Morning Reflection]# 652: The Question

.Everything in our life is determined by our questions. I don’t have a clear recollection of the day of my birth, but I’m guessing I arrived with a quizzical look on my face, and if my first word wasn’t ‘why’, I would be very surprised. I remember being a child who wanted to know everything. How does this work; why is the sky blue; what does that mean?

Questions as a child are how we come to create a working model of our reality.

As I grew into teenage-hood my questions changed. Why am I different? I wonder if she likes me? Why is the world so scary. It’s then that we begin to move into the questions of our place in the pack. Why does their family have more money than we do? What am I going to do with my life? The questions come faster, and have deeper meanings, with answers that can shape the future in ways we cannot foresee.

So we ask some questions, and find ways to ignore the ones that scare us.

It seems to me that the shape of my questions have often been determined by the responsibilities that I was under at the time. As a young father, the questions became about providing for my family, how to raise my children, how to get them to sleep through the night? How to balance the demands of graduate school and being a husband?

The answers were harder to find sometimes, as the outcome of the questions had greater weight.

And as life grew more complex, so did the wondering in my mind. Soon there became a realization that I had parts of my soul that were significantly different than I wanted them to be: less functional. Yet I also came to really understand that in some ways my mind was very unique, and if I could only bring all the parts of me together, and make them work in harmony, that I could be somebody very different.

So the questions centered around a desire to make that happen.

But when it doesn’t come to pass in the way that you are expecting, you start to ask very different types of questions, ones that go to the very core of who you think you are. Left alone long enough, the questions form a life of their own, and coalesce into answers that you didn’t necessarily arrive at by yourself. Your whole perception of reality can be brought in for review, shackled to a grimy desk in a dimly light corner of your mind, and everything you thought you knew examined under a microscope.

It’s been said that you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

Yet it could also be said that you either die believing who you thought you were, or you live long enough for the universe to disabuse you of that notion. It’s been said that great sculptors can see the statue under all of the stone, and know just how to remove the pieces that don’t belong there. It seems to me sometimes that the universe is asking us to do that to ourselves, but we don’t get a picture or an instruction manual to guide us.

We have to figure ourselves out while trying to sculpt away everything that doesn’t need to be there.

And along the way, we try to decide if what we come up with is any good. I’ve lived long enough to recognize that there are many different layers to my soul, and for reasons that I am still trying to understand, they don’t seem to fit together in the ways that I feel like they should. This itself creates many different questions, not the least of which seems to be ‘what the hell am I really any good at’…

And why is that so important to me?

The second part of that question is actually fairly easy to explain. As someone who grew up in ways that were seemingly less, I answered a lot of the questions of my childhood with statements that made me feel like there was something wrong with me. After all, in fair universe, when something bad happens to you, or when you don’t have something others do, the easiest answer is the one that says that you don’t deserve it. That’s easier to believe than realizing that the universe is not, and never will be, ‘fair’.

So you stack a couple of decades of believing those answers together, and you get yourself a steaming pile of critical self belief.

To survive that you find something, hell anything, to pin your good opinion of yourself on. It’s better if it’s something that seems obvious, yet doesn’t require too much in the way of objective measures, so you can believe it without having to quantify it. But eventually, in its own inimitable way, the universe will find ways to test even those beliefs, grinding you down until you come to a point where you’ll question even the very things that give you a sense of being ‘enough’.

And its then, and only then, that you really come face to face with the truths of your soul.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 651: Reconciliation

There’s this moment when an orchestra is tuning up when everything sounds… discordant. Like a cacophony of voices trying to find a common tongue, seeking that moment where all of the whisperings and wonderings coalesce into a moment of pure harmony. A true note, reaching out through the universe, finding its voice in the wilderness.

Trying to find out who it really is.

In like manner, we are the sum of all the parts of all the different voices inside of us. The good, that seeks to express itself in kindness and compassion. The darker sides, that mostly seek to protect us, but can sometimes choose expressions that are not in congruency with our better nature. The closer the two sides of our nature are, the more congruent we become.

And congruency is the secret to becoming whole.

I have found in my lifetime that times of struggle can be most educational regarding the real nature of the difference in the two sides of me. When things are going well, I find it easy to experience peace and compassion, and desire to share them as far and as wide as my abilities will allow. This can be something as simple as letting someone cut in front of me on the freeway, or finding it easier to have kind feelings for a patient who recently took money that was owed to me.

When I feel like things are going my way, it’s easy to be the person I try to always aspire to.

Yet when things are going ‘less well’, I find myself less disposed to be generous and kind. The parts of me that are not yet aligned with all that I wish to become are able to find their way through, and I find myself more focused on me, and less on others. Kindness is harder to manifest, and the subtle whisperings of the darker parts of my soul seek an audience with my awareness, trying to convince me that I might find peace through an employment of my abilities in less enlightened ways.

It has been many years since I have listened to those voices, and yet their presence still bothers me.

Because I would honestly like to be the person who hears nothing but kindness and compassion from within me, no matter the situation or the circumstance. There are times I wish that I could sit down in person with the parts of me that fear, and teach them the truths that I so desire them to listen to.

So that I might reconcile that which I feel to that who I would like to be. I think many of us who are on this path of self awareness struggle with living up to our aspirations.

One of my favorite characters in all of literature is a witch by the name of Granny Weatherwax. An old woman, toughened by a hard life lived trying to balance who she was with who she was trying to be. In one of her wonderful monologues, she states the following “The trouble is, you see, that if you do know Right from Wrong, you just can’t choose Wrong. You just can’t do it and live”.

Sometimes, knowing right can be a blessing but also a curse.

Yet in doing the right things, we are slowly, glacially, giving comfort and healing to those parts of us deep down that desire to forget all that we know, and just act only for ourselves. Oh we may deceive ourselves for a little while, saying it’s the right thing to do, or it’s what somebody really deserved, but in the end, we know the difference between that which we do because it’s right, and that which we do because it makes us feel good.

Sometimes the two are combined, but if we allow what feels good to be more important than that which is right, we start our feet on a path that will eventually lead us to another of Granny Weatherwax’s quotes, about how sin is really when we start to treat people like objects.

In my experience, all real evil begins that way.

So day after day, I try to be the very best person that I can imagine, and every day, I fail in some way or another. Thankfully these are very rarely bad, but every moment when I could have been better is just a way of seeing the parts of my soul that still require some healing.

Because once we are truly healed on the inside, there is very little outside that can do us much harm.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 650: It Really Is All about You

If that sounds kind of like I’m inviting narcissism, please forgive me, because I’m not. Yes, there are people in this world who are so self focused that they can’t see something from someone else’s point of view, but that is definitely not who I want you to become. Rather, I want you to find one the greatest strengths that you can ever have.

To get there though, you’ll need to go somewhere that you’ve never been before.

I’ve lived a while on this earth now, and I’ve tried to learn a lot about who we are, and how we can live more peaceful and more meaningful lives. I’ve come to realize that the majority of problems that I have come from one place, and one place only. I finally understood this when I figured out that it didn’t matter where I was, the same kind of problems travelled with me wherever I went.

It turned out that I carried them there, deep inside of me.

I’m not naturally somebody to has a lot of confidence. Arrogance, oh I had so much of that when I was younger. I remember being 12 years old and arguing with my dad’s best friend of the time about a subject that I knew honestly very little about, but it didn’t stop me from expressing my opinions with the utmost certainty that I was right.

But if you have any level of introspection available to you, arrogance can only last for so long.

Confidence though… confidence is harder to come by. Confidence only comes from actually having done something, and realizing you have a degree of competence in that. Once you have confidence, you can do a thing without fear, knowing that this is something you’ve done before. Confidence correctly applied can help you move through life with a significant absence of fear.

And if confidence is hard for you, fear can creep in to the dark places of your mind and paralyze you.

I also struggle with whatever it is that “self-esteem” looks like. Coming from a background where it was made very clear to me that my family had less than others, and that because of my struggles to lose weight I was somehow inferior, I still struggle to this day trying to believe that I am somebody who is worthwhile, who has a right to be happy and receive joy.

When you don’t think you deserve anything, it’s very hard to go after something that you want.

