Pink Culture

Well, the whole thing isn't pink, just the reds on the TV. While visiting my sister some time ago, I was surprised to see how pink the reds were on her TV. The reds were all shocking pink and blue jeans were green jeans. Yet they didn't seem to notice. I mentioned that the colours seemed off. But they seemed quite happy with it, so I let it go and watched TV with them. The longer I watched, the more I accepted it. It didn't feel right, but I got used to it. I suppose that if I stayed long enough I'd stop wondering about it and start to think that IKEA changed their logo to yellow and green.

It makes me wonder though. How much of the world I consider normal is my adaptation to something?

Should-less Days

In an interview with New York Public Radio, actress Ellen Burstyn was asked how she takes care of herself after many busy days. She said, "I’m very lazy. I have what I call should-less days. Today is a day where there’s nothing I should do. So I only do what I want to do. And if it’s nap in the afternoon or watch TV, and eat ice cream, I get to do it. I had that kind of day yesterday."

I love this. "Should" is a word we use too much. It always signals an inner conflict between the expectations around us (even our own) and what life wants us to do. Maybe by giving ourselves more should-less days, we can learn to trust that flow of life.

First published December 2016 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Upside Down

Every time I drag out the box of last year's hats and scarves from the back of the closet, I am reminded of a conversation I had years ago with a pond specialist. He told us that lakes turn over by themselves twice a year - even the ones that are not fed by fresh water. The changes in water and air temperature turn them over each spring and autumn - the bottom water coming to the top and the surface water to the bottom, bringing in fresh oxygen.

Life insists on change. It's always turning things upside down.

If I attempt to keep things the same, over time, my energy gets depleted. It steadily seeps away with the effort to resist. On the other hand, if I can move with what life seems to want of me, my energy gets revitalized.

Times of change ask me to re-think things: habits, people, activities, beliefs, assumptions, obligations. "Do I really need to bake him an Angel Food cake this year? Does he care?" "Do I think that anyone other than me cares about my hair?" "Is it okay if I don't go to every meeting?"

Times of change ask me to wonder "Who or what energizes me? and who or what depletes me?" so I can make choices based on today's reality. That hat may have worked last year, but, ummm, not this winter.

I resist though, because this is when some of the murkier bottom-of-the-pond stuff might float up. "I'm not as limber as I was. What if it's just a downhill slide from here?" "If I don't go to all the meetings, will they think I'm just there for the pot luck in June?" "Jenny asks too much of me. If I say no to dinner next week, will she stop being my friend? Was she ever really a friend?"

Yet it's no co-incidence life has given me this right now. These fears don't float up before their time. They float up at the perfect time. Life does its best to bring balance and joy and ease. I have to trust that.

It helps me to dial back my responsibilities during times of change. If I don't, life might do it for me. Ever ended up with the 'flu when you've been doing too much?

Then once I have enough energy and room to assess, I can see what's floating up and work with that.

Sorting through the box of winter stuff felt good. "I forgot I had those boots. They'll be perfect for tomorrow." "That hat has got to go." "Well look here... five bucks in my coat pocket."

The five bucks was nice but the real payoff was the sense that I was working with life. Like the pond inversion, it renewed me.

First published in December 2016 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

What is Seen With One Eye

"We have to learn what we can, but remain mindful that our knowledge not close the circle, closing out the void so that we forget that what we do not know remains boundless, without limit or bottom, and that what we know may have to share the quality of being known with what denies it. What is seen with one eye has no depth."

-- Ursula Le Guin, from "Always Coming Home."

Feedback

When I was younger, 'measuring up' was important. We had standards to live by, as a community, as a culture, as a family. Achievement was important because the feedback I got from the world around me told me it was.

When I surrounded myself with more relaxed people, I got different feedback.

I just came off a yoga retreat where we were all encouraged to meet ourselves where we were: tired, energetic, cranky, mellow, flexible, tight, sad, joyful, whatever. The only standard set was - none. We had to show up. That was enough.

It sets a good tone for the days and weeks to come, one with no inner critic, with no need to distinguish between good and bad (which our teacher suggests is exhausting, btw,) with no ideas of 'should' and 'should not,' and with no lofty ambitions except the joy of the moment. This frees trapped energy so I can respond more gracefully to life as it comes.

This is the kind of feedback I prefer. It makes me feel nourished and supported.

First published in November 2016 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Recognition

The word "recognize" comes from Latin: re: 'again' cognoscere: 'learn.' It is defined as "Identification of a thing or person from previous encounters or knowledge."

When my girl was in high school, one of her science teachers kept mixing her up with another classmate. I generally did not intervene in her schooling, but this time I had to do something. So I went to a "Meet the teacher" night with her. During the meeting I sat and discussed her work with the teacher in an open friendly manner, pointing often to her, and saying her name out loud often as I pointed. I was in effect teaching him who she was. Her name was a layer of information he hadn't picked up, so by providing him with the essence of who she was (her appearance, her work, her charm) and then layering her name on top of that, I hoped that recognition would follow. It did. That solved her identification problems in science class.

When my grandmother was old and forgetful, she didn't remember who I was. On one visit, she saw me and smiled broadly, "Now there's a familiar face." Even as I reminded her that I was Janet, one of Audrey's twins, the names and relationship to her vanished, but the sense of familiarity continued.

The essence of who we are gets layered first by relationship, then associations, then names, and then this idea of who we are gets layered some more with our history, our judgements, opinions and evaluations. By the time we stand in front of each other, the spark of who we are may be buried under all that stuff, unrecognizable.

When we strip it back, we may recognize that essential me-ness of who we are, the way Gma recognized a kindred spirit.

If Gma had even lost that, she would have nothing to hold onto. All ego traces would be gone.

Eventually we all have to lose it. Ego doesn't want us to, but even that essential spark may have to be lost - back into the ocean of grace that brought us into being.

Then I wonder what we'd recognize.

First published in October 2016 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Perhaps in Another Life

I find the notion of other Janets in other universes a comfort. The quantum idea of each choice leading to another possible reality means there could be a whole lot of Janets out there somewhere. Which is good. Another Me may have chosen a different career, or life partner, or place to live and had those lives play out quite differently. Some may have more privileges that give them a step-up in life. Others may really be struggling.

I met one of those ones in a dream once. While I was struggling with an issue, I met another Janet who was struggling with the same issue but from her own different perspective. She lived in a different town, in less comfortable circumstances than me. She had our daughter, just like me, but I didn't see my husband. And she was desperate. Poor thing. My heart went out to her. I wished across whatever distance may have separated us that she feel better, and hoped that just as her reality bled through to mine, some of my good wishes would bleed through to hers. The dream was one of those ones you know is real, and as I saw her in the dream, there was no question that she was as much me as well, Me. She felt like me. Her life was simply playing out a different way.

I've also met a me who wasn't Janet in a dream. But he was every bit as much Me as I was. He was about 11 years old and very much a boy - what fun to get into a boy's head like that. I don't know where he was, but there was no question in my mind that he was me. Every bit as much me as I am.
It's all a bit weird, but in a good way.

Dreams themselves lend us a flexibility of consciousness that we don't often see in everyday life. But I've had daytime experiences too, that have made me wonder just how closely we are tied to this reality. These things could be written off as a form of brain hiccup or something that might someday be scientifically explained. That's fine with me. But they felt as real as this keyboard I'm using to write this story. And even if they end up being brain hiccups after all, they still add something wonderful and interesting and comforting to my life.

