The Three Points of the Circle of Life

This past month I had the pleasure of working with several individuals in my private practice who have permitted me to share some of their stories with you. I have taken those and expanded upon them to develop  a useful tool for readers. I call these the “Three Points of the Circle.” The first thing you may wonder is…”but three points makes a triangle, not a circle!” Indeed if you connect these points with straight lines, but if instead, you connect these points with curved or arced lines, you get a circle. So, when we see beyond the immediate logical answer, we actually get something wonderfully different. Read on if you’re curious for more….

The first point is to follow your heart. Within your heart is what you hear more commonly referred to as your “intuition.” Your intuition does not live inside your logical brain or your head. It lives within your heart. So no matter how analytical and intellectual you believe yourself to be, when you follow your “intuition”, it comes from within your heart. Your heart is the center of who you are.

The second point is that while much of life and ordinary reality is made up of divisions of time, such as years, months and days, our true inner lives and our souls have no sense of the clock and do not abide by calendars as we know them in ordinary reality.

The third point is that life is not meant to be lived in a straight line, though in American culture today, we are taught by society that an “upwardly” straight line equals “success.” But if we meander, if we travel on and on, only then are we able to savor the moment and celebrate the unexpected - the triumphs along our way. If we think of a straight line, that very definite oneness forces us to go from “beginning” to “end.” If that were the case, we would only see the end in sight and soon enough forget the beginning and middle. We become always goal oriented and not open to the unexpected and the special.

By putting these points all together and “connecting the dots”, we get this wonderful thing called the “circle of life.” Who you truly are is your circle called life.

Life is a circle, not a straight line. Though we often think of life as a straight line, from birth to death, it is not. Life is a circle much like a wheel with a hub that is the heart and spokes that are the lines that divide different parts of our living moments into years, events and much deeper, to the unconscious aspects of our inner being, the self or soul.

An individual I work with, a 45-year old woman who had found tremendous professional and personal “success” in earlier years in that “upwardly” straight line I mentioned, recently found herself right back to the financial and personal circumstances she faced over 25 years ago in college. While she did everything “right” her whole life and achieved so much beyond an average person by her mid-30’s, at one time having a net worth of several million and being a generous philanthropist to the needy, today, she finds herself on the other side of the giving line. Today, she shops at discount stores for plastic boxes to assemble a makeshift closet for what little clothing she has left. In a span of less than 12 months, due to the economy, she lost a half million dollar home and sold all of her possessions to survive. She has nothing left but a few possessions and her beloved pets. Yet, she called me one morning and started the conversation by telling me that she was shopping for the same things that she did when she was poor in college- plastic crates and boxes for makeshift closets. We all remember our poor college days, but in those days, we didn’t know what we know today. Less than 5 years ago she was shopping at Neiman Marcus and she was on the cover of a magazine for her philanthropic and charitable work. Then she laughed and said something remarkable to me. She said “I could be really sad about this whole thing, but you know what, these plastic closet things have really come a long way! They are so well-made these days and there are so many options and styles, I’m so excited about it!”

And I reminded her that life is a circle – though we may find ourselves where we were 20 or 30 years ago with our finances or circumstances, life is not a race, it’s not a straight line we have to follow towards increasing amounts of fame or fortune. Life is a circle! Life is this wonderful continuous circle – and because of advances and innovations in our outside world, when we find ourselves traversing that circle, though we may feel that we’ve gone right back to where we started, that part of the circle is actually very different. It has shaped and changed and evolved…just like our souls and inner selves do.

As we travel this circle, we grow in wisdom and rounding any curve of it, we can sense change, from childhood to adolescence to adulthood to old age and to what we know as death.

Another client I have been working with lost her parents at a very young age and was adopted into a household where she was accepted. Though she felt loved, she did not feel right or that she was in her right life. Her life felt untrue. She began to work with her deeper self at the soul level or the hub of the circle and by going into her own deeper reality she found that her life was different than the straight line she was living. She found there were many facets and aspects she could meander through. She found that the curve of her life had valleys and peaks and that she could travel along the spokes and do inward or outward. She felt unlimited. She felt she could explore possibilities. She felt her dream life informed her waking life. She began to believe that her birth into her body was but one of many possible lifetimes. She felt there were no endings and really no beginnings.

She felt free. She began to live from her heartbeat outward into the world. She chose new and different experiences and relationships. She celebrated moments without expecting a different ego influenced outcome.

She gave to others. She fell in love. She traveled around the curve of her life and ventured back and forth to and into her hub or true self. She noted the different parts of her circle. She began to think of death as the beginning of a new life. She lost fear and anxiety. Fear became true moments. Anxiety drifted away like a cloud of disbelief.

To think of living as a continuous event gives us the courage to move forward in a more meandering fashion and not in a hurried, often harried straight line with the anxiety that a dead end can provoke.

Once you remember that the center or hub of the circle of life is our heart and within that drumbeat is the energy force we call self or soul, you’ll find the power to continue to traverse the circle in ways that feed your soul…for life.