There is a wonderful African proverb that says if there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do you no harm. I’ve seen this in people who seem to have boundless confidence, and the ability to “fail” forwards without any regrets or self recrimination. I’ll admit to you that I’ve always been jealous of those people, and wished that I could have that kind of “superpower” for myself.

Yet it turns out that I can, if I’m willing to do the work for it.

To get there, I have to do the deep work of understanding and healing myself. The true measure of self acceptance is when we have looked deep into our own hearts, and made peace with whatever it is we find there. That’s a much more difficult process than it sounds, because we have so many things that can hold us back, such as ego, fear or ignorance.

But if we can work through those, what we can find may be truly amazing.

When you finally accept yourself for who you are, and realize that you have value just because you are you, then you can begin to move through the world differently. Your fear of the opinions of others lessens, your willingness to take chances and learn increases. When you can finally step into all that you are, holding nothing back, you’ll find out just how incredible you can be.

And when you find that for yourself, you want nothing more than to share that gift with everybody else.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 649: Tell Me the Story of You

It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words and that a movie is made up of thousands and thousands of pictures. As human beings we have found so many different ways to tell our stories. From cave paintings through stone tablets and then bronze, from paper to film to the ever present screens that take both our attention and our time.

Yet the real stories that you carry are the ones that you probably never tell.

Because the most powerful stories are not the ones we lay out for the world to see or share in our feed on whatever platform you are currently logged into. The real powerhouse stories are the ones that you keep quietly inside, locked away deep in the depths of your soul. Chances are you learned them when you tried to make sense of something that you couldn’t understand, and you probably never questioned the meaning that you took from whatever it is that happened.

And those stories are probably all about you.

Because the tales we’ve made up that define us are the ones that control us. Like a subtle and insidious form of programming, we decide who we are and where we fit into the world not by an objective evaluation, but in the intense moments of our heightened feeling, whether from anger, sadness, joy or peace.

The stronger the feeling, the greater the power the story has over us.

And chances are we never questioned them. As long as they are working for us, we go on living our lives. Whether they are true or not is less concerning to us them whether they allow us to be happy. There is no person less likely to question the story they believe than the person who is happy with the outcome, or who is afraid to face the reality that the story may not be true.

It’s been said before that when people are successful they tend to party and when they suffer defeat, they tend to ponder.

I started a new project recently, one that involves a great deal of writing, and one that I doubt I will ever share. The goal of this is not to publish a book, but rather to challenge how I remember the past, and hopefully change how I show up in the future. I never thought of somebody who would have a story worth telling, until I realized that the person I most need to tell that story to is myself.

So I’ve started writing my own biography.

Even writing those words seems incredibly pretentious. I don’t claim to have any great wisdom, and what little I do have I share here freely. I don’t think I’ve had the worst or the hardest story; I know of many who have had incredibly harder lives than I have. I don’t even claim some massive success that justifies the writing of a memoir.

For me, writing my own biography is an attempt to put back together the many fractured pieces of my life, and to try to find some semblance of peace in a unified whole.

Because the worst part about the stories that we carry inside of us is that we never get to see them from somebody else’s perspective. That which is carried quietly in your soul cannot be seen until it is dragged into the light of consciousness, examined from a perspective other than how it feels, and then and only then can it be judged according to its merits, or modified as may seem necessary.

But the act of committing to paper that which is inside of you creates a separation that actually allows you to see the truth of it.

And it has been said that the truth shall set you free (although in my experience it usually hurts for a little while first).

So over the next however long it takes, my goal is to find truths to help me see who I am, and also help me write the next generation of stories to take me through the next chapters of my life. Because while there are some things that are true, I’ve also come to understand that as we define ourselves, there are a lot of things we make up, and if I’m going to make something up, I’d rather it be something that empowers me than something that doesn’t.

Because so many of the ‘truths’ that we carry are actually anything but.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 648: Imposter

How good do you think you are? I don’t mean that in a moral sense, so much as I mean it from the basis of skill sets, abilities and vision. If you had told me as a teenager that I would go on to be a Doctor and care for patients, testify as an expert witness and write a Facebook page that seems to help people, there is no way I would’ve believed you.

Arrogant teenage me would have agreed with you, but underneath I would have been much less sure of my abilities.

Yet here I am. 20 years of clinical practice, almost half of those in a very high-volume high stress environment. I’ve saved lives with the right diagnosis, I’ve been able to change lives with the right treatment in the right way, and I’ve even been able to change people’s destinies by helping them see the truth of themselves through writing and coaching.

And yet in some ways I still feel very much like that messed up teenage British kid who looked like his only trajectory was going to be headed towards a fairly dark place.

I bring this up, because I find myself standing on the precipice of a new direction. I have an option in a few weeks to attend a seminar taught by a business coach who is an absolute specialist in the nature of the business that he does. A multi-multimillionaire, he teaches others how to follow his practices so that they can change their lives.

And although a part of me wants to go, there’s a part of me that’s very uncomfortable with the idea of being in the same room as these people.

It’s not that I’m not smart enough; I know that I’m a fairly intelligent person. It’s just that the idea of sitting in a room with people who play at his level honestly scares me. I have this innate fear that they are going to look at me as somebody who doesn’t belong in their particular environment. Not necessarily because of the way that I look, more that I haven’t yet learned to play success at their level.

And yet of course that’s what the seminar is about.

Everybody who goes to that seminar is there to learn. From the stories he’s told in the past, some of them have absolutely no experience in doing what he does, and yet they are able to be successful by following his footsteps. Realistically there is no reason to assume that I cannot do the same thing, but still I struggle with the feeling that I don’t “belong” with people who play the game at their level.

This is what we call in the entrepreneur world “imposter syndrome”. And today I’m really feeling it.

What’s funny is that I was perfectly prepared to go in person until I got the confirmation I had been accepted, and I found that there was a virtual option. Although even the virtual option is somewhat expensive, it is significantly cheaper than going in person. Staying home and doing this seminar virtually would also enable me to keep my practice open rather than having to close it for a week, so all in all from both the financial and a “Physician” standpoint, virtual would make all the sense in the world.

And yet I still feel like I’m essentially hiding, because I know I would feel incredibly uncomfortable if I went in person.

The funny thing is that if I go, I would probably be the only person in there who would look at myself like I didn’t belong. I’m sure they’ve had people less “qualified” than me, and I certainly know how to act like people who play at that level. As someone who helps people find their own identity so they are comfortable being themselves, I think it’s kind of ironic that I suddenly feel so worried about what others will think of me.

I think it just goes to show that we all struggle as we move through different phases in life.

Yet the fact that we struggle doesn’t mean that we are doing something wrong, quite the opposite. So many times the “right” thing is in fact incredibly difficult, and what makes it right is the fact that pushing ourselves to a new level changes us into the person who can play at that level. The growth we can achieve from pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone can reap incredible benefits for who we are as a person, and how we show up in the world.

Knowing all this, I still struggle with feeling like I don’t belong.

Which I think is very human, although very frustrating.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 647: Pattern Recognition

It starts when you’re a child. Lines become corners become squares. Some lines never have an edge, but find themselves in the darkness and become circles. Slowly we learn our shapes, and we see the patterns of geometry. Light dances at wavelengths to become color and we perceive differences in depth to create a third dimension. Finally we add time to the mix, and we begin to see what we believe is our reality.

Then we start to look for repetitions, patterns of reality in this obscure universe.

And we recognize repetitions of systems, sequences and behaviors. We come to think that the universe is something in itself that is sentient, following laws, procedures and probabilities. Nature structures itself by Fibonacci, ratios and determined outcomes on the availability of the rate limiting factor. We look for long enough, and eventually begin to see and learn and know.

And that my good friends is where the problem starts.

Because we start to believe all the patterns that “make sense”. Good gets rewarded, bad gets punished. Kindness begets warmth, cruelty begets isolation. The more patterns we see, the more reassuring our universe becomes, seemingly ordered by something that seems to make sense. And if it doesn’t, we make up stories to cover those as well.

And eventually our reality become circumscribed; limited and controlled by everything we believe the patterns can do.

If you were to see all the ways that you live your life in response to pattern structure, it would probably blow your mind. Sure, it’s a crazy universe and having some sense of predictability gives us something to hang our proverbial hat on, and feel like maybe there is a chance that we will find a little happiness. So we live according to the way we think everything works.

