The impossible choice

Sep 21st, 2012
by Sunni Chapman.
12 comments

We’ve all been faced with impossible decisions, choices that seemed to have terror built into either end.

But I have recently realized that it isn’t really possible to make the “wrong choice” — unless you think you absolutely, certifiably, categorically and unequivocally know what’s best at all times. Unless you have somehow accessed that vast view of the grand scheme of things, and can absolutely say with utter certainty what would be best.

Case in Point: My Dear Sweet Friend

Recently my best friend became ill. This is a being who has been with me for 10 years now, through some of the most hellish and terrifying times of my life. He has loved me unconditionally and steadfastly for every second, of every minute, of every hour of those 10 years, unfailingly. He has listened to me, and sat with me while I cried, and he has looked at me lovingly and unflinchingly, for all that time. He is also approximately 5 pounds, and covered in long flowing hair. He doesn’t speak a word, and he doesn’t have to. His presence says EVERYTHING.

Meet Kita, my beloved furry friend. On a recent camping trip he apparently inhaled a tiny fragment of food or something into his lung, and then began hacking this horrendously painful sounding cough. We were already leaving the very next morning anyway, so I took him to the vet as soon as we got back. She took x-rays and could see cloudiness in his lung. She wanted to put him under anesthesia so she could take a look down his throat, but I wanted to try ANYTHING but that first, because the last time a local vet put him under anesthesia his heart stopped and he almost died.

So she put him on antibiotics because she suspected if he did inhale a piece of food, that the lung had already gotten infected and the antibiotics would go to work on the infection and the cough. Aspiration Pneumonia was a possibility, so were some other things, we just didn’t know… but I was faced with a choice, as the next 2 then 3 then 4 then 5 days went by and the cough did not subside, I was being pushed into this impossible choice:

Do I let her put him under anesthesia for his own good so she can possibly heal him, but then he might die from the anesthesia? Or do I hold out to try to protect him from the possibility of death by anesthesia, only to kill him from not having his throat explored?

I couldn’t win. How could I win? It was an impossible choice because I WAS BELIEVING THAT I COULD MAKE THE “WRONG” CHOICE. And if I make the “wrong” choice, then it will be MY FAULT IF HE DIES.

My GAWD. Talk about pressure. Talk about impossible choices.
With what I was believing and thinking, either way, I’d be responsible for his death. WTF?

And it was just a thought. A thought in my head.
So I inquired within, and what I saw was such freedom that I had to share it with you.

I saw that there was no such thing as a “right” choice or a “wrong” choice, there was just a CHOICE, that’s all I had. Because in order for me to believe that there is a “right” choice and a “wrong” choice, I would have to have the incredible super-power of being able to SEE THE FUTURE! And not only that, but I would have to KNOW, absolutely, that that future could not be changed. I would have to see into the future with my super-powers and see that decision A led to Kita being okay — and that decision B led to Kita’s death. And having seen the future like this, the only way to make a “wrong” choice would be to see that decision A led to Kita being okay, and then intentionally choosing against that and being upset that it turned out that way. But people… we DON’T see the future. We DON’T have that super power. So we don’t have the possibility of making a “wrong” choice, we can only make a CHOICE.

Not right, not wrong. Just a choice. A choice, followed by infinite possibilities that we cannot see.

We cannot make a “wrong” choice because we simply do not know how things are going to turn out. Period. End of story. If you can’t know how it turns out, you can’t defend against it.

I also saw that thinking I could make the “wrong” choice, also implied that I thought I could absolutely could know that Kita’s passing would not ultimately be the best thing for his little soul, and for mine. And I love him more than anything, but I can’t know that. I can’t know when it’s his time to go, I can’t even know when it’s my time to go! How ridiculous.

So I spent that night making peace with his life and his possible (unavoidable) death, and all that his life has meant to me. I realized very deeply that he has been a reflection of my own self-love, the love I could not give myself for all those years of pain, and that he enabled me to finally find that in myself. And I cried those kinds of heaving sobs that quake your whole body, and leave your face in a giant red-puffy mess, and I let go of my illusion of control.

