Joyfully Bea Healing Arts

Beandrea Davis, CYT

Relationship myths :: 'Making' others feel…

Posted: Thu 04, Mar 2010

Myth 2 :: No one can ‘make’ anyone else feel a certain way

“I hope I’m not driving you crazy,” an extroverted housemate said to me as she babbled about her life.

“I was crazy a long time before we met,” I said staring out the kitchen window laughing at myself, an introvert.

People, circumstances, and events often stimulate the memory of similar occurrences in the past that are unresolved and still oozing with unprocessed pain. Having the quirky personality I was born with, I truly was already my own brand of ‘crazy.’ My housemate didn’t “make” me anything; she was simply a mirror of something already inside me.

Most of the time we are not current. We live in the past replaying it constantly, projecting it onto the present and the future. When we are not present we are lost in what has already happened and what might happen in the future.

There is so much clutter inside – trauma put in storage, languishing in the dusty corners of our saturated bodymindspirits. We clear the clutter each time we allow ourselves to acknowledge in the moment what gets triggered by another person or situation. We get to actually experience our feelings in real-time, rather than stuffing them until the ‘right time’ that never comes.

Only when we become current can we start fresh with new possibilities available to us. It is not complicated, although in a distracting world that hinges upon the denial of what we do not like, it is a challenge.

When an emotion comes up, I often take a moment to simply feel it, label it in my mind, and investigate the body sensations and onslaught of stories associated with it. This usually lessens the charge, and I feel myself become calmer.

I am responsible for dealing with the undealtwith feelings I carry inside. I can (and increasingly do) let people know when they have triggered me without making them responsible for the root of the pain I feel.

When I share my vulnerabilities with trusted friends, it invites connection and sounds a reminder bell in my body to embrace my whole self moment by moment. I do this knowing that as I embrace my own healing, I can more easily hold a larger vision of collective transformation.

Freedom is a deep desire of living beings. We can practice and experience freedom everyday by freeing ourselves, and our relationships, from delusion.

Meditation: Let’s take a breath together. (aaaaahhhh….) Think back to a moment earlier today or this week where something happened that you didn’t like. (It’s okay to pick something ‘small.’) Take a quiet moment to simply feel and notice the body sensations and thoughts associated with this experience. Keep breathing. Then, take out your writing materials, dancing shoes, or collage materials, and go for 10 minutes on what’s alive in you now. If it would inspire you, write to me and tell me what happens!

If you feel inspired by this post, I invite you to email me and say what moves you! If you have suggestions for future blog post topics, I welcome that too.

This is the second of a three-part series on Relationship myths.

Relationship myths :: Doing 'for' others

Posted: Thu 11, Feb 2010

Don’t look for it outside yourself.
You are the source of milk. Don’t milk others!
There is a milk-fountain inside you.
Don’t walk around with an empty bucket.
You have a channel into the Ocean, and yet
you ask for water from a little pool.
Beg for that love-expansion. Meditate only
on that. -Jelaluddin Rumi

I watched a lot of television and movies growing up. In the world portrayed on the screen it seemed that pleasing and loving others was the absolute best and most important thing to do in life.

My life is deeply enriched by the relationships I have with my loved ones. My relationships with others compliment my inner life – my relationship with self, nature, and the unseen, without which there would be nothing to enrich.

With Valentine’s Day drawing near, I want to clear up a few persistent and often unquestioned inaccuracies about human relationships. I want to scrutinize language because I believe the subtleties of words speak worlds about the beliefs upon which society hinges.

Maybe with things in their proper place, we can all connect more profoundly with each other, at last, inside an ocean of clarity.

Myth 1 :: We do things solely “for” or “because of” other people

We do things because of our own needs. (A great needs list here.) It is not possible to do anything “for” someone else unless that doing is somehow related to something we need.

When I reach out to my dear friends and they are busy with little time to call right back, I ask them to acknowledge my calls with a smiley face text message. I request this because I want to know they got my call. Underneath that though, I really want to feel seen and heard and know that I matter to my loved ones.

When my friends agree to this request it is because they are willing to help me get my needs met and want to contribute to me. They also want to know they are living life in alignment with their spiritual beliefs, and are meeting our collective needs for self-care, efficiency, and trust.

