivid and the dead linger in the hearts of those left behind. Only four years later do we see one survivor finally get the proper surgeries that may once and for all heal her burned face and limbs. While another victim, a surviving spouse who lost her new husband in the collapse of tower #2, finally turns a page, moves away from New York and starts dating again, four years later. Four years of grief, darkness and suffering.

And then, in the fifth year, all of a sudden, just like at the site itself, there is a spark of activity, a movement, the appearance of possibility--the rebirth of hope.
It is a powerful film. And it is only half complete, as the project iniatiors, perhaps with an uncanny intuitive prescience, chose to set up the narrative as a decade-long endeavor. So today, with the emergence of hope, in the fifth year of recovery, we can begin to see the seeds being sown of a new life--for the site, for the survivors.

Now what does this have to do with the process of "Life-Shifting", you might ask? Well, just EVERYTHING! Ok, I resort to a bit of hyperbole here, but really, I believe that one of the core distinctions of the life-shifting approach to self-renewal is the recognition that CHANGE, be it recovery or transformation, takes time! I am always amazed at all the coaching literature that is being promulgated these days that is all about goal-setting and action and focus and "getting on with it". What is new here? Haven't we always known that you have to set goals and act in order to achieve anything in life? Yet, these motivational tools rarely work over a sustained period of time. Why? Because they avoid telling you the truth about life: that things take time; that life moves in cycles; that recovering from hurt and loss and devestation takes patience; that life can be slow and tedious; that we are not always in control of how quickly we move. We can accelerate our growth and healing, yes. BUT, we do not control life.

We are a partner, a dancer with life...and as such, we fool ourselves if we think we can just "turn a switch" and get to the next rung of some endless ladder of success. Life is more complex than that. Humans are more complex than that. And that is why "life-shifting" as a process and tool for healing and transformation, offers you more than just a treatise on goal-setting and a slap on the wrist for procrastination. We want to look deeper. Sometimes we need to just let go and stand still. Sometimes we just need to WAIT. Be patient. AND, most importantly, have hope.

With the "life-Shifting" approach to self-renewal, we honor the cycles of birth, death, and re-birth that are inherent in all forms of nature, human and otherwise. I often advocate that my clients simply sit still and breathe. Sometimes hibernation is called for--a time for reflection. The cliche "hope springs eternal" is also a truism. For it is only when the wings of hope appear that we throw off the cloak of grief and step out into the sun. The story of Project Rebirth is a powerful reminder: "Life-shifting" requires patience, preparation and hope. How audacious is life: even in the dark recesses of a 10-acre mud-filled hole in the ground, the seeds of a tower of freedom are germinating.

Peace,

Dr J

The Imperceptible Peak

2007-01-23T09:35:00.000-05:00

"... So subtle, slight, or gradual as to be barely perceptible" ...Yup, that is exactly what it was--imperceptible. I'm not sure that I use that cool word very often, or even appropriately, but this time it fits. Last night I had a rare and miraculous moment: I had an experience of what all the gurus call "peak performance". And I almost missed it. Yikes. Here's the skinny: I'm a yoga practitioner who has been taking hatha and vinyasa yoga classes for about 2 years with some regularity. Now truth be told, "some regularity" means two, sometime three times a week, but not every day or even every other day. Still, I have steadily progressed in my practice over this time period, becoming more flexible and attuned to my body, my breath, to my core sense of "self"--whatever that might mean (see blog #1 October 06).

It has been a wonderful journey both physical and spiritual. But last night something special occurred: I did a handstand. Yup, for me a first. It lasted perhaps 30 seconds, just a few deep breaths, but I stood on my hands, legs and body straight up in the air--away from the wall. No leaning. In the moment that it happened, I was actually a little shocked. It was as if time stood still and I stepped outside myself and watched. My mind kept saying (I could hear the words loud and clear): "You can't do this". But I was doing it. And then it was over. I was back on the floor, up in down-dog pose, on with the class. The moment had passed, and the momentary elation, doubt and ecstasy, dissolved. Did it even happen?

Now, as always, when I decide to write about an experience of mine or a client here in this space, I pose the question: what does this have to do with "Life-shifting"? As I pondered this question--and I have been pondering it deeply because it feels profound--I was reminded of a good friend who shared a similar experience with me recently...but I barely noticed. My friend is an artist, a whimsical creator of abstract and conceptual works--sculpture, video, paintings--in a variety of media. He has had a few successful "showings" in galleries and won a couple of competitions, but has never been shown in a big name gallery or a well-known art venue or museum. Last week when we had coffee and were catching up on our lives, he mentioned that one of his projects was to be exhibited at the Whitney Museum in New York City. He pronounced this so matter-of-factly that I bared noticed. Yet, I did hear him and I was frankly flummoxed at his casual, almost dismissive way of expressing this obviously BIG DEAL. His work was to be shown at the Whitney! This is a world-class venue where thousands of people were likely to see his work. Granted he is not getting his own show there and will be seen as part of a broader project with other artists...but STILL! It is clearly a peak moment for his career: he has hit a milestone. Yet, he didn't seem to be particularly impressed or even acknowledging of this truth. He simply shared the information and went right on talking about what's next for him.

Me too. I came home last night after my little "peak" moment on the yoga mat, and even as I was feeling a sense of fullness and satisfaction at reaching this new level in my practice, I was very much focused on what I still need to learn, what I still haven't accomplished....thinking: there is still a "flying crow" in my future (don't ask!).

So here is the question for "life-shifting": how can we know when or how to "shift our lives into high gear" if we don't recognize the peak experiences that are already occuring in our day-to-day lives? Maybe most of us are already in HIGH GEAR!! (I think so, actually) The obvious problem here is the paradox of self-perception: we are ALREADY ENGAGED IN LIFE-SHIFTING every day, with every breath--we just don't notice it! As human beings we are constantly in varying stages of self-renewal. Every cell in our body is renewed or regenerated over a seven year period. Every human endeavor reflects a cycle of beginning, growth, expansion, peak, decline and death. Yet, our tendency in the Western culture is to focus our attention obsessively on the expansion or growth aspects of the cycle. In fact, we tend to ignore the peak moments, abhor the decline, and deny the death moment altogether. We like to believe that life is a straight-line heading up into the stratosphere, yet the deeper truth about all aspects of life is that nature works in cycles. At some deep level, of course, we know this, but we tend to forget; we actually choose to forget. Hence, we are all set up for considerable amounts of disappointment, a tendency towards depression and endless feelings of failure.

My artist friend and I are products of our over-achieving, productivity-obsessed culture, where nothing short of David Beckham-style success is worthy of notice. Not true. We need to stop, breathe, experience and CELEBRATE our peak moments in life, no matter how seemingly imperceptible or slight. They--and we--are worthy of our attention, our recognition, our gratitude. Success, our success, is BUILT INTO THE SYSTEM. We only have to notice.

So where have you simply passed by your peak? Where have you declared yourself a "failure" because you haven't achieved "world-class" (whatever the hell that means--on TV?) performance? Take a look close to home--at your hobbies, at your job, at your spouse? Many people come to me after leaving a relationship or in a painful moment in a relationship and they start our session by saying: "my relationship is a failure." "Oh, really," I ask. "How long have you been together?" Sometimes the answer is many, many years...but the point would hold even if only for a few months: just having a loving relationship is a success! What about the amazing experience of just coming together and falling in love? Have you celebrated that recently? What about the peak moment of having children or moving in to gether or building a home? Have you noticed, experienced and celebrated those peak moments together? Apply this same principle to ANYTHING else in your life.

Bottom line: we are having peak experiences of our own amazing essence all the time. Our challenge is to stop, breathe, and take it in. Celebrating success is a key principle of "Life-shifting".

Remember: we are all miracles in action....and that, my friend, should never become imperceptible.

Ok, so now go out and stand on your head!!! (ha!)

Peace,

Dr. J

An Inconvenient Truth

2006-11-28T13:31:00.000-05:00

Have you ever heard the phrase, "It's my story and I'm sticking to it!" Of course you have. You may have even said it a few times in the course of your life, and you certainly have thought it a few times. I know that I have. More times than I like to admit. Truth be told--no pun intended--we all have a tendency to take ourselves and our ways of thinking quite literally. We invest a great deal of time and energy in creating a so-called "life" -- a career, an identity, a philosophy, etc.--and, for the most part, we are loathe to alter it, give it up, or shift it, even though it may be killing us!

What I'm thinking about today is inconvenient, but true: We are addicted to our stories. We become our stories. Yet, at the very core of the process of transformation that I call, "Life-Shifting", we must be willing to give up our stories. We need to see that our stories are just that: stories. We made them up in the first place, and we can unmake them quite simply (but not easily!).

Let me share an example with you, one where our attachment to our "story" about ourselves and our world is quite clearly getting us in trouble! Have you seen the movie "An Inconvenient Truth"? If not, please make every effort to see it. It is beautifully wrought and important stuff. In a clear case of Life-Shifting writ large, Al Gore has made an attempt, through the powerful narrative synthesis of cinema and science, to SHIFT us out of a cultural story that no longer serves us--the one that says that cutting down most of the trees on the planet and burning up all the fossil fuels simultaneously, won't have any deleterious effect on the environment. Hello?! We in the developed countries have been so resistant to changing this narrative that we blatantly ignore all the signs that a new story is unfolding...a geological and climatological nightmare that includes epic floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, and level "6" hurricanes (lest we remember that levels 1-5 were only recently made up!!!) When will we wake up, release the outdated story of how to go through life burning fossil fuels, and embark on a new adventure: the adventure of living sustainably on the only home we've got, earth?

In many ways, the entire process of Life-Shifting, and the art of self-renewal in general, is about developing a willingness to discard worn out stories that we get in the habit of telling ourselves. I have a friend who has finished all the schooling he needs to become a therapist and life coach, but for the past couple of years he has struggled with building a private practice and attracting clients. He does tell himself, and a few of his closest pals, that he wants to be successful in his new profession. I think, in fact, that the story of his new identity as a professional counselor is beginning to take hold, but there still seems to be something in the way of his practice taking off...and that something is this: he fails to tell people about it!

