Neal A. Maxwell
"The very unfortunate result of our preoccupation with order, control, safety, pleasure, and certitude is that a high percentage of people never get to the contents of their own lives...
"Human maturity is neither offensive nor defensive; it is finally able to accept the reality is what it is."
Richard Rohr
My first week at Desert Solace was full of wonder and new ideas. Not just ideas that didn't matter, but rather ideas that could, and would, if I accepted them and actually did something with them, change my life. The saying at Desert Solace, that I heard many times, was that our goal was not change...it was transformation. Big difference. I came in as an apple, and I would leave as an orange. Or vice versa. The point being, of course, I was to become a new person, and not just a new version of the "old" me. As I came to better understand this, it was obvious to me that Jesus is saying the same thing when He asks us to become "new creatures", or to become as "little children." He wants us to become someone completely different than we were, and that began in earnest right away for me.
One point to make...I bought in from day one. I noticed that some clients take weeks or months to make the choice to go to Desert Solace, and since I've been home I've had the opportunity to talk to a few of them trying to make that choice. They stew about it, worry about it, and think of all the reasons not to go...time away from work, money, family, etc. That list could be endless. But...and there is a big but...if they want to be someone different, then they need to DO something different. I didn't get to decide. I just went. As it turned out, it was the greatest blessing of my life, and I knew that right away. So I was all in...
I took a couple of notebooks with me...Kristen packed them for me...and from the beginning I took notes. Every day. Every session. Every check-in. And I re-read those notes all the time. They are invaluable to me.
One of the first things Shane talked about in group was the whole idea of letting go of my past, and letting go of my false beliefs. Honestly, I wasn't sure what he was talking about. I know there are lots of people that understand this concept, and are able to live it, but this was all news to me! Let go of my past? Really? I could do that? This was truly a new revelation for me. Sounds easy, but it's not. But I soon realized that for most of my life I had done two things...let my past define me, and worry incessantly about the future, whether is was tomorrow, next month, or next year.
One day in group with Lynne, about four weeks into my time there, we were discussing our regrets and disappointments, and I shared the fact that I had not graduated from college. I had come oh. so close, short just a semester, but had decided that teaching would not pay the bills, and I became impatient with school. So instead I switched from part time to full time for the grocery chain I had been working for, hoping to become a manager.
As I told this story that day, I couldn't finish it. I felt this pain, this emotion, that started in my gut and came all the way up my body until I was sobbing and couldn't talk. I had always joked that someday I'd get a "real" job, even though I had been a Store Director for Smith's Food and Drug for over thirty years, managed over 100 associates and a store that sold over $3 million dollars a month in groceries, pharmacy, and fuel. It drove Marilyn nuts...she always told me I had a real job. But I always felt like a failure...at least part of me did. How many of us carry that type of emotional baggage with us, for years and years? Regrets, maybe for what we've done, but more so for what we had not done. For the risks we were never willing to take, or for our seeming lack of courage in our choices. How often have we just shoved those feelings down deep into our souls, until there's just nowhere else to put them?
So I carried this huge regret around with me, and in that moment it just overwhelmed me. Through a tapping exercise, with Lynne's help, I was able to let that go. It was a seminal moment for me.
As an addict, as I said, I lived in two places...the past and the future. The one place I never spent much time was the present moment. I was always thinking two steps ahead. Or more. I was a mess, and although I hid it well, everyone noticed it. Even my grandkids. I was just never "there."
My notes from an early session with Shane are:
"If you live in the future, you're living 'as if' something were true, when it's not. How do you feel when you do that? How does that serve you?
"Let it go. Live in the moment. Shift your thinking and emotion. Choose to live now.
" Letting go doesn't mean forgetting - it's letting go of the stories and emotions of what we did or what happened to us.
"All we have is this moment...and life comes at us moment to moment to moment. Yes, plan for the future, but live now. This moment."
I soon experienced the freedom of this way of thinking, feeling, and living. As Ty Mansfield writes in the book "The Power of Stillness", "Surrendering stories and judgments about what "should" be, and allowing myself to live with a kind of compassionate awareness and acceptance for what "is" -right now" began my transformation...from an apple to an orange. Or vice versa.
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