The next day, day 9, I called to make an appointment to take him in to have her put him under and look around. Knowing full-well, it was a choice, not a right one, not a wrong one, just a SHOT IN THE DARK, cause that shot in the dark is all I have. And I know it’s not “dark” anyway, it’s just another light that wants to be seen, I just don’t get to know which light that is; the light of his life, or the light of his death. The vet had gone away on vacation, the one that I trusted, so I called my sweet sister who’s a vet tech, and I got to go down and visit with her, and planned to take Kita in to the doctors at her work the next day, and lo-and-behold…

Kita got better.

Wouldn’t you know it, that sly little sucker — like the angel he is — was just waiting for me to realize a profound truth, giving me the GREAT GIFT of this insight, this gift of letting go, and then his wellness appeared. I didn’t have anything to do with it, I didn’t control the flow of life, I just did what I could in an instant, and let go.

Oh Life, you are so kind. Even if you had taken him from me, you are still so kind. Because you gave me the love of this dear sweet being, for as long as he wants to be with me, and for a million other reasons, as well.

Thank you Life, for this gift of seeing, and thank you Life,
for this greatest gift of LOVE.

It is not possible to fail

Aug 22nd, 2012
by Sunni Chapman.
7 comments

This is not an article about re-framing your thoughts about “failure”, it’s an article about dis-proving them. So much of what we do in our lives is an exercise in defending against “failure”: at careers, at goals, at parenting, at relationships, at eating, at sleeping, at talking, at being, at just about freakin’ everything!

We are constantly trying to avoid “failing”.
How totally, and utterly, EXHAUSTING.

And it’s all because we believe that it’s possible to fail, we don’t even question that, we just whole-heartedly abide in it, and we set our lives in motion around this painful belief.

Are you ready to let it go?
Are you ready for IT to let YOU go?

I am.
And so, here it is…

8 reasons why it is not possible to fail

  1. “Fail” is just a WORD that you put on something that didn’t work out the way you thought it should. How on earth can you possibly know that that is not precisely the way it was supposed to work out? How can you know for sure that it doesn’t lead to the best possible thing? You can’t. You can’t know that.

  2. “Failing” implies that you know, for absolutely, positively, 100% SURE what is most needed from you in this world, and this life, and when and where and at what time it is needed. The truth is NOBODY knows that. Not from our limited human perspective in the vast and universal grand scheme of things. NOBODY knows that.
  3. What you call a “failure” might be the very stepping stone necessary to your greatest “success” — which therefor makes it NOT a failure at all, but a very “successful” step in bringing you right where you’re meant to be.
  4. This is by far the most important of all of these reasons: A belief in “failure” — at its very core — is a belief that some human lives are worth more than other human lives. It is a belief that some people are more “valuable” than other people. That “successful” people are more valuable than people who don’t “succeed”. It is saying that their lives are not as important, their families, their loves, their EXISTENCE, is somehow of less worth than a “successful persons” life is. That is the very same core belief from which violence and cruelty are born — a belief in separateness, a belief in INEQUALITY. This is the violence you commit against YOURSELF when you believe this thought. And excuse me, but it’s bullshit. The mind is very tricky, and even though we don’t immediately see it, this is the core of what is hiding under the thought of failure.
  5. In order for it to be possible to “fail” you would have had to have seen out into the furthest reaches of the future indefinitely. You would have to have seen HOW IT ALL ENDS in order to know the apparent “failure” was not the very thing that was needed, and NONE OF US have seen that. NONE OF US knows precisely what’s needed, and when. (This may be a bit of a repeat, but it bears repeating from a different angle)
  6. What you call a “success” might quickly turn into a “failure”… given time. 1 week, 1 month, 1 year, all “successes” eventually dissolve and could then be called “failures”. Just as any “failure” could quickly become a “success”, given that same time.
  7. Every apparent “failure” is just a sign saying, “This isn’t it. You’re needed somewhere else.” It’s a time/thing/place/person you are not supposed to be with. If you WERE supposed to be with that, you’d be there — and you’d call it a “success” — but only because that’s the way you THOUGHT it should go, and so it matched your ideas of how things “should be”, and so you call it a “success”. When really, reality and universal intelligence is always going the way it should, wether it matches your ideas of how it should go, or not. When you see this, you see “success” and “failure” are nothing more than words tied to how you think things should go. As if we know what’s absolutely best for us from our limited viewpoint here! How can we know that? We can’t. Not absolutely.
  8. “Failure” is just a word, a LABEL, you attach to yourself in a moment and then freeze yourself into a CONCEPT. A boxed-in and painful concept. Not a person, not a soul, not an integral part of the vast whole of EVERYTHING… you have made yourself into a “failure”, and it’s just a word. It doesn’t mean ANYTHING except what you think it means. It doesn’t mean a thing, until you attach your beliefs about it, your beliefs about how it makes you less valuable, less “worthy”, less important than any other being on the planet, and then it becomes “bad”, and “sad”, and “awful”, in your experience. But it’s not because of the WORD, it’s because of your beliefs. Your painful and very un-true beliefs about that word.

