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Creating Bridges: Spirituality & Philosophy:
The Conscious Column
Taming the Tempo
by David Ault |
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Just thinking about Jack makes me tired. He's running up hills to fetch pails of water. He's trying his best to be nimble and quick while hurdling over burning candles. To cap it all off, the poor guy has to work extra hard to support his spouse's eating; a woman who can eat no lean.
Everything about this nursery rhyme legend suggests that Jack's life has somehow evolved into a series of unmanageable circumstances. For many, this unmanageability is more than just an annoying problem. It has emerged as a full-fledged epidemic. Recovering that sense of balance between work and rest seems ripe for discussion by nearly every inspirational author, lecturer, minister and counselor I hear today. Taming our "to do" list animal has become a critical priority, as many of us experience a breakdown in our physical lives; the "Jack" within all of us tumbling and crashing down that overscheduled hill.
We function in society with an undercurrent of urgency that buzzes like an artificial light, a switch constantly flipped to the on position. Whether we realize it or not, this high voltage beam shines on the underlying notion that there is not enough ­ not enough time, not enough resources, not enough love. We work harder to merely maintain, fulfilling the observation of Frank Lloyd Wright that we become "little more than janitors of our possessions."
At no time was this problem more glaringly brought to my attention than over the 2001 holiday season. As I lay in the hospital during the weeks spanning Christmas and New Year, I came to the realization that I had not allowed myself to "stop" in nearly 15 years. That youthful feeling of invincibility I assumed would prevail forever had come to a screeching halt. I unwittingly reserved my space next to Jack at the bottom of that hill, a place littered with broken and exhausted souls feeling anything but invincible.
The saga of a lingering year and half cough joined forces with innumerable other complications, leaving me hooked to and monitored by machines for weeks; electrocardiograms, a bronchoscopy, an endoscopy, asthma testing. Even brain scans were intermingled with tube feeding to help counter my immense weight loss. My adrenal system had completely shut down and my kidneys, liver, and spleen sluggishly tried to function. Other than my birth, I had never been admitted in the hospital. The required surrender was immensely foreign yet welcomed as those first few days blurred together with procedure after procedure and a fatigue-induced sleep so deep that it took on fairytale proportions.
As thankful as I was at each benign biopsy or negative test result, I couldn1t help but wonder what was really going on internally for me to create such dramatic health challenges. Had my inability to stop become so all pervasive that a force greater than me had to step in to assist? I was scared. As ridiculous as it sounds, I felt I could deal with the situation easier if there were a diagnosis. I could wrap my mind around something like the suspected cancer and begin to work with the specifics in getting better. Continuing to look for the next thing, going through the medical process of elimination, made the mystery seem all the more ominous.
Lying in that hospital bed late one evening, I took the comment card from the adjacent dresser drawer and began to fill it with my own comments to God:
I feel a weariness that goes beyond physical exertion. It is like a secret bucket, hidden from the world, and continuing to fill up with my private tears. The weight of responsibility collects, and the tears slosh around so that each step becomes increasingly labored. Eventually this bucket spills over into the outward expression of crying but that does little to empty out the unbearable weight; the weight of sorrows, regrets, and unexpressed disappointments. I guess there has to be a collapse; an earthquake of the soul that takes that bucket and completely flips it over. It makes for a messy, emotional display. No matter how great the longing to keep it all together, there is a greater requirement to surrender and embrace that collapse.
I feel like I don't know anything anymore. I don't understand the cough or its presence in my life. I'm so far "in it" that I can't even see which direction to extend my hands for help. So, I'm flailing in the dark and grasping at a collection of straws that hold no answers. I don't know what to do other than to continue to explore and wait, explore and wait. I feel uncertain as to what I'm supposed to pursue now or how I'm to conquer the cycle of debt that has surfaced from all this. For the first time in a great while, I am consumed by indescribable loneliness.
And, so I ask for help. If 2001 was the cyclone, then I pray that the new year will be the relief effort to help clean it all up. I've somehow disconnected from my intuition, your guidance and placed all my faith in only what the physical world is presenting me. I need to find my authentic voice again; the one that cannot be silenced by all of this nonsense.Dare I say that I choose to be happy with my life, every unexpected detour, because the alternative hasn't been very appealing? I need to learn how to say no and not obsess over whether or not I've disappointed someone.
My thoughts are far from unique. As I travel and speak about recovering the necessary balance in our lives, people tend to sigh with a weary recognition, expressing their doubt in really finding a personal solution. We often lament, "If I can just make this deadline, get through this year, get this child through graduation, then I can schedule some time for me." Yet, the to-do lists are never complete, and the deadlines are always followed by more, fueling and spinning the proverbial hamster wheel of activity.
