Falling In Love

Finding Your Medicine

I invite you to (after you read this, of course) to close your eyes for a moment. Get in touch with your breathing. Notice the inhale, the natural turn towards exhale, exhale, and then the turn toward the inhale. Simply notice for 5-10 breaths without making anything happen that doesn’t feel natural. Let yourself sigh, yawn, or whatever surfaces as you place your focus on your natural breathing. Now turn your focus to the youngest version of yourself you can remember. Sit with that energy, if it feels safe for you to sit with that part. Imagine that someone approached you and asked you this question, “What medicine are you bringing into this world?” Or, “Who are you beyond your name?”

Most adults don’t know the answers to those questions. Most of us live our lives absent of our true identity. We simply are asked the wrong questions from the very beginning. We hear questions like, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And often that answer is stricken down if it doesn’t conform with social and familial norms, which then feels like a trap question. After a while, that voice, that message that was whispered into your ear at the moment of your birth, as you emerged into this world “from the other more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world where everything began”(1), gets put away until it starts beckoning you, or as James Hollis says, your soul begins to summon you. There is a moment, I hope and pray happens to you, when you begin to realize that all of the work, striving, and conforming doesn’t have the payoff and reward that was promised. You might have a lot to show for it; a nice home, happy family, social status. But deep down there is a longing, an emptiness, a looming question that sits just beyond your reach. And as you start reaching outward for that question (not to mention the answer), there is even more confusion and frustration. It’s very easy to understand why people settle for good enough and continue to accumulate to try to satiate the soul summons. After enough time, the beckoning gets louder and more insistent. If we are lucky, this will lead to a dissolution, an unraveling (as Joanna Macy calls it), or a period of disorder (as Fr. Richard Rohr states it). This can be quite uncomfortable for most, especially when you realize that this rearranging requires a significant change to status, relationship, or vocation, especially if you’ve been living in this way for a long period of time. Everything seems to get reorganized.

We begin to search outside of ourselves for the answers to the questions that are still unformed. Perhaps we begin to go to places that seem to have the answers; church, yoga, meditation, soulful groups, initiations, the gym. And each seems to have the answers, and they do to their own questions. It’s easy to conform with the answers to everybody else' s questions when we have yet to form our own. That’s what we’ve been doing all of our lives. So, we do the thing we’ve always done: live the answers to someone else’s questions.

But here’s the thing, we all have the right answers, we are just being asked the wrong questions. There’s a line in a John Prine song (Far from Me), “Well, a question ain’t really a question if you know the answer too.” That level of unknowing can be uncomfortable to a well-educated, fully (outwardly) resourced adult. These are the kinds of questions “that have no right to go away.”(2)

So, how does one go about finding the questions? How does one find those answers? And then, most importantly, how does one live those questions and answers? This blog/book is my story. It is about how those big questions were found, the answers I received, and my path to living a life that I can call my own. I will talk about how my life was organized, torn apart, and then reassembled. That is the medicine I bring into this world from my Mosaic Maker archetype, the one who takes the broken and shattered pieces of this disparate and desperate world and rearranges them in a way that makes sense and creates beauty. I will talk about my Holy Clown/Child Shaman who was exiled long ago, the one who sees the sacred in the profane and the ridiculous in the most holy. I will share with you how I found my spirit guides, notably my Healing Heart Gorilla, the one who practices gentle grace while holding enormous strength and endurance. And I am excited for you to meet Stunning Reindeer Buck, the one who brings magic, presence, and presents into this world. So, when I am now asked the question, “Who are you?”, I have an answer. My answer used to be, “What do you want me to be?” And I was a really good chameleon. I had an uncanny way of answering everyone else’s unasked questions, leaving my own questions in the dark.

This process took me years, well actually my entire life, and is ever unfolding. It is a constant practice of re-membering. And a way to begin this process is through a simple daily practice of asking questions that you don’t know if you have the answer (spoiler: you do!) and beginning to articulate what that answer is.

Here’s the invitation. Break out your journal and write the question “Who am I?” at the top. And then write “I am the one who…” and let your pen just take over. In the beginning, you might write something like, “I am the one who is experiencing hunger. I am the one who has a deep longing to find the questions that really matter. I am one who is heartbroken by what I am seeing going on in the world. I am the one who responds responsibly to all of the demands this world places on me.” Just let it flow. Write about your roles in society. Write about your longings, heartaches, achievements, and disappointments. After a few weeks, you might be surprised by what begins to emerge as a true vision of who you really are. You might find, as I did, that you’ll get stuck in a pattern of responses. Some of those responses reveal the same things that are secretly circulating in your consciousness that actually prevent the deeper questions and soulful answers. This is an important phase in this type of development.

For several years I committed to a two-week silent meditation practice. I would go to a location that had very little if any access to TV, radio, or cellular service and just sit with myself in complete silence, not even a book. Just me with my practices and a journal. One of the things I realized is that my thoughts and even my thought processes were nearly identical from one day to the next. I had an endless barrage of judgments, criticisms, and insults swirling around constantly. It wasn’t until I became aware of those nagging noisemakers was I able to tend to those deep needs. At first I thought that these voices were stupid, silly, and had no value. I was taught to disregard those voices, to exile them, to compartmentalize them. But, day after day, the more I tried to shut them off, the louder they became.