So you see, it’s only possible to fail, if you believe in the concept of “FAILURE”. It’s only possible if you believe that some life is of more value than other life, and some moments are of more value than other moments — and a belief in THAT will be painful every time. Because it goes against the nature of who you ARE.

You are LOVE, my friend. You are UNCONDITIONAL LOVE itself, and every time you carry a belief that puts conditions on that love, it’s going to be painful. And it’s going to keep being painful, until you wake up to it.

Just as it should be.

So embrace that pain as a friend, and let it do its job in shaking you AWAKE to the truth. The truth that NO ONE is of less value than anyone else. What we call “successes” and “failures” are just things going the way they should, one is not better than the other, you just can’t see far enough ahead to know how that ripples out and touches ALL THINGS.

It would break our mind apart to know the reality of the ultimate interconnectedness of things, and we don’t need to know that.

We can just trust, and go BEYOND even trust,
and begin right here, with all the ways we’re supported NOW.

And it’s enough.
It’s ever-so-much-more than enough.

Driver of the heart

Aug 2nd, 2012
by Sunni Chapman.
4 comments

shhhhhhh….
there is no hurry,
no thing to be done
no event that was ever
out of order.

You weave this world
like needle and thread,
every action
a divine rhythm

you need not know the rhyme
or reason,

they reveal themselves to you
soon enough.

Take your hands from the reigns
and wade in cool water,

for I am the driver in this
caravan of the heart.

Don’t you know
that nothing was ever required of you?
Do you not yet know
that all of it’s done?

Do not try to understand this.

Just listen to the genius of your
still-point breath.

Bask in the hollow
of this
magnificent strange.

Untie all your knots
and slide into
the river

for it’s here you are
born —

again and again

beguiled, bewildered,
beloved.

Give yourself the gift of you

Jul 18th, 2012
by Sunni Chapman.
1 comment

Sometimes I write about dark things, and sometimes I write about light things — and both of those things are about the brilliance of YOU. About the brilliance of who you really are, and who I really am, and who we ALL really are.

I am one who believes vehemently in INCLUSION.
Because inclusion is just another name for equality.

And equality is what we all desire.

A whole-hearted unconditional love that reaches its arms around this whole apparent universe, and embraces US ALL.

We all want to be loved, and embraced,
seen and heard.

And when we deny any part of ourselves, we deny that very part in the world.
We hold it outside of the whole of ourselves, we defend against it…

and defense is the first act of War.

When we break ourselves into pieces like this, when we hold things apart from ourselves like this — we must ALWAYS live in fear.

Because those pieces could come into our world at any time, they might show up one day, and so we can never truly be free… we must always be in semi-defense mode, and that is stressful, and it’s always going to hurt.