I submit to you that the key step in framing, crafting and adopting a new life-story for ourselves, once we've done the work of waking up, letting go, grieving, etc. (see earlier blogs)is to begin a key practice: share your story. Go out and tell people. I have counseled my friend, that even if he doesn't quite fully believe it yet, he needs to tell everyone he meets--not just his close friends and confidantes--that he has a new profession. He needs to proclaim to the world, "I am a therapist. I am a life coach. I can help you change your life." (I know him and he can!).

Stories are meant to be told. Stories are meant to be shared, and altered, and re-invented. And when a story has outworn its usefulness, this too must be said. Laura Simms, a professional storyteller and performer that I had the opportunity to see "live" earlier this week at the New York City Shambhala Center, notes that when she brings stories to life in the classroom with young teens, she is shocked to find that they are sometimes overwhelmed by the experience. They are moved to tears, or have laughing fits, or just become overcome with emotion. It appears that they are somewhat unfamiliar with the power of their own imaginations! We may be oversaturated with media-soaked images from TV and movies, but unaware of our own innate human ability to come alive through story, to connect to strangers, the unknown, the future itself, through story-telling. Perhaps the ultimate gift of being human is just this: we can write our own story from beginning to end. We are not flat screen robots and life does not take place in "The Real World". It begins in our minds, and in our hearts. Life is a journey of the soul that needs to be mirrored, explored and received by the world. Our stories deserve to be told.

So this week take a moment and ask yourself: what is the story I tell myself about who I am? And this: What is the story I tell others about who I am? Is it fresh, alive, vibrant, and filled with your fullest, loudest, most edgy potential? Is it stale and worn and in need of an upgrade? Only you can know the truth...and it may be rather inconvenient.

On the other hand, isn't it great to know that although it may be your story, YOU DONT HAVE TO STICK WITH IT!!!

Peace,

Dr J

Enough is Enough

2006-11-22T09:38:00.000-05:00

Ok, I'm going to date myself on this one, but ever since I started pondering the idea of gratitude and abundance, those hallmark themes that emerge within us whenever Thanksgiving approaches, I have that classic Donna Summer/Barbra Streisand duet ringing in my ears: "enough is enough...I can't go on no more now..." Yikes...and I thought I had banished the eighties from my psyche!

Oh well, no matter. What's on everyone's mind today, the day before Thanksgiving, is what's on my mind as well: gratitude. Of course, this time of year the mind also gets crowded with stress about family engagements and shopping and travelling et. al. but in the midst of the overwhelm, most of us do take time to reflect on the amazing abundance, the gifts, the people, the sheer richness of our lives. I know that I have much to be grateful for--wonderful family and friends, a full stomach, warm blankets and soft pillows, a cuddly kitty and a loving partner--what more could one want?

And that, it seems to me, is the real question: why do we always want more? When is enough, really enough?

Today I want to reflect on the lesson of abundance that I gleaned from the powerful work of Lynne Twist, whose Soul of Money Institute is committed to bringing about a major Life-Shift in our attitude towards money and abundance. Lynne's work is radical because she takes on the prevailing New-Age philosophy of so-called "prosperity-thinking", pointing out that the idea that there is "plenty of everything", or "more where that came from" (common platitudes in the prosperity literature),is blatantly false. There is NOT plenty of everything in this world. There is not enough water, not enough oil; there are not enough trees and not enough clean air to keep up with the endless population growth that is occurring across the planet. To think otherwise is wishful thinking at best and suicidal mania at worst.

The deeper truth, according to Lynne, is that our affinity for this idea of "abundance" remains rooted in the same scarcity consciousness that it supposedly abhors. What we really need to consider is not abundance--but sufficiency. We need to get clear on WHAT IS ENOUGH. We may be blessed with plenty, but we still struggle with when to say, "stop. I have enough". I'm not really trying to be a spoil-sport here. I don't for a minute believe that we should feel "bad" about our good fortune, living as we do in one of the world's few truly prosperous countries at this time in history. We are blessed and we should feel grateful.

But there is an opportunity here as well, an opportunity to shift gears, to slow down and maybe veer away from our entrenched patterns of consumption, an opportunity to venture forth down a new road: the road to simplicity, self-awareness, and sensitivity to the limited resources of this finite planet. (Anyone who doubts the veracity of this theory of limits should read the latest scientific studies about world fish populations--which, at the current rate of exploitation, will be completely wiped out in fifty years!).

So if you, like me, desire to wake up and step off the treadmill of "more is better", where do you start? Well, as my good friend and role model, Tom Lutes , always reminds me, new patterns, new ways of being and living, always begin with new practices. In this case, the Thanksgiving practice is simple: eat less. HAH, you say! Here we have one of the Life-Shifting mantras writ large, for this will be simple but it sure won't be easy!

So, will you join me? Can you enter the treasure vault of turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy and pecan pie...and know when to say, "enough"? This is the Olympics of disciplined consumption. If you can learn to be awake to your eating patterns at Thanksgiving, to know when you have had enough, to become sated but not saturated, well...there is hope for the planet.

Like peace on earth, sufficiency starts with you and me. At home. I am reminded of when I first encounterd the idea of re-cycling my cat food cans. Initially, the idea of rinsing out the cans and separating them from the other detritus repulsed me. Yuck. Yet, today I do it like second nature...and I'm glad I do. It's a small thing, yes, a gesture, but more importantly, it reinforces a different pattern, in me...and in the world.

So, let's take this one on. Let's head into Turkey Day with our head down, our eyes wide open and our periscopes up. When the second and third helpings get passed around, have this question in mind, "have I had enough"? Sure, you may not win the battle first time out and you may over-indulge in that sweet-potato pie.. but at least you will have made a Life-Shift in the right direction.

Besides, it won't hurt your waste-line.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Dr J

Dormancy and Destiny

2006-11-21T10:55:00.000-05:00

When was the last time you took a day off? I mean, not just a day off from your regular job, or a day off from personal obligations, not even a vacation in the typical sense of booking hotels and flights and coming back more exhausted than when you left…no, I mean a REAL day off? A day with no agenda, no plans, no to-do list, maybe no movement at all. Don’t you long for such a day, maybe a weekend…even a whole week (God Forbid!) to just lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, or cuddle up on the sofa with a good book? If you are like me, somewhere in the recesses of your mind you long for true rest and relaxation. Penetrating soulful rest, the kind that nurtures your spirit and reconnects you to a deep, resonant voice that you normally give short shrift: yours.

A key principle of Life-Shifting, one that I have touched upon a number of times in this blog, is going within. For most people, the idea of getting quiet and spending time listening to one’s own inner guidance sounds inherently practical. Not that there is anything wrong with seeking advice, or getting help from others—these are also essential elements of the Life-Shifting process—but at some point we all need to just stop, sit still and listen to our own inner wisdom. But, if this practice is so intuitively obvious, why don’t we do it?

I suggest that in our harried, productivity-obsessed culture, we have become caught up in a paradox: we fear that if we stop—stop work, stop striving, stop achieving—we may be thrown off track, end up as a bag lady…or worse. Yet, the opposite is true: if we do not stop, rest, and rejuvenate, on a regular basis, we will die. That's right: die. Incessant, manic activity is ultimately deadly, to the body, to the soul, to the spirit. So today, I want to write about the wisdom of dormancy.

In his beautiful book, "Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in our Daily Lives", Wayne Muller speaks eloquently about the essential requirement of dormancy: “If certain plant species, for example, do not lie dormant for the winter, they will not bear fruit in the spring. If this continues for more than a season, the plant begins to die. If dormancy continues to be prevented the entire species will die. A period of rest—in which nutrition and fertility most readily coalesce –is not simply a human psychological convenience; it is a spiritual and biological necessity. A lack of dormancy produces confusion and erosion in the life force.”

Very powerful stuff, no? Have you ever considered that taking a REAL VACATION might be a "spiritual and biological necessity"? Well, I would go one step further and add that not only does a lack of "dormancy" produce confusion and erosion in the life force, it is a major contributor to depression. You see, as counter-cultural as it sounds, I believe that many of the patients with severe depression that I see in my private practice are not really depressed at all: they are spiritually, energetically, emotionally, and physically EXHAUSTED. Wasted. Burnt.

Depression is sometimes just a symptom, a signal of the soul's call for help. It is the human body/soul attempting to get us to STOP, take a break, get quiet. Yet, instead of listening to the signal and allowing ourselves to take a much-needed break from the world of hyper-productivity and consuming and striving, we choose to medicate ourselves...and keep right on going. But where? Do you ever stop and ask yourself: where are you going? What is it all for?

I have many friends and clients whose biggest struggle in life is not about their relationships, or their kids, or their boss or even their mother-in-law. Their biggest struggle in life, the one that gnaws at them day in and day out from morning till night is deceptively simple,immediate, and insidious: it is whether they can justify taking the day off. Or a week off. Or a year. Deep down they know, and I know, that just as the plants and animals of the natural world require dormancy, hibernation--a time for gestation--the human spirit needs to same thing. The seeds of destiny lie fallow within us...longing to germinate. BUT, they need us to stop and pay attention...to put down our cell phones, close the laptop, lay down and just breathe. And listen.

There is no time to waste. Ok, I'm gonna take the rest of the day off. It's a start.

Peace,

Dr. J

The Miracle Cure

2006-11-15T09:30:00.000-05:00

Have you noticed that a very powerful, if rather insidious, new marketing tool has been invading your life more and more lately? If you think about all the multitudinous ways in which marketers get to us--through billboards, TV ads, direct mail, tele-marketers, etc.--then you won't be surprised to find they have discovered, and are quickly saturating, a new access route: the in-box. I call it "Miracle Mail". These are those ubiquitous emails that seem to arrive from the North Pole, dropped down our broadband chimneys by nefarious marketing elves, in the middle of the night. These emails generally have two key attributes: 1. the tag line is short, seductive and offers you the world (usually for free!); 2. they are exruciatingly long, with drawn out anecdotes and testimonials, written in a multitude of fonts and colors, and you must either read all the text or be smart enough to jump all the way to the bottom to find the link to the miracle product (which is only free at the beginning...you pay the residuals forever!!!).

