WELCOMING 2010

POETRY OF INNER GROWTH & AUTHENTICITY
Celebrating a bit more than twelve months of writings

(c) 2009 Howard McQueen


Is the external world going from bad to worse?
Many of us feel extremely stressed out living in this rapidly changing world. The vast majority of us feel our sense of financial security is slipping away. Many of us are also perplexed, if not deeply discouraged, in our efforts to engage in and sustain intimacy with a significant other. We are feeling deeply insecure and are uncertain as to how to step forward and improve these dilemmas, these our life situations we find ourselves in.

The nature of fear
It is more and more common for us to find ourselves in a fearful place. When fear enters us, we literally shrink and cower down, and our perspective and relationships with life does as well.

When we are fearful, especially when the fearful conditions persist, we are forced to adapt and cope. If the fear is too extreme, we enter trauma, and we shut down. Fear urgently cries out for us to step up and control the situation, to lessen or abate the psychological and/or physical pain. To do whatever it takes to accomplish this.

When we were small children, and relatively powerless, we figured out how to escape into our mind, where we learned to hang out. You can notice children that are dull and lifeless, as they are trying to hide and not be present in the moment. Deep down inside, this same child resides within you, and it is continuing to trigger the current you, as you circle back through unresolved childhood painful experiences.

As we grow into adulthood, we develop other strategies for managing unresolved pain: we become workaholics (we control some aspect of our environment instead of choosing to learn to become vulnerable and intimate); we use alcohol and drugs (we sedate ourselves from our outer and inner environment) or we become hermits (we continue to hide out). We may even turn to spirituality as a means to sedate/control our mounting inner turmoil.

We increasing find ourselves in an ever-deepening dilemma of personal suffering. For most of us, we end up choosing expressions of life represented by these two polar energetic behavior extremes:

• anger/aggression
• grief/depression

We may exhibit bi-polar symptoms, bouncing between the two polarities. Both of these expressions of life are strategies that attempt to cope and control the underlying causal fear and unresolved energies running deep in our sub-conscious.

Like great big buzzards in the sky, we unknowingly circle around our unresolved childhood traumas, repeatedly allowing our emotional immaturity to sabotage our attempts to be an adult and to have authentic, loving, intimate relationships with life and our fellow human beings.

We sense however, something is either dead, or dying -- It is how we feel about ourselves, our inner innocence and joy, our inner, smothered child.


Poetry of Inner growth and authenticity
I began writing poetry in late 2008, in part as my own therapy and to also give myself a record of how I was feeling and how I was seeing myself and my sense-of-self in relationship to the external world. I have published over 95% of these entries, uncensored, on Asheville Sangha.

In late 2008 and regularly throughout 2009, I engaged in individual and group experiential (and experimental) work. All of it brought illumination to what I was experiencing inside myself. With a bit of practice and a bit of guidance, I have learned to open myself up, from the inside-out, and this poetry is my diary of how I am experiencing my inner world.

In early 2009, I experienced a major breakthrough in accepting and loving my father 100% for exactly who he was. In the summer of 2009 I experienced an equivalent breakthrough in my romantic relationship at that time and in December of 2009, another breakthrough was realized with my mother.

All of these breakthroughs were inner and perceptual. They all revolved around accepting the behaviors of another and no longer judging or blaming them for the symptomatic suffering that had been so prevalent in my life.

I would say that 2009 has been a series of ongoing lessons in learning to surrender. The surrender is seeing the futility in trying to control another, or the outside world, and to put all of my attention and intention in architecting internal perceptual shifts, in how I am perceiving my relationship with the external world.

Here is the wisdom I have pulled together from these past twelve months or so:

1: If something or someone in your external world is triggering us emotionally, this is an invitation to look inside ourselves at what is running within us, and to do the work to uncover the message bring brought to us. Once we have done this and see what is lacking in our inner world, we can become the nourishing parent and give our inner child the guidance and loving nournishment being cried out for

2: Every single human being, the Buddha and Christ included, were born into the world with the obstacles and challenges. There are an overwhelming set of conditional experiences placed on any child born into this world. The important thing to remember is that three cycles of attention (as best described in the Fifth Agreement, by Miguel Ruiz and his son) are available to us, and we can use these to mature emotionally and spiritually to shift our perception of our experience and relationship with the world. These are:
o The first attention we end up perceiving ourselves as victims. In this attention, we see ourselves as the world is happening to and victimizing us. Most of us are in this first attention.
o The second attention we connect to our inner warrior and we do the emotional, mental and physical cleansing to clear our pathways of awareness (this is best described in the book The Presence Process, by Michael Brown). This second cycle of attention allows us to regain our authenticity and be joyful, peaceful and empowered in this world. We have very strong boundaries and are freed from our imprisioning emotional immaturity.
o The third attention is that of mastering the dreaming of our life, and that we become increasingly barrierless and boundary-less and more and more in touch with the Oneness of life itself. The third attention has its pathway through the heart, and for many of us, calls upon us to become authentic and intimate and create "we spaces", holding and sustaining this space with one (or more) significant others (romantic or not). May we be blessed with teachers holding the space for this attention!

My poetry is about my journey and my experiences and my interrelations with my fellow humans and all of life.

For me, the journey still has the occasional bump in the road, the occasional shock of deep insecurity or rejection and the persistent noise of the mind wanting to steer my life back into the old comfortable, habitual, semi-unconscious patterns of the victim attention past.

From my perspective, there is this unbelievable love and joy and comfort with the world clearly resolving. So much of this I attribute to the work I have done to give myself the love that I have felt to be missing (again, I credit the book, The Presence Process and one specific teacher www.michaelregan.us) for accelerating and pointing me into myself and the processes I have needed to engage in. I've also engaged my chiropractor and my acupuncturists and close friends in conversations with stages and course-corrections in my journey.

To the question of “Is the external world going from bad to worse”, my answer is

It does not matter!

As to the nature of fear:

Use the presence process and the adept teachers and face your fear
so you can start putting down all the manufacturing of anger/aggression
and grief/depression and fill yourself inwardly with joy, and authenticity

We have the distinct privilege and opportunity to re-architect our world, this time, from the inside-out, as we invoke a combination of the second and third attentions. We are not born to remain victims!

Much love to all of you taking up the inner work.

I’ll do my part and keep churning out the poetry. Always glad to be of any assistance personally, if called upon.

Howard McQueen
December 30, 2009
howard@mcq.com
USA 828.280.4780
Poetry of inner growth and authenticity
Life Coaching