Petitioning the Universe

I'm in the process of reading a book by Elizabeth Gilbert called Eat, Pray, Love. (see the sidebar for what I'm reading) Elizabeth is a New York Journalist and, in Chapter 9, during a long car ride, complains to her friend about how long it's taking for her divorce to come through. It had been taking an extraordinarily long time and she was wrung out.

She said to her friend, "I don't think I can endure another year in court. I wish I could get some divine intervention here. I wish I could write a petition to God, asking for this thing to end." She then went on to explain to her friend why she thought that she couldn't/shouldn't ask for specific things from God but should instead pray for the courage to face whatever occurred in her life with equanimity.

Her friend's response was as follows:

"Where did you get the idea that you aren't allowed to petition the universe with prayer? You are part of this universe, Liz. You're a constituent - you have every entitlement to participate in the actions of the universe, and to let your feelings be known."

So Elizabeth wrote a petition to God and asked for what she wanted. She humbly made a case for getting rid of one more conflict in this world and said that it would increase the general health of the whole world, letting two more people become free and healthy. (It was a great letter but I'll let you read it in the book.) She signed it respectfully. Then her friend suggested that she should add (symbolically sign) the names of all the people whom she thought would support it. They listed them for an hour as they drove, including her parents and others, alive and dead, as far-flung as Mandela, the Clintons and Gandhi. Then she was exhausted and fell asleep. She was woken by her cell phone ringing. It was her lawyer to tell her that her husband had just signed the papers.

Did I mention that this book is non-fiction? As unlikely as this story sounds, I believe that when we ask for what we want, we should be prepared to get it. Yes, this could be a coincidence. Yes, she might be stretching a point - although I don't think she is.

To write a letter/petition to God or the Universe, I think you have to get very clear in your own mind about what you want and why. Wishy-washy petitions don't usually garner support and we'd best keep that in mind when formulating them.

What do you want? Who will benefit and why? Keep in mind that you can't pull one over on the Universe or the all-knowing-one because, well, he/she/it is all-knowing. You would really look unworthy if you lied about deserving something, or lied about what you really wanted it for, or how many people it would benefit. Even if you don't believe in God, and you're writing to yourself, lying isn't likely to move you closer to what you want. At the very least, you should be honest with yourself.

It seems to me that getting clear is really half the battle. If you can spell out what you want and not have any doubts about it, then you've set your intention clearly enough to manifest what you want or need - especially if it really is in the best interests of your soul and everyone else's. And, in the worst case scenario, if you still don't get what you're looking for, petitioning can't do any harm, can it? It's not like you're using up three wishes.

All this left me wondering how I would phrase a letter. What do I want? How much do I want it? Why?

The 'holding tank'

My world went through quite an expansion when I left home to go to university in the late seventies. I met many new people from many walks of life and learned about other people's lifestyles, belief systems and histories. Many of the people whom I met during those first years away from home are etched in my memory. I remember having one deep discussion in particular, in my dorm room late one evening, with a new-found friend. We were getting to know one another's views on life and in the process I realized that I was using a technique that I had not, until then, put a name to.

Fear of new concepts
I use this technique to this day. I thought everyone used it until I talked to this new friend and found she didn't. Let me explain. When someone, or some experience in my life, introduces me to a new concept or a new piece of information, especially one with which I am not completely comfortable, I put it into what I described that night as a 'holding tank'. During our discussion, I introduced to this friend just such a new and, to her, uncomfortable concept, and she immediately rejected it - out-of-hand, I thought.

I was surprised that she refused to even entertain the idea and that she was so vehement in her rejection. We had hardly even had a chance to discuss it. When I asked her why she wouldn't even give the concept some thought, she said she already had and that the idea I was suggesting wasn't possible for her. I thought maybe she had thought about it in the past and rejected it, but no, I was the first person to suggest it. She was rejecting it because it felt too unsafe for her to even sit with it while she considered the ramifications.

A holding tank
It was as she explained this that I was able to see my 'holding tank' system for dealing with the unknown. For me, it's a bit like putting an idea into an isolation chamber while I give it a good sniff and figure out what it would mean to my belief system if I took it on board. I can then talk to other people about it. I might research it. I can compare it to what I have always believed in the past, to see if the new concept makes more sense than how I have seen things to date.

