Speaker 1: Hello everyone. Just a brief reminder that the Spiritual Habits
Speaker 1: group course will close its registration this Sunday, which is
Speaker 1: July nine. So Sunday, July nine, registration will close for
Speaker 1: the groups Spiritual Habits course. You've probably gotten emails about it.
Speaker 1: You can go to group dot Spiritual Habits dot net
Speaker 1: to learn more. So what I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: in this short mini episode is sort of the ongoing
Speaker 1: nature of our coronavirus crisis that seems to just keep
Speaker 1: going on. I think there was a moment there that
Speaker 1: a lot of us thought, Okay, we're emerging from this
Speaker 1: and life will start to be a little bit more normal.
Speaker 1: And it's not looking like that's working. And I think
Speaker 1: there's a second wave that's hitting some people of feeling
Speaker 1: really tired of this. I know I have my moments
Speaker 1: of feeling really tired of this. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about some strategies that we might
Speaker 1: use to help us navigate as this continues to go
Speaker 1: on and on. But first I'll start with a little
Speaker 1: story that will lead me into the first point I'd
Speaker 1: like to make. Some of you might have heard some
Speaker 1: version of this in some way or the other This
Speaker 1: is the slightly longer version. But when I got sober
Speaker 1: at the age of twenty four from heroin addiction, I
Speaker 1: came into twelve step programs and was told I needed
Speaker 1: to believe in God in order to get better. And
Speaker 1: I was in an area that was predominantly Christians, so
Speaker 1: that idea of God was at least the idea of
Speaker 1: this God that's out there and he's intervening in our
Speaker 1: lives and making things better, right, And I didn't really
Speaker 1: believe that, but I kept forcing myself to believe it,
Speaker 1: and it worked. I stayed sober, But then several years
Speaker 1: into sobriety, I got married, I had a son, and
Speaker 1: one day my wife came home and said that she
Speaker 1: was in love with someone else, a friend of ours
Speaker 1: in the twelve step groups we were in, and my
Speaker 1: life sort of fell apart. I just I emotionally imploded.
Speaker 1: And what happened at that point I didn't I didn't
Speaker 1: drink right away from that. I stayed sober for probably
Speaker 1: two more years, maybe three more years after that. But
Speaker 1: what happened in that moment was that I turned to
Speaker 1: my spiritual life as something to sustain me, and I
Speaker 1: realized that I didn't have anything there because I had
Speaker 1: been making myself believe in something that I didn't, and
Speaker 1: when everything went up and smoke, I was kind of
Speaker 1: I just didn't have anything to hope hold onto. And
Speaker 1: so that eventually was part of what led to me
Speaker 1: drinking again. I got sober from drinking again that second
Speaker 1: time about thirteen or fourteen years ago, So you know,
Speaker 1: I got sober, stayed sober about eight years, drank again
Speaker 1: for a few years now. I have been sober for
Speaker 1: about thirteen years. Is sort of the whole chronology. But
Speaker 1: that lack of a spiritual life that made sense to me,
Speaker 1: something that could really support me, was part of the
Speaker 1: reason I went back to drinking again. So when I
Speaker 1: got sober the next time, I realized, I have got
Speaker 1: to find a spiritual life that makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: I believe what a A was saying that we need
Speaker 1: a higher power. Right, Well, so what is this higher
Speaker 1: power to me if I don't believe there's a God
Speaker 1: out there intervening in my life. And again that's my
Speaker 1: personal belief. Everybody can believe exactly what they want. But
Speaker 1: my belief was that's not the way this all worked.
Speaker 1: And so I had to come up with something, and
Speaker 1: where I landed was on the idea of spiritual principles.
Speaker 1: And what I landed on there was that spiritual principles.
Speaker 1: If I lived my life by spiritual principles, I would
Speaker 1: be able to stay sober and I would be able
Speaker 1: to handle what life through my way. And so that
Speaker 1: was a really strong base to build on, and it
Speaker 1: has turned out to be an incredibly strong based to
Speaker 1: build on for my sobriety, my recovery, and my life
Speaker 1: in general. Spiritual principles are a really good orientation. They
Speaker 1: can be a true north. So what do I mean
Speaker 1: by spiritual principles? Things like acceptance, um, things like mindfulness,
Speaker 1: things like generosity, kindness, love, honesty. These are all spiritual
Speaker 1: principles by which we can try and orient our lives.