Thinking like this consoles me, because it expands my thinking. If I am all Janets, then I am all Beings. We really are all One. The ability to make the leap from one Janet into another is in me, and if it's in me, it's in all of us.

It consoles me because it leads to ideas of alternate realities, perhaps realities where intuition, telepathy and the more subtle perceptions of life take precedence over thinking, analysing. Or realities where we explore life from a framework that is not chronological. Or realities that are far beyond my capacity to see or imagine.

It consoles me because it means there isn't quite so much pressure on me to get things right. I don't have to do more or be more than I am. Another Janet may be in a better position to rock the world. In this reality I can be just as I am, finding my joy here and living the wonderful life that I've been given.

It also takes the pressure off in a grander way. Since it is all so unreachable, so far beyond my ability to grasp, I can relax about it all. Something much bigger than me is in charge. I can rest in that loving energy and trust that this greater power is taking me where I need to go.

There's only so much I can fit into one life. It comforts me to imagine that another me could be sitting at a café in Paris, or marvelling at the Sultan Ahmet Mosque in Istanbul or tasting chicken pho on a street in Hanoi. I can't do it all right now, but perhaps in another life ...


First published October 2013 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Seasons Changing

I can feel it in the air.
The crows and jays are calling each other.
A hawk flew right up the driveway and by the house.
I've seen deer moving in the bush next door.

Each year as they move into the new season,
I feel the need in me to do the same.

Coffee Yoga

I've been doing yoga off and on for most of my adult life. I started for the strength and flexibility of body, but it called to me as a practice of spirituality too since it's a moving meditation. Given my commitment to it, I wondered why some mornings when I got up, it seemed more like a chore than a joy.

So I decided to see if, or how, I could change that.

Of course I know that I'm not as young as I used to be, not as flexible. It'd be crazy for me to compare myself to an earlier me. But sometimes a bit sneaks in. Certainly I understand that there are times when it's just too hard to get to the mat. I'm not shirking. Yet sometimes I wonder if I'm being a bit lazy. The biggest drawback though, was discouragement. I was doing so well, strengthening my shoulders and then, a setback - my physiotherapist told me, "No more plank. Ever." I know I can adjust. I have in the past, but, well, damn.

Then I came across this passage in "Awakening the Spine," by Vanda Scaravelli.

She asked, "Why are we doing yoga? For health reasons? ... Out of a sense of duty or discipline? ... No. Nothing of the kind. No motivation, no aims, only an agreeable appointment for the body to look forward to. We do it for the fun of it. To twist, stretch, and move around is pleasant and enjoyable, a body holiday."

An agreeable appointment. A body holiday. For the fun of it.

It was just what I needed to see.

Life is good, I reminded myself. There is no need to struggle. Ease in the physical = ease in the spiritual.

That's where the coffee came in.

But isn't coffee bad for you? Yeah, well so is discouragement. And I take joy in my morning coffee.

So I dig out the yoga mat first thing in the morning right after I make the coffee, and I do a routine (or part of one) with a video. When I come to a spot that I can't do any more, I see what I can substitute that brings ease, or I sit back for 30 seconds and sip from my favourite chick mug, while Adriene or Padma does her thing.

It's been fun. Joy isn't found in what I used to be able to do, or what I might be able to achieve in the future. It's found right now on the yoga mat. And today, it's with a cup of coffee.

First published in September 2016 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Right or Wrong

In her email to my group, the writer said, "I feel I need to correct a misperception. Just because it is cooked on a grill, it does not make it barbeque. To cook something on an open flame over direct heat is to grill. To barbeque is to cook something slowly over indirect heat, flavoring the food with smoke." At first, I wondered if she was joking, but no, she's a Certified Barbeque Judge from the southern USA.

What makes us need to correct other people when we believe they're wrong?

Sarah, who is gay, corrects people to 'educate' them. Her barely suppressed anger covers her hurt feelings, her vulnerability, and her need for acceptance.

Harry corrects people to bolster his self-esteem. He may even think it's his ideas we must agree with, but he just wants his beliefs and ideas to count for something.

After Sharon insisted that the documents we needed for the lawyer were in my possession, and I knew they were in hers, our conflict was about more than simply who was right, it was about how we perceived ourselves, each of us seeing ourselves as well-organized and efficient.

We need to be right to maintain our grip onto self-identity, personal or cultural. The barbeque lady is a good example of cultural identity. That's how things are done in the 'south'.

The I'm-right, No-I'm-right, kind of conflict doesn't produce any winners, though.

After I got off the phone with Sharon, I rushed to my notes to see who was right about the documents. I was. Yes! That felt gratifying, but only for a second. My conviction that I was right ran deep. But she was just as convinced that she was right. My ego may have been gratified by being right, but at what cost to hers?

Being right didn't make me happy.

After that, I changed my mantra to "Do I want to be right or happy?"

It was a good next step. It made room for me to choose not to get caught up in an unnecessary conflict. Yet, it didn't go far enough. If I smiled graciously and let them 'continue to deceive themselves,' my need to be right meant I was still caught up in ego gratification.

Too often we mix facts and beliefs, forgetting that just as beliefs can and do change over time, facts can too. Galileo. Need I say more?

And each of us from our own unique perspective, conditioning and experience is bound to see things differently from others. Someone who is colour-blind will not see yellow the same way I do. There's a good chance nobody sees yellow quite the same as I do, even though the variations may be small.

So what can I do when beliefs conflict?

It helps to eliminate all ideas of right or wrong: Right or wrong? There's no such thing. Whatever the belief they have, it's theirs. They came to this belief through a lot of living. They earned every bit of their belief. It's as true to them as my beliefs are to me.

Recognize that their beliefs are not my responsibility: These beliefs could all change at some point, but someone else's beliefs are not really my business unless actions taken as a result of these beliefs do me harm. I don't have any responsibility to find consensus. I don't have to mediate, educate, or persuade anyone. I don't need resolution.

Let it be a bit uncomfortable: Lack of resolution can be uncomfortable. Ego doesn't like that. And ego likes to be right.

Choose how much I want to become embroiled in conflict: If it turns into a conflict, know that I can withdraw at any time. I am entitled. If I long to jump in and persuade, then it's my own ego trying to take control.

Then finally, see us all with tenderness: Sharon was facing the tough fact that she might not have been quite as in control of the paperwork as she thought. Harry was facing the tough fact that he didn't have as much influence on the world around him as he wanted. Sarah was facing the tough fact that not everyone cares about her pain.

My intention now:

• Find a chair that is easy and comfortable to sit on.
• Regard her or him with tenderness.
• Sit and breathe.

Do I want to be right or happy? It doesn't matter. By getting ego out of the picture, right and wrong dissolve into the flow of life.

A link to an XKCD toon about being right.

Conditioning

When I walk, my body starts to walk itself after I have gone a certain distance. For the first ten minutes or so, I can feel the effort in the movement, but then, it just opens up and the effort is gone. My body seems to think, “Oh, THIS is what you want to do !” and does it for me. The body itself seems to develop a memory.

The trick is to make all this work for us rather than against us.

Think not lightly of good, saying,
'It will not come to me.'
Drop by drop is the water pot filled.
Likewise, the wise man,
gathering it little by little,
fills himself with good.
 — Dhammapada 122 –

First published August 2008 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Expectation

When "we go out with an idea, we close the doors of possibility. When we expect a certain result, only two things can happen: We will either find what we are looking for or we won't. Either way, we are blind to all other possibilities because we are focused on our expectation. ... Open yourself to discovery. Enjoy the mystery. All the good stuff is hidden in the dark corners. It's what gives life its sense of vitality."

