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?

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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.

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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?

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Becoming Wide and Open

"Your beliefs become your thoughts 

Your thoughts become your words
Your words become your actions
Your actions become your habits
Your habits become your character
Your character becomes your destiny"

~mohandas ghandi

There is an energy that is spoiling my peace. It crackles and shifts the silence within me. And deep down and all through everything I know - I know this energy is good.

Even though I feel nauseated by its unusual character and unfamiliar tones. Even though I know nothing about what is to come. Even though I feel afraid...I am willing to endure the uncertainty of cascading next events because deep down and all through everything I know - I know this energy is good.

I am opening to the changes of Spring.

I am open to the casting off of my cocoon. 

I am open to the emerging of my new me. 

I am open to the merging of the flows - the flow of my soul's river with the flow of the rhythms of the world. 

I am open to the merging of the flows because I know deep down and all through everything I feel - this merging is good.  

I am wide open.

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Good Grief

“You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation... and that it is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else." ~hermann hesse

Grief has sculpted me over these last 2 1/2 years. It has been my permission slip, my way in and out and through things. Lately though I have been taking note of the many moments I am "clean & sober" feeling good and in life's pocket again, without feelings of grief.

Having become so accustomed to feeling deeply pangs of deep sorrow, this now is strange. Comforting Grief connects me with he who is lost. But more so even, Grief has introduced me to my viscera - my deep feeling self. And I like being connected like that! 

Giving up Grief may actually be like quitting a substance that I have come to know and been most seductively soothed by. I am suddenly aware that letting go may be a challenge.

Stepping out from under this big black umbrella seems to be what is called for right now. I really can't waste another moment. I must become a responsible veteran of these "my griefy wars!" I want to own my own present experiences - taking on the world directly without the veil of Grief, without an excuse...but not without a net! 

No need to be a daredevil. 

Can I stay connected without Grief? Is there a practice 
i can put into action that will slide elegantly into grief's place?

So I am on the hunt to identify that thing that will be my entry point into the deepest parts of myself. I will let you know when I have found it! I think I know what it is already...and if you have been following me for a bit you may know too! 

How do you keep connected?

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Pandora

Hey Pandora...Why not look inside?

"Endowed by the gods with every attribute of beauty and goodness, Pandora was the first woman on earth. Happy the man given her as wife! Her dowry from the gods included a box, which she was warned never to open. No one but the gods knew what was hidden inside. Why, oh why could she not open the box? Finally overcome by her curiosity, she opened the mysterious box…from which flew innumerable plagues for the body and sorrows for the mind. Terrified, she rushed to shut the box, but could do nothing to stop or retrieve the evils unleashed. Only hope, the one good thing among all the evils the box had contained, remained to comfort humanity in its misfortunes." 

Isn't it her innocence, not her curiosity the gods are protecting her from? 

What if Pandora had chosen to never open the box? Do we imagine this type of behavior admirable? Will this choice really alleviate the experience of pain/suffering in the world? Perhaps an unwillingness to look inside Pandora's box can be seen as a fear-filled unwillingness to grow and evolve? 

The power of conscious and deliberate choice is central to the myth of Pandora and her box.  

Understanding life is challenging and then still making a conscious choice to open the box completely changes our perception of all it contains!

"Our perceptions, our senses, our skin, our illness and health, our pain and suffering are precious doorways to the sacredness of our world. The dichotomies of imagination and rationalization, intuition and intellect, heart and mind, heaven and earth, feminine and masculine need to be viewed less as polarities than as partners in a delicate dance of balance and harmony. Only by embracing all parts of ourselves are we able to know the wholeness of the world and our inherent inseparability and interdependence with it. Art is spiritual. Art is about our world, our sacred world, inside and out, and our world is alive. Each breath is a new breath, a fresh breath, totally awake and intimate before being encumbered with the weight of conceptualization, labeling, and judging." ~ mini frailly-hansen 

Pandora's box is an invitation to peek, then explore, then celebrate what is inside - consciously accepting the inevitable "plagues and sorrows' of life as, not evil, but gracious good lessons to be confronted, absorbed and overcome.

