Accomplishment and Disclaimers

My second example of Accomplishment (stated as a belief and a practice in "A Treatise on Unity and Its Recognition, third installment on Accomplishment).

In Brene Brown’s book The Gifts of Imperfection, she tells a story of a woman who made fantastic jewelry. The woman had a booth at a conference Brown attended, and she was excited to go look at her wares. She was wearing a pair of her earrings. But when she talked to the woman, saying how gifted she was and didn’t she just love being a jewelry artist, the woman said, “Oh, I’m not really an artist. I don’t make a living at it. It’s just something I like to do.”

I’ve been like that too.

Now, this isn’t all the time. But when I’m with a friend who introduces me as someone who has published six books – the friend standing there, sort of glittering with pride – the first thing I want to say is, “Oh yes, well, my books aren’t popular and I don’t make a living at it.” Why do I want to do that? It’s like I want to cut short any admiration, any assumption that, having published six books, I’m actually a successful writer. And I’m as quick to say I’m not a spiritual teacher if an introduction implies that I am. You’d think I have no sense of accomplishment.’

It’s very odd because I do feel accomplished…and I don’t…which I think is what the whole thing we call “integration” is all about.

I know people just bursting with wisdom and talent and a desire to give. They know full well that they’re bursting with it, but what they don’t know is how to share it, how to share who they are. So they’re wondering – when am I going to be accomplished? Or when am I going to know who I am and what is mine to give? It isn’t a matter of not feeling wise or talented or spirited. It’s not that we have no sense of our accomplishment or that we don’t know we’re beloved. It’s more that we feel a vocational disconnect.

My friends who are bursting with wisdom, talent and a desire to give are doing it all the time. At least they’re inspiring me! Knowing them makes me feel absolutely grateful! I’m just delighted that we’re connected, that they share with me, that I know these incredible people.

Any of us can have a sense of our worthiness as a person or of the true importance of our work and yet feel this disconnect that leaves us feeling shy about claiming our accomplishment.

Maybe we’re not going to fulfill our potential until we find a way of expressing our inner sense of accomplishment. Or maybe we’re in a gestation period. It could be we’re finding our wings by sharing with each other. And it could be that we’re living on the edge, the cusp of the new, where who we are is a little ahead of the times. There’s all kinds of reasons of timing for the feeling of “not there yet.” Many of them are soulful. We’re finding our way.

Of course, this belief in accomplishment doesn’t only apply to worldly things, but it is in the way we see ourselves and our expression in the world – not just in the big stuff, but in our daily lives – that some of us most need to live out this belief.

It does no good to beat ourselves up for behaving foolishly. Disclaimers aren’t a great thing. They do just what the word implies – they disclaim who we are. I know this. I don’t plan to do my disclaiming thing anymore. I don’t need to hinder myself.

But I want to acknowledge that many of us have an inner yearning that says we must meet with that which we need to feel fulfilled. Essential worthiness and need fulfillment aren’t contradictory.

The story isn’t that of seeing one side of the coin as “bad” and the flip side as “good” but holding the tension of our yearning and our accomplishment.

We are enough, we are accomplished, even when we hinder ourselves, behave badly, or disclaim our gifts. That’s what we are to accept. To look at accomplishment, to see it, to catch a glimpse of how we feel, of what leads us to say the things we do, to demur or to boast or do any of those things that aren’t quite true to who we are, is to begin the work of acknowledging that we’re already accomplished, and no more so than anyone else.

I’ve seen that when I’m standing firmly in accomplishment, it results in a feeling of empowerment. I know that’s what I’ve felt from time to time, and it’s a wonderful feeling.

But it comes and goes.

This is why I’ve turned to practice. Why we practice. So that when such feelings arise, they stay a while.

We are already accomplished. The practice is for our benefit. So that we might feel empowered more often. This is great for us personally, and it aids us in giving our gifts to the world. Without that empowered feeling, we struggle more.

But we’re still accomplished. Born that way. Can’t ruin it.


Next – this belief/practice as it relates to our movement from learning to discovery.

Accomplishment, Our own wisdom, Authenticity

Before I give you my every day examples, let me just say a word first about the overall idea of accomplishment so that I don’t give an erroneous impression. This belief is, simply put, that we’re already accomplished.

Not realizing this, and worrying over being accomplished is a problem for us. Early in A Course of Love (chapter 6) Jesus said that with peace, accomplishment is achieved in the only place where it makes any sense to desire it. With our accomplishment complete, we move on to the freedom and challenge of creation. I take this to mean that when we quit worrying or thinking about our accomplishment and feel it and believe it, we are free…and oh…then, what we can create! We’re not wasting our energy on something that’s a done deal.

