I once asked God what He meant by the phrase "straight paths." (Isaiah 42:16)I asked this because I felt I had never experienced one, and was, in fact, once again clinging perilously to a cliff's face due to the loss of our life's savings by our investor. In my mind's eye, a straight path was obstacle-free, smooth and even, starting at a certain width in the foreground and narrowing to a pin dot on the furthest horizon.
Immediately, an image appeared in my mind of a person climbing a rocky mountain path that twisted around bushes and boulders, that dipped and pitched, so that the journey was "three steps forward, two steps back." Progress, but only slightly. Then I noticed that the path was flattening out before him so that every step the person took was landing on a flat surface, a "straight" place. His foot never slipped. He never skidded downhill. The actual effort of the step might be considerable, it might seem to take him backwards or downhill, but the footfall was steady and secure.
I took this as God's answer to my question. A straight path is one in which He is literally guiding each step. I revisit it now because I feel a little lost in the labyrinth of my journey. I've been venturing into new/old territory and experiencing old confusions, fears, and sadnesses that make me feel an uncharacteristic insecurity. Progress seems lost. The path feels treacherous. I don't know where to step now (read: I don't know what to THINK now). I know no other solution than to look for the light which is Christ. To remember what I know about Him. To stop looking wildly around for a next step and find Him. He is the light unto my path. Like a shepherd, He is nearby. If I'm in trouble, He knows it and is ready to guide me to safety. The reality is that though I feel like I'm out on a ledge, the drop is only a few inches and I know that He is there to catch me.
I will breathe in His spirit, be still and know that He is God, I am not, and that it's best that way.
"I will bring the blind by a way they did not know; I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them, And crooked places straight. These things I will do for them, And not forsake them. They shall be turned back, they shall be greatly ashamed, who trust in carved images, who say to the molded images, 'You are our gods.'" (Isaiah 42:16-17)
When Jesus tells his followers to love God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, he is referring to the whole person. He wants us to love God with every part of ourselves. I have always looked at these four elements as a four-stranded cord of humanness, as though there is no alternative but that they exist in perfect unity, snugly twisted together like a stout rope.
What if the integration of these four elements is not a given? What if we look more like frayed and frail strands loosely bunched together, and the grounding of each strand in love for Him is what unites (or reunites) them to create us into a strong cord/integrated beings? What if God desires this kind of love for Him NOT for His sake, but for ours?
This morning, the deep sleep in which I was immersed began to slowly drain away while it was still dark outside. The essence of me, which is really just awareness of being, was confused. Normally, it is jarred awake by a snoring someone and immediately finds an identity in the closest mind (mine) as "Someone Who Hates Rude Awakings." That's the Who. Then Mind starts its litany of daily plans...that's the When and Where. My existence is established in moments.
But not today. The leisurely dawning of consciousness wasn't characterized by the usual scramble for identity, but by a noticing: "There's a mind in a sleeping head, laying on a pillow." A tentative connection is made. Mind notes that shower is running, drowsily calculates Steve's estimated departure time and approximates that the time is "not time to get up."
Mind becomes aware of unpleasant sensation, which is first identified by location: "somewhere under shoulder," but it cannot determine exact source of discomfort. Mind travels from shoulder, down arm to source of pain, presumably hand. But there is no hand! Only a roundish shape of pain. Mind imagines other hand. It is there, small with five slim fingers. They wiggle. Mind wanders back to other hand, noticing but not analyzing or judging. In the absence of thought, images come to mind: Her firstborn's collection of early drawings, dated and titled and placed in a book in the order in which they were created. Experts say that infants do not have a sense of self. They have to grow apart from their mothers to discover that sense, which typically occurs at about 18 months. Their early drawings reflect how developed that sense is. In Katrina's first self-portrait, she drew the typical depiction of an almost 3-year old: a large head with two legs and no arms. (She actually had a better sense of how to write her name than she did of her body). Then at 3 1/2, she had arms coming out of her head (one appears to have been cut off), and at 4, she has big hair, highly developed ears, stick appendages with round hands and feet and Wolverine-ish toes and fingers. By 5, she was drawing bodies to which the arms were attached.
