This is the essential factor in the process of cleaning up your mess that rejects all blame and rationalization and commits you to a long-term program of increasing your self-awareness, deepening your consciousness, and changing those thought patterns that led you to choose poorly in the past. This, in fact, is where “the rubber meets the road” in terms of turning your attention away from reactive efforts to make up for the past and toward proactive effort to create a different future for yourself and those who depend on you (within our outside of your conscious awareness of them). Here’s your opportunity to get down and dirty with yourself, to unearth those dark corners of your soul where you feel most unloved and vulnerable, and commit to taking positive action to addressing those areas with spiritual courage.

When you create wreckage, it’s because you’ve applied the wrong formula to the wrong problem. Merely accepting the right answer isn’t enough. You need to correct the formula you’re using so that the next time the problem comes up, your answer is the right one the first time. This is how we learn and grow: try, fail, correct, try anew, succeed!

Facing the wreckage of our lives with insight and the courage to “change the things I can” defines this stage of apology as an essentially spiritual step. Whenever we need or want to create transformational change, we need to recognize the profoundly spiritual nature of our work. It’s a totally “inside job” that has three essential phases to it: honesty, openness, and willingness. Each phase contributes its part toward empowering us to make substantial change toward authentic growth and the realization of our human potential. This is the essential process that drives us toward the fulfillment of our God-given destiny — as individuals and as humanity.

The first phase is a commitment to honesty. That demands that you lay aside all blame and rationalization and that you embrace the person that your behavior has revealed you to be with humility. Are you fearful? Are you angry? Are you arrogant? Are you self-centered? Are you judgmental? Seeing your character defects this way in the light of your bad behavior can bring up defensiveness: “You’d be that way, too, if you’d gone through what I did!” And yet, we’re not responsible for what others have done to us; however, we are responsible for our reactions to that. We all have built-in defense mechanisms that we created to keep ourselves safe when we felt overwhelmed. However, now, those defenses are no longer serving us. They’re keeping us from connecting effectively with others and with our Higher Power. When bad behavior reveals our own dysfunction, it’s time that we accepted our condition honestly. It’s time that we admitted the weaknesses that we’ve so long tried so hard to cover up to ourselves, to our God, and to another human being. Humbly admitting the truth will, indeed, set us free from it.

Openness implies the readiness to look at the situation differently: to change our minds and get rid of old beliefs that no longer serve us. As an adolescent, I was deeply angry at my father for not being close to me. All that changed when I went through a spiritual crisis that caused me to take another look at the situation. I discovered to my surprise that, from my earliest recollection, I continually judged my father’s attempts at connecting with me as insufficient. There was nothing he could do to satisfy my childish demands. In effect, I pushed him away, then blamed him for not being emotionally present. Once I saw my truth, I was open to looking at the situation from a new perspective: forgiveness became possible, and I was then free to reinterpret our relationship. Once you’ve taken an honest inventory of yourself, you have the opportunity to see the same old hurts and injuries and woundedness you have always experienced festering there, and to give those experiences new meaning. You don’t get to choose your experiences, but you do get to decide what they mean for you. When you discover a meaning that no longer serves you, you can be open to experiencing it differently. That’s your choice.

Finally, willingness is just another name for courage. Many people read spiritual and inspirational books. Self-help is a popular genre. You can read inspired authors like Maryanne Williamson and what they say can resonate in your heart and in your head. Then, like many people, you can file what you’ve learned away like you’ve done with the plots of novels you’ve read over the years, and go on about your business creating the same kinds of messes that have entrapped you numberless times before. Willingness means giving practical answers to these questions: 1) how am I going to think and feel differently about these experiences when they come up again? 2) what practical steps will I take to avoid falling into the same reactive traps I’ve set for myself in the past? and 3) what decisions will I make now about how I will change my behavior when these things come up again?

This stage of cleaning up your mess is all about change, and everybody hates change. It’s painful, it requires both humility and courage, and it takes a lot of energy to change. Yet, change is synonymous with growth. As grew from childhood to adolescence, we experienced physical ‘growing pains;’ as adolescents growing to adulthood, we experienced mental and emotional ‘growing pains;’ now, as adults growing into spiritual maturity, our ‘growing pains’ are at a far deeper level than ever before: at the spiritual level. That’s why one of the most important shifts of consciousness we can experience at this stage of life is to see our messes not as failures, but as spiritual growth experiences. Take to heart the old saying, “No pain; no gain!” and embrace your mess (with all the pain that goes with it) as a gift and your golden opportunity to make a difference in your world — for that is precisely what it is!

