Show Up, Pay Attention

Posted on September 15, 2011 by mcallister

by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys

The first job I had out of college was in a small software development group. It was a sort of apprentice position, which meant that I handled office boy duties, while also learning about the work the group was doing. While I covered the office boy part I will admit I didn’t take it as seriously as my “studies”. Walking around Palo Alto to purchase imported coffee and the afternoon ice cream wasn’t bad, but answering the office phone was something that I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about. One day my boss called me into his office and gave a bit of a discourse on “professionalism”. He wanted me to show up for all aspects of my job and to commit to the minimal effort required to do them well.

I have always remembered this talk, or at least the basic point, which I took to mean that it was worthwhile to do what I had to do well, to show up and pay attention, not just for the things that interested me at the moment, but for whatever I was doing, especially if someone was paying me to do it. This is a matter of having respect for people I interact with, whether at work, home, or play. Perhaps even more importantly it is really a matter of self respect, being fully present as my Self in all situations. Replacing the pride of “I’m too good for this”, with the pride of doing well what needs to be done.

Showing up and paying attention may benefit others but it mainly benefits yourself. You will often learn something useful, about what you are doing or about yourself. There is always truth to be found in being present in your life, it is surprising what will turn out to be useful experience later on. I once spent time in Japan working for manufacturers of heating and air conditioning equipment, not something I expected to ever be useful. A few years later in graduate school I wound up studying the fundamental physics behind much of that industry.

Even when you are physically present, how present are you mentally, emotionally or spiritually? This is what my boss was speaking to. We often seem to show up only as much as seems “necessary” to get something done. We are really cheating ourselves, living parts of our lives half asleep, missing opportunities to explore, learn, grow. You may not always be able to choose (in the moment) what you are doing, but you can always choose how present you are, and the more present you are in this moment, the more likely you can choose the next one differently.

While my examples have been about work, this is equally true for all aspects of living. When you are fully present you can do anything with fuller satisfaction. It impacts all your relationships. The more present you are the more interesting things become, the more fully human you are with yourself and with others. This way life has a chance to give back to you. Can you complain that life doesn’t give you what you want if you aren’t present to receive it? and yet we all do this at times. Showing up and paying attention, people feel it and respond. Spirit feels it and responds. You can’t really expect to get what you want, on any level, if you aren’t engaged on that level.

Decades later I still remember that talk and when I forget I meet others who set an example that reminds me. I am still challenging myself to be more present, true to my Self, engaged with my life, not just half asleep going through the motions. It is an ongoing practice. We are amazing spiritual beings in human bodies. How do you make everything as alive, as rich, as deep as possible? How do you bring all of who you are to the table all the time? Practice this for yourself, any where, any time, why wait? If you need inspiration, ask. Listen to your heart, make room for your spirit to communicate. I.e. show up and pay attention. Life is much more fun that way.

(© 9/2011)

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The Inner Gatekeeper

Posted on August 31, 2011 by mcallister

There is a gateway in you, a gateway of consciousness that opens to your essential self. The part of you that is on the other side of that gateway is ready to invite you in, to welcome you home to yourself. You have been through this gateway before; in the mountains, in the forests, with your children, or a lover. The peak experiences are all on the other side of this gateway. You may have thought you needed someone or something to let you through, but if you seek your Self and match your inner gatekeeper’s energy you can be there any time.

Call up this part of you. Remember in your feeling body, in your being, those times you have been there before, let the part of you that knows, remember for you. Open inside and the essential will arise into your awareness. Breath deep, relax and enjoy.

Earlier this month I was co-facilitating a ceremony in the role of gatekeeper to a series of sacred spaces that participants were invited to enter to assist in releasing limitations to connecting to their essential Selves. As the first person approached the first space I felt my awareness shift into a deeper level of presence with myself and with them: an awareness in my body and being, a feeling of fullness and aliveness which I think of as the experience of my essential self. My inner gatekeeper, an aspect of my essential Self had risen for me, supporting the ceremony and all of us there.

As I asked the simple questions that invited each person to be present and to step with intention into the physical space behind me I knew that there was a deeper level to the interaction in which my essential Self was inviting each person to step through their inner gateway into their essential Self.

