The Benefit of Nightmares

As a Dreamwalker, I can control my dreams. Sometimes that means maneuvering a bad dream into better waters. Other times it means stopping a nightmare dead in its tracks.

But mindfully? It often means choosing intentionally to face into the darkness and deal with what’s there. Because there is a tremendous benefit in having nightmares.

It shows you where your weak spots are.

Nightmares: some mechanics

Fears, attitudes, and most every anxiety trigger you have will likely show up at some point in your dreams. When they do it’s no different in the Dreamlands than it is in the waking world. You have the exact same reactions based on the same mental and emotional conditioning.

So why are the nightmares so doggone intense?

Your fears and other triggers are under the jurisdiction of your subconscious mind. That mind has full expression in your dreams. So the trigger is amplified to cause the biggest response in you. You are on its turf.

Afraid of spiders? Suddenly you’re in a room full of them. Scared of falling from heights? You’re at the top of the Eiffel Tower and it’s stupid windy. Don’t like being humiliated? Probably should’ve got dressed before giving that big speech at work; oh that’s right, you didn’t get that luxury: this is a dream.

Whatever your anxiety trigger is, it will be given the overblown IMAX 3D THX sound Director’s Cut treatment in a nightmare. (By the way, IMAX 3D and THX are trademarked brands that I do not in any way claim or own, but are super awesome.)

So we experience that anxiety or panic or anger or whatever, and we wake up wishing we hadn’t eaten that jalapeno ice cream so close to bedtime. The next day we can feel drained or even have lingering flashbacks that re-trigger the emotional responses.

This is good stuff. No it doesn’t feel good. You’d pay to have the effects and the dreams that cause them go away.

But you may not need to pay anyone. This is a fantastic Do It Yourself project.

Get the hammer and caulking gun honey!

By hurling disturbance at you while you sleep, your subconscious mind is hoping you’ll take charge and help. Your mind doesn’t want to torture you with nightmares: shoot, it suffers right along with the rest of you. All those brain chemicals and stress reactions don’t do it any favors. It doesn’t want you to hurt; it’s asking for your help.

Whatever is causing you anxiety, you may be in Avoidance Mode while you’re awake. Hey, that’s not always a bad thing: sometimes just doing your best to stay out of triggering situations or environments is your best strategy. But if your mind won’t let the matter drop and brings it up in casual dreamtime conversation, it’s probably time to square your shoulders and face the challenge.

Will it be easy? Not usually, no. It may take many tries, most of which will probably be unsuccessful. But so much of what you accomplish in life rarely takes only one try unless you have done a lot of preparation beforehand. Like fixing something in your home, it might take hammering on this, caulking that, and generally troubleshooting the problem until you find it and make sure it's really fixed.

Dream Control (called Lucid Dreaming by some) just means that you get to make conscious decisions and take an active role in your dreams. Your subconscious mind gets to intrude on your conscious thoughts all the time. Why not return the favor and consciously, intentionally dream?

However you get to that point, you will notice the need to really apply Mindful techniques. (I know these strategies have different names in different philosophical and psychological realms. I’m just sticking with Mindfulness because she’s the one that brung me to the dance.)

Acceptance comes into play because much of the anxiety you’re feeling has to do with struggle. As you struggle to avoid the feelings or the triggers, you develop an anxious response that can take on a life of its own. So learning to accept that the trigger will occur no matter what you do will free you to choose a healthier response.

So you struggle not to get too close to the edge of the cliff, then you struggle to maintain your footing, then you struggle to not fall over the edge, then you struggle to hang on to the thin thread of hope that keeps you from dropping. Motion pictures use this kind of tension builder so often I’ve started laughing at some of them. Filmmakers know that people have an anxiety reaction to this kind of inexorable edging towards disaster, so they use it to get you on the edge of your seats.

Of course, like any tool, it gets overused. And if a filmmaker turns the screws too tightly, it crosses the line from tense to ridiculous, and I laugh. (Hey Hollywood: if you don’t want me laughing at crucial tension-filled moments, get a clue and stop tightening it beyond that point. Thank you.)

Accept and dare

So if I’m struggling so hard to not fall over the edge and it seems that no matter what I do I get closer to the edge, there’s my first moment of enlightenment. By accepting I am going over the edge regardless, I stop the unwinnable struggle. You can’t prevent it, so trying to do so will deplete your mental energy and deprive you of rest and peace. You’re going to plunge; as comedian Christopher Titus said once, if you keep struggling “you’re just gonna die tired.”

