Being enough is paradoxically a very simple and yet complicated process.  It is simple in that it is three words, cuts to the chase and says what it needs to say…….simply stated, I am enough. I am perfect in my imperfections and every moment of every day I am exactly what and where I should be and I am enough just like I am. I don’t need any more or any less……..I am just enough.  Get the point…..very simple, so where does the complication set in.  Well in my mind, I think “What is enough?” This is where the dreaded left brain monkey mind comes into play.  In my mind, I can never be enough because if I was truly enough, then it would be my time to go.  So I have often wondered, do I stop short because I think enough is a finite process? ……or do I stop short because I don’t think I am enough.  Welcome to my world……now you see how simple yet complex enough is.

I read a great piece this week that looked at it a little differently and opened up a new avenue for me. It was my horoscope and it said “ It is perfectly OK to be 95% enough because if you were 100% you would have wings……..take your foot off of your throat and love yourself, you are enough.”  This reminds me of Rolf Smith’s B+ approach to life……sometimes I don’t need an A…..a B+ is just perfect……..and that is enough. 

So today, I am enough and wherever I am at or whomever I am with…..I know that I am exactly where I need to be and I am doing exactly what I need to be doing for my journey this lifetime…….and to the presenter who brought to light three words that I have said thousands of times and that changed my life, I have five words…….. thank you, I am enough.

When my mother died in November, I had no idea of what that would mean.  What I realize now is that I just moved up in line and that as long as my mother was alive, my little boy felt safe.  As an adult, I deal with the anxiety of uncertainty and responsibility, yet somehow the little boy in me knew my mother would always make it OK. Now that she is gone, things are different.  This struggle has created suffering in my life and as I can accept my struggling, I become aware and awake.  Part of my struggle also has to do with my children as they grow up.  This mirroring between my relationship with my mother and the relationship with my children has helped me see how hard it is for me to let go of controlling my suffering and to step into the belief that we are all connected and that suffering creates gratitude and compassion within me.  I realize the question of a child is….. Who are they? (parents) and of an adolescent…Who am I?(self identity).... and of an adult…Who are we? (our place in the world). I am in the question.

So this week I have sat with the discomfort of not knowing.  Growing up is not just about the path from a boy to a man, but it is my path of creating a meaningful life of intention by opening myself to change, staying connected,  and knowing that I am embracing hope as well as suffering on my journey to compassion and meaningfulness.     

This has been with me all week.  This has been my journey my whole life.  I was different and never quite felt that I fit in anywhere.  When I was a boy I wanted to be Bill or Bob or Jim not Stan. Who in the heck had a name like Stan…..or better yet Stanhope.  I hung around with so many groups and felt like I fit in some with each group yet I could never find my posse…..my home….my community.  So I adapted and learned to bridge who I was to where I wanted to be.  Someone once told me that if I put all of my friends in one room, they would all look around wondering what they all had in common.

Fast forward to the first time I met Rolf Smith and did my Myers Briggs and KAI and realized that I was in a group of about 2% of the population. I WAS different….literally…..very different. When I left his office that day I cried because for the first time in my life I was validated that I WAS different and THAT was my gift.  WOW…..what a concept.

Since that wonderful day 10 plus years ago, I have been on my journey to celebrate my uniqueness, my gifts, my different perspective, and my wonderful blessing to be able to relate to all these different people.  So now these different people find their way into my life and we mourn and celebrate how it is to NOT go with the flow……to be different……and I realize that all along my teacher on how to be different was my Mom…..because she was so different, all she could do to deal with it was to conform….wow…..the lessons keep coming.

Well now, I am not so sure……better put, I am sure that world would be filled with people that had become unbearably arrogant, extremely boring, and actually quite shallow……and I would be right there with them.  This would be a world of certainty…..a world of that would require no change…..a world where there were no issues to grow with…….a world with no pain or joy to feel…….we would be complete.  If there was no contrast, there would be no magic and if there was no magic, there would be no meaning. 

My life is a search for meaning and with that I welcome the uncertainty in my life. I need dark and light to grow. I need to know what appreciation feels like by living in the necessary dissonance that creates a vacuum in my life.  I have always said that nature abhors a vacuum and that vacuum helps me know what I want so I can recognize it when I get it. 

