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I can honestly say that, for the first time in 50 years, I’m learning how to just be. How to relish the present moment, which, magically and mysteriously, unlocks the door to the treasure house that is the rest of my life.

- Jennifer Green, Salem, Oregon

From the moment Jon and I connected, I had this deep experience of loving presence and complete trust. Something bypassed my mind and my ability to figure things out, and communicated directly to my heart and soul that I was safe and in the right place. There was a creation of power in our relationship that he honored and witnessed as being mine. It was my power. I had the experience of being wonderfully, beautifully powerful, in the most loving, energized way.

- Laura Lind-Blum, The Idea Midwife, Waterbury Center, Vermont

Jon can help you recognize where you are, and become more clear. My work with him has not been about plotting out my future, it has been about helping me come into deeper relationship with myself so that next steps unfold easily and effortlessly.

He creates a safe, spacious container for you to go as deep or wide or high as you’re capable of in any given moment. It’s a matter of him being able to see the facets and help me make them real in me.

- Sandra Leader, Carmel, CA

My feelings changed from, “Quick, fix me, I can’t stand how I feel, make it better, hurry,” to, it’s not about hurry, and it’s not about fixing, it’s about staying where you are and getting more and more and deeper and deeper sensations that this is okay. You’re fine, this is okay.

It helps me reframe experience. I don’t see anything that’s happening quite the same as I’ve ever seen it before, because my viewpoint has been enlarged. There’s more, there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s love, there’s health, there’s everything.

- Layne Young, artist, Salem, Oregon

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What’s Most Important?

May 31 2011

A few weeks ago, a client emailed me with a question about her meditation practice.

As is often the case, she began to discover the answer to her question as she wrote about her experience.

I wrote back, “Yes, of course this is for you to explore. My take on it, though, is that you’re asking yourself, ‘What’s more important than anything else?’ If you really want to remember what’s deepest within you, then you know the answer.”

In the midst of uncertainty — whether it’s a deep fog of confusion, or an apparently straightforward dilemma such as hers about what’s best to do — this simple question, “What’s more important than anything else?” begins to create clarity. It cuts through the surface noise, clearing the way to see more deeply into what’s happening for you.

When you see past the apparent urgency of the moment and past the distorting effects of your thoughts about your experience, then you’re beginning to see into your own heart. From that perspective, the answer to any question becomes easier to discern.

Yet when the confusion appears impenetrable or it feels like the immediate demands on you are overwhelming, remembering to give yourself space to explore this question can seem challenging.

Here are a few steps to help you find space — and discover greater clarity.

Allow confusion

Allowing your confusion and your question to simply be present for you can feel strange. Our culture tends to emphasize problem-solving and knowing, and the existence of unsolved problems may even seem threatening.

Yet allowing your confusion to be and simply stopping to experience the questions that are coming up can free you to look more deeply into what’s happening.

“Sometimes when I stop and just let myself relax into being confused, I discover that the question I think I’m trying to answer isn’t the real question at all,” one client says. “In allowing myself to stop and listen more deeply, I save a lot of energy and struggle because I’m not jumping in to answer the surface question — but instead I’m listening more deeply to find the real question.”

Listen deeply

Which leads directly to the second step: listening deeply to your experience.

The client who asked about her meditation practice thought she was asking about time — how important was it to find the time, what time was best, and how could she manage all the different things she wants to focus on in her day.

By writing about her dilemma, she began to see that the question itself was a way for her to avoid what she already knew. Writing allowed her to listen more deeply and to recognize that by asking a surface question about time, she was avoiding asking herself the more powerful question: what’s really important.

Sitting with and opening yourself to your experience, without immediately trying to solve or change it, will often reveal the true question — and guide you to the true answer.

What’s most important?

Allowing yourself to feel your confusion and experience the reality of not knowing ... and taking a moment to listen deeply to what’s really happening for you ... gives you the space you need to ask, “What’s truly most important?”

It seems like such a simple question.

Yet the conditioned thought patterns of the mind can cloud almost any situation with concerns about what you “should” do and feel, and even about what others might think.

Asking “What’s more important than anything else?” begins to cut through the shoulds and the concerns, providing a deeper view of what’s really true for you.

And then — like the client I mentioned at the beginning of the article — you can respond from this deeper experience instead of reacting to the apparent surface issue.

“As you saw, it wasn’t about time at all,” my client commented later. “I needed to let go of what I thought should be happening, and how I thought I should be feeling about meditation. Then I could see when and how it naturally wants to happen. In asking, ‘What’s more important than anything else,’ my whole perspective shifted and it all became obvious. Once I stopped trying to force myself to feel in a particular way, the scheduling issues simply disappeared.”

In asking yourself this question, be sure to first give yourself the gift of time and space within which you can acknowledge your confusion and listen to what’s underneath the surface.

If you don’t, you may find your answer remains unclear, remaining hung up in “shoulds” and other people’s expectations.

“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.” James Thurber (1894-1961), American author and cartoonist.

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