Today's post is an excerpt--the beginning and ending points--from this morning's Zoom talk:
This morning I'm speaking on "If Only". Here we navigate the border between fantasy (if only it were true or another imagined way), frustration (if only it this had not happened, or if only it wasn't like this), and manifestation (actual expression). The idea of this talk erupted after meditation, as I reflected on a powerful sense of consciousness and the goodness of life and wondered if this goodness of life, and our capacity to be conscious of that good, is chicken or egg. Does the goodness of life seize my awareness, or does my affirmation of good as a conscious choice, when I choose to believe life is good, and refocus my attention on the good, does that activity actually shape reality, so that life reflects and bends to that Goodness? I raise the question this new year, 2024, in the form of our 'If Only' responses to life events-- our options of conflict and dissatisfaction, or accepting life as it is, or re-shaping life...
The real value of' 'If Only' is found in the shift to 'What If'? But the paradox is that if we are always asking "What If?, we miss the deep contentment of what IS. With 'What If' though, we take our block, our discontent and turn it to possibilities. I say possibilities, plural, because part of the problem with 'If Only', is that we often mean 'only if'. In other words, we get stuck on one solution to our discontent. Yet, discontent drives us to creativity and change. Creativity that takes us beyond discontent has more that one possibility; its movement is multi-directional. There's a simple technique you can try: sit down and generate 10 possible 'What If's', instead of the one 'If Only'! Chances are they will range from re-do's of the past, to current practicality that may seem unlikely, to a few wild cards, seemingly fantasy. You can leave one as the possibility you don't yet see, but assume is there. This list makes room, openings for movement. When your head or feelings echo 'If Only'...pull out the 'What If' list. Besides stimulating creativity and opening alternatives, there is research to suggest unwanted thoughts, in this case thoughts of a painful 'if only', are triggered by the brain's association with common words that can spark an endless loop of negative thoughts. As a personal experiment, you have your positive possibility list to cultivate as a 'What If' to divert the 'If Only' thinking.
Not all creativity arises from discontent. A contented mind, theoretically is Taoist: life is movement itself, nothing remains static no matter how it feels; the Taoist mind moves with Life in contentment. Is that always possible? Perhaps we learn to be Content with our discontent and in that sense, move forward. St. Paul wrote, "I have learned whatsoever state I am in, there in to be content." This may well include the state of discontent. Otto Rank wrote that love of life was the essential thing for creativity, the love that pushes the desire to enhance life. Can you see your discontent in the context of a love of life and the push to enhance? Or as modern science offers, the potential to understand, to solve, and improve? This is God--the act of a creative intelligence, acting on and through human intelligence, life acting on life. joyously bringing the new into form--the Good, the Beautiful, the True. Yes, the Goodness of Life seizes my awareness, pressing on me possibilities, and I consciously choose to accept life as good, by attending to the good, to positive possibilities and activity--mental, emotional, physical--activity shapes reality. Life extends, enhances, reflects and bends to its own Goodness as you and I. And so it is. (Susan Nettleton)
Poetry from this morning: https://www.poemist.com/ray.../if-only-we-had-taller-been
https://onbeing.org/poetry/go-to-the-limits-of-your-longing/