Even when we do things begrudgingly with a chip on the shoulder, it is often driven by our needs for acceptance, ease, and safety.

Everything we do is to meet some need we have inside even when it looks like the stimulus, the external cue for an inner state, is the reason. Don’t confuse stimulus with root cause.

Ultimately, whatever we do for others, we also do for ourselves. Interdependence is a fundamental reality of relationship.

***

Body-centered Writing Prompt: Shake out your legs, arms, and whatever you’re sitting on. Take slow deep breaths, close your eyes, and feel what is alive in you, notice how you feel, what you are thinking, the sensations in your body. Then take out a pen, paper, and go for 10 minutes starting with “I need…”

Are you moved by this post? I would love to hear if these words have been a contribution. If you have suggestions for future blog post topics, I welcome that too.

This is the first of a three-part series on Relationship Myths.

Live the questions :: Happy Now Year!

Posted: Mon 28, Dec 2009

I am actually not curious right now. I am anxious, apathetic, and eating chocolate icing from leftover Christmas cake as I resign to die slowly watching 16 hours of television a day until my brain atrophies.

I’m tired of asking questions. I want answers.

It was so gratifying to stomp on the cement porch of a friend the other day. It was solid and unbreakable under my paltry human weight. I jumped and jumped pretending to crush precious objects under my feet.

Life seems to go like this: there are peaks and valleys and in between there are plateaus. Repeat and rewind a million times and you have a human life.

My mother seems to have received an Oracle From The Prophet commanding that she share her every opinion about my life with me. Today I told her for the first time that she might want to consider keeping her unsolicited opinions to herself every once in a while. (You know, just for fun.)

Last night I drove to visit friends I met in Paris who now live in Branford, CT and we had a lovely dinner of chicken risotto and red wine. Afterward I bought American Spirit tobacco at the gas station just off Interstate 95. Then I rolled and smoked my first cigarette. Things I never thought would happen are happening all the time. Things I thought would happen by now are not happening at all.

Why anticipate the future and wait for an illusive later to become now? Who am I? Who am I right now this very moment? I am a creative and complex being who sometimes remembers she is held by something larger than herself. I have a body. I have breath. I have energy. I have a variety of internal and external resources. How do I want to use this human life?

I want to ride those peaks as they turn into valleys and rise again to plateaus. More and more I want what is happening now more than I want what happened or what could happen someday. Happy Now Year friends. This moment might just be enough.

Writing Prompt:Take one of your ‘up’ questions right now and answer it as if you were an expert on your life. You actually are. As usual, don’t think about it too much. Just get your pen moving across the page. Happy Now Year!

“Happy Now Year!” is the last installment in a series called Live the Questions. Based on the idea of learning “to love the questions themselves”, as Rilke put it, this series made space for communal inquiry into Life’s many questions.

Live the questions :: the right path?

Posted: Tue 01, Dec 2009

Is the path I’m on as a writer really what I should be doing to make the changes in the world I want to see, or should I be out on the streets one and one with people? -anonymous Joyfully Bea blog reader

How do things change? Can I affect change? Why do I write? Is it personal, political, both?

Why do I constantly lurch forward into the future? What do I think will happen someday? What is the point of long-term goals anyway? Isn’t the world going to end in 2012? If the word will end in two years should I care so much about getting a new car, paying off debt, setting up an IRA?

What’s wrong with the world? What do I want to be different in the world? What do I want to be different in my life? How can I relate to others with empathy and compassion instinctually, without needing to coach myself into it?

Why is the truth always changing? Are there books in libraries that have never been read? Does the holy dirt at Chimayo Mission really heal psoriasis? How do we heal and what for? Where do we go when we are wounded? What helps us grow new skin?

Where am I going? What is carrying me along? Who is moving me forward? Who walks in my skin? When I leave who will come with me? When I stay who will be there? Who will be part of my life ten years from now? Will I live to be my Grandmother’s age? Will I make it to 40 or 50? What’s happening in my liver? What do my ears hear the sound of? What do I taste with my tongue?