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

The seismic shift that each of us experiences in the course of the midlife transition has varied and far-reaching consequences. Like the goads of the ancients, that transition urges us forward into paths that we may be very reluctant to embark upon. After all, don’t we spend the first half of our lives striving for independence and autonomy? The changes that come over us at midlife seem to be focused on our physical nature. For the second time in our lives, — for men and women both — our hormones seem to be taking over. Yet the physical aspects of midlife, although fundamental, do not define the ground where most of our personal transformation is taking place. When the goads of midlife are applied, what we experience can only be described as a ‘soul-quake’ of enormous proportions. It’s a 9 on our emotional Richter scale.

At some point in our personal evolution, we either change our minds about our relationship to life in this world, or we risk causing great harm to ourselves and to those we profess to love. We kick against the goads at our own peril, yet we do that whenever we refuse to accept life on life’s terms (and the radical changes that entails) and refuse to trust the process and the One who drives it forward. That’s one reason why I feel called to confront political and religious conservatism. People want to believe that the truth (‘Truth’?) is ‘out there’ and changeless. Yet ‘truth’ necessarily involves both a knower and whatever is known. To suggest that the ‘truth’ is eternal is only to suggest that knower him- or herself also cannot change.

The truth of what we know and experience derives from our dialog with what is. As we change, our ‘truth’ must change, too. To try to resist that change and to cling to old ways of seeing and understanding our world can only be described as ‘kicking against the goads.’ We spend the first half of our lives learning to hang on, and the second half of life learning to let go. Hanging on to old ways of seeing, thinking, and believing in the face of life’s invitation to change can only lead to frustration and pain. That’s the insight behind what Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong wrote about in his book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile. Using outmoded human paradigms to explore the wildness of God’s relationship to humankind can only lead us to an impotent caricature of faith. Tradition can give nothing to a people who cannot comprehend it.

It’s been a tense week here. My 88 year old mother-in-law has been very sick, and we thought for a time that we were going to lose her. After some relatively minor surgery (there’s nothing minor about surgery at 88), her doctor prepared us for the worst, based on her experience. Just as she was being released from the hospital yesterday, the tests results came back negative. Living life on life’s terms meant knowing that we would have to cope with the results, regardless of whether or not the news was going to be good. We had to let go of our own expectations and our own hopes, and live simply in acceptance and trust: not necessarily an easy thing to do, regardless of the outcome.

That’s the lesson that comes with maturity: ultimately, we’re not in control. Living life on life’s terms means living in an attitude of acceptance with the realization that “all things work together for the good.” Whether we’re looking back at the so-called tragedies of our lives, or looking forward toward the obstacles that still seem too daunting to overcome, it’s ultimately our spiritual connection with our Higher Power that will allow us to see everything in its true perspective. I’ll repeat once again that perfect prayer from Dag Hammarskjöld: “For all that has been, thanks; for all that will be, yes!”

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

Whether or not we recognize it, each of us constitutes an organic whole. We can’t somehow separate out our emotional pain from our physical being, our mental acuity, and our spiritual focus. When painful emotions overtake us, we can expect to experience physical discomfort (that ‘heartache’ again), mental dullness or confusion, and spiritual aridity. The entirety of our personhood goes into retreat from a condition we might call ‘feelings deprivation.’ Pain is big. It’s so big that it fills our inner space to the breaking point. It leaves no room for anything else. Ordinarily, we have room for many emotions at the same time: joy, excitement, anticipation, intimacy can all together share the same emotional space and still leave room for more, like anxiety or fear. Not so with pain. When it settles in, there’s no room left for any other feelings. We are joy-deprived. What can we do then?

Emotional pain, stretching our endurance to the breaking point, needs to be released. It needs to be let out and given its freedom. So long as we keep it pent up inside, it festers and begins to consume all our resources: our energy, our attention, our time. Emotional pain is corrosive. So long as it’s kept captive, it eats its host alive from the inside out. The ‘good news’ is that no powerful emotion (and this is no doubt the most powerful of all) can be sustained indefinitely. Eventually, even pain will wear itself out and go numb in time. However, while we’re waiting it out, real damage may be done to our organism. What price are we willing pay in terms of stress and in lost productivity while we wait for our feelings to subside? And what about the emotional cost? Even after the sharpness of pain and anger have subsided, they can still remain sullenly in the background, blocking out the emotions that we long to experience again, like joy, enthusiasm, and intimacy.

