“Let all your fears and worries and problems leave you.”
From December 20, 1989. – JDW
A soft voice.
“Put your feet flat on the floor. Allow your eyes to close. Follow the air into your nose and down your throat to your heart.
“Feel it WARM your heart. Feel it nurture you. Feel the compassion.
“With each breath you take in, say to yourself, ‘I am.’ With each breath out, say ‘peace.’
“Inhale, I am. Exhale, peace. I am. Peace. I am peace… Now, let out a big sigh. Let all your fears and worries and problems leave you.”
And that’s how we started. Twenty-five (25) of us in an apartment complex in the Sylvan area of Portland. A chilly basement in the West Hills. We were there on a Friday night for the first of ten (10) hours of teaching by a man named Patrick O’Hara. With his wife, Sharon, he is THE GROWING PLACE, a non-profit organization based in Montana.
Norma Louise talked me into it. The workshop costs seventy-five dollars (75$). She paid just ten bucks. Turns out this was not her first time. Many of those in attendance had participated previously. In fact, they’d arranged for the O’Haras to be in Oregon. The O’Haras don’t sell, they don’t advertise. They don’t go anywhere they’re not invited. They manage to travel constantly and everywhere they go, growing takes place.
Maybe fifty years old, Patrick is a big man, six-foot-four, about two-hundred pounds. Casually dressed, he spoke softly, so softly, so softly he couldn’t be heard over the space heater’s drone. We turned the machine off.
He began by asking each of us our name – he remembered them all – and the answer to this question: What do you like about yourself?
My response was, of course, much too lengthy to be reproduced here in its entirety. Most of the others seem to like that they are 1) loving, and 2) caring. Norma Louise, who is both, said she liked her sense of design and color, as well as her voice, her smile and her teeth.
She blushed when she said it.
The next question was perhaps more difficult: What don’t you like about yourself?
Let’s see. There’s my inability to forgive Reagan. And I park in truck-loading zones before 6 p.m. And… I’m still trying to understand how I could’ve come up with a list that long and not mention procrastination. I’m still amazed. Maybe I was just putting it off.
Norma Louise – glancing at me as she spoke – confessed to being impatient with herself and others. The rest of the folks had the usual responses you’d expect. Bad breath, bad temper, multiple personalities.
Patrick had heard it all before, of course. People are very much alike, even if no two are quite the same. “We are very, very simple,” he said softly, “but we’re very, very subtle… We are each all mankind as much as one drop of seawater is the ocean.” I wrote that down.
As best as I can explain it, Mr. O’Hara believes that people – you, me, your loved ones, your boss, the guy who goes out of turn at a four-way intersection – we are all programmed to act in certain ways at certain times in certain situations. This programming is done by our parents, our peers, our schools, television, etc., etc. Et cetera.
Patrick believes we can be our own teachers. “You must understand that you are literally the creator of yourself,” he teaches. “Thought directs energy. Start to think of yourself as an energy pattern.” And then start to increase the beneficial energy in your life, decrease the negative. Sound too good, too simple? Maybe you’re programmed yourself to believe that complex problems demand complex solutions. Not always true, grasshopper.
You start by doing nothing. Which is harder than it sounds. “The first cause of all things is being still,” Patrick points out. In other words, get a grip.
He suggests meditation. Hey, I know that sounds like something which used to go on between orgies at the Bhagwan’s rancho. Give it a try anyway.
YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE TO SEE WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING AT, SO YOU CAN ACT INSTEAD OF REACT.
The stillness, achieved daily, will present you with the opportunity to see what you’ve become. And to see how your life might be transformed when you accept the responsibility of creating it.
Patrick O’Hara does not fit the mold of spiritual healer or religious leader or guru. He not only does not seek such roles, he avoids them with a passion. He spent twenty-one years as an enlisted man in the military, and he admits it. He has read, he has thought, he has experienced, he has asked questions, he has listened.
Today he thinks he has some of the answers. And so he shares them. I’ll share some with you.
You will have to provide your own questions.
You have to give up to gain.
You cannot have an emotional feeling without a physical reaction.
When you love, you make yourself whole.
Your power is in your softness, and your softness is in knowing who you are.
It’s not enough to say “There’s got to be something better.” You have to follow up with “And I want it.”
The way to make change is by example.
Forget what you want to get away from. Take aim at where you want to be and go for that. Keep moving. Keep your goal out there in front of you.
Reality is never the way it seems to be.
Finding a spotless clean restroom on a cross-country drive is a spiritual experience.
Man’s only problem is the refusal to accept his own greatness with humility.
If you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, things will work out. Believe this.
You don’t have the slightest idea what you can do. So, why lack self-confidence?
You must see life the way it is, so you can laugh your way through it.
It’s the space between the notes that makes the piece.
What you believe is what you create.
You have to let go in order to get somewhere new. You have to make the cycle linear.
If it’s no fun, you’re not doing it right.