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7/10/2018

Grace Appears at the Level of Imbalance

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In Flannery O'Conner's super-creepy short story "Revelation," the good and respectable Mrs. Turpin is literally conked on the head and choked by grace. 

By Mary Grace, that is--a college student who can't bear to hear Mrs. Turpin's gossipy hypocrisy in the doctor's office one more second and throws a book at her before jumping on her and choking her. At home, where she is hurt more in spirit than in body, Mrs. Turpin wails Why me?! and basically demands that God explain himself to her,

Which He does. 
Kind of. 

After her violent encounter with (G)race, Mrs. Turpin has a vision--a revelation about the true nature of virtue--beside a pig parlor.   

​ 
I think of this story every time I hear the word ​grace.  Growing up, I heard grace defined as unearned favor with God--which sounds very sweet. 
​
​But in real life, I have found grace to be both the thing that knocks me off-balance, and the thing that appears when the center does not hold.

​

​
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But in real life, I have found grace to be both the thing that knocks me off-balance, and the thing that appears when the center does not hold.
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​Which is why I am utterly fascinated by Level 4 of the Enneagram Levels of Development, called "The Level of Imbalance."  Below Level 4 is "Interpersonal Conflict" (L5), followed by "Overcompensation" and various levels of unhealthy development.  And above Level 4 is "Social Value" (L3) and various levels of healthy development. 

Basically, below Level 4, our pre-conscious patterns of behavior, emotions, and thought are totally running the program--or rather--running us.  Because, icky as it may feel, we are the program the patterns are running--like non-updated software.  Below Level 4, our actions are not free; they are deeply conditioned.  But at those levels we don't know and can't care--because pre-conscious personality patterns just feel totally normal.  (Of course they do!  How could it be otherwise?) 

At Level 4, though, somehow, the patterns loosen, and things become unbalanced.  Something happens--some grace occurs--and we feel . . . different.   Maybe lighter, maybe more expansive, maybe brighter or clearer or more "real."  This shift from Level 5 to Level 4 is the beginning of transformation.  
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So how does this shift happen?  How do we move from interpersonal conflict up to the not-always-comforting grace of imbalance?  
  • Suffering can take us there.
  • Practices can take us there.  (Breathing, yoga, qigong, hip-openers, heart-openers, self-awareness and mindfulness practices.)
  • Nature and children and animals and love can take us there.
then I'm in love with grace, with the unknown whatever-it-is that cracks us open, and light shines through.  That's why I developed this workshop--a whole weekend of nature and breathing and art and Enneagram learnings.  18 CE's for social workers and therapists.  One more earlybird spot for August; four more for October.  
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REgister for August Retreat
REgister for October REtreat
copyright:  The Enneagram Institute

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3/11/2018

Enabling Forgiveness

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On a particularly dark night of the soul . . . 
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​​On a particularly dark night of the soul, when my husband was with his new love, I exploded from sleep, drawn to my computer as if it were oxygen, not yet aware that I was awake, yet typing in the words:  ”What is an enabler?” 


​
Just days before, upon discovering the thing between them (the thing that would someday have a name--affair--but which was presently was just a terror devouring my universe), I had snapped at my husband, trying to stay in touch with the deepest place in my soul, a thing that I thought would be an investment toward healing our marriage:  “The forgiveness is in place and ongoing.”
 
And I meant it with all fury of wisdom, righteous truth, and comic justice.
 
Still, there was all this pain, all this emergence of disconnected pieces from the recesses of memory coming together and forming patterns, fatal flaws, and tragic consequences.  All this realizing, over and over again, that even with the support of friends, I was really and deeply alone in this.
 


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​I had been toying lightly with this concept for some time:  joking with my husband and friends about certain "enabling tendencies" and feeling good that I had accurately, openly, and without shame identified a key characteristic of my intricate inner survival system.
 
But that was before I knew how fully I have been betrayed.  And not only by my husband and friend, but also by my own innocent, intentional blindness.

Now there was only a pounding, tunnel-vision urgency define what went wrong, to understand how I had created this mess, and to figure out how to escape the flames.


​And here was an answer, cutting through all my filters. 
(Because I had no
more filters.)
(​Because they were
​all in tatters.)

​"An enabler is someone who
doesn’t allow other people to take
​responsibility for their own actions."
​
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​​Ping, ping, ping, ping, ping.  A dozen memories surfaced at once, from early childhood to adolescence and college, into professorhood and marriage and motherhood.
 
Yes. I did this.
I was this.
I did not have "enabling tendencies."
I was an [expletive deleted] enabler!
I have always been like this.


But I didn't always have to be.  

So:  here is what I’ve come to discover
about the difference between enabling and forgiveness,
about how we abuse forgiveness,
about how we gaslight our own realities--
--all in the name of forgiveness
and all in the service of
not having to stand up
and say, 
​No. This is not okay.
​
Both forgiveness and enabling meet an incredibly deep need for relief from relationship pain.  But they are not the same, and they have very different outcomes.
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​Forgiveness feels good.
And so does enabling.

The relief associated with releasing anger, coming into equilibrium, restoring relationship, and helping life becomes sweet again is powerful.

Forgiveness brings relief. 
​And so does enabling.
​
Both meet  an incredibly deep need for relief from relationship pain.    


​And it is often literally impossible to tell the difference.
​
On the school bus, when I was a very little girl, a boy started hitting me over the head with a book--a very heavy textbook. I had no defense but enduring and not responding.  (Yes--classic Enneagram 9.) 
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All my instincts told me that eventually, he would get bored and stop.
Which he did. 
But it took a long, long, long time.