The very hubris of humanity to believe that we can understand can often become the prison that we prepared for ourselves.

I grew up in a country where the sense of “class” was still a specific thing. You needed to stay in your place, and not have “ideas above your station”. Medieval sociological patterns designed to funnel power to a very few and keep the populace in lockstep permeated down through the centuries into a sense of who you were by where you lived, how you sounded, the nature of the shoes that you wore.

Everything designed to suppress your life through a pattern that gave no respect to your individual abilities, and did nothing to respect the consciousness inside of you.

Because respecting others means giving them the right to break the patterns in which you feel comfortable. Don’t get me wrong, I like patterns. The older I get, the more I become a creature of habit because it makes life easier. Every night before I go to bed my clothes for the next day are laid out in a very specific sequence so that if necessary I can get dressed in the dark, so my sweet wife can sleep, and so that I don’t wake the dog.

But I’ve also come to realize that there are patterns that I believe in that I really don’t like.

Because some of those patterns make me feel like there’s no way a kid like me with my background and my issues could become “successful”. Some of those patterns whisper to me in the darkness that I’m not really worthy of that which I do have, and I have no right to hope for anything more. It’s like there’s some cosmic rule that I’m breaking if I step out of who and where I am, and embrace all the possibilities that I’m capable of.

It’s a very strange thing to realize that in order to become who I want to be, I may have to live at odds with what the voice inside my head says I should be.

Who am I to break the patterns of the universe? By what right do I claim a sense of value above that which I was taught? Is it possible that a child who came from so little can break that cycle to have more than he ever could of dreamed of? And in doing so, is that breaking the pattern of always giving and never taking that was drilled into me in word, in example and in experience.

So many patterns to break, both in view of what I see, and whispering quietly in the back of my soul.

I have come to understand that since nature abhors a vacuum, I need to substitute new patterns in place of the ones that I discard. The pattern of finding balance between giving and taking needs to replace the pattern that taking any more than the minimum is wrong. The pattern of respecting my own needs in balance with others must replace the pattern of never feeling like I’m important enough to worry about.

The pattern of allowing myself to have value needs to replace the pattern where that is considered to be wrong.

We all have these patterns that we live by. The more that you can pull them out from the dark into the light and examine them, the more you will change the limits that you place on your life. The better you understand what patterns are real, the easier you navigate through the universe.

Because patterns are real, some serve us, and some hold us back.

And some are very much made to be broken.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 646: Freefall

How do you know it’s time to jump? Because whether it’s in a plane at 13,000 feet, or when you’ve spent 20 years of your life working on something that just isn’t doing it for you, inevitably we all have to make jumps in our lives that sometimes are pretty scary.

Strangely for me, skydiving and leaving behind an entire country to get married were not the scariest things I’ve ever done. The funny thing about skydiving is if it goes wrong, you never have to hear anyone say I told you so.

It took me a long time to realize that most of my fears in my life centered around how other people felt about me, or specifically how other people could make me feel with what they thought of me. When I finally understood that it was my own lack of certainty and acceptance of myself that gave them that power, I realized that I had a lot of work to do about how I felt about me.

Which sounds so much easier than it really is.

Because most of the time our opinion about ourselves is created not in our greatest moments, but in the times where we feel like we’re less than somebody else. This is especially damaging if it happens as a young child, because we will store the memory and the meaning separately. We forget what happened to make us feel that way, and all that is left is the echo in our soul of something that made us feel like we didn’t belong, because if people came to know who we really are they wouldn’t like us.

In my understanding, there are really only three ways to change how you feel about yourself.

The first is to ‘live up’ to the expectations and ideals that you feel like you’re not meeting. In some ways that can be the easier part, because it’s usually a concrete measurement. “If only I could get under 200 pounds”. Or maybe it’s “if I could just pay off all of my bills”. The problem with this measurement is that people often find that the “success” that they’ve achieved feels hollow, and over time the feelings of being inferior will be ‘justified’ by some other thing.

It’s amazing how deep a sense of inferiority can be rooted in your soul.

The second way, a harder way, is to do the work to realize that measuring your self worth through any kind of “metric” is to tie yourself into a paradigm of performance, and instead measure self-worth against how you behave in accordance with your principles, rather than your profits or your presentation.

Although this is still based on performance, the metrics are more “squishy” and it’s easier to find yourself being successful, and therefore changing how you feel about yourself.

The third way is harder still, and although it might be the most effective, it is most definitely the hardest one to achieve.

And that is to realize that the entire concept of having a sense of “self-worth” is something that we should all have because we as a human being have a value separate from everything.

I’ve come to realize recently that so many of the things that I’ve “failed to do” in my life have come down to a significant sense of being “less than” and the terrible fear that if I try something and fail, everybody will have the justification they need to feel about me the way that I feel that they already do. It’s amazing how little you can understand yourself sometimes, even when you’re doing the work to try.

However, that realization is only the very beginning of a new and different pathway that I have to walk.

Because I really do want some things in my life to be different. I’ve always had a strange sense of separation in my soul, believing that I have certain skill sets, certain abilities, and yet I’ve never been able to put them to work for me in the way that I’ve wanted. From what I’m learning, the thing that’s been holding me back is the very thing that I thought I had overcome.

How frustrating it is to pull another layer off the onion, and realize the problem you thought you had left behind is still very much with you.

So once again in life, I find that it’s time to jump, and accept the reality of freefall once again. Only this time if it goes wrong, there may be people who will feel that they are justified in their opinions of me.

But I just have to make sure that I’m not one of them.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 645: The Truth You Find in the Dark

You know it’s there, don’t you. Oh sure, you don’t want to admit it, but in the end, you’re going to have to face it. No matter how hard you try to avoid it, the truth of you will come out in your unguarded moments, when you’re least prepared, and even less capable of stopping it. We’re all the same, none of us perfect, just different shades of human in the same color gray.

Each of us is a combination of the dark and the light.

This week I've been focusing this work on the importance of finding your true self, because I honestly believe that it’s the only way you are truly going to be happy, and that people being happy is the only way to save the world. But what doesn’t get talked about so much is the way that the journey within our soul will show us some parts of us that we really don’t like to see.

Each of us has a shadow; a dark side, and it’s never an easy thing to find.

Growing up in a home where alcohol was definitely a problem, I saw some of the darker sides of humanity a little earlier than would have been good for me. I grew up thinking that since I didn’t do those things, I was a ‘good guy’… until I found myself behaving in a way that didn’t require alcohol to be unkind, cruel or just plain vicious.

Turns out, those were always a part of me.

And that’s a difficult realization. It’s been said that we all want to be the hero of our own life’s story, and truly it is easier to think of ourselves as a ‘good person’. Yet if you have any sense of awareness at all, eventually you’ll come to realize that sometimes you can be the villain as well. Since we humans like to deal in binaries wherever possible, we tend to look upon the good sides of our nature far more than the bad.

But if you dig around inside of yourself long enough, you’re going to find that the dark parts of you are there.

Which honestly is ok. We all have that side of our personality. I learned at a young age that I could be very mean, and for a while, as a messed up kid coming from a messed up home, I used that side of me for protection. But I came to understand that to continue down that road would lead to me becoming someone who I couldn’t live with, so I made a decision, and have done my best ever since to be better than the darker parts of me.

Coming to understand where that darkness lives within me helps me to recognize it, and making peace with my shadow helps me to control it.

But it also allows me to understand those who are still a slave to the darker moments of their souls.

I’ve found in my work with people that those who cannot accept and understand the darkness within themselves have a very hard time allowing for the fact that other people struggle with their own darkness as well. I spoke recently with a woman who made an incredibly cruel comment about those who she considers to be her ‘enemies’, simply because they see things differently than she does.

Because she cannot accept that there is darkness within her goodness, she is unable to see goodness in those who she believes are on the wrong side of right.

When you find that truth of who you are, and come to accept and forgive yourself for the times that you have given in to the darkness, you’ll find that in the end, you have no ‘enemies’, just those who have not found a way to let the goodness in them win. It doesn’t change what they have done, or are doing, but it can help us to seek peace with those with whom we struggle, rather than seek their destruction in our desire to be ‘right’.

The more you come to know yourself, the more the rest of humanity will resonate.

