Make the Crisis Worth It

Mar 20, 2020

Make the Crisis Worth It

Make the Crisis Worth It -

There’s a quote that’s keeps popping up in my mind “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”  Well never in my life time has there been such an enormous awe-rendering crisis on a world scale, and the really impressive thing about it is everyone gets to experience it together! 

All over the planet we’re going through the same thing during this season. This is what we call a unitive experience. We’ve been brought to a halt. I wonder how this halt is for you? What are you doing as you take in the magnitude of what’s going on?  As you are either forced to stop, or to give everything you’ve got on the front lines of essential supplies, safety and health care.

A Spiritual Perspective - Be Undefended

I’ve studied, practiced and now teach Pathwork since I was in my early 30’s.  Pathwork is a contemporary body of teaching for personal and spiritual transformation www.pathwork.org.  Pathwork teaches how to live without defence—how to be in reality and meet whatever comes your way - pain or pleasure with an open, accepting, willing heart.   This is no easy task and often you can’t immediately enter it - you work towards it as best you can.   

There Will be Losses

I’ve had my share of trauma and crises.  I’ve also had my share of joy, pleasure and fulfillment.  So that at this point in time I’m pretty good at acceptance and surrender - to both. 

But now - the biggy!!  In the past week my work life has been turned on its head.  And on one level I’m really pissed as I had a really awesome year lined up with more teaching abroad which I love and enjoy - a couple of gigs in the U.S. and back to Japan in the fall. For more than a year I’ve been part of a planning team to host an international Pathwork conference here in Ottawa in May.  I’ve spent months preparing a 4 year training program for the fall.  Most likely much of this will be cancelled -  maybe all of it.   

But that’s just work. What about my 97 year old Mom who’s in a care facility - will she survive?  And what about my other loved ones, a few with compromised immune systems?  What about me?  Is this my time?  So much uncertainly!  

How to be with this adversity and uncertainty potential loss?  Is it possible to practice being undefended - open to it all?  I hope so - so we don’t collectively waste this colossal crisis.  But how to do this?  

I can share a few things I’ve learned through my dress rehearsals for this by one. 

First off, release your attachment to the illusion of certainty: We don’t like uncertainly; we want to know.  That’s the ego - “I need to be in charge and know what’s going on to be safe”.  But now we don’t know/can’t know.  Our daily lives as we knew them have been turned on their heads - hell even going out for groceries feels risky!   

Second, be choice-ful about the pull to be busy: I’ve always noticed that a great defence to being in the reality of the present moment (another word for undefended) and feeling my feelings to what’s really going on, is to stay busy.  I think that’s a pretty common defence. and it’s been so supported by the pace of our current culture.  There are so many options, some many things to do.  But now we’re halted!  The busyness can stop if you choose.  Here’s a beautiful opportunity to listen to one’s self, an opportunity for a re-set.  A great way not to waste this current crisis.  When we stop, we have the opportunity to meet ourselves. Really look at our lives. This can feel a bit or a lot overwhelming and maybe really scary.  But it’s just the doorway.  It’s the first step to the reset that this crisis offers us all.    

Ask the bigger life-design questions of yourself:   There’s now time to contemplate questions like - Are their aspects of your life that need change? Did you sometimes feel you were just living on auto-pilot - so pressed by everything going on, you felt you couldn’t focus on the really important things?  Had you maybe even lost sight of what those important things were?   If this is true for you, I think you’re in good company.  

Be Kind towards your Reactions: As we meet ourselves it invites being undefended - a colossal opportunity to practice letting go of our defences.  You, like me, will bounce back and forth between the ego trying it’s best to hang on, and then there will be moments of breakthrough.  If you hang in, those moments will stretch into hours perhaps even days.  The crazy thing is what we fight like hell - surrendering to the moment – is actually a wonderful, joyous and yes also sometimes painful place to be - but it’s real and enlivening and in reality the only way to survive - mental, emotionally and spiritually - in times like these.  

This is what I wish for myself and all of you - to use this crisis to the best of our ability, to open my heart and be undefended to it all.  

To this end I want to offer space once a week to explore - not wasting this awe-inspiring crisis.  I invite anyone who feels called, wants to use this crisis for healing and transformation, to join me once a week for an hour and a half or so to be together, to express ourselves, to learn and grow together, and support each other in whatever way we need.

This is a free offering.  I want to contribute to making this crisis worth it.  Free will donations are welcome too.  Once a week Sunday evening at 7:00-8;30 p.m ET for as long as we need it. Join me on zoom to just “be” together.  To sign up, please register on www.madelinedietrich.com.  

One technical detail - You’ll need to set up a Zoom account (there’s no charge for that) to accept the invitation to the meeting and use the link provided.  

If it’s a small group it will be up close and personal.  If it’s a large group we’ll figure out how to make it meaningful.  Either way I’m imaging starting with a meditation - no doubt a poem.   This is, by the way, The Poet’s Moment - almost every poem offers instructions as to to be with what we’re going through now - adversity and uncertainty!  I’ll give a short teaching and we’ll open the space to what wants to happen next.   Maybe only one or two people will get to dive in each week, but if you’ve ever participated in a group process, you’ll know whoever steps into the hot seat, as it were, does the work for us all.  Same applies in on-line forums. 

I have spent 30 years of my professional life as a somatic therapist (support to live in your body), a mental health counsellor and now as a spiritual teacher, facilitator and counsellor holding space for individuals and groups to grow and heal and be transformed through crisis.  

Although I am at times quaking at the unprecedented nature of this crisis - I’ve never felt more ready and able.  Join me if you feel called.   

And a couple of resources - here’s a link to a great Pathwork Lecture about dealing with crisis it’s title -  #182 - The Spiritual Meaning of Crisis.  https://pathwork.org/pl-183-the-spiritual-meaning-of-crisis/

And below a poem about loss and kindness.  

Love and blessings to you all, Madeline

Kindness - Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand, 
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride 
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho 
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive. 

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows 
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head 
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

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