Continuing our June Series, Lola shares about co-commitment versus co-dependence and how the Bodhi community is being called “into a remix” in her talk titled, “Remixing Our Relationships”.
Transcript
This “talk” is electronically transcribed. Please excuse any errors or omissions.
Lola: So we are in week three, yes? Week three of this series titled Transform. The invitation of this series is to look at the form that you find yourself in and consider that there’s actually a higher ground upon which you could arrive. That this experience is not all that there is. So the two words that have been coming up for me all week are the word remix and codependence. And you might be wondering how do those two words go together? I never know. When that comes through, I’m like, oh gosh, where is the spirit of life taking me? I just kept hearing remix. Okay, I got it, I got it. And then codependence. So I texted my friend the Twilight Tone yesterday and a friend of ours, Reginald Jolly, two extraordinary artists that come from the city of Chicago. And I said, “If you were teaching a college level course and you had to explain to your novice students what a remix is, what would you say?”
Lola: And they said, “It’s a renovation of sound. Taking something from its original source, adding your flavor to it and re-serving it, serving something back to the world as your self-expression.”
Lola: So if you were to remix something, it becomes something that was being carried forward into something that is through your lens of interpretation. So that’s what a remix is. You know, there’s a whole generation and now generations of people who don’t know Aretha Franklin’s music, for example, but came to know Aretha Franklin’s music through Kanye West because he sampled her, he remixed her. Do you understand what I’m saying? So this community is being called into a remix. Yeah? That which has been is being called to be remixed. Something new must come forward.
Lola: Now, how does that have to do with this idea called codependence? From the book Conscious Loving by Gay and Katie Hendricks, it said codependence is an agreement between people to stay locked in unconscious patterns. Co-commitment is an agreement to become more conscious. So we could remix the part of ourselves that’s been in codependent relationship into a new idea of co-commitment. Now I see for me how that exists here in community. I’m asking you to see how does that exist perhaps here for you in community? How does that exist for you in your relationships? How are you in a locked pattern of an unconscious state with another person, place or thing?
Lola: See, there’s a kind of collusion that occurs when we do that. See, if we can just stay sleepy, then we don’t have to deal with the real thing. The challenge is that becomes increasingly uncomfortable. Actually, you begin to diminish your life force energy. You and I are here to be vibrant and alive. If some aspect of your being is feeling tired and exhausted, that is an indicator that there’s something to explore there. Your body is a kinesthetic tool that will never fail you. It will never fail you so long as you develop a conscious relationship with you, with it.
Lola: So if you are at the effect of your body, my body is hurting. Oh, that’s not what I’m talking about. Your body is giving you an indication of something. Are you listening to it? Your relationships are in the realm of body. They’re giving you an indication of something. So where am I, where are you, in unconscious patterns? See, our entire existence is made up of patterns. This thing called evolution is the moving forward of patterns.
Lola: So Aretha Franklin puts out Spirit in the Dark. 45 years later, Kanye West comes along and he takes Spirit in the Dark and creates a new pattern called School Spirit. Patterns are always being created. What are the patterns that you’re creating? Do the patterns in your life serve you and support you or do they exhaust you and deplete you? That’s the invitation, just to explore that.
Lola: Ralph Waldo Emerson says it like this, “God will not have the work made manifest by cowards.” So if the word God trips you out, you can just, you know, he also said, Ralph Waldo Emerson also said, “God is love.” Those words are synonymous. So God will not have the work made manifest by cowards. Love will not have the work made manifest by cowards. What is a coward? One who is afraid, one who does not take action because they are afraid. So where in your life might you be experiencing unconscious patterns, which by virtue of them being unconscious must be rooted in fear? Where are unconscious patterns animated by this thing called fear? Where are they alive in your life?
Lola: Because here it says, “God will not have the work made manifest by cowards.” There is a body of work that is to come through you, but it won’t if you’re a coward. If you’re oriented by fear, if your cosmology of thought is undergirded by fear, the work that you are here to bring manifest to will not be amplified, will not be animated, because you have a false loyalty, as my good friend Tony Anderson would say, a false loyalty. You gotta get that. You have a false loyalty to fear.
Lola: So my practice right now, and really it’s an active practice, is to look at the places and spaces in my life where I am in an unconscious relationship with fear such that I am making choices from codependence. If I am selling myself out, that’s an area of codependence. If I’m willing to do something for you at my expense, it’s codependence. Map that onto your life. See, you can take care of you and give to others, but you’ll run out of steam if you do it from codependence. If you do it from co-commitment, where all of a sudden we begin to relate to one another as allies, wow, what could be possible? That’s a whole different game.
