Rebirth?

There are a lot of good reasons to behave as though we get reborn. 

I'm not saying I believe or don't believe. But I find it convenient to live as though it's a thing.

A while back I mentioned to Tom that I'd always hoped to travel more, and now that particular door is closing fast. He said, "Maybe in your next life." It came at the right moment to remind me that while some doors close, others open. I'm not missing out on anything.

A dear friend lives with Schizophrenia. The wonderful curious kid he used to be is still there but is hard to see through the illness. Has his life been wasted? I don't think so. Perhaps at some level he needed this life to have this challenge. But I hope his next life is more fun. 

In an idealistic culture like ours, we strive for perfection and then beat ourselves up for our inability to attain it, even though it is not possible. By seeing life as something we are not supposed to get right, we can relax. Having other lives gives us limitless possibilities.

How better to connect with all of humanity than to know we live such different and varied lives? I could be a tired old man in one life and a laughing child in another. When I have an opinion about someone, it can help to remember they may not just be the person I see, but may be very different in another life. I also keep this in mind when I do energy healing. We may know each other over lifetimes. In another lifetime it may be me reaching out to you. Thinking like this levels the playing field.

Rebirth? I don't know. But behaving as though it were true takes off the pressure and leaves me more free to enjoy what this life brings.

( photo copyright Moyan Brenn )

Fun

I've been working on an article for the blog and it hasn't been coming together. I've been getting distracted by things that are more fun. And that could be what I'm missing in the writing.

So, fun it is!

I just watched the show "Becoming You" on Apple+ over the holidays. I was blown away by the kids. Here's their description so you know what I'm talking about: It's a "series about child development that explores how the first 2,000 days on Earth shape the rest of our lives. Told through the eyes of over 100 children across the world, from Nepal to Japan and Borneo, each episode offers a thought-provoking look at how children learn to think, speak and move, from birth to age 5."

Wow these kids amazed me. We get caught in our circles and cultures and forget how marvellous humans are as a race: a little kid learning how to mount a reindeer, another taking her first swim in deep water, another learning how to handle her feelings. The kids weren't the only ones having fun, I was too.

What is it about kids and fun?

They play. They risk trying out new things. They experiment to see what works and what doesn't.

Kids commit to learning and developing new skills. They lean into life. And they have fun in the doing. Kids can get so absorbed in what they are doing they don't notice how cold their fingers are. Work for them is fun.

Kids laugh easily. Hearing a fart rip in a room can change the energy instantly. A kid's laugh invites us to laugh along.

Kids are creative and imaginative. They make stuff and make stuff up. They look at things from different angles. They get down. They look at the small things. They get up close. They wonder.

Kids love to be surprised and delight in the absurd. They love it when they expect to see a jellyfish and it turns out to be a banana.

And they are not afraid to get dirty. The dirtier the kid, the more fun you know she had.

I may watch the series again. I can't go back to being a kid, but I can bring more of that back into my life.

It'll be fun.

Refreshing Our Timeline

The shenanigans at Twitter have reminded me it's likely a good idea every now and then to disconnect from people or topics that drag my energy down. I may have started following these folks because they had something valuable to say. I need to stop following most of them anyhow. The move to Mastodon is giving me a chance to interact with a different crowd, see different viewpoints, broaden my horizons, and cut back on the amount of time I give this stuff.

I wrote about this before, you know. 

Back in 2017 I wrote "The mornings have been staying darker longer and I often get up before the sun. So recently I've been reading the news - pages I enjoy, news sites I trust and so on before going out to my prayers in the trees. But the last few days when I was reading, I noticed I was getting angry. And this mental activity made it harder for me to settle into prayer/meditation later on."

I got used to the vibes at Twitter, even though I rarely posted and blocked heavily to avoid some of the nastier stuff. It wasn't until I shifted over that I realized how strong an effect it had been having on my mental and emotional landscape, not to mention how addictive it can be. I had to leave it to see it more clearly.

I've had a quote sitting on a scrap paper on my desk. It's stayed there because I want to keep it there for a while before it gets lost in the clutter. Ajahn Sucitto says, "It's precious, what we give attention to." He wasn't just talking about bad habits like scrolling Twitter for too long. It's more about what we choose to take in, about taking back our power.

