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.