22 Mar Instruction Manual for Flourishing
We all want instructions, at least when things are complicated.
Some things are easy to figure out. We know when we get a new gadget how to put the batteries in. We have the basics on how to do a lot of things on the computer. We no longer need instructions on how to get out of the chair and walk around.
But when it comes to our lives it doesn’t always feel that easy. Certainly isn’t that simple. Things don’t always make sense. We’re confused by how people respond to us.
When we’re faced with complicated relationships, jobs, life choices, illnesses we can feel lost, alone, disoriented by trying to figure it out by ourselves. As someone near and dear to me said yesterday, “How does it happen? I need some instructions.”
One of my Kripalu friends, Kalindi Trietley was famous for asking, “Where’s the manual?”
Confronted by the confusing morass of life we don’t know what to do. This is certainly true when we’re in a deep healing process. At those times life seems to pick us up, spin us around. We’re in the same place but everything is different.
Most of us deal with these situations by using the protective strategies in place. You know the ones. The patterns cultivated from a lifetime of experience to keep us safe, to provide us with some tools for navigating.
One of the big problems that happens is we end up carrying these protective layers around us collecting charge. Sort of like dust bunnies in the corner when we ignoring sweeping.
These layers make it difficult to see who we really are.
Yet we don’t know how to get back there. We can’t seem to activate the inner magnet that guides us from within.
The way through is always there.
The path, however, doesn’t come from looking outside for the directions or the map. We first have to weed out space inside to make room for our inner magnet to begin to pulse forth.
In the Internal Family Systems model we talk about Self Energy, this leadership qualities of perspective, confidence, compassion and acceptance that are in every person regardless of their life histories. Twelve step models talk about “higher power.” Other psycho-spiritual models might address this inner magnet as “source energy” or “Universal consciousness.”
The words all point to the same thing: our capacity to be at peace inside of ourselves, accessing our particular guidance through life.