We are all present as our essential Selves all the time, but we are mostly aware only of the worldly personality levels of our small self. When we do connect to essence it is like a gateway that opens, that our awareness can step through into “higher” aspects of consciousness. Each time we do this deepens our awareness of this gateway so that it is more and more accessible.

Any peak experience that you have had is a time when this door was brought into awareness. Communing with a mountain, a tree, an animal, a love opens it. Remembering these experiences allow that doorway to come into awareness now, feel it inside your Self. You may imagine it as a gateway, and your essential Self as the gate keeper that welcomes you in. Just let your self match the energy of your Self and “step through”.

When this doorway opens in us it can help to open the same doorway in others. This is how many of the great masters are. They are like that open door that reminds us that we all have a similar door in our own hearts, in our own beings, and reminds us how to open it.

While we can hold this energy for others, and often it is easier with others, try exploring how to hold it for yourself, to meet your own gatekeeper to your own heart. Come to know your inner gatekeeper for yourself, learn to open the gate whenever you want and then pass it along. When we can all open the gate of our hearts and meet each other in this way what a beautiful world it is.

(© 9/2011)

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Holding Emotions

Posted on August 16, 2011 by mcallister

Many years ago I heard a talk in which the presenter touched on the clearing of emotions. He referred to primal scream therapy, in which people are encouraged to fully express anger by yelling or screaming. He said that in studies over the years there were no consistent results. Some people seemed to find it healing and others did not, but apparently it wasn’t clear why.

I know from personal experience that there can be great healing in being with my emotions, giving them space to be, feeling them in the body, and letting them go. There are beautiful practices of forgiveness, acceptance, and witnessing that are found in different traditions that are based on this.

I have also been in some pretty stuck places where it seemed that I just couldn’t let go of the emotion. The emotion was all enveloping; like the heart of a thunderstorm, where you can’t see the light. There have been times when I could feel that part of me found safety in an emotion, or confirmation of a belief about myself or the world, at a deep level I was attached.

Emotions are energy which is meant to move, to flow. In the course of life they arise naturally in the body, in response to different life experiences. When we can allow them to move through us like Rumi’s guests, entering by the front door and exiting by the back, they are just the flow of life force in different flavors. But when we become attached, or resistant to them, we become identified with them, the flow stops and they move in.

It is said that to all things there is a season, and that is true with working the emotions too. There are times to chose to change the channel, and there are times to embrace them so that they can heal and transform. The key is in neutrality, where we can find the space and separation to have our emotions, rather than being them. Do we identify with them or have a relationship, where we can choose to let them go?

This is the answer to the question about people who have tried primal scream therapy. Those that identify with the anger, who need it to be strong, or “right”, or alive, will loose themselves in it and simply pull more anger into their lives. Those who can view it like a guest that is ready to leave, or a state of being that can change, like the weather in Colorado, can express it and release it.

The key is to be able to “hold” the emotion, to have it, but not be it, like a pain in your toe, or the feeling of hunger. With some emotions we may need to give them physical expression, with others we can just feel them in the body, keep breathing, relaxing into them, without judgment, or fear, or other forms of resistance, until they dissipate, transmuting into forms of life force that nurture and sustain us.

Some times we can do this on our own, especially with training and practice. Other times it is good to have a friend, partner, community, or professional to help hold space for us, so that we know we are safe and will come out the other side. The key is to have or find a place to stand outside the emotion, from which to do the holding. Then imagine it like an infant and embrace it with compassion and love. When we can do this it will transform and heal, transmuting into spaciousness for you to be more alive, more present, more joyful.

(© 8/2011)

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The Traveling State of Mind

Posted on July 28, 2011 by mcallister

Summer time is often a time for travel. Short trips or long; with family or friends or on your own; to a city, or out in nature; leaving home for a few days or more can put us in a different space. Especially when we are traveling to places we haven’t been before. There is an element of adventure in the unknown; the possibility of learning, growing, changing.

When I was young I sometimes traveled on buses across the country. I would meet all sorts of people, see new places and hear new stories. I discovered that I was a different person on the road, more outgoing and adventurous, generally freer. It was a mindset, or perhaps the lack of a mindset, where I was more open and therefore more met. I had more fun, lived a bit more and liked myself better.

