Who are you BEING?

(photo by Chuck Savage)

“You are a person who embodies peace, in my life.  You really seem to be a person who is peaceful and brings more peace into the world.”   …So said a coaching client on a recent call.  

If she could’ve been a fly on the walls of my inner world in the previous week, she might not have said so.  I’d been a little berserk inwardly, trying to cope with waves of emotions ranging from anger to sadness to fear to elation to depression.  It didn’t feel particularly peaceful in my mind.

And yet, I was indeed peaceful.  Below the turmoil, or perhaps surrounding it there is a pool of peace that I trust to be there. Because I know it’s there, I practice dipping into it often.  Because I practice being in contact with peace, it stays with me even when life’s not easy.  

That she feels my connection to peace speaks to that practice.  

CONCEPT OR EXPERIENCE? 

When one is engaged in inner work we often read or take classes that introduce us to concepts.  We learn about ideas like peace, freedom, discernment, compassion, and unconditional love.  Just learning about these qualities starts a process of opening our hearts and minds to be able to receive and express them more fully in our lives.  

But for many of us, the learning remains conceptual and doesn’t cross over into experience.  That means, we think, journal, and imagine a lot about those qualities.  We even seem to understand them on a mental level. But they stay in our minds and they never fully come alive inside of us.  

The reason we don’t live the qualities is because we only think about them and never experience them.  Essentially, we don’t practice.  Practice is what transforms our ideas into embodied experiences.  Practice is how we start to LIVE the things we’ve learned.

In this case, I’m not talking about a formal yoga asana practice, or a seated meditation practice - though those are both places where you can practice any qualities you’re learning about.  I actually mean, practice on the go.  Informal, scrappy, imperfect trying and trying again to BE someone who lives the qualities you’ve met in your studies.  It’s messy.  It’s usually uncomfortable.  And it’s what transforms you.

TRY IT 

• Pick a quality you’d like to embody. Consider what would support you to be more present, connected, and effective in your life. And, you know what would be great? Pick something that you’re naturally kind-of good at already and grow it in you. I don’t recommend picking something that’s already really hard for you until you’ve had a chance to practice with something that’s easier - or until you have a teacher to help you.

• Know that you already possess that quality inside you. You only need to access it more often for it to be available to you whenever you need it.

• Now consider what the opposite of that quality is - and start watching for THAT to appear in your life.

• Do a Messy Practice. The next time you feel the opposite, pause, breathe soften (is this a theme? yes) Instead of choosing the negative path, consciously practice the quality you want to embody. Act as if you already feel that way and see what happens

I am naturally a pretty peaceful person.  But, like everybody, I have times when I’m really irritated or angry.  When I was parenting young children I got triggered (pulled out of peace) a lot.   My teacher helped me work with staying centered when I felt that anger and frustration.  I did a lot of practice to soften, and notice the peace that was there too. When I could do that I recognized that my mind could have a lot of negative things to say, but it didn’t mean that peace wasn’t there.  I could still connect with peace.  As my children have grown I’ve learned to stay peaceful even when my mind is pitching a fit.  

If you try this you need to know that most of the time, it’s not going to be pretty.  You may have to try a thousand times.  But, it does get easier.  

EMBODIED QUALITIES

The other thing that will help is to be around that quality when you’re not feeling stressed about it.  So if there’s a friend who embodies it, hang out with them whenever you can.  If you dip into that feeling when you practice yoga asana or savasana, or when you sing or dance - do those things that move you closer to the qualities you want to embody.  The more often you’re around it, the easier it is to remember the feel of it when you’re stressed. And it’s easier to recognize when you’re not feeling that way and to bring yourself back to it.

The main point here is that there is a kind of Doing (practicing connecting to peace) that gets you to the Being (embodying peace).  You can’t just think about it, or imagine yourself (though that helps).  You have to practice.  Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice.  Did I mention practice?  Yeah.  And you’ll still have times that are hard.  But you can always practice again.  

Eventually your practice starts to pay off by changing the way you show up in the world.  It changes how you feel inside yourself.  It changes how you respond when things are hard.  Eventually you don’t just think about the important qualities.  Eventually you embody them.

And when you embody qualities like peace, joy, freedom, love compassion enthusiasm… that’s when you change the world around you.  So.  Once again, I invite you to stick with it my friends. Stick with your practices. TRY THIS ONE (don’t just read it and forget it).  See how it goes and let me know.  

My hope is that together we will shift the world.