So how does one go about building a life? My starting point has been what we can call fuel. The most basic component of my life is my body. I was incredibly angular and skinny until somewhere around, I dunno 30. I don’t want to go back there: not enough meat on me bones, not enough curvature (but alas, plenty of suitors). I want to remain a woman in a woman’s body. This woman’s body. But I want to feel lighter, stronger, healthier. I want to look good, but I want to feel better. Strong like I can do whatever I want to do in this borrowed body, “I’ve got on loan in between my mom and some maggots” (Ani Difranco).
And I want energy. How can I go about doing anything else if I feel tired all the time? Besides I want the way that I look to be a non-issue, something that takes up little thought space. I want to bound out of bed, grab what I am drawn to costume myself in, without contemplating whether or not it makes me look dumpy. Don’t get me wrong, I love my body more and more these days. I am amazed at how it functions, gets me where I need to go, shares itself through affection, runs slick maneuvers. So it is also out of love for my body that I want to give it the proper fuel and strengthen to function at its optimal capacity.
That said, I have had my eye on food and exercise for years, and each year it gets bumped up on the list of things that I care about. Finally it is reaching the top of my list. Over the past two years, since I moved to CO, and no longer had an in-house chef, I have had to ponder what to put in my grocery cart and I have had to confront the curious malaise that sometimes takes over when I am facing the stove. And I have had yoga and gym memberships and I have lost and then regained 20-30 pounds. And I have taken nutrition classes (ok 1 class) and talked with a couple nutritionists, and read books. And what I have ended up with is that there are some basic facts to be armed with about power foods and such, but mostly I know. I know what foods make me feel good and what foods don’t. I know what and when I should eat. I just sometimes don’t care enough or react to food from an emotional space. Right now as parts of me process the break-up in their own ways, I feel the old tendency toward the coffee and cigarette diet come a callin’. It doesn’t help that I’m also in a low-money space.
But I know that when I eat how my body deserves to be fed, I send my self a message that I deserve to be happy and healthy. That I am worth the extra effort, so not only do I feed my body, I feed my mind and spirit too. Below this, I will post the grocery list I mentally carry that seems to be working for me these days. Feel free to suggest grocery items of your own.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Grocery List
Kale (I usually throw this in a skillet with olive oil and garlic sometimes balsamic vin. or braggs amino acids)- very fast
Spinach
Eggs (to boil or scramble with Spinach)
Minced garlic (tired of chopping)
Fish (Tilapia is cheap and Safeway has daily 50% off specials)
Turkey Burgers
Black Beans
Sweet Potatoes or Yams
Almonds (Costly so I only eat a handful once in a while)
Bananas
Blueberries
Yogurt (has to be creamy )
Choc chips
Kashi Go Lean Cereal
Milk/Soy/Almond
Peanut or Almond Butter
Apples ( I like Fuji)
string cheese
For Salad:
Lettuce
Sunflower Seeds/Pumpkin Seeds/Hemp Seeds
Jarred Cactus (in the foreign food aisle)
Onion
Raisins
Cucumbers
Goddess Dressing
Spinach
Eggs (to boil or scramble with Spinach)
Minced garlic (tired of chopping)
Fish (Tilapia is cheap and Safeway has daily 50% off specials)
Turkey Burgers
Black Beans
Sweet Potatoes or Yams
Almonds (Costly so I only eat a handful once in a while)
Bananas
Blueberries
Yogurt (has to be creamy )
Choc chips
Kashi Go Lean Cereal
Milk/Soy/Almond
Peanut or Almond Butter
Apples ( I like Fuji)
string cheese
For Salad:
Lettuce
Sunflower Seeds/Pumpkin Seeds/Hemp Seeds
Jarred Cactus (in the foreign food aisle)
Onion
Raisins
Cucumbers
Goddess Dressing
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Clean House
There are many a person from many a walk of life that advocate that part of happiness is a home-space that is free from unnecessary clutter. That being said, many a year and many a garbage bag later, I still have things that I don’t know where to put, and tend to have such low energy at times that where things fall is where they stay. But what about mental & emotional clutter. It is my deep belief that I am learning the old-fashioned (i.e. hard) way that I cannot hold on to things that don’t work (that don’t have the effect they are designed for). It has been my experience that the more I try to make things work that don’t, the more frustrating and complicated my life becomes. “Mama God” seems to support me in this belief as she has made it more and more abundantly clear when I am doing something that isn’t working. Sometimes this is simple, like my vacuum cleaner that wasn’t biting the dust or anything else, and though it hit my wallet hard, I had to invest in a new one. Done.
