Unfolding Our Myth - Coming to know and trust our own deep sources of knowledge.

“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” 

-Rumi

With the overwhelming amount of advice available to us now in the form of books, e-courses and blog posts, it can be easy to ignore or overlook our own innate sources of knowledge and wisdom. 

Those are other people's stories, the advice issuing forth something they learned in a very specific set of circumstances, shaped by a very specific history, such that the advice can only be more relevant to them than to anyone else.

This isn’t to say that we may not be inspired by the stories and advice of others, or see the wisdom in them. But, no one’s story, or the wisdom therein, is ever going to be more relevant and applicable to our lives than that issuing forth from living our own story.

For better or worse, the answers to our life’s riddle remain within us.

Unfolding our own myth, then, is the work that lies before us. It may be tempting to look outside ourselves for answers as it is easier to dream that someone else has solved the riddle facing us, and that we can adopt their program and apply it to our life, but this cut-and-paste orientation ultimately will never produce the results we hope it will. How could it?

People who have truly learned anything, who have gleaned wisdom, are people who have wrestled with their demons and their angels—they have struggled, they have persisted in the struggle, and out of that come to know something about themselves and the world that does not translate easily into the lives of others, especially those who have not yet engaged on that level in a struggle with the demons and angels populating their own lives.

We are each required to walk through that fire. No one can do this for us.

So, if we are looking for a little more peace, love, joy and happiness in our lives, we need also to understand that these treasures are something to mine for in our own experiences, our own myth, our own soul.

We need to, in other words, demonstrate some respect for the life inside us, and we do this best by charting our own course, unfolding our own myth and getting to know the qualities of our own soul.

Meditate. Contemplate. Ruminate. Listen. Do these in whatever form yields results for you in coming to know yourself and your story better, and do it consistently. Write it down, sing it, dance it, learn from it … own it.

And be very discerning when it comes to vetting the advice of any well-intended others.

Change and the Challenge of Relationship

“We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.” –W. Somerset Maugham

 I don’t think the truth revealed in this quote can be understated. We demand much of our relationships, but almost always viewing them through a lens which doesn’t allow for the differences that crop up over time as a result of change.

Life is a dynamic process, always. There is never a point in time in which the life inside us ceases to move, re-shaping itself over and over and over again.

It is amazing, therefore, to have the experience of a healthy, longstanding relationship with another person. Navigating these inevitable shifts within our own personalities, value systems and perspectives is hard enough, let alone managing them well in concert with the same taking place in the life of others.

I am not criticizing the desire for relationships that last, but I am questioning the expectation that (given the dynamics mentioned above) they should necessarily be expected to last in one particular form.

It is worth noting at this juncture, that longevity is not necessarily a sign of health in a relationship. I have witnessed many a longstanding relationship to succumb to rot for the inability to either mend things or move on.

It may then be advisable to measure our success in relationship less by the length of time that passes, than by the quality of our interactions moment to moment.

Perhaps this is why relationship is often compared to dance. Dance makes space for the idea of relationship as a dynamic, continuous process that requires us to cultivate strength, presence and the ability to move through the ups and downs, beginnings and endings, with an increasing sense of fluidity and grace.

In other words, the object is not that the dance should last forever, it is to dance from beginning to inevitable end as well as we can in any given moment in time.

Best to leave any sense of expectation or entitlement behind where the question of longevity is concerned.

Change is inevitable. There is nothing to bargain with here. We merely get to decide what action we will take in response, whether the change be that inside ourselves or others near and dear. 

And while this reality may be sobering, I think it is also hopeful for the freedom it reveals we have in any given moment in time, to choose that which augers well for life, passion and vitality. 

Our happiness never depends on one particular relationship working out forever and ever, it depends on an openness of heart to meet all relationships with a degree of respect (self and other) which includes letting go if need be.

Scrutinizing the season of petal pink haze.

The short-lived season of cherry-blossom pink, and seductive-red hearts is upon us—love as an over sentimentalized commercial enterprise that, essentially, holds little to sustain and nourish us.

I don’t mean to be a downer here, in fact, I mean to uplift, but uplift in a grounded sense of what it means to be in relationship, to love someone.

Relationship in almost any guise is not a simple, easy undertaking. When we engage with others, when we invest significant portions of our mental and emotional life in getting to know someone better, ideally, we take on a deeper sense of responsibility both for ourselves in terms of how we are treated by the other, and for the other in terms of how our actions and behaviour play out in their life—part of the work of love.

As we are all a multi-faceted complex of moods, personality, degrees of intelligence, understanding and skill, it isn’t a wonder that we come up against challenges in our dealings with one another.

Love, therefore, in the broadest, most real sense, must have substance to it. How else to manage the discursive challenges when our friend or lover proves both to be much more and much less than we imagined or hoped for?

Sticky sweet sentimental notions of love and relationship may, temporarily, be stimulating, but will never give us the strength and fortitude we need to manage this dissonance well.

And, if we crave the nourishment that can only come from depth of engagement and intimacy, best plan on being awake, attentive and challenged, for a robust love is the only sort of love that will see us through.

Be light-hearted and heavy-hearted. Be happy and sad. A well-rounded love holds space for it all, is present to it all and transcends (thankfully) the feebler, more conventional notions of love that permeate this season of candy-coated I-heart-you.

Have fun, but be real. 

Love well.