Acting from Okayness
Actuar desde la Serenidad de que Todo Está Bien
The teacher explores how our fundamental stance toward reality, whether we feel it is basically okay or basically not okay, shapes every action we take, even when the outward behavior looks the same.
Acting from Okayness
The teacher explores how our fundamental stance toward reality, whether we feel it is basically okay or basically not okay, shapes every action we take, even when the outward behavior looks the same.
I'm all for change. The point of being alive is to co-create, and that's all about movement and change. But what I'm pointing to is a very fundamental structure that is constantly saying, "This reality as it is is not okay, and I'm not going to be okay fundamentally unless X, Y, Z happens."
Two places to act from
The question is: how do we engage with reality? We can engage from the position that this is not okay fundamentally, or from the position that this is fundamentally okay. From both places, you can engage and change things.
For example, if a child is doing something that I don't think is right, I can engage with that in some way. I can educate the child or stop the child from doing what he or she is doing. But if I come from a place where what's fundamentally happening is not okay, that will be projected onto the child. The child is fundamentally not okay. I can still educate, but it will come from a place of "he or she is fundamentally not okay, because reality is not okay, because I'm not okay."
The same action, a different ground
Notice the difference. One approach is going to be a lot more loving than the other. If this reality is fundamentally okay, I can come to that child and do the same thing, the same action: say no, stop it, don't put your fingers in there, whatever. But one will come from a place of something subtly, fundamentally not okay. You could call it a distrust. There's a subtle judgment. The other comes from a trusting, loving place.
Creativity rooted in completeness
There's a whole other aspect I want to explore in another session, having to do with all the creativity that we are: the imagination, the map-making. The point is to notice to what extent what we think is reality is actually mind. It's good to notice that. Thinking is our tool, but we need to differentiate it from reality so that we can use it in a much better way. We can use our thinking and our imagination to create and to connect with what we feel and what we love at a much deeper place, because we connect not to what we think we need (since "I'm not okay and I need X, Y, Z" is a very limited sense of self) but to something else entirely.
When we notice that what we are is okay fundamentally, that this beingness is total and complete, it still wants to create. That creative desire is a much deeper one, and it is much more aligned with the universe. When we're moving and creating from that place, there's a lot more harmony.
You see this in many films. There's a beautiful one called Bagdad Cafe. In it, a woman, I think she's German, arrives at this little cafe in the middle of nowhere, a place just full of pain. But she simply comes from love, and everything around her changes. Everyone around her changes. It's really as simple as this: she's coming from a deep place where her reality, her life, is fundamentally okay. And what she creates from that place is beautiful.