Speaker 1: In the seven Habits of highly effective people, Stephen Covey
Speaker 1: actually talks about this, and he says, a principal centered
Speaker 1: life is really the best kind of life because it's
Speaker 1: a stable base. If you make your work the center
Speaker 1: of your life, well that your work can go bad,
Speaker 1: you can get fired, it can turn if you may
Speaker 1: your relationship, your wife or your spouse the center of
Speaker 1: your life, Well, that can shift out from under you.
Speaker 1: As I learned in that experience, if you make your
Speaker 1: children the center of your life, right, all those things
Speaker 1: are shifting. But if you if you make spiritual principles
Speaker 1: or principles in general the center of your life, those
Speaker 1: can be relied upon as true north. And then those
Speaker 1: also do a very good job of orienting us back
Speaker 1: out to the other parts of our life that really matter,
Speaker 1: like our work, our family, are our children, the people
Speaker 1: we care about. Spiritual principles give us a real strong
Speaker 1: anchor to build on. So as we are entering you
Speaker 1: know again, uh sort of maybe another phase of of
Speaker 1: this coronavirus thing, and we're all feeling like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: sick of this, Right, what do we have? This is
Speaker 1: the time that we can reorient towards some of these
Speaker 1: fundamental spiritual principles that are true in all circumstances, and
Speaker 1: it can be a grounding and an anchor for us
Speaker 1: in this time. Right, we we are in a crisis
Speaker 1: of sorts, right, We've got the coronavirus happening, We've got
Speaker 1: the racial unrest happening. Um, we've got an economic crisis
Speaker 1: of sorts happening. It feels like a lot of crisis
Speaker 1: is going on right. And the word crisis derives from
Speaker 1: the Greek words crisis and I don't know how to
Speaker 1: pronounce it crisis and creno, which mean as separating. So
Speaker 1: the very root of the word crisis is that these
Speaker 1: are times of severing from old ways and states of being.
Speaker 1: So crisis is this separating from the way things were.
Speaker 1: So we need to ask ourselves, you know, what is
Speaker 1: it that we're being asked to separate from what needs
Speaker 1: to be left behind? Or as we're separating from that,
Speaker 1: what can we anchor to now? And again, I think
Speaker 1: that principle is a great thing to anchor to. The
Speaker 1: other idea I'd like to talk about is and I
Speaker 1: did this in one of our group coaching calls, but
Speaker 1: is to talk about this idea of liminal space. It's
Speaker 1: a word that many of you may be hearing now
Speaker 1: more often than you've ever heard before. Some of you
Speaker 1: may not have heard of it yet, but it seems
Speaker 1: to be showing up more. And the reason is that
Speaker 1: a liminal space is a waiting space. And it does
Speaker 1: feel to a certain extent like what's happening for coronavirus
Speaker 1: for us is this waiting. We're waiting until we can
Speaker 1: emerge back into the world right. But liminal really comes
Speaker 1: from the Latin word limon, which means a threshold, any
Speaker 1: any place where we are going from what was to
Speaker 1: what's next. It's a place of transition, often referred to
Speaker 1: as a season of waiting. Uh. It can be a
Speaker 1: not knowing, which my Zen practice will say that not
Speaker 1: knowing is most intimate. How was the answer to my
Speaker 1: most recent co on? I don't know? But liminal space
Speaker 1: is often considered a very fertile space. Richard Roor says
Speaker 1: we have to allow ourselves to be drawn into sacred space,
Speaker 1: into liminality. All transformation takes place here. We have to
Speaker 1: allow ourselves to be drawn out of business as usual
Speaker 1: and remain patiently on the threshold where we are betwixt
Speaker 1: and between the familiar and the completely unknown. There alone
Speaker 1: is our old world left behind while we are not
Speaker 1: yet sure of the new existence. That's a good space
Speaker 1: where genuine newness can begin. Get there often and stay
Speaker 1: as long as you can by whatever means possible. It's
Speaker 1: the realm where God can best get at us because
Speaker 1: our false certitudes are finally out of the way. So
Speaker 1: that's what this coronavirus is giving us. It is drawing
Speaker 1: us into liminal space. We are there, but for it
Speaker 1: to be fertile, we have to actually inhabit that space.
Speaker 1: We have to allow ourselves to feel the fears that doubts,
Speaker 1: the difficulties. We have to pay attention. Liminal space is
Speaker 1: often described as crazy time, right, and that's one of
Speaker 1: the most common things you'll hear any of us saying,
Speaker 1: right now, crazy times, strange times. Right. So the the
Speaker 1: metaphor of the caterpillar and the butterfly sort of show
Speaker 1: this process. The chrysalist stage for the caterpillar is liminal space.
