It's the third possible response which
interests
me. What
facing up
really is, is becoming
present
to the situation. The first two, fight or flight, are for the most part
automatic responses. There's
nothing wrong
with either of them. We're constructed to respond this way from time to
time. It's what ensures our
safety
and our
survival
- literally. It's what comes with the package. But what
facing
up brings which is new, which doesn't come with the package, is
accountability,
responsibility, and possibility. This is
who I am.
This is
what's happening.
I'm responsible for this. Now what?
These realizations are the very stuff of
transformed
living. They don't
create
themselves. Neither do you have a right to them, and neither are they
easy to wrestle with. If
transformation
were easy, wouldn't the entire world be
transformed
by now?
Ask yourself: what's my choice here? What possibility can I invent
here? Whatever the answers to these questions are, asking them allows
something new to emerge, something more than simply a hormonal
endrocrinal keyed response for which no one except your own
clockwork-ness can take any credit.
Notice you can't answer these questions
authentically
and neither will anything new
show up
until you
get present
to the situation and
face up
to the challenge - fight and flight are not options. It's not just that
you can't have a worthwhile inquiry when no one is at home. It's that
the problem state, whatever the problem is, is always axiomatically
congruent with
the über-conversation "This isn't it".
Simply by
facing up
to it, the problem state is vanquished.
Nothing
changes out there, yet the missing link -
presence
(or
listening,
if you will) - returns. Someone is at home.
The train
is in the station.
It's OK the way it is,
and there's choice in the matter of
the future
again.
What stops you living a life you
love
isn't the past you had but the
future
you don't have. What makes for living a life you
love
is inventing
a future worth living
into.