Shining a light into the darker corners of your soul is never easy. In my journey to understand me, I have found many things that have caused me sadness, and many wounds that have been, or are slowly being healed. Yet the more I work on myself, the more I am able to appreciate the humanity and duality that is present in all of us.

And the more I can see the good in everyone, the greater my desire to work for peace in all of its forms.

In the end, we are all in this together. Although our journey within is personal, our journey through this life is also communal. None of us exist in complete isolation, and so we must learn to find a way to balance the light and the dark within us, so that we may balance the light and the dark in all of us.

So that we can find peace together, and wisdom therein.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 644: Finding You

You’re born. You live as much time as the Universe decides to give you, and then you die. There’s a myriad of opinions on what happened before, and what happens after. No matter how much somebody swears to you that they ‘know’, they don’t. They might believe, and that’s fine, but no one has ever proved anything more than the fact that what you have is this time, right here, right now.

So why are you wasting your time not living a life that is authentically you.

From the moment you were born, people have tried to fit you into a mold that suited them. Not necessarily because they were bad, but because they didn’t know any better, or maybe they were scared by you becoming your own person. Maybe it’s because they thought they were doing their best, and so they tried to help you see what was ‘right’ for you, which usually coincided with what they wanted.

But none of it honored the person that you really are inside.

So through all the years, your uniqueness has been buried under the expectations and instructions of others. Maybe you were encouraged to shine in a way that benefited others, but chances are you were never given the space to find out who you truly are, and what ‘living your best life’ actually looks like for you.

I can understand if you feel angry about that. I really can.

But in the end, being angry is never going to get you anywhere worthwhile. Yes people may have been cruel to you, and yes, maybe the universe dumped you in a difficult situation. Take it from someone who spent way too long being angry with the universe and demanding some kind of recompense. The universe doesn’t care, and it doesn’t give do-overs.

In the words of Eminem, ‘you get one shot, one opportunity’ to be you.

The interesting thing about that statement is that people often misunderstand what ‘being you’ actually means. It doesn’t mean that you need to have yourself “figured out”, or have some magical understanding. “Being you” is as much about the journey of discovery as it is the point of arrival at the platform of authenticity.

Finding you and being you can be both the moment of discovery and the act of creation.

Because one of the little secrets that seems to get lost along the “pathway of discovery” is that there is no one pathway, there is no one specific recipe. Part of you being you is the conscious act of self creation, as you get to decide who you are going to be. We all have skills, we all have interests, but at our core we are conscious beings who can choose the direction in which we travel.

And the activities we perform along the way.

I say this to help you understand that finding yourself isn’t about digging some buried treasure and only being able to access that which “already is”. What I’m trying to help you see is that you get to determine who you are. You don’t have to accept anybody’s definition, and you don’t even have to accept the thought that there is only one definition for you.

Finding you can sometimes be the act of creating you. While that difference sounds like an exercise in semantics, it’s actually the freedom to live life on your own terms, and to decide your place and your progress in the universe.

So why would you blindly accept someone else’s definition of who you are?

In my 52 years on this planet, I’ve had a lot of people try to define me for me. I don’t think any of them were malicious in their intentions, even the ones who made things difficult for me. I just think it’s an incredible act of faith to give another human being the freedom to find out who they are without any reference to your own needs and desires.

I think it’s even more courageous to give that same freedom to yourself.

Because so many of us like to “stay within the pack” and live a life that is safe and simple. I’m not here to tell you that’s wrong. If that works for you, and that makes you happy, then absolutely 100% do that thing. What I’m trying to help you understand is that if that doesn’t work for you, that’s okay too.

The last thing anybody should do is tell you how to spend your time.

Because time is all we really have. It’s the great equalizer. My year is the same length as your year. We may have different capabilities, options, relationships and understandings, but in the end my time is as precious as your time. I have no right to tell you had to spend yours, and the inverse is equally is true.

A person’s life is their own. You should have no expectations around that, because when you apply your expectations to somebody else’s life, you are attempting to steal their time away from them.

Your life is your own. When someone tries to tell you who you should be, they are in effect trying to steal your time from you. Please don’t let them do that. Your life is precious, your time is precious, and you should use it in the way that you think best serves your principles.

It’s the only way you are going to be truly happy.

May you find yourself through this journey of life, and may you find peace in your discovery and your creation.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 643: The Echo Percentage

How much of you is actually you? I ask this because in meditation recently I have been struck by how much of my ‘personality’ seems to have been given to me, rather than created by me. I realize that’s a hard line to draw, and maybe most of what I consider to be ‘me’ might actually be a discordant reaction against something that occurred to me, but still I’m struck by a single idea…

If being me is the pathway to finding true peace, how can I know what is truly me, and what is an echo of something else?

Of course, if you’ve followed this work for any length of time, you’ll understand that in my philosophy, the only true ‘I’ is the consciousness having this experience; but existing as consciousness alone, purely observing a state of awareness, doesn’t get me through the day. I also have to find ways to resonate within the state of ‘me’, the human being experiencing a human reality.

And yet ‘me’ seems to be made up of so many echoes.

My attitudes towards peace and its counterpart of violence could be considered an echo of the frequent verbal and occasional physical violence I experienced both in my birth family and in my community as a child. Likewise my thoughts on money, wealth and the balance between the individual and the community maybe an echo of the times and financial status of the town I grew up in.

Sometimes there are so many echoes within me that I have to wonder what is truly a note of pure thought rung from the depths of my soul.

I once heard genius described as the ability to understand snow having never lived outside the desert, as if the ability to comprehend a reality without having seen it is the hallmark of the truly elevated mind. However, since most of our comprehension of reality comes from an experience and a concept of its counterpart, I find it difficult to accept that to be truly a ‘part’ of me a thought must come from an absence of a precursor thought.

Rather, I am beginning to accept that to be truly ‘of me’, a concept has either been accepted as is, or modified according to what I feel it should be.

As children we are taught so many things. Reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also what is considered to be ‘right’. Yet if you and I were to spend hours around a campfire, talking endlessly about a myriad of situations, I wonder if we would ever reach a perfect consensus as to what ‘right’ truly is. I think we might agree about the broad principles, yet struggle to find absolute agreement on their applications.

Yet the ‘truth’ that each of us would come away with would, I think, be a true part of each of us, having been thought about continually, refined in the fire of debate and tempered through the application of expansion and contraction. What was once an echo of a thing taught to us would become our own by the virtue of the application of awareness and consideration.

Which I think is how we finally get to be who we truly are.

Yet to become who you really are requires a tremendous amount of thought, and very often a great deal of silence. Combined with an understanding of how to tease out the true tones from the echoes, we can begin to discover the sounds of our actual selves from within the noise of all that we have heard and seen.

In case you have any illusions, I will tell you that it is nowhere as easy as I just made it sound.

Because in order to learn to disregard the echoes of all that you have been told, you may have to give up so many things that you wish to be so. There’s nothing more addictive than a thought that makes you special, or gives you a sense of comfort or community. A picture of yourself that tells you who you are will never bring you as much peace as a process that allows you to discover who you are for yourself.

And that identity is only truly possible by combining the awareness that is ‘I’ with the paradigm that is ‘me’.

Because it is awareness that allows us to sift the sands of time, emotion and circumstance in order to understand the person we are underneath all that we have been taught and told. The more that we are able to let go of the echoes, and find the truth of who we are inside, the more we will know peace in our souls, and transmit that peace to the world.

The lower percentage of echo that you carry, the higher the percentage of yourself you will truly be.

And the more you will know peace.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 642: The Incalculable Value of Being Human

Let’s face it, as the world in which we live becomes increasingly more ‘digital’, it’s starting to get more difficult to tell what is ‘real’. Artificial Intelligence can write books, paint pictures, and even read an X-Ray better than a human. Before long, you’re going to wonder about every piece of video footage you see, wondering if it’s real, or just another ‘deep-fake’ designed to sway your opinion into hating someone, or supporting a particular point of view.

It’s like we are going back in time.

200 years ago, people could only really trust what they actually saw occurring with their own eyes, and even then they could be fooled. In the very near future, who you can trust, and who you connect with, is going to be called into question. As a species, we’re moving into a future that we cannot fully trust, and living in a time where we have never been more connected, and yet have never been more apart.

Before long, we’re going to recognize just how much value there is in ‘being human’.

