Better Happens

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." ~ralph waldo emerson

Ever wonder how to tweak your life to make it even better than it already is? No need to struggle - just allow "better" to happen.

There are those bumper stickers that say 'SHIT HAPPENS'? What that is all about, for me, is a twisted way of going with the flow and allowing the world to leave it's tire tracks all over your back. My bumper sticker or T-shirt reads 'BETTER HAPPENS'!

Both these silly statements are confirmations that without much effort the flow of things, how your life unfolds in this present moment, is inevitable. Both are true. What I find most interesting is...which one we find easiest to believe!

Don't we have a choice in the matter?

Tag You're It!

The Happiest Place on Earth - Selling Mindfulness

"Nothing could be finer than meditating in Carolina..."

Wouldn't it be great if meditation was as American as baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet? I wonder what kind of world we could create if meditation was demystified, re imagined or sold en mass like cereal or detergent?

Is it just me or are we seeing this already? MINDFULNESS jargon is all over the airwaves. Connecting your happiness and your satisfaction to 'the product' is the name of the game, isn't it? Let's take our cues from those who watch culture and see it shifting. Let's advance the tide even further and go right to the source! 

Check it out for yourself. I have substituted meditation as the product in these notable ads. Can you guess the original brands?

 
MEDITATION – Think Small.
MEDITATION – Think big.
MEDITATION – There is no substitute.
MEDITATION – Power, beauty and soul.
MEDITATION – Save Money. Live Better.
MEDITATION – I am what I am.
MEDITATION – Just do it.
MEDITATION – Impossible is Nothing
MEDITATION – Success. It’s a Mind Game.
MEDITATION – Solutions for a smart planet.
MEDITATION – Keeps going and going and going.
MEDITATION – Live in your world. Play in ours.
MEDITATION – Share moments. Share life.
MEDITATION – Your vision. Our future.
MEDITATION – When there is no tomorrow.
MEDITATION – The happiest place on earth.
MEDITATION – Pleasing people the world over.
MEDITATION – Connecting people.
MEDITATION – Make the most of now.
MEDITATION – Open Happiness.

Let me know when you see references to mindfulness or meditation in the guise of advertisements. Now that the seed has been planted, you may see these everywhere! And I won't leave you hanging. Just in case your interest is peaked here is a primer on how to do it from one of the best.

On Meditation by Norman Fischer

"This doesn’t work by thought and will. It doesn’t disregard thought and will, but thought and will are not the engine that makes this go. The engine that makes this go is taking a step back and trusting the body, trusting the breath, trusting the heart. We’re living our lives madly trying to hold onto everything, and it looks like it might work for awhile but in the end it always fails, and it never was working, and the way to be happy, the way to be loving, the way to be free is to really be willing to let go of everything on every occasion or at least to make that effort.

So the practice really works with sitting down, returning awareness to the body, returning awareness to the breath. It usually involves sitting up straight and opening up the body and lifting the body so that the breath can be unrestrained. And then returning the mind to the present moment of being alive, which is anchored in the breath, in the body.

Then, of course, other things happen. You have thoughts, you have feelings. You might have a pain, an ache, visions, memories, reflections. All these things arise, but instead of applying yourself to them and getting entangled in them, you just bear witness to it, let it go, come back to the breathing and the body, and what happens is you release a whole lot of stuff in yourself. A whole new process comes into being that would not have been there if you were always fixing and choosing and doing and making. This way you’re allowing something to take place within your heart."

Try it! You'll like it.

Tag You're it!

A Vivacious Cycle

"Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is.” ~mary anne radmacher

Sometimes I feel like I'm absurdly gifted with things nobody wants. Like, "She is really good at climbing trees and painting turtles" or "He can correctly guess the weight of your grocery bags - separately or all together!" Yet the awkward talents I possess, my own unique gifts, please me to no end.

Where does my gifted spirit best meet this corporeal world? How can I spend my limited time here on earth loving what I do and serving others as well?

My spirit meets this world at it's verges - on the edge of all boundaries where no man or women has been before. This is the spot creativity meets joy and beauty. This nexus is my place. This is where I belong.

If this is true - then how should I see those pernicious companions of mine called Sorrow and Tears? Their significance cannot be ignored or denied.

Tears are tools I am told. We use them to whittle away at the rough edges of things. They hone our sensitivities and help us reveal what is smooth, easy and true. If we pay attention, they can make clearer what is most important in our lives.

If this is true - then I am waging peace for unencumbered Beauty and Joy with ease and comfort knowing this spiritually vivacious cycle begets only more of the same. Perhaps this will be of service to someone in some way someday?

My accountability to you is lighting the candle and being the flame. I am alive in the moment. I am the placeholder for wonder.

Now... what's for breakfast?

Tag You're It!

Yearning: Other Words Other Ways

We all yearn for something.

Christine Valters Painter stirs my yearning to be one with my soul's heart. I say yes and yes and yes to living from the inside out!

"This is not a poem
but a rain-soaked day keeping me inside
with you and you loving me like a storm.

This is not a poem but a record of a hundred mornings
when the sun lifted above the stone hills outside my window.
This is time for boiling water poured into the chipped cup
holding elderflower, hawthorn, mugwort.

This is not a poem but me standing perfectly still on the edge of the lake
in autumn, watching a hundred starlings like prayer flags fluttering.
This is my face buried in May’s first pink peony,
petals just now parting, eyes closed, inhaling.

This is not a poem but the field beyond thought and judgment
and the ways I tear myself apart on too many fine days.
This is the place where clocks no longer matter unless
it is the dusty gold watch which belonged to my grandfather.

This is not a poem but me standing desolate in a parade
of white gravestones, when a single bluebird lands and sings.
This is the bunch of Gerbera daisies you handed to me one foggy
February afternoon, pale yellow like the long-forgotten sun.
This is the first bite of bread after too many hungry days,
This is my grandmother whispering her secrets to me after dusk.

