The Caterpillar Girl

On May 23, 2015May 23, 2015 By Just StephIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

THE CATERPILLAR GIRL

She was going nowhere, this caterpillar girl. Every day the same. Inching along her barren branch. Trying to make sense of a pointless world.

Every day she would wake up and do it all again. And every night it seemed that she was no closer to her goal (whatever that might be ). Every night she would curl herself around the stem of a leaf and fall asleep gazing at the stars and dreaming of a future where she had a purpose, where her life had meaning.

And then there came a day when the caterpillar girl knew that it was over. She couldn’t stand being strongany longer. That night she curled herself around the stem of a leaf, and this time she allowed herself to let go.

Inch by inch she used her outer skin to weave herself a shell; an armor against a purposeless pointless life. And once she was enclosed in her safe space she allowed herself to fall apart. She held onto nothing, allowing herself to finally let go, dissolving into the quantum foam of pure possibilities.

And it was there, in the quiet and the dark of her chrysalis that something began to take shape. It was here that the caterpillar girl’s hopes and dreams finally loosened from their mundane routine, began to take on a life of their own, and the foam of possibilities coalesced into exquisite form.

Finally, gasping for breath and still damp with the dew of creation, she climbed out of her self imposed prison and lay quite still, wings spread to dry, basking in the warmth of the sun and ready at last to make her dreams come true.

Living in the Moment

On July 21, 2012 By Just StephIn My Odyssey, Touching the InfiniteLeave a comment

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment. ~Buddha

When I first heard the phrase “living in the moment” I found myself laughing sadly and shaking my head at the gullible fools who would buy into something so inane. Live in the moment? What fool would settle for living in the moment? Man oh man, talk about boring!

I didn’t want to live in the moment. What I wanted was to live my dreams, to achieve my goals; to make something of myself so that when I died the world would remember me! Forget about this living in the moment stuff. Obviously it was a cop out by those who hadn’t done anything with their lives; people who perhaps had once dreamed big but who had failed to follow through and were now regretting it; something to fall back on in order to make themselves feel better.

I knew better. I knew that if you wanted to be anything in life; if you wanted to make something of yourself, you had to remain in control; not only of yourself but of everyone and everything around you. Leaving anything up to chance was just plain foolishness.

If you wanted to get anywhere in life you needed to focus on your goals and break your projects down into small steps that you could accomplish and then, when all of the steps were completed, presto, your goal would be achieved. Well, that was the plan. And hey, it worked for businesses, why not for me?

There was just one problem. The goals that I had set for myself were not in alignment with my soul purpose. Hell, I didn’t even know what my soul purpose was. I had created a nice neat fiction for my life; a belief that when I attained a specific level of financial security or professional achievement that I would, at last, be happy. Well, that was the plan anyway.

And so it was that even when I had achieved each goal there was always something missing. It was like baking a cake. I’d followed the steps – added all of the ingredients in the proper order – and had a perfect cake sitting in front of me, but even though it looked perfect, it didn’t taste quite right. What had I done wrong?

Over time, however, I have discovered something; I found out what was missing, and it was far simpler than I could have imagined and all the more difficult because of that to implement. What I was missing was living (dare I say it?) in the moment; enjoying what I had already achieved without the expectation of what came next; of what I could do better next time around.

For all of my lists and my schedules; for all of my hopes and dreams and plans; for all of my visualization and projection; without being able to step aside and get out of my own way I ended up with a picture perfect cake that had little if any flavor.

This isn’t to say that we can’t dream.

This isn’t to say that visualization will not bring you your heart’s desire.

All this means is that we need to take the time – right now – to enjoy the moment that we spent all of our yesterday’s dreaming of and visualizing. It is the enjoyment of the moment that we have created that brings us the flavor of our days. And it is here, in the quiet of appreciation and the letting go of expectation where we will find that happiness has been waiting patiently for us all along.

Living In The Moment

To take each day as it comes

To live each moment as it arrives

To hope for nothing

To fear nothing

To expect nothing

Makes each moment a priceless gift;

A gift from the universe

Straight to your heart

A gift to be treasured and adored

A gift to be enjoyed, experienced

And then released.

~SSHenry

The Perception of Pain

On May 14, 2012 By Just StephIn Authentic Living SeriesLeave a comment

“It isn’t what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it’s what we say to ourselves about what happens.” ~Pema Chodron

How many hours have you spent living in pain? Oh, I’m not talking about physical conditions here; broken bones and painful illnesses and things that can be relieved by popping a few pills or taking a hot bath. No, the pain I’m talking about is the pain that twists your heart into a knot; the kind that pierces you insides; the kind of pain comes from reliving painful memories and circumstances over and over again; playing them out on the movie screen of your mind in all of their gory detail.

Perhaps they are old memories; things that happened long ago and far away; things that impacted your childhood or things that you have simply not been able to let go of. Or maybe the painful event happened just this morning; someone saying something unintentionally hurtful as they walked out the door, and you can’t keep your mind from going over and over what was said.

But not only does the scene replay over and over again in your mind, you then find yourself going over all of the possible interpretations and connotations of what was said. Why did they say that? Was it something you said or did that prompted them to react that way? Could you have done something to prevent it? What did they mean by it?

Before you know it, minutes, sometimes hours have passed and you have absolutely nothing to show for all of your worry but a headache and a tear stained face. You haven’t had breakfast. You can’t focus on your work, you’ve called or texted half a dozen different people asking for their input on the situation; their interpretation of what happened, and when they can’t give you a satisfactory answer you find yourself snapping at everyone around you, and all because you can’t let go.