Because as much as technology is trying to replace everything (and everyone), the truth of who we are as people is that in almost all of us, there is a deep desire and need to connect with another human being. Not with a piece of software, not with a simulation of who we are, but someone organic, with a history and future, a value all of their own.

If the last three years have taught us anything, it’s that we as a species need each other.

And I’ve come to believe that part of that need is a feeling of being accepted, or at least noticed, by something of your own kind. Because even an evolved machine intelligence cannot bestow upon you the same sense of acceptance and appreciation that a human being can. No matter how many power cycles an artificial intelligence has been through, it’s never been through the shared background and the shared fears of another human being.

As the world around us becomes more synthetic, I think we’re going to start to understand the value of the real.

Whether or not this means we going to start treating each other more kindly… I think that the jury is still out on that. What I’m hopeful for is a greater sense of appreciation of each other. Maybe, just maybe, in the midst of all that isn’t, that which is will finally be elevated to the place that should always been.

Because once we understand the real value of a human life, hopefully we will start treating everyone else, and ourselves, with the respect and kindness that we have always deserved.

I think part of it is the human desire to create and strive for perfection with all the imperfections that we have built-in. Sure a machine might paint a beautiful picture, but I don’t think it will ever move us the way we can be moved by seeing a painting done by human being. I once described art as the desire to create perfect from the imperfect, and I think that imperfection is a vital part of what makes us human.

The antiseptic perfection of machines is never going to move us in the same way.

Sure it might take us a while, as our fascination with the simulation of what it means to be human will grow, but eventually I think we will come to the understanding that life is about connection, and relationships. Not with a machine designed to emulate and meet your every desire, but the messy, difficult and honestly sometimes frustrating nature of the relationships to which we aspire.

As human beings, we need challenges to overcome in order to have a sense of meaning, of progress. The easier the simulated world becomes, the more we will crave the difficulty of being with each other.

In the end, I think we will find a balance between the digital and the real, but it’s going to be a roller coaster getting there. Hopefully one day in the not too distant future all of the technology in the world will be focused not on enslaving, isolating or destroying each other, but in lifting each other up, and enriching the experience of what it means to be human.

So that we might understand each other, and find peace on our journey together.

Because we are all looking for something, and I think it’s a sense that we mean something, that we belong, and that there is some sense of purpose to be gained in every breath, in every heartbeat. So far, human life is the most intelligent form of life that we know of in the entire universe. Sure it can be messy, sure it can be difficult, but there’s nothing else like it.

And we should cherish every single day we have of being human.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 641 : When Knowing Isn’t Enough

What’s the difference between knowledge and wisdom? If you had asked me that a few years ago, I would’ve told you that knowledge was knowing what you had to do, and wisdom was knowing when to do it, or more importantly sometimes, when not to. But lately I’ve come to realize that there is a different way to look at this.

Because the way I was looking at it was proactive, not reactive.

As I’ve mentioned recently, I’m going through one of those “growth moments” right now. It’s forcing me to confront some parts of my past and my psyche that really isn’t fun, and there have been sometimes recently where I’ve just kind of stood back and looked at the universe and thought “really?”. The timing of certain events has been enough to make me feel like something is being done to me.

Which is where the reactive definition between knowledge and wisdom comes in.

I decided that knowledge in the reactive sense is understanding that you are being taught a lesson, and that wisdom is really a faith in the universe that is doing the teaching, and also the faith that things will turn out okay. That kind of wisdom only comes from sparring with the universe over a long period of time, and realizing that things usually do fall into place.

Even when it feels like they are falling apart.

But I’ve realized there may also be a greater value in this method of teaching that the universe employs. It’s often said that in the classroom environment you learn, and then you take the test, whereas in life you suddenly get tested, and then you learn the lesson. I think the value that comes from that kind of experience is a certain level of empathy for those going through the same kind of testing.

And also a certain level of authenticity when explaining the lesson yourself.

And I think that authenticity is vital when it comes to helping people. When I look at the list of people who I respect and listen to, they’ve all had a significant measure of seasoning on their souls. Some have lived lives that I can’t begin to imagine, and yet have pushed themselves through the darkness of their stories, and found a sliver of light to share with the world.

While others have chosen to live lives that are very different from the normal.

How someone comes by that seasoning on their soul is not as important as the lessons that they learned from their experience. I have learned from men who lived with violence, and who chose to respond with peace. I have also learned from those who suffered unimaginable horrors, and yet found a meaning in the experiences that could enlighten others.

All this to say that if I complain while going through my own seasoning, I’m probably missing out on the chance to learn how to make life better for others.

Yet sometimes, there are situations that we can’t make better, and the only thing we can do is be present for someone, and share the empathy that we have learned through our own lessons. I think that’s when the darkness we have struggled through can most be transformed into a light for others, because we have a sense of what they are feeling, and somehow, someway, they can sense that.

And it makes a difference for them, as well as us.

When I was younger, I would actively complain and rail against the universe for my trials and my lessons. As I grew, I could at least see the benefit of the trial after it was done, although I was still ungrateful. Experience has helped me to have moments of gratitude within the trial, although I will be honest and say they have been few and far between.

My hope is that one day, I might reach a point where I can just be grateful the entire trial through.

Because that gratitude becomes a lens through which we can interpret the experiences without so much pain and anguish. That’s not to say that pain, sadness and anguish aren’t going to happen, because they do, and we cannot run from them. Rather that if we can employ our experience, sit with gratitude for the lesson, and find a sense of wisdom in the moment, we might learn other lessons that we could have missed during the times that we were complaining.

Of course, all of this is so much easier written than done.

But what I’m hoping is that all the truths I’ve learnt from my prior lessons will help me walk through this one just a little easier, and just a little quicker. Because even though I think there is a lesson to be learned where I am at right now, I would like to get through it as quickly as possible.

Because sometimes, things just suck, and all you can hope for is that sooner or later the lesson will be over, and you can rest with the growth that you have gained.

And personally, I’d like to get to that point as soon as possible.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 640: A Dysfunctional Definition of Wrong.

I have done some dumb things in my life. You want a funny example – how about admitting to a girl who was crazy in love with me that I didn’t feel the same way… right before the movie was about to start. I mean honesty is good right, but so is timing, and I can tell you with complete honesty that that was one awkward movie.

Just one of many things on a very long list, I assure you.

But when it comes to doing something actually wrong, it’s truly a shorter list, but some of the items on that list haunt me to this day. I think we all live with those things that we wish we hadn’t done or said. Yet I've come to realize recently that in some aspects of my life, trying to not add another item to my ‘wrong list’ has caused me to actually do something that was truly wrong.

Because I had a dysfunctional definition of whether a certain behavior was ‘wrong’.

One of my favorite authors passed away a few years ago. He wrote books that on the surface looked like comedic fantasy, but underneath the strange characters, hilarious storylines and brilliantly conceived plot reveals was actually a wealth of philosophy and wisdom that still lives with me today. One of those gems of knowledge goes something like this…

“You don’t need whips in your hands when they have chains in their heads”.

And a dysfunctional definition of what ‘wrong’ looks like can be like that, chaining you to a pattern of behavior that looks like it is the ‘right thing to do’, but that actually doesn’t serve you at all. Or worse, it can led you to a lifetime of feeling guilty about something that you felt was wrong, but that was actually the right thing to, depending on your definition of what was right and wrong in the situation.

So I think sometimes it can be worthwhile to look at what you consider to be wrong.

Because let’s face it, there’s no shortage of voices in the world today clamoring to tell you what is ‘right and wrong’. I grew up in a country, (and specifically in a community) where the idea of ‘getting ahead’ was looked at as something distasteful. In fact Madonna, when she moved to England to marry her then husband Guy Ritchie, wrote in a Times of London article that she didn’t realize that she was moving to a country where ambition was ‘frowned upon’.

Talk about chains in your head – I have had (and still have) to struggle and fight to get that teaching out of my head.

A few weeks ago I spoke with a good friend who was struggling with a pervasive sense of having done something wrong many years ago, and was in effect ‘punishing themselves’ for what they thought was something terrible. I won’t betray their privacy by going into too much detail, but as I worked with them, going deeper into the factors that led to a difficult decision, I came to realize that what they thought was a terrible thing was actually the best way out of a terrible decision.

