The Constellation Learning Newsletter
January 2010

Greetings from sunny Boca de Tomatlan! Ensconced in mi casa I had a very lush, green holiday this year having flown south the day before the first major snow storm hit the east coast mid-December; either really keen foresight or just plain dumb luck. Either way, I’m glad to be right where I am, and not just physically.

Quite a nice way to begin a new year, and a new decade.

Cynthia Barlow

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~ Monthly Message ~

We are experiencing an uncommon event today: rain. Last year there was not a drop of rain for my entire stay. Rainy season ends in October for the most part, but I am grateful for a cloudy day and an opportunity to play an indoors game of electronic catch up.

I rely heavily on external stimuli for internal reflection only to spew forth my (sometimes) insightful comments in an attempt to further assist my readers to make some sense of their own lives as they tolerate absorbing details of my own.

Well, there haven’t been as much external stimuli recently, or at least not a lot I’m thinking deeply about; I’m living a relatively stress-free existence at present. That’s not to say that life hasn’t thrown lots of people and places and things to do (that bother me) in my path, lots I could choose to stress about, for such is the nature of life.

But the way one considers, internalizes, and responds to the daily bombardment of external stimuli (and in our current world that barrage has increased exponentially)—the perspective one chooses in creating an internal reality—shapes the experience of the “experiencer,” or whatever it is that observes the self in operation. Call it self-awareness if you want, but I think it’s more than that. I think it is that part of each of us—the eternal part, or unconscious, or soul—that lives apart from the experience itself, observes it as though a clinician: an inherent professional distance.

Our poor little conscious self experiences the events around us filtered through so many layers of our individual A-B-C’s (attitudes, beliefs and accumulated crap) with so many kinds of emotional responses, we can feel like a pinball machine without flappers: out of control and at the mercy of our environment.

Maybe I’ve been in vacation mode over the holidays and my brain has turned to mush, so much nada to do, hence the lack of experiences I can distill into inspiring tidbits of enlightenment. Or maybe, as I’m beginning to believe, there is a natural crossing of a bridge occurring, a maturation perhaps, a realization that the flippers have been there all along and I know where they are and how they operate; a dispassionate unhooking from what I used to consider so urgent: improving myself (read: “fixing” myself). This extends to others, too. I am, and they are, doing the best we can.

Maybe I’ve finally arrived at a place where what others do really is none of my business unless they ask me for an opinion; where what others think of me is none of my business unless I ask them for their opinion; where the choices I make and the choices they make can coexist, compassionately; where I need not feel pity—a smokescreen for self-righteous condemnation cloaked in smug superiority; where to watch those for whom I care board trains that consistently take them to places they’re trying to leave behind, need not necessitate my packing a bag as well.

This last has proved the most difficult for me over the years, so intent was I on making sense of the world (well, at least mine in particular), so it was with some mild surprise that I “observed” my response to some news on New Year’s Eve: a friend had checked herself into the hospital for elective electro-shock therapy. I checked e-mail after completing my morning Tai Chi and Yoga routine, feeling grounded and relaxed. For a fraction of a second my lack of emotional concern was paradoxically slightly upsetting. I was upset I wasn’t upset? Or rather, that I didn’t feel sad for her?

No. My “observer” experienced no upset, no sadness: her choice is hers. I can choose to view it not as a potential culmination of a lifetime of challenges but rather as an expression of courage and trust in the darkness of her current experience, so deep it drove her to pursue hospitalization at this time.

And so, the “experiencer” in me is experiencing a certain kind of calm, an appreciation for my friend’s courage and trust in the face of the unknown, for carrying a suitcase packed with deep desire for peace of mind and sense of centeredness into the future as she boards this train.

This morning I listened to an NPR station which carried a program focusing on the best music of the year. The hosts (um, young ones) obviously do this annually, but it being a new decade they presented their choices for the best music of the entire decade. Top of their (young) list was a song I’d never heard of by a group I’ve never heard of: Do You Realize by The Flaming Lips. The song was played and before it had finished I had already downloaded it from iTunes (I do love iTunes!) and have been playing it the entire time I’ve been writing this (I also love “repeat”). I then went digging and found the lyrics and the band on video.

As my Happy New Year greeting I offer it up as a musical summary of what I’ve attempted to communicate here about choice and peace, the power of perspective, and growing into yourself.

http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/howtodeal/doyourealize.htm - watch the video (on the right hand side of the page).

May 2010 be the year we all realize that everyone we know someday will die—and it’s time to live free, if only to show those around us it can be done.

"Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us."
-- Hal Borland --

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