As I floated in that dark and timeless space, Mind deduced that a shoulder was laying on hand, and caused enough shift to restore blood flow. Tiny stick fingers began to emerge from the round pain. They lengthened and eventually wiggled, and the form of a hand became visible to Mind. It looked like the hand in the third drawing, above. Then Mind remembered another of Katrina's drawings.
She had drawn a round body with a round head, oval-ish (not stick) arms and legs. She had said, "This is a fat girl," so it was entitled Fat Girl. (I guess she was beginning to distinguish shapes in people.) Then she drew all those circles and ovals all over the page and said, "This is a fat girl who popped." We laughed and entitled it Fat Girl Who Popped. Mind became of aware of other pains and began to THINK (about Katrina's drawings and whether Fat Girl Who Popped was a portrait of the mother, about child development and why hand was still hurting and, oh yeah, "Good morning, God!"). The alarm clock rang and the day began.
Hopefully you're not dialing the men in white coats to come get me just yet! What I have described is just one portrait of the daily integration process of the SELF. It happens a little differently everyday. The strands of me come together in proper, healthy formation, or they don't. Either way, a sense of self is developing for the day. If I were to draw the level of integration I "feel," my drawing would be just as indicative of that sense as a child's is: Is the outline I draw firm, steady and uninterrupted or "sketchy"? Are there hands and feet, fingers and toes, or just vague shapes (or no appendages at all)? Is the head overly large or detached? (This exercise only works if Mind doesn't outsmart Body)
Doubt what I'm saying? How many times have you said, "I feel like I'm falling apart" or "I need to pull myself together" or "It feels like he's just not HERE"?
I have come to four conclusions: 1. Pain of all kinds causes the healthy unity of SELF to dis-integrate (or fail to integrate). Remember how to my barely awake self the pain in my hand kept me from having a sense of my hand? Without healthy integration, where there is pain, somewhere else there is a naked spirit, a forsaken body or a mind in handcuffs.
2. What is dis-integrated cannot connect with others and will manifest in dis-integration in externals facets of life:
If mind is disconnected, communication and interaction are difficult.
If spirit is disconnected, love and joy are difficult.
If body is disconnected, enjoyment and relaxation are difficult.
3. Any area that is cut off (dis-integrated), will be compensated for by over-development of one of the other areas (which results in compulsions, addictions, superspirituality, hyperintellectualism, etc.) [ You will be forgiven if you can't help having the thought right now that I am describing myself!]
4. The element that seems to integrate or dis-integrate the strands is EMOTION, since it has access to all three of the other areas. (but that's a topic for another time)
I'm only just beginning to explore this idea, but I am pondering the notion that loving God with our heart, soul, mind and strength is something achieved only through our lifelong journey of discovering and integrating these aspects of ourselves (much as the Father, Son and Spirit are integrated), learning to integrating with others well (which is how we learn where we're not integrated internally), and ultimately, with Him. This would partially look like bringing each aspect of ourselves into alignment with HIS image of us (which is very dependent on our knowledge of truth in that department).
The word integration means whole. Isn't that what he came to make us?
I would LOVE to hear your ideas about this passage as it relates to integration.
After reading my last post, the poem "adrift," a friend texted me to see if I was okay. Of course, I am rarely totally okay, despite my improved functionality in the past 20 years. I am what a friend of mine affectionately refers to as an E.W. (Emotional Wreck). Most days, it takes everything I have to let Jesus hold me together. I wish I were different, but I'm learning to embrace my E.W-edness.
I'm learning to embrace a lot of things that formerly I hid or denied or resisted, such as writing and publishing poetry. I know I suck at it, but it's a good exercise for me, both the writing and the putting it out there. That poem particularly.
See, I am in a season of learning to really feel my feelings. Some of the experiences of this are new and interesting to me. For example, the image of the two fence-posts, held together by the very thing that held them apart came into my head after sharing with my husband some sad feelings I was having about the difficulties of relationships, in general (not just marriage). I had gotten out of the habit of sharing sad feelings because I had gotten out of the habit of HAVING sad feelings. He responded really sweetly, sharing some of his own, similar sad feelings. I just let myself float in that sadness, with no judgment of how it would be resolved or what it meant or that I should fix his sadness. In other words, I didn't analyze it, and that's when the image came.