And I was amazed by their strength in making a choice that many would not have had the courage to make.

As we talked, I explained my perspective on their choice. I think it was hard for them at first to understand what I was trying to explain, but once that moment of revelation hit them, things started to shift in their soul. What was a life defining ‘mistake’ became a moment to be proud of. Years of guilt were reinterpreted into a sense of having done the right thing.

It’s incredible to see how much damage can be done when living with a dysfunctional definition of wrong.

We all live with choices every day, and I’m guessing if you follow this work that the majority of your choices are good ones. Yet I’m sure if you sit down and listen to your soul, you have a feeling around some of your choices that isn’t always pleasant. Whether or not you made the right choice, well that’s between you and your sense of reality, but I’ll tell you this…

Not everything that you think was wrong was actually so, and some of them were probably right.

Because as humans we sometimes have to make hard choices. As one of my greatest mentors once said, “sometimes all you have are bad choices, but you still have to choose’. Life can present you with tough situations; choices for which there are no easy answers, but making the hard decisions doesn’t make you a bad person, or mean that you chose to do ‘wrong’.

It means you are a human being in a universe that doesn’t play nice with others.

So if you have some great sense of guilt you are carrying, I invite you today to bring it out into the light, and reexamine it. I’m not here to absolve you of guilt, but I also don’t want you to live with any more of it than you absolutely have to.

Far too many people have been taught a dysfunctional definition of wrong for far too long.

And it’s weighing them down, when it doesn’t have to.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 639: Where Did You Lose Yourself?

Do you remember what you were like as a kid? Other than the obligatory baby pictures (of which there are very few because I grew up in the 70s) one of the few surviving images of me as a little boy is a photograph of me standing on a dirt pile. My super blonde hair is a mess, and I’m gesturing wildly with my hands while yelling something at somebody.

I’m not sure what was going on, but apparently four-year-old me didn’t appreciate how somebody was doing whatever it was they were supposed to be doing, and had no issues telling them about it.

Do you remember what it was like to be a child? Given my background I do remember some pretty tough things to go through, but I also remember an incredible amount of resilience. Maybe it’s because I didn’t know things should be different, but when you think that the life you have is just how life is, you have a tendency not to get bogged down in all of the meaning and trauma.

You just do things. Because that’s life, and that’s what you do.

Then we start to grow up. The more that we realize the truth about the things that we went through, the more we seem to attach meanings to them. Let me be clear here, I’m not saying that trauma isn’t real, because it is. I’m not saying that things that happened to us in our childhood weren’t terrible, because sometimes they were.

I guess what I’m really saying is that I miss being that child who didn’t know any better, and so just did things.

I made some amazing mistakes as a child. One time we tried to sit seven people onto a two skateboard catamaran-type setup, and rode it down a hill. I went home bleeding profusely from both elbows and one knee, and yet I remember that as an amazingly fun experience.

Or the time when I tried out for the school play, and ended up playing “Prince Charming” in a satire send up of Cinderella that had me wearing white silk clothing and a pair of 14-hole Dr. Martens air-wear boots. (To this day I am very grateful that this was pre-social media because there’s no pictorial evidence of that whatsoever).

It seems that the me who I used to be had a lot less baggage around trying and failing.

But somewhere along the line we seem to lose that. Maybe it’s because as children we have so much time, and usually, although not always, the ramifications of our choices aren’t that terrible. Yet the older we get, the more we seem to lose that childlike innocence that actually allowed us to not take ourselves too seriously.

And I really wish I could get that back.

Because I’ve spent the last 20+ years of my life playing it so “safe” that it’s hard sometimes to remember feeling “really alive”. Yet the times I have “risked it” and “gone for it” have actually for the most part turned out pretty well. Yes there have been a couple of stunning mistakes, but for the most part when I have swung for the fences, I have at least gotten a pretty decent hit.

But those times have been few and far between. Certainly too few to feel good about.

And when I look back as to the reason why I stopped taking chances, it seems to correlate around the same time that I became a parent, and realized that my choices could be detrimental to other people, and especially to the people that I love. In order to avoid causing them pain, I began playing it “super-safe”… so safe that I stayed in bad situations for way too long, justifying my ‘cowardice’ as concern.

And in doing so I really lost the sense of who I am.

There’s nothing wrong with being “responsible” and there’s nothing wrong with being careful. The problem is that like too much of any good thing, if that’s all you do, you end up being stuck in a place that you probably don’t like, and you don’t see a way out of the problems keeping you there. Too much caution leads to stagnation, and there’s no pathway to happiness from there.

Which means that I need to be more “teenage me” just with a little more wisdom that hopefully 50-year-old me can bring.

Maybe I was too dumb to know the difference, or too arrogant to be reasonable, but I honestly think 14-year-old me was having way more fun than 50-year-old me does. I might be remembering through rose-colored glasses, but I really miss the part of me that sometimes just “went for it” and did something spectacular (and possibly ridiculous).

I think he enjoyed life more.

So here’s to reclaiming the confidence of youth, and combining it with the wisdom that hopefully a few decades will bring. I’m sure there will be some spectacular screw ups along the way, but hopefully by taking more at-bats, I’ll end up with a percentage that is a better reflection of the person who I would like to be.

So here’s to finding ourselves again, and finding some joy in the process.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 638: When All the Words in the World Won’t Work

I’m married to a beautiful woman. For 26 years now she’s been my wife, my best friend, my confidant and cheerleader. We went to a wedding reception a couple of weeks ago, and she looked graceful and stunning. Sure she looks a little different from the woman I married, but to me, she gets more beautiful every day.

Although, when I try to tell her she’s beautiful, she just looks at me like I’m crazy.

But in the same vein, I really don’t listen to many people anyways. I don’t mean that to sound like I am dismissing everyone… far from it. But I've got this narrative in my head about how the world works, and more importantly, my place in it. That narrative is born out of years and tears, hardened by successes and failures, and most of all backed up by thousands of hours of confirmation bias, and self fulfilling behaviors.

So whatever you’ve got to tell me…. Chances are it’s gonna bounce right off.

Which is why when I work with someone one on one, I try to remember to ask questions rather than give instructions, because the only answers we really listen to are the ones we find for ourselves. As humans, we’re always going through the universe answering our own questions, and most of the time we don’t stop to ask ourselves if the comfortable answers we’ve settled on are actually true.

And when someone tries to tell us something different, well at best we get uncomfortable, and at worst, we get angry.

So when I see a good meaning soul try to tell someone what they need to do, especially when it’s obvious that the person they are talking to probably knows that already… well I just have to take a deep breath, and realize that I have been that person too. Born out of a desire to help, often with a side of ego, we all like to spread our own gospel of opinion throughout the universe.

Most of the time, all we do is make ourselves feel better, without realizing how little we are accomplishing.

Which is why with this work I try to suggest things to think about, and hopefully help you find a better pathway through your own questions. Yet all the time, I have to remember that someone may have a truth that works differently for them, and that doesn’t make them a bad person. Good and kind people are always going to differ in their opinions.

Just as we often see ourselves differently than everybody else.

But there comes a point in each of our lives when words aren’t going to cut it. Sure, talking is great, and I seem to do a lot of it, but it’s never going to be enough. I have a quote on a whiteboard to the left of my chair that I wrote many years ago, when I started this particular branch of my journey. It reads simply this… ‘Don’t tell me what you want me to know, help me feel it’.

Because what we ‘feel’ will almost always over-ride what we ‘know’.

So yeah, when I write these pieces, I’m trying to get you to think, but I’m also trying to help you feel something, because that is how we change what we ‘know’. When I think about the number of people whose opinions can actually change how I feel about something, well it’s honestly a pretty small group of people.

And most of them would never tell me something, but they would ask me better questions.

It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and a movie is worth a billion. Yet I have seen a hug break through someone’s pain in a way that words never could. I have been lucky enough to help others have experiences that have enabled them to feel a whole new truth about themselves. I've seen a simple gesture of a handshake or a wave make the difference between misunderstanding and connection.

So yes, while words can be wonderful, sometimes what we really need is a different kind of connection.

But most of all, we need to realize that the words we speak and write to others can only take them so far. The real growth for a person comes not from what we tell them, but from the way we make them feel when we ask them.