And the relief of him finally, finally stopping was so great that for a brief half-second I literally wanted him to start hitting me again, just to feel how good it felt when he stopped. 

​​In that buzzed-out place of dissociation, relief is all that matters.  And relief happens naturally  when we let go, even when we let go of the need to be treated with deep respect.  Thus it is that enabling (not letting others take responsibility) disguises itself as forgiveness (letting go of what no longer serves.)
​


Those of us with “enabling tendencies” are therefore called to a deeper responsibility than we are used to taking on.  We are called to

  1. Notice where in our relationships we are over-functioning:  when we are not letting others take responsibility for their own words and actions
  2. Tune in to our body's intelligence, and learn to hear and honor our own no.
 
And here is the scary part:  we are called to see our own abusing of forgiveness.
Please do not imagine that I take this work to be simple, surface-level adjustments. I tried these ("silly me, yes:  I have enabling tendencies"), and they were a first micro-step.  But only that.

But neither does the work have to be hard or traumatizing. Trauma clearly is not a path to freedom. 
 
We must take the body to a safe and clear place, deeply present and alive.  And then (think of Maslow's hierarchy here):  safety of the body becomes our baseline--the place that feels normal, the place of grounding to make any deep shifts that your own wisdom is calling you to make. 
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​​The call is into your own ocean, into your own bleached coral reefs.

Being with the damage.
  • Witnessing what is.
  • Knowing what you know.
  • Remembering what deep presence feels like.
  • Knowing that you already know how to shift back to wholeness.




There are reliable ways to shift back to wholeness
  • Know your true needs at any a rising moment, including the need for both respect and release.
  • Find your natural boundaries. And honor them.
  • Forgive by releasing what no longer serves.
  • Know in your bones whether enabling actually works for you, to express your highest self in the world.
  •  Use your breath and body wisdom to shift.

Yep.  I can teach you these ways.  I sought out wisdom and the tools that I now teach when I was in desperation.  I practiced and honed and cried and died and came back to life and somehow went on healing.   I found out what really, really worked, and sloughed off all the rest.  Then I got myself trained to teach and coach and challenge and support others. 

I take this stuff very seriously.
And also very playfully. 

Because life is the thing we are freeing in ourselves, and love is what flows through.


​


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1/13/2018

The Paradox of Living Unstuck

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Paradox:  two incompatible things that are both, somehow, mind-blowingly, true.
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We all want to live unstuck.  We just don't know how. Because HOW is a paradox. 

​So, if we are going to invite ourselves to experience life-unstuck, let's make it easy. 
Let's allow the inherent paradox.  Let's examine its two incompatible elements.
​

 
Incompatible Thing One
Living unstuck happens fast—happens instantly, in fact.  It always and only happens in this moment, in this present unfolding now, in this instant melting and melding, in this knowing of each in-breath and outward touch and word unsaid and minute stretch of muscle and thought and on and always.

Incompatible Thing Two
Living unstuck takes time.  Old patterns loosen their grip on our consciousness only over the course of time as it unfolds through our lives. 

An easeful resolution . . . 
Moment after moment of awareness (Incompatible Thing One)  that we are life (as Tolle says) loosens the patterns of thought, behavior, and emotions that otherwise keep us stuck.   

And here is where my advice becomes less meaningful than attuning to your own inner wisdom.  (But I’ll give you first a bit of advice, just in case it is helpful.)  And then I'll offer some help in attuning to your inner wisdom.
 
Here is the advice, my dear friend:  befriend the paradox by attuning to your body’s infinite, unfolding wisdom.

And here is the help in doing so: 

Breathe consciously.  Practice yes-breath or alternate nostril breathing.  Or, just invite yourself to notice the lovely, magical, swirling place at the top of your breath cycle, where the inbreath becomes the outbreath.  Just notice it.  Two or three times a day is plenty. 
 
Move to the off-rhythm of life!  Imitate a 2-year-old’s facial expression.  Spread your toes and see if you can sense the dip in-between your second and third toes.  Shimmy your shoulders (just try it, just once, and then you can go back to what you were doing.) Surreptitiously smile and raise and eyebrow to see if anyone else noticed your shimmy.  Stick out your tongue without opening your lips.  If you live in Saint Louis, do a little soul dance.  
 
Do these things in the unfolding present moment, whenever you think of it.  Build reminders into your day.  Notice whatever shifts in you when you do the weird things above, (aka creative joint play).  Appreciate from your depths any joy, relief, calm, peace, or giggles that arise.  Ask for more and more and more of this.
 
Small shifts in the present now are the undoing of egoic patterns of behavioral, thought, and emotional responses. 
 
I deeply hope that these reminders are useful for you today, and for most of you, they likely are enough!  Yay! 

But if you are in a place of transformation and would benefit from individual support, we can easily have a brief and free conversation.   

(I’m actually unusually good at attuning to what is unfolding within people—clients, friends, family—which is why I’m developing this coaching practice, the central tools of which are available in this workshop—How to Live Unstuck, Imperfect, and Free.  
 
It’s also why I’m collaborating with other health-and-wholeness professionals in the Saint Louis area to create Owning Your Wholeness events. )

Appreciation all around!  And may you feel an ever-greater sense of unfolding ease.
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We all want to live unstuck; we just don't know how.

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And we don't know how because how is a paradox.

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    Lynnea (her Ph.D. being in English) shares her training and wisdom here, to help her gentle readers live freely and fully in the unfolding present.

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