Now that you’ve accepted you can’t change the situation, develop a strategy to face the inevitable and unavoidable. “Man up,” as a certain generation says. “Grow a set,” as another generation is fond of saying. Or “Put your big girl panties on”: same generation, slightly different gender.

The point is to know the difference between what you can change and what you can’t. Once you recognize you can’t do anything about a situation, you are free to not keep wasting resources struggling and save them for dealing with the consequences. Not only will you have more rest and peace, you will be in a way better frame of mind to deal with what comes next. The best news: the consequences are often way less horrible than our imagination led us to believe.

Dare yourself to confront your fears and doubts. Identify your triggers and figure ways to accept and deal with them, whatever that will mean. Have faith that you can do this.

And remember the value of the nightmare. It may have scared you and woke you up at 2:30 in the morning in a sweat, but it was also a cry for your assistance. Be a superhero and answer this distress call from your subconscious mind. When you do, you will learn more about yourself, along with practical strategies for reducing your anxiety reactions to certain triggers.

And that particular nightmare will probably be gone for good.

Now to tackle the one about being lost and late for an appointment.

The Hill

It was around 1969, maybe in the early or late summer. My parents and I were driving back from somewhere but I was too young to really remember for sure, but I know we were in a dustbowl part of Western Kansas.

I only recall fragments of trips back then; a lot of driving with the windows up and both parents smoking which often made me nauseous. My dad had family in Colorado who we visited to ride horses (I was a little bitty thing then, but I rode for a moment), and he also had relatives in Hayes, Kansas. So either of those could have been where we were returning from.

At some point in the early afternoon, we were driving through an arid patch and there was some discussion in the front seat that didn’t sound overly promising to me. We pulled over and we got out of the air conditioned car and stood on hard dirt in the hot sun. I asked my mom why.

She told me something about my dad wanting to go climb a mountain.

There were tall hills and I seem to remember buttes around, and apparently my dad felt the siren’s call of one of them. So we watched my dad head off towards adventure, and finally he disappeared into the distance. He said he wouldn’t be gone long.

I don’t know how long he was out there, but I recall at some point the sun began to sink, and my mom became more and more impatient. Soon she started calling out for him to come back, but of course all she did was make herself hoarse. Finally she just told me to stay there with the car because she was going to go get him.

I was probably 4 at this point, and the distance was too far for me to walk in the heat and too far for her to carry me. So I stood by the car watching my mom disappear into the distance that my dad had already disappeared into.

All alone, in a hot deserted part of Kansas, I stood crying. I eventually started calling for my parents, but I do not recall them coming back. At some point I must have crawled into the back seat and cried myself to sleep.

Fast forward to some point in the late 1970s and my mom and I lived in Independence, Missouri which meant occasional road trips to Nevada Missouri where we had been living until recently. My dad’s mom and grandma lived there, and so did my mom’s parents. We made the long trip down highway 71 quite a lot.

Going out 71, just outside of Butler Missouri, there was this hill. It was a two-level affair to the side of the road. With half the hill, then a plateau, then a steeper part of the hill to the top, it was captivating to me.

I asked my mom frequently if I could get out and go climb it. I was always told no, but I never lost the pure desire to climb it. I felt the hill before we made the curve and it came into view, coming and going. I stared at it as we past it each time.

On August 4, 2012 I was driving back from Nevada in the mid-afternoon. My dad had passed away earlier in the year and my mom had been gone since 2008, and this would be the last time I would drive down to Nevada with any real purpose. I felt the siren calling as I approached the curve. As I rounded the curve, I found myself pulling over and stopping.

I never intended to stop and climb the hill. It never entered my conscious mind. I now found myself preparing to answer the siren’s song.

The experience wasn’t all good. I lost my cell phone somewhere on the hill, and because a Missouri State Trooper had stopped to figure out why my car was sitting to the side of the road and what I was doing on the hillside (a passing trucker had reported a potentially stranded motorist) I ended up falling down the hill and tearing some tendons in my right ankle. Long story.

But the exhilaration of climbing that hill was worth it.

I could not explain why I climbed the hill. People call it a bucket list item and I found that insulting, because I don’t have some list of things I want to accomplish before I die. I didn’t plan this consciously, although apparently I was planning it most of my life subconsciously.