Now, of course, like all marketing schemes in the free-market West, there is nothing inherently evil about these distribution tools. You can always just click on "delete" and move on to other more pressing matters at hand. The problem with them, as you and I both know, IS THAT THEY WORK! Yikes. The real "miracle" of these irritatingly lengthy, pithy and potent email blasts, is that we find ourselves READING THEM...and sometimes, more often than we like to admit, BUYING THEIR PRODUCT....or worse, signing up to receive even more miraculous email offers. It is rather like discovering that you have a virus in a single organ and then consciously choosing to spread it around until it takes over the whole body!

OK. So what does this tiny tirade have to do with Life-Shifting, you ask? Well, as I was reflecting on another key principle and practice in the Life-Shifting process, what I like to call "going within", I couldn't help but think about the miraculous practice that I offer to my clients in this regard. It struck me that maybe I should package it, put together videos, workshops, and maybe a book or two, and get out there with my own email blast! I could make a fortune.

But wait, truth is, there is really nothing to my miracle cure; it is a simple practice, accessible to anyone, requires no skills or products or tools whatsoever. It requires no training, no reading, not even a half-hour infomercial to understand, adopt, and execute. Of course, since when has offering NOTHING MUCH in the form of a miracle cure not been worth millions?! (I'm reminded of Lucille Ball's famous adventure with the cure-all of her day: "Vita-Meta-Vegamin". Funny thing, with the power of the placebo effect that we know well today...it probably worked!). But, I do digress (which is what those nasty emails do, right? And we keep going, right? HAH!)

Ok, you're on to me. But here's the thing: I'm having fun with you, yes, but I am not selling anything. Really. I'm just taking a rather long, circuitous route to sharing a wondrous little technique for learning more and more about the most important thing you can ever study: yourself. You. Inside and outside and all around, the way to shift your life is to learn as much as possible about how you work". In fact, whenever you feel that your life is not going the way you'd like it to, or that things are happening too fast, or you have break-downs all around you that SEEM to be coming out of nowhere, the key step in discovering the meaning, the reason, and the cure for these things is GOING WITHIN. Learn about yourself. Ask the tough questions: what am I doing that is creating this energy of change, of chaos, of overwhelm, of illness--whatever--in my life? How am I contributing to the quality of my own life? The bottom line is that once you've turned 18 (or so, everyone is unique), you are fully responsible for your life. Every other perspective makes you the victim. And as much as we all like to play the victim once in a while, blaming the outside world for all our woes, this approach NEVER WORKS. The victim stance becomes the blame game, which as we all know if we stop and think about it for a moment, you never win!!

On the other hand, if you can figure out how to go within and learn to study yourself, you can discover the key to changing everything, to shifting everything in your life, by changing yourself. You still with me? Do you still believe that there is no link at the bottom of this blog that cuts right into your wallet? Good, cuz there's more. As the saying goes, "there must be a pony"...there is, there is. I promise.

But we have to ask ourselves: how do we "go within"? It sounds so simple. About now, most counselors, and most teachers, head toward meditation, contemplation practices, and prayer. The most common approach to stepping back and observing your self is through the myriad of meditation techniques that are proliferating in spiritual and alternative health circles. I am a huge fan of these practices and highly recommend John Kabat-Zinn's work on mindfulness in this regard. But learning to practice meditation takes time, effort, and discipline. It is a great way to learn about yourself--but not the miracle cure that I'm offering here...not by a long shot. There is a simpler, easier, faster way (oh, yes, and it is free! hee hee).

Let me share an example of how my miracle cure works. A few months ago, I had a client who was doing great work in crafting and manifesting the life of her dreams: she found a new man, got a big promotion, bought a fabulous apartment with a doorman (for New Yorkers this is nirvana!), and so on. But there was one small, nearly life-crushing problem that just wouldn't seem to go away: she panicked at the thought of giving a presentation in front of a group. No matter what size group, as small as ten, as large as one hundred, she would clam up and shrink like a little girl when called upon to present, literally freezing up with fear. Now, it is a well-known fact that public speaking is one of the most fear-inducing activities that people are called upon to do in life, so this might not have been such a big deal, except that this client had a vision of herself as a leader--and leaders lead. Leaders lead groups. Leaders present. It is what they do. So for this individual, emotionally falling apart at the idea of presenting to her peers, or her staff, or, God-fobid, her superiors (!), was a show-stopper.

As you might imagine in this kind of situation, I recommended speaker-training for her. And, to a certain extent, it worked. She did a number of executive presentation workshops and learned the key principles and practices of effective public speaking. Her technique certainly improved, but the fear never receded, and no matter what she did to stop it, she would still get overwhelmed with fear, until one day, I gave her my miracle cure. Once she started using one little practice, a small seemingly imperceptible technique for GOING WITHIN and learning about her deeply fearful child-self, the fear began to subside. So what the heck am I talking about, you ask?

Well, I guess now would be the time to put the hyperlink on the phrase "click here" and you will be taken down the rabbit hole to that long form which ends with you giving me your credit card number! Not. Ok, I give. No tricks. Here's the deal: The technique that I most recommend for getting to know yourself better is this: think of yourself in the third person. That's right. That's it: speak/think/dialogue with yourself as if you were a "he" or a "she" instead of an "I" or a "me". Try it right now. Ask yourself these questions: What is he/she feeing right at this moment? Why is he/she reading this blog? What is he/she learning about him/herself right at this moment?

How does it feel to step outside yourself, just a little, and think different? The idea is to watch yourself as if you were watching someone other than you--to gain distance and a new perspective, to look through the microscope at yourself, to train the periscope on you. The key to all learning is found in the POWER OF OBSERVATION. But as all doctors and scientists will tell you, you cannot see anything new if you don't get some distance--emotional and/or physical--from the thing you want to study. And, so it is with ourselves.

In the case of my client with the extreme phobia about executive presentations, she realized that in the moment of having to get up in front of a group, she becomes a little girl. Hence, the only way to "cure" the phobia is to dialogue with herself, but not the adult self who is filled with blame and shame and self-loathing, no, she needs to talk with the little girl...to calm her, to hold her, to nurture her, and to tell her that it will be all right. And lo and behold: it will. She (the little girl) loosens her emotional grip on the adult and lets go, letting my client step up in front of that group AND SHINE.

It works. It sounds very simple and it is very simple. At first, it feels weird to go around thinking/talking to yourself in the third person, but NO, you are not coming unglued. You are not insane. I promise. You might want to try writing in a journal in this way, writing about how he/she felt this and did that today. Or better yet, interview yourself in this manner, and when it feels strange or you find yourself feeling self-conscious about it, remember one thing: YOU are the most interesting subject in the world. No one else needs to know you as well as you do--so get to it!

Now I've got to run and make a meeting with my marketing guys. There's got to be a way to make millions off of this miracle cure...get ready world, I'm heading to your in-box!

Peace,

Dr. J

Practice, Practice, Practice...

2006-11-09T12:14:00.000-05:00

if you want to get to Carnegie Hall that is! AND if you want to shift your life into a higher gear! Life-Shifting is all about practice and, perhaps more importantly, practices.

On the way back from Florida I started thinking about the next crucial step in the process of Life-Shifting. After the identity crisis, the resistance, the surrender, the grieving and hopefully the laughter of release, what comes next? Well, you've got to pick yourself up and start "re-tooling", re-constructing the new, bigger and better "self". And, this step always begins with practices: new ways of being and doing in the world that serve to break up old patterns and reinforce new ones.

I have already spoken here about practices such as meditation and yoga, both of which are powerful disciplines that bring together mind, body and spirit to access greater and greater levels of self-awareness. These practices serve to awaken our powers of observation, so we can become witness to our ingrained habits of thinking, doing, and feeling. Without moving in our bodies, watching our minds in action, and learning to FEEL OUR FEELINGS, we will always be dominated by whatever grooves have been etched in our psyche from childhood conditioning.

BUT these are not the only practices that support the process of renewal. What is key in choosing a new practice is to move out from your comfort zone, to dive into a physical, emotional, mental or spiritual domain in which you are a true beginner.

In this context, I want to share a story of one of my clients, whose dive into a new practice served to restore him to wholeness, ultimately shifting him to an entirely new level of being in the world.

One day, a truly lost soul showed up at my door (referred, incidentally by another therapist who had thrown up her arms in frustration) who proceeded to announce, within a few minutes, "I have no self. I am nobody." Whew. He really knew how to jump right to the core. I was impressed, if a bit non-plussed. This guy was extremely bright, a true intellect of the highest order. He was a philosophy professor and a scholar of ancient Chinese, Greek, and Hindu culture and history. He was erudite to the extreme, and spoke in esoteric, metaphyscial jargon that snowed me with acute regularity (and I was a philosophy major!). This guy was the quintessential talking head.

As it turned out, his engorged intellect may have been the only thing that saved his life. As a child, he was the victim of parental neglect, vicious sibling rivalry, and a psychotic mother who committed suicide, right in front of him, by immolating herself. Truly, a nightmarish loss from which he had never recovered. Many years, many timezones, and many defensive postures later, this guy had wrapped himself in books and theories, epistemologies and cosmologies of an ancient world...all in hopes of avoiding the buried pain that had been thrust upon him in the present one.

He did great therapeutic work with me. Slowly, over a period of many months we applied the wisdom of the ancients to the wound of the present. He began to see that his flight to philosophy was a flight away from his pain, and he slowly connected the dots from a child in survival mode to an adult whose hold on reality was tenously tied to a bunch of archaic, if brilliant, dudes who lived thousands of years ago. At a certain point, however, in the wake of a great outflow of grief and release of repressed pain, it was clear to me that although we had reconnected his head to his heart, we were still missing his body. He had taken off the intellectual suit of armor, but not yet replaced it with a more contemporary outfit. He was in limbo, naked, raw.

One day I asked a simple question: have you considered doing something physical, trying a new exercise practice or joining a ball team? I thought he needed to start to "get in shape" for the new identity that was clearly at a formative stage. Not one for following typical routes to anywhere, he came back to me a few weeks later and said that he had taken up pottery.

