An Integrated Life

Overwhelm - and a little help from my Higher Self

I sometimes go into periods of overwhelm, whether my internal thoughts and assumptions are shifting or external projects are piling up, or both.  At such times, my old  familiar patterns are to freeze, procrastinate, become (even more) forgetful, and/or escape into a juicy book or some comforting chocolate.

I’m moving away from lots of the unproductive responses (like telling myself how bad, silly or dysfunctional I am acting, and how I simply must snap out of it!)  I’m even finding some positive approaches that help!

Top of the list is to notice when I am judging, and remind myself I really don’t need or want to do that.  (I’ve become familiar enough with my judging habits by now to know that’s true.)

Once I can relax and stop defending me from myself, I can just get to work digging through what needs to be done.

And sometimes my Higher Self, unconscious mind, or whatever part of me seems to know far more than I do will step in with a bit of advice or encouragement.

In the midst of one such recent period of overwhelm (right after I started to write this, in fact), I had a dream in which I was a member of a very large, very excellent and famous orchestra.  We were on tour, stopped at one of the towns where we were to perform.  The conductor was rehearsing small groups of us at a time to make sure each of us was very sure of our part and how that fit in with all the parts around us.  She knew the overall piece thoroughly, and we were all totally confident that she would pull all these pieces together for the performance so long as we did our parts.

I’m taking all this as reassurance that if I focus on the parts I need to be doing right now, they will all come together in harmony to make beautiful music when the time comes.  I know I woke up feeling great!

What if we ARE the fruit of the tree?

I am sitting on my deck, soaking in the gorgeous sights, sounds, smells of the (more or less) natural world in my back yard.  It occurs to me that a lot has been written about just that, from carefully planned and maintained yards, gardens and parks, to not so controlled wilderness – mountain, forest, or sea.  Much of it romanticizes nature (I do that myself!), and there is an implicit distinction between the object of our attention, which we call “nature” and ourselves.

But we are “nature,” too.

When we really look closely at this natural world, we find beauty and ugliness, gentleness and brutality, peaceful cooperation and violence, that which inspires awe and that which evokes our horror.  And all degrees between the extremes.  Just like us.

If anything sets us apart, it’s this very ability to “see” and reflect on it all.  We assign meaning to everything!  It would seem to be our job.

So if this is our job, how would our evaluation turn out?  We have accomplished a lot (not all of it useful, some very destructive).  In fact, we seem to be sliding into some very serious dysfunction, based on that very mis-comprehension about our place in the order of things.

According to physicist David Bohm, this job of making meaning can be evaluated according to how coherent it is with the real situation.  Our insistence on believing in our separateness and difference from everything else is actually incoherent enough to be threatening our survival!

If I cut off my hand because it annoyed me, I would suffer pain, possible infection, maybe even bleed to death.  If I trashed my house and had no other option, I would probably not survive the elements.  Such actions would be incoherent, and I am smart enough to know this.  As a species, however, we’re not quite so smart.

Why don’t we get smarter?  There’s always a price for more smarts.  Animals suffer as much as we do, but at least they don’t worry about it in advance.  We lost that Eden when we ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.  What would we lose if we bit into the idea that we are one with everything?  Certainly our specialness.  Entitlement.  Rescue. 

But what might we gain (besides survival)?  Peace?  Freedom?  Equanimity?  Joy?  It just might be worth a try!