The truth and my heart

"No one ever has 'talker's block'" - Seth Godin

Yes, and in my head, there is no thinker's block either. But there is a critic's mallet. A gavel thunders down after each thought. Most thoughts. 

Sometimes.

When I try to listen for it, however, it starts to fade away, like when you catch your friend who constantly mumbles by surprise and genuinely ask, "What did you say?"

Suddenly, a voice that couldn't shut up realized it was being listened to and then clams up, unable to speak for fear of actually being heard. 

To equal out the equation, I can help my thoughts become words and become posts by forgetting that anyone might be reading this anyway. 

And if I listen to the inner judgments and innocently ask, "What did you say?" I can start to remove the barriers between the truth and my heart.

The Thought of Something Better

As I "Show Up, Sit Down, and Type" today, I am reminded of the thought of something better that often haunts me as I write. It is part of why it is so easy to be distracted from writing, so easy to judge oneself for any fault whatsoever, real or imagined. 

I will often share with the students in my meditation classes that the mind lives in the realm of ideas and ideals, which is not always connected with the ground of right-here-now. The mind helps us in many ways, especially when we need to use logic to accomplish a task. However, it is not the whole story. 

When you have the thought of something better, whether it be as mundane as an insight in rearranging or the life-changing consideration of what your life would be like with a different partner, see if you can recognize the most crucial truth of all:

It is just a thought. 

It might be a wonderfully indulgent thought, or a thought that makes all sorts of sense. But that doesn't negate that it is a thought. And thoughts are just projections of the mind. And the mind is not the whole story. 

Joan Tollifson beautifully demonstrates in her book, Bare-Bones Meditation, that "Thoughts are not facts," though they make great cases to persuade us to believe they are. 

Next time you recognize a thought of something better, see if you can emphasize the thought part of it, and see if it changes your sense of the something better part. 

The Process of Becoming Never Ends

There was a quote that I had on my wall for a long time:

Something in the process of becoming both is and is not.

I got this from the book Sophie's World and it's an idea that's followed me around for a long time because, well, it's ever present. Though we tend to think of the world as something seemingly unchanging, its is changing all the time. All the time.

Even from the time I started writing this post my life has shifted in so many ways.

We've opened the store at the new "center," which turns out to be a reinvention of the place we were the whole time we were planning the Upstairs Dream Center. It is funny now that I think of it. The symbolism of planning this thing upstairs that never ended up happening. "Upstairs" representing the realm of thoughts and ideas. Thoughts and ideas are so plentiful that most of them will remain thoughts and ideas. This contrasts with the realm of reality; not imaginings but what is really here. That's more the realm of the ground, earth, first floor. We decided to "bloom where we are planted" and it seems growing will be effortless. 

We had our grand opening for the store last weekend. A few days beforehand I came to the realization that everything wasn't going to get done; meaning, everything I had planned to do (with my thoughts and ideas!) wouldn't all be done. 

And you know what? It was totally okay. In fact, it was still a great success.

I once thought that at a certain point my business (or any other aspect of my life for that matter) would finally be all neat, organized and tied up in a nice little bow. Nope. Life is messy. 

It is not good or bad it is just a part of this whole process of becoming. Seeing it as that, I just marvel at the unfolding. 

I am truly blessed to be on this journey.