He loved working with his hands, spinning the wheel and mainpulating the clay. Weeks went by, and unbeknownst to him, a discipline, a practice, took hold in him. He became fastidious in his daily attempt to craft ever more sophisticated pottery, and to his own great amazement, he was very talented at it. He crafted beautiful vases, swirlingly unorthodox bowls, undulating cups and saucers, eerily "philosophical" jars that, to my mind, seemed to synthesize ancient Greek classicism with Salvadore Dali-like abstractions.

The more he took to the practice the faster our work together progressed. Within a very short span of months, not years, he began to proclaim a new sense of self, as a teacher, lover, writer, thinker, spirit...and of course, potter. He was a revelation. Was this success a tribute to therapy? Perhaps, but I'm more convinced that his real healing and transformation, the process of true self-renewal, only became manifest when he took up the PRACTICE of making pots. Pottery became the keyboard on which he could practice, practice, practice, and if there were a Carnegie Hall for pottery, today he'd be a star performer.

Practice is a key element in any major Life-Shift, there is no doubt about it. And finding the RIGHT practices for you is a crucial step along the way. Once you've stepped off the well worn road of habituated patterns, shed the tarnished clothes of the past, and stand stark naked at a fork in the road, ask yourself: what would I never do...that I might like to do? What practice would be TOTALLY new?

What activity would require you to wear a new uniform, a new attitude, a new frame of reference? What would force you to see with a beginner's eye? Start small perhaps, but get your hands dirty. Dig in with discipline, diligence and commitment--and lo and behold, soon a new you will emerge, not only in the art, the craft, the performance, but in the body, the spirit, the soul.

I leave you today with a wonderful quote from a famous "practitioner" of life, the amazing dancer and choreographer/inventer of modern dance, Martha Graham:

“I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes the shape of achievement, a sense of one’s being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God. Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.”
Martha Graham

So, strap on those training wheels and get out on that practice track!

Peace,

Dr J

What I Really Need Right Now...

2006-11-03T13:50:00.000-05:00

is to hear a good joke! You heard me. If you've got a good one...please send it on. I could use a hearty belly laugh, a little chuckle...a good guffaw! I am still here in decidedly not-so-sunny Florida and it is beginning to feel like a long week. Everyone around me is hacking away with the flu, bronchitis, a cold--something unhealthy--which is exactly what I came south to escape, having just been released from headcold bondage myself a few short weeks ago. Alas, the world is so small these days that those nasty bugs just get on the planes and follow us around. Can't we build a scanner that will zap'em as we go through the x-ray machines? That way there would be a real, tangible benefit to the ubiquitous hassle of airport security. Hah!

Anyway, what's on my mind today is levity. Laughter. Simple, light, good humor. The opposite of yesterday's post, it strikes me that on the other side of deep sadness there should always be a hearty belly laugh. It just makes sense. The old adage that "laughter is the best medicine" is surely true to a certain degree. We all need to lighten up more. Yet, with Americans dying in Iraq for no good reason, and children being enslaved in Africa, and North Korea building a bomb--not to mention John Kerry trying to be a comedian--sometimes it is hard to find the humor in life. But we must.

I suggest that not only is humor and levity an important aspect of the healing process and thus a key leverage point for Life-Shifting, but that it is an essential building block of self-esteem, even leadership. People who can laugh at themselves make better leaders. When asked how he felt about Kerry's mangled joke that supposedly insulted the soldiers in Iraq instead of the President responsible for putting them there, Barack Obama (an up and coming senator and democratic leader) said it well: "I think that we all need to lighten up a bit. Sure, Kerry may have mispoke, but I do it myself all the time. Every day I wake up and look in the mirror and ask myself if I am willing to go out in public and be humble, human, and fallible. If I can laugh at the face staring back at me, and learn not to take myself too seriously, I know that I'm still up for the job."

Coming off my crying jag in the coastal waters of south Florida (see last post), I too, recognize the importance of lightening up and not taking myself over the top with seriosity (ok, so I'm making up words now...it's fun!). At the end of the day, we are all just hurling through space on a huge dirtball, with no idea why we are here, or where we are going. You gotta laugh at that, right?

So just for today, try a little Life-Shifting levity--make up a word and toss it out in the midst of a "heavy" conversation, slip into an Irish lilt when you feel the talk getting heated, or better yet, un-leash your inner leprechaun by strolling into an Irish pub around noon (don't drive!) and levitating a Guinness. And just in case you want to get serious, even if only for a moment, with this juxtaposition of humor and healing, check out a few of these websites:

http://www.hahainstitute.com/index.html,
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blterrorattack.htm
http://www.carolinahaha.org/

Cheerio!

Dr. J

The Healing Wisdom of Africa

2006-11-02T09:38:00.000-05:00

I'm still recovering from yesterday's post. There is something a bit unnerving about the fact that inevitably when I write something about my clients or friends in this blog, the theme that emerges somehow manages to stick to me personally for a fairly long while after I've hit "publish". Is this just the universe's way of making sure that I get my own point? Ummmm.

So I'm still buzzing with yesterdays' post. The idea of stillness. Of repose. Of hanging out in the breeze. So easy to write about but so difficult, in our speed/activity addicted culture, to do. No pun intended. Yesterday, after writing about this transitional moment in the process of Life-Shifting, I decided to take a dose of my own medicine and take a break. God forbid, in the middle of the day no less! Being in south Florida for a week helps in this endeavor, as you might imagine, as I stole off about 1pm and took a stroll on the beach. The weather had cleared and the air had become still. The waves were lapping gently against the sand and the sky was a broad-brush streak of uniform blue. Florida as the adverts proclaim it. At least for a moment.

As I strolled the beach, trying to hold myseslf to a leisurely pace, getting re-acquainted with the feeling of not going anywhere (totally against the psychological grain of a New Yorker!), I felt myself finally grow quiet inside, calm. I could feel my breath slacken and my heart rate slow. It was gloriously peaceful. Suddenly, I had the urge to dive into the azure sea. Rolling onto my back, and closing my eyes, I just floated there, still. For a long moment, I felt a sense of ease and grace, even gratitude, for the pleasure of being able to take this break in the middle of a work day.

Soon enough, too soon, I started to feel an energy of constriction creeping up my spine, into my chest, throat, and jaw. It was a very strange physical sensation and my first emotional reaction to it was fear. The fight/flight response gradually subsided, only to be replaced by an overwhelming need to cry. Strange as it sounds, basking in this moment of essnce--and delight--I was overcome with grief. I just felt a deep longing, a missing, a heartbreak. I could feel the tears come even as I resisted them. For a long moment, perhaps a few moments, I don't really remember keeping track of time at this point, I let the tears come. I lay on my back in the sea, feeling my briny tears flow down my cheeks, washing away into the vast Atlantic. The experience was very womb-like, being held by the warm, salt water; it was almost as if the ocean mother herself coaxed me into letting go, releasing pent-up, coagulated emotions of loss, of hurt, of pain. This rush of emotion wasn't really even about anything--it was more like feeling sad about everything.

Suddenly, as quickly as they had arrived, these feelings dissipated. My tears dissolved back into the ocean from which they had originated and I felt a sense of peace return. But this time, it was richer, deeper, ecstatic. A feeling of oneness, belonging--at home in the sea.

Looking back on this rich if awkward moment, I realize that I was living out Life-Shifting writ large. I had given myself, even if only in a small way, permission to be still, to stop my striving, and to allow whatever wanted to come up, to come. And it was sadness. Not endless sadness (which is what we most fear), but deep sadness. Perhap, in light of yesterday's post, this is why we all so resist stopping, being still, being empty. Because the tears might just come...and fill the ocean with our grief.

Upon reflection, I wasn't really surprised about this experience. It was a catalyst, a reminder of a profound teaching that I had received many years ago from a wise African shaman from Burkina Faso. His name is Malidoma Some, and he has written many books in which he shares the wisdom of the tribal cultures of Africa. One of his teachings is about the importance of sadness, of grieving, of truly feeling, at a deep emotional level, the truth of the impermanence of life. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to experience this wisdom first hand.

A few years ago, a good friend of mine invited Malidoma to join a group of us on a community retreat in Lake Tahoe. Malidoma happened to be living in nearby Santa Cruz at the time, and my friend had been participating in his shamanic training program for a couple of years at that point. Graciously, Malidoma accepted our invitation to come and lead us in a West African ritual experience. There were about 14 of us on this retreat and we were all very eager to be introduced to the healing wisdom of Africa.

The morning of the ritual, we all gathered in the living room of one of the homes we had rented for the retreat. It was a cozy space, with a wall of glass looking out at the lake, a huge fireplace, and an array of sofas and pillows on which we could all casually drape. Malidoma came into our circle and sat to one side, stiffly, on a hard-back chair. For a long time, he did not say a word. There was a palpable energy of anticipation in the room, as we were enchanted by the presence of having a "real" African shaman in our midst. We were totally psyched up and enthusiastic about whatever ritual he would "perform" for us.

Looking back, Malidoma must have felt a bit like a circus animal, with his rapt child-like audience looking on, holding its breath, watching and waiting for the entertainment to begin. But, truth be told, we were the circus animals that day, and Malidoma himself was watching us keenly. As we grew more and more uncomfortable, even impatient, he just sat quietly, waiting. An energy seemed to enter the room. Call it spirit, a life force, a power. Who knows. We all felt it. A presence in the silence.

The air started to feel thick, and for a moment it felt like I was breathing soup. Moisture enveloped the space. Suddenly, my good friend, Patricia, just started to choke up. It began as a soft whine from deep within her chest and grew and grew until she was sobbing uncontrollably. Her grief was heavy and deep; it sounded like her heart was breaking. Maybe it was. We all felt it and it touched us deeply. Slowly, more and more of us joined her, the women at first, but not long after, even the men were wailing. I too, succumbed, caught up in a tidal wave of grief, I felt the tears come, and come, and come again.

Soon, the entire group was awash in tears....and then laughter...and then both. Pain and joy. Two sides of the same coin. We cried until we laughed. We laughed until we cried. Malidoma sat. Still. Watching. We did all the performing...and all the learning.