I now see the connection. In a sense, I followed my dad’s path, heeding the seductive song and climbing the hill that called to me. I also set out to find my parents figuratively, something I couldn’t do in 1969. I needed to make the trip, conquer the hill, and prove to myself that I really would be okay, just as my mom said I would.

No other challenges beckon me. I had finally made peace with The Hill.

New content is up at A-mindful-guy.com

I just added three posts dealing with Mindfulness and Dream Control over on my site.

Controlling dreams is somethign I learned to do pretty early in my life, but it came in stages. First I learned to decide what kind of dream to have, shifting the tone from darkness to a lighter mood.

In time I learned to fly, face fears, even change the dream to my liking or walk out of a dream altogether.

In this series of posts I'm going to look a little at how the subconsious mind, as the seat of your dreams, can be consciously directed. It's a dreaming form of shifting the way we think in the waking world, away from unhelpful views and behaviors towards more beneficial patterns.

Sometimes you can control your dreams, and sometimes you can't, and sometimes you just choose not to.

Like life, it often boils down to choice.

Check it out, comment if it feels right, and as always thanks for reading.

David W. Jones
A-mindful-guy.com

The new site is up and running

I have moved over to the new Wordpress site. You can see it at

www.a-mindful-guy.com

So far I have a general welcome, an About Me page that's still needing some adjusting, and my first Mindfulness post, a parable about a teacher trying to reach a student who is so preoccupied with keeping his serenity that he ends up losing it....

Also, I'm still publishing articles on Yahoo Voices under the Health and Wellness heading. Tying in with the new site is a series of short articles that share the basic title "A Mindful Guy" and the premise of the article.

Times have been challenging lately, which have given me ample opportunity to practice my Mindful resolve.

As an IRS employee, I have watched scandals rock the service while the sequestration ensures that I can barely make ends meet. While the media may bring attention to big money, I can assure you that they aren't reporting on the many Federal employees who are not making nearly as much as you hear about. On that subject...

My car got repossessed. It wasn't a fancy car and it was about 5 years old. Couldn't make the payments anymore. Life's perspective changes when you can't just go anywhere you want when you want without either taking the bus, finding a friend who will come get you, or walking.

But hey, I'm getting more exercise!

Life is what it is. I can be frustrated all I want, but it doesn't change anything.

As we've seen, emotions come and we can manage them. It's acceptable to be angry, or sad, or happy, or neutral. Emotions are part of our make-up, and sometimes they get the better of us.

So long as I accept them and deal with them rather than letting them rule me, I'll be fine.

*************************************************************

I'm grateful to have the new site. It's going to be Mindfulness, but with a Midwest twist. It's what is referred to as my Writer's Voice. It's just who I am. It's going to be fun.

I'm also grateful to everyone who has taken some time to read this blog. I'd love to have you stop by the new place and check it out!

David W. Jones
Independence, Missouri, USA

Faith - No Sex Does Not Mean No Love

This is going to be short and quick.

Okay, settle down.

Simply put, sex is the big paradox in the western world. It’s everywhere and yet we are afraid to deal with it unless we can hide behind jokes or blushing cheeks.

I know folks who thought nothing of going through life engaging in regular bouts of leisure with any number of others, yet they couldn’t bring themselves to tell their kids a thing about the Facts Of Life.

Well, you ain’t gonna read about it here neither. So don’t get your hopes up.

Since this is a blog about my personal journey, I will use this post to deal with a major battle I faced, based on misunderstandings growing up: what does sex mean in a relationship?

Sex Does Not Mean Love

It’s not that I thought sex and love meant the same thing. I know that sex is merely one possible expression of love. However, without proper personal Boundaries and Acceptance, I believed that if sex existed in a relationship, then gradually changed and sort of stopped, it meant that I was no longer loved.

Many therapists have said that one of the earliest signs a relationship was in trouble was when sex stopped.

If sex is the ultimate intimate expression, then when sex falters it must obviously mean that the very foundation of the relationship is falling apart.

Well, I mean that’s how I basically reasoned.

Here’s the thing: if you do not have faith in love, in the person you love, then you are forever insecure in the relationship with that person. The insecurities are always there, just under the surface, but in an intimate relationship they are open and in plain view (yeah, even if we try really hard to hide them).

