Thursday, February 9, 2012

Don't Settle ...!

I often run into the admonition, "don't settle for less than what you deserve! you deserve the best - you deserve to be happy!"

Oh really..?

I mean, I get the concept. I've even said it: "I won't settle."

Who can say what is "settling"? I agree, never "settle" ... but no one outside of us can determine what that may be.

I will not settle for less than my soul's purpose ... but that may have nothing to do with our culture's romantic, fairy-tale expectations of what we think we "deserve" ... or "happily ever after."

Deep relationships are often about growth, not just "being happy" ... happiness is but one of a multitude of emotions that humans experience ... for me to label some emotions "good/welcome" and some "bad/unwelcome" is to become hemiplegic to my full humanity! If I squelch the "bad" emotions/experiences, I also dull the "good" emotions/experiences ... it takes both postivity and negativity to enable the universe itself to exist.

I am here to experience it all ... ala Rumi's
"The Guest House"
... every emotion, every experience, every encounter is a messenger to me, and therefore welcome (though I often resist, and need to continuously remind myself to be welcoming, when the painful "guests" arrive).

An authentically intimate relationship will "trigger" my deepest wounds, my core beliefs, my hidden shadows, and bring them to the surface ... this does not usually feel "good"...! It often feels like open-soul surgery, without any anesthesia. I am prone to blaming, projecting, and running. I am that human.

And yet, love would say, "I trust you - I welcome you into my depths - I give you permission to love me enough to mirror my depths back to me, so that I may know myself in ways I cannot on my own ... and I shall do the same for you."

I did not stand in the "stupid-happy" line for this lifetime ... I apparently stood in the "gimme full-throttle, roller-coastery, deep-saturation" line. It's wild. It's real. It's often gut-kickingly, double-overingly PAINful ... as in exquisite agony. But also excruciatingly delicious.

I want authentic intimacy. I will not settle for merely "happy."

Nope. No way. Nuh-uh.

4 comments:

Harry Riley said...

Hi 'gain, Dena:)

The idea that we somehow 'deserve' to be happy is totally meaningless, as what we imagine happiness to consist of is just that, a thought.

I find that what resists new experiences is simply the fictional 'thought-form' character in the mind, and that character is also what 'gets hurt' by those experiences, or rather by the very resisting of them. It takes energy to resist energy!

Light and dark, sorrow and joy, and all the other opposites, are indispensable to each other and to the totality of life. And our true nature, which is pure awareness, is never touched by any of it, never labels any experience, but relishes Its Self through each one. Language doesn't work too well here, but maybe you glimpse what I'm trying to say..!

You are coming to a very deep, simple place under the gut-wrenching agony stuff, and I don't imagine you're going to chicken out ever. Your honesty is magnificent.

Dena said...

Yes ... just a thought.

I was "thinking" to myself ... that I would love to shut off my thinking ... to take a vacation from my thinker.

But then, I wouldn't be human, would I?

I would, however, like to not be "ruled" so much by my thoughts ... by the stories in my mind ... by the judgments and conclusions and criticisms that indict me.

I am so very touched by displays of compassion (perhaps because they seem so rare) ... I want/intend to be more compassionate with me.

Chicken out? Oh, but I do that every day, Harry. At least, I threaten to ... the mental cry of "I can't do this anymore" arises nearly daily.

But I don't know what "this" is, that I imagine I can't do.

I'm still here. Still getting through. Still, I assume/hope, learning.

Dena said...

A friend wrote this:


"...what if the difference between inauthentic/authentic living 'lives' within the space between ourselves and the reflection in the mirror. What if 'authentic' living is just the carrot in front of our face; with the distance between me and the carrot the space where my 'want' lives. How can life itself NOT be authentic; including the feelings of inauthentic and authentic???

Just some thoughts.

How will you know when you have FINALLY LIVE authentic; and have your Wants satisfied. Maybe every time you seek to be authentic, it moves a step further in front of you???

Just pondering."


Yeah ... I'm pondering that, too.

Harry Riley said...

Well, Dena, I'm pretty sure you can't switch off the mind - it would be the mind trying to switch itself off:) - and neither is it necessary. The mind thinks - that's just what it does - and it only causes trouble when we identify ourselves as the thought-form, the story, between the ears. It has absolutely no idea what is going on most of the time, but is very happy just to make stuff up. It is the - utterly brilliant - tool of the heart, but when it tries to usurp the place of the heart it causes all sorts of mayhem - in fact most of the mayhem that passes for 'normal human life' on this planet. It can be ignored when it gets up to those tricks. And incidentally, the thinker is only another thought - there is no thinker, only thought going on in this thought-machine called Mind.

All thoughts that condemn, blame, punish etc are a waste of psychic energy and can be ignored completely, as well as all those that inflate the 'thinker''s self-importance. What could be more magnificent, self-sufficient, utterly blameless than to be the Pure Awareness at the Root of All? And that is what we all are, each with a unique flavour.

'This' that you feel you can't do is just another game of the mind. Don't join in, but just observe the mind doing its thing. You are not that. It may be that you have to take the pretty route, exhausting all the mind's energy until it gives in. Then behind all that you'll find a simple, silent, infinite space which is what you are. Or it may be that this will arise in you today, and all the mind's strivings will just fall away. Whatever happens, you can come to no harm - it's only who you think you are that can get hurt. All that is not Dena will be burned up, and your true nature will shine unhindered.

I've written a lot here, but it's all pointing to something very simple, which is the end of suffering - again, it's only the mind that 'suffers'. Can you see this?

Much love, my friend:)