As a child, I did not know any better than to accompany my bicycling friends behind the DDT truck as it drove through our neighborhood spraying for mosquitoes. Chasing the poison mist that exploded from the giant sprayer was part of our summer ritual. The one who could stand the stinging eyes and lungs the longest was declared the winner. Today, I would never do such a thing. I've grown wise to such foolhardy dangers and would appropriately remove myself from the vicinity of any poison. Yet, we don't have the wherewithal to remove ourselves from the "poison" of over doing. Many of us still ride into the fog as if it were a contest, the prize, our ability to endure the longest.
Perhaps no one has addressed this topic of imbalance more brilliantly than Wayne Muller in his groundbreaking book Sabbath. Muller reminds us that what we are missing is our connection with Sabbath. Sabbath is more than an antiquated idea that requires us to observe our religious convictions on a particular calendar day, it is offered as a way of life. Muller writes, "Sabbath is more than the absence of work. It is time consecrated with our attention, our mindfulness, honoring those quiet forces of grace or spirit that sustain and heal us. To practice Sabbath is to remember and honor this balance in the most sacred and personal way." Every living thing was designed to operate within a natural rhythm of activity and rest. For every inhale, there follows an exhale. For every blossoming season there is the stark stillness of winter. All of nature participates in this ebb and flow without question or strain except for one; human beings. Humans have the supreme ability to reason and choose, the highest form of wisdom on the evolutionary chain, yet can lack the insight to honor this sacred tempo.
We just keep going, equating action and accomplishment with success, never honoring ourselves for the wisdom in napping, watching a sunset or playing with a child. Somehow, being still is inappropriately linked to being lazy. We could learn a thing or two from the family dog. Chances are, Spike isn't worrying about his reputation when rolling over to let the morning sun warm his belly. Yet, we struggle in allowing ourselves to stop. We must keep up for our family's sake, for our careers. Regardless of the reminders to slow down or face the consequences, the merry-go-round remains full to capacity - the message lost in the deafening whirl of wind and noise. So why do we refuse to listen even when we know better? For one, there's something immensely scary when we are asked to focus on our feelings rather than the energy expended to avoid them. Muller uses the example of skipping stones across a pond. We are taught that the successful stone skipper hurls the rock at great speed, the goal to send the stone traveling as far as possible. What happens if we toss the rock too slowly? It disappears into a murky unknown. Most of us feel that if we stop hurling ourselves as fast as we can into life that we will somehow disappear. We would have to drop down to the core of our feelings where our orphaned vulnerabilities lay waiting to be visited.
We don't disappear. We actually come face to face with our power and the guidance in how to use it. All one can ask in order to get us to see that is by imploring us to trust enough in the unfamiliar journey and embrace the places that scare us. Just as embracing times of sorrow and unexplainable mystery can propel us to a greater place of freedom and healing, so does visiting the silence introduce us to the answers we1ve longed for.
My greatest realization from the imposed stillness of that hospital bed came from the last line in that comment card - my inability to say no. The truth of that simple awareness felt astonishing to me. Funny what a cyclone could distract me from. With wanting to be accepted and liked so deeply rooted, my saying yes was on automatic pilot. The affirmative was out of my mouth before I even had a chance to think about it. I was accustomed to doing whatever it took to create happy environments; happy people even at the expense of my own welfare. Many times, I boarded planes with a soaring fever or cold because I could not fathom calling and canceling an event. "Everyone1s depending on me," I reasoned and so I must do my part to save the planet from misery and despair. All I needed to go with that idea was an old fashioned phone booth to change into fitted tights and my special cape of enlightenment.
All the energy that it takes to be the dutiful son, the responsible daughter, the uncomplaining employee, the understanding spouse or well providing parent must be balanced by the ability to recognize our needs and be willing to respect ourselves enough to ask for support. But with a history of any kind of abuse comes a history of not being able to set boundaries. Oprah Winfrey made the comment that once your personal boundaries have been violated as a child, it's difficult to regain the courage to stop people from stepping on you. You fear being rejected for who you really are. She spent the first four decades of her life giving everything she could to almost anyone who asked, running herself ragged trying to fulfill other people's expectations of what she should do and who she should be.