Other times, the decision may be just as simple, but the reverberations of that decision are enough to shake a life to its core. So last week Friday, I was called to show up in my life in a way that is particularly difficult and uncomfortable for me: as a single woman. I won’t go into the untidy details of how and why and who said what of the ending of said relationship (though if you need or want to know, feel free to email me), but the last line of that story is that the relationship ceased to work. It was riddled with difficulty and carried with it a history of heartache. If the relationship were a person we could say that it was an unreliable employee. It was always late, it called in a sick a lot, it was chock-full of excuses as to why it couldn’t do what was being asked of it. I gave it pep talks, and lots of paid time off, I threatened it, and gave it both verbal and written warnings, but in the end, it wasn’t right for the job. So I had to lay it off. If I want my company to be competitive in this waning market of happiness, I have to have the best team working for me. I have to take very seriously who I hire, who gets promoted, etc. The metaphor could go on.
So if my mind and heart were a house, it would be very clean. But part of the reason for that would be because it has been laid bare. There is very little furniture or art on the walls. I have lost a lover, and have few close friends with whom I have regular contact. My social calendar is sparsely populated. My life is, for the first time since I can remember, a blank slate. I am starting from close to zero in life-building. Perfect for this particular investigation as to what one should do/be/have to find authentic happiness.
Other times, the decision may be just as simple, but the reverberations of that decision are enough to shake a life to its core. So last week Friday, I was called to show up in my life in a way that is particularly difficult and uncomfortable for me: as a single woman. I won’t go into the untidy details of how and why and who said what of the ending of said relationship (though if you need or want to know, feel free to email me), but the last line of that story is that the relationship ceased to work. It was riddled with difficulty and carried with it a history of heartache. If the relationship were a person we could say that it was an unreliable employee. It was always late, it called in a sick a lot, it was chock-full of excuses as to why it couldn’t do what was being asked of it. I gave it pep talks, and lots of paid time off, I threatened it, and gave it both verbal and written warnings, but in the end, it wasn’t right for the job. So I had to lay it off. If I want my company to be competitive in this waning market of happiness, I have to have the best team working for me. I have to take very seriously who I hire, who gets promoted, etc. The metaphor could go on.
So if my mind and heart were a house, it would be very clean. But part of the reason for that would be because it has been laid bare. There is very little furniture or art on the walls. I have lost a lover, and have few close friends with whom I have regular contact. My social calendar is sparsely populated. My life is, for the first time since I can remember, a blank slate. I am starting from close to zero in life-building. Perfect for this particular investigation as to what one should do/be/have to find authentic happiness.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Where is here?
So the blog is called "from here to there"-- and I was trying to figure out exactly how happy I am at this point so I can determine where "there" might be.
First off, this past week was a particularly low one for me. As I said in my previous post, rumination was definitely a part of that. It is hard to tell what made this past week particularly hard and I dare say that I could throw a dart and hit on a myriad of logical reasons that I am not the happiest I could be. Firstly, I am in a state of transition. I am leaving my job next month to begin internship. I will be starting a new internship and then in August a new job. I will be moving also in August... So I am back to Liminal Space (I posted about this a couple of years ago, feel free to read about liminal space in that post).
Secondly, I am somewhat isolated. Two of my very good friends are out of town for extended periods of time. In a past life that would have had little impact on my social life, but these days that cuts my source of relational nourishment by more than half. When I decided to stop consuming alcohol more than eight months ago, that had an expected, but unpredictable impact on my social life, and the ramifications of that are still working themselves out. I am sure there is a thirdly and a fourthly and a list of other uglies that could go on and on, but I don't think making a list of what isn't working is as uplifting as getting back to the point of where is here so I can then get from here to there.