- John Daido Loori Roshi

I Wish You Peace

When I drove by the place where that guy lives - the politician who called me a liar, I realized I still wasn't over it. But didn't want to spend energy on the issue or him. I wanted to let it go in a healthy way. So I said aloud, "I still have issues with you, but I wish you peace." My energy settled right down.

When I had an argument with a family member I thought, "I don't know how to make this better, but I wish you peace."

When I saw a TV personality make an ass out of himself and his great country, I said "I don't like your worldview, but I wish you peace."

The wish for peace must be genuine. None of that fake-it-til-you-make-it stuff. If I can't dredge up an ounce of genuine tenderness towards them, then all it does is keep the discord alive.

Wishing someone peace may not resolve the problem, but the weight of authentic compassion, love, kindness goes deeper and reaches farther than any issue I may have with them. And it helps me let it go.

What is True?

Kathy popped up on the radar the other day. We parted ways a decade ago – no hard feelings. But what made us part was a difference in beliefs. I felt some of her notions were pretty “way out there”. Yet, I realized that even though her beliefs didn’t match mine, she believes them thoroughly and lives her life according to those deeply held principles.

I’ve had some important men in my life who have believed deeply in the power of reason or intellect to handle life well. They’ve lived good lives according to those values. At the same time, they saw my belief in the power of prayer as “way out there” too.

A strong difference in beliefs can break apart families and friendships. Getting people to believe the same thing is a recipe for war.

Yet it’s understandable why we would want to swing someone else around to our way of thinking. Consensus builds trust. We can act as a group when we are all operating from the same beliefs – or assumptions. And when we have a conversion to a new set of beliefs, we want others to know just how wonderful this new truth is. It may seem so joyful and promising that it can be hard to grasp that others might not be interested. We build our lives around this new information. And we don’t stop talking about it until it is a belief that is firmly entrenched in our minds.

We perceive this as truth, and not a belief. We don’t look farther ahead and see that this truth, while it could be valid for us for years, may itself change when something new nudges it aside.

Truth isn’t really a be-all and end-all thing. It’s flexible. What we believe now may be worlds apart from what we believed to be true a decade ago – or even last week. Truths that we adopt in life can be fleeting or superficial. We change.

Ultimate truth seems to go much deeper than religious ideas, myths, or scientific principle. Yet in our human way, we have assigned ‘truth’ a meaning of being whatever we believe about reality in any given moment. Since, as human beings, we are incapable of grasping the whole of reality, if truth is about being in accord with reality, we’re really all just making good guesses.

That’s why it’s important to find ways of connecting with those around us. Each of us holds a different set of beliefs about reality. To each of us, ‘truth’ means something different than to anyone else.

In the end, it might not matter what we believe is true, and it might not matter if we share beliefs with the people around us. It matters how we live. Kathy’s deeply held truths are just as important to her – and just as valid as mine are to me. I don’t want to let something as speculative as the truth stand in the way of love.

Revised slightly from story first published November 2011 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Good Intentions & Assumptions

After the special silent service was finished, we left behind the pamphlets on the back table so they could be used again next year. One of the readers whose passages were highlighted in her pamphlet left hers upside down in the pile so that the person sorting them later would be able to separate it from the others. I had a part, too, so I was going to do the same thing. But the lady ahead of me saw the upside down pamphlet and assumed that the person who left it that way had been careless. She straightened it with all good intentions and moved on. When I left mine, I tried to sort them again to make it easier later on, but my efforts were foiled by another orderly person, again with the best of intentions. So I moved on, too.

So many of us make assumptions, thinking we are doing the right thing.

First published January 2017 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Judgement

The pickup truck parked at the side of the road was blocking part of the driving lane. He parked right on the hilltop, making it impossible to see if it was safe to move over to the other lane to get by him. "What a jerk."

One of the women on a yoga retreat left her shoes right inside the door, where people would trip over them. Every time. "How inconsiderate."

Judgement can happen fast.

When I caught myself judging the shoe-lady, I stopped in my tracks. I'd intended to be aware of how judgement rises when I was away, so it was the perfect time to ask myself how I could approach this in a non-judgemental way

Judgement is personal. It's about the person, their character, personality or motivations. Yet, when it comes right down to it, I'm not qualified to judge anyone. Non-judgement, on the other hand, is just observation. Nothing added. Just-the-facts.

Judgement: "How inconsiderate." Non-judgement: "These shoes are in the doorway. I'll have to watch where I step."

But that was hard. I really, really wanted to move my thinking into, "I shouldn't have to step over someone else's shoes."

Judgement slips in when we think we are entitled to something: an easy pathway into the lodge, respect, love, affection, peace and quiet, an open road. It's built on a sense of entitlement. Sneaky thing, judgement.

This doesn't seem like big stuff, but it affects us in deep ways that can really mess up our ability to communicate well or develop better relationships not just with the one we judge but ourselves too. I belittle us all.

I will never be able to control what someone thinks or how they act. It's like trying to stop the wind. To release myself it's not enough to decide not to judge, I have to take action. I have to act on just-the-facts. For the shoes in the doorway: step over them or move them aside. For the pickup at the side of the road, slow right down, perhaps even stop until I can see if the way is clear.

Life will always give me shoes and blocked lanes. How I respond to them is up to me.

It can be tricky to see judgement when it rises. I imagine I judge others in ways I have yet to discover. Yet I don't mind the practice. I find it interesting to see how the dynamics change when I can turn judgement into just-the-facts, and conversely, how the dynamics play out when I can't.

My sister gave me a great analogy that helps:
Think about a cat sleeping in the most comfortable place in the house. Then the dog comes in, disrupting its sleep and comfort. What will the cat do? It'll get up and move to the second most comfortable place in the house and go back to sleep. Just-the-facts, leading to taking care of its own needs.

“Love is the absence of judgment.” -- The Dalai Lama
"A person who judges gets it wrong, becomes confused and is defeated." -- Pope Francis

Patience

"So when you're like a keg of dynamite just about to go off, patience means just slowing down at that point- just pausing- instead of immediately acting on your usual, habitual response. You refrain from acting, you stop talking to yourself, and then you connect with the soft spot. But at the same time you are completely and totally honest with yourself about what you are feeling. You're not suppressing anything; patience has nothing to do with suppression. In fact, it has everything to do with a gentle, honest relationship with yourself. If you wait and don't fuel the rage with your thoughts, you can be very honest about the fact that you long for revenge; nevertheless, you keep interupting the torturous story line and stay with the underlying vulnerabilty. That frustration, that uneasiness and vulnerabilty is nothing solid. And yet it is painful to experience. Still, just wait and be patient with your anguish and with the discomfort of it. This means relaxing with that restless, hot energy- knowing it's the only way to find peace for ourselves or the world."

-- Pema Chödrön from "Practicing Peace In Times of War"

photo by Astronaut Sam Cristoforetti

Harmony

"We all have a knowledge of harmony anchored deep within ... Those who feel inspired, as I do, by the greatness of small things will pursue them to the very heart of the inessential where, cloaked in everyday attire, this greatness will emerge from within a certain ordering of ordinary things and from the certainty that all is as it should be, the conviction that it is fine this way."

-- Muriel Barbery from "The Elegance of the Hedgehog"

(I loved this book.)

Shoes

I headed off to a big shopping mall on Boxing Day (the 26th) to see if I could find a pair of pants.