We all know people who hang around with a bad crowd. People or media. The more they spend time with these influences, the more conditioned they become. Their worlds get smaller, with fewer opportunities to see other perspectives. This happens with good crowds, too. We all know people who have high moral standards, and then as they steep themselves in the people and institutions that share their beliefs and ideas, the rest of the world becomes less relevant.

When there's a sea-change like over at Twitter, it seems like a good time for me to use that momentum and step out of the familiar. 

To refresh my own inner timeline.

If you want to find me on Mastodon, this is me for as long as I am there: https://mas.to/@jjannie

See also: The Power of Repetition. This helps us find a way to deliberately steep ourselves in more wholesome energies. https://www.janetdane.com/8repeat.html

Analog and Digital

Over my life, as more and more has changed from analog to digital, while I can appreciate what was gained, I also feel some nostalgia for what has been lost.

My everyday self benefits from the digitization of our world, (do you remember how much it cost to process photographs?), but I mourn for the ones who will never know the thrill of the sound of a pipe organ at full crank in a place where the acoustics are half-decent. A pipe organ doesn't just play notes. It breathes them. Literally. Its breath fills the rafters and permeates and lingers in the wood in the building. Digital is fine, but even with the best speakers, it doesn't come close to the real thing.

Mom played the pipe organ at church when I was a kid. After some years, she got an electronic organ so she could play at home. It was great for her. But it never gave me that thrill. Decades later when I got news that the church of my childhood had burned down, I felt bad about the loss, but mostly I mourned the pipe organ. 

School bells, hand-held or hung in the bell tower, had a human touch. Switching to an electronic buzzer may have been more efficient, but it lost something when the push of a button set it ringing rather than Mrs. Storey. School is about community, and Mrs. Storey ringing the bell was part of that. 

Bells are analog. They are complex and resonant. I feel enriched when I hear the carillon at U of Toronto, church bells in the distance, or the clock at Old City Hall.

When we first started going to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia to visit Dad, the fog horn blew a long, low tone that filled the air and tingled right down my back. One year they modernized it and replaced it with an electronic version. I was so disappointed. My experience of the town was more than family, location, Bluenose and tall ships. It was laying in soft sheets in a misty summer night and letting the reassuring tone of the fog horn fill me. The new one did the job, but didn't touch me the same way.

We lose something rich and multilayered when we switch from analog to digital. But we are human after all, and will find a way to replace them. Other multilayered experiences will open up even as the old ones fall away; we aren't left with only pale imitations. 

Still, as much as I feel the loss when some of them go, I take joy in the ones that still exist. When I hear the sound of a bell, if I can, I stop and let it soak in.

Oh, and if you ever get a chance to hear a pipe organ in full crank in a building with good acoustics, go. If you are anything like me, the complexity and beauty of the experience can raise gooseflesh and fill your soul.

……...

The Sumburgh Foghorn is an example of a proper fog horn

Sounding the Sumburgh Foghorn youtube.com

Bigger Bowl

I don't remember where I read the concept of putting things in a bigger bowl, but I have found it helpful over the years. 

So say you have an apple here and an orange over there. They are different things. But put them together in a bigger bowl and they are both fruit. The differences are still there but the view is more expansive.

I was awake in the night with a restless and busy mind. Tossing and turning. Thoughts about politicians, about family. You know the stuff that makes us toss and turn. I tried deflecting by thinking about puppies and kittens. That didn't help for long. I tried pink prayers. They were helpful to change the flavour but didn't do much to stop the tossing and turning. I tried recalling the movie I saw earlier that day. It didn't last long. I tried watching my breathing. I tried noticing body sensation. Finally it dawned on me that this was just a lot of turbulent thinking energy. 

Thinking energy can take on a lot of different patterns: turbulent, smooth, some thoughts rush up and grab us with an emotional hit, some hover in the background, some are cluttered or fragmented, some crowd in on our energy putting pressure on us, some are comfortable. During the night the pattern was turbulence, like rough waves in a lake or gusty weather above. 

The thoughts themselves were oranges and apples. Noticing the pattern as turbulence was the bigger bowl.

This helped. It removed the effort I was making to change the thoughts themselves. Imagining the turbulence as gusty weather helped too, because like clouds in the sky, I knew the thinking pattern would change and disburse eventually. 

Once I rested in the awareness of a bigger pattern, my body rested too and I was able to get back to sleep. 