So I had no faith in the permanence of relationships, largely because my parents divorced.

I also had no faith in myself as being worthy of being loved. If a person was making love to me, then it was proof that I was loveable. (Okay, I know that was a myth. Bear with me here.)

I was raised to view sex as obligatory. It was the responsibility of both people in the relationship to have sex. That’s a rural thing I think, although it’s pretty much everywhere. If the woman didn’t want to, that was fine. A woman’s mood was not a prerequisite to sex; she just had to be there and submit to it.

It’s not a unique view, no matter how much we are unaware of it. Do you know how many legal statutes exist to allow a marriage to be annulled if the marriage isn’t “consummated?”  It’s pretty sad.

So let’s sum it up:

A woman’s expectation and responsibility and obligation in the marriage is, among other things, to do her Wifely Duty and have sex when the husband wants to; sex is an expression of love that dwindles and goes away when a relationship is in trouble; marriage can be considered invalid if one party cannot or will not have sex to consummate the relationship; insecurity of being unlovable is relieved temporarily when sex occurs, due to it being viewed as proof that someone loves me; sex is seen as a need.

So basically things are just too jacked up for me to be balanced.

Oh wait, I forgot to add to the problem! Let me fix that…

Growing up I was bombarded by the simple judgment against me simply because I was male: all guys think about it sex.

Man that ticks me off no end. Just because all the guys you associate with do, doesn’t mean they all do. It’s a generalization that weighed heavily on me. I was treated as a second class citizen by women because the men in their lives had stupid views about sex. They wanted it a lot but they were so selfish about it, so there were a whole lot of dissatisfied women and clueless men. But lump me in with them?

It would be the same as me saying all women are treacherous witches just because all of my experiences with them to a point ended up with me getting hurt.

If all the fish you catch have the same drawbacks, maybe ya ought to fish in a different pond some day. Just sayin’….

Okay. Breathe. Let go.

So here’s this mess that works against me. I can’t begin to have faith in the stability of a relationship because if sexual expression stops then I resent the woman for not upholding her end of the relationship, I feel threatened because I feel she has stopped loving me and the relationship is on its last legs, and I feel guilt because I then try to force the issue and put on the pouty face: “If you loved me then you would.”

I shudder when I examine myself. No wonder self-examination is so scary. But it’s also healing, because once I see what I do and why, I become more mindfully empowered. I free myself to choose to see things differently, to react differently.

I Am Loved With or Without Sex

I needed to develop faith in relationships, women, and even myself about a lot of things, including sexual matters.

Communication is key here. If sex is viewed as proof that you love someone, then a lack of sex represents a lack of that love. By communicating my concerns to my partner, I can let him or her know that I will need their help in fighting the doubts and shadows. They can, in turn, reassure me that I am indeed loved and we can focus together on all the other ways we express love to each other.

So Boundaries help me stop relying on this other person to provide my self-assurance and security and peace and happiness. I recognize that if he or she doesn’t want to have sex, then it’s not a reflection against me but a reflection of their own sovereignty to make decisions about themselves and their bodies and minds.

Acceptance is another tool to be used. Sex is only a need based on the importance we place on it. Place less importance on it, and it becomes less of a “need.” Accepting that there are other ways to express love, accepting that sometimes sex just isn’t possible, frees me up to enjoy my partner more fully because I’m not all hyper-focused on this one thing.

And if I accept, then I won’t try to manipulate my partner to get my way. No heaping on guilt, no pressure or coercion, no whining and begging and threatening and tantrums and ultimatums and angry demands. Certainly no undermining junk like accusing my partner that he or she doesn’t love me because he or she isn’t showing me they love me by having sex. That’s childish, unfair, cruel, and irresponsible.

Been there.

Faith vs. Expectations

So I have found my way out of another morass from my past. Sex is an aspect of a relationship that, when kept in balance and perspective, can bring much comfort and joy. What it takes is willingness to abandon preconceived expectations and accept that I am loved and lovable. I can be free to enjoy the expressions that someone else can give me.

I can stop hyper-focusing on what I don’t have and focus my attention on the things I do have. That’s actually a good balance that Mindfulness has allowed me to have in a lot of things.

I have found faith that I didn’t know I had, because I have let go of some of the old views and teachings that I grew up with. When you grow up with something, it’s natural to assume that the thing reflects truth and reality, when it really only reflects a small corner of those things.