In years past you wouldn’t have found me there. Too many people. Too much going on. But I seem to be able to handle the crowds now. It helps to expect crowds. It helps to not to feel like I’m responsible for every bit of information that passes through my energy. I may have finally developed some good boundaries. Yay. Even better, I found a pair of pants. Yay again.

I found myself watching people go by while I waited for Tom to look through a store. I was sitting comfortably and was in no hurry. I didn’t watch the people really. I watched their shoes. It occurred to me that we are very very wealthy, and not just in comparison to those in third world countries. Not one single person who passed by my spot had ratty, holey or worn out shoes. All were spotless, many brand new.

When I was a kid, we were not poor.  We lived in a nice house in a middle class subdivision. We ate well. Three square meals a day. Yet we had only two pair of shoes. Good school shoes and sneakers. That was it. We polished the leather in the good shoes when we were going to church or Brownies. We threw the sneakers in the washer when they got dirty and whitened them when they got horribly stained. Then when we grew out of them, we got a new pair with a bit of room in the toes for our feet to grow. In the summer we got one pair of flip flops and by the time the end of August rolled around, we had worn holes in the soles and were keeping the flip flips together with adhesive tape.

When I look at what we have now and take for granted, a part of me wants the simplicity of two pair of shoes. Another part of me likes the fact that I have more and can choose from more.

Is there a moral to this? Not really. Just saying.

First published January 2103 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Why I Meditate

I started to meditate in my early 30's I'm in my 60's now.

As a kid, Mom was firmly religious and Dad was firmly secular. They were both wonderful people: honest, brave, creative, full of love and laughter, and I loved them both. But I felt I had to choose.

Since Dad's view seemed to be more accepting of people as they are and provide more opportunity for a larger community, and Mom's side seemed more like a club you had to say the right words to join, I swung over to Dad's side.

By the time I reached 30, life had already hit me with some blows that had knocked me to my knees and the secular-only approach wasn't working. My main goal in life since I'd been a little kid was to be happy. So I turned to meditation to see if I could attain a happy mental state that wouldn't impair my ability to function, (in other words, without drugs.)

It took practice, but it was the right thing for me to do. I'd been so busy listening to the loud voices: phones, tv, news, opinions of others, that I was missing the subtler voices.

For me it also cracked open an intuition I was taught to ignore as a kid who shared a twin-thing. It led me to Buddhist practice and eventually back to the church I left as a disgruntled teen. In fairness it's because the local parish priest is amazing. I'm still a practicing Buddhist, but go to church every Sunday. I find no conflict at all between the two.

Stilling the chatter is not for the faint of heart, it takes courage to step into the unknown. Timing is everything. I had to move into it when the time was right.

How has it changed my life?

• Well life is still hard at times, some mornings I do not want to get out of bed. It is happy and sad, fun and awful. But I am easier with life.
• Under all that grand mess is something wonderful that I have met now and again and want to learn more about.
• As splendid as the mind is, I treat it more as an assistant, than my boss.
• Stilling the chatter has taught me that I am not supposed to get life right. What a revelation !
• It's taught me that it isn't the big ticket things that make me happy but the 100 little joys in a day that when added up make for a happy day. But I do have to pay attention to them or they fly right by.

It also taught me that there is a way to bridge the opposing views of my parents. Meditation taught me that there is room to love us all, and love well.

Releasing Worry

I flipped open Richard Rohr's book "Immortal Diamond" in the middle of the night when my thoughts were running rampant and I wanted to release worry and opinion.

I found this gem in one of the appendices. He says,

"Next time a resentment, irritation or negativity comes into your mind ... and you want to play it out or attach to it, move that thought or person literally into your heart space because such commentaries are almost entirely lodged in your head. There, surround it with silence (which is much easier to do in the heart). There, it is surrounded with blood, which will often feel warm like coals."

This is similar to tonglen, in that it gets these thinking patterns out of negativity and into a place of warmth and compassion.

I found it worked well when I surrounded the worry with warmth, rather than silence. It seemed easier for me.

When I went back to sleep my dreams became fun and interesting and open.

First published February 2014 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Salutation to the Dawn

A friend reminded me of this poem that I heard as a girl. She told me she’s tacked up on her fridge:

Salutation to the Dawn

Look to this day!

For it is life, the very life of life.

In its brief course

Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:

The bliss of growth

The glory of action

The splendour of beauty

For yesterday is but a dream

And tomorrow only a vision

But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness

And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore to this day!

Such is the salutation to the dawn.

– Kalidasa, Indian Poet

It'll Show Up

Sunday is my day for reflection, contemplation, and ease. Through the week, something will be floating around my thoughts, rising to the surface. If it is ready for me to look at, I’ll take some time on my day off to explore it a bit.

Funny how that works. Out of the zillions of thoughts, ideas or other bits of information I am surrounded with, something in me says, “pay attention” to some and “ignore” the rest. Like I’ve decided to tuck that bit in the back of my mind to save for later. When I need to visit that same theme again, something else will draw my attention, I’ll see how it’s similar to the older bit, and see if the time is right to form anything out of them.

I guess that’s what creativity is.

Whatever I need to know will show up, because something in me insists on it.

When I am working, I can not reach for information. I can’t demand it comes. I can’t fake it ’til I make it. I must sit and wait and see if it tells me what it wants me to know. I have to expect nothing, and trust in the outcome. Even if the outcome isn’t what I want. Even if it is nothing.

When ideas are flowing, sometimes they all demand my attention at the same time, and I’m left with a muddle that seems to have no cohesive story or form. It’s best then to tuck them all back in my mind and wait until they are ripe.

I don’t remember where I saw it, but I read some time back about how a student of the zen master Shunryu Suzuki told him that she wanted to remember an important point in the talk he had just given. He told her to forget about it, that she already had everything she needed within her. I have tried to live like that since.

Trust is trusting that I can wake up 5 minutes before the alarm, or feel an urge to rise from meditation after 10 minutes. Trust is remembering that what I need to know will show up.

First published October 2011 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Imprints

My office has stars on the ceiling.

My daughter put the stars on the ceiling when the office was her bedroom. She liked the way they glowed after the light was turned off for the night. She painted the walls blue and then painted white clouds on the blue walls. These were some of the things that made her feel good about the room. When she grew up and I moved my office back upstairs from the basement, I kept my daughter’s stars – and I added my own touches that make me feel good about the room – like the mirrors that bounce the light around, and the colourful file folders.

I don’t think of her every time I notice the stars or the blue walls that still line the closet. But something lovely of her has been left behind in this room. It adds a sweetness to the work I do in here. Long after this room passes on to someone else, her energy and my energy and even the energy of all the people who have talked with us while we have been here, will leave their traces.

We leave imprints wherever we go. The world is changed because we have been here. If the energy that lingers is difficult, it can be easily cleared, but when it is pleasant, we may want to keep it around for a while, even though we know it will eventually dilute and then dissipate.

But for now, I work in a room with stars on the ceiling. And I hope that whoever inherits this room from my daughter and then from me will enjoy the traces we have left behind.

(Update June 26, 2016: Since this was written the room has become our main TV room, and yes, it still has her stars on the ceiling)

First published July 2007 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Stillness

Some people are constantly on the move. For some, it is their nature to be activity oriented, happiest when in motion. For others, however, it looks more like restlessness, almost as though they are afraid to slow down.

John Daido Loori, in 'The Still Point' says,

"Every other creature on the face of the earth knows how to be quiet and still. A butterfly on a leaf, a cat in front of a fireplace; even a hummingbird comes to rest sometime. But humans are constantly on the go. We seem to have lost the ability to just be quiet, to simply be present in the stillness that is the foundation of our lives. Yet if we never get in touch with that stillness, we never fully experience our lives."

