Loving what is

“When we reach a state of pure awareness, we realize that there are no problems and therefore no need for solutions.” –Deepak Chopra

This line is from a meditation I got in an email this week, and it has really affected the way I am feeling about the start of school. You see when we perceive something as a problem, we have identified it as something that is wrong or bad, as well as something that requires a solution. But what I have come to understand is that even when a solution is reached it never erases the problem, nor the stress I had that was associated with the problem.

However, now, I realize that if I refrain from judging what is, I save myself a lot of stress. For example, the A/C went out on the Vibe this week. I could stress about it, worry about it, identify it in my mind as bad, but, at the end of the day, it’s a broken compressor. It has no idea what stress it is or is not causing, it just exists. The situation just is. So, rather than get upset, searching for a solution, I just thought about what action I could take. Drive car to the shop, get it fixed. The result is exactly the same as if I had identified the situation as a problem, yet the stress and worry were non-existent.

You just think about what is, and then you think about what action you might take to create something that is more congruent with your true self.

I am the head of a new committee at work, one that has never existed before, that focuses on literacy. It occurred to be that I formed the committee because I was trying to solve a problem. This was leading me on a chase to find the silver bullet. I felt like I was going to be responsible for the having the answer. But that’s not it at all. What is is that we have kids who cannot read. For each kid, there’s not going to be an answer. Literacy is too complex and layered for there to even be an answer. I was thinking this thought at 5 this morning when I remembered the Deepak quote. The committee is a group of people in action, not a group operating from the fear of not finding an answer.  Just like the car, all I need is to begin taking action, help spur others to action, and evaluate our action to determine if different types of action need to occur.

Could you imagine telling a 5^th grader that he has a reading problem? It’s automatically a judgmental statement, it implies imperfection and that the child is imperfect or bad in some way. The truth is, that child is just as sweet and full of light as they have ever been and whether or not they read has nothing to do with it. So how is it a problem? It just is, and we are going to take action so that maybe one day we can say it isn’t. And from beginning to end, we identify that student as whole and perfect and full of light. And just as the opposite is true, helping the child won’t then make the child complete or perfect, it will just be another something that is. The child is already complete, literate or illiterate. We wouldn’t stop and observe a dog and comment that that dog is somehow imperfect because he is not cat. (An example from Don Miguel Ruiz). We must see our students as whole to begin with, they are enough because they are people. We know that a richness of being comes with the ability to read, so we take action to make that something the student can experience or take advantage of. To take Jon’s words, “That’s teaching with soul.”