Accomplishment is linked to peace. This course is about wholeheartedness: ending the divisions within ourselves, joining mind and heart “in wholeheartedness” and joining the human and divine so that we have one self. It all comes back to this. With wholeheartedness we can gain the peace that is inherent in our accomplished self.

But…we’re accomplished even when we’re about as far away from peace as we can be. That’s the paradox that we must embrace.

Now that I’ve given a bit of a broader perspective, here’s one of two ways I have seen Accomplishment at work in my life. This first one I’ll share today is about when it’s shown up in a way that I could easily see as a help. The second one, that I’ll share next, is about when it showed up in its opposite form, which I’ve seen as a hindrance.

Owning my own wisdom

Last year, when I was invited to give a talk, I was having a fine time preparing for it until I had a sudden realization. The realization was that I wasn’t owning my own wisdom.

I’d had an awareness of this for a while – probably for as long as I’ve been the receiver of this course. When I first ventured out into hosting a Course of Love group at a Unity church, the minister who inspired me to try was a woman who told me a story about owning her own wisdom. She’d felt the same way as me once upon a time – sort of tentative about it, and then she had a realization much like I’d had. After that, she practiced owning her own wisdom – or put another way, her accomplishment…by… well, practicing it in her ministry.

The realization that came to me last year was different than the earlier “awareness” that I wasn’t owning my wisdom. It was so clear that “it was time”. It was like a shift. As if I was suddenly a person who could no longer not do this – not be accomplished – or authentic.

The reason that I was no longer feeling at ease with preparing for my presentation after the realization was that I felt brand new, and too unfamiliar with my new self to be out and about trying to say anything coherent. The newness was total, as if a change had already occurred. It had happened. The realization seemed to come with a full blown agenda of its own. I couldn’t wait, couldn’t pass. It was time. I was ready and I couldn’t continue to ignore my readiness.

This is what I mean by the way things come to us in life. The talk was the call that told me I had something to say – not something derivative – but something that came of my experience, knowledge, heart, soul and that could be expressed as “my own” and in my own voice. And it coincided with the opportunity to practice it. I had to dig for my courage to do it. It wasn’t easy. But I did it. This was a life example. I accepted my accomplishment and put it into practice.

In A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson tells a story of asking a man to fill in for her when she was unable to make a presentation. He said, “I can’t give a speech as good as you.” She told him, “Of course you can’t. I have had a lot more practice at it than you.”

Our practice comes in many forms.

The call to our own wisdom, and being authentic are a couple of the ways I’ve seen this belief in accomplishment show up in my life.

Next: Disclaiming – my second example

Accomplishment

Accomplishment

Jesus said that we are never separated from our accomplishment.

I pray that I become aware that I am never separated from my accomplishment. I need help seeing that nothing I have done, or haven’t yet done, can keep me from it. I need reminders that the accomplished self is who I am, even right now, with all my faults and failings. I desire more than anything to carry this idea of being accomplished into my life so that I don’t have to worry about what, or who, I will be. So that I can relax, be as I was created, and serve with the gifts I’ve been given. I exist in unity. In unity, I know I can express who I am safely and beautifully. I can remain as I was created and grow into my full expression of that creation. I do not want to lie to myself and pretend to feel this way when I do not, and so I know I’m looking for the grace that will take me beyond belief to knowing and living my accomplishment. That, for me, is the practice.~

Our learning has us used to thinking that what we would like to accomplish stands apart from us in time. Someday…we’ll be accomplished. We believe that when our treasures, such as talent, have come into full expression (when that book is published!)…then we’ll be the accomplished. When we have reached enlightenment…then we’ll be accomplished.

But this belief in accomplishment says I Am rather than I will be.

Our beliefs can tell us of all that can be accomplished – or – of what is already accomplished. In this idea of accomplishment, stated as a belief and a practice, we are given the example of the tree that exists fully accomplished within the seed. The tree grows and changes but that does not mean that it does not begin and remain what it is.

There is a great emphasis from Jesus on time within these beliefs. Learning is what takes place in time and is what it is for. Accomplishment exists in Unity, devoid of time. It takes some getting used to – to envision our potential as something that is already accomplished – but the germ of the idea, like that of the acorn that becomes an oak, is that of an already existing accomplishment that doesn’t depend on time. Our accomplishment doesn’t wait but is fully there. It grows into it’s own…into it’s full expression.