Uncertainty is doubt and the willingness to sit in that place to learn what we have come here to learn.  Uncertainty is uncomfortable and it highlights our resistance to pain and in my judgment……joy.  So I embrace the pain, doubt, joy, and hope that is created on my journey that certain uncertainty creates so I can trust, love and keep moving forward.

I love life and am excitable and passionate.  Even though I was never fond of being told what to do, especially breathing, I have caught myself so many times either holding my breath or breathing very shallow.  For some reason, I resisted meditation and breathing with purpose for years. I guess I was too busy…..makes sense now.

A few years ago, I was given a wonderful book by my friend John Sklar called The Presence Process. The book is about learning to be in the present moment.   One of the most significant processes in achieving this is breathing for fifteen minutes, twice a day.  It was the right book… the right subject….. at the right time for me.  It launched me on a journey of REALLY learning how to breathe.  I have been breathing and meditating with purpose ever since.  With the help of my doctor, some supplements, and breathing, I have successfully lowered my blood pressure in the last two years.  I am even learning to breathe deep in the middle of a guitar solo.  It’s all about letting it in and letting go for me.

So taking a page from Thich Nhat Hanh in his article about facing my fears, I have added a new wrinkle in my life.  When I find myself in the face of fear, I pause. In that pause, I breathe.  I take 3 deep abdominal breaths and on each intake I become aware of the depth and gentleness of my breath as I breathe in peace and when I exhale, I let go of judgment, critique, and the monkey mind.  I recognize what is happening in the present moment.  The fear is still present…I can still feel it…..except this time I am mindful that the fear is not me and that I am more than my emotions and with intention I make a choice to breathe, smile at my feelings, and simply let go.  Breathe in, Breathe out.

This week I was reading a great article by Pema Chodron that asks a very similar question “As I go into this day, what is the most important thing?”  She wanted me to take a look at how much time I have left to fulfill my soul’s purpose in this lifetime and be aware of how I spend my time. This came from a book on facing my fears and it really hit home.  There are periods of my life where I am on automatic pilot,  I get caught up in the minutiae that makes up my day and become so self absorbed that I create illusions of fear that I will never get done what I need to get done. It becomes a vicious cycle for me……if I am not getting it done, then I am thinking about not getting it done, or thinking about what I have to get done.  This cycle takes a lot of my life energy and consequently I live in fear and am not able to really absorb the beauty of the day…….so I ask myself again, what is the most important thing?

The most important thing for me today is to realize I have a choice and that when I say “I have to”….I rarely do.  With my choice comes my power and my love for myself.  So yesterday, I took a large part of the day and made a choice of silence, meditation, and breathing.  I fought the vicious mind chatter that  I wasn’t “doing anything”…… I was just being with myself and finding those gaps in my life to punch a hole in the cocoon of my cycle of doing, to let myself treat that day as it was my last day…..to be grateful…..to be kind….to be compassionate and at the same time to know what is important to me is to treat tomorrow as a dangerous assumption.

I have been confused that when I have had calm as my goal, I am not necessarily at peace.  Over the last few years I have struggled with my blood pressure being higher than I want and I am not willing to just take a blood pressure pill for the rest of my life. I want to find out why I have this internal pressure. Well, if that was not enough, when I went to the eye doctor last week, I found out I have the beginning stages of Glaucoma. Come to find out from the doctor that Glaucoma is internal pressure on my eyeball that cuts off the blood flow to the nerves and can eventually lead to blindness. OK that’s two different pieces of information that I have some internal pressure that is not being resolved. 

I have worked on being calm and it does not seem to affect either of these situations. So I called my acupuncturist/healer friend Jimmy and we talked about how I was creating peace in my life. After that conversation is when the BGO happened. I realized then that calm is a state of being that I have worked toward by externally controlling my life situations and peace comes from letting go within of the fears that I have in my life. Another gift right before my eyes……literally.