So I'd purchased a book called "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin several moons ago and decided to give it another go-- I could use a companion on this journey. She references the "Authentic Happiness Inventory" and so I, being the scholar that I am, googled it and found http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx, the homepage of Dr. Martin Seligman, "Director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania and founder of positive psychology, a branch of psychology which focuses on the empirical study of such things as positive emotions, strengths-based character, and healthy institutions".
There are a variety of measurement instruments on there that look at happiness, well-being, depressive symptoms and much more! This seemed ideal for a way for me to measure my happiness as I go along my journey.
So I won't reveal my scores just yet, but let me tell you...they were pretty low and my score on depression symptoms were pretty high. I can say that the scores were based on feelings of the past week and as I said earlier, it was a rough week.
Let me tell you one last thing before I turn in (because it is a fact I have personally accepted that you need to go to bed at a decent hour to be happy)-- I have turned to yoga a couple times in the last week to assist with my mood and it has been a lifesaver. I am committed to going to yoga as much as possible. Tomorrow I return to meditation.
First off, this past week was a particularly low one for me. As I said in my previous post, rumination was definitely a part of that. It is hard to tell what made this past week particularly hard and I dare say that I could throw a dart and hit on a myriad of logical reasons that I am not the happiest I could be. Firstly, I am in a state of transition. I am leaving my job next month to begin internship. I will be starting a new internship and then in August a new job. I will be moving also in August... So I am back to Liminal Space (I posted about this a couple of years ago, feel free to read about liminal space in that post).
Secondly, I am somewhat isolated. Two of my very good friends are out of town for extended periods of time. In a past life that would have had little impact on my social life, but these days that cuts my source of relational nourishment by more than half. When I decided to stop consuming alcohol more than eight months ago, that had an expected, but unpredictable impact on my social life, and the ramifications of that are still working themselves out. I am sure there is a thirdly and a fourthly and a list of other uglies that could go on and on, but I don't think making a list of what isn't working is as uplifting as getting back to the point of where is here so I can then get from here to there.
So I'd purchased a book called "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin several moons ago and decided to give it another go-- I could use a companion on this journey. She references the "Authentic Happiness Inventory" and so I, being the scholar that I am, googled it and found http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx, the homepage of Dr. Martin Seligman, "Director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania and founder of positive psychology, a branch of psychology which focuses on the empirical study of such things as positive emotions, strengths-based character, and healthy institutions".
There are a variety of measurement instruments on there that look at happiness, well-being, depressive symptoms and much more! This seemed ideal for a way for me to measure my happiness as I go along my journey.
So I won't reveal my scores just yet, but let me tell you...they were pretty low and my score on depression symptoms were pretty high. I can say that the scores were based on feelings of the past week and as I said earlier, it was a rough week.
Let me tell you one last thing before I turn in (because it is a fact I have personally accepted that you need to go to bed at a decent hour to be happy)-- I have turned to yoga a couple times in the last week to assist with my mood and it has been a lifesaver. I am committed to going to yoga as much as possible. Tomorrow I return to meditation.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Stop ruminating.
Ruminate= : to go over in the mind repeatedly and often casually or slowly
2: to chew repeatedly for an extended period
A couple of days ago I found myself in quite a funk. Dwelling on the meaninglessness of all. Found myself in a state of anhedonia. The day before this particular experience of funk I had been able to shake it off with a return to yoga (after a significant relapse into non-exercise which I don’t recommend). So I thought I would do the same and ran off to hit a yoga class, but I had the schedule all confused and I missed it. Deeper into the funk. I sat with it, I smoked with it, I complained to the bf, and there was no movement. Luckily, we had tix to hear Deepak Chopra speak that evening. The talk was good, though not mind-blowing, just a gentle reminder that yes, I am a spiritual superhero and I don’t have to over-effort to manifest spiritual qualities or to tap into omnipresent joy. Hmph.