This is not a poem, but me taking off my clothes
and stepping eagerly into the cold mid-December sea.
This is the silence between breaths and in that stillness
this is me saying yes and yes and yes." ~christine valters painter 

For what do you yearn? What can you use to stir IT up?

Tag You're It!

We are all Storymakers

"...our endless capacity for storymaking winds us through our lives…" In Blue

Yes, it is true. Whatever we say it is it is…

Creating as I go along my own tale unfolds with caring parents who knew not what they did. And a hateful sister who grew to be my best friend on this earth. And a delightful playmate who frolicked with me for a time and then went where I could not follow. He went to another world and I remained here heartbroken and raw.

But my rawness collected things. My wet weeping wounds made my heart larger and caused another kind of break to occur. I broke from a hard scared smallness to a new kind of self. A self that reflects and records and creates - creates light in the light of great support and with great joy. I am not sure how the story will end, but I know I am it's author.

The facts, in our storymaking are negotiable. The Truths are not. The Truths go on being true whether we believe them or not. The non-negotiables are not meant to stymie or cripple us. They are our grounding. They allow us to fly!

So keep telling your story as best you can. Let it unfold cautiously or chaotically or whimsically - it is your call! It is always your call. Just remember that facts are not always Truths.

Does this make sense?

Tag You're It!

Letting Go Requires Knowing

Here is the kernal of my sadness which, lately, I have been feeling - yet not really knowing…

"One of the difficulties of leaving a relationship is not so much, at the end, leaving the person themselves – because, by that time, you're ready to go; what's difficult is leaving the dreams that you shared together. And you know that somehow – no matter who you meet in your life in the future, and no matter what species of happiness you would share with them – you will never, ever share those particular dreams again, with that particular tonality and coloration. And so there's a lovely and powerful form of grief there that is the ultimate of giving away but making space for another form of reimagination."~david whyte

Now may I let go?

Tag I am It!

"When I Grew Out of…"

"When you feel peaceful joy, that is when you are near truth" ~rumi

I smiled when a friend used this phrase in an email recently,"When I grew out of…" It reminded me that, even after the age of 50, we do grow out of things. It let me know that whatever I am going through right now is important and okay and I will grow out of it. And from it I WILL GROW.

Let's do Spring this year ... consciously! Let's reflect on those things we have grown out of and those things we WILL grow out of! 

I have grown out of the sensibility of relying on others to do things for me. I am doing things for myself now! 

I have grown out of accepting denigrating thoughts about myself AS TRUE for I know they do not serve me in any way!

And I have grown out of judging. There is no possible way I could know the totality of me, much less the totality of you, so passing judgement seems absurd!

And I am currently growing out my old life. I can feel it receding fast like the sudden drawing back of sea water revealing 400 feet of shore line before a tidal wave slams into the coast. Sounds scary and violent and dramatic, I know, but it feels right and good and organic too. 

Birth is like that. 

So let's do Spring consciously this year! Let's reflect on those things we have grown out of and those things we WILL grow out of! And those things we are becoming!

I write these words out of Love and Compassion. This is what I have grown into. These are the things I am becoming! This is my place. I will allow the rest to unfold.

What compassionate words do you have for yourself?

Tag You're It!

Deep Inside the Darkness is Light

"As long as you do not know what you are experiencing inside, you are asleep in your life, even though you may think you are very awake." ~gary zukav 

Protection has got me thinking and feeling small. Rejection is fresh and overt as I begin to date again. It is harder than I thought it would be after losing my husband to illness almost 3 years ago.

I have done the work. I have opened myself up and have reaped many rewards - brand new friendships, awesome new experiences and a boat load of new emotions & feelings. But it seems there is still more work to do. Alas as I drill down even more deeply I am finding more growing... and more pain. 

There is this idea lurking deep down inside me that no one will ever love me again the way my husband loved me. The way we loved each other. And perhaps, I have to admit, I will never love again the way I loved him.

Does this mean all my efforts so far are useless? Or am I just arrived at yet another level for potential healing? 

My experience tells me I must allow these deep feelings a voice. I acknowledged these feelings as I watched them express themselves sideways as my own self-judgement and tears. 

Reflecting on these ideas, "my truths," makes way for new beliefs to take hold. I acknowledge "these truths" may not be so true so I can cleanse myself of limiting beliefs.

And most importantly, I acknowledge these "truths" so I may move forward with love and compassion for my predicament and towards new better ways that serve my deepest desire for amazement, freedom and joy this year!

Jack Kornfield says, "Wise spiritual practice requires that we actively address the pain and conflict of our life." 

Like a spring bulb I must want to grow to break through the mud and earth toward my newly blossoming self! Just did not figure it would hurt so much...again.

What light is hidden from you by the dark?

Tag, You're It!

APRIL'S FOOL - and Every Other Month for that Matter!

“The words you speak become the house you live in.” ~Hafiz

It happened again.

I felt really small again and all my accomplishments-to-date were negated by my judgemental mind. I cannot tell you how it started. All I know is one minute I was having a great day then I felt it melt away. It wasn't a crash and burn situation. It felt more like a slow insidious termite infestation that you don't know about until your foot breaks threw the kitchen floor.

As my firm foundation crumbled my confidence morphed into doubt and 2nd guessing. THINKING these things stopped my forward motion. It was then that my THOUGHTS lasso'd my EMOTIONS. And my emotions then took over and hog-tied me but good!

Eventually I recognized it. Then I fought it

Then, after shedding some tears, I placed all this energy fully and gently in the light of my own LOVE and COMPASSION.

…and then I was large and limitless once again!


What is your bounce back strategy?

Tag You're It!