Ah, that wasn’t what you expected me to say, is it? I’m sorry; did you think I was going to say that the pain you have been experiencing is all because of the event that happened so long ago; all because of the hurtful things that the person said as they were leaving? Did you think I was going to tell you what a brave soul you are for having to relive that horrible time; to re-experience those negatively associated comments and those situations that scared you for life? Well, I’m not, because it’s not true.

You are not feeling bad because of what the person said – or because of whatever it is that happened to you in the past. You are not a brave soul for being able to relive your memories stoically (or even tearfully). What you are is being selfish, and your selfishness is hurting you.

Does that sound rather harsh? Perhaps it does. But that does not make it any less true.

As humans, we cling to our pain – it’s what we do, and there certainly seems to be enough of it around. We pin our hopes and expectations onto people and circumstances; onto events and outcomes, and when they fail to live up to our expectations, we feel hurt and rejected. We experience pain.

But we can’t simply let it go at that. We can’t simply feel the pain and then move on. Oh no, we have to cling to our pain. It wasn’t simply enough to experience it. We have to own it. We have to keep it close, locked away in a pretty carved box; one that we can take out and rummage through whenever we feel the urge to trust again; whenever we feel the urge to live.

We cling to the memories of those things that hurt us because we have an instinctive urge to avoid pain; because we don’t want to be hurt that way ever again, and reliving that painful event or circumstance; playing that memory over and over again in our minds is our way of protecting ourselves against its ever repeating. The thing is, in making ourselves repeat these memories over and over again, we are hurting ourselves far worse than the event ever could – or did. Instead of experiencing the pain once; learning from it and moving on, we force ourselves to experience it time and time again.

It is far better to let go of all of the old hurts and painful memories. Will this leave you open to being hurt again? Of course it will. But if you want to really live and not hide yourself away, it is a chance you are going to have to take.

Try it.

When you find yourself recalling a painful experience, instead of letting it play out in your head, stop it in its tracks. Lift it out of your mind complete and whole as you would a flower that you have picked and hold it in front of you; over a pond or river in your imagination. Acknowledge the pain that the memory caused, and then let it go. Drop it into the water. It is gone. The fear and the pain that were attached to it are gone too.

Will this leave you vulnerable to be hurt again? Yes it will. But it will also give you a freedom and lightness of being that will make your spirit soar seeing as that it is no longer weighted down with the fears and expectations that you had given to it for safekeeping.

Besides, if you remember that the pain of experience comes not from the experience itself but rather from what we tell ourselves about the experience then you will find the way that you view your experiences changing radically, all it takes is a shift in perception, and the ability to let go.

A Blue-Gray Wind

On November 30, 2011 By Just StephIn Metaphysical MussingsLeave a comment

There are colors on the wind tonight, and flavors in the rain. So I roll down my window as I drive, and let the colors float through, taste the flavors of the raindrops on my tongue.

I found a last shred of hope under the visor, but lost it when a blue-gray wind whipped through the car and carried it out into the woods where crickets are calling out for reinforcements against what has to be invading bull-frog hoards. I slam on the breaks, but it’s gone. All gone, whipped off and no longer visible, and I find tears on my cheeks, for it was all I had left, and now my heart is left empty.

But even as I sigh and head back down the slick black road, dodging puddles and downed tree-branches, I have to wonder what they thought of a blue-gray wind bearing hope. Did one side or the other see it as an omen, a sign of divine intervention on their behalf?

Or maybe it didn’t pause in those damp green woods, perhaps it drifted right over the heads of the battling crickets and bull-frogs and instead drifted off into the fields where slightly soggy lightning bugs are huddling under ivy leaves in the hopes that it will dry out enough for them to give their backsides a good workout – it’s been a very long time after all, and what would they make of a blue-gray wind carrying hope?

Or did the wind ignore the lightning bugs and instead curl itself around the legs of a late-night jogger, devoted soul, only a devoted soul would be out jogging on a night when blue-gray winds are whipping things out of people’s cars and splattering white mesh running shoes with muddy spray. Did my hope trip up the jogger? Make them fall face first into a mud puddle? Are they even now spitting out a mouthful of mud and brushing the leaf bits out of their hair?

They probably didn’t even notice the hope. They would have cursed it. What need has a jogger of hope? Focused devotion, that is the only emotion that they have room for, they probably carry it strapped to their arm like an iPod, turned up to highest volume, nothing else in the world for them at that moment in
time.

Perhaps my hope never made landfall at all, and is even now drifting off into the stratosphere, its blue-gray transport slowly turning to silver-white as it crystallizes into ice, its silver touch chilling the hope to nearly the freezing point.

But that’s the nice thing about hope you see, it can never be entirely destroyed, so even a silver-white wind wouldn’t have any effect on it – or not entirely, it might make it sluggish and cold, but eventually the silver-white wind would lose its grip, and on its way down – spiraling down to earth, it might just get caught up in an updraft, and a sliver of rising morning sun, and a splatter of raindrops, and, just for a moment, my hope, that hope I had tucked so securely beneath my visor, that hope for which I had such great plans, would be visible to the world, reflected off a million raindrops, refracted by a million photons of sunlight, and trickling down to the world – into my waiting hands, in an outpour of shimmering multi-hued rainbow light.

And I smile, because that’s my hope. I feel it in my heart of hearts, recognized it the moment I saw it. And it’s made even greater now, by having been lost, it’s finding can touch the hearts of thousands – of millions – and perhaps they will not be silly enough to fold it in half and tuck it under their visors, but instead keep it always in their hearts and souls for all the world to see.