Next I’ll share a couple of ways I’ve seen this belief (or the lack of it) affecting my life.

(Beliefs and Practice from The Treatises of A Course of Love, "A Treatise on Unity and Its Recognition".)

The basics of practice

I’ve said I’d like to share some from the practices of “A Treatise on Unity and Its Recognition.” I’ll start with just the basics.

These are practices to cultivate wholeheartedness. They are very practical, human-centered ideas, stated as beliefs to be practiced:

"As you move into the world with the end of the time of separation and the beginning of the time of unity taking place around you, practice the beliefs that have been put forth in this treatise." 13.4

The beliefs are:

Accomplishment
Giving and Receiving as One
No Relationships are Special
No Loss but only Gain
We Only Learn in Unity
We Exist in Relationship and Unity
Correction and Atonement

What practice is:

“To practice…is to make known. Practice is the merging of the known and the unknown through experience, action, expression, and exchange. It alters the known through interaction with the unknown. It allows the continuing realization that what you knew yesterday was as nothing to what you know today, while at the same time, aiding in the realization that what you come to know has always existed within you …” (from The Dialogues, Day 15, Entering the Dialogue, p. 217)

Even though this definition of practice doesn’t emerge until near the end of The Dialogues, and even though it’s not an easily understood definition, I’m including it to suggest why, for me (as a person not prone to practices) it is so helpful. I’ve always tended to view practices as something you “do.” You sit down and meditate. You practice yoga or Qigong. When you say such things, many people will have an image of what you’re talking about, and so will you. Even with meditation and Qigong though, viewing the practice as only the hour in which you sit, meditate, or do exercises, is inaccurate. With this practice of beliefs, even such a view as the “hour of practice” doesn’t make much sense except perhaps in taking time to be attentive to them.

I’m always saying how in this course, our lives are to be our curriculum. These beliefs are to be practiced in life. Another view of practice that I like comes from The Dialogues. It’s the image of “carrying.”

“Carry,” Jesus said, “what you have been given.” Carry it like “air carries sound, as a stream carries water, as a pregnant woman carries her child.”

“What you have been given is meant to accompany you, propel you, and to be supported by you. You are not separate from what you have been given, and you do carry what you have received within you.” (p. 246)

So you can see where I couldn’t really begin without referring to these ways our practice is spoken of, even if they come later in this course.

I like particularly that what you have been given is to “be supported by you.” That really translates into support of ourselves…support or nurture as opposed to an idea of obligation or responsibility.

I guess you could say that what I’m looking to do through these practices, is get myself in a mood that supports what I’ve been given.


I’ll start next time with Accomplishment.

Deep Root Investigating (and The Practices)

As soon as I get any kind of idea of changing myself – with change basically meaning self-improvement (only phrased in a way I find more palatable), I get loaded down with negative feelings and a certain kind of focus that, believe me, does not help me change. The same is true of goals. If I get determined to accomplish something, I’m in trouble. All I do is think about it more.

Just ask my husband and kids how I act, and even worse, how I look when I get determined. I am told, “You should see your face.”

Being as I know this about myself, I lit on the idea – prevalent in AH Almaas’ Diamond Heart Series, Buddhist thought, and even Centering Prayer in a more roundabout way – of investigating what arises. If I find myself with a concern that’s weighing on me, or a feeling that seems to reach back and push buttons with memories from another time, I stay with it and investigate…but very loosely. I don’t declare myself to be investigating; I just stay with it.

I can’t say that this makes me feel good, but I will say that it brings insight, and the insight feels good. If I feel like I’m getting at the truth of the matter, I know that’s what I need. I’m seeing what I’m really dealing with.

So here’s the drill: I feel uneasy in some way…sometimes due to a particular circumstance, and sometimes for reasons that are very vague but still insistent. I investigate. You could say I feel worse, but I’m going deeply into the feeling as if pulled. I don’t feel crabby about what I’m feeling and I’m not berating myself for it, because it came up of its own and, the benefit I get for staying with it is it pulls me down where it needs to take me. I might feel all kinds of feelings – sad, or lonely, or humiliated, but I’m definitely interested. It’s like the feeling has roots and stories attached to it and what started out as a feeling caused by a spat with my husband sends me back to feelings that I had about my dad and some long buried pain that gets released for being looked at. It’s rarely an instant healing but it lets me see where the pattern originated and what it’s really about. Without seeing the origin of the pain, it is like treating the symptoms without finding the cause, and you might feel better, but only for a while, and only as long as you lean on the treatment.

I’d call this deep root investigating brutal but gentle and still, I prefer it to the self-improvement style of change.

