Don't Solve Your Problems

Alter your Relationship to Them

Jan 08, 2025

Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.

—Albert Schweitzer

With love and profound appreciation, I give my deepest thanks to you.

I appreciate our easy companionship and the privilege of journeying through life together, as we welcome each other into 2025.

May 2025 present us with many opportunities to awaken our hearts, transform our lives, and rekindle the light of others. Obstacles and problems bring surprising opportunities. I wrote this, our first blog for 2025, on behalf of empowering you to turn your breakdowns into breakthroughs.

I’m aware this is a longer Blog than usual. I promise you: it’ll be worth your time; if you take the time to let it in and contribute to you.

Oh, shit!” I said to myself. My front wheels hit a curb hard as I was driving home in the dark. In the rain. From a friend’s house. A week before Christmas, last month.

The rain was a snare drum pelting on the roof of my car. I couldn’t see very well, and I knew it. I was looking forward to getting home to my delightfully warm fire in the living room.

And then I hit the curb.

There was no place to immediately turn off as I was immediately entering a bridge across the Agate Passage. As the car crept along, the steering wheel became more difficult to maneuver. The grating noises from underneath the car increased in volume as I continued to drive across the bridge.

A River of Fear was flowing through my body.

I got to a place of safety as soon as I could, and called my husband first, still in fear, letting him know what happened. I “hoped” he would come out in the driving rain to hang out with me, or pick me up and take me home by our roaring fire, or call AAA for me. He did none of those things. He simply assured me I could handle it on my own. I said, “Okay,” and leaned into his coaching. I COULD handle it on my own! That, in itself, was a declaration, for I had no evidence from the past that I would be able to. He always handled these kinds of things.

I first called AAA, and began to calm myself as the kind lady told me I probably had a flat, did not need to be towed, and needed to stay by the car for the man to come.

I waited in the pelting rain for my hero to come and change my tire. I watched the blue dot on my phone slowly creep toward where my car was located on the map, listening to the rain on the car's roof, practicing Patience and Presence, two distinctions I have been cultivating this year. A half-hour later, I stood holding a flashlight in the rain while the man changed the tire. The car is now in the shop, which had been closed these two weeks of Christmas/New Year.

I did it myself, and that was entirely new, and a breakthrough! Wow!

Why, you may ask, am I starting this year’s postings with that story?

In my commitment and passion for contributing to you through this Substack, it seems appropriate to start by diving into our relationship with problems. Shifting our relationship to problems from problems being problematic to problems being something more enlivening, more Life-Giving, can surely contribute to the spiritual “arrows in our quiver” as we journey through life. Living life with an open, awakened heart and nourished soul, discovering as we go, allows life to be our teacher.

The year 2025 is likely to present a feast of problems. May this offering from me strengthen your inner resolve to resolve them.

We have problems all the time—obstacles, breakdowns, sometimes little, sometimes big, events that surprise us when they thwart our expectations or intentions. Then we say those two words: “Oh, s.. t.”

If you think of one of them you had recently and think back to what you said to yourself the moment you realized you had a breakdown on your hands, you’ll see you probably said the same thing I said to myself when I felt the bump of the car as the wheels rolled over the curb.

That first moment of automatic reaction reveals a lot about us: First, we say those two words or some version of them. Then, the reactive, survival–based fight–or–flight mechanism kicks in, and we get worried, anxious, angry, or filled with fear. Often, we get into blaming and becoming the victim.

What does this reveal? It reveals the home in which we hold our problems. It is the home of “There Shouldn’t Be Any.” While problems or breakdowns (those sudden, unexpected occurrences) do occur, they shouldn’t.

“Good parents,” we think, “don’t have problems; good leaders don’t have problems; good don’t have problems; good friends don’t have problems; good people don’t have problems.”

So if I have problems, I’m. not a good person. There’s something wrong with me, or with it, or with them!

So, we think the best way to deal with them is to eliminate them, avoid dealing with them, and step over them. And, have you noticed? The more we resist them, the more they resist us.

I once took an Aikido course, in which I learned to let the energy of the other’s blow go past me, rather than fight it. It’s the fight, the resistance, that causes the problem to persist. It’s the acceptance, the surrender, that allows for peace.

So: “what allows us to move from resistance to acceptance?” is the question.

The answers lie in something deeper than what lives on the surface. The answer lives in a shift in the inner state. It lives in —

Noticing it was the expectation that was the source of the problem. (I expected to get home to a nice warm fire.)

Noticing the form of your resistance (fear), and letting go of your resistance, accepting, or surrendering to what is
Having a background place to stand that gives you easy access to doing just that. “I am capable, able, of handling this on my own.”

May I suggest that the problem is not that there are problems?