Lola: So my intention is to invite you into a practice of where when discomfort arises, consider it an invitation for something new to emerge. See, if you are moved by fear, then discomfort will arise and you won’t see it as being for you. If you are rooted in a consciousness of fear, discomfort will arise and it will exist as if something is happening to you. Imagine the discomfort is what is required for your next evolution. I know that to be true for me. It doesn’t mean I like it, by the way. I’m not suggesting you have to like it, but to resist it is to create suffering.
Lola: I’d love for us to pay attention to the ways that our patterns are undergirded by scarcity and obligation. So one of the things that’s happening at Bodhi right now, which I would love to accelerate, but I’m surrendered to this practice, is really asking who do we want to be and what do we want to do? And we’re asking that first and foremost at a staff level and at a board level. Because as you know, we’re moving out of this space July 31st. Our last Sunday here is July 28th and we do not know what is next. Now, if I want to be in a codependent relationship with this community and this organization, I would swiftly just keep doing what we’ve already done because then we don’t have to feel the experience and the discomfort of not knowing. Okay, just find a theater. Let’s just find a theater very quickly and get us in there because we know the people like Sundays when they want. When you want it, all right? But if the staff who creates a lot of energy for something like this is not wholly aligned with that, it’s a false loyalty.
Lola: Now, if you get stuck in the content of what I’m sharing, you won’t be simultaneously mapping this onto your life. I’m giving you an example. I’m asking you to map this onto your life. So if the seven staff people that are in a regular conversation around this idea of co-commitment or a whole body yes, what would we create? If the board is committed to creating an experience of full and total alignment, what would we create? You understand that’s a very different way of operating. That’s called operating from the inside out as opposed to operating from the outside in. Okay, we got these bills to pay. What do we got to do? Oh Gosh, the kids have to be at school at at nine. What do we have to do to back into that? It’s like this constant survival and triage.
Lola: It is actually not the place or space or the resonance or the vibration that enables you to rise out of scarcity consciousness, rise out of lack and limitation, rise out of survival. See, this place exists to transform all the paradigms and patterns that no longer serve humanity. But if we’re not in an act of practice, we can fall asleep and keep doing what we’ve always done. Whether that works or not. Hence the 3,500 churches that close every year. Yeah?
Lola: So Gay and Katie Hendricks go on to say, “Codependence is an unconscious conspiracy between two or more people to limit each other’s potential.” The basic contract is if I allow you to sleepwalk through life, you won’t wake me up either. So begin to bring your awareness to the relationships where you collude with one another to stay asleep because better than disrupting things. “Codependence is an unconscious conspiracy between two or more people to limit each other’s potential.”
Lola: Over the last few weeks, as I’ve been talking with people about the future of this organization, the vast majority of the conversation is occurring inside of what we already know. It’s not inside of the potentiality of the thing. It’s inside of a context that we already know and that makes sense. You create within the confines of safety. We all do that, but would you be willing to consider that when you and I create within the confines of safety, we’re actually thwarting our capacity of who and what we’re here to be.
Lola: So I’ve spoken before about this way of walking in this dimension of reality as if you’re in a perpetual treasure hunt. Ooh, I wonder what could be here, what could be here? And there are two vibrations to do that from speaking in binary terms. If you’re familiar with the book, I think, it’s a Dr. Seuss book called Where is My Mother, the little bird leaves the nest. The little bird is searching for its mother and it walks up to the pig and it says, “Are you my mother?” There must be something better out here is what the bird is thinking. This nest is not satisfying enough. I want something more. The little bird goes up to the tractor, “Are you my mother?” Always searching outside of itself for satisfaction. It goes through many rounds of this and realizes, “I think I need to make my way back to my nest and find my security, approval and control, which is always within me. It’s not out here.”
Lola: So that’s one kind of searching. That’s not what I’m talking about. So you could look and see when I’m on a treasure hunt of life, am I coming from a fear based orientation or am I coming from a curiosity, a wonder an aliveness? For me, I vacillate in this all the time. Unfortunately, it is not an experience of once you have it you got it. It is a practice. It is a constant practice.
Lola: So we are in a remix right now and I’m asking you if you would go through this remix with co-commitment instead of codependence. Now it’s sort of a challenging request because the vast majority of human beings are walking on the planet in codependent relationship. So I’m asking you to do something that is outside of the normal pattern of behavior. Would you be willing to hold a high idea for yourself, first and foremost, and then for this community that all of life is an unfolding, beautiful, glorious demonstration? I wonder what this will look like. Our intention is to not have a Sunday experience. After July 28th, we’re not sure when or what will happen thereafter. We will have an experience. We don’t know what or where or when it will be. And, again, if we create out of fear, we’ll run to solution and that may not be the highest and best idea. Does that make sense?