I wonder why this is so hard? Are we afraid that if we stop we'll never get started again? Are we afraid of what we'll find if we are just being ourselves?

Yet, it's within that very stillness we avoid that we can meet ourselves. From stillness we can see our natural kindness. From stillness, we can make better choices. From stillness we can allow ourselves to be guided by our natural inclinations and to have faith that they will bring good results.

In and of itself, stillness provides us with a depth and richness of experience that we often miss while we are in motion. I stop often while walking. In that moment of stillness, I can take it all in: the sudden beauty of a dewdrop on a spider web or the grace of a bird taking flight.

Henry David Thoreau said,

"I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise until noon, rapt in a reverie amidst the pines and hickories and sumacs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around ... I grew in those seasons like corn in the night."

I may not have the hours that Thoreau devoted to experiencing himself in nature, but I can give myself a few minutes each day for stillness. When I do, I rediscover that stillness is the very underpinning of my life.

Adapted from "Mystery", first published March 2001 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Mystery

By mystery, I don't mean a puzzle to be solved or an intellectual exercise. I mean mystery as the very stuff of life.

For me, this mystery of here and now is the feeling of wonder and interest and involvement we get in participating in life. Albert Einstein said,

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

Perhaps we are too eager to find all the solutions to life's problems. If we move into life with a sense that we already have all the answers we need, or satisfied that all the important answers have been taken care of, we miss out. We miss the opportunity to open to the new and fresh. We miss a sense of engagement in life. We end up feeling disconnected and fearful and joyless. We miss the point.

If instead we move into life with a question mark - not needing the answers, but wondering what this moment is all about. Just wondering. As we take this open-ended approach, we make ourselves more available to realization, more open to insight. Life begins to reveal its mysteries even as it makes room for more questions. When we allow ourselves to let go of a need to understand or control life, life shows itself to us as something that is marvellous and precious.

From his book "The Faith to Doubt", Stephen Batchelor speaks of mystery in a delightful way. He says,

"When confronting the mysterious we can not rely upon any logical or technical means to gain insight. For as soon as we attempt to "figure out" a mystery, it ceases to be such and becomes a mere problem. ... Unlike a problem, a mystery can never be solved. A mystery can only be penetrated. A problem once solved ceases to be a problem; but the penetration of a mystery does not make it any less mysterious. The more intimate one is with a mystery, the greater shines the aura of its secret. The intensification of a mystery leads not to frustration (as does the increasing of a problem) but to release."

Life itself is a mystery. It can not be solved. It can only be penetrated. And as we penetrate it with interest, it leads to release. It's a release that's joyful and connected. It's fun. So let's let ourselves be perplexed, to be questioning, to be curious. Let's see life as a mystery to be enjoyed and see where it takes us.

First published August 2002 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Priorities

I was mulling over a longstanding problem the other day when walking home from a neighbour's house. It was one of those annoying problems that never seems to get resolved. Not big. Just annoying. But something lovely happened as I was walking along the lane. The fragrances of the summer day were so strong that they pulled my attention away from the problem and back into the moment. They reminded me that there were more important things to do than mull over problems.

We had a summer rain that day after a dry spell. After the rain, the scents came alive around me: sweet balsam from the poplar trees, the rich odour of wet earth from the ditches, the ripe clover being cut in nearby hay fields. It was a feast of fragrance. In that moment while walking along the lane, I asked myself which I would rather do: continue to be mildly upset over a chain of events I could do nothing to change or fix, or enjoy the scents of summer.

Well, the scents of summer won.

But it was close.

I like solving problems. I like working through mental puzzles. It can be gratifying - yet it can also be seductive. Too often I'll dwell on something I can not change in the false hope that by worrying it through I'll get somewhere with it. I know better, yet it is an old habit. And even as I inhaled the rich, sweet scents of summer, I was aware that I had a strong impulse to say to myself, "Well that's nice, but let's get back to this problem." It's almost as though some part of me had decided the problem was more important.

I know better, though. In "A Path With Heart" Jack Kornfield suggests that our senses, having dulled by time and inattention, heal when we pay attention to them. He says,

"The eyes, the tongue, the ears, and the sense of touch are rejuvenated... Colors are pure, flavors fresh, we can feel our feet on the earth as if we were children again. This cleansing of the senses allows us to experience the joy of being alive..."

On this day, the present moment demanded my attention.

I'm glad it did.

Revised from story I first published July 2005 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

We Need Dancing Shapes

"In the past, people would stare into the fire for hours when they wanted to think. Or stare at the sea. The endless dancing shapes and patterns would reach far deeper into our minds than we could manage by reason and logic. You see, logic can only proceed from the premises and assumptions we already make, so we just drive round and round in little circles like little clockwork cars. We need dancing shapes to lift us and carry us..." "Logic comes afterwards. It's how we retrace our steps. It's being wise after the event. Before the event you have to be very silly."

— Douglas Adams

Where You Stumble

"It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure."

-- Joseph Campbell

First published October 2012 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Things Change

"'That things change' is the reason why you suffer in this world and become discouraged. When you change your understanding and your way of living, then you can completely enjoy your new life in each moment. The evanescence of things is the reason why you enjoy your life. When you practice in this way, your life becomes stable and meaningful."

Shunryu Suzuki

First published September 2011 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Life as a Dream

When we were kids, we had a song that we used to sing in rounds:

    Row, row, row, your boat,
    Gently down the stream.
    Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
    Life is but a dream.

I didn't get it. How could life be a dream? Now, I see the rhyme a little differently. With a longer perspective on life, it's easier to see life itself as a dream that we are dreaming, with ourselves as principal characters in the story.

I think what gives our waking life more intensity is the emotion, the attention and the belief that we give to it. When dreaming, we can be frightened, but there may be a small part of our mind able to tell us that it is a dream and that we will wake up. The heat of the emotion can be strong, but we don't feel like the very 'self' of us is at risk. While awake, we feel this self is threatened. We think that the waking self is the real one and the dreaming self the not- real one.

Yet there are moments when we realize that both of these selves are not-real. We know that they are constructs of something deeper that has brought them into being.

It can be useful to see life as a dream that we are living. When we don't feel that our very self is at risk, we can relax and enjoy the ride a bit more. Since life is never entirely in our control, it can be a relief to be able to let go. It can also be useful to let our dreaming self inform our waking self more.

When sleeping and dreaming, we are not tied to time or space or belief. For example, when I was a kid, I learned how to ride a two-wheeler in a dream. The dream was so vivid, I thought it was real. It wasn't until after I'd brought the skill into my waking life that I'd found out it had been a dream, and by then it was too late to go back. Even though a dream, it was real. What's more, we can do this sort of thing intentionally with practice.

As our consciousness expands and perceptions broaden, we can become aware of other realities - other dreams. Some may seem more real than waking life and some may seem less real.

Yet the question of how real they are is not the important question. I feel the more important question is "Who is the dreamer of these dreams?"

"Row, row, row your boat" is a rhyming song that has been with us for many generations. I wonder that it lasted in a world that likes to make clear distinctions between waking life and dreaming life. Perhaps it has lasted because it is true.

Perhaps life is a dream.

First published May 2005 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Simple Pleasures

I love hanging out the laundry in the nice weather.

It's not just an excuse to get some fresh air and sunshine, it's good for me. The simple pleasure I take from it gives me a time out from all the other matters that want my attention and helps integrate me.