So that didn’t take too long. And you didn’t fall asleep on me! Yay!

And with that, I think I’m done examining some of the main pillars of Mindfulness in my experience. I’m going to keep posting personal matters relating to Mindfulness on this blog, and I will expand the topics and examinations on my new blog at a-mindful-guy.com.

Well, as soon as I can figure out how to get the thing to work. Lol

Faith - All By Myself

When you are single in America, an awful lot of folks think it’s a problem, like there’s something wrong.

Not too long ago, they would have been correct.

“Jim still isn’t married. He’d better hurry up and settle down and start a family.”

“Mary is going to die an old maid at this rate.”

“Dan is a nice guy, but he isn’t even trying to see anyone. Is he… weird?” (Weird often equaled gay)

“Shirley isn’t getting any younger. Pretty soon she’ll be too old to find a nice man.”

(Sound of mother sobbing into a dish towel) “I’m never going to have grandchildren and it’s like he doesn’t even care.”

(Sound of mother grumbling in general directions) “So, when am I going to get a grandchild?”

Ugh. It all makes me sick to even type.

I understood things pretty much that way my whole life. That stupid Life Script that sets your life course in a flow-chart format was not even discussed – it was just handed to me.

Not that anyone could have discussed it with me. It was just understood that you went to school, got a job, found a nice girl, dated, got engaged, got married, had a child or ten, had a grand-child or thirty, retired, and wandered off into the sunset. Some variations existed in my region, but for me the path was instilled in me in various ways as the cultural norm.

Simply put, I really had no choice to stay single. It was not an option.

It is a choice nowadays, more and more. But there are still folks who uphold the basic dogma of the Wrongness of Intentionally Remaining Single. It’s not really their fault; they don’t believe there is a choice either.

So what can be said about singleness? Like everything else, it’s about choices. And as you will discover in life, there are more factors to consider in life choices than it appears.

I’m Afraid of Being Alone

There are some folks who are afraid of being alone. But that is a pretty uncommon phobia. Why do I say that? Because most folks who say they’re afraid of being alone… really aren’t.

Afraid of the dark? No, more likely you’re afraid of what else is in the dark with you, or you’re afraid of the vulnerable feelings you have in the dark. It’s not the dark’s fault.

Afraid of spiders? More likely you’re afraid of the spider biting you, or the emotional response as you feel it crawling on you. Their movements just look so alien to us that they seem, well, creepy.

Afraid of being alone? Probably not. I mean maybe you’re afraid of being vulnerable if someone tries to break in, or afraid of someone already being there when you come home alone one night. A lot of those insecurities lie in not having faith or confidence in yourself and your abilities to handle life events. What if the furnace breaks down, or my car won’t start? It would be so much better if I had someone else around. Maybe so.

But what if your fear or worries about being alone have nothing to do with that?

Maybe you might really hate feeling lonely?

If you think “being alone” is the same as being lonely, then high five! You just figured out where the problem is.

I disliked going through life without a girlfriend. That’s partly because I felt lonely, and partly because I was indoctrinated with the notion that you could not buy a house in Happy Life Estates without being in a relationship.

Plus any people at school and in my neighborhood regularly asserted I was gay, which wasn’t exactly improving the odds I was going to get a girlfriend from among the locals.

Men and women kissing in public, holding hands, doing all the Couples things – seeing all this around me only compounded my feelings of alienation.

Of course I was oblivious to all the people who were single and loving it. I figured they were in denial and as soon as the novelty of being single wore off they would be as miserable as I was.

I was also blind to all the couples who had a partner 24/7 and were way more miserable than I could imagine. I assumed they just made bad decisions and if they had maybe met someone at a park or at a book store, they might be happier today. Or in many cases, maybe they should have just trolled at a more upscale bar. Hey, the quality of the pond gives you a hint to the quality of the fish you’re gonna haul out of it.

Soon I got a girlfriend and had companionship. It satisfied some aspects of my life, but I noticed that others appeared. That’s a pattern in many relationships: smooth at first, then the rocks appear and you wonder what happened.

It all boiled down to expectations. I could not grasp being happy in life as a single person, and I could not grasp why being in a relationship did not instantly fix all my woes. I expected all the wrong things, and that’s what was really making me miserable.

I needed to cultivate faith….

