Changing Plans

Posted on December 3, 2011 by mcallister

by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys

It is said that life is what happens while we are making other plans. The other day I had a number of things planned that I was looking forward to. Going swimming on a relatively warm day, doing some ceremonial service work, attending an evening of spiritual blessing, and drafting this newsletter. Then the head cold that has been hanging in the wings for weeks settled in more solidly and I spent the day resting and healing instead.

In Buddhist thought, the first thing I remember learning is that it is good to have goals, but better not to be attached to them.

In it’s isolation and separation the mind thinks it has to plan everything out, as if it is the only force at work in our lives. So when the weather changes and we get chilled too often and our body decides it needs a break, the mind feels frustrated. What about all those great plans? But today is today and we need to work with what shows up for us today. If the plans are really good they will wait.

Perhaps the first reaction to this situation is to buck up and gut it out, keep to the plan. I have at least learned this: that proceeding in that way will push my body harder and most likely enhance my head cold symptoms and mess up even more plans in the coming days. This thinking also leads to the idea that we need to not only plan for ourselves, but to manage the world around us to fit our plans. The more we can do this the better we are, and the less the weaker.

Of course at the end of the day the world is always bigger than we are. You can be the cleverest guy on the street managing financial risk, until the whole system meant to control risk turns out to be the riskiest thing around. You can plan for an earthquake, but forget about the tsunami. You can think that you know what other human beings are going to do, until they don’t.

Having let go of my plans for the day doesn’t mean that I fold up and go away. I make the choice to listen to some uplifting music, brew some good teas, take various herbal preparations that I know will help, rest, do some reiki, and through it all feel into my center that is whole and present, even when I’m ill. I notice the frustration, the concern about “getting behind”, and release it so I can be present with my body and call in the resources I need today.

When the world around us does things that are not in our game plan we could decide that we are somehow too weak (or too “fill in the blank”) to get/deserve what we think we want. Or we can choose to let go and find our Self. Letting go of the urge to control the world, doesn’t mean giving up. It means putting your attention on yourself, on the one thing you can control, though even that may take some practice. It means working with your own emotions, finding your own spiritual resources, owning what you do have.

Even in this “illness” I know that my body is doing a pretty good job of taking care of itself. Or perhaps I am releasing old stress or emotional residue, or letting it catch up with some significant energetic work I’ve experienced in the last few weeks. I let go into the trust that my body, emotions, sub and super conscious aspects, along with my guides are on the job and setting a new course.

Letting go of the impulse to control the world can come from a place of strength. The place where you remember that your inner self, your inner world, is always more powerful and important; where you trust yourself enough to know that you will always be whole even when your plans are shredded. This deep knowing has enabled human beings to survive concentration camps, to find their true calling in life, or simply get through another day of rest and recovery.

My experience this week was relatively mild, but I have seen my life implode and helped others though places that were far from their mental control. Some say the lesson in having the bottom fall out is so that we have to remember that we are more than we have *thought* we were. If so perhaps we can choose to find this place without so much catastrophe, to practice finding our Self, letting go the mental urge to control and finding that we can stand in power and have resources under any external conditions.

So when your plans go right and life goes left, take the chance to let go of something you thought you needed to control and find the place within that is unchanged by that letting go. Stand there and look around. You may be surprised at how differently the world looks and even how differently it reacts to you. Find your inner power and inner resources in the practice of daily life and they will always be present for you.

(© 12/2011)

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Editing Your Emotional Sound Track

Posted on November 16, 2011 by mcallister

Have you ever been watching a movie and played with stepping back from the sound track so that you become consciously aware of how the music is leading your emotional reaction to the scenes you are watching? Some scores may be obvious and others subtle, but they all are designed to evoke certain emotional responses that give that real depth to a cinema experience.

In your life there is always an emotional “sound track” playing under your experiences and under your thoughts. It is there to guide your responses, to indicate which are important (volume) and what flavor they have; happy or sad, fearful or angry. As your experiences are stored away in the long term memory banks they are filed with this emotional “sound track” included.

