by Jordan Kozey, MA, R. Psychologist (Provisional) | Feb 20, 2017 | Food for Being
One moment it happens. Your book is accepted or you land the biggest contract of your life. Perhaps you stake a dream plot of land or finally drop into the sweetness of a deep meditation. Maybe the love you never knew could existed now wakes up next to you and says “good morning” with a lustrous smile forged just for you.
What was once a string of feeling states and desires playing across your mind and gut now stares you in face, and the precarious sentiment that you actually belong to the greater matrix of life flutters in the soul.
Eyes widen in humble disbelief.
How can it be so?
Most of us believe these breakthroughs require loads of work (ie. 10,000 hours) on yourself and in your world. Most of us are busy pursuing whatever that is. Work and progress get a lot of press. I used to graze in these pastures as well.
These past weeks I’ve been showered with goodness and I’m stumbling to figure out why. I didn’t work hard over the winter. I kept mostly to myself. I felt terrible for quite a few stretches. At times, sadness became my immovable bedfellow. Slowing down seemed to hurt as I avoided and felt blocked from the things I love most: writing, working with my clients, yoga, and travel.
One auspicious afternoon, I stumbled across an Alan Watts clip (link) the other day, and in starry fashion, that British Accent of his nudged me along an astonishingly novel but clear line of thought.:
~ That which we desire actually desires us. Our dreams are just as intelligent as we are, if not more so.
~ What prevents this desire from arriving is all the focus on outward push, and a colossal lack of sweet, surrendering inward flux.
~ Hard work contributes to the fulfillment of our dreams, but the full attainment cannot take place without a moment or period of full surrender. Nothing is accomplished alone; we must let the web of life contribute.
Just as a body builder works hard to break down his/her muscles, it is the periods of rest that produce the conditions for success and the muscle builds. It is at the moment when we let go of our own efforts, that the breakthrough happens.
Let me explain, (it’s kind of relieving…)
A friend of mine took a step back from his business after weeks and months of driving the hell hounds to doomsday.
… One moment it happens …
The paradox of meditation is much the same. We try to empty the mind, to force attention on the breath, to hold up your spine and lower the hips with all one’s might- most become aggravated. Yet the magic begins to occur when all this effort is released.
After weeks of brooding in darkness, that smile-staring-back of another’s love arrived in the first light of morning. I began designing landscapes using sacred geometry, plans were accepted, full installs implemented. An article surfaced wrote an article with the most weekly views in January 2016 (How to recognize a conscious man).
As I struggled to write this piece, it became evident that my efforts to find words had exhausted my energy. So, in the spirit of my own advice, I stopped trying to figure out how goodness comes, and let the words come as they would, of their own accord (there is a difference!). This is what transpired:
- Goodness arrives in supportive environments. When we remove certain characters from our life that bring stress, confusion, and a general sense of unease, we convey a message of self-care. Something inside of us responds to this with gratitude. As I told a client lately: we cannot meditate, eat good food, or form good relationships in a moldy room and expect to be healthy. Get out of the room, and goodness just happens.
- At the moment we recognize our value when we are doing absolutely nothing, goodness begins cooking us breakfast. When we can swirl up a smile inside, just at the fact of being aware of our own existence, we know we are ready to receive. When we’ve done nothing for days or months but sit and feel whatever it is that happens to be passing through, and a sense of wonder develops in its wake, then we are ready for goodness to appear.
- Feeling your desire, the part of it that is billowing in your body, is more important than thinking about it. Thoughts are like prayers, they have an outward motion into the cosmos. Feelings are like lightning rods, attracting the events that bring us goodness. Spend more time feeling – it’ll come. We do enough thinking – trust me. Some people are really good at going out and getting things. Few people are really good at allowing things to come to them.
- Practice saying “yes” to as many things as you can, especially those difficult encounters. Find the yes in rainy weather, communication breakdown, tiredness, sadness, or laziness. Say yes to your noes.
- Imagine what it is like to be the beloved or the recipient of love. So many seek the love of God, angels, spirits, a partner, their children, or animals. Imagine and play with the idea that those Beings are perplexed at your striving and are waiting for you to just receive. What if it was all just one big inundation of love with the compass pointing at you. Would you, could you, accept and absorb it? Are not all the colours, sounds, and impressions of the world not knocking at your door, wanting to give you goodness?
- Nothing is as good as the discovery of our individual uniqueness when it feels at home in the world. Our natural state of expression, the perfection of each weather system passing through as an intimate connection with our body, and the beauty of our mind and the potential of thoughts, are all organic processes mirrored in nature. Spend time there, and discover that, like the trees and the clouds, who never pretend to be something they are not, we too have a natural function to be wild and free to be.