Mom Needs Grandkids!

The Script says that one of the biggest bonuses in having children is one day getting grandchildren.

It’s funny that I remember very few pictures of me, her only child, on my mom’s desk at work over the course of her career. Once grandkids appeared, there was hardly room on the desk for anything BUT their pictures. That gives you an idea of you how important grandchildren figure into the life of a woman round these parts.

See, mom was very busy actually trying to make a living and raise me, so there wasn’t a lot of time to relax and enjoy me. We did have a lot of time and vacations and stuff, don’t get me wrong. But parenthood was very much a job. Grandparenthood is very much a hobby.

After mom retired, she had this huge hole in her life, and grandchildren were going to help fill that nicely. It made her very confused and disheartened to realize after awhile that grandchildren aren’t like the stories. (Wow, neither are husbands and wives! We seriously need to stop reading Happily Ever After stories like they’re roadmaps!)

She adored my sons, and they adored her. But they didn’t just sit quietly and behave like I had as a kid. My kids saw grandma as an awesome playmate that treated them great. But she had respiratory and mobility issues and their constant desire to run around and play wore her out. They were always poking around in things, spilling out boxes to find out what was in them, wanting her to go outside and push them on the swing or catch them at the bottom of a slide 30 times in a row.

Sadly, she wanted to do more and enjoy them more, but her expectations were too high, both for the role of Grandmother and for herself. She couldn’t meet her own expectations and it made her less happy.

She really needed to cultivate some faith….

So When Ya Gonna Tie the Knot?

This will be short and sweet. I know a girl who is beyond wonderful to me. It was assumed we would get married. Probably not now.

Did something bad happen? No actually something good happened: we escaped the bear trap called The Script. It was painful, and I think we had to chew a leg or two off, but it was a relief!

We are happier now that we threw off the expectations and role requirements that were heaped on us throughout time. We can relax and enjoy each others’ company because we aren’t tied to this Institution of Relationship that everyone says will be the road to happiness and personal fulfillment. I mean we tried to fulfill the Script as best we could, but it wasn’t for us. We are happy this way.

But other folks, oh my….

So many of them still live lives according to The Script. That by itself is perfectly fine with me, because as long as everyone is playing by the same rulebook there’s a pretty good chance it will work out for them to some degree.

But to see their faces when they saw us together doing things and being happy, and compare that to the looks on their faces when we dash their fairytale dreams with news that we probably aren’t going to get married: the weight can be suffocating.

Religious teachings, cultural expectations, personal views: so many things can help pile the guilt right on your back when you escape The Script. Suddenly there’s something wrong with you. You are going to anger God and rob everyone you know of the joy of seeing your gleaming golden wedding because you are being selfish and choosing to live lives outside the Right Way.

We’re trying to have our cake and eat it too, I’ve been told.

Let me just say, I’ve taken the plunge and purchased the cake once. If it works for you, go for it. It didn’t meet all the expectations it was supposed to. So I don’t need to. I’m free to get married, but ought of desire to, not out of obligation to.

How can we deal with all the peer pressure and expectations of others?

We just have to cultivate a little faith….

Alone But Not Abandoned

Loneliness is basically when you want someone there and no one’s there. It’s an emotional reaction to unfulfilled desire. Not really sexual desire (although that’s a big part of it at times) but a desire for companionship.

I was nervous when I found someone who I really clicked with on pretty much all cylinders, but discovered that we were at a point in our lives where we just couldn’t handle living on top of each other.

I had to have faith that it was okay.

I needed to have faith that I could live my life separate from someone else by building boundaries, and that was not going to scare away this one person.

I needed faith that I could be single and have a fulfilling life.

I needed to have faith that I was whole and complete as a person without needing another person to make me complete.

I needed to have faith that I could make it… alone.

Now I can go home and have cereal for dinner if I want. I can watch three DVDs of wrestling in a row and not worry that someone in the house is missing her favorite shows. I can leave work and spend the evening walking every aisle in a book store or window shopping at the mall. I can come and go when I please and do what I please. That’s freedom.

And when I get lonely, I can pick up the phone and call or text the most wonderful person in the Multi-verse, and ask if she wants to go to a movie or out to eat or just hang out and walk the aisles or the mall together. That’s also freedom.

I am alone, but I’ve not been abandoned. I don’t need to be attached to someone.