The memories that have the strongest charges tend to resurface from time to time. Spiritually this is so you can review them with neutrality and release the change on them. When this happens, it is like the scary music cue in the movie, we match the old emotion and find ourselves right back in a similar experience. When the charges are unpleasant we tend to resist them and push them away, adding new layers to the charge associated with them.

The other day I was thinking about how pesky these old memories can be until we sort through them, when I wondered why we don’t also work with positive memories. For years when I have spontaneously found myself in a really great state or spiritual experience I will ask my higher self to book mark it, so I can find it again and return to it. In hypnotherapy when you have found yourself in a positive state it is usual to anchor into the body for future reference, as a resource.

Filed away in memory you have a large selection of positive memories, which you can call up along with their emotional sound track. Allowing your body to match to positive feeling, or invoking the state of being you were in, you can make these into resources, tools for practicing positive emotional states. As you practice these positive states they become deeper and easier to find and reload. In fact after a while you can leave out the memories and go directly to the emotional experiences.

I’m not suggesting that you keep charging up the old memories, but that you allow them to remind you of the good feelings and relaxed states that you have experienced in the past. Building these tools and resources you can choose what emotional score you want to play underneath your current experiences and life. Changing the music can have a wonderful affect on the quality of the movie and the nature of your life.

So take some time and sort through those old memories for the positive, uplifting, funny, or joyous ones. Then bookmark them so you can play with them on a sunny afternoon, or find them when its raining and bring your inner sunshine to any time or place. These states of being are part of who you are and you can learn to access them, to have them as your foundation, to use them to rewrite your own soundtrack.

Happy composing.

(© 11/2011)

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Seasonal Resistance

Posted on November 2, 2011 by mcallister

Standing last night on a hillside above Boulder: as the stars came out in the clear autumn sky, smelling the pine trees and noticing the snow from last week’s fall, I can remember summer, but am feeling also the approach of winter. As the feeling of winter drifts through my awareness, a part of me tenses, wanting to turn away, to focus on the warmth and light that are so close in time and not quite flown for the year. I know that I can access the feelings of summer even in the heart of winter and call forth the awareness of light and warmth when the world is neither, but tonight I choose first to take a second look at winter. What is it that I am resisting and why?

Shying away from the weather for the next quarter turn of the year seems limiting. Even if I admit that I prefer other seasons, there is life and beauty in every season. What is this flinching pointing to? Is it the season itself or the emotional associations that have piled up like drifting snow over the years? Can I stand still and make a space inside me for these feelings, memories or associations that cause me to flinch? Knowing and feeling the light and warmth are there too, I hold my summer experience like a torch that melts the snow and reveals what lies underneath. Dancing with the fears and griefs, judgments or memories, I relax and release my need to resist, to flinch so fast that I am not even conscious of the process.

Standing on the hillside underneath the stars, breathing, grounding, I step through the resistances and find I am surrounded by old friends. Becoming present with myself, including them, I step into a place of true choice, to embrace, or let go. I can call up light in the dark, the feeling of a summer breeze when its cold. I can give myself permission to yield to the bodies impulses to hibernate and choose to schedule a bit more sleep, or a slower pace. I can feel the weight of past winter’s studying and let some of that burden go, while appreciating whatever I have retained from those efforts. The place where I feel alone I can wrap in the deep connection to myself, and while the world in the north is going to sleep I can reach out around the globe and connect to the life of summer on the other side.

Allowing myself to turn into my resistance I can, piece by piece, recognize, balance and release the old companions that have lived behind it. Join me in reclaiming this season for yourself, as next to every piece that you may turn away from there are others that fill you with life and joy. The season is comprised of so many facets and when we shy from a few we cease to be present with the rest. Perhaps you already love the winter times, but there are other places in your life that are sealed off by resistance. Noticing the feeling of turning away, you can choose to remain present and refocus your life in any season or facet. Let resistance guide your attention to the places that limit your life force and joy; breath in your life force, ground, connect to your high self, notice your spiritual resources are close at hand, and come into loving relationship with the world around you.

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Beyond Success

Posted on October 16, 2011 by mcallister

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
– Rumi

Millions of years of evolution have programed Homo Sapiens for success. The success of staying alive long enough to find a mate and raise a family. It is built deeply into our brains and our minds, which are tools whose purpose is to facilitate this biological success. They do this by learning what helps us survive and what doesn’t. They do this by judgement, backed up by emotional charges on all our experiences.