We can speed up the healing process. There are a number of approaches we can take, like talking openly and honestly with a close confidant or a therapist or mentor. Letting other people know who you are and what you’re going through is an essential part of the healing process. It’s at least one step beyond the limits of the playground of your own mind: a very dangerous place to spend unsupervised time, I’m afraid. And yet, merely talking about how you feel, difficult as it may be, has drawbacks. If you’ve been lying to yourself or deluding yourself about what’s been going on, you may succeed in convincing others to join you in your distorted view of the facts. After all, if you’ve convinced yourself of the truth of your illusion, how hard will it be to convince others? True, a very perceptive person who knows you intimately may call you on your ‘stuff,’ but, maybe not. There is a better way.

If you’re experiencing emotional pain and you’re not journaling, you should be. Thinking and talking employ similar regions of the brain (where that dangerous mental playground can be found). Writing engages different mental faculties and generates electrochemical changes. It’s much harder to lie on paper, where, no sooner have you set the words down, they stand as not-so-silent witnesses against you. Did you ever wonder why ancient societies (like the Babylonians and Hebrews) carved their laws on stone tablets? Once carved, those tablets stood as witnesses against the very people who carved them. That’s the magic of the written word. Once you’ve written it, you no longer own it. It becomes the exclusive property of the reader. If s/he doesn’t understand what you meant, or, for some reason misinterprets your meaning, that’s just too bad: it’s theirs to do with as they choose.

Writing creates a mystical dialog between the writer and the reader. This remains true even when the writer and reader are physically the same person but separated into two by the passage of time (no matter how short). The writer remains locked in the past, powerless to influence her/his work in any way. The reader lives in the flow of the present, deriving meaning from what s/he reads not only by absorbing whatever experience the writer has entombed in the words, but also creating new meanings by means of the interplay of the words and her/his own experience. That’s why foundational texts (like the religious Scriptures) can be read over and over again, and, each time, the reader will learn something new. Your writings not only stand as a witness to the person you were, they also generate a brand new truth every time they are read even if the original text was born in self-delusion. In time, a perceptive reader (even when the reader and the writer were the same person) will discern what is honest and true from what was illusion.

By writing from within your emotional pain, and writing out your emotional pain, you give yourself the gift not only of emotional expression, but also of objectivity. By appearing in words, the cycle of self-deception and self-perpetuation that feeds the emotional pain can be broken. You not only experience the catharsis of pouring your emotionality out in an expression that’s both perfectly safe and uniquely yours, you also give yourself the gift of being able to resonate with what you’ve written, saying at one time, “this is so true,” and at another, “I was kidding myself.” As it emerges, your pain begins to gain definition and to retreat within much more manageable boundaries. It no longer expands wildly, threatening to overwhelm you. You get to choose what aspects of it to own, and which to dismiss as irrelevant to the person you are now, as compared with the person you were when you wrote those words . . . even if the time that has passed is only a few minutes. Change never pauses to take a break. That’s why, “This, too, shall pass.” Do you want to ride out the pain? Then write out the pain! It’s as simple as that.

See, I feel better already!

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

Must couples in trouble necessarily fail? No, not necessarily: no healthy couple is doomed to failure. In fact, the only ‘doomed’ relationships are those where one or both partners are unapologetically physically or emotionally abusive . Without a doubt, the only realistic option for someone who finds her- or himself in a fundamentally abusive or exploitative relationship is to exit immediately. Apart from that, I believe that many (if not all) relationships “on the rocks” could be healed under the right circumstances. From my perspective, the fact that this healing so often fails to take place could be an indication that one or both of the partners have stopped listening. Additionally, ceasing to listen indicates a spiritual problem. Let me explain.

It would seem that the  person who hears another’s voice, but is no longer committed to listening to what the other has to say has given up on her or his partner, as well as their relationship together. If you look more closely, however, it soon becomes clear that the person has actually given up on him- or herself. Empathetic listening and appreciative inquiry represent a three-fold choice: 1) to accept the other, 2) to trust the other, and 3) to engage with the other. Closing off the lines of communication also represents a choice: to cease accepting, trusting and engaging with one’s partner. Before I relate this to fundamental spiritual principles, let’s look briefly at each choice.