Photo—Sebastien Wiertz/Flickr
by Jordan Kozey, MA, R. Psychologist (Provisional) | Feb 16, 2017 | Words For Men
In many an ancient legend, forgetfulness of any kind was equivalent to death.
Within the volumes Greek lore, it follows that those who perish (with few exceptions) are ushered to Hades, the underworld. Its dead inhabitants, ruled by the god Pluto, found little solace in those dismal, grey, shadowy caves. Their respite from the darkness depended on the memories of those on the surface.
Those remembered by the denizens above, mostly heroes and notable figures, were given access to a region of Hades whose pastures endured the warm embrace of the sun. Those tragically cursed or forgotten were sent to the lower confines of Tartarus, a place of unspeakable darkness and decay.
In other legends, the Sirens, whose undulant choruses drew men to forget their true course, soothed many a sailor to their slumber, raking their devoured bones clean across those ancient hypnotic shores.
Narcotics and tropical pleasures gave loss to memories, forgetfulness of home and family, and dissolution of character. Tradition cautions us to forego dinner with the Lotus-eaters or nights on lusty islands.
If forgetting breeds synonyms with physical and psychological death, the act of remembrance provides a certain antidote. During a meeting with my local men’s group (Prometheus Men’s Group), we began recalling our earliest memories and discussed the importance of memory in masculinity. Here’s what we compiled:
- Men who forget themselves in relationships typically dissolve into codependent, people-pleasers. They live for the “other,” usually their intimate partner, children, or work. Hence, they embark on a slow or rapid descent to some kind of death.
- Forgetting our path digresses into the pursuit of money, sex, and possessions. Should a man give his power to others, he will consequently seek to exert power and control over the other to the same degree he has lost himself.
- Men must face criticism to grow. Should they forget that they are a soul in progress, and that Earth is a factory of experience unconcerned with failures or gains, then these criticisms can cripple. Forgetting the larger picture, the cycle of breakdown and growth, sends us to early body or soul graves.
- Remembering includes our instincts. Instinctual masculinity has oft been oppressed, and we have forgotten healthy anger, virile attractive libido, and the ability to share sadness, grief, and defeat.
- Men who forget their childlike nature often surrender their zest for living.
- As all Greek myths and legends serve as analogies to external worldly life, they also serve as parable to mental/psychic processes. They remind us to constantly seek our own remembrance. Summarily, heroes are not only remembered by others, they remember who they are, where they came from, and where to get information about where they are going. Heroes…
- Remember that they must step into the unknown, into places they have never been before, and interact with things that are foreign. They also remember whence they came, and return from their adventures proud of their accomplishment yet grateful for those who supported their journey. They also remember to share their bounty.
- Reclaim, on a regular basis, the idea that their divine nature exists, independent of religion, and that our gifts come from another place. Forgetting that we are much more than a body that likes to please its senses, avoid pain, and retain satisfaction constitutes a tremendous problem in the world today. Let us not forget that aside from our work, families, dreams, goals, religious obligations, aspirations, partnerships, interests, etc., we are here to expand our capacity to love ourselves and our experiences with increasing amplitude and compassion.
Remember their defects, how terribly they might have treated this or that person, animal, or most importantly themselves; that in the spiral nature of life’s experiences, when they return to a similar encounter, they will choose love more skillfully, embracing the betterment of all beings.
- Recall that our opinions and dreams are worth standing erect for. Each time we forget to stand firm in our intuitions, a little shard of our soul departs to the land of the dead, only to return when we remember it once more. The pillars that support the earth are never flaccid. Although the world may test them, heroes are virile. Even if later they are proven wrong, heroes know it was their truth in that particular moment, admit their folly, and stand by their current truth like strong oaks cling to the hillside during a tempest.
Honor the memory of their ancestors, acknowledging that they are not an entire pie unto themselves, but a piece among a larger whole, a node amongst a webbed lineage, carrying the torch for the past, present, and future members.
- Remembering where they come from eliminates egocentricity. We aren’t islands of heroism or defeat, we are simply doing the best with what we have, and making things better by remembering….
- … the past, childhood, pleasant experiences, and, especially, victories and hard-fought triumphs. The cumulative effect of this anamnesis retrieves soul power, reminds heroes that we are more than the wounds we have been dealt, and that we are capable of becoming better than we are, despite loss of hope in outward appearance.
- Purposely forget who they are from time to time. Whether it is by virtue of will, or a passing cloud, heroes consciously allow this forgetting to arise. When their horizons are familiar, heroes allow their minds to begin experiencing life, people, work, and their imagination for the first time, even if they are physically going through the same motions.
- Remember to ask for help.
How will you be remembered? How do you remember yourself?
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