…

If you've never seen thinking activity as energy patterns before, you can make it into a small awareness exercise. Ask yourself at any time, 'What does the thinking energy seem like right now?' Then, stop and see if you can get a feel for it. It's a fresh new place to put your attention and keep it occupied for a bit. 

It puts things in a bigger bowl.

Trusting Life

When a bird flies closely in front of my car as I drive, I tend to slow down. It can happen often out here in the country. What I discovered over time was that there is often a good reason for me to ease off the gas for a slow-to-get-out-of-my-way crow. Like a cop running radar up ahead, or farm equipment that needs more than one lane of road. Not always, but it's happened often enough for me take it as a warning sign. 

Other patterns like this have shown up. If I set off to buy a sofa, and things don't fall into place, I take it as a sign that it's the wrong sofa or the wrong time. I bail out earlier rather than later. When I ignore that little pain in my back while digging in the garden, my body may well just say, "OK that's enough!" and put me into bed for 5 days to recover. (When I was young it was 3 days).

We hate having our flow disrupted, though. When a bird flies too close it disturbs the flow and speed of the drive. It knocks us out of the groove. It's a nuisance when the sofa purchase doesn't fall into place. I had a rhythm while digging in the garden and wanted to have it done that day. A little twinge in the back is just a twinge. Surely I can power through.

This even works with assumptions or opinions. Forming an opinion uses less cognitive energy than changing it later on. It's easier to ignore something we don't want to hear than give it any of our energy. Until we must. This can be serious business in a world where social media and propaganda are buzzing around our already tired selves; we are fresh meat for their tactics. 

We don't want to let life get in the way of our plans. But I have learned not to fight it. Yes, it could mean I am late for the appointment, or that I'll have to find a sofa elsewhere. It could mean that I don't finish the garden until later. 

But I'd rather slow down for a bird than meet that cop around the next corner.

Finding Things

 

I started writing this when we'd been chasing down a set of car keys that had vanished into thin air. It had been dogging me for a day.

Years ago, when a wedding ring vanished during a family celebration, my Catholic friend taught me how she asked St. Anthony to find lost objects. Her technique (if I remember right): Quiet yourself. Get a mental image of what you want to find. Ask St. Anthony to help you find it. Wander through the house or area with a sense of loose concentration, mind and body easy. See if there’s a place you keep being drawn to, even though you may KNOW FOR SURE it couldn’t be there, because you can take that to mean you are being guided. Where you keep feeling that pull is likely where it is or is a hint to where it is. She had great successes with this. That particular day she kept getting drawn to the discarded wrapping paper. She must have gone back to it 4 times. And sure enough there was the wedding ring, found before it went out with the trash.

My technique is almost the same. I start logically. First I retrace steps. I ask another set of eyes to look. I go through things systematically.

When that all fails I go the intuitive route. This is when it gets fun. It's a great way to pull into the less logical and feel the energies of attraction and repulsion. It's also a great way to get the universe involved, recognizing that there are forces greater than us. 

I quiet myself. I get a mental image of what I want to find. I may even imagine the lost thing wants to find me, too. I ask the Universe/God/Life/Angels to help me find it. Or I ask St. Anthony - he's a friendly Saint. I wander through the house or area with a sense of loose concentration, mind and body easy. Sometimes I use a technique like the radar thingy. Like my friend, I don't discount places I feel drawn to even when logic tells me it couldn't be there. I don't rush; time pressure adds a level of cloudiness. I try to relax about the outcome; lost things sometimes need to stay lost. If I get stressed out while on the wander, I stop and relax again. The relaxed mind and body gives me access to something larger than logic, something rich and fluid.

The car keys? Well, we looked for them everywhere we thought they might have been, and places we thought they might not. We tossed cushions, took apart the recliner chair, checked all the wrong pockets. Called the dentist office. The garage got tidier. We cleaned out a few pockets. After two days, no keys.

But.

The third day, a letter from the government reminded me to renew license and health cards. That led me to the glove box of the Jeep which I rarely open. Without the letter, it could have been weeks or even months before I needed to use the glove box. And there they  were. It ended up being an "Oh I remember now" moment. He'd dropped them in my glove box for convenience after a visit to the dentist (poor guy had teeth pulled) while I was getting him some prescriptions from the drug store.

By giving up the need for the keys to be found, when they did show up, it was a delightful surprise. It felt like a blessing.