Because when I tell you, I am communicating to you that I don’t trust you to come up with your own answers. When I ask you, I’m actually telling you that you have a right to your own answers, and that all I’m doing is help you find what is real to you.

And when I spend my currency of time with you and for you, I’m really hoping you’ll see why I think you are worth it.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 637: Becoming

For once, I had today’s reflection all planned out. I’d been watching a movie that I had been meaning for watch for a long time, and I was kind of surprised by my response to it. It gave me some good things to think about, and as I opened up Facebook to check what reflection number this was going to be, I got sidetracked by a quote that a friend of mine had shared.

I have no idea who ‘Roach-works’ on Tumblr is, or even if this quote belongs to them. All I know is it stopped me cold, and I realized that my carefully planned and thought out reflection was going to have to wait for another day, because I had something rather different to share.

The quote is simply this: “I think ultimately you become whoever would have saved you at the time that no one did”.

There’s so much wisdom in that one line that I honestly struggled finding out where to begin unpacking it. It hit me like a thunderbolt, and for a moment I just sat here riding a wave of intense emotion. I took a couple of deep breaths, and tried to pick my way through the multitude of feelings washing over me. It took a little while, but I was finally able to uncover the truth of why this struck me so forcefully.

And I suddenly realized why I have been writing this work.

Because honestly, there have been a number of times in my life where I think the presence of somebody older and wiser could have really helped. As some of you know, I don’t have a great relationship with my dad, in fact it’s been over 26 years since I’ve seen him, about half of my life. Even when he was there when I was younger, he was too busy trying to survive the trauma of his own childhood to really be present emotionally.

And since I was scared of one grandfather and have almost no memory of the other, I didn’t really have anyone I could connect with as a father figure when I was a child.

So when it came time to be a parent, I was doing a lot of things on instinct rather than experience. I can honestly tell you that I made a lot of mistakes in my life, but if there is one area that I can look at and think that I really did okay, it’s in my relationship with my children. I wasn’t a perfect parent, and I’m still not, but I can honestly say that my two boys are my best friends, and that the relationship we have is so very different from the one that I grew up with.

And yet even now, in my early 50s, there are still many times where I wish I had somebody who I could talk to about things. Someone who I felt had the wisdom that I needed, and that could have made such a difference in my life both years ago and now.

And then it struck me… I’ve been trying to be that person for everybody else.

This work, whatever it is, began over five years ago at a time in my life where I was really struggling. I wanted to find myself, I wanted to understand what I really felt, and most of all I wanted to share something that may be helped somebody else. Because I know what it’s like to sit there in the dark and feel like there is no one who I can turn to.

I honestly don’t want anyone else to feel that way.

It’s kind of a sobering thought to realize that what I’m really doing is trying to heal myself through helping others. I know enough about my own psychology to realize that probably some of this work is my attempt to forge a different meaning out of the events of my life, and find a meaning that essentially gives value to things that I’ve gone through, so that I could help others.

It’s kind of funny how, as creatures of meaning, we do things subconsciously so that we might find our way to the stories that allow us to live with who we are and what has happened.

In the words of one of my mentors who was there for me, “in the end we are all just stories, make yours a good one”.

As I sit here in my office at home crafting this piece, I’m struck by an incredible sense of responsibility for every word that I write, because I understand that there are those of you who read this who didn’t have somebody show up at a time in your life when you needed them to. I don’t claim to be able to “save” anybody, but I promise you that every word you read on this page is born out of a deep desire to help you in any way that I can.

Because in the end, we do have a choice in who we become. We don’t get to choose the circumstances of our birth, and we have far less control over the daily lives that we live and we would like to believe. What it comes right down to is the person who we turn ourselves into, through our choices, our actions, and the way we spend the time which we have been given.

I guess for me, it’s about becoming somebody who can share something that helps people get through this thing we call life, and maybe, just maybe, find a modicum of peace on the journey.

Despite how it looks, none of us have it easy. Being human is never without trials and struggles and difficulties. All of us have our mountains to climb, our rivers to cross, and our burdens to bear.

May we lift one another where we can, so that we may save each other from any more suffering than is absolutely necessary.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 636: Ethereal

Have you ever seen the Northern lights, or sat and listened to a choir harmonizing in a large building? Maybe it was watching the sunset over the western sky, as the last rays of light for that day pass off into eternity. Perhaps it was a moment of reflection deep in the mountains, where the solitude allowed you to connect with something that feels larger than yourself.

However, whenever or wherever, we all seem to at some point have had the experience of feeling connected to something that is definitely beyond ourselves.

I remember very clearly the last solar eclipse. I was working that day, and the patient who I expected to show up for an appointment never made it. I got to stand out in the parking lot by my office, and share the moment with some friends who own a business just opposite mine. I remember this incredible sense of wonder as the sky darkened, and nature seemed to pause and take a deep breath.

At the moment where the light was lowest, I felt a sudden understanding and connection with the universe.

It’s like I know logically that we are on a planet revolving around a sun, but in that moment I had the actual experience of feeling the light from that sun being blocked by a moon orbiting our planet, and I could sense the majesty and wonder and vastness of where I was standing. One man, connected by gravity to a planet, hurtling through the darkness, and yet feeling like I was a part of it all.

Like there was something more, of which I was just a part.

If you’ve ever experienced this, and I hope you really have, you know that what I’m trying to describe is very difficult to put into words. About 45 minutes from our house is an area where people go to gaze at the stars, because you are kind of out in the middle of nowhere with very little light. On a clear night without a moon, you can see the majesty of the Milky Way as it crosses the sky.

It’s an awe-inspiring and humbling sight, to realize how small we are.

And there’s something about that perspective that moves me. I think it’s far too easy for us to get caught up in our own daily lives, with our personalities and our problems, our trials and our triumphs. We lose sight of the fact that although in our own way we think we are important, in the grander scheme of things we all play a very small part in the history of the world, and in the comings and goings of the universe.

But the majesty of life declares that though our part may be small, without us the very nature of reality would be different.

I think the more frequently we expose ourselves to the aspect of the ethereal, the greater our potential to obtain a wider and deeper perspective on life. The better we see our place in the universe, and our importance, the more we will come to understand the divinity that is life, and grow in both our respect and our respectfulness for others.

Because once you have seen the whole, you realize the incredible value of all its component parts.

The older I get, and the further down my pathway I travel, have come to realize that there is not a person on this earth who isn’t important. I may not have always seen that truth before, and if perchance our paths crossed before I understood that, I’m very sorry that I didn’t recognize the majesty of your soul. We’re all learning, and some of us are further beyond, and some further behind.

But all are important. All are a part of the whole.

It can be a struggle sometimes to remember this. I don’t claim to have any special talent or understanding of how to maintain that reverence and respect every moment of every day, but all I can tell you is that the more I connect to the ethereal, and the more I’m able to sense the grandeur and majesty of the universe in which we live, the stronger I feel my connection to you and to everyone around me.

Bathing my soul in the wonder of creation, I find all of creation a wonder.

Including you.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 635: Accepting Yourself

There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to lay it out for you. What I’m about to teach you is a super power. You master this, and suddenly the world becomes a very different place. Every relationship you have changes. The responsibilities you have are altered. You step into every moment of your life a changed person, with greater calm, increased power, and a deeper sense of being alive.

I know – sounds too good to be true right?

The amazing part about is that there’s no catch. In order to access this super power, you just need to do one simple thing… accept who you are without shame, without ego, and without judgment of value. Because once you can do that, everything else falls into a different perspective.

It doesn’t mean everything is suddenly perfect… far from it.

What it does mean is that you can move forward in life without a lot of excess baggage. As humans, we spend so much energy trying to make sure that we “looks the right way, or drive the right car, or live in the right house, or say the right things. We spend so much money buying things that we think will make us “enough” when what we are really trying to do is bury that sense of unworthiness under a mountain of things.

It’s the very active judging ourselves that becomes a problem.

That’s not to say that we act without a sense of judgment, it’s just that that judgment is about the choices that we made, not about the value of the person who made those choices. I can look at things that I have done and see if they were in harmony with the principles that I try to live by, and realize sometimes they are not.

But that shouldn’t change my value.