Because I have somewhere to put any potentially life-changing concept or piece of information, I don't have to immediately make a decision about it. This system gives me the grace of time. Generally-speaking, I have noticed that if someone pushes me to make a decision faster than I am ready to, I am much more likely to say no, just to be on the safe side. Since rejecting change out of hand might not be in my best interests, I have developed this system to help me process the potential ramifications of the change, whatever it might be.

Entertaining the 'guest' of change
Over the years, I have often referred to this idea when working with clients. For it to work, we have to be able to make a little compartment within ourselves, within our belief systems, where we can 'entertain' a concept as we would an unknown guest in our house. We might only let this guest come as far as the front porch, at least until we determine how comfortable we are with it. Researchers are familliar with this process. They call it setting up a hypothesis, which has to be tested and then validated before it is accepted as fact.

In order to do this, we have to be aware of ourselves as 'people who hold beliefs' and be confident that those beliefs can change without us completely losing our identity. Gaining such an awareness requires a certain degree of objectification of our thought processes. It requires a 'meta' viewpoint. For me this has always been a natural way to see aspects of my beliefs and my behaviour, and the world, but I realize that this isn't always so for everyone.

Some people can take such a meta-position naturally, without even knowing that they do. Others can be introduced to this process and, with some practice, can gain increasing levels of confidence and skill. Still others may never feel comfortable with it, preferring to whole-heartedly take the plunge into change, devil take the hindmost, or instantly reject the change as being too dangerous, or 'not me'. These are different styles; each with their own benefits and drawbacks.

Helping myself grow
I'm happy with my system because it gives me the space to explore with some sense of safety- real or imagined. Perhaps I'm overly cautious and could live a more adventurous life - some might say this is true of me. But at the moment this system suits my personality and allows me to be a little braver than I might be without it. It helps me to deal with being in my own personal 'edge territory' and potentially grow into a greater awareness of my potential self - which was last week's subject.

Contemplating the 'edge'

In the last couple of months, I have found myself frequently referring to people being 'on the edge' and afraid to step off into the unknown. I've had conversations with many of them but there are many who aren't in a place where they can talk about it yet.

I'm not talking about being so uncomfortable that you want to commit suicide. I'm talking about having the feeling that where you are isn't completely comfortable any more, at the least, or is possibly even downright uncomfortable at the worst. We could call this, 'edge territory'. Any of you who have worked with me have probably heard me refer to this place.

Foggy Land
Edge territory is the the foggy land between the you with whom you can identify and the as-yet unknown you. As we get older, life teaches us more about ourselves. You could say that it increases our window of self-awareness. But all of us have a blind spot. That's the part of ourselves that is still undiscovered. It's hard to deliberately do something about this because a blind spot is, well... blind.

The biggest challenge about increasing our self-awareness and decreasing the size of our blind spot is that we're really not identified with it. We experience it as 'other'. A teacher of mine once said that we often have emotional allergies to the qualities that we see as 'other'.

'Other'
My personal favourite was the 'selfish' person. It was so easy for me to point out anyone who had the slightest scent of what I saw as selfishness. 'Selfish people' were 'them' and I was part of the 'unselfish people'. Once I had this 'allergy' pointed out to me, I could see the nonsense in my perspective, but it took a while! In reality, we all have every quality. Before I could accept that I had this one, I had to reframe it as 'self-ful-ness'. Being selfish is actually a neutral quality. The positive and negative aspects just depend on how we express it.

Exploring Our Wholeness
We may choose not to identify with part of our emotional wholeness, or not express it, but all the emotions are there. For many years, I thought that I wasn't an 'angry person'. In fact, I prided myself in not being angry. I started seeing a therapist in my early thirties and began to see how I expressed, or leaked, my repressed anger. I was under the impression that it wasn't acceptable to be angry, let alone express it.