Have you something you have been unwilling to see? 

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Clarity: A Master Class

"What you are, and who you are should provide greater clarity about where you have been and where you are headed. Although one distinguishes spiritual from physical nature, the ultimate unification of the two is the consequence of the struggle for internal, external and eternal – peace." ~t.f. hodge

Clarity really messes up everything I already know to be true! Is it bad when you are shown the way and you just keep walking -  like it never happened? Clarity looms close. I can feel it. It is lurking in the shadows waiting for me to know some more damn Truth.

30 years ago I was living a life that came spontaneously like waves - ahhh youth!  My conscious efforts were spent writing and performing comedy and assisting the universe in finding me a mate. Almost 23 years ago I married Mike. 2 1/2 years ago Mike died.

Since then I have been actively rebuilding my life. It is a strange and hard task which requires much energy. Clarity has asked me to allow every feeling that comes up to be felt then flushed through my delicate system. OK… so it is an intensely robust system I have… but it hurts bunches just the same.

Well - I did it. And I did it well! Circumstances have been unfolding just fine with joy, grace and ease. But lately, this last week, I am crying a lot. I know this is Clarity stalking me again!

Yep - I am shedding what is left of my past life with Mike. I am getting the message I cannot go any farther without doing this. It seems these tears come from an extremely vast reservoir the size of which I will NEVER comprehend.

I thought I had let go already. I guess letting go in your thoughts and deeds is just not the same as letting go in the deepest part of your heart - that thing that is just now cracking wide open - again. 

So I find myself accepting - again - this weepy invitation to feel! And it hurts. But I know, from this, I will grow. 

Damn you, Clarity!

How do you process pain?

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How To Unfold

“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” ~rumi

How do I unfold? Until I am able to live in the dream for my highest self, I am borrowing my Soul's heart to assist me in making decisions. To do this I am meditating more regularly, which helps me to focus. 

Focus on what you ask?

I am focusing on: the Mist that is obscuring things, the Questions I need answered, the things I demand Manifest in my life, the feeling of Gratitude I have for all that is manifested and Unconditional Trust that all is well just as it is today! 

Borrowing my Soul's heart helps me get to where I want to be. Or a better way to express it - it helps me see I am exactly where I am supposed to be, right here right now!

Ohm...

What TRICK do you use to get here?

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A Teaching Creme Brûlée

“I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon.”
― Charlotte Brontë

I am no innocent bystander. Everything I do, say, think and believe affects my life. I had a teaching creme brûlée last nite. I knew it was OK to order it, but I did not pay enough attention to the description on the menu. It read, "enough for 2 or 3 people." So when the oval tart dish arrived - it was the size of a clown shoe - we were all very surprised. It was then I had a choice and I did the right thing. I ate just the right amount and had the rest wrapped up to take home. (I did offer to share it with my friends, but they so rightly would have none of it. I hang with very enlightened people!)

But I was again tested at home as I took the pudding from it's shiney folded black paper box to place it in a more durable container. "Gee - that is not as much as I thought," I thought. "Gee - that spoon tastes good. Ya know - I think the burnt sugar may dissolve before I get to it again tomorrow. Perhaps I should finish it tonite?"

Don don don donnnnnnn! Oblivious to the forbodding Beetoven-ish chords playing over me and the dish and the spoon, I carried my doom with me up the stairs to my bedroom. Yes - it was eaten. Yes - there was a belly ache. And yes - I had totally disregarded all my inner wisdom. 

I am no innocent bystander here. I created all of it just like I am creating this message to myself today, as a reminder. I am not powerless. I am NEVER powerless. All the choices I make bend my life forward!

Knowing this Truth I move onward being more aware in the moment of every single MOMENT!

What thing needs more of your attention today?