Sometimes we split ourselves up into bits. Too much thinking, too much emotion, too much well, whatever, and we need to reassemble the bits again to find out where we really are and what we really are doing.

Hanging laundry on a warm summer day does it for me. It's a feast for the senses: the contrast between the cool wet textures of the fabrics, the warm cinnamon scent of cedar bark and the drowsy sweetness of ripening apples, the quiet clicking of a wren, the steady hum of bees, the radiance of the colours and the sky.

I wouldn't feel the blessing in such a simple pleasure if I was mentally writing my next article or nursing a grudge against that fellow who cut me off in traffic. Taking unashamed physical joy in the activity gives me the space to bring body, emotions, mind and soul together.

I never apologize for sitting outside to eat lunch, or for stopping at the side of the road to skip stones in a creek. Not everyone might agree that getting up at 3 am to watch for shooting stars is a valuable way to spend time, but I know better. Where else than under a starry night can I know that I am a part of something timeless?

I love hanging out the laundry in the nice weather. Simple pleasures like this make me feel more whole.

First published September 2008 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Being Like Water

We are happiest when we are not fighting life. Being like water is moving around obstacles the way that water in a river freely moves around rocks. Fluid, accepting, allowing. Finding the easiest course. We are like water when we go with the flow.

But we often don't in small ways and in big ways.

For example:

Small: The wind blew a neighbour's garbage can right into the road. I had to get out of the car to move it so I could get by. I thought nothing of it. It was a force of nature.

Medium: Someone parked so close to the back of my Jeep in the parking lot that I had to move the Jeep ahead a bit to get my grocery bags into the back. A bit annoying, but no big deal.

Big: We were about to leave for an important family get-together. I was ready at the door for an hour, but Tom wanted to check the brakes on the car since it is a long drive. He decided that brakes were not good enough so took them apart to fix them right then. We were hours late. I hate being late. I wanted to spend quality time with the family. I didn't want them to think I was being rude. I didn't want them to think I was married to a rude husband. I wished Tom had attended to the brakes yesterday. This was not the plan. You see how quickly a simple thing has escalated to become a big deal? The deal was all in my head. Tom is like a rock in a river. He is a force of nature. I could no more prevent him from looking at the brakes than I could prevent the sun coming up.

Humungous: Well, some things are almost too big to talk about. When Clift and June got older, they set up their finances figuring that when it was time, he'd go first. But June did instead. Clift said, "This isn't what we talked about. This isn't how it was supposed to happen."

The garbage can was pretty easy for me to handle gracefully - a small rock for me to flow around. But maybe that's the way to look at this. When we meet with the small stuff and handle it reasonably well, that can give us practice to move up to the big stuff - the stuff that really scares us.

Who knows why life does what life does? There are a thousand, thousand causes and conditions that bring about each event in our lives. As brilliant as our plans may be, we can't begin to take all those thousand, thousand things into account. There's no point in getting annoyed at the rocks in our river. Big or small, they're a force of nature. We just need to move around them the best way we can.

That's when we are at our happiest. When we are not fighting life, but flowing, accepting, allowing and moving into the easiest course. We are at our happiest when we are being like water.

First published March 2010 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Easier Does Not Equal Ease

I was driving home after a busy day and dithered over stopping at a sick friend's house for a short visit. It was a bit out of my way and there was ice cream melting in the back of the car, but I knew she'd appreciate it. I'm her friend. I the end, I asked myself which choice brought greater ease. I went straight on home.

There's a difference between ease and easier. It was certainly easier to drive straight home. But greater ease about the choice wasn't a measure of how difficult it was, but how my gut felt. I felt a gut clench at taking the detour and stopping at her place. So I went straight on home.

Whatever my choice, it needs to feel right. Balance is achieved by doing what feels right. When I feel unease, it is life pushing back. So I have to ask myself, "What do I feel?" or "What do I need?" or "What brings me feelings of ease right now?" Not my friends, or neighbours. Not an authority figure or my inner critic. Me. Life.

When I am drawn to something it is spirit drawing me to spirit, life drawing me to balance. When I feel a joyful urge to throw myself into the lake on a hot day, it is the lake and my connection to it that is calling. The urge doesn't come from only me and the lake, it comes from the interconnection. Me-Lake. I call spirit. Spirit is calling me to call spirit.

On that day with ice cream melting in the car, it was home that called me.

First published June 2014 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Vardøger

For years my daughter and I experienced vardøger when my husband, Tom, was about to come home from work.

We would hear his car in the lane about 10 minutes before it actually arrived. Since we never knew when he'd be finished work or arrive, this signal made it easy to shift from one activity to another during that 10 minute interval.

After Tom retired, I didn't get vardøger very often and I thought maybe it wouldn't arrive again. But I heard it once again one day before he drove in. And then the next day, I heard my friend's car in the lane a little while before she was due for a visit. When it happened this second time, I set my kitchen timer for 10 minutes and then got busy with other things. When the timer went off, I looked down the lane, and there her car was, turning into the lane right at that moment.

Vardøger literally means "warning soul" in Norwegian. In "The Sense of Being Stared At", Rupert Sheldrake writes, "Typically, someone at home hears a person walking or driving up to the house, coming in and hanging up his coat. Yet nobody is there. Some ten to thirty minutes later the person really arrives to similar sounds. People get used to it. Housewives put the kettle on as the vardøger arrives, knowing that their husbands will arrive soon." Etiäinen is the Finnish version of the same thing. Like vardøger is in Norway, etiäinen is not an extraordinary phenomenon, but a common part of everyday life.

I like this. It's one of those sweet little mysteries that doesn't need to be understood or solved, just enjoyed.

Listening to Bells

Early one morning, when the weather and wind were perfect, I could just make out the sound of the train's warning call 20 km away as it traveled north from Alliston. In the summer, when the air is right, I can hear the kids talking down at the bottom pond, over a km away. Sometimes I can make out some of the words along with the laughter. If I am lucky, I may hear a church bell off in the distance, sweet-toned, ringing again, and again, and again.

There's something about the sound of a bell that warms my heart. I heard the carillon at University of Toronto once. 51 bells. It was so beautiful, it gave me goosebumps.

Of course there are bells that announce news: Like the one at a neighbour's summer home. After working all week in the city he drove up here on weekends to decompress. He was so happy to be here he clanged a noisy bell outside his back door to announce his joy each Friday evening. We'd hear the bell and announce, "Gord's up." Or the temple bell in a small village that was rung to announce a happy event. Ayya Khema wrote, "The bell allowed the villagers to share their joy." Or the bells in the clock tower at Toronto's Old City Hall, tolling the hour.

There are bells that clear energy: Like the singing bowl that friends gave me a while back. When I use it right, the tones and overtones are clearing and soothing. Or like the small chime with the pure musical tone that I use to clear the energy in a space. 

I think my favourites though, are the tiny bells. I have a few scattered around the house - small tinkly things that sometimes move in the breeze as I walk by with a sound like the whispers of a forgotten song. These bells make no demands. Yet their voices reach deep within and without.

There's something about the sound of a bell that warms my heart.

See also "Being Nobody Going Nowhere" by Ayya Khema.

First version published May 2014 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

The Birds Notice

We take it for granted how much we influence the world around us and how much it influences us. We barely notice how when we walk near a bird's nest, the birds will either quiet right down or call an alarm. While under the tree, if I suddenly feel a rush of anger, without perceptively moving my body, the birds will pause.

First published December 2014 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Who Wins ?