Dream Your Way Through Darkness

Welcome to a New Year. Physically speaking, January is the dark time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. It is a time when one can look into the dark, to know it, to find a way through it and in doing so to discover that is hidden inside. You may find your energy, your sense of purpose, your courage. You may celebrate the effort. From that, you will celebrate yourself.

Martin Luther King did just that. He was born this month, January 15th, in 1929. He walked a long dark way and helped many to freedom and a higher sense of self. He found a purpose traveling through the darkness of segregation. He found help in the light he found on the other side, in the idea, in the dream of change made possible, through the courage one can find by surviving the dark. He advanced a dream.

The dark can be found in everyone and anywhere. It is both outside in a night without moon or stars and inside a room with no light. It is in us. It lives in our memories, in our childhood nightmares, in our collective minds and in our broken hearts. It grows or shrinks, depending on who we are, where we live, who we live with, when we live and certainly how we live.

There are some of us who are courageous enough or desperate enough or lucky enough to reach into it and find a path out to it. And there are some who are desirous enough to edge our way through it and by doing so to clear away its hold on us.

It holds us as fear does and as pain - unexpressed - does. It hold us because someone or something brings it to us or we find it on our own. Some, unknowingly, seek it out or want to lay down in it. Some want to disappear.

The young people I work with today were often born into it. We often hear children say they are “afraid of the dark.” They tend to want to sleep with the light on. They struggle to keep the dark away. They are afraid. But really deep inside, they are grieving. Some are even physically damaged. Others are emotionally and mentally damaged. These young people want light. Really they want new parents. They want any parents. They want teachers. They want a home. They want to be able to think clearly, to trust, to be held, to dare, to hope.

A fifteen year old girl I work with was born addicted to cocaine, with a club foot and high anxiety. Through our work, she can just begin to feel her way through her own harmed body and mind because she can imagine a path through the dark. One that takes her into poems and stories. She loses herself in images she transforms into words. In that imagined realm, she walks a bridge over her own dark pain and fear. She reaches down and pulls stories out. She follows her written achievement. She celebrates her dream of publishing a book. She feels empowered. She hopes.

A young man I know draws or paints the images he finds in the dark places inside his mind. He feels stronger. He learns he does not have to be a victim of his dark past, of his nightmares, of his memories. He can transform them on a page, on a canvas. He wants to paint murals so others can see how he walked through the death of his father and the imprisonment of his mother, toward himself, toward who he can be.

Another girl I work with, who has no home, cries as she tells her story. She transforms who she is and who she has been into a dream because that is the only way she can survive through the pain. She has a dream of being an immigration lawyer to help people like her father, who was unfairly deported and forced to leave his family without income. She misses her father. Life is dark, it is frightening. Her mother and siblings are all frightened. Through it all, she feels energized, thinking of how she can change her life and the world by studying hard. She is indeed a high achiever. She will graduate this year, and she plans to go on to college.

All of these young people struggle with darkness. They have courage. They develop faith in their struggle. They use their own selves, their souls, their force. They survive. They have a dream. So, remember to always dream, and always start with a dream. That is what Martin Luther King, Jr’s famous words reminds us of – “I have a dream.”

The Light from the Darkness - A Time of Blessings

Feliz Navidad. Merry Christmas and best hopes for all your days ahead. This is a time of year when we celebrate a light born out of darkness. It is a time to welcome rebirth and new visions...to celebrate our abundance…to know our own strength. And to know our power.

I have been working with children and adults who, in the midst of their own suffering, are able to find their abundance. They are able to emerge out of childhood and young adult patterns that include severe abandonment and abuse. These are individuals who can find, at the core of their inner selves, a light or force that gives them a sense of grace, of joy and of possibility. When asked why they believe now in their future, they say “I feel strong. I feel full of hope.” 

A woman I spoke with a few days ago who is worried about paying her rent, feeding her family and staying strong physically as well as mentally and spiritually, said she feels at peace in spite of all her troubles because she believes in herself. She feels she can do what she has to do because she believes in her own abilities. That when she rests at night she can meditate as she has learned to do and feel the force come through her like a river of light.

A young adult who is a survivor of childhood abuse and is plagued by nightmares resulting from that abuse, can look into the corners of her dreams and bring out what she can do, will do and sometimes must do to survive and follow her special path forward into the light. She is studying to become a healer. She has begun to trust that she can heal others and that she can celebrate because she has overcome a great deal because of who she is at her core.

Another woman I work with has just begun the journey of reclaiming her life after a long hardship. She overcame tremendous obstacles and despite being knocked down more than once by those who feel threatened by the power of her core inner self, she emerged a hero to herself. She left me a message the other day to tell me that in this holiday season, even though she has no family, she feels joy and hope for her future. 

These stories and more are ones that I take pride in helping to shape as the individual learns how to heal himself or herself.

This is hope. This is abundance. This is grace. This is the miracle of this time of year.

Blessings are everywhere because they come from inside of each of us.