Softening Our Hearts

Strange how some days, things just open us up. We could be walking down the street and suddenly find ourselves struck by the play of light on the side of a building. Or stopped by the scent of coffee, freshly ground. Our energy just stops in those moments and our hearts open a crack. We become available to the joy of life.

Other days, not so much. These are the days when we scroll social media, or find our way to the fridge to try to feel better. We know strategies like this don't work, but what to do? Where do we find joy when we don't feel joyful? 

In a newsletter years ago I made a list of some things can can soften the heart. Here are a few of them:

• Stroking a dog, cat or loved one.
• Appreciating a delicious food.
• Lighting a candle for a departed friend.
• Letting music or art fill us.
• Remembering a kindness.

Notice how these are all actions. This is important:

• I'm not taking a picture of the dog, I am stroking her. 
• I'm not evaluating the music. I'm listening to it.
• Appreciating a delicious food is, literally, enjoying it. En-joy-ing.
• Remembering a kindness isn't mental exercise. Like the word itself says, we are re-membering it.

We are taking it into the body, incorporating it and letting the energies infuse us. The heart may be sad when lighting the candle, but the softening and allowing opens us to a deeper underlying joy.

The "stopped" part of this is important too. While walking in the forest my mind was going a mile a minute. Knowing I was working on this story, I thought "Ok. A real world example." So I stopped. "How do I soften when the mind is just running on and on and on? And on?" I took a breath and relaxed. I listened. Not to specific sounds. I just listened to allow the sounds into my very cells and nerves and body processes.

In stopping, I let down my guard. I relaxed. My heart softened. 

The way to live more joy is to, well, to live more joy. I might be all stressed out by something, but if you plunked a puppy into my lap, my world would right itself.

Crinkly Energy

"Nothing's happened," Ajahn Sucitto said, when speaking about worry, "and I started to feel all crinkly about it all." 

I like the word "crinkle" to describe energy.

The first few times I heard the phrase it just sounded poetic. But then one day, I realized it was literal. 

I'd been scrolling on social media. I noticed how I got a bit juiced up to hit That Link about That Awful Thing, even though I knew it wasn't going to make things any better. As I watched the desire rise, I felt my energy actually crinkle. For real. The energy near my forehead, right hand side kind of crinkled up like a cotton shirt that had been slept on. I stayed with it while the impulse faded, and my energy smoothed out again.

Smooth is what we want. Crinkles are all right, and mostly inevitable, but smooth is what we are shooting for. In that smooth relaxed open state, we are at our best: our most creative, most open to insight or perception, most accepting. It feels good.

So it's worthwhile noticing what the energy is doing and finding fresh ways to describe it: 

• a little numb mid-back
• weight above the right shoulder
• a vague congestion near the jaw
• a little burble or flutter at my back left ribcage (some of them are fun)

I wonder if they have better words to describe these sensations in other languages? English seems so limited at times.

I might feel a bit knocked around or crumpled, or feel sensations like heat or cool, pressure or weight. The energy could be bristling, sinking, lifting, pulling or expanding. 

These are are worth our attention. As I was writing this paragraph and getting stuck on some of the wording, I could feel the tension rise in the back of my neck. I relaxed the muscles in my neck deliberately and then watched the crinkled energy follow suit. There was no point in pushing through the effort when my energy's all rumpled up. 

How is it now? Well, at the moment, my energy seems pretty relaxed. Maybe a bit fluffy over there, in a nice way.

A mantra: "What does this feel like in my energy?"

Bonus: Following what the energy is doing rather than getting caught up in the drama or mental knots themselves can give a busy overactive intellect something more useful to do.

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.