When I was a kid, I often beat my brother at Canasta. He took the game and the outcome very seriously. He played to win. What he didn't realize at the time was that while I enjoyed winning, I didn't mind losing either. I liked the fun of seeing what strategies may work one day and how the cards come out another.

Like any card game, winning was about skill and about luck. We were probably equally matched in skill. And all in all, we were probably equally lucky.

Since he worried about the outcome, his approach to the game was short term. With his vision set on the win, he tightened his playing style, and let his intellect and skill be in charge. This may have helped his focus and determination but it also made his moves predictable. With my vision set more on the fun of pitting myself against a worthy opponent, I could think a bit more out of the box. He took risks at bad times, hoping for a change in fortune. I took risks when it was fun to take risks. Sometimes I'd play the whole game in an outrageously risky manner just to see how it might turn out.

I wonder what it might have been like if he had played the way I did, not to win or lose, but just to play? I bet there would have been more laughter. I'm happy to report, he's much more mellow these days.

First published February 2015 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Just Not In Us

Years ago on a talk show on TV, they were exploring ways to lift themselves out of some sort of emotional jam. When asked, one woman from the studio audience stepped up and told the hostess she just couldn't do it. The TV hostess was the picture of rags to riches, the embodiment of hard work and willpower leading to success. And here in the audience was a woman who clearly wasn't ready to put this good advice into action. When pressed as to why, the woman gave a number of reasons. The hostess saw them as lame excuses and told the audience member that she wasn't really trying.

I didn't agree. There was no lack of effort here or even commitment. This woman who stood up wasn't making excuses, she was trying to explain that she just couldn't do it. She was hoping for answers and what she got was a dressing-down. The simple version is just pull yourself up by the bootstraps and do it. While that may be good for TV ratings, it may not work in the real world.

When I was taking physiotherapy after getting a new hip (it's still wonderful by the way), some of the joint-replacement people who were there along with me couldn't manage the schedule of exercises at home, and their results suffered. Those who weren't in the thick of it might think "If she just does her exercises, then she'll get the results." But it's not that simple. For the lady next to me with the new knee, it just wasn't in her. She didn't have whatever inner drive or circumstances or thinking patterns or beliefs or background or genetics or karma it would have taken to jump into the work at home. I can't know what it was, but I was next to her in the physiotherapy room, and no fault to her at all. It just wasn't in her.

A story that really helped me internalize this was a Star Trek story. Geordi and Beverly were in the cargo bay and had to put out a plasma fire without assistance from outside the room. The only viable solution was to hang onto something tightly, evacuate the air (and the O2 to feed the fire) into space and then once the rush of air-to-space was over, get to the other side of the room to a switch that would restore the atmosphere. They'd have to hold their breath and fight to stay conscious in the process. Beverly made it. Geordi collapsed along the way. So what made it possible for one and not the other? There was no lack of effort or commitment. No fault to either of them. No blame.

A client of mine was offered a chance to take a vacation with some relatives. They did all the work to make it happen, even to finding her a flight during the busiest time of year. They knew she had reasons for not going and did their best to eliminate each of those reasons so she could go. She wanted to go and found great pleasure at the idea of the trip, yet she just couldn't do it. For her, the trip was too much. And she felt terrible about letting them down. It just wasn't in her.

As for me, I saw the difference between 'not in me' and 'in me' right up close recently. 

For some reason last month when the time changed from winter time to summer time, something inside me changed along with the clocks. I felt more cheerful. It was easier somehow to find the commitment to get onto the yoga mat first thing in the morning, when for the last year or so, I've had to push myself. Some might say I'd reached some sort of tipping point as a result of pushing myself day after day. But I'll tell you, that's just not the case. It wasn't just yoga. It was like a switch flipped inside me. I don't know why. 

So here I am, instructed by my physiotherapist not to do any back twists or forward bends for the next week, not even to tie my shoes. And I want to get onto the yoga mat. If this was a month ago, I would have shrugged and felt relieved that I didn't have to push myself to get onto the mat. Now, it's different. I'm happy to substitute other postures for the ones I'm not to do this week. What is it in me that makes it seem a joy now? What made it so hard before this? Same person. Same amount of will power. Same understanding of consequences. Same respect for what I want to do. Same ability to focus on process and not end result.

What changed in me? I don't know. If I did, I'd bottle it up and sell it for a million bucks. It feels pretty good.

But I am really grateful for it. It makes it easier to look back on the Janet of 2 months ago and see her more tenderly. The upswing I feel right now is not an upward curve based on accomplishment or hard work or eliminating roadblocks one at a time, but a gift, one that is certain to change at some point ahead. When I find myself pushing to make life work in the future, I hope I remember this, and see my efforting self just as tenderly. 

Sometimes, no matter how worthwhile, or how deep the desire, with no fault to us, whatever it takes is just not in us.

First published April 2015 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Mind the Gap

I have a card in my tarot deck called "Nothingness." It refers to a time of transition. That in-between time. Something is finished and the next thing not yet in sight.

I can always tell when I am in the middle of another gap: I go to the store, eager to buy a new top, ready for the fresh and new. I pick up the perfect top, then get it home and realize that it wasn't as perfect as I'd thought. It can take two or three tries like this before I get smart and give it up for a while. During the gap time, I feel creative and eager to jump into a new project, but no matter how hard I try, it's just not right. It's as though part of me is embracing the new me, but the old me hasn't quite let go.

During the gap, nothing seems to fit right. Nothing seems to work right. Stuff around me may break down, first the car, then the fridge, then 2 lightbulbs on the same day. It can be uncomfortable.

When I swapped out from a Windows computer to a Mac, there was this awful period between being competent on my old computer and being competent on the Mac. Suddenly I was in neither world. I was stupid on the Mac, and when I needed to work on the windows computer, I found I was newly-stupid on it too. My sister (who is a computer teacher) told me to expect to be stupid on both for a while. "Give it 6 weeks," she said. "Then you'll be fine on both again." All I could do was keep at it, give more time to any work I had to do on the computer, and wait it out, trusting that I really would be fine with the change. She was right. It took about 6 weeks.

A humbling 6 weeks.

When we move through the gap we discover that we aren't quite who we thought we were. We are re-creating ourselves. That's where the word recreation originated - renewing ourselves, even in the sense of mental or spiritual renewal. It's a good time to think new thoughts, to let ideas drift through, form and coalesce, then separate and form new patterns. It's a good time for insight to arise, but also a good time not to settle on any of it as a concrete truth. It doesn't hurt for me to remind myself that who I think I am is just a mental idea - a snapshot that I like to carry in my pocket. Yet the snapshot doesn't give me the whole picture. It can't accurately say who I was when I made it, who I am right now, or who I am becoming.

In my tarot deck, this gap time is described as a time rich with possibilities that have not yet manifested themselves. It's not a time for doing, but a time for being. So if I feel a strong desire to go shopping for a new top, I might want to leave my money at home. If the top I see in the store is really all that perfect, it'll be there later on. It might be better to drift a bit, and relax as I re-form myself. As my mother used to say, it's a good time to "Make haste slowly."

First published July 2015 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Ritual

I just made a small pot of coffee to sip while I write. It's early in the morning and the ritual of coffee-making brings me a sense of "okay now, it's time to get started on my day." Kettle, filter, grinding beans, my favourite cup, the scent, the time it takes to brew - all are a part of the ritual.

This is small but it's valuable to me. When out of town at a hotel, I may check out the nearest coffee shops the night before to see where I can find a cup in the morning. At my sister's, I can look through her cupboards. I found a packet of hot chocolate the last time I was there and substituted that for the coffee. I may think it's about the coffee, but when I have to change it up, I realize it's not. The ritual is there to support my 'starting the day.'