Calmness like happiness is not a destination, it is the result of creating the life I manifest. So now I just got another BGO…..that maybe….just maybe that is why I end every email, every phone conversation, and every exchange with “Peace” not “Calm”.

Fast forward forty plus years as I approach my 53^rd birthday next month and I still deal with the messages that receiving is selfish.  I even have a tinge of guilt writing about this. This is how deep this goes for me.

A few years back I learned how to ask for what I wanted. That was not an easy lesson for me. I would preface my want with “if you have the time”…or…”if you don’t mind”…or…”if it’s not a hastle.” It was so hard to just directly ask for what I want.  That doesn’t mean that they have to give it to me, it just means that I am willing to love myself enough and to know that I am worth what I am asking for and I am willing to put it out there to the universe.  When I get clarity and ask for what I want then I prepare myself to receive.

I give multiple blessings every day to people. I have formed groups for the sole purpose to bless each other on a regular basis.  What I have found is that when I bless others, I bless myself in the process. I have done a lot of emotional work with men and have found that one of the hardest things for men to do is to hear wonderful, beautiful blessings about themselves. …..I call that our gold.  The paradox of receiving this gold is that I want so much to be blessed and yet when someone blesses me, it is so hard for me to let it in…….to receive it. I know that at my core it is about me being good enough to receive love and so I am teaching myself to stop, breathe it in(thanks Denver), and say thank you.  I am good enough and I love being selfish……so there……I said it.......and I believe it this time.......thank you. 

I think happiness is a choice.  I have the choice everyday to wake up and have happiness in my life.  I believe that happiness is a state of being that we choose to have no matter what circumstances we are going through. I have spent many years of my life pursuing happiness as if it was a destination ……..and I have never found it.  First it was……. “if I get this job then I will be happy”, then it was “if I can earn this amount of money then I will be happy”, then it was …..then it was……then it was…….you get my point.  It was like climbing a mountain that had no top.  Every time I would accomplish something that I thought would be bring me happiness, it either was very temporary or it didn’t.

The paradox is I am a very happy person a lot of my life……so what gives.  One of my favorite quotes that I got from a Honda brochure nails it…….. “The key to true happiness is recognizing when you’re experiencing it.”…..exactly, that was the first step.  Recognizing the simplicity of happiness has been my challenge……….I want to make it too complicated or too dependent on external factors.  I can be as easy as placing my intent and making a choice.

On December 19^th, Kim Peek passed away.  He was a unique savant that the character, Raymond Babbitt of Rain Main was based upon.  Mr. Peek was not autistic but he was born with severe brain abnormalities that impaired his physical coordination and made ordinary reasoning difficult yet he had an extraordinary depth of knowledge and the ability to recall it. He was the Mount Everest of memory. When Rain Man won an Oscar, it was given to Mr. Peek, who carried it with him to public appearances for the next 21 years.

During a presentation Mr. Peek gave at Oxford University in England, a young woman stood and asked him, “Kim, are you happy?” in which he replied, “I’m happy just to look at you.”

Thanks Kim for recognizing happiness and showing me that I am happy just to look at you too…….my choice today.

It is my belief that the unprecedented awakening we experienced during the first decade of the 21st century was miraculous, but it will not hold a candle to the shift of consciousness that will take place during the second decade. The wonders that are in store for us will begin in 2010, and they will unfold day by day until we grow into the love and nurturing we were created for.  As most of you are aware, there are some interesting viewpoints on what the significance of 2012 is all about….ranging from eternal doom to light and love……. I think it is about change, light and love, and nurturing……plain and simple....... just like the blues ……simple but not necessarily easy…….big difference……..just ask Albert King….RIP. I have found this to be one of the hardest and most gratifying challenges that I have faced. I grew up in a culture where conflict ruled and I believe there is a shift moving away from that to unity not division.

I was born William Stanhope Cutherell and there is a reason that hope is my given name….it has been and will always be my mission in life to be a “merchant of hope” or a “rock of hope”.....always hope…so with that in mind I am hopeful for a decade that I know will bring the change in my life I have gotten ready for and that has gotten ready for me……..…sometimes it’s all about the timing…..Happy New Year….Blessings and Hope.