The next morning, I was amazed at how much better I was feeling. A couple of days later, I decided to go back and revisit that image of the floating fence-posts. To write that from a perspective of not being emerged in the emotion anymore was interesting. I was particularly aware that I should resist the urge to bring hope to the picture.
I try to be a person who brings hope to others who are struggling, but I mostly do this by quantifying and explaining. Some people are resistant to that kind of help, and the hope I offer ends up being a thinly-veiled argument about whether it is true. I see that sometimes people just need to know that you have the same kind of crazy thoughts and feelings, and that you care.
That moment of honesty I shared with Steve reminded me of a song that came out a couple of years ago called Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol. I remember thinking back then that I would have a great deal of trouble doing what the singer was asking:
Let's waste time Chasing cars Around our heads
and
If I lay here If I just lay here Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
But this is what I did that night and in so doing, I noticed that: 1) When I embrace my own sadness, I have an infinite amount of empathy for yours.
2) If I reject anything about myself, I will reject that in you, too (which will feel like a general rejection of you).
3) Embraced difficulties are over much more quickly than resisted ones.
4) My favorite line from Chasing Cars applies to me too, not just as a giver of grace, but a recipient of it:
By now, I hope you've started experimenting with the impact of breathing to your mental and physical health. Today's information goes a little deeper into the emotional side of breathing. This is an oversimplification and elementary examination of a controversial subject, but I am finding it useful and practical, and others might, as well.
I'm researching a phenomenon called dissociation. It is a group of habits and disorders that include, in their severest form, schizophrenia. Dissociation also applies to a broad range of versions that are experienced whenever painful emotions cause us to separate our ego from our body, such as when a person is "in a fog" following a death. A very mild example of dissociation occurs when you have been driving and you suddenly realize you've arrived at your destination, but that you haven't been paying attention at all and weren't aware of your route or the passage of time.
It begins with the mind's early subconscious realization that when I hold my breath or breathe shallowly, whatever is distressing me doesn't seem to hurt quite as much. Think of how you freeze when terrified. If the terror is bad enough, the mind will "deaden" the body in order to survive. This is commonly seen in cases of severe childhood abuse.
Long before I knew about dissociation, I revealed my own experience with it when I blogged about my efforts to avoid exercise. Apparently, being very still suppresses bad feelings. For integrated people, exercising and deep breathing energize the body and spirit. For dissociative people, it stirs up subconscious fears. The problem is that dissociative people don't know what they feel, so all they may experience is a desire not to move. The very thing that could help cure their dissociation is the thing their brain tells them they must avoid at all costs. Could this partially explain the Couch Potato phenomenon and our aversion to exercise?
When you add the third choice of Freeze to the Fight or Flight response to danger, you are attempting to dissociate. It appears that for a person suffering from dissociation (millions are, in the forms of addictions and depression), breathing and moving are important ways to begin to bring healthy unison to their body and spirit. By moving, I mean exercise that focuses on conscious breathing (i.e. yoga) or is strenuous enough to cause deep breathing. There is obviously much more to reintegrating a dissociated person, but breathing is a vital step that is often not included in therapy.
From this perspective, not only is breathing good for oxygenating our bodies and bringing equilibrium to the homeostasis of all our systems, breathing is a very proactive part of holistic healing in two ways: 1) by reconnecting the ego with the body, it helps activate underlying emotions 2) it helps keep them from overwhelming us as they surface. (Remember from Part I: deep breathing tells the brain that everything is under control.)
If you're familiar with my work, you already know how important I believe processing our underlying emotions is to our spiritual transformations and freedom. Significant to this transformation is the Spirit, whose very essence is breath.
Joseph Pilates said, "Breathing is the first act of life." Living every moment to the fullest requires that each of those moments begin with a good, healthy breath.
As I said yesterday, what usually takes away our breath is fear. I used a physical example of fear, but you may have been astute enough to make the connection between breathing and emotional fear.