Lola: So what we know for sure is that by October 1st we’ll know something. That’s what we’re committed to. By October 1st, something will be known and revealed. And you might be saying to yourself, “Why do you have to wait till October 1st if you don’t know what it is anyway. Why don’t you just say August 1st?” And what’s occurring over here on planet Lola is I need more quiet. I don’t want to create from a reactivity and we haven’t gotten to that place of quiet yet. I understand that is deeply unsettling and I know and trust that if you have a desire to co-create this next iteration, beautiful. And if not, it’s okay.
Lola: There are wonderful communities like City Side, like Unity in Chicago, like Christ Universal Temple. This place is not going to look like it has, though, for a variety of reasons. I have been in a codependent relationship with this place where a lot of my activity has been like shucking and jiving. Hey! Woo! Yeah! Let’s do it! Come on you want to do it too!
Lola: It’s exhausting. I will tell you it’s exhausting. You have no idea what it takes for this place to exist the way you enjoy it. We have not done a good enough job articulating that and we have over delivered and it’s not a healthy relationship. You know, I shared this I think if not on a Sunday morning, but in a class I had Gaylen McDonnell do an afternoon with Jim Deathmer’s organization, the Conscious Leadership Group, and the context for that exploration is am I living in a state that’s open and curious or am I living in a closed and defensive state? Am I living in a drama pattern, a victim/villain/hero or am I living in a curious state of creator/coach/challenger? Those are the distinctions. Galen walked out of there and he said, “I think the entire church paradigm is created below the line in a drama pattern of victim, villain and hero.”
Lola: See, the basis of this place is that we are each empowered beings. We each have agency, but if we keep overfunctioning, there’s sort of an implicit subtext that you need that. So we’re relating to you as somehow wounded and something that needs to be saved. Does that make sense? I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to do that. I really know that it may be a smaller gathering of human beings that are co-committed, but where two or more are gathered, that’s all I need. And if I work with a few people that are laser focused and have an abundance consciousness, I know what’s possible. That’s what I’m interested in.
Lola: So they go on to say power belongs to the people who take responsibility. It flows to those who claim creation. There is no power in victim-hood. Power belongs to the people who take responsibility. How might we take responsibility? I mean in consciousness, because the tempting thing to do would be to run up afterwards and say, “I have this skill. I have that skill.” That’s overwhelming. But get clear in your soul, in your subconscious mind, what are you willing to take responsibility for in your life? Forget Bodhi, just in your life. If you shift into a relationship that is around commitment and not codependence, you are in a creator consciousness. Victim-hood will take you out every time.
Lola: So my intention for this morning’s inquiry is titled Remix Our Relationships. Where in any of our relationships do we need to remix? Where are we in drama patterns of collusion? Remember the idea if I stay asleep and then I don’t call you out for being asleep, then we can just stay asleep together. It’s like you know the sleepy parts of yourself that you don’t really want to have to do the work around and wake up around. You know which friends to call, do you not? You know what they’re going to say before they even say it. That’s why you called them. You are looking for a pattern of collusion. If you wanted something that was uncomfortable, you would probably call the person that’s not in a codependent relationship with you.
Lola: I had an experience with someone this week and they said to me, “I am burnt out.”
Lola: I said, “Don’t bring that here. That is such nonsense. Please don’t bring that here.”
Lola: That is the ultimate victim move. Something’s happening to me. Ah, as opposed to, I’m noticing the experience of tiredness in my body. I’d like to take a few days and just restore myself. Do you feel a difference in vibration there? So I did like a little diatribe on that in that moment, which I’m sure you can appreciate how well that may have been received. But they got it. And it was funny because four days later, almost out of my mouth, I said, “I am burned out.” And because of my practice that had been proceeded by that moment for days, I literally caught up myself. I said, “Don’t you dare say those words. That is not the truth.”
Lola: So my point is to be being an active practice to have partners that support you in your awakening. I’m so grateful for the incredible staff that is this place. Really. If you were to watch Joan Colletto, Linda Jackson, Tony Anderson, Nick Cartwright, Trey Royal, Amira Tatum, Abby Sutkiss, Jay Ratio. Have I forgotten any core team member? Margarita Roman. If you were to witness that body of human beings asking all of the most uncomfortable questions imaginable, what if we were to create this next iteration of life? Map this onto your life, free of any and all sacred cows.
Lola: Nothing is sacred that can’t be cut off and recreated. You know the scripture to put new wine in old wineskins. What happens? Sours. Something is emerging in the consciousness of Bodhi. Something new is forthcoming. We’re interested in co-committed relationships where we call one another forward into the highest idea of self. So for those of you who have an interest in playing that game, the seemingly uncomfortable game with far greater longterm benefits, I welcome you. All right? And please, if you are in a game of co-commitment with this place, hold it high during this time. Hold a high idea of who and what this place is here to be. If you are in a codependent relationship with this place, see a practitioner, they will help you and most of your people in your life will be grateful too. Yeah? All right. Thank you. Happy Sunday.