This excursion into African community practice, as Malidoma, pointed out to us later, was called a grief ritual. It is a regular, every-day occurence in West African tribal life, and it is what all Westerners crave. Throughout the ensuing hour or longer that we all just cried and laughed and held each other and cried some more (are you still with me here, or have you checked out in disbelief? look now--at your resistance to this stuff!) Malidoma just sat still. His faced was filled with compassion and his energy exuded safety and patience. He was just there for us, like a father. He held the space for us to grieve, to release, to be cleansed. It was what we needed to do, only we, of course, had no idea.

Why is experiencing the pull of sadness so difficult for us westerners? When you think about it, grief is the ultimate taboo. If I had told you that Malidoma led us into some ecstatic orgy of naked lust and debauchery, you probably would have LOVED this post...but since I am writing about a ritual that was simply about a bunch of uptight, white folks spending a morning on a lake crying their hearts out...most of you are probably not impressed. Maybe even a bit critical, or at the very least, disbelieving. But why?

Why can't we cry? Why did I have to go out in the ocean in order to get in touch with the deep sadness that lies within me? This is the curse of our relentless high-productivity-addicted culture--and a crucial step in any process of self-renewal. Thanks to Malidoma and the healing wisdom of Africa, among other indigenous peoples, we still have teachers on the planet with real, useful knowledge of the human species...and its need to release and grieve the deeply heartwrenching losses that are an inevitabe aspect of life.

So today--join me on this excursion into the depths of your humanity. I encourage you to reach beyond the border of your own resistance, to reach beyond the borders of our myopic and denial-addicted culture, reach deep into your heart and feel the pull of grief that wants to break you open.

Read Malidoma Some. Have a good cry. Let your heart break. It is the way in...and the way out.

Time for a swim...and a good laugh.

Peace,

Dr J

Hanging in the Breeze

2006-11-01T09:04:00.000-05:00

Good morning from sunny...and not-so-sunny...Florida! Every time I spend time in southern Florida I'm constantly aware of the awesome presence of mother nature and her mercurial personality. Not that there isn't any "nature" to be had in New York City, but I guess just being in a more tropical environment, where the weather constantly shifts--from sun to rain to wind back to sun, sometimes in mere moments--brings the truth that life is constantly shifting front and center in my consciousness.

Today however, in the midst of a glorious sun-drenched thunderstorm, I want to write about stillness. I want to write about the space between the changes in weather: that quiet moment of empty space between clouds and sun, between wind and calm. How do we weather those moments? With grace? With gratitude? Or maybe with angst and fear and insecurity?

It seems that a number of my clients and close friends are going through very serious life-shifts at the moment. A number of them are letting go of career and relationship identities and moving through the stages of life-shifting that include feeling that an identity or label no longer fits, waking up to a pattern that no longer works, crafting a vision for the change, working through the resistance and facing the inevitable feelings of loss, sadness and grief that accompany it (see last post).

What is profoundly interesting to me though, as my friends and clients put the principles of Life-Shifting into practice, is to discover that one of the most difficult stages of the process comes at that moment seemingly between stages, that moment when the old identity has come loose and been discarded but the new one is not yet fully formed. In this moment, or week, or month--or year?--we often experience feelings of confusion, dislocation, sometimes boredom, or emptiness.

It is easy to mistake this experience for depression. When in the midst of major change and you find yourself just wanting to take a week off to do nothing but curl up on the sofa with a book, or you find yourself with an endless to-do list and no energy to do any of it, you may be tempted to think: time for the anti-depressants. Not so fast. Yes, you may feel down, even suddenly sad or flooded with grief, but this is not so much depression, as an emotional way station as you move from one way of being towards something new and unknown. It is simply nature's way of taking a breather before getting back in the game. So why is it so difficult to relax in those moments, to give ourselves a break...maybe even a rest?

We high-achiever types have a hard time with the idea of doing nothing, of being patient, of just SITTING STILL. Yet, sometimes that is exactly what is required. We need to stop all the doing and just step back and be.

Hanging out in the unknown, however, can be very uncomfortable. It goes against the grain of our fast-paced, always going somewhere kind of life. To make matters worse, this limbo state may be particularly acute if you are undergoing life-shifts in more than one domain: relationship, career, family, etc. Sometimes life just swoops in and uproots us completely such that many of the identities that we have constructed get torn asunder all at once.

Reverend August Gold, who is the spiritual director at a wonderful spiritual center in New York City called the Sacred Center, tells people that whenever they feel like their whole life has been uprooted, well, it probably has! She likens our personal journey to a plant in a pot. When we grow plants and they become pot-bound, what do we do? We go out and buy a bigger pot. Then we proceed to dig them up,roots and all, put new soil and nutrients in the larger pot, and re-plant them. Surely, if we were to ask how the plants feel about this experience, we would hear that they find it rather traumatic. Yet, it is a necessary part of their lifecycle, and without it, they would be come totally pot-bound and quickly begin to rot from the inside out.

So it is with humans--and our tightly bound lives! Reverend August reminds us that whenever we are ready to grow into a bigger life, a more satisfying life, a more fully realized life, we have to step out of that comfy, little "pot", and find a bigger one, a more nutritious, fresh, vitalized place, where we can sink in roots and, ultimately, spread our wings. This is what Life-Shifting is all about. Simple...but not easy...for as Rev. August points out, there is always this in-between moment when we are not quite out of the old pot or fully in the new one . Plucked from the old identity and not yet grounded in the safe soils of the new one, we hang in mid-air for a while, roots dangling, precarious and vulnerable. This is the empty place. The place of waiting. The place of raw vulnerabiity. It can be a scary moment. And it may seem like forever.

But, perhaps, we can see it another way--as simply a necesary part of the journey. A breathing point. A way station. My friends who are currently undergoing major life-shifts are busy trying to avoid these dangling roots kind of moments--they sometimes strike me as just a bit too busy, a tad too focused on what's next. The truth is that other than just having a vision, an inkling, or an intuition, what the future will hold is beyond our knowing. What's next is a bigger pot, no doubt about that...but it has not yet arrived. Sometimes we just have to wait. The universe is on its timetable, not ours.

I tell them to relax. Read a book. Put your feet up and watch a little TV. No, you are not becoming lazy. No, you are not depressed. You are in transition. Be gentle, patient...and most of all, nurture yourself. A good, hot bubble bath may be in order.

So the next time you see a break in the clouds, or feel the breeze suddenly go dead and the air become still, stop for a moment and FEEL THE STILLNESS deep within. Is there a feeling of momentary panic, of emptiness, or perhaps a glimmer of wonder...maybe awe?

Life may be constantly in motion; we all may be constantly shifting; yet, there are moments--fortunately--when all is quiet. Empty. Waiting.

In those moments, can you just hang in the breeze?

There will always be plenty to do.

Peace,

Dr. J

R-E-S-P-E-C-T...

2006-10-26T08:04:00.000-04:00

Good morning! Can you hear the beat? I don't know about you but whenever I see those 7 letters written this way--R-E-S-P-E-C-T--I immediately hear the sound of Aretha Franklin's 1967 classic hit pounding in my ears. If you haven't heard it for a while, I highly recommend you dig into that old record collection...I don't know about you, but Aretha gets me going every time!

And this time, I needed her. You see, the topic for today's post has been swirling around in my emotional space since a week ago, when I last spoke with my writing partner, Judy, and we started to dissect one of the key, if not THE KEY principle of Life-Shifting: RESISTANCE. In fact, if there were a song titled "R-E-S-I-S-T-A-N-C-E"...by just about anyone (of Aretha's stature!)I'd surely have had that one pounding in my head for a week. Bottom line: it has taken me a week to work through my own resistance in order to be able to start writing about it! So, that's why I need to start off this post by showing a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Respect for resistance. Respect for my ability to ignore, deny, and otherwise be completely unconscious to my own resistance. Resistance is stealthy, subtle, and unfathomably powerful. And yet, without working through it, there is absolutely no chance for life to shift in any meaningful way.

By now, if you've read last week's post on death, you may be saying to yourself, well Dr J, this one is rather obvious: we all resist death! Even those tiny, seemingly imperceptible 'deaths' that I was speaking about, like giving up my attachment to caffeine (I confess, I have a StarB right by my left hand here, that habit is still very much alive!), we resist with all our might. So, of course, resistance, in all its blatant and not-so-blatant manifestations, is going to rear up and make its presence known whenever change is afoot. On some level, I suppose what we are pointing to here is a survival instinct. It is deep...and it does not budge without a battle.

For those of you with a psychological orientation, and perhaps a Jungian bent, what I am talking about here is the resistance of the ego (that sense of a personality called "me")to relinquish its hold on what I might call the little "selves" (those labels and identities to which we become attached, without which we feel lost and vulnerable)in order for something new, something bigger, something MORE--what Jung might refer to as an archetypal Self (with a capital "S")--to emerge. The dynamic here represents a deep internal conflict between our urge to grow, change and become more fully human and the urge to remain small, safe, and comfortable. Resistance, both conscious and unconscious, holds the key.

The big challenge when working with resistance is recognizing it in the first place! You see, for most of us resistance appears in the form that I like to call "P & P"--pain and projection. Inevitably, as life goes along and we hit a snag--a breakdown in relationship, a fight with the boss, a life event that displeases us--we can shift very quickly (sometimes in a nano-second!) from feeling joy to feeling pain. In those first seconds or moments of pain, we immediately RESIST the feeling and our ego's response is to project the feelings on to someone else. It shows up in subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle)forms but always with declarations, spoken or unspoken, that start with every pronoun except "I". "I" is last on the list.

This is perhaps the one and only time when it is NOT "me first". Rather, first on the list we find: "you","they" or "he/she", as in "you did it", "It's your fault", "They did it", etc. This is projection 101. Starting from the day we realized that it is easier to blame others than to accept criticism and take the heat--somewhere around four years old--we start earning our Ph.D. in projection. Real problems only begin many years later when the "victim" mode becomes the default mechanism, and we become obvlious to the fact that what we are really doing is RESISTING having to look at ourselves, RESISTING change, RESISTING taking full responsibiltiy for our reactions to the world. Yuck.