The problem is in our relationship to problems. So, let’s consider a more empowering way to deal with the problems, breakdowns, and obstacles in our lives so that when our proverbial right front tire hits a curb, we can move into the Land of Possibility rather than stay stuck.

So here is a question I invite you to address:

What are problems an opportunity for?

Huh? You might say?

Yes. What are problems an opportunity for?

That’s a jarring question because problems and opportunities don’t generally live together like marriage partners. Only in China do they. Did you know that the Chinese ideogram for “crisis” is the same as the ideogram for “opportunity?”

Interesting, no?

The proverb accompanying that ideogram is “A crisis is an opportunity riding a dangerous wind.”

This is a representation of Ganesha.

Ganesha is a highly referred revered Hindu God, who is the bringer of obstacles to us. Yes, he is the provider (and the remover) of obstacles – and the obstacle is removed once you’ve received the wisdom from moving through the life that the obstacle gives to you. So Ganesha is a teacher. Ganesha, the provider of obstacles, is one of life’s greatest teachers.

I have many representations of Ganesha in my home, as my Guru’s ashram, whom I met when I was 29, Swami Muktananda, had an ashram in India. The name of the village is Ganeshpuri. And there are statutes of Ganesha everywhere, temples to him everywhere.

Here are some of those other statues and representations that live in our home, from our travels.

I consider breakdowns as gifts from Ganesha. When I am confronted with one and remember what I stand for—that breakdowns are opportunities for transformations that lead to breakthroughs—I give myself another world to dance in.

I refresh a story I told in a November blog, a story of the biggest breakdown of my life.

“Do not worry. She’ll be able to return to herself,” my husband, who was my course logistics manager, said to the participants in my course one day in February 2003 when I couldn’t speak. I had lost my speech function—not just a word but the whole context of what I was talking about. I did come back about two miles later.

The next week, I found I had a large tumor in the frontal lobe of my brain. It was called a meningioma.

Four different brain surgeons had told me that week that the surgery was going to be quite complex and difficult (“not a walk in the park” were the words of the first surgeon I consulted), and not only that, I would for sure lose my taste and smell. I spent that week deep in fear.

On the last day of that week, in an appointment with my acupuncturist, a wise woman who was focused on healing, it all turned around. She listened to me deeply, and after I finished telling her the story of that week's event, she stopped for a long time.

When she spoke, she said, “You know? Bodies have an intuitive wisdom. For your journey right now, this must be exactly what you need.”

The moment she said those words, my world shifted.

My body's full resonance was in tune with her words. “Ah, yes,” I remembered. I stand for: Breakdowns are an opportunity for learning, evolving, and waking up.

Breakdowns are a wake-up call, a way to connect more deeply with what is resourceful and Life-Giving.

Instantly, my fear left me. And I was calm. And then she said, “And you’ll find that right surgeon.” And I stood for that, and I did. And the surgery was successful. And I did not lose my taste and smell. I called that passage “My Great Medical Adventure,” and the adventure itself, including the six-month recovery period, became an extraordinary opportunity, in which I created a whole new level of Originality and Creativity in my Work.

I return to the question I am inviting you to address: “What do you say breakdowns are an opportunity in your life?”

Here’s an old English Proverb: “A smooth sea never a skillful mariner made.”

I like that one so much that I even designed the logo for my business, Gale Leadership Development, as a sailboat.

“All of life comes to us as a gift,” teaches Brother David Steindl-Rast, our Teacher for bringing the spirit of Gratefulness to our lives.

“Every problem contains the seeds of opportunity,” Deepak Chopra tells us, in Seven Spiritual Laws of Success.

“All problems,” he says, “contain the seeds of opportunity, and this awareness allows you to take the moment and transform it to a better situation or thing.

Once you do this, every so-called upsetting situation will become an opportunity for the creation of something new and beautiful, and every so-called tormentor or tyrant will become your teacher. Reality is an interpretation. And if you choose to interpret reality in this way, you will have many teachers around you and many opportunities to evolve.”

So, now it’s your turn. What is the most powerful place you can create or stand in to have a life-giving relationship with obstacles and breakdowns that lives for you like a Live-Giving, Spirit-Soaring presence as you walk your path through life?

What do you say breakdowns are an opportunity for?

Take some time with this; don’t rush. Once you have completed this and have given yourself a powerful relationship with breakdowns, one that initiates surrender and peace rather than fear and resistance/avoidance, you’ll have created a doorway through which you can walk which opens up new possibilities.

In the meantime, may your powerful stand create new openings in your life for being a space for a breakthrough. May you find yourself deeply aligned with Source in a powerful way.

May you be a channel for letting go of Control and allowing extraordinary opportunities to manifest through you.

What do you stand for regarding breakdowns? If you would like to share, with us, please do.

Awakening Heart

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