The choice to accept another human being is foundational. True acceptance represents a fundamental option to see in the other person another self, with exactly the same sorts of strengths and weaknesses that we ourselves possess. This choice to acknowledge the other person as another self  has two destructive opposites. The first perversion of acceptance we call ‘exploitation‘. Philosopher Martin Buber contrasts these approaches with the terms I-Thou (for true acceptance of the other), and I-It (for exploitation). To see your partner merely in terms of his or her usefulness (like a tool or a piece of furniture) or her or his capacity to satisfy you represents a fundamental denial of humanity on your part. The second perversion of the choice to accept your partner shows itself as conditional acceptance. In brief, “I’ll accept you if you do such-and-such or so-and-so.” Conditional acceptance of another puts you in the position of being their judge, jury and executioner. In fact, it represents nothing less than your attempt to usurp the position in your partner’s life properly held by God alone.

Next, let’s look at the choice not to trust your partner. Why don’t you trust her or him? Because you’ve been hurt before? The refusal to trust your partner goes way beyond self-preservation. Once again, it is passing a judgment of condemnation on another person — another self — who exhibits the same sorts of faults and failings that you yourself exhibit. In fact, if the truth were known, the faults and failings that you find most easy to condemn and most difficult to forgive in others are the very ones that you exhibit most strongly yourself. In fact, the two keys that are absolutely essential to unlocking both acceptance and trust are these: first, to acknowledge an identical humanity in both yourself and the other, and, second, to commit yourself to the path of unconditional forgiveness. Who cannot look at the plight of even the most desperate of people around us and not be able truthfully to say, “There, but for the grace of God, go I?” The greatest message of Christianity — and also, I’m afraid,  its most forgotten and neglected — is simply this: unconditional, unlimited forgiveness. If you cannot forgive unconditionally, you cannot trust for very long.

The final choice is the choice to engage with your partner. If you refuse to engage with her or him, you thereby give credence to the (Jungian) ego’s false belief that you are vulnerable and need protection. It’s the same force that drives people’s frantic searching for that illusive (and illusory) ‘security’ that they believe will fix everything and protect them from danger. Once again, it would be foolish to put ourselves in harm’s way by engaging with an abusive partner. We owe it to ourselves and to them to take the necessary precautions so as not to allow ourselves to become victims of deliberate abuse. However, if you imagine that refusing to engage with your well-intentioned partner will grant you some sort of immunity from harm and from hurt, you are mistaken. Do you believe that spiritually you are invulnerable and that nothing outside of yourself — not even death — can destroy the essence of you? “Greater love has no one,” we have heard, “than to lay down his life for another.” Oddly, dieing for someone can actually be a whole lot easier than living for them.

Finally, what does the choice not to listen say about that person’s spiritual condition? The testimony it gives is nothing short of damning. Personally, I would liken it to what Christians refer to as the ‘sin against the Holy Spirit’ or the ‘unforgivable sin.’ Here’s what I mean. Whenever I write, I use the terms ‘acceptance,’  ‘trust’ and ‘engagement’ as  synonyms for what are called the ‘theological virtues’, namely: faith, hope , and love. The ‘sin’ against faith is the decision not to accept the will of God exactly as we encounter it in our world. The ‘sin’ against hope is the choice not to trust that our only Source of genuine security is divine providence. The ‘sin’ against love is the refusal to become meaningfully engaged with those we were sent to serve: our fellow creatures who, along with us, share the “image and likeness of God.” If the ‘sin against the Holy Spirit’ is a refusal to believe that the love of God is powerful enough to forgive us (and so we refuse to ask for forgiveness, and therefore refuse to accept it), then turning a deaf ear to someone we once claimed to love is a ‘sin against love’, for, as we know, the opposite of love is not hate, but deliberate indifference.

What can you do if you find yourself failing to listen? Remember the futility of protecting yourself. What can you protect yourself from? Even more importantly, what are you protecting yourself for? After all, your mission here in this world is not to try (futilely) to keep yourself safe. It’s to share with your fellows (and especially those in relationship with you) the same kind of acceptance, trust, and engagement that your God has shown to you. God hears his people’s cry . . . can you do any less?

And what about you who find yourself ‘learning to love one another’ and your words keep falling on deaf ears? You, too, have the opportunity to pass on the love of God. Your acceptance of the other can be renewed continually. Your trust of the other need never fail or fade. You may stand ever at the ready to engage. However, engagement (love) requires reciprocity. God does not condemn, so how could you? God does not constrain, either (because love can never be forced), but rather waits for all eternity for the other to emerge from his or her isolation and re-engage. You can have the willingness to re-engage, whether or not the other ever seeks it. You may never re-engage as you once did: time and the world goes on while the other chooses to isolate, stagnate, or (what’s worse) repeat the same self-defeating choices and behaviors with other partners. You, on the other hand, have the opportunity to accept and trust and engage with people at every stage and every condition of your life: people who, like you, have chosen to listen not only with their ears, but with their hearts.

