Here’s what I’ve been hearing a lot of lately: “I don’t know how to fix this” “I am overwhelmed” “I can’t hold it together anymore” “I’m exhausted” “Nothing is working”” “I’m FU**ED” “I feel crazy”
Mars Retrograde turned the first three months of 2012 into advanced, required and uncomfortable human coursework. We’ve all been asked to identify and confront the most stubborn, ongoing issues that seemingly evade transformation. Add Mercury Retrograde into the mix and the last month has been a perfect recipe for going CRAZY! Nothing seems to be working, it’s glaringly obvious and yet there’s a cosmic brake on our creative action.
While Mercury is out of retrograde now and Mars is moving out of retrograde over the weekend, I want to collect some of the uncomfortable insights of this challenging human workshop. Over the last few month it has felt like the most obvious principles of good living that I have been studying and collecting my whole adult life, that I even teach people about!! were out the door. That’s the nature of crazy! So today I’m anchoring myself back into the basics.
So here’s the question: what is actually happening when we feel crazy? And how do we get back to creative sanity?
Thankfully I got to gather with a quorum of creatives/close friends over the weekend and we examined that question together.
Here’s some of what we came up with from our own present, personal experience:
1) Crazy is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome.
My experience right now is that nobody is getting an easy ride. We are living in a time when our obsolete organizing principles are being stripped away from us. Our unconscious, conditioned ways of being are not producing the life and world we want to live in. But are we letting go of what isn’t working or just recycling the same behavior?
Sometimes life gives us gentle blinking billboards that wake us up to what’s not working.
However, in the last three months it has felt more like our faces are being held down in the s**t until we acknowledge that it stinks.
2) Crazy is resisting what is – fighting it, wrestling it, pushing against it.
The biggest way we do this is to override the signals of the body that are always in the present moment and full of authentic information.
I can’t tell you how many times I have said to myself in the last six months,
“OK Laura, fire up!” It’s a rather innocuous, seemingly self-inspiring phrase but really I’m pushing myself into overwhelm and exhaustion. And that is CRAZY!
Or how many times I’ve heard people say, “I’m fine!” when they really aren’t.
Let’s get honest with what is happening and start to really listen to the signs.
3) Crazy is a wide gap between ideals/shoulds and the actual truth of the present moment.
I’ve had to do some major reviews on the expectations I place on myself, my life, my partner, my family, and the pace of life’s unfolding. I’ve been setting myself up for a lot of disappointments and powerlessness thinking I can make something happen when that isn’t really in the flow of my own or the collective energy.
For example: I’ve found myself on Craigslist almost every day looking at my dream house that I know I can’t afford in the present moment! I had a daily practice that enhanced my sense of disappointment! Now that’s crazy! The pressure of where we ideally want to be vs. where we are sets us up for unworthiness and powerlessness.
4) Crazy is avoiding the present moment.
As Carl Jung puts it: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
The present tense reality has a habit of always breaking through our illusions like a bull in a china shop. If we avoid reality than we get shocked by it, increasing feelings of exhaustion and victimization. What are you afraid to acknowledge?
How are you avoiding some hard truths? Staying busy, watching TV, or taking drugs is not going to make anything go away, it will only make it get bigger
5) Crazy is trying to control what you cannot.
“God grant me the serenity, to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” Reinhold Niebuhr
I teach people tools to become change makers and authorities in their own lives. But there’s a paradox here. How do we honor our creative authority, the ability to affect change when we come up against unfixable realities and things we cannot control?
What I’m letting myself remember is that surrender is a creative action – one that stimulates enormous change. Laying down my personal will and letting life unfold on its own accord requires I anchor myself in radical trust and alliance with Mystery. I’m having to remember that I’m not actually in charge of the universe! (HA!)
6) Crazy is not forgiving ourselves for our limited ability to change others.
A lot of my review, and the collective and astrological review right now, lives in the realm of relationship. We are learning right now that we do impact each other, that we are interconnected and our compassion and response to each other ripples out in powerful waves.
On the other side of the spectrum we all have those relationships that we spend a lifetime praying for an opening or a shift in the dynamic. We’ve been standing on our heads and bending over backwards for long enough that maybe it’s time to forgive yourself, live through the grief and powerlessness and spend your creative energy somewhere else.
7) Crazy is in our isolation.
Sadly, when we are overwhelmed and experiencing countless disappointments, obstacles and powerlessness – our systems become over-laden with the shame affect. Shame causes us to curl inside ourselves and evokes the victim consciousness, a state of profound separation. We forget that we are all in this life together, that crying together, saying “I’m going crazy” to another human being may not change our circumstances but helps us feel more connected and supported in the process.
It’s so easy for me to forget I have support. It’s easy to imagine everyone else is having an easier time of it, or too busy to want to connect with me when I’m negative and overwhelmed. But an authentic moment with a friend, even a short moment, makes a world of difference. I’m also increasingly clear that WE NEED COMMUNITY and BIGGER CONTAINERS for the tasks of the present moment. Sorry for the drama…I’m just saying.
Principles of Transforming Crazy
1) Name and acknowledge what is happening to yourself or even better a friend.
2) Make course corrections! Don’t keep doing what isn’t working!
3) Distinguish what you can control and the things you cannot.
4) As my good friend Heather says, “It’s time to delete the Default Button.”
5) Radical surrender. You are not alone, we are all scared. But letting go will make it easier.
6) Breath compassion into your life, your body and all of your relationships. When we breath kindness into our body it initiates the tend-befriend part of the brain and reverses the fight-flight-freeze state.
7) Make something out of your experience through expression. Write a poem, make a collage, pound at clay, etc.
8) View failures as information not evidence of your incompetence!
9) Be simple! Take walks, go slow, just do the next obvious step towards relief or accomplishment.
I’m sending waves of compassion to you all. Sending visions of ease and lightness in the coming weeks as the endless sets of waves die down and we paddle to shore, coughing up water from our lungs and collapse onto a sun-filled beach. I am laughing joyfully, and a bit maniacally (the crazy isn’t gone yet!), at just how human we all are, how many times we need to revisit and remember it all.
With love,
Laura
Image: “Can you love a nut?” Photo my Laura, concept by Heather and Friend