But wait: what if this best friend of mine chooses to go away? (Is it time to sound the Abandonment Alarms?)

It would hurt badly. I would mourn and become unbalanced for awhile. But I have faith that I am still a complete person, I am capable of having a happy and fulfilling life alone. I would still have many friends and no doubt would make many more. I would go on.

My mind used to rob me of peace and erode that faith by dwelling on such an eventuality. I would sit and worry obsessively and compulsively over a potential scenario that was very unlikely. I will not do that anymore. Sure the thoughts occasionally come back, but I will treat them like the guy that comes to the door to ask me if I’ve considered carpeting. I will smile, tell him thank you but no thank you.

“But it’s a great deal.”

“True. But I don’t want carpeting. No deal is so good that I’m going to purchase carpeting if I don’t want it. Free would not put carpeting on my floor.” If I want a relationship I can have one, and if I don’t then that’s cool too. But I don’t NEED one. Believe it or not, the more pressure you put on yourself to get into a relationship because you NEED to, the more likely you will become frustrated and open to making some erroneous choices.

I have a choice as to how I will deal with facing things that make me uncomfortable, including loneliness. I can sit and lament or I can get up and go somewhere.

 “But I don’t want to go somewhere alone. It makes me lonelier.”

Loneliness is an emotional reaction to a situation. Believe it or not, you can change that reaction. No really, you can! It might mean you just have to change your expectations a little….

As I said earlier, one of the main issues that contribute a bit towards loneliness (and certainly one of the biggest arenas of expectation in a relationship) is: sex.

Don’t get all excited (oops, sorry), but we’re going to look at this topic next. Relationships and sexual expectations, and how Mindfulness can help balance that out. No kissing and telling; I promise, I won't get inappropriate.

C’mon, have a little faith.

Faith - Well I Gotta Have Faith

George Michael sang about it. Well, he sang about having faith in something, anyway.

So often when we hear people talk about their faith, we are hearing about their religious beliefs. But there are other demonstrations of faith, since “faith” has shades of meaning.

“I watched a documentary about First Responders and it really restored my faith in people.”

“I was afraid to change careers at my age. But I just had to make a leap of faith.”

“No one knew if the news report was true at first. Everyone was just taking it on faith.”

Dictionaries and thesauruses (thesauri? Nah, it’s 2013) have definitions of faith that focus on belief in something, trust in something.  You can trust something and believe in it if you have faith in it. Whether that thing is a god, a philosophy, a business model, or a weather forecast, it is something that you trust to be correct, or helpful, or at least that it is what it appears to be.

Sometimes we apply faith in something without thinking about it. We subconsciously trust something when we just assume – take it on faith – that a thing is and will continue to be what it seems to be. A new bridge might be unsafe, but people might have faith in its safety simply based on knowing it’s new. Whereas a bridge might be very stable but appear to be rickety, and folks might not have any faith in it to support them on use.

Sometimes faith needs more conscious effort, whether because we encounter something new, or because something familiar has demonstrated questionable trustworthiness in the past.

Then there are situations where we have been pre-programmed to either have faith or have no faith in something. Religion is often involved in these cases, but it extends to pretty much any sphere of one’s life.

But for folks who dive into Mindfulness, there are a few places where they may not have really examined for the presence of – and need for – faith.

Faith in Self

It is a funny thing to watch someone who seems to lack confidence suddenly enters one of their Strong Places. You know, suddenly his back gets straighter, her head is held a little higher. Or the person who oozes self-confidence suddenly stumbles into a gray patch, a Weak Place for them. His posture drops, she suddenly looks at the floor or her shoes a lot.

It goes to show that self-confidence isn’t something you either have or you don’t; it’s something you have in some places and don’t have in others.

Although I am more balanced now than I used to be, it wasn’t that long ago that I had a very prominent Strong Place and an equally prominent Weak Place.

Work was a Strong Place. If weird things happened or technical issues popped up, I could just slide my brain into Analyze and Correct mode. I would exude self-confidence, not because I thought I could understand or fix absolutely everything, but because I had enough experience which I could plug into my troubleshooting brain routine. I had a track record of success; it wasn’t 100% but it was certainly well over 80%. At the drop of a hat, tell me of an issue or tell me to go train someone on something, and I needed very little preparation time on average. My instincts were sharp and I followed them.