We set rituals in place and pay attention to them because we want to underscore the meaning of experience. The rituals may seem superficial, but they are the exact opposite of that. They help us attend to the meaning underneath by giving us a structure around the meaning.

I lost sight of that when I first started developing my own spiritual life. I thought the rituals themselves were superficial. I discarded them. And then immediately I started building rituals of my own to support my spiritual life. I set up a meditation cushion. Said a few words before each meditation. When in the trees and listening to spirit, I held my hands a certain way because it seemed to support the practice. I felt by taking my own approach I was being more honest. But I discovered differently. When I went back to church, I didn't want to say words that I didn't believe in or participate in mandatory rituals that had been in place long past their 'best before' dates. To resolve that, I looked to the meaning behind the words and activities. What I found surprised me. The meaning had been there all along. Some of these old religious institutions have been going for a very long time. There's a good reason why they have persisted.

Some of the joy we take in ritual is about the pagentry and theatre. A coronation is a ritual. A wedding is a ritual. The grandness of the event gives us all, participants and spectators alike, a way to set the experience more firmly into our lives.

I used to eat the brown M&Ms last. That was a ritual that added depth to the treat. Setting the table with the good dishes at Thanksgiving sets the tone of the importance of the event. One of my favourite rituals is baking a birthday cake, cooling and frosting it, putting a coin inside the cooked cake, sprinkling it with colourful sugar beads, then presenting it to the birthday girl and singing while she blows out the candles.

When I step outside each morning and listen to the sounds around me, it helps me reconnect with the whole world. When I light a candle for a friend, it helps me bring the emotions I am feeling into a positive physical form. When I feel overwhelmed, making a cup of tea is a small ritual that can bring me back into myself.

While the rituals themselves are not the meaning, they are not superficial. We need them. We love them. We use them all the time.

First published October 2014 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Humour Has a Place in Spiritual Growth

Sitting in vipassana retreat. Silent. Very serious. I found it joyless at times. The teachers, while well versed in their field, took themselves pretty seriously too. I didn't see them smile much.

Anyhow, well into the first long sitting, a guy sitting in a yoga posture in the middle of the room started to do some loud, specialized, odd breathing thing. In that quiet, serious meditation hall, it sounded as loud as a gong. I loved it. As I listened to him, my sense of humour kicked in. I was caught by the sound of it; it sounded a bit like a cat trying to throw up a hairball, you know - that ackk, ackk kind of thing.

Spiritual growth has a certain dignity to it. Yet humour does too, when it's not pointing fingers, or hiding from the pain of reality. Real humour is about the absurdity of life. The longer we live the more we come to see that each time we try to settle on a truth or fact or take things too seriously, we find we have spinach in our teeth. Humour keeps us humble; it's what makes us human and it serves as a good counterpoint to self-importance or too much piety.

When I sat in that meditation hall after the hairball thing stopped, I could feel that the pressure in the hall had released, as though everyone had taken off a tight shirt. Even if it wasn't his intention, and even if it made the leaders frown, it was the perfect way to break all that deep dark difficult energy.

Taken at the same time, spiritual growth and humour invite a sense of tenderness in us, an understanding that we are all together in this same weird boat called life.

First published January 2015 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Boot Camp for Flowers

It's like all the flowers in a garden were lined up in a row and told they had to be better flowers. "You! Yeah you, the one with the crushed petals. I know you grew up next to a rock, but you'd better stand up straighter or you'll never get anywhere as a daisy." "And you! Yeah, you. How come you're so short? I know you didn't get the same nutrients as the others but how about a bit more effort now! You're not trying hard enough to be taller." "What about you? Your soil and weather were perfect to make you the most beautiful flower ever. How come you look average?"

First published November 2014 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Pig Sayings I Have Found Helpful

"Never teach a pig to sing. It annoys the pig and wastes your time."

"Not my pig. Not my farm."

"Never wrestle with a pig in the mud. You'll both get dirty but the pig likes it."


First published March 2015 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Ego Stuff

Someone who works hard to shed ego - attachment to ideas of who he is - may get to a point where he thinks he has finally released ego. As soon as he thinks, "I am someone who has shed ego," it's a sign that his ego is still strong and well.

This makes me smile.

First published April 2015 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Coming Brand New Into The Day

Ellis Peters wrote, “some come brand-new into a new day and have to rediscover their griefs… Some nurse their griefs into the night.” I guess that’s why we are encouraged as kids to say a prayer at bedtime. It sweetens our dreams, releases our worries and lets us start fresh the next day.

Instinct

I wonder how much we have deviated from the inner wisdom we all possess. We're so busy analysing the world that we forget we are living here. When birds flock to warmer climates in the Autumn, they do this out of instinct. Instinct, in the sense of being more in tune with their connection with the world. They feel the inner need to go and they don't reason it out or analyse their choices. They simply go.

I often feel the inner urge to organize and fluff my nest at this time of year. I can fight it if I want, but if I do I may lose something important along the way. If I make a pattern of fighting it, due to a busy schedule or rational cause-and-effect thinking, my whole being is in conflict.

I may think I am being rational. But even my rational mind suspects that the birds have it right.

First published October 2015 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Body Wisdom

If I assume that our bodies are always leaning towards finding balance, then even when our minds overwork with worry or analysis or remembering old sorrows, perhaps this is the body's way of giving us/it a chance to process them, accept them, cry them out, perhaps and then move ahead into a more balanced state.

To take this idea even further, I have found that my body retains extra fluid if I eat too much comfort food. Then tears are closer to the surface making it a good time for me to process the difficult emotions that I'd been using comfort food to soften. Again it's like my body is trying pretty hard for me to do what I need to do to recover some balance.

First published November 2015 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.

Flame Wars and Twit Filters

When I first started using computers and communicating with strangers via bulletin boards (early 90′s) disagreements often flashed up into total flame wars. 

I found it really seductive to get embroiled in the fight. 

For a while. 

Until one day when I realized the draw was conflict without consequences. I could feel that great juiced-up feeling of battle without the counterbalance of real danger. That wasn't right.

The major combatants wanted the fight. They wanted to fight. They didn't care about the conversation. They weren't there to chat. They were there for the juice of battle.

And battle can be juicy.

In the midst of one particularly juicy battle, I decided to stop being a part of the conversation and watch how eager my mind was to participate. It was eager. But the longer I lurked, the easier it got. 

Until I realized that lurking is still participating. I was still caught up in the fight. 

So I did the next hard thing and stopped paying attention to it altogether. I'd joined that group looking for understanding, conversation, friendship. I got battle. So I left.

Offline I found the same thing. A neighbour loved introducing controversial topics when friends gathered. It took me a while but I eventually realized she was feeding off the conflict. I could see it in her face. This gathering wasn't about bringing people together, it was about stirring things up. It was entertainment, not friendship.

I’m better at spotting trolls now whether they're bots on social media or in-person. And I'm better at walking away now - or blocking, muting or otherwise using my twit filters. The juice that might have fired me up in those flame wars never could hold up. That kind of energy isn't honest. It's superficial. 

There are other deeper ways of raising good energy, ways that sustain me better than any flame war.

Poof !

If for each of the things we perceive there is a counter-thing: strength-weakness, light-dark, faith-doubt, then for every being is there a counter-being - that once they merge, neither needs to continue to exist? Poof, I'm gone!

First published January 2016 in my free monthly email newsletter, Starry Night. Sign up here.