Self-help Articles

by Ruth Cherry, Ph.D.

Sometimes I get so frustrated. I have a clear (very clear) notion of how things should be or the ending I would like; and there is nothing (NOTHING) I can do to effect an acceptable outcome.

I get so tense. I do everything one could possibly expect, I think about alternatives and plan for them, I visualize a different life experience. And yet ... nothing changes.

Or, rather, nothing visible changes. I've learned over decades that what is visible truly is only the tip of the iceberg. I've also learned that my concern needs to be with the ice beneath the surface. I can't see it with my eyes but this huge mass is real and present (very, very present) in each second of my existence. What is hidden beneath the surface in fact makes life on the surface happen as it does.

We like to think that we are captains of our ships but we fool ourselves. Our minds are not that grand or that powerful or that wise. We want to believe they are, however, and that we can trust them.

Truthfully, we can trust our minds with details, with strategies, and with problem solving. How to live a meaningful and rewarding life is completely beyond the purview of anything our little minds can imagine. Being the good servants that they are, our minds will attempt to fashion a meaningful life if we ask them to do so.

Meaning, however, is not a concept but an experience. Our minds don't experience. They can't. All they can do is solve problems. The thing is: our lives are not problems to be solved, but experiences to be had.

Experiences tend to be messy. How we muddle through the mess is how we grow and learn and develop as the unique humans we are. Minds don't have a category for individual. They operate in the realm of fair and unfair, acceptable or not.

The Currency Used to Experience Life

Creativity? Spontaneity? Joy?

A mind doesn't trade in those currencies. A mind can tell us how to be safe, how to do things the way everyone else does things, and how to think logically.

But that iceberg under the surface isn't a problem to be solved and doesn't require logic. The iceberg represents consciousness, the tiniest details of is-ness, of being for any one of us.

We know we're not our thoughts or our actions or our words. The being whom we most basically know as ourselves is far deeper. That being is experience. Fluid, changing, evolving (or maybe contracting).

But life is at our core; unpredictable, uncontrollable life. So we be. Life lives through us and we feel. And who we are develops from our choices. We can choose to close off large parts of our lives -- no more anger. I won't go there.

But we all learn eventually that having an experience inside, feeling a feeling, noticing a conflict, builds our life as a human. And we learn that we need not fear any feeling or eschew any experience.

What's to fear? It's all me. So I keep breathing and keep feeling. I don't have to judge my experience. I just have to open to having an experience of myself in my life.

Reference:

Castaneda, C. The Power of Silence. New York, Washington Square Press, 1987.

About the Author:

Ruth Cherry, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in private practice in San Luis Obispo, CA. Her specialty is midlife when psychological and spiritual dynamics merge. Dr. Cherry leads guided meditation groups weekly both for the public and for inmates in a state penitentiary.