pass your own tests
Fragility as a teacher, Michael Corleone, and The Shawshank Redemption
Your realizations will be tested almost immediately. It’s an energetic certainty I’ll tell you why in a moment, and once you know, you’ll have a little more stamina to make your realizations you reality.
Remember that classic line in The Godfather III from Michael Corleone (Al Pacino):
“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”
You should say it aloud with me, with a little gravel in your voice, maybe even smack the table, like Pacino:
“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”
Pacino was incredible, simmering under an extreme paradox of softness, integrity, and ruthlessness for 3 films, yet rarely exploding.
Despite Michael’s efforts to extricate himself from the underworld, there’s no exit from Mafia life. We’ve seen the same story in every great Mafia film.
No matter where you go or what you know, you are still yourself, an accumulation of patterns and momentum that are stronger than one moment, so you must also be stronger than one moment. Transcendence is stamina. You break through after much effort.
Michael Corleone’s entire adult life is an energetic tidal wave from which there is no safe exit. His Karma is too much; you can’t surf a tsunami. We are all riding the momentum we have created up to this exact moment, so of course you have a profound realization and are quickly tested.
Patterns are not resolved in the moment of realization. You have to keep at it. I tend to give great advice that I can avoid taking because I already know.
Knowing isn’t enough. You have to practice. No one takes well that person who’s always telling everyone how they should be doing everything differently, because that corrector person is not a frequency that will allow their guidance to be accepted.
It is crucial to consider the kind of energy with which you are attempting to correct and adjust. Discipline and kindness can coexist. We respect those who can embody that duality and are more likely to follow their guidance. We respect those who have earned their wisdom.
Very simply, you will make realizations about your own behaviour if you are a conscious person, and then you will behave again in the same way that led you to your realization. When you catch yourself back at what feels like square one, shake your head and chuckle. Respond by first knowing yourself as loved, intelligent, and empowered.
There will be small opportunities.
On Thanksgiving morning, a family member once asked me, somewhat passive aggressively (family will do that), isn’t it boring doing the same handstand over and over again?
First, whenever you feel your defenses engaging like an electric current tightening the back of your neck, ask yourself, what is this person telling me about themselves with this communication? Resist responding from the wounded part of you – not easy to do, but you don’t have to take on the insinuation.
My family member was really telling me, without words, that she was demeaning herself relative to my discipline for practice. The only way she could handle that feeling was to take me down. This isn’t about thinking that being devoted to my practices makes me better than someone else, but about seeing how all life is practice and what is the fucking good of refining my attitude to handstands if I can’t refine my capacity for empathy?
What a beautiful word, empathy.
Underneath someone’s words, you feel the soft part of them and let those words land in the soft part of you where they can be alchemized to more humanity, not less.
Last week I wrote about the intelligence coded within your fragility, how fragility is a wise teacher calling you home. When you feel vulnerable, some potential that’s been left to wither needs to be watered and given sun.
My answer to the handstand question on that holiday morning was that a handstand is never the same, and there is always something to refine. At the time, I meant mostly the physical intricacies, and now, yes, still that – but so much more so, practice is to make realizations stick, like the realization that I would facilitate a better environment by asking myself what is this person telling me about themselves with this communication – instead of letting the wounded part of me respond to the wounded part of her.
Life repeats to give us opportunities to interact differently with similar stimuli and in so doing rise above our own content. Content is what you carry with you from the past.
There is a good reason you have similar feelings in totally different settings. The reason is that you can change your geography but always bring your content with you.
People have reputations, right? Reputation comes from Latin reputatio, which means “consideration, reflection, reckoning.” The behaviours we repeat are worthy of our consideration, reflection, and eventually will lead to a reckoning.
It’s up to you to choose to have a quiet and intentional reckoning, or go to war with the Mafia.
As soon as you have the a-ha moment about a pattern you are ready to transcend, you’ll quickly have a moment of what feels like falling backwards, but is really an opportunity to make good on your resolution. This is the moment of reckoning, and there won’t be just one – but there likely isn’t a team of federal agents and rival Mafia families on your heels.
Remember that fragility is a wise teacher calling you home before you stray too far from your heart and become a set of patterns you didn’t choose.
When you feel vulnerable, which may manifest as angry or despondent, look at how you got here.
Allow yourself to feel it this time so you can make a different choice.
Make a new mistake. Eliminate the most obvious mistake so you can make another one, and you will, because that is what we do.
We give ourselves the opportunity to have little reckonings.
It’s pretty amazing how feelings can become intelligence if you are willing to know yourself as loved, intelligent, and empowered.
The patterns that lead to realizations take longer to adjust than a moment of clarity. That moment of clarity also took time, it just didn’t feel that way.
Last week was the Jewish New Year holiday, Rosh Hashanah. I was invited to a small dinner of a few other folks who barely know the prayers. My friend Zoe hosted. She’s like a sister to me. Zoe is an acupuncturist in town and my friend Matt introduced us when I moved to Bozeman.
A few years ago, Zoe asked Matt why he introduced me to her, of all the acupuncturists. His answer was, “because I wouldn’t have to explain you to each other.” Part snark, all truth and love.
You know how it feels to be understood by others. You know how it feels to want to show up for people you care about. Have a reckoning about how you integrate your realizations, and show up for yourself – change your inner reputation.
We were six adults and three kids at Zoe’s for Rosh Hashanah. I wasn’t raised very devout. I like when people come together for love and reverence. To me divinity is acceptance and a lot of practice.
God concepts are archetypes that give us ideals to embody.
The kids were running around, two boys and Zoe’s daughter, Sofia, my absolute favorite. Last week, in the midst of national unrest, and fervent foment, I went by Zoe’s house to wait out the construction East of town towards my place.
I sat down with my computer at their kitchen table and Sofia slid in next to me and drew a smiley face on my index finger. She had one on each finger of her left hand.
There was a guy called Dan at the Rosh Hashanah dinner, a transplant to Bozeman like me – like most people actually, or everyone if you go back far enough. We got into films, and landed on the Shawshank Redemption.
I thought I was the only one. I’ve used the film as pontification material for decades in Yoga classes.
There’s a lot of practice in the Shawshank Redemption to substantiate a realization. Andy (Tim Robbins) realizes he just might be able to tunnel out of the jail with a rock hammer that he can procure by pretending he’ll use it to shape chess pieces.
It takes Andy two decades to tunnel out of his cell. That’s 20 years of daily reckoning with a realization.
Eventually, his best pal, Red (Morgan Freeman) joins him on the outside. It takes a while. Red really struggles when he’s released. Finally, he follows Andy’s cryptic instructions, guidance he wasn’t sure was real. He got to a point of such fragility that he gave it a shot. He found faith.
“If you ever get out, find that big oak tree in Buxton... look for a rock that has no earthly business being there.”
In the box is money and directions to join Andy on a beach in Mexico. The film ends with the friends reuniting.
Fragility can lead you if you let it, if you accept that there will be a daily reckoning with your most important realizations.