The Cycle of Knowing and Not Knowing

Summer has ended. 

Fall has just begun. 

Hurdling toward shortening daylight and the contraction of things 

today I am reminiscing about

contemplation.

NOW 

is a good time to plant.

Hibernating, then germinating in the darkness of uncertainty

with time and patience thoughts break open

up

through 

thawing grounds. 

Once their time has come there will be no stopping them. 

Of this I am certain.

Planning ahead in the NOW. Is there really such a thing?

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Making Use of Randomness

"What you seek is seeking you." ~rumi

When I became aware of Leonard Mlodinow's book The Fragility of Grand Discoveries, which makes the case for randomness' role in science, it started me thinking. Books will do that! I wondered about making use of randomness in this teeny-tiny-little experiment called my life and what discoveries might be laying in wait for little 'ol me?

If random occurrences happen and if I have an over arching intention for my life, can I then make use of randomness while thriving in the ordinariness of my everyday?

Can I declare my life will be lived in JOY and with EASE and make it stick by living simply and allowing my current daily schedule a little room to stretch and breath between regular tasks of that living?

Can I be so bold as to engage in - say a 10 minute exercise - imagining - say twice daily - what that life would look and feel like? And then can I just let it go? And in letting it go can I then give up striving to achieve it?

Would this experiment in creating a mental equivalent of my best possible life make more familiar to me what those things felt like so that when they randomly occurred I would then be more apt to recognize them?

And upon recognizing them - my visions turned in to my actual experience - might this not give me confidence to engage in more imagining, more letting go and even more manifesting?

And could all this "better world thinking" be done while just doing the dishes, taking the dog for a walk, making the kid's lunches or simply preparing to sleep at night?

Can I start this practice from right where I am now? Am I really this powerful?

The answer is YES to everything - in case you haven't arrived there already. So…what's standing in your way? You got the goods - the yearning or longing for that which makes you happy. Begin imagining today what that looks like and how it feels to be in that place. Then let it go. Now you can be confident you have done all the work necessary to assist randomness in doing it's job! 


When can you start?

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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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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?

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"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?

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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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A New Way to Love

"The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky,

Are also on the faces of people going by.

I see friends shaking hands, sayin', "How do you do?"

They're really saying, " I love you" 

~from Lyrics "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong

I am IN love. 

Not like "what is his name?" kind of love. 

Not like "every Cary Grant movie ever made" kind of love. 

And not like "co-dependent attachment you can't do without it" kind of love.

What I mean is I am always "IN love" because I am always surrounded by (in) Source (love) all of the time.

Feels great to use these words - "IN love" about myself when I know it is not some bullshit positive thinking word game but my honest and real Truth.

Feels great to use these words - "IN love"  about myself when I know that this love cannot and will never be taken away from me.

Feels great to use these words - "IN love" about myself in such a new and different way than ever before -  so fully, passionately and completely.

Within this Love I am safely held. And it just feels great!

Can you dig it? Too quote Billy Crystal as Louis Armstrong, "I knew that you could. Oh Yaaaah…"

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Happy Valentine's Day!

I do not fit snuggly into a world built on principles of clock time and corporeal senses alone. I may appear eccentric if I write about things like "equanimity" and "straddling eternity." But it is in the effemera I feel most hardy. My strength seems to build upon itself in the light of my spirit.

What do I do with this new found thing - this core within - which consists only of sweet air, energy and feeling? This thing that has no structure or mass, no handles to grasp, no parts to which I can point? How do I manage to live a life based from an open heart?

I am coming to know when my heart throbs and feels weighty I am tapped into this thing. This actual heaviness in my chest is confirmation for me. It lets me know "this is important." It seems my body can tell me when I am here connecting to whatever this is - my Truth.

I am building strength toward being more awake and available. I look forward to the day this is, if not an automatic response, at least a familiar one. In this way, perhaps I can then manage to live more often from this place - a place Steve Winwood calls "a higher love." In this way, I figure, then every day will be Valentine's Day. 

Wishing you a Happy Valentine's Day! 

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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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New Art

"For me, a picture should be like sparks. It must dazzle like the beauty of a woman or a poem. It must have radiance; it must be like those stones which Pyrenean shepherds use to light their pipes." ~joan miro 

Joan Miro inspires my new creative work! Here is a sketch for a pendant to be fashioned from sheets of textured metal. It is the first project, of which I hope there will be many, in my new metalsmithing class!

What NEW THING have you begun that brings you joy?

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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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No Need for Struggle

"Don't keep pushing against closed doors. Look around for the open ones." ~ sanyana roman

Every now and then I get caught up in wanting a thing that may not be mine. I feel owed it. Or I need it. Or I just would like to have it because I briefly enjoyed it...so it must be mine.

For me, "being caught" is an indication I have stepped out of the flow of things and have begun a familiar dance of dragging myself against my better interest or anchoring myself when I could be happily moving along. Feelings of powerlessness show up as a life circumstance becomes harder than it has to be. And in the end - after some misbegotten actions or emotions - I get that it was never meant to be mine or perhaps there is a better way to do something.

I wonder why this happens? How come I retrace these steps now and then? 

