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Let’s Turnaround
One of the themes that keeps appearing in my life and work lately has been the nature of cause and effect. How much freedom do I really have? Am I really the product of my genes, my upbringing, my conditioning and my situation? We certainly tend to think like that in our society. But is it really true?
I have asked hundreds of students and clients this question over the years: Do you really think that circumstances, people and situations determine your experience?
I’ve asked them to sit with that question in silence and wait for the truth to show itself to them. And I’ve never had anyone reply ‘Yes’ to that question. That amazes me. Every single person who took that question into their heart said ‘No, it must be that I am responsible for my own experience. I can’t make anything else the cause, otherwise I am a victim.’
But here’s where it really gets interesting. When I looked at the way I was actually living, I was amazed at how often I was thinking and behaving as if circumstances were much more powerful than I was. (It was often my coaches that pointed this out to me, God bless them.) And I saw the same thing happening with my students and clients. I really started to wonder, “What’s going on here? Why are we not living according to what we really know to be true?”
When I looked a little deeper, I realized that on a certain level, the laws of cause and effect do prevail. If you go out and stand in front of a moving bus, there are certain inescapable consequences! Newton’s universe, the laws of thermodynamics, clearly aligns with this law: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. When Einstein came along and discovered the law of relativity, a much larger view of reality suddenly emerged. It didn’t eliminate Newton’s universe-it went beyond it and included it at the same time. (Ken Wilber talks about this in his theory of ‘holons’)
It seems to be the same with our lives as human beings. On one level, I am a product of a long genetic stream of conditioning, and of every experience I’ve ever had. There’s not much point in trying to deny that. But what if the opposite is true as well? What if the nature of reality is much too vast and mysterious to be limited to one perspective? Byron Katie, in her inquiry work, asks each person to consider a ‘turnaround’. Contemplating a turnaround means allowing yourself to consider the exact opposite of what you believe to be true. And most of the time the turnaround turns out to be as true or truer than the original thought or belief.
I started playing with my own turnarounds, in relation to cause and effect. I remembered times when I was public speaking. Normally we think the speaker affects the audience. But I always noticed that the way the audience listened to me totally affected the way that I spoke. When we think about parenting, we talk about how the parent affects the child. How come we ignore the other side? My daughter has had an enormous effect on me-from the very first moment I laid eyes on her. And in the field of education, we speak about teachers and how they affect their students. We forget that the great teachers are the ones who constantly learn from their students.
I remember when I saw Michael Moore’s movie ‘The Corporation’ a few years ago. There was a scene at the very end, where a corporation had bought the rights to all the water in one part of a Central American country. The people were not even allowed to collect rainwater. At a certain point the people rose up en masse and took over the country and their water again, in a remarkably short period of time. Someone interviewed their leader, a soft-spoken and unassuming man. “How did you do it?” he was asked. “How did you create this revolution overnight?”
He seemed genuinely bewildered by this question. “I didn’t do anything,” he replied.
“But how did the people take back their power so suddenly?’ he was asked. Again he looked very confused by this question. “The people have always had the power,” he said. “They will always have the power. But it is theirs to give away, until they decide to take it back.”
I remember sitting in the theatre, stunned by that, realizing, “My god he’s right!” And it’s just the same on an individual level. We give our power to our thoughts, our feelings and our circumstances, until we decide to take it back.
So we need to be very careful about the questions we ask. Ultimately, we don’t even have to know which thought is true, because reality cannot be confined to a thought. What we can do is just watch, “How do I live when I believe that I am the cause as well as the effect?”
Check out Bono, on youtube, in his acceptance speech at the NAACP awards. Here is someone who has decided to live as cause. The mind can think “It’s easy for Bono! He can do anything.” Is that really true? How do you live when you believe that thought? How would you live, what would you do, if you knew you were not less than Bono, or Nelson Mandela? Isn’t that a question worth asking?
with love
Shayla
Resources:
Bono’s speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDueMj7RlsU
Byron Katie’s work: http://www.thework.com
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6:30-9:30pm
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The Gift of Presence evening retreats will focus on learning how to release habitual attachments to suffering, the core sense that something is missing. The retreat experience, grounded in body, breath and feeling, offers you a direct pathway to authentic presence. It allows you to welcome the whole stream of your experience without attachment or aversion. In this place of lucid aliveness, you can discover what you really want.
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Tues. April 24-May 29
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Tuition: $250
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