||| AS THE PARADIGM SHIFTS by ROSIE KUHN |||
No one wants to talk about what it’s like being them—especially when we feel powerless, helpless and hopeless. My client, Miranda, said to me the other day, “It overwhelms me to think about climate change. I just want to put my head in the sand. It’s too much!!!”
My conversation with Miranda wasn’t about climate change, per se. It was about how she has the capacity to be with what she is experiencing, with regard to those issues, events and problems when she feels out of control. She feels stuck in her lifelong patterns. She wants things to change, but she doesn’t want to change. JEESH!! I totally get it!
My work as a transformational coach takes me into conversations that evoke the full potentiality of beauty, love and joy, serenity and fulfillment. And it takes me into conversations where the exploration of the worst of the worst of the worst is articulated—a requirement to get to the fulfillment of your heart’s desire. I have to be willing to create a safe space for people to truly experience themselves—the worst and the most exquisiteness of their human-spirit. I gotta keep pushing my own bandwidth of limiting thoughts and perspectives in order to support and empower others to do the same.
This Dang Climate Change Thing is Messing with Our Current Paradigm
We humans think we are in control of everything. We think that we can do whatever we want and afterward, somehow, we will clean up the mess. Like for Miranda, things right now look pretty out of control. For so many people experiencing so many natural disasters, there seems to be no way out. Big sigh!!! How do we be with what seems so destructive and hopeless for our survival?
No one is immune from concerns about survival, as a planet and species. We are in this together. And, yet, we feel like it isn’t in our hands. Someone else has to make miracles!!
Do we try to fix things? Do we blame and shame others? Do we ignore and avoid the whole issue? Do we run around like Chicken Little, crying “the sky is falling, the sky is falling!” So many options. For me, depending on the day, I do any of the above. And sometimes I’ll practice something else—something out of this world.
I’m Reminded of a Time…
In my 40s, I sailed on a 93 ft schooner for a couple of years. Off the coast of Florida, one night, we were hit by a micro-burst—a small storm system which carries tremendously powerful winds. It knocked down our 60-ton boat.
As you can imagine, water was pouring in through portholes and hatches left open—a real no-no when sailing off shore. It looked like we were gonna sink!
The captain left the helm, knowing the boat would right herself—she was built to do that. He went down to hopefully figure out how to turn on the bilge pump to get more water out as the water was flooding in. He never had to use it before so wasn’t sure how it worked. What a time
to figure it out! JEESH!!!
In a circumstance such as this, when it seems all is lost and there is nothing to be done, I asked myself, “What can I do?” I remembered that in my cabin, next to my bunk, under the floorboards, was a hand pump. I knew that I could get myself down there in the dark, retrieve the pump and start pumping with everything I got! I didn’t necessarily believe I was going to save us. I just knew it was important for me to do whatever I could while the boat was going down.
In the pitch dark, nauseated as hell with sea sickness, I found the pump. By this time, the boat began to right herself, as the captain anticipated. I was able to get the hose to the pump through a porthole and began to pump. Shaking, nauseous and somewhat calmed by the boat getting herself upright, I continued to pump until there wasn’t any water left in my tiny area of the boat. We survived.
It didn’t matter, by then, all the ignorant mistakes that led to this almost disaster. What mattered was that each of us did what we could do to hopefully right the ship.
Righting Our Ship
Okay, so what do we do while we are trying to right our ship—called Planet Earth? Here are some thoughts that make sense to me. Maybe they may not make sense to you. Maybe they will inspire you to explore other possibilities for yourself. That, after all, is the intention of my writings—to inspire you to look at things in a way that makes sense to you and empowers you to move forward—again, whatever that means for you.
Albert Einstein said…“We can’t solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them.”
I’m grateful to have been exposed to many different perspectives regarding my personal survival and that of every being on the planet. Looking outside the paradigm within which we’ve created our problems, gives me a far more expansive overview—one that brings some peace and solace.
From this overview, I can maybe see all of this as a learning opportunity. Perhaps it’s an opportunity to elevate our problem-solving abilities—to find things outside the thinking that caused the problems in the first place.