As someone who’s worked very hard at owning both the light and dark parts of myself,
I can personally attest to the incomprehensible freedom and open-hearted JOY that comes from
LEAVING NOTHING OUT.

It is exhausting trying to constantly keep only the “good” things in your periphery, and constantly having to push the “bad” things out the back door. The paradox is that when you ALLOW everything to be as it is — it all becomes “good”. It all becomes innocence, or confusion at worst.

You get to take your guard down, you get to feel the inexplicable wide OPENNESS that is the
TRUE NATURE OF YOUR BEING.

This is true love.

Everything else is a game of hide and seek. Something in you is ready for more,
something in you has ALWAYS been ready.

So, sometimes I write sweet notes about your brilliance and your beauty, but more-often I write notes about what gets IN THE WAY of that brilliance and beauty, about the darker-seeming-stuff… because ultimately, they’re the same thing.

Because I want you to see that,
and begin to love ALL OF IT,
and love ALL OF YOU,

so that you can truly, madly,
wholly, and completely…

Give yourself
the GIFT OF YOU.

A body beyond “normal”

Jul 5th, 2012
by Sunni Chapman.
12 comments

I recently realized I’ve been living almost my entire life with an apparent deformity.

At least I thought I was.

A deformity is defined by being anything that you see as “not normal”. And for as long as I can remember, I have thought that my body — it’s shape, it’s size, it’s features — were NOT normal. Not for me. For as long as I can remember I have had the underlying thought that other bodies were “normal” and mine was most certainly NOT — that the shape and size and proportion of my body was some kind of a horrible mistake. A mistake that I must have made. A mistake that I would spend the next twenty-some years trying to correct…

to absolutely, positively, NO avail.

I vividly remember being 11 years old, and standing in front of my bedroom mirror, having just tried on my new bathing suit for the summer, and just LOATHING what I saw there. Just ripping myself to pieces, there in the privacy of my head. The round little belly, instead of the flat one, the inner thighs that should have plenty of space between them – but didn’t, the rosy-red inherited arm-rash, the awkward newly developing breasts — this was not ME in the mirror, this was not what I was supposed to look like, this was not the girl I knew myself to be — this was some kind of sadistic joke or something.

My body was “WRONG” to me, in every way, I had seen the pictures of “normal” in movies and magazines, and this was definitely not it. I felt as if this body was a cage I was trapped in. I was like a canary in a mine. I had to find a way out. I had to find a way to make it right — to fix this apparent “mistake” — and I suffered from that belief for the next 20 years.

I won’t go into the laundry list of failed diet and exercise regimens, creams and lotions, pills and promises. I won’t go into the 12 year stint with Anorexia and Bulimia, or the occasional binge-drinking episode I would use to try to escape the pain of all of this. For I don’t have to tell you the pain of believing you are not normal in some way, that you are not “okay” or ENOUGH as you are, you already know that pain — we ALL know that pain, far too well. Maybe it was your hair, or your nose, or your eyes, or your hands or your arms, or your skin — it doesn’t matter what your particular vice was, it’s all the same pain. We deal with it in different ways, but it’s all the same pain.

My body struggles in this life, were my gift. Each of us is given a different outstanding “challenge” in our life, and they are all designed to bring us HOME. They are designed to push the button of that pain, until we wake up to what we are believing — and therefor WAKE UP to who we REALLY are. When I first started looking at this, I was astounded to have a memory of being 5 years old and coming back to Kindergarten after having had the stomach flu for a couple days, and the teacher saying “oh poor thing she looks like she’s lost weight”, and I remember feeling pleased about hearing that. This was shocking to me, if you looked at pictures of me when I was 5 – you would see a skinny kid, a quote “very normal” looking little girl. But BELIEF is everything, and on some level I had already begun to believe that I was somehow flawed, and that being thinner was the way to fix it. And of course, it wasn’t.