As social beings we have developed collective experience, collective judgement; still encoded emotionally in the brain, still aimed at being successful. The definitions of success have evolved as we have. As our social roles have specialized so have the definitions. On top of basic survival there are now many other layers and options about what success means. But there are still definitions, and we are still programed to follow these, to be successful in some way.

With awareness and hard work you may have let go of the definitions of family, of school, of the other layers of society. But it is likely that the machinery of judgement and definition has not gone to sleep. If you have ever been in a new situation, or one that is not unfolding the way you had expected you may have felt the part of your mind that is looking for a new definition of success. It really doesn’t care what it is, as long as there is one, so it can feel good about itself and what you are doing or not doing. So we take up spiritual definitions. The process hasn’t really changed, the mind is still following its basic program to be successful. These may be personal, or even religious or spiritual, but the mind will have its definitions.

So like the mystics we come to the question: how do we find the place where the issue is never raised at all? That deep place of the Soul that is beyond the human mind with its conditioning and programing, where the Self is always OK. There is no goal that needs to be attained, no purpose that must be fulfilled, no test that must be passed, and the Self is so present and the world so full that the mental machinery has no place.

Once you have found this place in yourself, you can come back to worldly activities, or not. You can take up tasks which have standards, and complete them well. But you are not saddled by the internal judgments and doubts. The tasks of your life are not what define your worth as a soul. That is an absolute given. The divine loves you unconditionally, and when you can find that place yourself, the world changes and success is no longer an issue that torments or drives you. You will find out how much energy has gone into this process, how much life force you can reclaim. You can be happy “just because”, not having to earn it first.

Out beyond the need for success there is a field of peace and joy. Let’s meet there soon.

(© 10/2011)

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The Connected Self

Posted on October 1, 2011 by mcallister

Take a moment to settle yourself. Give yourself a few deep slow breaths. Feel the seat under you and the sky above.

Now set your inner attention for self love. Open to the feeling in your body and being.

Notice what just happened. Are you feeling like a child of the universe, being loved by all of Spirit? or have you just flashed into a place where you are by yourself, alone, and trying to love yourself when no one else does?

If you felt the universe loving you, then good for you. You remember that we are all unconditionally connected to Spirit and loved by the Divine, unconditionally. Perhaps you’ve never really thought about it because its always been there. This is as it should be. Keep up the good work and have compassion for those many of us who, in the process of being human, have forgotten that we are always held and supported by Spirit.

For many of us we come to self love only after we have given up on being loved by others, at least in a deep and clear way that we know is possible. After all we know ourselves better than anyone and who else can love us as we are, appreciate us completely and unconditionally. Looking at the energy of Self Love recently I realized that there is often a hidden association: that we have only come consciously to self love when feeling a lack of external love. Calling in the vibration of self love may therefore invoke times when we have felt alone, having to love ourselves in a “vacuum” of external love. We tend to believe that if we are truly worthy of being loved that others would show this to us.

Self love is not something that you do by yourself, you do it with the whole universe supporting you. It is a receiving of the love that is always there, unconditionally. It is an opening to inner channels and resources, not really a “doing” at all. Loving yourself as a soul is not a matter of self flattery, or puffing oneself up egotistically. It is a deep feeling of presence and love inside and round about you.

Give yourself another breath, slow and deep. Feel the richness of the air and the life force that come with it. Experience the love of the universe pouring into your lungs and feel it spreading out into your whole body. Perhaps you are still, in your minds eye, by yourself, but feel into the truth that you are not alone. Release the outside, and all memories and thoughts that make Self Love hard or heavy. Hold gently and with love any aspects that feel alone, until they relax into your attention. Feel how you are held, enfolded by your Self, by Spirit.

Breathe again and melt into the infinite love of your Self loving you, unconditionally, eternally. The Divine is holding you, as the earth supports you and the sky shines light on you. Your guides and angels are with you. You are a child of the universe, one part of the whole loving itself, and all the power of the universe is supporting you in this. Easy and natural, love yourself and know that you are never alone.

(© 10/2011)

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