What do I remember about growing up? About being part of my family of origin? About going to three high schools in as many years? About college? Why didn’t I go to any parties when I was in college? Why did I party so much the first year I lived in the Bay Area? Why did I come here to Oakland? Why am I leaving Oakland now? Where am I landing when I leave here? Where is ‘here’? Is it constantly shifting? Do we ever go backwards? Are we always moving forward even when we have déjà vu?

Who will leave the light on when I come in late? Who will run the hot bath so its ready when I arrive in the dark, cold and soiled by the day? Who am I really? Where have I been? Where am I going? What will happen next? How did this or that thing go? Is there anything else I need to do now? Is there something I’m missing that I need to see?

Where? How? What? Why?

How to hold these questions as if precious antiques I wanted to save for my grandchildren who may or may not ever be born?

Writing prompt: Take a question that grabs you from this commentary or elsewhere and let your pen run wild on the page for a set amount of time. You could write more questions, you could postulate your own theories. Just keep the pen moving and make space for whatever wants to come out.

“The right path?” is the third installment in a series called Live the questions that is ongoing through 2009. The question was contributed through the Live the Questions Experiment Portal which is available for your anonymous inquiries here. Based on the idea of learning “to love the questions themselves”, as Rilke put it, this is a space for communal inquiry into Life’s many questions.

Live the questions :: Is effort required?

Posted: Tue 17, Nov 2009

Is effort required?
-anonymous Joyfully Bea blog reader

Do I owe her anything more? Is it okay to let go of a difficult relationship primarily because it is difficult and always has been the entire decade we have known each other? Does she know I can count on one hand the number of moments we have shared that have been satisfying?

Why do I so fear conflict? Why be afraid when someone disagrees and doesn’t like something I’ve done, I’ve said? Why on the outside do we look nothing like our insides? How can I leave things this way – scattered text messages signaling the end of a significant friendship? Why aren’t there divorce-like papers to sign when a close friendship is lost?

Is effort required? Can there be ease as I reach toward things that are challenging and feel impossible? Where did I learn to shoulder things alone, to carry the weight all on my back? Who am I when I am at rest? Where am I struggling? What is the struggle illuminating for me? Where can I let go? What can’t I let go of? What has to be pried from my fists before I will relinquish it?

How can I say no? How can I prioritize what’s most important to me? What are my needs right now? What do I do all this stuff for? Why make an effort? Why care about anything? Is effort required? Is caring the point? How do I keep my heart open in the midst of betrayal, disappointment, and mistrust in relationships? Who is a true friend? What does real friendship require?

What does it require of me to relate to people? To relate to myself? What do I need in order to feel willing in relationships? What is the point of relationships really? Am I alone? Am I held? Am I one with something I can’t see but still exists? Am I deluded into thinking I know myself? If my emotions and thoughts are fleeting – why do they interest me so much? Who am I in the dark, under the covers, naked?

Where do humans get off believing in right/wrong, good/bad, either/or? Why are we so into ultimatums as a culture? I mean who really needs that? Where have I been? Where am I going? What am I doing now, here?

Where did we get this idea that everyone has to like everyone else all the time? That everyone has to like what we do, how we choose to live our lives, and if we’re not popular then something is wrong with our choices? What if we can train ourselves to accept people we don’t like or agree with and live in harmony with them, without destroying ourselves and the planet in the process of trying to convert them to our cherished point of view?

What if the kindest thing I can think to do in relationship to someone I have a hard time with is to avoid them? To refrain from engaging directly until I have some more spaciousness inside to interact? What if absence really does make the heart grow fonder? What if there is value in dropping the connections that we have with others – for a day, a month, a year – and seeing what it is like when we come back together again? What if letting go really makes sense?

What if I stopped using the words “my, I, me, and mine” for a week? What would I talk about then? Who would “I” be then?

Is effort required? Can there be ease as I reach toward seemingly impossible challenges? Where did I learn to shoulder things alone, to carry the weight all on my back? Who am I when I am at rest? Where am I struggling? What is the struggle illuminating for me? Where can I let go? Where can I not let go? What has to be pried from my fists before I will relinquish?

“Is effort required?” is the second installment of a series called Live the questions that is ongoing through 2009. The question was contributed through the Live the Questions Experiment Portal which is available for your anonymous inquiries here. Based on the idea of learning “to love the questions themselves”, as Rilke put it, this is a space for communal inquiry into Life’s many questions.

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