So what is your life’s gift? What is that one thing that you have spent your entire life believing is “not normal” for you? I know there are MANY things we believe this about, and in fact, if you are like me — nearly everything. Nothing that I ever DID, or WAS, was good enough — but which is the one thing you’ve struggled with the most? Start there.

This is a BELIEF, a thought-form that wants to be SEEN, and KNOWN, and REALIZED — that’s all. Nothing more… nothing less. When we believe we are “not normal”, we are living with a deformity. We look at someone whom society has labeled as having a “real deformity” such as a missing arm or leg and we cringe in pain and sympathy, and that is because we KNOW what it is to live with a deformity. We know what it is to be crippled by a belief about how our body should be, when it ISN’T. We are crippled INSIDE. I have seen some people with what society calls “real deformities” who are some of the freest people I have ever seen. Because they knew they either had to accept the unchangeable, or live the rest of their life in sadness and hiding. And so they faced their worst nightmare, and they found out they were really whole and beautiful, all the while — just as they ARE.

When I questioned my belief that my body is “not normal” — even just “not normal” for ME — I saw what an absolute lie that was. That my body has been a bigger or smaller version of the SAME friggin’ shape, since I was 12 years old. That no matter HOW little I ate, or HOW much I exercised, my belly was always more round, than flat. My inner-thighs were always closer together, not farther apart. And I am telling you people, I gave it my all. I could subsist on nothing more than cucumber slices and do hot yoga till my hair falls out, and all that would happen is you’d see a girl with bony calves and fore-arms and a roundish belly and some roundish inner thighs. That’s me. That’s “normal” for this body called Sunni.

When I first saw this I laughed out loud! I’ve kicked and screamed and gone down fighting, and my body stays true to its nature. True to its “normal”. And the ONLY problem that has EVER existed with it — was my THINKING, about it. I’ve put it through the absolute ringer, and my body has stayed true to itself, all the while. I realized my body always HAS been “normal” — not normal for you, or for the girl down the street, or for the girl on the movies or magazines, but for ME. My body was “normal” for ME. I just hadn’t noticed before. My story about it, overrode the truth of it.

I stood there opposing reality, and reality is LIFE. So when I oppose reality — I oppose Life. And Life is what we ARE. We oppose the precious Life force that we are, and we wonder why it hurts so much?!

So I’m not living with a deformity anymore. I’m living with the perfect reality of MY “normal”. I’m living with the reality that my “normal” could change at any time, I notice things are constantly changing in this world, and that nothing ever stays the same — including my body. It’s younger, it’s older, it’s smaller, it’s bigger, it’s smooth, it’s not smooth, it is what it IS.

But my FREEDOM is NOW, or never. And so my body is always perfectly “normal” for NOW. If I want pain and shame, I can think it’s not normal. If I want to get myself “stuck” in a very hurtful place, I can go on believing it’s not normal — OR — I can take another look. And another, and another, and just keep right on looking, until I’m free.

I invite you to question your beliefs about your “normal”, and find out what’s really true for you, beyond every story of what you “should” be.

This is the coming home to ourselves, that we truly desire. What would be possible for you without the ball and chain of this belief? Even if it’s only peace… wouldn’t that be worth it? To be totally comfortable in your own skin? It would be a revelation! And a revolution… because when we feel the need to fix and hide our own “flaws”, we teach others to fix and hide their flaws. But when we love and embrace our whole-selves, we teach, and give permission, for them to do the very same thing.

This is why they say “it all begins with you”, because it DOES. It really, positively,
absolutely does.

“Normal and Not-Normal” are just another name for “Good and Bad”, “Right and Wrong” — concepts used to separate. What do we find in the absence of separation? Love. The absolute fullness and astounding joy of life. Love for ourselves, love for others, love for the whole apparent dichotomy of it, because out beyond every concept that separates, is unconditional Love.

It’s where we’ve come from, and it’s where we’re returning.
We meet in the middle.

I’ll see you there. :)

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