We all make mistakes, we all have different backgrounds. I’ve known people who grew up in a very safe homes, with everything they could have asked for, and they go through life just expecting that. They seem to have achieved “a lot” and yet they essentially started on 3rd base and just walked their way into home plate.

I’ve also known people who have come from very tough backgrounds, and who look as though they are falling far short of “the world” but who have in actuality run a much longer race under much harder conditions. These are often people who judge themselves harshly, and to struggle with relationships out of a crushing sense of not being enough.

Because they fail to accept themselves.

I’m going through a pretty difficult phase of growth right now. It’s forced me to go really deep, and lose a lot of sleep meditating and writing, trying to communicate with a very lost, angry and somewhat petulant child who still inhabits a small corner of my soul. I’ve carried a lot of shame and self judgment over the fact that that part of me hasn’t “properly matured”.

When in truth, that part of me is a response to some things that happened, and some things that didn’t happen that probably should have, a very long time ago.

It’s something that I find hard to talk about outside of the relationship I have with my wife, just because it’s so difficult for me to accept. For anyone else, I would tell them that the very fact that they are where they are in their life, and they are in a place to be able to focus on this is incredible given the background.

So I’m working on trying to accept that petulant child, and to embrace him and offered him the love and the understanding that he didn’t get when he needed it. It’s a hard thing to do because it involves walking that fine line of accepting what happened and trying not to get caught up in judgment of all that transpired.

Recognizing that everybody involved was doing their best, and that sometimes life just hands you a bad circumstance helps, but in the end I’m left with me, myself, and some responses in reflexes that are buried very deep in my soul.

So every day I try to accept that part of me, and I try to make peace with the circumstances that have arisen as a result of all that I have experienced.

It’s not easy, but I find that the more that I’m able to just be kind towards myself, and accept that part of me without judgment, I find myself feeling lighter, and having increased measure of courage that is necessary to take the next steps to be where I want to be.

Accepting yourself is the ultimate act of self-love, and it allows you to lay down so many burdens.

But it is not easy, and I am trying.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection #634: Chasing the Sadness

If you’ve ever worked with me in person, be it in a group setting or one on one, then you’ll know that I am very focused on the art of reading ourselves through our emotions. I truly believe that our reactions, especially those that are so deeply rooted that we don’t question them, are the key to understanding both our traumas and our truths.

They are also the key to progressing on our pathway to finding peace.

I recently realized a change that I need to make in my life. Not that I wasn’t aware of the need to make the change, but as often happens, we don’t see ourselves as clearly as we see others. As I meditated and contemplated this change, I sat quietly, trying to make sense of the complex morass of emotions I was feeling around it.

Like I said, this isn’t a change I've been unaware of, and it’s not so much of a complete change of direction, more of a course correction. Usually when I think about it, it’s just an overwhelming mess, but this time I was able to isolate a particular emotion sitting at the core of how I was feeling.

And I realized that it was a deep sense of sadness.

Obviously, I didn’t stop there though, because I also truly believe that answers are merely pit stops, and that what directs our journeys are better and deeper questions. So as soon as I had identified the sense of sadness, I began to probe deeper, to try to understand why this change provokes sadness in me, when other people see it as something joyful, and embrace it.

All the while, trying to question myself without allowing a sense of judgment to cloud my vision.

Because this is honestly something that has been a negative in my life for a very long time now. I try not to think of it as a failing (avoiding judgment so that I can see clearly), but rather as just a part of how my consciousness is currently expressing itself. It’s a hard thing to do, especially when there is so much emotion caught up with it.

But whoever said this was going to be easy right?

Anytime I experience sadness, I first allow myself a little space to grieve. Sadness is always a secondary reaction to a perceived loss. Sadness is really the other side of the coin from anger. Both are reactions, just different ways of directing the energy that comes from the pain of losing something. Since I try to avoid anger, sadness is often my default.

So it became necessary for me to understand what I felt I could be losing by making this change.

Over the course of the next few minutes, as I sat quietly and reflected my feelings against my awareness, I came to the understanding that what I was losing here was a belief that the universe should be a certain way. I’m not expressing that very well, because I know that the universe isn’t the way I wish it was, but that in making this change, I am essentially finally accepting the truth that I have been fighting against.

The ‘loss’ is of my assumed naiveté (because I know what the universe is really like), and my desires for a kinder and more balanced universe. It’s like I am accepting a truth that I wish wasn’t true.

And it’s making me sad.

But if I am to move forward, and find peace, then I have to let go of wishes that the universe would be one way or the other, and accept ‘what is’ with as much peace and calm as I can manage. My definition of peace is the state of fully accepting the universe as it is, and still acting with as much kindness and compassion as I can.

Because in its native state, the universe is devoid of kindness, and I don’t think that’s right.

Yet I face the reality that I need to make a change to how I am expressing my consciousness, and align within the universe in a way that allows me a greater balance of existence. This is probably a change that I should have made many years ago, but what can I say… we are all on our own timelines, and sometimes the most honest thing was can say is simply that something was, or is, or that we hope it can be.

For now, I’m going to sit with the sadness for a little while longer, knowing that change always brings with it complex emotions, otherwise we probably wouldn’t notice it as a change at all.

Wherever and whenever you are reading this, I hope that you are able to spend time today learning to read your own emotions. I can think of nothing greater that will bring you peace than finally understanding and healing your soul, and finding your own way to balance within the universe.

May we all find ourselves there, and find joy in the presence of each other.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 633: The Paddington Principle

As a child growing up in 1970’s England, Paddington Bear was a part of my life. If you’ve never heard of Paddington, he’s a fictional little bear who comes from Darkest Peru, and is found by the Brown family on Paddington railway station in London. They take him home, and his curiosity and overwhelming kindness charm everyone he meets.

Of course, given that he’s a bear, and not a human, he gets into all sorts of calamities as he tries to navigate the world.

With his blue duffel coat, and his red hat, Paddington is instantly recognizable to anyone who knows of him. I had a Paddington pillow case growing up, and probably kept using it until I was well in my teens. My sweet wife actually found one for me this Christmas, and I’ll be honest and tell you that I shed a couple of tears when I opened that present.

Because Paddington stands for something more than just being a bear.

The character was actually based on Jewish refugee children from Europe who were sent to England for safety. The author of the Paddington books, Michael Bond, was moved when he learned of these children who had to leave their families to avoid the horrors of what was happening. In writing the character of Paddington, he combined childlike curiosity with the kindness and wisdom of a much older soul.

Because the real genius behind Paddington is that he looks for the good in people, and in doing so, he helps people find the good in themselves.

Which is (subconsciously) kind of how we raised our two boys. Having grown up with a sense that my issues made me less than, or unworthy, I was determined that my children would not feel that way about themselves. So when I caught my oldest child lying to me when he was 6 or 7, I didn’t tell him that he was a ‘bad’ kid, or go off into some long lecture.

I simply sat him down, and told him that he was much better than that.

I remember reading the story (I have no idea if it’s actually true of not) of a tribe of people who would take people who had committed some kind of an infraction out into a field, and for 2 days people from the village would come out to them and explain to the offender how valued they were, and remind them of all the good things they had done.

So instead of fearing punishment, the offender’ would come to see that what they had done was a violation of their own goodness, and would generally act accordingly in the future.

You’d be surprised how much of the work I do with people involves helping them see the incredible value of themselves when their identity has been lost under a lifetime of judgment and criticism. Through no fault of their own, the difficult situations of life had left them with the idea that they were unlovable, unworthy, and unwanted.

And when a person feels that way, they will act accordingly.

I recently had the opportunity to watch both of the recent Paddington movies. If you haven’t had a chance, please do yourself a huge favor and watch them. Yes they are technically ‘children’s movies’, but the first movie has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (a website that reviews movies) and the second one got a 98%. It turns out that people were so upset about the not 100% rating that unkind things were said about the people who gave it less than perfect ratings.

A behavior which I’m pretty confident Paddington himself would not have approved of.

It’s tough being a human being sometimes. We have days where things go wrong, and where it feels like the whole universe is against us. From our own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others, life can make us feel bad about ourselves, and everyone else. It’s in those times that I try to remember a little lost bear from Darkest Peru, who despite being lost and alone, never stopped looking for, and finding, the good in everybody.

Because if we spend enough time looking for the good in others, maybe one day, we can see the truth about the good inside of us.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings