Self-Trust and Devotion

I used to be as Christian as they come.

One of my parents is a pastor. (They say that pastors’ children either go one of two ways: all-out rebel or perfect angel, and I was definitely in the latter category). I went to Bible camp every summer, worked at Bible camp in college, majored in religion, did a Lutheran volunteer year, got an MA in theology, and married a pastor.

I was all in.

It seemed my spiritual destiny was settled.

Until one day, it didn’t make sense anymore.

The best way I can describe it is that Christianity just stopped resonating in my body - like there was no place to plug into it anymore.

It was like Christianity said, “okay, enough; I love you, but you’re done now,” and gently released me.

Often, in stories like these, there’s some great religious trauma or injustice to prompt the exit. Not so much for me.

(I mean you can’t be a Christian as long as I was and never have any run-in’s with heterosexist, patriarchal bullshit - so that definitely happened, but it wasn’t the reason I left).

No, I truly believe I experienced the best Christianity has to offer. And it had a lot to offer.

I loved growing up in the church and having a parent for a pastor. I loved the rhythm of the liturgical calendar. Bible camp was a space of so much magic and mysticism that I got married there. In my academic work, I studied cutting edges of feminist and queer theology (that are rad AF.)

Christianity was a space of deep spiritual connection, love, and growth. It was a place where I was radicalized into justice. And there were so many times I felt alive and on purpose in that space.

Today, I see Christianity as a spiritual ancestor that I continue to love and respect.

And even in my departure, I feel the need to defend it - to say that some of the most devoted and radical progressives I know are Christians (including my favorite borderline biblical fundamentalist rabble-rouser: Jonathan Barker) and that there is so much movement around justice and liberation happening in Christian spaces.

But ultimately, I’m sharing all of this to say:

It’s okay for love and devotion to change.

You can love something and leave it. There doesn’t have to be a deep or dramatic reason. It can be a gentle letting-go.

Sometimes (and for some people), the right thing is devotion to one thing, one path, one destiny forever, and other times (for other people), it’s not.

Sometimes, it’s the right thing to move on. Sometimes, new things call us forward, and we feel the imperative to answer them.

Life is dynamic and unfolding and unpredictable, and so are we.

So trust yourself. Your life is for you, and I truly believe you know best how to live it.

Clarity Through Self-Trust

{Coaching reflections, Part 2 of 5}

Coaching is about getting clear through self-trust.

We're conditioned to look outside ourselves for answers.  The dominant culture tells us clarity is found through rational analysis in which status, money, and external success are the primary values and metric points.

Coaching is a process of tuning into the slower rhythms and deeper energies of our being to reconnect with the knowing and wisdom that is available to us in that space.

It's about learning the language of our bodies and deepening our intuitive superpowers.

It's about reconnecting with a steady internal compass that helps us navigate the loud, fast, and flashy world around us and discern which of the voices (if any) competing for our attention are worthy of it.

My first step is always to get quiet and still and then know what I know in this moment.  

Because the more I welcome and allow the knowing that's already here, the more knowing opens up.  The more I listen to my body, the more it speaks and the more I understand. The more I add to my reservoirs of self-trust, the more I have to draw on when the next hard, uncertain things appears.

So what do you know in this moment?  What answers and truths are available to you in this moment through your body?

Working with Fear to Create Goodness

Life has been reminding me recently that deepening my capacity to feel fear, discomfort, and uncertainty is a nonnegotiable part of living a big life.

Going after what I want, being real and vulnerable about who I am, stepping into newness, and seeking out unpredictable, raw experiences in the world often scares (and sometimes terrifies) me.

But more often than not, good stuff is waiting for me on the other side of that fear.

When I think of my first date with my spouse, getting on that plane to travel alone, starting my coaching business, or preparing for all of those high-stakes swim meets, job interviews, or exams, I can still feel the nervous butterflies and/or heavy pit of terror in my stomach, but I also remember that those feelings were all that stood between me and the beauty, goodness, and accomplishment waiting on the other side.

Deepening my capacity to feel fear helps me not run from life. And being with uncertainty and discomfort helps me stay in the moment I’m in (and not opt out by turning to escapism or avoidance).

And when I can do that, fear becomes an essential compass point – an indication I’m at the edge of my comfort and on the verge of the next new thing calling me forward.

Also: feeling fear and getting clear about what it’s communicating is a core component of discernment – because sometimes, fear is telling us it’s time to take our next step (or leap) towards a coherent desire, goal, or possibility, and sometimes, our fear is telling us we got off track and are on a path that is not right, safe, or good for us.

So how do we discern the difference? By getting clear on how each feels in our body.

I love the metaphor Martha Beck uses to talk about these two types of fear: does it feel more like you’re standing on a high dive about to jump into cool, clear water on a hot day, or more like you’re about to jump from the high dive into toxic sludge? Either way, the jump is high and frightening, but are you leaping toward something glorious, right, and clear, or not so much?

A helpful way to calibrate this compass is to return to times you felt fear. What did you feel in your body when the fear was leading you toward goodness, and what did you feel when the fear was warning you to stay away from something unhelpful or harmful? What do you notice about the differences between the two in how they show up as a feeling in your body?

Either way, fear is an important thing to feel and allow (unless we have traumas, addictions, or mental health issues that make it problematic for us to feel anxiety and fear, which is another conversation), because those feelings – as they show up in our bodies – are what give us the data we need to respond clearly and coherently to what life offers. And when we listen to our emotions and our bodies, we not only have more clarity for the path ahead, but also a deepened sense of inner knowing and self-trust.

Meditation, Heart, and Self-Trust

About a year ago, I was halfway through my first Vipassana meditation retreat.  Nine days of 4 a.m. wakeup calls and repetitive stretches of motionless perching atop my rotund biscuit of a meditation cushion.  This was basically how all the days went: Oh, let’s see what’s next on the schedule…surprise! More meditation!  Literally the exact same thing I just finished doing!  Also, there was no talking, no reading, no writing (I admit I cheated on this one), no running, no phones, no communication with the outside world.

And it was pretty good actually.

I quickly realized there were infinite layers to the quiet stillness – endless depths of dark intensity and mesmerizing mystery to sink into and explore.  It was quite mystical really, and I was never bored.

But nine days was a lot.

There was also the butt numbness (lord, the butt numbness!)  I couldn’t even look at my meditation cushion for months after, and it took several weeks for full sensation to return to my tailbone-pelvis region.

But through the good and the painful, there were lessons to be had, and this is a brief story of the one that was most impactful:

There was a day, mid-week, when I was doing my daily 30-ish minutes of walking meditation outside and feeling an internal struggle about that. Because even though, yes, this was technically meditation, it was also in violation of the rules. We were supposed to meditate seated and indoors only. And my desire to be a good student and follow the instructions exactly right was beginning to haunt me. But…these blessed minutes outside and moving were one of the few things keeping me tethered to my sanity at that point.

So I had a decision to make: How was I going to do this?  Bend the rules and do what I wanted, or adhere to the clearly outlined authoritative directives?

The answer came in a flash (all that meditation must have opened a portal or something). I remembered that I was in convenient possession of an internal guidance system, and I could find my answers by reading my body.

Basically, my heart is a trustworthy barometer.

And when I thought about it, I saw there was no way around this.  Generally speaking, there are too many voices competing for my allegiance and too much noise demanding my attention to discern the answers from external sources alone.

It was a defining moment, not just for my meditation practice, but also for my understanding of my place in the larger collective moment.  This was November 2016.  The election had just happened, and I spent a lot of the week sitting (literally) with my fear, shock, and uncertainty, feeling flooded and overwhelmed.  There would be so many causes to support and issues to confront, infinite things to say or not say, do or not do, in the months and years ahead.  And I felt completely ill-equipped, lost and unsure how to be in this world that always existed but that I was now seeing for the first time.

So I decided this was what I would take back with me into the noise, commotion, and conflict: a steadfast trust in my own self.

This doesn’t mean I can do it alone.  I need other people – their wisdom, their voice, the truth of their experience.  But rather than conceding to another’s perspective uncritically, I take it in, hold it in my being, filter it through my center, and allow it to change me.  Reliably, good things come through this process of integration and alchemy.

In the case of my meditation conundrum, I kept walking.  It was a beautiful, sort-of warm day (the last one of the year), and my heart knew: that was reason enough.