It seems as if the wanted thing is the least of my concerns. I am coming to realize it is the unlearned lesson "to let go" that I am really after.

Do not get me wrong...struggle to achieve a goal is a good and mighty thing. It cultivates patience, trust, confidence, focus and concentration. But there are a myriad of ways to achieve and knowing that in the deeps of my soul is very liberating.

So I am learning to pay attention. And if it feels like I am being dragged down away from Joy... I stop. I reconsider my options all the while keeping my same goal in mind. It is having this kind of flexibility that eases my way forward. 

There really are endless ways to get there and still stay on your own path! And if you are lucky...and open... some of them may even surprise you!

Do you find flexibility to be one of your go to assets?

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Lessons from the Farm

"…before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we've learned as we've moved toward that dream." ~from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Perhaps everybody knows these 3 things, but they were never explained to me so viscerally or so well as they were today!

Ask and you will receive. 

Walking past Flash, the dark brown and white speckled pony who is second in line in the pecking order between Tophat and Skippy, I was not focused on him there in the side pasture. I was focused on the six slips of hay I needed to get and dispense in the back pasture on this gray blue December day. So no mind was paid to Flash and his water barrel. After getting the hay in all the right places and on my coat and fat wool knitted scarf, Flash had not budged from his barrel to go eat. I took note and fed the goats. 

Suddenly there was no question what Flash wanted to see happen. Oh so that's the reason the blue barrel is lashed twice round the fence post. Wordlessly he was knocking the thing again and again so I Iet him know I hear you, "OK, OK...I get it...must put water in the empty water barrel NOW!" Requiring confirmation he did not leave his post to get his breakfast until he saw with his own pony's eyes the barrel and hose joined and the water flowing.  Ask and you will receive. The farm taught me this. 

Make every step count. 

Watching a 60 gallon barrel become full...just watching it is a gift. Resting there with intermittent rays of sunlight noiselessly raking the pasture, the peace of that moment was unmistakably given and received. 

Looking back at Flash's barrel, I worked out the time. Not clock time. Not the time to catch a bus or to meet a date. I needed to know the best approximate interval to begin walking, walking around the goat pen past the garage through the stone gate on to the muddy patch and beyond the guinea hen's squawk to get to the pump to turn the off the water that was currently filling the bucket. 

Figuring in real time this distance and pace to walk so I can shut off the hose at that exact perfect moment the bucket is filled is my kind of fun! I love this soft squishy numberless calculus involving just woman and foot and practical physics. When I got back to the barrel it appeared I had done it. We were all filled up, Flash and me, he with his water and me with my Joy! Make every step count. The farm taught me this.

Turn it off at the source. 

Flowing water is a must around here. A hose with many junctions provides flow all over the farm. The cutting off of the flow at the source would eliminate extra work and avoid unwanted complications. Turn the water off at the source, not at a junction otherwise you will just have to do it again and again until you get it right. Turn it off at the source. The farm taught me this.

So glad I got up this am. Seems nature and the animals are full of the Truth of Life. And so grateful I am awake and studying - never know when I will be tested again!

What teaches you stuff?

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Advocating for Meditation

"Through the sacred art of pausing, we develop the capacity to stop hiding, to stop running away from our experience. We begin to trust in our natural intelligence, in our naturally wise heart, in our capacity to open to whatever arises. Like awakening from a dream, in the moment of pausing our trance recedes and Radical Acceptance becomes possible." ~tara branch

Everybody has their own unique natural state, their own baseline from which all their experiences begin. Some say we can move up the vibration of this - our unique natural state - to enhance our experience of life; to increase the amounts of JOY and LOVE we are able to know.

If you knew this to be the truth, why would you not set about immediately to begin doing it? 

"The realization of eternal truth comes at the expense of all of our illusions." ~adyashanti

Aha! Well I have had nothing to lose recently so my way of raising my vibration is through meditation. If I mindfully begin by setting my intention to make more abundant JOY and LOVE in my life and then practice quietly sitting still - in a way that makes sense for me - I have found I do generate just that. Not by direct effort, i.e. analytical planning out a strategy with steps and goals, but by simple use of my breath and my mind and my body in a standard practiced way. 

I use these same capacities, my breath, mind and body, in every other of life's routine situations. When I am brushing my teeth or washing my face or cooking a meal I use them to stay healthy, to shed cells, to grow and transform. So why not use my breath, mind and body (over time) to amp up my perception?

Like clothes that are worn in bright sunlight and washed and then hung on the line over and over again - Meditation has helped me to indirectly become slowly bleached of hardship and sorrow. My natural daily responses are fading away from material concerns and focusing more toward a wholistic embodiment of loving energy. I do not know where this will lead but this is the direction in which I am going! 

Oh I still go grocery shopping, make plans, art and money. But gradually I am coming to see with these newer more joyful and loving eyes. And I see that all is well. Really...I swear! And all this "all is well" jazz started by just sitting quietly and not trying at all. This is a feat in itself - I know.

And so unlike the way we have been taught to strive for JOY and LOVE. So alien and perverse and cliche! But it works for me. This is my chosen path. And I am still living the same life I have always lived - just better by every measure.

What does your path look like?

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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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