Canceling my engagements during this time had upset a number of people. Knowing they were upset, yet not being able to do anything about it, was uncomfortable at best. There loomed within my consciousness the belief that an automatic yes response would keep any disharmony, chaos, or abuse at bay. Saying no was equated with being difficult, stingy, and chancing not being liked. I must have believed that being liked was far more important than taking care of myself.
As I listened to the night nurse try desperately to calm an angry patient next door, another insight came barreling towards me. We can never please all of the people all of the time. No matter how great the effort or how honorable the sacrifice, there will be those who will find fault with us regardless.
These two concepts, learning to say no and understanding that I will never be able to please everyone became like bookends for my brain. It did not mean that I was to stop striving for excellence. It simply meant that I needed to re-examine my intentions behind my commitments. What was I doing it for?
The fluorescent lighting of that hospital room shone on more than just my arms so nurses could check my IV or for doctor1s to write in my chart. It somehow illumined within me the importance of placing these bookends on the shelf of my day to day decision making process. Practicing the boundaries contained within this wisdom might keep me from ever having to visit here again.
During the next year I simply began to live with the fact that I was a decent, kind, and giving person; whether I responded to the world's request with a yes or a no. I could honor my mental checklist. Does what is being asked of me feel in line with being true to myself? Does saying yes resound within every fiber of my being; if not, what needs to be changed? As Oprah concluded, "You don't know what a genuine yes feels like if you're used to saying yes to everything. When it's right, your whole body feels it."
With a great many of us identifying with nursery rhyme Jack's overwhelm, it becomes apparent that a change is needed. In order to lift ourselves out of the battered collection of bodies that populate the base of that hill, we must choose a different experience. As much as we want to complicate it, it really is that simple. You are enough, period. There's nothing you may have done that is so unforgivable that it requires you to spend the rest of your life making up for it. Stop. Accept the divinity of who you are and know that you can now start to nurture your greatness, the precious and unique gift of you. By inviting this truth to erase and replace any other label we may have given ourselves, the energy expended becomes focused on the things that really matter. You can say no and feel OK about it.
Not only did this re-examination of my responses liberate me emotionally, it liberated me physically as I began to chart a course towards wholeness that I had never fully known before.
In hindsight, I got to see that choosing to stop or even slow down the "doing" of life does not mean that the Universe stops in its ability to provide. My human body was just exhausted, period. Nothing more. Since that time, I have continued to let go of the reins of control and let God do the steering.
I have returned to the way of Sabbath. I have yet to be disappointed.
Taming the tempo of our lives isn't so much about exerting power over the unmanageable aspects of our immediate world, it's more about quieting our minds enough to hear our true voice and speaking its wisdom from a self-nurturing heart.
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David Ault
Visionary Vocalist, Author & Motivational Speaker
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David Ault is highly regarded as one of the finest visionary vocalists and motivational speakers within the New Thought/transformational movement.
His focus on remembering the Divine within and reclaiming that connection has empowered hundreds of thousands on their spiritual journey. The union of David’s charismatic message and heartfelt singing has elevated him to guest speaker of choice in many nationwide churches and global organizations.
As a licensed minister and practitioner through Religious Science International, as well as author, songwriter/recording artist, David has traveled and shared his gifts for well over fifteen years.
Working closely with notables Louise Hay and Marianne Williamson and sharing the stage with many cherished mentors ranging from the late Og Mandino to Dr. Barbara King, Jerald Jampolsky, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Father Leo Booth and Mary Manin-Morrisey, David harvested that experience and developed his own unique style of teaching. His compassionate presence, warmth and humor continue to be an unforgettable guidepost for audiences as they rediscover and reawaken to their personal magnificence.
Starting out as a professional actor and singer, David worked extensively in Broadway tour shows, film and television winning critics awards in both New York and Los Angeles.
Throughout the 1980’s, David, along with the late Jerry Florence and Keith Kimberlin made their mark in New thought history by helping pioneer an unexplored musical genre—visionary vocal music. Known as Alliance, their remarkable blend became legendary, helping establish them as one of the most successful vocal groups in the Spiritual recording field.
David continues this musical path with the release of his critically acclaimed recordings, The Healing Bridge, Travelin’ With The Angels, All Is Calm, All Is Bright, And Then It Is Morning, all distributed through his Los Angeles based organization, The Conscious Company. Now, his highly anticipated literary debut, Where Regret Cannot Find Me, is heralded as “a fresh and exciting discovery in Spiritual literature ... a work of pure heart!”
“I feel extremely blessed and grateful in following this path”, says David. “It is my ongoing intention to create a message in word and music that assists us all in reawakening to our personal magnificence!”
www.davidault.com
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