Of course, none of us is immune to this "P & P" affliction. This past weekend my partner and I spent a gloriously romantic weekend in Montreal, enjoying the sights and sounds of this deliciously urbane, European city that lies only one hour north of New York by plane. As you might imagine there were many moments of ecstatic joy--amazing food (real butter croissants--instead of the cardboard Starbucks version), amazing archtitecture (we want to do a whole book just on creative staircases on the back streets of Montreal!), amazing shopping (shops in New York should send all their sales staff to Montreal for training...), etc.

There were also a few lows. Tense moments of indecision about what to do next, uncomfortable conversations in the midst of a splendid dinner as politics made its way onto the scene, or disagreements over quantity versus quality as fatigue began to set in. Truth is, I came back exhausted. Happy yes, but also aware of an indeterminate PAIN in my gut, my back, and my head, that was screaming: "if only they hadn't done X, the trip might have been perfect." Now X, of course, represents a long list of what my partner did WRONG. Those irritating things that, dammit, I just don't like. So are you thinking yet that I am a brat? Well, you should be. I am. We all are. Just stop for a moment and think about the last travel experience you had with a partner or friend in which you came home thinking, "never again!" Ummm, look in any mirrors after that trip?

To make matters worse, I carried this foul energy around with me for a couple of days, mostly holding it as "not my fault" that I was tired, irritable, and unable to sit down and write about resistance! HAH! There's a laugh. I was so caught up in my own resistance to looking at myself and how little I am willing to change, how tight I hold on to my own self-centered bad habits, how little criticism my ego is able to handle--that I became virtually unable to move. But MOVING is what breaks resistance.

And that is exactly what was required--moving.

And here, once again (see earlier posts), is the simple, but not easy, answer to the dilemma of resistance: it is always held first, in the body. It shows up as anxiety, stress, aches and pains and if it is not attended to promptly (which is often the case with our tendency towards denial!), it rapidly devolves into illness, even depression. So what to do? Well, you've got to shake it loose! Break up the pattern of victim energy that settles into mind, heart and body. Only then you can see it, be with it, work through it, laugh at it (and yourself), and let it go!!!

For me, yoga helps. Yoga is all about resistance. Yoga brings you right up to the edge of your physical, emotional, and mental stopping points, and asks you each time, in a new way, to move through them. Yoga, in its goal of bringing us bodily, emotionally, and spiritually into union with the divine within, asks us to break through the boundaries of who we think we are and what we think we can do/be.

Yesterday's class was all about opening the hips. Yikes. Bad news for me. As the instructor pointed out, the lower chakra area of the body--the hips, lower back and abdomen--are where we hold most of our fear, anger, and, you guessed it, resistance. It is that part of the body that grounds us and holds us and supports our stance as upright beings on the planet. BUT, it is also that part of the body that most resists change. Hips, especially for men, are usually the most resistant to opening, releasing, and relaxing. Perfect timing for me, as it were...a gift from Spirit.

So as I suffered through the excruciating pain (with no one to project onto, except perhaps the "sadistic" instructor!), of opening my hip sockets in directions I never even knew legs could go, something snapped. Not a bone, thank god, but my ego. I surrendered, or should I say, "it" surrendered...and something deeper, more essential, more loving, compassionate and real, emerged. Returned. Awakened. But truth be told, something also had died in this process, something heretofore invulnerable: my self-righteousness. My attachment to being right. Split open, both figurately and literally, my hips hurt and my heart broke. I wept.

From that moment forward, I withdrew the projection, took back the sword of responsibility, and softened to the core. I remembered my compassion for myself, for my partner, even for the yoga instructor...but most importantly, for myself.

We all go through this cycle over and over again...and no matter how good we get at turning our attention inward, onto our own RESISTANCE, we always still feel a bit like a deer caught in the headlights. What me? Project? Still, eh? Ouch. Ok, time to lighten up and be HUMAN. Learn to respect the big "R"...and know that it is just trying to protect you.

So, as you move through your day today, get humble...and look for those pain points...don't slough them off as simple "anxiety", "aches & pains"...instead, with deep humility, consider these questions:

1. Am I willing to consider that my stress, my anxiety, and all my aches and pains may be my body's way of signaling that change is afoot?

2. Am I willing to consider that some identity that I wear as protective armor might have outworn its usefulness?

3. What do I most resist? Is it possible that this may be what I most need to change?

Tough questions, eh? Well, to the practice of Life-Shifting, they are core. They deserve our respect. And a chuckle. Maybe a guffaw. At the very least, we might as well welcome them with a smile--they're likely to be hanging around for a long time to come!

Respectfully yours,

Dr J

Every Day a Little Death...

2006-10-19T15:31:00.000-04:00

In the parlor...in the bedroom...OK so I like Stephen Sondheim! As many of you will know, this is a line from a famous song in one of his musicals. Perhaps not the most upbeat note with which to kick off a post, but what the hell. Death is on my mind today. In a good way. You see, after dialoguing a bit with my writing partner, Judy, about how we approach the themes of my recent post on labels and identities, we came to the conclusion that one of the most difficult aspects of "Life-Shifting" is letting go of an identity to which we have become accustomed, even attached. It feels like death. Not the real thing, perhaps, but in the moment, pretty darned close.

Truth is, we like to KNOW who we are at any given moment; we like to be comfortable with the role we are playing, and especially as adults, we loathe having to be the beginner. Surely, this is true for many reasons (and I'll probably write about more of them as I go along with this blog), but one of the main ones, I think, is that making room for a new identity requires us to let go of an old one. And letting go in many ways resembles the experience of death. Even if it is just a little death, as Stephen Sondheim sings, it is death nonetheless. Painful. Sad. Hard.

But very necessary. How else can we welcome in the sense of possibility, the energy of creativity and spontaneity, if we don't step off the comfortable plateaus of identity that we build for ourselves? Sure, in moments when life suddenly shifts and doors open to new possibilities, it can feel exhilarating and fresh. But it can also feel terrifying and frightening, as we step out of our known frames of reference and dangle precariously in the unknown.

Yesterday, I spoke with a client who sees himself as hanging on the edge of a precipice in his corporate job: things in the company have shifted dramatically around him and now he is frustrated and unhappy and feeling like a victim of circumstances--bad bosses, bad economics, bad timing, bad colleagues...you name it. His star in the company, however, has been on the rise. So he has choices: 1. he can quit (but he doesn't have a job yet; 2. he can go demand what he wants--a new role, a promotion, a new organization structure; 3. or he can sit back, do nothing, and let the frustration build until he gets sick...or worse, fired for having a bad attitude. Sound familiar? I have seen this kind of situation many many times in my career as an executive coach...and...I have been in this situation myself a few times.

Looking back, I wish I had been less stuck in fear, more willing to hang over the edge...more willing to trust myself...and life. Why? Becase every time I finally got myself over that edge, out into the open sky of possibility and out of the muck of victim-hood, amazing things would happen. Whole new vistas of possibility would appear that I had NEVER SEEN BEFORE. But I had to shed that part of my identity that was holding me back: it had to die, to be buried up there on the cliff, in order for the birth of a new me to occur. Now, I am not advocating that you leap before you look, nor have I told my client to jump willy-nilly into the unknown. BUT I have told him that after learning all he can about the landscape before him, he should go ahead and MAKE A DECISION. TAKE THE LEAP. Let go. Let that small, used-up, no-longer useful identity that he claims is his...die.

So strange as it sounds, I'm asking that you think about death today. Is it a good day to die? What in your life needs to be killed off? Think of all the different labels that you wear, the ways you supposedly "know" yourself to be: "worker-bee", "boss", "professional", "adult", "parent", "over-weight", "out-of-shape", "non-spiritual", "hard-worker", "always tired", "oppressed", "underpaid", etc... Is there one you'd be willing to part with? Even a small one? For example, I'm contemplating the possibility of letting my identity as a "coffee addict" die. Even as I write these words, I stand on the precipice: could I actually walk by a Starbucks and not go in? (Stay tuned). Birth requires death.

In closing, just in case you happen to think after reading this not-so-happy-go-lucky post that Judy and I are just sadists in disguise as healers and transformers, let me share with you a bit of wisdom from a modern day philosopher/spiritual teacher whom many admire. Eckert Tolle in his book "Stillness Speaks" says of death the following:

"People tend to be uncomfortable with endings, because every ending is a little death. ..Whenever an experience comes to an end--a gathering of friends, a vacation, youer children leaving home--you die a little death...Often this leaves behind a feeling of emptiness that most people try hard not to feel, not to face. If you can learn to accept and even wecome the endings in your life, you may find that the feeling of emptiness that initially felt uncomfortable turns into a sense of inner spaciousness that is deeply peaceful. By learning to die daily in this way, you open yourself to Life." (p.106)

So it seems that Judy and I are not the only advocates of a little dose of death now and then. In fact, we believe that one of the crucial principles of "Life-Shifting" in practice, is taking the leap into that "emptiness" of which Tolle speaks. It is in that space, that spaciousness, as he puts it, that the new you is born, every day.

Tomorrow, my client will walk into his bosses office and make a decision, take a stand, and become a different person. He sees himself as a leader of others....now, just maybe, by stepping off that cliff of the known, he will become different kind of leader--a leader of self.

Peace...gotta run to Starbucks...Dr J

Always...Never...

2006-10-17T09:59:00.000-04:00

New York is truly a magical place. I find it to be like living in a ready-made "Life-Shifting" laboratory, where every idea or theory that I ever come up with seems to get played out on the streets, on a daily basis. Take yesterday, for example. Just coming up from the 49st N/R subway, emerging in the glare and electric hum of Times Square, I witnessed one of the core themes of "Life-Shifting" played out right in front of me. A I exited the subway, I heard the deafening roar of jack-hammering only a few feet away. Right at the entrance to the subway, it seems, there was drilling for oil underway (probably nothing that exciting, actually...). Anyway, as I slowly made my way through the din, wincing in pain at the screech of the jack-hammer, I glanced at the construction worker who was wielding the hammer, and lo and behold, he was not even wearing ear plugs! I could'nt believe my ears...or should I say HIS ears. How could he stand it? I thought Jack-hammerers ALWAYS wore earplugs or hardhats or sound proof helmits or SOMETHING. But no, this guy was happily hammering away, sans any protection whatsoever. Well, if that wasn't enough of a shock, I turned in the other direction, and lo and behold again, there was a homeless man, a street bum, as we might unfortunately deem him, sitting on the curb looking very dirty and unkempt, except for one thing: he was wearing a very expensive pair of sound-reducing headphones, the kind that cost upwards of 300 hundred bucks in an electronics store. Top-drawer. Needless to say, I was dumbfounded at the juxtaposition of these two unlikely crashers of the sound-barrier. Of course, I thought, one NEVER sees a street bum wearing expensive head phones, whereas, jack-hammerers ALWAYS wear ear protection! Until yesterday. Ah, New York. Another street-level lesson in Life-Shifting!