Perhaps, to begin with, being focused and centered on me and mine, isn’t working. Perhaps I have to see myself not separate from anyone or anything—like on the boat. I can’t sit back and hope someone else is going to come up with a miracle. I have to be the miracle!
It’s All Energy
Perhaps from this overview, I can see that we are all energy, and we are not separate from the source of our being—the Universe, or the creator of the Universe. From this perspective—again, outside the thinking we used to create our problems, perhaps love is the answer. Okay—I see you rolling your eyes! But, why not love be the answer? If nothing else, being loving, doing love, giving love, can’t hurt, right?
“Practice Random Acts of Kindness Senseless Acts of Beauty” Anne Herbert
This quote was a bumper sticker I saw when I was in high school. It’s been around a long time. It moves me deeply to know the world is more that material goods. The energy, the frequency, the resonance of kindness and beauty goes way beyond our consensus view of reality. Mind you, for me, I’m practicing kindness for kindness sake—not to save the planet. And I’m creating beauty because it feels so good in my heart. Immersed in the acts of beauty brings me into an elevated state of being. Knitting, painting, cleaning up my kitchen, brings peace to my heart and to my space. Creating peace in me creates peace in the world—I have no doubt about that!
“The One’s Who are Hardest to Love are Usually the One’s Who Need it the Most.” Dan Millman
I’m learning what it really means to be unconditionally loving. It’s big work. Every time I think I’ve mastered it, someone comes along who challenges me to love them—no matter what. My self-righteousness and self-importance gets exposed. I’m humbled into humility over and over
and over again.
Yoda says, “Train yourself to let go of what you are afraid to lose.” As I’m confronted by people who at first glance, don’t deserve to be loved, two things show up. First, I feel the fear of losing a sense of self that I hold onto, through my self-importance and my self-righteousness. Then returning to my overview, I see how ridiculous that is, in relation to being in the world beyond the one that created our problems. I gotta let go of my fear that I won’t know how to do me without my righteousness and self-importance. It’s a fascinating learning experience.
The second thing that shows up is that, I remember all the times I personally experienced undeserving-ness and unworthiness of love. I grew up in a home where I always felt I had to prove I was lovable. It was a horrible childhood in that way. I don’t want anyone to experience what Miranda calls, “feeling like less than squat!” By training myself to let go of what I’m afraid to lose, I expand my capacity to let go of judging others as less than, or more than. No proving required. That’s the practice anyway.
Nourishing Conversations
The other day, in a conversation with a friend, I experienced a sense of being nourished through that conversation. I realized how important it is to engage and connect with people in a way that nourishes us both. I realized too that it was important to create nourishing moments with myself as well as with others.
And, in Dan Millman’s book “the Way of the Peaceful Warrior,” I read the words, spiritually nourished. That really spoke to me. I experienced, in that moment, an embodied sense of being spiritually nourished. I want to bring that into my life more and more. And I want to extend that to others too. I think it is kind of a foundation of what I’m intending to bring through my writing.
There is so much more I could bring to this piece, but it’s probably getting a bit long. I can certainly bring more to it another time. The bottom line is that, I don’t know for sure if what I’m doing and how I’m being is making a difference to the world and to climate change. I do know though that, if nothing else, I feel less powerless, hopeless and powerless. I know I enjoy how it feels when I’m being kind for kindness sake. I know I love being in the creating of beauty. I know I love learning all the things that are here for me to learn. I know I love laughing at my self-importance and self-righteousness. I know I love that I’m not as angry, bitter, anxious and triggered as I once was only months ago. I know I love that I have found the courage to share this with you! You might think this comes easy. It doesn’t!!
One more thing. I’m training myself to be grateful for the way that it is, in this moment. It has really pushed me out of our problem-solving paradigm into an overview that there is more happening here than meets the eye. Perhaps all of this is a very exciting and wondrous journey! Thinking this certainly shakes me out of my worry and doldrums. Phew!!!!
Thank you to all of you who leave comments and emails. I’m touched and honored and appreciate your sharing of your experience of my writing. Thank you!
Rosie is available for coaching sessions in person and online. And, if you are interested in more of what Dr. Rosie has to offer, visit her website: www.theparadigmshifts.com. And, her books are available through Darvills, Amazon and Barnes and Nobles.