A self-improvement idea would look like this in me: I’m going to once and for all figure out what I do wrong with men so that I never again feel this icky feeling, and so that I always keep my sense of self at the forefront. Something like that.

I’d start out crabby and remain crabby. Crabby, determined, hard, cold, already feeling wrong, and in my head. What might come out of it is new rules: I’m going to do this or that and if things don’t improve the consequences will be this or that. (My thoughts go to that sterile place often enough even without ideas of self-improvement – or maybe you could say with ideas of “others-improvement.”)

So you might ask why I’m writing of practices, and I’ll tell you the truth – I’m doing it because I’m still feeling the division between seeing the truth and living from it. I turned to these practices with the hopes that they can help me. I’m sharing them because maybe they can help you too.

The practices of A Course of Love are about coming to know the unknown, and so, right off the bat, they don’t have that disadvantage of coming at me like a self-improvement dictum. We all have our ways and this is probably the only way that might have a chance of working for me. (Our favorite spiritual messages are our favorites for a reason! They fit us!)

A Course of Love is all about wholeheartedness and I’ve been practicing wholeheartedness for over ten years. All that was said about it is in me, rattling around, messages sending me signs and clues and reminding me of who I am. The practices in the treatises are about the beliefs of this course and they’re there to lead us beyond belief to knowing. I don’t have a doubt about these basic descriptors of what it’s all about. But if I’m not living by what I know, then maybe there’s a disconnect somewhere, and this is what I turned to these practices to find.

Even as I say this, though, I want to add that I think it’s the rare person who is not working through things, basically, for a lifetime. It’s part of the beauty and challenge of being human and I truly wish spiritual texts didn’t make it sound so easy.

I believe what they’re saying is that once your motivation has moved from fear to love, you’ve done the hard part, and that’s the part that can happen really fast – even before you’ve realized it. In fact, realizing it – making real what it means to live from love instead of fear, is the basis of the rest of the course work – which is basically defined in ACOL as a life curriculum. (I would add, as a curriculum for our whole, entire lives!)

It goes something like this: Return to love. Then work out the details.

(Some of those pesky details, i.e. life practices, forthcoming.)

Consistent Practice

Tuesday. I am so grateful for Tuesdays, to have time to walk around and pick up all the detritus of the weekend, to spend one hour on wiping, sweeping, washing, and have the house back in order. It is a marvel to me and I wonder how anyone does without it.

I remember in my single mom days, visiting my cousin Lynn who had a husband and a home daycare. She got up an hour before the kids came and got everything in order. She had shag carpeting (it was the 70’s) and she even combed her carpet. It made me kind of sick to my stomach to hear all this. Could my whole chaotic and messy life be vastly different with one quiet hour and consistent use of it to keep order? It seemed too simple, too doable, and I knew I wouldn’t do it.

I have only recently gotten the quiet of empty-house Tuesdays. Not long after this new routine came about, I started using the first hour to putter around the house, setting things straight.

I have three mornings of empty-house quiet and I do the same thing on all three days, but on the others also throw in the laundry and do other chores that fall less easily in the category of puttering.

If I only had an hour, I wouldn’t do it. But I have six. The other five are mine.

I’ve been thinking about consistent practice lately as I review the practices detailed in the Treatise on Unity (from A Course of Love). They’re not exactly things you can do in an hour. There’s the proverbial “get still and listen,” which could encourage you to your meditation hour, but the practice examples are more situational while at the same time they’re based on beliefs that are too broad to pin down easily.

I thought maybe I’d share these in coming posts.

When it's all turned off

It’s late, (well it’s dark), it’s quiet, and I’m hanging suspended between sitting here and going out to the dining room to tackle the mail and bills I usually address on Tuesdays. When I’m not feeling particularly inspired is when I start hovering between rooms. I do this out of hopefulness. Tomorrow, I might be really inspired, so if I get the mail-chore out of the way tonight (when I’ve got nothing much going on creatively), then tomorrow I’ll have more time.

It is probably no wonder that I value the creative spark so highly since, when it’s missing, I go to my least favorite tasks.

I didn’t get up and go to the dining room. I came instead to the blog where, sometimes, writing without inspiration I hit upon something worth sharing. And sometimes don’t.

The thing is, is that it’s the idea of “hitting on something worth sharing” that bogs me down often enough. I think it’s why we write blogs and e-mails and short quips back and forth. The pressure is off.

I go to bed.

I get up in the morning. It’s dark. It’s quiet. It’s early. Everything is off. This is sacred time.