Okay so here’s the deal. I figured out a long time ago what I was here for and it has made my life a little easier to know that secret. I am here to serve. My life is all about service and surrender. Knowing that has helped me a lot. It does not mean I am good at serving or surrendering but it has helped me get through each day knowing what my job is, my Responsibility.
I’ve noticed that some people are still trying to figure it out and so they spend a lot of time not doing stuff or avoiding the painful questions of identity and purpose while they distract themselves with numbing addictions of various varieties and kinds.
So this column is for them and anyone who finds themselves lost and confused, procrastinating and avoiding, floundering in their fog of failure.
For me, service has meant to work hard at what I do every single day. In my case, as a psychologist, psychotherapist or counselor, that means I devote my attention, time and energy to helping other humans figure out their stuff. It is the coolest gig in the history of gigs but I had to suffer to get it. I had to pay a price.
Each of us comes into the world like Christmas. Each of us is a gift from the Universe to the Universe. We are a gift to our Self. Each of us is unique and special. And the price of entering the world is amnesia. We don’t emerge from the womb with a guidebook for our journey of joy and pain. At least not an external guide. I believe it is written in our souls, waiting for our spiritual eyes to open and see. And I know a little bit about this process of waking up and seeing our solitary and sacred truth. Can I put it into words? I can only try.
The very first step is to withdraw your attention from the world and focus it on your mind. I am not talking about meditation although it could become that. I am merely describing the first step. Let’s call it Awareness.
When we are in a state of Awareness, we can watch our mind as it struts and states, as it panics and prays, as it calculates and craves, as it loves and hates. We can just notice and see and observe and nod and welcome and allow. Like a large, white and empty room, it’s what’s left when we remove all judgment, expectation and blame. It’s what we discover when we sit and allow our senses to touch the world without attaching our tortured tale to its telling. It really helps to breathe.
When we focus on our breath, we have a glimpse of eternity. Like a constant, bending and dissolving dance; like the translucent scarf of ocean waves – what I call Earth’s Visible God – our breath is a reminder that we are connected to something deep, limitless and true. We are blessed to be alive but more than that we are blessed to be Life itself.
We are Life – not just a spare scrap of the whole – and when we step outside of our small minds, we begin to understand our true self is the Universe. Right outside our front door is the Milky Way and when we step off the porch and find ourselves falling into inky blackness, we can touch the magnetic midnight of the aurora borealis in our chest. We can feel it beating a steady, constant song that whispers over and over, “And that’s ok.”
After – or along with – Awareness comes Acceptance. To find Acceptance, look for non-acceptance and accept that. To find non-resistance, look for resistance and allow it to be without resisting. To find Willingness, look for the war within and bring it peace. When we feel the burn, offer it love. And never stop.
Please trust my words. Be conscious as you let it all be. Refuse to give up or give in to despair.
From our safe sanctuary of Awareness and Acceptance, we can find our Responsibility, the reason we are here. It is all the stuff we can control. It is our duty, the things only we can do. It is the stuff all around us. When we look at it from the still pool of Acceptance and Awareness, we realize it isn’t good or bad. It is just the stuff we promised to process, protect or produce. Our minds want to turn it into drudgery and grit but we can decline that dark interpretation and find another view. Each of us is a spiritual steward and the universe is counting on us to do our part.
When we remove the past and future, we find the present. When we allow all people to be exactly who they are, we are free to be who we are.
When we step back from emotion and thought, we find our choices like colorful cans of paint. Each of us has a brush that can absorb the rainbow and spread it across the divine canvass of time: the sacred seconds, magical minutes and hallowed hours of our precious days on Earth. Only our minds want to paint it all black but why? How does that help?
When we get rid of resistance and avoidance, we find liberation, celebration and light. Of course the pain is here too but our resistance to pain is what makes it painful, not the pain itself. When we welcome pain, it can settle into its proper place in our life instead of metastasizing and paralyzing us with its refusal to recede.
Finally, be conscious. Be awake. Suffering is present. Give it room. Let it be. And what else is here? When we stop hating our life and all it contains, what comes to mind? When we take a luxurious bath in forgiveness, how clean can we become? It all starts Now. We are only limited by the size of Self we think we are. Be Big. Be Amazing. Be who you really are.
And wait! Let me get my sunglasses. Ok, now go ahead and shine.
Doug Craig graduated from college in Ohio with a journalism degree and got married during the Carter administration. He graduated from graduate school with a doctorate in Psychology, got divorced, moved to Redding, re-married and started his private practice during the Reagan administration. He had his kids during the first Bush administration. Since then he has done nothing noteworthy besides write a little poetry, survive a motorcycle crash, buy and sell an electric car, raise his kids, manage to stay married and maintain his practice for almost 25 years. He believes in magic and is a Sacramento Kings fan.