I realized why meditation was very challenging for me. I didn’t want to be with a person I didn’t like. Seriously, if I were to hang around with a person who said the things that were swimming around in my subconscious, I wouldn’t choose to be in their presence for very long. Well, that’s what I have essentially been doing all my life, but unfortunately there is really no way of not being with myself. Wherever I go, there I am. And I believe that is why meditation is so challenging for many, we don’t want to be with someone we don’t like. In all of our efforts to escape from ourselves, the addictions, the survival strategies that were formed early in our lives, the inner protectors that keep us distanced from harm or hurt, we realize that there is no escape, and all of that surfaces when we sit quietly with ourselves, even for a few minutes.

This journal process begins to highlight those thoughts, questions, and answers. Simply stating “I am the one who…” is a doorway, a threshold to begin noticing what is stirring in you.

Now the harder step. Don’t try to change, analyze, diagnose, or fix anything that emerges. Just approach that part with curiosity. You see, all of those judgments, criticisms, and insults weren’t bad or stupid or silly. They were the parts of myself that needed my attention and were begging for me to tend to a broken and under-resourced part of myself. And I had done what I was taught, to turn my back, ignore, and eventually deny the very existence of that tender part. So, it hardened into a judgmental, critical part, mostly to keep me safe from sacred vulnerability.

After a while, a new question emerges. “What in your body most needs your loving attention right now?” What I mean by body is anything you sense, feel, imagine, or think. That question invites the tender, exiled parts that only emerge in silence to play an active role in the conversation of life. This is a process called bio-spiritual focusing. In the beginning, you might find that there is no answer that surfaces. Well, then enjoy the peace and tranquility of the moment and sit patiently for an answer to emerge. When an answer comes, ask that part if it consents to being the focus for a while. If the answer is no, then ask that part what concerns it has about being focused on, and then respond to those needs. If the answer is yes, then hold that part in deep curiosity. Start asking that part questions, which can be done in a journal, or just let the moment emerge in your consciousness. What does that part feel? When did that part come into existence? What does that part most want for you and from you? Does this part have a name? What clothes does this part wear? Where does this part reside in you? What does it feel like to you when this part takes over? What loving, healing response is this part begging you for?

You see, this is a very different approach from the one most of us are conditioned to. When most of us are confronted by the soul summons, we do what we always do, search outside of ourselves for the answers hidden within. It reminds me of a parable. After the universe was formed the gods got together when humans gained self-awareness. They knew that humans would never be content with the simplicity of ignorance, so they decided to hide all of the secrets of the universe. Where to hide it? Where to hide it? Where to hide it? The gods got into a stuffy conference room and began to brainstorm about where to hide all the secrets. One god said, let’s hide it high in the sky. They thought for a moment and realized that the humans would learn to fly. So that idea was scratched. Then one mentioned that deep in the ocean would be best. Again, they realized that humans would learn to swim. So that idea was out. Then one god spoke up and said, “I know! Let’s hide it deep within themselves. They’ll never think to look there.” And so, deep inside each of us is the secret to our universe. And that secret is the soul summons and the place where everyone needs to go to find their medicine.

I’m not saying that church, yoga, groups, or the gym is bad. What I am saying is that instead of going to those places to find the answers, go there because they are safe enough places for you to practice living the questions. They are safe enough places for you to experiment being you and allowing the untended, tender parts of yourself into the conversation. If you struggle to find a place like that in your community, then begin one. “Start close in”, as David Whyte states in his poem. (3)

(1) What to Remember When Waking by David Whyte

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake, coming back to this life from the other more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world where everything began, there is a small opening into the new day which closes the moment you begin your plans. What you can plan is too small for you to live. What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough for the vitality hidden in your sleep. To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others. To remember the other world in this world is to live in your true inheritance. You are not a troubled guest on this earth, you are not an accident amidst other accidents you were invited from another and greater night than the one from which you have just emerged. Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window toward the mountain presence of everything that can be what urgency calls you to your one love? What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky? Is it waiting in the fertile sea? In the trees beyond the house? In the life you can imagine for yourself? In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

(2) Sometimes by David Whyte

Sometimes if you move carefully through the forest, breathing like the ones in the old stories, who could cross a shimmering bed of leaves without a sound, you come to a place whose only task is to trouble you with tiny but frightening requests, conceived out of nowhere but in this place beginning to lead everywhere. Requests to stop what you are doing right now, and to stop what you are becoming while you do it, questions that can make or unmake a life, questions that have patiently waited for you, questions that have no right to go away.

(3) Start Close In by David Whyte

Start close in, don’t take the second step, or the third, start with the first thing close in, the step you don’t want to take.

Start with the ground you know, the pale ground beneath your feet, your own way to begin the conversation.

Start with your own question, give up on other people’s questions, don’t let them smother something simple.

To hear another’s voice, follow your own voice, wait until that voice becomes an intimate private ear that can really listen to another.

Start right now, take a small step you can call your own, don’t follow someone else’s heroics, be humble and focused, start close in, don’t mistake that other for your own.

Start close in, don’t take the second step or the third, start with the first thing close in, the step you don’t want to take.