Speaker 1: It has entered the cocoon and just appears to be waiting.
Speaker 1: Sue Monk Kidd said that in many ways, waiting is
Speaker 1: the missing link in the transformation process. I'm not referring
Speaker 1: to waiting as we're accustomed to it, but waiting is
Speaker 1: the passionate and contemplative crucible in which new life and
Speaker 1: spiritual wholeness can be birthed. She says, Waiting is both
Speaker 1: passive and passionate. It's vibrant, contemplative work. So this is
Speaker 1: the place that we can circle back to principle, What
Speaker 1: are the spiritual principles that we believe in? What are
Speaker 1: the spiritual principles that can anchor our lives? And how
Speaker 1: can we live into them more passionately during this time?
Speaker 1: How can we allow this waiting time, this liminal space,
Speaker 1: to be a place where we grow more deeply into ourselves,
Speaker 1: more deeply into our beliefs, more deeply into a spiritual life.
Speaker 1: And that happens by engaging more with what's right here
Speaker 1: in front of us, and for a lot of us
Speaker 1: in a in a way that feels frustrating, we are
Speaker 1: sort of stuck in one place. I've often thought of
Speaker 1: this period that we've been in sort of quarantine period,
Speaker 1: is a little bit like being on a retreat, because
Speaker 1: on a retreat you can't go anywhere. There's not a
Speaker 1: whole lot to do, and it's a process of narrowing
Speaker 1: what you have to pay attention to. And that's what's happening.
Speaker 1: So again, it's frustrating and I feel it and an impatience,
Speaker 1: and it's also an opportunity. So if we're willing to
Speaker 1: listen and to sense and to feel what's waiting for
Speaker 1: us in this space, if we're willing to let go
Speaker 1: of control and surrender to a greater potential that's waiting
Speaker 1: to unfold. The shifts and awareness and personal transformation could
Speaker 1: be enormous. So I think it's worth sort of re
Speaker 1: orienting here, right. The good news is we've been in
Speaker 1: this phase for a while, right, So we're more steady
Speaker 1: and we have a little more margin to choose how
Speaker 1: to respond to what's happening versus simply reacting. Certainly, early
Speaker 1: in the coronavirus, it was a reaction, right, But we've
Speaker 1: recovered more space now to ponder our choices, and we
Speaker 1: have choices about how we're going to navigate the space.
Speaker 1: And so the question i'd pose is what choice do
Speaker 1: you want to make? Right? And I'd suggest that we
Speaker 1: choose growth over stagnation, that we choose thriving over surviving.
Speaker 1: And that's certainly the choice that I continue to keep making.
Speaker 1: I've said many times that my Zen training is great
Speaker 1: for what we're going through because it just keeps reminding me, like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's right here, what you need is right here,
Speaker 1: right now. Right. So that's what I would say to you,
Speaker 1: is we're entering this second wave and a lot of
Speaker 1: us or feeling frustration and despair. Let's anchor back into
Speaker 1: some principles, and let's anchor back into the idea of
Speaker 1: this space can be fertile for us if we choose
Speaker 1: to use it that way. So I hope that's helpful.
Speaker 1: I'd like to say a few more words about the
Speaker 1: Spiritual Habits Program now, because the Spiritual Habits Program is
Speaker 1: designed to do exactly what I was just talking about,
Speaker 1: right It is a program that is based on six
Speaker 1: key spiritual principles that I think all traditions would agree
Speaker 1: are great principles and that we can really anchor our
Speaker 1: lives on. And then it's from there, it's using the
Speaker 1: science and behavior change to say how can we really
Speaker 1: live deeply into those principles. And we're doing it as
Speaker 1: part of a group right now. So it's a chance
Speaker 1: to build community with other people, like minded people, and
Speaker 1: it's a chance to really choose during this period. Okay,
Speaker 1: I want to really take advantage of this period that
Speaker 1: we're in a little bit more deeply and and and
Speaker 1: I believe this program gives you a great chance to
Speaker 1: do that. I'm really proud of it. I think it's
Speaker 1: the best work I've ever done, so if you're interested,
Speaker 1: I'd love to see you in the program. You can
Speaker 1: go to group dot spiritual habits dot net to do
Speaker 1: that again. That's group dot spiritual habits dot net and
Speaker 1: as always, will have another episode out next Tuesday. I
Speaker 1: appreciate you listening, I appreciate all your support, and I'm
Speaker 1: glad to be part of this journey with you guys. Okay, bye,