Grief – A Path Forward

Tag: Personal Growth,SpiritualityBeth and Neill

How do you deal with disappointment, pain, rejection, and the grief that these can bring?

A friend and I were talking today about this. She just called it quits with the man she was seeing and we were discussing the different ways people deal with these issues.

How do you deal with grief

At one point in the conversation, I had said to her that spending time in pain is a choice. And frankly, I don’t quite get the appeal.

If I understood her correctly, I believe spending time in the pain surrounding the end of this relationship helps brings her to new depths of clarity. This clarity then allows her to move forward from that pain. So for her, the pain of disappointment, rejection and grief can be a gift that moves her forward.

For me, and–I am admittedly very cerebral–my process is acknowledging my pain, choosing to focus on uncovering the thinking causing the pain, identifying what was missing for me in the situation that caused my dissatisfaction, and then coming up with strategies that help me focus on the happiness and pleasure in my life. This is what helps me move forward. The pain of disappointment, rejection and grief can be a gift.

We both do our best to consciously move towards the gift that the pain is offering.

I’m positive there is not one “right” way. What I do know is that I often see other people spending time with their pain–delving deeply into it–but seemingly never really moving forward from it.

Coleman Barks in his book, The Soul of Rumi, said: “There is a shedding that’s healing, that makes us more alive, a grieving required to enter the region of unconditional love.

“The heat in the oven cooks us to a loaf that’s tasty and nourishing for the community. Rumi is always affirmative about grief and disappointment, mad with the YES inside all the no’s.

“Rumi eats grief and the shadow and metabolizes them into his bewildered, surrendered self, then tries to live simply and generously from there.

“Rumi said: ‘I’ve broken through to longing now, filled with a grief I have felt before, but never like this.'”

I believe the difference is being conscious about your intention.

What do you think?

With Love,
Beth

You find out more about Coleman Barks and his book, The Soul of Rumi, by going to his website at: http://www.colemanbarks.com


Why People Become Relationship Terrorists

First of all, I dislike using labels such as “terrorist.” Labels such as these tend to dehumanize the person we’re talking about and help perpetuate a culture of “enemy images.” And “enemy images” are the driving force that perpetuates terrorism.

But to unwrap this label, let’s agree that terrorism means: “the systematic use of fear, especially as a means of coercion.” The question that comes to my mind is: How could anyone come to believe that using fear to influence someone else to do what we want is the best strategy? (Just look at the history of the Middle East if you want to see how ineffective this strategy is at truly resolving issues.)

Well, the best answer I’ve found to this question has to do with how we unwittingly adopt our culture’s beliefs and then unquestioningly act on them. I haven’t seen anyone who explains this more succinctly than this talk given by …

Dan Dennett: On ants, terrorism, and the awesome power of meme

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_dennett_on_dangerous_memes.html

Here’s one of those talks that can change your view of the world forever. Starting with the deceptively simple story of an ant, Dan Dennett unleashes a dazzling sequence of ideas, making a powerful case for the existence of “memes” — a term coined by Richard Dawkins for mental concepts that are literally alive and capable of spreading from brain to brain. On the way, look out for:
+ a powerful one-sentence secret of happiness
+ a compelling insight into terrorists’ motivation
+ a chilling view of Islam
And just when you think you know where the talk’s heading, it dramatically shifts direction and questions some of western culture’s fundamental assumptions.
This Is Unmissable.

After viewing this talk, it’s not hard to understand how a dangerous set of relationship memes has hijacked most of the brains in today’s culture, and why people end up acting the way they do on “dating” and Survivor type reality shows.

Fascinating stuff! What do you think?

Committed to Your Success,
Neill Gibson


Personal Values and the Heart’s Intuitive Intelligence

This NEW video from our friends over at HeartMath is an overview of the amazing and vital role of the heart in our lives, and how our personal energetics shapes our social relationships and ultimately affects global consciousness.  The video is about creating Personal, Social and ultimately Global Coherence.

Where this HeartMath video talks about the intuitive nature of “heart feelings”, those familiar with our work will recognize that these feelings are generated whenever one is in resonance with that core pattern of values that are central to each person’s makeup. Our experience working with people is in complete harmony with the material presented in this new video, and we wholeheartedly recommend HeartMath’s work.

We hope you enjoy the video!

The Heart’s Intuitive Intelligence —

a path to personal, social and global coherence

 

;-)HeartMath’s mission is to facilitate a fundamental shift in health, well-being and consciousness. The focus of its triple-bottom-line mission is people, planet and profit. And what could be bad about that?

Please leave a comment below and share whether you rely on your heat’s intuitive sense as described in this video and if so, how you have developed or nurture this ability.

