A Different Form

I love words. Frequently they press themselves on me, demanding my attention. So it was no surprise when the word anew came leaping to my mind repeatedly this past week, clamoring for consideration.

It shouldn't have been a surprise to me. Even the physical world around me spoke the word. Yesterday, I woke to find a thin blanket of snow covering all but the warmest spots, and everything looked new. Untidiness was covered and clutter was blurred. Dead leaves and hibernating grass, which had been none too attractive, were hidden. It looked beautiful. It looked new.

Even the season is proclaiming newness. The solstice has opened us to light and vitality, the holiday season has turned our activities festive, and the New Year is only days away.

But while things may seem different on the surface, a nagging suspicion remains, that all the problems that have accrued, all the lacks that remain, all the unfulfilled hopes that languish...none of them have been transformed by the season.

We are taught that change is a constant. If it is always with us, what are our options with regard to it? We can fear it or embrace it, direct it or fall victim to it's whims, find the treasure in it or bemoan it's arrival, aching for what is familiar (even if not very satisfying) to return.

Here's where my word 'anew' come in. Anew means in a new or different form. Evidently the stuff of which my experience is made is the same stuff, however it works out for me. But that same stuff can take a different form. It can make my life anew...or not.

From where I sit, I have come to know that I am co-creator of my experience of life. The thoughts that I disallow, the emotions that I refuse to entertain, the company that I avoid, these are probably old forms for me, and ones that haven't produced what I have wanted to create in my life.

But those thoughts that I enthusiastically and repeatedly choose, those emotions that feel really good to me, that I seek and bask in, and the company of like minded people, whose dreams run parallel to mine, these create a new life for me, obliterating the untidiness, and making an opening for the clutter to be removed.

Here are cues to life anew for me, life in a new and different (and exhilarating) form.

A Posture of Resistance

I couldn’t read the fine print from where I sat waiting for the light to turn, but I sure didn’t miss the message. “I RESIST!” shouted at me from the bumper of the car in front of me. It was almost as though whatever was being resisted was of infinitely less importance than the posture of resistance.

I RESIST!

Now, as I ruminate on it, I realize it’s not just the car or the driver in front of me that’s at issue, it’s me, too. My girlfriend tells me that I often resist what is sent my way just for the sake of resisting, because I can’t accept good coming to me. Actually, she more often says it’s just because I’m stubborn, but that’s probably the same thing. I want to do it all by myself, and I decide to resist before the offering presents itself. Could it be that I have a posture of resistance? Heaven forbid!

What you resist persists. So goes the well-worn cliché. My resistance works for me this way: I end up maintaining circumstances and situations that I really don’t want. That’s the underlying rationale for resisting in the first place. I focus on something that I don’t want. I protest, find fault, judge all else as beneath my standards, knowing that my way and only my way is right and best. And those circumstances and situations stick to me like tar.

In the process, I disallow so much good that might come to me, proud s.o.b. that I am. My failure to appreciate the good around me, to allow it to close in on me, while I am focused on having it my way does, in effect, prevent the good that I really want from ever arriving.

Hmm…so this is the way that I block the blessing that would flow to me. I sit tight in my posture of resistance.

Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow?

“Praise God from whom all blessings flow…” So begins the doxology that I sang every Sunday in my father’s church. Lying in the shadows, seeping through the words of the sermon, forming parentheses around the strains of the invitational hymn was the subtext that retribution, punishment and curses also flowed, and if I did not ‘get right with God’ the blessings would dry up, and the consequences of my sin would catch up with me in full measure.

Not my father's church

But, what if all that flows from the Divine, the eternal, the infinite is blessing? Somehow, within me, whatever name I use for this all encompassing Source, (Love, All that is, The Universe, God) I can find nothing but blessing in it. And if that be so, what is keeping me from being the beneficiary of the flow? It makes sense that it has something to do with me.

So, let me today affirm this. God is good! Her blessings are immeasurable, stocked up, waiting to be poured out! And I have a choice to face the windows of heaven, let fall away the barriers I have built around me, and allow the blessing in…first trickling through a crack in my wall, then showering me, now flooding me, until I have no option other than to swim and frolic in it’s endless flow.

Oh, is this what a heavenly choir is?

Praise Source from whom only blessing flows.

Default

Just this morning I changed a default setting on my computer. You see, I have two printers. I originally had an HP and used that exclusively. Then I got an Epson as well, and began to use it more and more. At first I kept the HP as my default printer, but soon found that I was using the Epson more. So, I changed the setting to make the Epson my printer by default.

Make this one my default setting...

All this means that now I don’t make a conscious choice about which printer I will use each time; I made the choice one time, and without any thought process from me, my choice now sends the data to the appropriate printer. (usually)

Apparently, the same thing happens in my life. On a great range of issues, I have thought and re-thought a particular way, and those thoughts eventually became my default thought on the subject. No longer do I consciously think about the issue at hand, I merely reference my prior thought on the matter, and respond or react consistently with that thought.

The hitch comes when I discover that my default thoughts no longer serve me well. Without considering it, those thoughts, and the correlated responses come up when the issue arises. In order to change the thought, I must go through the process of actively choosing another. And until I make that new thought a true setting, the old rises again the next time around.

Choosing a new thought about the issue, and setting it firmly in place is my challenge. I most often remember to choose the new thought only after the horse is out of the barn. So I set myself to the work of impressing that thought on my automatic mind. I think it long. I think it often. I begin to get out of the old groove. As I sustain my choice it moves into my automatic mind, and I no longer have to consciously choose it every time.

Except for the times like today, when my computer setting hopped back to the old default. Those times, I simply choose again.

Minding My Speak

Never mind about speaking my mind. Somewhere along the way I learned to do that, respectfully, of course. But what about when mind and tongue are disengaged, and the outflow is the froth on top of the surface of the minutiae of my experience? You know… speaking without the benefit of having passed the content through my consciousness. (perhaps like these guys)

Sorry to say, I’ve done that all too much, on the keyboard as well as orally.

So, Minding My Speak is a choice I have made to be alert when I publish something to the world. When I speak of mind, I don’t mean primarily brain or intellect, I include remembrance, emotion and imagination as well.

It seems big, it is incredible, but it isn't everything...

I invite you into my head to listen to the authentic conversation there. If it strikes a chord with you, I hope you will reciprocate. I will attempt to ‘mind my speak always, but if I do not succeed, please bring it to my attention.