All the reasons behind why each of us repress certain qualities in ourselves could fill a book. Suffice it to say that some of it is gender-related, some cultural, some to do with the era in which we were raised, and much to do with our life experiences. But lest I mislead you, being afraid of certain emotions or qualities in ourselves isn't the whole story of 'edge territory'.

Reframing
Let's go back to feeling uncomfortable. I was talking to someone at coffee the other day who knows exactly what she wants to do, and she's not doing it. She was under the impression that it was just that she couldn't get organized and get off her duff. We played with the idea that it's related to a responsibility that she has been carrying for years. The need to carry it has all but gone now but she suspects that she might be holding herself back because she's afraid that the need to carry the responsibility could suddenly return. Very simple, but it hadn't occurred to her. If this is in fact true, she may have more options than she had thought, in terms of how she steps out over her personal edge.

Courage and Change
What's 'over the edge', so-to-speak, is unknown and therefore a bit shadowy; ranging from uncomfortable to downright terrifying. One thing is certain; venturing into this place, alone or with support, always brings growth, excitement and change. So, whether we're afraid to go for a dream, or make a long-overdue change, or explore our blind spot, or just own another part of our wholeness, carpe diem!

Love and friendship

It's a time we call 'Thanksgiving' in my part of the world, a time that is really quite Pagan, if you think about it, as it comes from giving thanks for the bounty of the land after the crops have been harvested for the winter. Everything in the market always looks so appealing at this time of the year that it gets my inspirational cooking juices flowing.

While I always feel particularly aware of Mother Nature in the autumn, I am feeling grateful on this holiday weekend for friendships. A friend of mine hasn't been feeling contented with her looks lately and I was reassuring her that she looks fine. Sound like a platitude? I think it might have to her, although I meant it.

I meant it because I don't look at people I care about with the same eyes as they use to look at themselves. I've been wondering about that. Why don't I look at them that way? I often find myself narrowing my eyes at my reflection in the mirror and getting hypercritical. Why do I do it to myself and not to them?

Perhaps it's because we fall in love with our friends. Yup - that's what I said: 'in love'. I don't mean that we want to hop into bed with them; just that wanting to spend time with someone, listen to their joys and woes, isn't just about being 'kind'. I think we're genuinely in love with some aspect of their character, their persona, their talent. It might be something that we wish we had and believe we don't. It might be some shared passion, sense of humour or cause. Whatever it is, we love it.

And just as with the partner we choose to commit to in life, we may not love everything about them. Being in love doesn't always mean being blind, especially if you've known the person for a long time. You can still get irritated or impatient with them, but overall you love the package, or you wouldn't stick around. Of course I'm talking about healthy friendships.

There are plenty of unhealthy ones around; the ones who become the big screen where we project our disowned power, our unacknowledged weaknesses, our need for whatever we feel we are not, or aren't allowed to be. Maybe you could call those the dysfunctional friendships that could do with a friendship equivalent of divorce.

As I give thanks for my friends, past and present, I suppose I must consider this latter group as well. Even if they aren't presently in my life, they too served me, if only in the negative sense. Either they taught me something or I taught them, probably a little of both. At least I hope that's what came out of it.

I was googling (funny how that's a verb now) some old friends the other day and found a few. One was a girl who lived across the street from me in Montreal. I think I only knew her for about a year and a half, although in child years it felt longer. Even though we were a year apart, we walked to school together and swore to be one another's bosom pals.

I found a picture of her on the web, and even found her email address, but I hesitated when it came to what to say. Do I need to say anything? Maybe it's better for that friendship stay intact in my past, uncomplicated by who we have become. I loved her then, in the way that a child loves their bosom pal. That apple has already been polished.

I have some friends with whom I feel special, like that polished apple. When I have visited with them, or spoken to them on the phone, I feel like a more beautiful, more splendid, or talented person - my best self. I feel accepted, celebrated, a worthy contributor to their well being, uplifted. Perhaps this is the everyday equivalent of a standing ovation.

I wish we all saw ourselves through the eyes of our best friends. Perhaps we would be more contented with ourselves. It's certainly cheaper than drugs and even better than vitamins to keep us healthy.

So, on this Thanksgiving, I give thanks for the wonderful balm of friendship.