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Finding your G-spot

"If you can sit quietly after difficult news (even if in financial downturns you remain perfectly calm)... If you can see your neighbors travel to fantastic places without a twinge of jealously... If you can happily eat whatever is on your plate, or fall asleep after a day of running around without a drink or a pill... If you always find contentment just where you are... You are probably a dog." ~jack kornfield

We all have ideas of what it means to be spiritual. For me it is about the exquisite equanimity of this life. Creating balance so nothing throws me too far a field is a practice. And because I am human I need the practice. When I experience one of life's many challenges I have come to know I can change things myself and I do NOT need an EXTERNAL source to do the job. In this lies power. 

I love the life I am leading and when things get a little hairy or a bit off balance I love that I can easily turn things around by actively focusing my energy on all the abundance that surrounds me, all the love that is shared with me and all the love I am able to share with others. In a word - I am GRATEFUL! 

This is my G-spot. 

This provocative phrasing is deliberately chosen to get your attention. I want you to know this is serious business - the practice of moving actual energy within and around your own physical space. It is not just platitudinous gibber jabber. Nor, by the way, is it a heavy lift.

By regularly holding conscious thoughts that reveal joy, love and grace things do shift, energies do up level and experiences do become transformed.

And this is the place that feels real good to me, the place I cultivate within myself and the place from which I enjoy intimately sharing my life with others. 

Where is your energy focused? 

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Getting Back to My Life

"A low point in life is sometimes a turning point. but you have to turn"  ~ thomas moore, author of Care of the Soul 

In a difficult moment I found myself saying aloud, "I can't wait to get back to my life!" And seconds later I recognized that this moment, every part and parcel of it, was my life. So I took a deep breath and thought to myself - just go with the flow.

Now I find myself thinking I am relinquishing too much control and must put order back into my life. I must invest in my own intentions. I am masterful and must take hold of the reins and choose a path!

Then I say aloud, "How do I do this exactly?"

Taking charge suggests taking action to me. Is this always the case you think?

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Fallen

Fallen

I am wounded 

I am weak 

I am not alone.

Scooped up

Made warm and welcome

Earth dug deep with candles lit

Your love nourishes me.

Gracious nestling

In your family's home, 

your heart, your lives, your land.

Just now this way 

I am safe 

I can crow 

I am made stronger 

in your light.

Fly away fly away 

I am going to fly away

Destined to glide high

To soar and to make my own nest.

On the bits of love 

you placed in me.

You give my wings their wind.

~ Dedicated to all the Chapmans who keep me, nourish me and give me wings.

Who does this for you?

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Hurdles - Present and Past

I have a thirsty fish in me
that can never find enough 
of what it's thirsty for!
~ Rumi

This was my father. 

He passed away 5 days ago. He was 75 and I loved him very much and I know he loved me.

And even though I have 2 years experience in the grief department and because I have this much experience in the grief department I am aware this means almost nothing. 

Grieving is a slippery character that creeps up unexpectedly and in a surprisingly different number of ways! So part of me is OK, part of me is on guard and cautious, part of me is angry at the timing and part of me hurts. And in this order... I think.

Unlike with my husband Michael's death, with whom I had a much more intimate relationship, my father's passing feels OK-er. We lived hundreds of miles apart for the majority of my life and I have not depended on him for anything since I was a teen. There was this distance both geographically and emotionally so I admit I might not be having strong feelings at the moment. But I suspect there will be 'karmic' repercussions that must be felt.

And unlike Michael, my father's death is more in keeping with natural expectations. He lead a life full of invention and inspiration and that life in him had begun to wane. For this reason I feel his soul may actually be in a good - or perhaps even a better place - with more flexibility and possibilities for growth. I am assuming our souls are continually learning.

Just working on the timing of this thing in regards to my own healing. I had just gotten back in the saddle, was on the horse and was learning how to trot. And while trotting I could SEE myself cantering and I was joyously anticipating some galloping soon!

Then this - a new hurdle - so I must readjust.

Now I am working on accepting what is and allowing it to unfold as it must. Its gonna do it anyway. I just have to get comfortable, hang on to the reins and go for it. 

Go up and over
     and thus continue forward 
          no matter what
     on this
my new path.

I just love a good metaphor - don't you?

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Words as Tools

I think words are tools by which we fashion a life. What other purpose could there be?