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

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Just before Christmas, I had stumbled upon the archives from Craig’s friend and performance poet, Chasen Gaver, who had died of AIDS in 1989. In those archives were listed audio tapes of conversations that the two of them had recorded many years ago. Seeing the list of familiar tapes and documents now part of a university library collection really affected Craig. He mused, as we walked along the water’s edge, about how strange it was to be confronted by the person he had been back then, when life was new and full of possibilities and ideas were exciting and heavy with promise. Now, he said, he felt as though his life was in ‘maintenance mode.’ It made me think: this is the shift of perspective that sets maturity apart from mere adulthood. It’s a tough change of perspective to navigate successfully.

Can you remember the thoughts and feelings . . . the dreams . . . that you held so dear when you first emerged into adulthood? So much was new! There was the first time you decided that you had found your partner in life. There was your first foray into politics. Your first career. Your first trip abroad. I’m certain that you can think of many, many more ‘firsts,’ each one seeming to open up new vistas, new possibilities, new promises. Life, for adults, appears like an endless series of adventures. Remember “Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it”? All the while that your storehouse of experiences grew more complete, your ideals were tested by time and adversity, your tastes became solidified, your hopes and desires tempered by disappointments.

The final transition between adulthood and maturity happens when reality forces you to acknowledge that your own hard-won experience has let you down. You look around at all that you’ve accomplished and built for yourself and suddenly you see it for the first time as emotionally and spiritually unsatisfying. You hunger for more, but everything that you’ve experienced and everything that you’ve learned tells you that ‘more’ promises only more of the same. The midlife awakening can be summed up in one sad phrase: “Is that all there is?”

Beneath the surface of your conscious thought, you’re experiencing a transformation. ‘Hope’ is robbed of the meaning that it once had for you. What’s there to hope for when you’re left trying simply to maintain yourself in a reasonable semblance of well-being until you die? What’s the point? Believe it or not, this is the turning-point of the midlife transformation. This is where you’re given the opportunity to create a solid foundation of maturity that goes beyond anything that you could have experienced in your adult life thus far. Leaving behind the ‘hope’ of the child waiting breathlessly for Christmas morning (mere anticipation) actually represents a major step forward toward living a fulfilling life. For the mature person, ‘hope’ comes to mean the kind of trust that sinks down into your very bones that, in the words of the Desiderata, “No doubt, the universe is unfolding as it should.” And that universe encompasses you.

The meaning that you find in your life no longer needs to be dependent on your accomplishments from yesterday. They helped to make you the person who you are, but now they are faded and stale. Regardless of how exalted your position, by now someone somewhere has bested you. Few accomplishments remain notable for very long. Nor can you expect to discover the meaning of your life in those things that you are yet to accomplish. By now, you’re way too cognizant of your limitations to imagine that you’ll be changing the world any time soon. What’s left? Ah! There’s the gift that you’re being given to ease you into maturity! What you discover that you have left is all you really ever had: today.

We’re looking at the immanent close of this year and our entry into the teens of this new century. Of course, we do well to look at where we’ve been this past year and where we hope to go in the one that begins anew in a couple of days. This could be a time for a radically new approach to living, if you want it to be. You have the choice of turning away from the regrets and recriminations that kept you stuck in the past and letting go of the fruitless habit of making ‘resolutions’ for the new year, as though you could by sheer act of will change what’s coming tomorrow.

There are but three decisions (call them ‘resolutions’ if you wish) that are worth making for this New Year (and every one thereafter): 1) to lay aside and detach yourself from every expectation that you may entertain about yourself or others for the coming year, 2) to deepen your personal contact with your Higher Power (however you may define that Power) Who supports and sustains you through every moment of your life, and 3) to live fully just for today in conscious awareness that you are an integral part of the divine plan and to do what you can to bring that sense of purpose to those around you who languish without it.

Every year at this time, I am reminded that my first coach, Lyn Christian, discouraged me from making New Year’s resolutions, and, instead, encouraged me to adopt a theme for the new year.  Here is my theme for 2010: “Be the hope you wish to experience.” What will your theme be? E-mail your theme for 2010 to me at lbrown@proactivation.com, and I will share it with my readers. A happy and blessed New Year to you all!

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2009 H. Les Brown

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