You see, one of the key principles of "Life-Shifting" that my writing partner, Judy and I are currently working on for our book, "Life-Shifting: Mastering the Art of Self-Renewal" (see Post #1 for more info)has to do with the formation and re-formation of personal identities. As we see it, if there is no true "Self" (see earlier posts)to rely upon, then we are constantly creating and crafting our "personal identity" and, like a set of clothes (or ear phones), we take on labels: doctor, lawyer, construction worker, husband, boyfriend, son, daughter, wife, old guy, bum, etc. Now do these labels actually identify who we REALLY are? Of course not. Are these identities static or constantly changing and shifting? Shifting, of course. So how do we come to recognize and KNOW each other, our loved ones, ourselves? Well, the obvious answer is that we get very attached to our labels...we BECOME our identities. We may know deep down that the self is always in flux and constantly shifting, but living with that awareness tends to make us uncomfortable. So, we generally ignore this truth and rely on the labels. We relax into knowing that construction workers act a certain way...and likewise, street bums act a certain way...until they don't!!! That is the wake-up call.

But why is this idea of labels and attachments to identities so important? Well, just think of how often you say the following words to your significant others: Always. Never. Do they ALWAYS forget to wash the dishes? Do they NEVER tell you that you are pretty? Do they ALWAYS arrive late to meet you? DO they NEVER fail to disappoint? We all do this, instinctively. We get used to certain behaviors and attitudes and ways that our loved ones ARE, in relationship with us...and that's it. They BECOME their identity. They take on the outfit--the label--that we dress them in, permanently. Of course, then when they leave us, or rebel, or get angry at being reduced to a label, or worse, a stereotype, we are shocked. What it comes down to is this: how can we give our loved ones the space to CHANGE and BECOME and GROW if we are not willing to see that they are not ALWAYS/NEVER anything?

But even this tragey of de-limiting our loved ones is not the real crime: we do this to ourselves as well. We take on identities, we label ourselves with endless ALWAYS's and NEVER's, crafting neat identity prisons from which we can seemingly NEVER escape. How many times have you said to yourself: "I am ALWAYS falling into XX"(XX = debt? trouble? fights? depression?) or "I NEVER have any XX" (XX= success? luck? happiness?). Are these statements really true? I doubt it. Sure, we may not have had much success or joy or whatever recently, or perhaps we have had conflicts with our partner or taken on some debt...but ALWAYS? NEVER? NOT.

Here is the principle to think about: to shift your life, you must drop your attachments to who you think you are and who you think others are. These are labels. Not truths. The deeper truth is that we are always changing, always becoming, always flowing in an endless cycle of birth and death and re-birth. Today we are a construction worker with bad hearing, tomorrow we are a street bum with good ears! Life, like the streets of New York, is filled with surprises!

So, just for today, try this exercise: watch how often you use the words ALWAYS and NEVER in association with others and most importantly, with yourself. Count'em. Banish'em. Open up to the possibility that you are more than your personal set of labels: make the shift and open up the space.

Have an adventure in Life-Shifting!

Peace,

Dr J

Embodied Wisdom

2006-10-12T11:28:00.000-04:00

I love the adage that I heard once at a talk by Margaret Wheatley (of "Leadership and the New Science" fame!): "Planning is a defense against God". So true, so true. The best laid plans of mice and men..or in other words we start out as men and end up as mice...no no...that's not right. Well, no matter, point is...getting this theme of "Life-Shifting" out in the world and understood obviously ain't gonna be easy...simple, yes. Easy, no. Of course, there is nothing new here...as my post about Buddha reminds me...but still...difficult messages are sometimes hard to digest. What I am trying to say is that I got a bit of flack from a good friend for yesterday's post. You see, he didn't seem to think that my bedtime example of one of the core principles of "Life-Shifting"--that everything is always in flux, therefore everything is possible-- was very successful. AND, he makes a great point.

You see, although he understood how in a situation like lying in bed feeling over-heated and frustrated lends itself to reflection, shifting, possibility and a warm blanket...what he didn't feel clear about was how this principle works on a bigger scale. What if you are really stuck with something in life? Stuck in your relationship or in your career...or worse stuck in depression. Something like that. This is a really valid question because clearly there is more to "Life-Shifting" than learning how to tolerate discomfort in the bedroom. Ultimately, the entire process and set of principles that I am calling "Life-Shifting" is designed to move us through the stuck places in life that take us away from feeling that sense of possibility, opportunity, opening, and joy. But we have to start somewhere.

I chose to start with a small, rather insignificant example...on a physical,emotional level, for a very specific reason: I truly believe that every real shift in us begins on a micro-level, in the body, with a felt sense of the internal fluctuation, movement and impermance of me, myself, and I. This is where the opening first occurs that life could be--well, OTHERWISE. Otherwise (ha!), if we just try to "understand" the concepts of "Life-Shifting" and take on huge changes based on the "theory" (as most of us do most of the time!), my experience has been that, despite our best efforts, the change we desire rarely happens (at least for long!). Thinking about a situation and learning new ways of understanding is essential, but most of the time, this is not enough to get us off our butts and into the actual ACTION-MODE that constitutes real change.

What I am pointing to here is what my good friend and wonderful teacher, Tom Lutes, likes to call, "embodied wisdom". His point is that unless we actually get down and dirty with ourselves, and on a very granular, practical level EMBODY the theory and concepts that might shift our perspective or break us open to a new way of being/living, it is all just good ideas. Fodder for conversation, perhaps, food for thought, for sure, but not the nourishment of deep change that we seek.

So where does the rubber hit the road: the body. Only by starting to flex, practice and play with the concepts of "Life-Shifting" in tiny, physical, felt-sense ways, will the possibility of bigger shifts, bigger change, and true wisdom regarding the nature of self (that there isn't one!) start to accrue. Of course, we will tackle the big stuff--that's what we are all about here. But just as simply knowing that you should lose weight or stop smoking or break up with that guy/gal doesn't usually get you to SHIFT GEARS in any real sense...you've got to start somewhere. Start small. Wake up in the body, here now. Feeling the movement, the flux, and ultimately, the possibility of flow, surrender and grace. It will expand...things will shift...and change, yes, big change, will occur.

Let me leave you for today with another example to ponder: yoga. For me, practicing yoga presents a grand opportunity to really SEE/FEEL/SENSE how this key principle of "Life-Shifting" really works. Yoga takes you into your body through the breath, the posture, the stretch. It is a practice that constantly surprises, because just when I think that I cannot stand the pain of that stretch, or that I will never get my body to move into that position, something shifts and lo and behold--it happens. I'm there. IT/Me constantly amazes...and constantly brings me to new levels of awareness, joy, even ecstacy. Life moving through. Never stopping. Always expanding. Try it. You'll see!

Peace,

Dr J

Getting Under the Covers

2006-10-11T08:45:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I didn't sleep too well last night and therefore I probably shouldn't try writing this blog today...but maybe... since I'm not very well rested, my post will be short (which many of my loyal fans will be pleased to read!)...

Today I thought I'd share a real-time example of what I was trying to point to and begin to discuss in yesterday's post: the idea that the "self"--that elusive sense of me, myself, and mine--is always in flux. I realize that depending on how you read into this idea, it can be good news or bad news. It can wake us up to the reality that EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE because there are no constraints AND it can bring us down to the depths of despair as we realize that there is no solid ground on which to stand anymore. In the world of "Life-Shifting", you can't just turn to the politicians, or the priests, or even the psychologists to get the "right" answer for how to live your life...you've got to do the work. Yikes.

It is all so simple...but not ever easy.

Last night I lived through a granular example of Life-Shifting in action. Let me explain. I live in one of those old fifties apartment buildings that was built after the invention of central air conditioning but before the addition of individual thermostats. What that means is that every year on a certain day in April and again in October, my building superintendent pulls the switch. In one fell swoop my apartment goes from having a/c to having heat. It is all very cut and dry: one day you get cold air and the next you get hot. No regulation. No choice. Nada. Well, yesterday was the day we went from a/c to heat, which might not have been so bad except the temperature outside was still almost 70 degrees when I went to bed. TO make matters worse, I really don't like to sleep with the windows open in the middle of New York City. Only as a last resort do I turn to earplugs!

So, you can probably guess why I didn't sleep well. The temperature was too hot and I was too hot and there wasn't any way to regulate it. Lying in bed under the covers I was aware of two things most of the night: 1. My body does not have an a/c vs. heat kind of temperature gauge. It is quite capable of feeling hot, cold, warm and everthing in between all at once; 2. My mind seems to follow my body down the rabbit hole of either pleasure or pain. When the body feels comfortable, the mind may relax (or not!), but when the body feels uncomfortable the mind tends to fuel the negativity. The bottom line on the experience: It all kept changing minute to minute, breath to breath. The movement from comfort to discomfort and back again is fluid, complex and dynamic.

The world that we deal with everyday often seems to operate in hot/cold kind of ways, yet the human dilemma is that we are not black/white kinds of beings. We are both/and kinds of beings. There were moments last nite when my toes were cold, my head was sweating, my head was aching...and yet my thoughts were elsewhere. So where was I? Was I on HEAT or A/C? Yes and yes?

