Don’t Be Predictable

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Pema Chodron is one of my favorite authors.  Both compassionate and very clear with using her sense of humor.  Her compassion cards offer daily lessons and I love the one that says hey self “Don’t be so predictable”.  Then you flip the card over and it says “Don’t resent people who have harmed you.”  Well damn~ Ego deflated.  Higher self activated!

What I, and in my opinion, many others failed to understand about growth, is that it can look rather messy.  Ever witness a baby being born?  The process of new life emerging is emotional, gruesome, incomprehensible, risky, amazing, exciting, painful and the list goes on and on – depending on a persons frame of reference.

So it goes with emotional evolution.  We are pushed and we get pissed.  We work hard and to our metrics we might ‘fail’.  We ‘lose’ and we are sad.  We are kind and someone is cruel.  It’s a hot mess at times!

Yet the birth of life started way before the arrival of a fully developed human did it not?  A man and a women must first find one another.  They must copulate.  Then a process of great magnificence happens completely unseen by the human eye.  At the same time this powerful process is happening, the host might suffer pain, nausea, doubt, fear, terror and so might her partner.  Perhaps this is how all growth works.  Even if we want a child with all our desire, we may still feel horrible physically or frightened emotionally.  Yet this process of life is growing, irrespective of our discomfort.  Some may refer to this process as creation.  So might emotions also be part of the process of “creation”.

So whatever emotion we have now, may not take into account the unseen process that has been forming or continues to form despite our “reaction” to what is.

We might just now experience a “consequence or outcome” of days or decades of choices – like cancer from smoking, obesity from overeating, resentment from others toward us from our own emotionally unavailability or a gold medalists now as the result of all the training “then”.

So “outcomes” NOW or the result of a series of “processes then”.  We can not change “then” but we can be unpredictable and decide to think about, act about, engage about, live about – in a radically different way.   Only then we will get a different result.

So if we feel like “X” then be unpredictable and just sit in it.  Don’t wallow in it.  Don’t flame it.  Don’t deny it.  Don’t react to it.  Don’t discharge it onto others.  Don’t resist it.  Don’t avoid it.  Don’t stuff it.  Don’t medicate it.  Don’t engage in all those predictable reactions. Don’t fix it.  Don’t judge it.  Don’t think you are “this or that” for feeling this way.  Don’t pick at it.  Don’t probe it.  Don’t try and make sense of it.  Just do the one thing that you try with all your might to avoid….. Just let it be there with the same understanding as the air that sits around you at all times.

You might find a space you did not understand.  That just letting it sit there allows it to pass more quickly.  That to relax and let it be is the ultimate solution.  That to go about other tasks and let the tears stream down are both possible.  That to allow the emotions flow is freedom.  To let yourself be authentic and let others see your authenticity can create deep bonds and respect for who you are outside and within.

Think of how you feel and imagine the others that must feel this way.  Think of other that must have gone through this.  Think of others who are kind to you and send them a thank you note in the midst of your own pain.  Think of others you can help who might need your support.  Scream at the sky.  Look up and around.  Choose to believe with all your heart and soul you are supported despite your mind telling dragging home all evidence to the contrary.   Thank the trees for shade.  Thank the sun for warmth.  Thank the water for sustaining life.  Thank the earth for continuing to grow food to feed you.  Thank the workers who showed up to make sure your lights worked today.  Thank the workers who picked food for you to eat.  Think of all the things people did for you today, and had they not, where would you be?

Show kindness to all just because you can! Go outside where life exists.  Feel the wind.  Breath deeply.  Sit in all the life happening around you and you need do nothing and it still is all happening.  Then relax in the understanding of this.  Just be.  Just sit with it.  Suddenly you will be inspired.  You will feel ok.  You will have done something totally different.  Now repeat over and over for this is what gives life and will eventually birth your new life; your deepest desires manifested!

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