Broken Open Part 3 of 8: Heart Warrior
September 11, 2009 by dr. lam · 4 Comments
Elizabeth Lesser talks about a profound influencer in her earlier life, the peripatetic refugee from Tibet, Chögyam Trungpa, who taught her the power of meditation but also shaped her direction by a single paragraph in his writings. She says that she is a voracious consumer of self-help books (like me) but in all the vast tomes that she has studied, no paragraph or words had as much an impact in her life as the following, so I have reproduced part of the paragraph by Trungpa herein:
“When we slow down, when we relax our fear, we find sadness, which is calm and gentle. Sadness hits you in your heart, and your body produces a tear. Before you cry, there is a feeling in your chest and then, after that, you produce tears in your eyes. You are about to produce rain or waterfall in your eyes and you feel sad and lonely and perhaps romantic at the same time. That is the first tip of fearlessness, and the first sign of real warriorship.”
We very much prize the power of the human brain here in the West as the navigation source for our lives. We think ourselves into what we need to do and how we should structure our lives. We leave feelings unexplored because as Lesser says, they are “messy” but life can be messy and less tidy than our small brains can envision. We can become heart warriors by opening our hearts and allowing them to guide us forward in our decision making and to use emotional intelligence as our cornerstone on how we lead our lives and how we progress forward every day.
Although I cannot deny my own cerebral leanings, I am now a much more intuitive and heart-centered individual and follow my intuitive heartstrings to guide me much more than in the past. I have become increasingly more self aware and less mentally constrained by giving my brain a break. The sadness that Trungpa talks about is a bit of our letting go the forced vision of who we are, seeing our vulnerable side and allowing us to become fearless in our heart quest. Sorry to all you rationalists out there!
Broken Open Part 2 of 8: Bozos on the Bus
September 10, 2009 by dr. lam · 3 Comments
Elizabeth Lesser cites the irrepressible clown, Wavy Gravy, for the expression “bozos on the bus”: ”We’re all bozos on the bus, so we might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.” Wavy Gravy is perhaps best known for his role as master of ceremonies in 1969 at Woodstock or as the eponymous Ben and Jerry ice cream flavor. He has also been a strong advocate for improving the lot of inner-city kids and also for running for president under the pseudonym, “Nobody”, so that he could use humorous tag lines like “Nobody for President” and “Nobody’s Perfect.” Wavy Gravy also has worked with Lesser at her Omega Institute as a workshop leader leveraging his comedic talents.
The expression “bozos on the bus” is meant for all of us to take what we do a little less seriously. Sometimes we are so imbued with the urgency to present a serious and perfect face to everyone around us that we cannot see that we are all just “bozos on the bus”. What Lesser is getting at is that we have frailties and failures like everyone else; we just don’t show them to someone else. There is this false sense of “Why can’t I be like Susan? She’s got it all together.” Does she though? Don’t we just offer false platitudes when someone comes up to us and says, “How are the kids?” ”Oh fine. Doing well.” ”How about Tom?” ”Great. Never better.” Maybe we mean, “My kids are struggling in school and my husband and I are separated.” We always put our best foot forward so that we never appear like a bozo. But come on! We are all just bozos on a bus.
We all can take ourselves a little less seriously and expose a little of our raw side so that we can be a little human. I remember for my high school prom night that I was trying so hard in my poorly fitting tuxedo to impress my date and to look the part. All that fell apart when I was trying to find my destination well before the era of GPS, iPhones with maps, and Mapquest. I think a 5 minute ride turned into a 30 minute excursion. Of course, my perfect sense of myself rarely allows me to admit my bad sense of direction because a guy is not supposed to have that, right? Okay, I’m just a bozo on a bus like all of you.
Broken Open Part 1 of 8: Once- and Twice-Born Lives
September 9, 2009 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
Elizabeth Lesser’s book, Broken Open, has had subtle but profound implications on how I see the world. Lesser’s book can be best summarized in her opening quote, “And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” The image of the flower with restrained and constrained petals on the brink of blossoming is at once beautiful and cogent to her message. All of us on our life’s journey are moving toward a destination but how we lead that life can be the most important thing. When we allow ourselves to take risks and to open our hearts and our minds we can be broken open to blossom, to mature, and to grow, and to be new beings in the process.
She uses a phrase from the poet William James to capture the idea of two kinds of people, so-called “once born” and “twice born”. Once born individuals live life with a certain, prescribed path. They never veer from their structured direction whether or not that direction is fulfilling for them or worthy of their life’s endeavor. She mixes James’ imagery with the famous Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s metaphor of the “dark forest”. She says that “once born” individuals follow their life’s pathway and when they come near to the edge of the dark forest, they turn away and go back onto assured footing. The “twice born” will penetrate the dark forest, meander through an uncertain pathway, and emerge on the other side a new being, better than their half lived lives before they entered.
She cautions the liberal use of the reductionist terms “once born” and “twice born” as being categories that may evoke elitism for any twice born individual to claim superiority over someone who is once born. Being broken open is not a necessity for growth but one that may facilitate a more profound level of growth, those things could be a loss of a job, loss of a loved one, a crippling physical handicap, etc. When we are broken, we can use that adversity not to break us down but to break us open, to facilitate our growth and be the catalyst for change.
For example, I have always wanted to be a doctor. I refined that idea by wanting to be a head and neck surgeon. Then I refined that idea by wanting to be a facial plastic surgeon. Then I refined that idea by wanting to be a hair transplant surgeon in addition to being a facial plastic surgeon. As I marched down this steady pathway I was never broken open. I never changed jobs or moved toward another position in my life. Does that mean that I am a lesser person for being “once born” in my career? Obviously not.
In my personal life, my father was stricken with a debilitating illness that left him finally unable to walk and to see only out of one eye at the remainder of his life in addition to being in constant pain and discomfort. I was broken open by my father’s experience and so was he. From my dad’s condition, I have become more sensitive to others’ suffering and have made it my life’s mission to heal and to help others through my work.
We all can grow, change, and live through adversity by seeing our adversity as a vehicle for our own personal change. We have talked a lot in previous blogs about the power of an adverse event to be a wonderful blessing if we change our attitude and our gratitude toward it.