Laying Down Arms....

Cecilieaux left an interesting comment yesterday. He said:

It occurs to me, from this post and the previous one and the new title to you blog that you may be -- we may all be -- closer to "home" than any of us think. We're always counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike and thinking they're all going to look for America ... but they (and we) are all in America already.

He's right. We are closer to home than we might imagine. It is not about Thailand or America or Canada or any physical place. It's about a process.

In a metaphoric way, he defined some of the changes I've been experiencing lately. If anyone has noticed a difference here, yes, it's real. It's not your imagination.

When I said it was time for reconciliation, that comes as a result of a year's worth of internal work. In some ways, it has been like the crumbling of barriers. It has tested and challenged me at some levels I didn't feel capable of reaching.

I no longer feel at war with "the West". It's just gone. While I still have my preferences and my beliefs, I no longer feel so angry. It has taken a lot to get me to this point. Looking back, every bit of it has been worth it. For so long, I couldn't let go of my own wounds, the ones inflicted by an ideology and way of life that neither fed nor nourished me. I was spiritually starving to death. I felt so completely alone in the world. There have been people who have witnessed my pain and stepped forward to help or even just acknowledge.

It is said that to let things go, we need someone to witness our pain three times. Then we have to release it. If we don't, we're choosing to live in the past. We're choosing to live our woundedness.

I don't choose that.

Caroline Myss talks about the three stages of spiritual evolution we all go through. We go through the tribal phase, the individual phase and finally the symbolic phase. That is very consistent with many spiritual teachers, east and west.

My tribal phase was finding Thailand and Thai culture. I needed a group to identify with, a group who shared values and taught me new ones. The tribe provides us with us with a foundation for not only discovering who we are, but who will support us in finding what we need to make our lives whole. I feel firm and secure in my "tribal" identity. My trip there at the beginning of last year confirmed it. I was indeed "at home".

I've learned that common beliefs matter most of all. Ethnicity and heritage are really secondary. There are those of us who can't identify with the ethnic or cultural heritage we were born into. Nothing wrong with that at all as long as we're willing to find something that does. I firmly believe we all need a tribal identity to feel whole. It is the earth beneath our feet.

The second phase, the individual phase, comes when we feel safe enough in our tribal identity to recognize our individual traits. We begin to question.. to pick and choose. We think more critically. I've been doing this with eastern/Thai culture for some time now, looking at the things that resonate for me and the things that don't. I've grown enough to know that my tribe doesn't need to be perfect.

I'd been off-balance most of my life because the individual phase is all I experienced, skipping the tribal phase altogether. There was no foundation, nothing to balance against. Nothing to compare. So I floundered for years and years. If I wanted to allow regret into my life, it would be the years wasted that would bring it.

Finally, we reach the symbolic phase which is where I find myself now, toes barely in the water. I'm learning. And testing. This is the phase during which we are able to identify symbols, to look at them objectively and glean their meaning. We find the root principles there, root principles that are true for everyone in the world, for all cultures and all individuals. Native American culture calls this "the shamanic journey".

We find the freedom to find truth in all traditions. We don't need to discriminate. We don't need to take everything personally. We understand the things that are really about us and the things that are not.

We no longer need to be "right".

There are basic truths that fit for eastern culture, western culture or any culture. That is that we all want to love and be loved. We all want to have meaning, however we define that. We all want to have purpose. We all want to "belong" somewhere... and to some thing.

And the symbols are the same for most of us, even though we might express them differently.

This is just beginning for me so I will try to write something here when a phase begins or ends. For now, I'm basking in the peace of it all.


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Word of the Year.....

Now that my high-speed has been restored, I was blog-surfing again and saw this. Rebecca presents the idea of choosing a word for the new year. It's a good alternative to the "I won't [that] anymore" or "I will do [this] from now on."

The idea of the word is to create a theme for the year. It is around a central concept that will change the way we look at things. It's amazing how a different lens can change our perspectives.

My word is "reconciliation". The idea behind it is to begin building bridges instead of walls. I began working with the concept a few months ago, deciding that bearing the responsibility of changing an entire culture was a bit more than I can handle. Concentrating on finding the things that unite us rather than the things that separate us is what I will be doing in the future. It does take a conscious effort.

I started by reading a lot of books that are well outside my worldview to discover the commonalities. Talking to others who see things differently and listening with an open mind has revealed many things we share. We just say them differently. If we stick with the dialogue, we'll find that we mostly want the same things.

In the micro, it means "restoration of harmony".

That includes moving from a place where there is a lot of chaos, anger and upset to create a more peaceful environment of my own in a new residence.

It means restoring harmony to my body by treating it well.

It means restoring harmony to my relationships by stretching my own worldview to include new people.

It means making a conscious effort to honor the beliefs of others without finding a need to criticize or correct them.

It means participating in activities that promote a positive change. The paraphrased quote of Mother Teresa comes to mind. "I won't participate in an anti-war rally. Have a pro-peace rally and I'll be there."

It means finally being able to relax. It means an end to the feeling of urgency that propels me into warrior mode. God's business is God's business. Mine is to be a bit gentler, to step a bit more lightly.

That's my word. Reconciliation.

What will be your word?

Wishing all a peaceful, kinder, more fulfilling 2009.



~Chani
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At what point..... ?

At what point do we need to put our own needs or desires, even our convictions, aside because it is in the larger good to do so?

This morning I am watching MS-NBC and we're once again subjected to the national soap opera known as "Anna Nicole's funeral".

Her mother and ANS's ex-husband have filed another lawsuit to stop the burial because they want both her son's and her body moved to Texas.

Maybe I don't understand grief of that nature, the kind of grief that is clinging and demanding, the kind of grief that ignores decency and common sense.

May I never know it.

This now appears to be a control issue gone wacky. While I can certainly understand her mother believes it is appropriate to bring her daughter back to Texas to be buried with the rest of the family, is she going too far?

Yeahm... she is.

This is not a property rights issue. Virgie Arthur appears to be someone I hope she is not. She appears greedy and controlling. It makes her look selfish. It makes her appear more concerned with her own needs than with the desires of her daughter which have been made rather clear through a variety of sources.

At the beginning, I was sympathetic to her position. Being from a family that is largely estranged, I know that we all carry a secret hope of reconciliation. None of us are young any more and we've been trained to believe in happy endings.

But we can't manufacture it through lawsuits.

True reconciliation takes a lot more than that and must be done in life, not in death. Unfortunately in my family, no one has been willing or able to step up to the plate so we remain fractured. Each in our own ways, we tried but sometimes the configuration just doesn't work out, the pieces of the puzzle won't fit, and we have to let it go. Sometimes it's more compassionate to admit defeat than to continue stubbornly fighting.

As we begin to die off, I believe the only right action is to respect the wishes of each family member as they have been expressed to those closest. There comes a time when our spirits need to rest.


Peace,


~Chani