Fear of pain (physical or emotional) exacerbates the breathing issue. Let's say that you decide to start breathing deeply. At about the second or third deep breath, the brain hears that everything is okay and tells the muscles to relax. If they have become knotted up like a 1970's macrame plant holder, the act of relaxing will cause them a little pain. They will panic and tighten back up, arguing, in effect, with the brain's dictate that everything is ok. "No," they will reply. "Everything is not okay. We're hurting down here." The brain is not the type to argue. "Okay. Everybody back on alert!" and you will stop breathing deeply and, most likely, say "This isn't working."
This is actually where I started to buy into the whole breathing thing. I like to have at least a little bit of a sense of control, and to know that I can create positive effects somewhere in my life. Because I am completely in charge of my breathing, I can hi-jack this whole dysfunctional situation by continuing to breathe deeply, which is like a presidential stamp: "This order is coming from the top, boys!" It may take a few times of doing this (and possibly a trip to the chiropractor or massage therapist to undo the damage in the muscles), but it is absolutely remarkable how many cues the body takes from the breath about the state of its world.
It only takes one day to put a positive cycle into effect. I was able to bypass the muscle panic issue by my 7th breath, soothing the very subtle anxiety like I would a small child having a splinter removed. And ever since then, breathing deeply is becoming easier and more automatic and my stress levels are bottoming out!
Can you apply these principles to the emotional fears in your life? No matter how bad the situation is, whether real or imagined, breathing deeply helps it by giving you full control of your mental and emotional faculties (clarity and calmness!). Who knew it could be so easy?
Tune in tomorrow to hear about my latest discoveries on the topic of breathing. In the meantime, I'm singing: "don't stop buh-reathing!" (to the tune of Don't Stop Believing), and I hope you'll hum along!
I've recently become one of its most ardent cheerleaders and here's why:
1. It's tied to our physical well-being (and not just by the fact that it keeps us alive!). 2. It's tied to our mental, emotional and even spiritual well-being. 3. It's good news for those of who would like to feel a little sense of control in their life. 4. It's changing my life!
You, of course, know that breathing oxygenates our bodies, carrying important elements into the body and toxic ones out. We mostly tend to breathe shallowly. I know I do. My chiropractor once told me to take a deep breath and when I did, he laughed at me. Then after some adjustments and deep tissue massage, I felt my body take a deep breath for me. Literally. It breathed me!
What takes our breath away is fear. Think about the sudden fright of an impending accident. The eyes see the situation and scream to the brain, which puts every system in your body on "red" (or high) alert. Muscles contract and tense in obedience, bracing for the accident. If you had time to think it through, you would remember that people asleep in the back often fare better in an accident than the ones who brace, but you don't have that kind of time, so your body obeys fear's message. You grip the steering wheel and lock your arms. Your brain also tells you to suck in your breath and hold or conserve it until the ordeal is over. Other autonomic body systems are reacting as well. These reactions are part of the natural Fight or Flight emergency response system in our bodies. Note that I said EMERGENCY system.
Let's say it was a near-miss. Your car didn't have a wreck, but you did! You pull over to breathe, cry, or momentarily collapse. Your breathing is exaggerated and ragged--it's deep, but not in an intentional, calming way. The brain hears the breath's message that the crisis is abating and tells the muscles to relax, so they start to return to normal. But what is normal? If "normal" for you is shallow chest breathing and tense shoulder muscles, the brain hears from these systems that everything is not all the way okay yet, especially since now your thoughts are all over the map about what could have happened. All of this keeps the body on "orange" alert, in case the crisis returns. The condition of being on "orange" alert is experienced by you as tension, stress, or anxiety.
A negative cycle begins wherein your tension, stress or anxiety keep sending the message to the brain that there is a crisis and it communicates to the muscles, respiratory system, etc. to stay tensed and ready for fight or flight, which you keep experiencing as stress, and so on. The first chemical it sends out to supply energy for this is adrenaline, which runs out when used continually, resulting in adrenal fatigue, a rampant malady of Americans today (especially among women). Then the extra-back-up chemical cortisol is sent in to relief the troops. Though it does help you keep pushing through, it is toxic, can only be eliminated through exercise and is responsible for belly fat.
No matter how much you tell yourself to calm down, your brain is listening to what it considers to be better information: your breath.
You may have recognized by now that this is your current status ALL THE TIME! If so, tune in tomorrow to learn about the psychological connection with breathing.