So here is a micro-level example of how the key principle of "Life-Shifting"--that all is in flux--can be the starting point for creativity and possibility. It is all about choice. At the end of a couple of hours of fluxuating and frustrating hot/cold bedroom drama, I made a choice: turn off the heat, plug in the earplugs, open the windows and change blankets. And more importantly, I chose to surrender. Let it be. Deal with the outer world's constraints in the most creative way I could think of in the moment...and then just accept what is. At about 3am, after tossing and turning and finally deciding to follow my cat's lead (he had been sleeping soundly through the whole drama), I relaxed...put down my head...and slept.

So, next time you are feeling frustrated, irritated, or down...ask yourself: what is under the covers? Is it all black/white, good or bad? Is there something going on underneath that you may be missing? Is there a creative response to what appears to be a bad situation? Is it possible to just let go and relax? Won't it all change anyway...no matter what you do today?

Perhaps you just need to sleep on it.

Peace,

Dr J

Thanks to Buddha, et. al.

2006-10-10T09:36:00.000-04:00

Well, it is another glorious sunny warm morning in New York City and there is plenty of jack-hammering and horn-honking going on outside my window...so I feel quite at home and at peace! Amidst the paradoxes of New York--sunshine, noise pollution, blue skies and trash collectors--it feels fitting to take a first stab at explaining a bit what the idea of "Life-Shifting" is all about.

Many people have said to me, "well, my life is certainly ALWAYS shifting...but what are you trying to get at with the phrase?" My first response is to say, "you've got it!" That's basically the core principle of "Life-Shifting", that life itself is constantly shifting. Everything is in a state of flux and nowhere is that more noticeable than in our own lives. So how do we manage it? What do we hold on to? How do we find peace and happiness in the midst of the raging river called life? How do we "go with the flow", as the sages would have us do? Of course, we know intuitively that there are no easy answers to these kinds of questions. And the principles and practices of "Life-Shifting" don't provide any. However, what we can do...and what the approach to personal and spiritual growth that I call "Life-Shifting" can do to support us...is to help us live more deeply, richly, and fully, letting go of easy answers and instead--embracing the questions.

But before we head off on further adventures in the land of "Life-Shifting", I want to stop and express some gratitude for a few of the many teachers that have tilled the soil before me. Although there have been many, and continue to be many teachers that cross my path and enrich my perspectives (in fact, that pretty much would include EVERYONE that I meet!), there are three main characters that are probably most responsible for the birth of "Life-Shifting": James Hillman, the Buddha, and Dr. Phil (a great trio, no?). So before I get any further into explanations about the principles of "Life-Shifting", I need to give these guys there due.

First, let me thank the Buddha. Just about exactly (how's that for equivocating!)10 years ago this fall, I went to my first Buddhist Vipassana meditation retreat. For ten days I sat in silence, eyes closed, trying desperately not to move, to follow my breath, and to banish the endles swirl of thoughts that raced through my mind like the Daytona 500. I learned many things on that first foray into Buddhist practice: that pain and pleasure are very similar emotions and always in motion, never static; that my mind constantly regurgitates an endless litany of complaints about everyone and everything; that the small details of life's wonders--a blade of grass, a passing cloud, the taste of a raisin--can bring tears of ecstasy. But most importantly, I learned that there is no such thing as a "self".

Just as the Buddha had pointed out thousands of years ago, I finally got to "discover" this truth on my own: where ever I looked for "myself" during those ten days in silence, I never found much there. I never heard the "real" voice called "mine"; I never got to the root of my essential being; I never figured out ANYTHING about who I am or where I am going. Nothing. Nada. Yikes. AND..Whew! Wow! What a relief. Thanks to the Buddha I learned the key principle that forms the foundation of "Life-Shifting": Relax. There's no there there. Everything, including me, is always changing, always shifting, never complete, never finished, never arriving. So, thanks to the Buddha for bringing me to a whole new state of awareness about what/who I am...and am not.

And so... the Buddha brought me to Dr. Phil.

I sometimes call myself the "anti-Dr. Phil". I have read his books and I actually have been touched deeply by the wisdom and heart in his approaches to healing. But, and it is a big but, I think his core premise is all wrong. Sorry, Doc, but thanks for waking me up to what REALLY matters. You see, his book called "Self Matters", which is the one that got him started on the road to Oprah and to national fame, starts with a devilishly false premise: that there is a Self..and that it MATTERS.

Of course, I certainly respect his endeavor to support those who have never gained (due to childhood trauma and hurt) a sense of what he calls the "authentic" self; I engage in this healing work myself with clients. It is important stuff. But at the end of the day, we have to remember that the "self" is something rather elusive, something that is never finished getting constructed...and it never will be finished. The work of re-membering your authentic self (or what I would call re-building your ego)may be an important step in personal growth and healing, but it is really just a beginning. Just a starting point. Life is never that simple.

What do we do with people who have achieved a so-called successful life--money, achievement, career, family--when they appear in my office saying: "Everything I've built is falling apart...my family, my career, my sense of self!"? Or even more commonly, "Is this all there is to life?" After hearing these words hundreds of times from many people over the years, I can't help but surmise that Dr. Phil's simplistic path to the "authentic self" just doesn't cut the mustard. It seems that as soon as most people have a modest sense of "self" cobbled together, something or someone manages to come along and tear it apart. So where does that leave us? Well, on the heels of Dr. Phil's valuable contribution, we embark on the good ship "Life-Shifting".

And that brings me to James Hillman.

Dr. Hillman is famous for being the ultimate contrarian, the psychologist who is most committed to de-bunking the mythic "truths" constructed by just about ANY psychological frame of reference. Hillman's approach to knowledge, which he outlines beautifully in his book, "We've had 100 Years of Psychotherapy and the World's Getting Worse," is what he calls "seeing through". He loves being the ant in the ointment that refuses to let us get too attached to "knowing" anything. Everything, and he means everything, can and should be "seen through" as a construction of the mind--a mythological interpretation of an unknowable reality--and our job is to constantly be on the look-out for the fundamentalism in our thinking. Well, with Hillman's powerful lens of deconstruction pointed squarely at the work of Dr. Phil and other big "self" promoters, we find ourselves grappling with a whole host of questions that perhaps really do matter...the ones that many of my clients are facing...the ones that form the permeable and flexible (always shifting never static) foundation "stones" of "Life-Shifting":

--->How do we hold "it" together when everything is constantly coming part?
--->If there is no "Self" to hide behind or cling to, then how do we live?
--->If change really is the only "constant", how do we make life work?
---->Is there any meeting point between my thoughts, my emotions and my physical body?
---->Whew! Can I relax and just not know?
---->What DOES really matter?

(As an aside...if you're getting my drift that we'll be living in the unknown from now on...welcome on board! If you would like a bit of an anchor for the voyage, I suggest you see the movie: "What the Bleep?" , which came out about a year ago. It is a uniquely creative film that gets at the core principles of what I am calling "Life-Shifting" as seen through the lens of quantum physics!)

So there you have it! These are the starting points for the Life-Shifting approach to healing and personal growth. With Life-Shifting, rather than seeking buttoned-up answers...we choose to step off the hard ground of black/white, right/wrong, normal/abnormal etc. and step gingerly into a diffent kind of space...a space of inquiry...a space of opening...a space of possibility. And so, thanks to Dr. Hillman, Dr. Buddha, and Dr. Phil, we are compelled to "jump off" the construction ladder called "building up the self"...and begin the journey down a path less linear and concrete and breakable...a path more flowing, fluid, and graceful; more like a spiral of possibility.

Life-Shifting, as we will discover together, is all about endless change, endless contraction and expansion, endless identity formation and re-formation, endless creativity and renewal. Re-invention. Rejuvenation. Renovation. Self-renewal. This is the key.

Have a great day and stay tuned!!

Peace,

Dr J

Adventures in Life-Shifting #1

2006-10-09T11:23:00.000-04:00

Good morning and welcome to "Adventures in Life-Shifting"...my first adventure in blogging! It feels fitting that this is Columbus Day, the day that we celebrate Columbus' so-called discovery of America (not sure that the indigenous people who were already here were too thrilled with being "discovered"...but that is another blog!), because it feels like I am discovering a new world myself today with the inception of this blog. It is exciting, perhaps a bit intimidating, but most of all exhilarating to know that I will have an opportunity to reach out, share, and connect with people around this new landscape of transformation that I call "Life-Shifting".

There are two main goals that I hope to accomplish in writing this blog: 1. I want to share with you some of the amazing gifts--truly gold nuggets of learning--that I receive almost daily from my clients and my interaction with wonderful teachers, students and friends. I am blessed (if sometimes lovingly beaten over the head!) with offerings of insights, suggestions, feedback, and just plain "moments" (those amazing "aha" experiences) that never fail to SHIFT my life in ways that transform and renew me each and every day. I often wake up in the morning or lie down to sleep at night and think, "Wow. THAT was a crazy moment...or a profound dream...or a powerful interaction. What did I learn from that? How am I changed forever? (yes...I'm, not exaggerating here: changed forever!). If only I could share this moment with others, with my clients, with the world!" And now I can...or at least I will try. Some of these "Life-Shifting" experiences are difficult to put into words...and so I may stumble and grapple with how to express them...but bear with me on this...for there is gold in them there hills!

2. Secondly, I want to use the medium of this blog to offer you an opportunity to get a first-hand look at some of the work that my writing partner, great friend and psychotherapist, Judy Fox, and are I doing as we collaborate on our first book project: Life-Shifting: Mastering the Art of Self-Renewal". As we frame the chapters and flesh out drafts together, we will share some of our writing and thinking. Some of this may come across as formative, even rough and not quite articulated just the way we want it, but our hope in sharing these previews with you is to encourage feedback and dialogue. We are as much students of Life-Shifting as we are teachers...and the more ways we can practice, hone our thoughts and clarify our ideas, the better the finished product will ultimately be.

I hope you will enjoy listening in on Judy's and my musings. I hope you will bear with us and have a bit of patience, as we grapple with miracles and paradox and life's un-ending surprises. We want to hear from you and learn about how your life is shifting and moving and changing in amazingly powerful...or even mundane ways. SO join me. Join us. Let's play!!!

Have a great holiday and if you're in New York City...relish this glorious sunshine!

Peace. Dr J