Harmony 

by Madeline Williams

"I believe in Divine Harmony and nothing else. This means I have no belief in problems. No condition, situation or frustration can upset me, confuse me or destroy my equilibrium.

I do not believe there is any power in evil, therefore it cannot have any recognition from me. Absence of prosperity, love, self-expression or health is not evil for there is no evil. When any of these great necessities to my happiness appear to be absent from my life the cause is the absence of their equivalent in my mind. I now declare that these verities eternally abide in my consciousness.

Just as the truth about a problem in mathematics is its solution, the truth about any problem which confronts me is its solution now--not next week or next year, but now.

The truth about anything is all there is of that thing, and that is always good. 

Divine Harmony is now at work in my life and affairs because I believe in Divine Harmony and nothing else."

What words are in your tool box?

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What Is is OK

Work in Progress

Glimpses of letting go

Glimpses of holding on

And the living in between

Galloping forward 

I am a work in progress 

Rocking back and forth this way

Steadiness seems out of the question right now

But as sure as the letting go and the holding on and the in between happen over and over again

I will survive

I will thrive

I am alive

Hum 

Paying Attention

A Centipede was happy quite 

until a frog in jest said,

"Pray which leg comes after which?"

This raised his doubts to such a pitch,

He lay bewildered in a ditch

Considering how to run.

~ Author Unknown

Taking yet another e-course with Thomas Moore, author of "Care of the Soul", we are studying The Holy Fool: Finding Spiritual Liberation in Foolishness and Humor. This is right up my alley some would say. Today's discussion is on 'The Fool as Inner Guide.'

Within this lesson is the idea of being NOBODY. Sounds strange and perhaps awful to some. The problem with adversity is that it is very hard to appreciate it in the moment. 

Being nobody can be very liberating. It can allow us to be unencumbered by societies' (and our own) expectations. Being nobody breaks open the cask of possibilities and, while frightening, is also very exciting.

Emily Dickenson's poem, "I am nobody" holds in high esteem this idea and suggests that 'if I am nobody than perhaps so are you.'

"I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Are you - Nobody - too?

Then there's a pair of us!

Don't tell! they'd advertise - you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!

How public - like a Frog - 

To tell one's name - the livelong June - 

To an admiring Bog!"

But I have always found it very important to recognize everyone I meet as important and somebody. Those who wear the costume of stranger - wait staff, clerks, and fellow classmates - are not NOBODY, but some bodies vibrating next to me. They are to be heard and valued. Sometimes, if I am not paying attention to my life I do not recognize their value in the moment. But when I take time to reflect on the day and on all the interactions I have had - this idea is reinforced 100%.

How can both these ideas - being nobody and being somebody - exist simultaneously? Being here - in this  paradoxical space - is a vast and benevolent experience. 

Don't think about it too long lest you end up capsized in a ditch unable to run. Just vibrate yourself on toward your next task at hand and remember with Love you are nobody and so am I!

Are you paying attention to your life?

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My Ego - Not Yours! Mine. Mine. Mine.

I sent my ego to the "timeout chair" this morning. I am sitting here smiling imagining this silly and sweet happenstance.

What would my ego look like if I could see it? Is it a smaller version of myself? It seems to be an innocent who does not know any better, but is not me as a child. It is a part of who I am right now, the part that has limited vision and reflexively stomps or rejoices. 

I sent my ego to the timeout chair this morning not to be judged and sentenced. I am showing it the way forward toward a new sensibility because it is part of me that deserves to be loved and understood. I am rerouting it toward a more all encompassing nature beyond it's usual pattern of instantaneous and emotive "me-me-me-ness."

In order to reach for my best self, the person I am meant to be, I am sweetly aware of my lovely and energetic ego self that requires guidance... from me or from some kind of higher self. That is why the moment I recognized it needed to become recumbent and docile I sent my ego to the timeout chair to "think about what it had done"

For this awareness I am grateful. 

"OK, do you know why I had you sit there a while? Yes - that's right, you can get up now. I love you very much. Now go and play."

Have you a part of yourself that needs more guidance?

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