 


The Fear of Taking Responsibility

Why don’t people fess up when they’ve done something “wrong”?

In our work, we believe that fear of taking responsibility is a result of being “Domesticated”. We define Domestication as any Training Process that uses a system of punishments and rewards to accomplish its goals.

We enjoy how [tag-tec]Don Miguel Ruiz[/tag-tec] describes this in his book [tag-tec]The Four Agreements[/tag-tec].
“Children are domesticated the same way that we domesticate a dog, a cat, or any other animal. In order to teach a dog we punish the dog and we give it rewards. We train our children whom we love so much the same way that we train any domesticated animal: with a system of punishment and reward.

We are told, “You’re a good boy or girl,” when we do what Mom and Dad want us to do. When we don’t, we are “a bad girl or boy.”

When we went against the rules we were punished; when we went along with the rules we got a reward. We were punished many times a day, and we were also rewarded many times a day. Soon we became afraid of being punished and also afraid of not receiving the reward.”

Becoming an Auto-Domesticated Animal

The domestication is now so strong that at a certain point we no longer need anyone to domesticate us. We don’t need parents, the school, or the church to domesticate us. We are so well trained that we become Auto-Domesticated animals.”

We can now domesticate ourselves according to the same system of punishment and reward. We [tag-tec]punish ourselves[/tag-tec] when we don’t follow the rules according to our belief system; we reward ourselves when we are “good boys and girls.”

We’ve all grown up in this Auto-Domesticating culture.
(see the work of [tag-tec]Riane Eisler[/tag-tec]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riane_Eisler
and [tag-tec]Walter Wink[/tag-tec]: http://www.walterwink.com/books.html)

Our culture practices judging whether we are good or bad, right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, worthy of reward or deserve punishment …

[tag-tec]Integrity[/tag-tec] vs. [tag-tec]Morality[/tag-tec]

This causes people to confuse Integrity with Morality. We define Integrity as: Being true to your [tag-tec]Chosen Values[/tag-tec] and your Highest Self, vs. Morality, which is: judging the rightness or wrongness of something according to Culturally Learned moral standards. Morality is the practice of judging what’s good or bad, right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, worthy of reward or deserves punishment.

In this culture people get Integrity & Morality mixed up so they believe that failing to act as others expect will cause them to be judged as Bad and Wrong, or worthy of punishment. So people fear the [tag-tec]punishment[/tag-tec] that will follow from the judgments of others such as: How irresponsible / inconsiderate / selfish / stupid … or What a jerk / creep / idiot, and so on.

In this situation it’s no wonder there are so few souls willing to martyr themselves to the consequences of these moralistic judgments.

What Would You Prefer?

Given all this, it seems to us that the more important questions are: How do we move from a culture where we try and control people’s actions through fear of punishment and desire for rewards to one where we elicit the actions we want from others by engaging in a compassionate dialogue that is focused on gaining clarity about everyone’s needs in a situation (such as one where someone has acted “irresponsibly”), thereby eliciting a sincere agreement to participate together in a way that serves the highest good of everyone involved?

And as an important prerequisite: How can we gain the level of [tag-tec]Values Intelligence[/tag-tec] needed to focus our attention on maintaining integrity with what is most important to us (at the essential, core, “spiritual” level) rather than being driven by our culturally learned, habitual thinking?

So (as a shamelessly self-promoting plug) if you find these questions intriguing you may be interested to know that much of our work is dedicated to finding practical and effective answers to these last two questions.


Speak Peace this Holiday Season

Dove and Sparrow in the Snow
Image by chriswsn via Flickr

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“Tell me, how much a snowflake weighs?” asked a sparrow of a dove.

“Not much more than nothing” was the answer.

“Then”, the sparrow says, “I want to tell you a wonderful story:

“I was sitting on a branch of a pine tree, close to the trunk when it started to snow. Not much, not like in a storm. No, it was like in a dream, without any touch of intensity.

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Snow on a branch
Image via Wikipedia

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“Because I did not have anything else to do I started to count those snowflakes which fell on my branch and its needles. Their number was 3,741,952.

“When the next snowflake fell on the branch – weighing not much more than nothing as you said – the branch broke.”

The sparrow did not say more.

He took off.

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Peace dove
Image via Wikipedia

The dove, which is supposed to be an authority on this topic since the time of Noah, thought a while about this story and then said to itself:

“Maybe there is only one more voice that needs to be heard for there to be [tag-tec]peace in our world[/tag-tec].”

~

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~ (received from Gitta Zimmermann, Nonviolent Communication Trainer) ~
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