Later I went to Japan, where I lived for several years. There I was really outside of all the mental constructs that were familiar; all the social and collective roles and norms where different and unknown. I frequently had the sense of being in a dream like state of mind, where the possibilities were wider open and I had a sense freedom, of living more from myself and who I was, rather than who I thought I should be. Not “knowing” what I was supposed to do, the past was far away, the future was undefined; I lived more in the present, in the moment, even after I had been there for years.

This summer I’ve made some short trips which have been fluid in their planning and guided at times by spirit. This is naturally the way one lives “on the road” allowing things to unfold; each day full of possibility for the unknown and unexpected. A new friend, or a new sight or smell, are all magical.

Coming home I felt that I brought some of that magic with me. I was able to be in a city I have lived in for 18 years, and know well, and feel that sense of wonder for what the day will being, for who I might meet, or just to see a familiar site with fresh eyes. That dream like sense of being in the present, the joy of the now, and allowing the future to be full of exciting possibility came home with me. This has faded a bit, but it is still with me and I can cultivate that sense of magic, adventure and possibility everyday.

So if you are traveling this summer, allow yourself to find the magic of adventure and the unknown, even in small things; to feel deeply how you engage with a new place or person. Then bring it home with you. Even if you aren’t traveling, perhaps you can go to a new park or part of town nearby, or just remember when you were on the road and full of life and adventure.

There is a state of mind, that is simpler, freer, more present; full of adventure and possibility. It is perhaps natural to find this more when we travel, but you can invite this any where any time. This is who you are when the everyday mental matrix is shed like an old skin. Call it up, let your heart fill with the feeling of being in the present, the freedom of possibility, for the day or the hour. You are creating space to be present in your life in a deeper truer way that cannot help but serve your dreams and your heart’s desire.

(© 7/2011)

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The Magic of Trees

Posted on July 17, 2011 by mcallister

Growing up on the east coast, mid-atlantic, there were lots of trees. Big trees: oaks, beeches, maples, and many others. Old trees: some that had lived for hundreds of years. I loved the trees then, but they were everywhere and so my relationship wasn’t very conscious, except for a few massive old maples or oaks, whose presence and age where palpable even there.
Later in California and I met the redwoods. I was older and beginning to wake up a bit, becoming consciously aware of the energy of things, and when I had the chance to walk in the redwood groves I could clearly feel how their energy affected me. Its a grounded and rooted energy of certainty and being, which allowed me to relax, to let go of the busy human energies of the cities, finding stillness and peace. Much of this is their nature, but I suspect that some of it comes from age, from perspective, the patience and certainty of time.
Now I live in Colorado, part of the world where trees are fewer and smaller. My favorite tree at present is a big cottonwood behind my house. When I sit by it and it helps me ground, to center and release. Its leaves shade my house in the summer. Its branches provide home to birds and squirrels. I can touch it and feel is roots deep in the earth, as deep as the branches are tall, it bridges the upper world of the air and the underworld of the soil.
When I do readings there is a dark green energy, like the pine trees in the mountains here, that I think of as tree energy. It is calm and grounded, quiet and still. It is an energy of listening and being, rather than doing. In this way it is a healing energy, because we all need to be listened to without judgement, simply witnessed.
It is the energy of the center post, of bending in the winds, but holding firm. In its being a tree provides shelter, shade, food and home for animals and birds. For us as well if we choose. In its clear and present being it can instantly help us ground, clear and find our own being and space. Try it sometime soon. Small children will calm down around trees, as they instinctively match their energy. Allow a tree to give that to you.
The trees can also talk to us, especially the old ones that carry their own wisdom. This conversation may translate into words, but it is mainly on other levels and you will feel it or know more than hear it. Allow yourself to receive, to open and learn, trusting that this is something that serves you.
Perhaps you already have a tree that grows near you that you have a relationship with. If so take time to say hello again. If you feel moved you might give it a little food or drink. Something you have made yourself, that has that love of making in it, even a simple “making” is best. Be grateful for the gifts the tree offers you. If you don’t have this sort of relationship, you might explore initiating one. Take your time and you will know the proper tree and it will know you.
Exploring the energy of trees and forming relationships, their magic will always be available for you to call up. All their qualities live in you, they just remind us, and remembering you can invoke them for yourself whenever you choose.

(© 7/2011)

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