Once I got home though, it was like entering an alternate universe. I thought too much and second-guessed everything (actually I often didn’t stop at second-guessing. I was very familiar with fourth- and fifth-guessing). I assumed the worst in many situations which caused them to actually become worse. I worried and fretted about making the wrong decision or saying the wrong thing or not doing something that I should have done. I had instincts, but I only followed the bad ones.

In short, I had faith in myself at work, but had no faith in myself at home. Work stuff was a piece of cake to me, but I stressed mightily in relationships.

I guess it ought to make sense, given my past. Dad was an old-school auto mechanic and Mom was a Customer Service wizard. They found what they enjoyed doing and were good at, then had careers in those realms. They excelled in their niches – their little corners of specialty – but they fell down at home in their relationship. I followed in their shoes.

I had to figure out how to develop faith in myself as a man capable of having a good, successful relationship. To do that, I needed to lay some groundwork: I needed to develop faith in myself as being someone worth being in a successful relationship. I simply didn’t think I was worth it.

“I Don’t Deserve You,” I Lied

The fairy tales and romantic songs try so hard to dictate how a relationship is supposed to work. Never mind that we put our relationship training in the hands of guys who abandon all sense in pursuit of beautiful girls (even if she’s an ogre now, I promise she becomes a gorgeous princess at some point!) or girls who will only fall in love with exactly the one prince or knight in shining armor (usually because all other choices are clearly shown with amplified imperfections). Or in the case of music, we are entrusting our understanding to people whose main purpose in life centers on the popularity of songs they sing (even if someone else wrote them).

Pop tunes and power ballads do not set a very good foundation for a long-term relationship. Look at the track records of most of the people writing and performing them.

It is assumed that the right sentiment expressed in a song can land you happiness everlasting. Or only one person holds the key to Happily Ever After.

Lies! The whole pack of it is lies!

But those tales survive, and the tunes sure are catchy.

One problem with all this is that it’s all unrealistic. It’s fantasy. That’s why people buy the romantic fiction or the love song-laden CD: they want to purchase a fantasy. That’s fine, up until they start treating the fantasy like a viable foundation for reality. Then it gets a bit dodgy.

Archetypes are presented, and you need to find some way to fit into them. That can be tough because you are dealing with princes/princesses, magical beings, rulers or other rich people, and the world of myth which is conveniently black-and-white. Mostly our ability to fit into the myths is physical: bigger aspects of anatomy; more wealth on display; prestigious position in society.

Aside from songs in which sex is the main motivator, love songs portray huge myths. These songs emphasize how desperate the guy is to land this particular girl that he will do anything to win her. We know he will do anything, because after stating this fact in exactly so many words, he is often off on a Romantic Scavenger Hunt, ticking off all the items on his list that he is prepared to do. Catch grenades, take a bullet, never let her cry nor feel even a moment’s pain or unhappiness, die in some fashion that will eventually be featured on an episode of 1000 Ways To Die, etc.

It’s simple: I don’t deserve you, so let me purchase you and your love through martyrdom, whether literal or figurative. Self-sacrifice is pretty noble, so I shall win her heart through self-sacrifice.

Of course, it’s one thing to win a heart; it’s another thing to keep it. This leads to the relationship becoming an endless business transaction that would put the karma cycle to shame. It’s like you are only leasing the girl’s heart. You make the down payment, and then you spend the rest of your life struggling to keep up the payments so that her heart doesn’t get repossessed and auctioned off to some other guy. Or girl.

So rather than accept who I am and remain open to love from someone who is equally flawed but generally compatible with me, I assumed I was not worth being loved by anyone and therefore I needed to settle for what I could get. People may not say it in so many words, but you would be shocked to find out how many folks believe that somewhere inside. One of the reasons many people stay in toxic relationships is an abiding belief that they don’t deserve better, or that they will never really find better, or ultimately that if they did find better, then “better” wouldn’t want them.

Ugh.

Have faith in yourself as a loving, caring, flawed human being. Believe that you don’t have to be perfect to get someone into your life. You don’t even have to meet all of their criteria (so stop trying to, as I had to learn).

Even the most “broken” person can turn the corner into a happy relationship. And even the most insecure individual can find happiness single and unattached. So before we look more at how to have faith in a relationship, consider having faith in yourself as a complete, whole being who can exist happily separate from a partner. Let’s look at Faith in Singleness.