I reflected upon my prior days. Yes, there were some external events that had the texture of minor stress, some not-so-fun insights in therapy for example, but in truth what seemed most clear to me was the excessive rumination and planning. The turning and churning of thoughts over and over in my head of what I was going to do, how to plan my life, how to best navigate X, Y, Z. It created a sickly stew of future-oriented, “fix it” thoughts that eventually made me ill. But when I was actually doing the rumination, it felt important, it felt like I was creating some master plan, it felt like I had some purpose and control. And after hearing Deepak talk, it was like I woke up for a moment from my dream. I remembered that what I was looking for, that sense of “it’s all good” was in the present moment.
I probably sound spiritually "slow" to those of you who think that once you have a realization about living in the present moment, and say study it incessantly for years, then it sticks. Well truth be told, if I were meditating, that might be the case. But I’ve been slacking on my sitting practice and this is an example of what happens when you slack. You forget important truths that sustain you on your journey towards happiness. Or you may remember the what, but you can’t remember the how.
So this morning I picked up Ajan Sumedho’s The Mind and The Way and planted the seed again: “The past is only a memory in the present moment…anything you can remember…are memories. They come and go in the mind. There is no past” (p.128) and as for the future “As long as we hang onto expectation and demand, we’re also going to be pursued by its opposite” because that is the nature of attachment. But in the present, if I really just let go and come back to this very moment of existence, there is nothing to want or to push away. “There is no suffering; there is nothing to worry about; there is nothing to be frightened of”; there is nothing to control or manage because I can’t anyway. Nothing is up to me. I can surely be a vehicle for energy, but it is the divine will that is being expressed. Regardless of how much I effort, the flow is a flowing. I can either accept and flow along, or bang my head against the passing moments. Hmph.
I guess for now all I am working with is a choice not to ruminate, not to chew what I have already chewed. Not to try to control the world through cognitive self-copulation. The next time you find yourself in a funk or headed towards one, stop thinking so much. Drop into the present moment. Just this moment here. This one here, this one here.
2: to chew repeatedly for an extended period
A couple of days ago I found myself in quite a funk. Dwelling on the meaninglessness of all. Found myself in a state of anhedonia. The day before this particular experience of funk I had been able to shake it off with a return to yoga (after a significant relapse into non-exercise which I don’t recommend). So I thought I would do the same and ran off to hit a yoga class, but I had the schedule all confused and I missed it. Deeper into the funk. I sat with it, I smoked with it, I complained to the bf, and there was no movement. Luckily, we had tix to hear Deepak Chopra speak that evening. The talk was good, though not mind-blowing, just a gentle reminder that yes, I am a spiritual superhero and I don’t have to over-effort to manifest spiritual qualities or to tap into omnipresent joy. Hmph.
I reflected upon my prior days. Yes, there were some external events that had the texture of minor stress, some not-so-fun insights in therapy for example, but in truth what seemed most clear to me was the excessive rumination and planning. The turning and churning of thoughts over and over in my head of what I was going to do, how to plan my life, how to best navigate X, Y, Z. It created a sickly stew of future-oriented, “fix it” thoughts that eventually made me ill. But when I was actually doing the rumination, it felt important, it felt like I was creating some master plan, it felt like I had some purpose and control. And after hearing Deepak talk, it was like I woke up for a moment from my dream. I remembered that what I was looking for, that sense of “it’s all good” was in the present moment.
I probably sound spiritually "slow" to those of you who think that once you have a realization about living in the present moment, and say study it incessantly for years, then it sticks. Well truth be told, if I were meditating, that might be the case. But I’ve been slacking on my sitting practice and this is an example of what happens when you slack. You forget important truths that sustain you on your journey towards happiness. Or you may remember the what, but you can’t remember the how.
So this morning I picked up Ajan Sumedho’s The Mind and The Way and planted the seed again: “The past is only a memory in the present moment…anything you can remember…are memories. They come and go in the mind. There is no past” (p.128) and as for the future “As long as we hang onto expectation and demand, we’re also going to be pursued by its opposite” because that is the nature of attachment. But in the present, if I really just let go and come back to this very moment of existence, there is nothing to want or to push away. “There is no suffering; there is nothing to worry about; there is nothing to be frightened of”; there is nothing to control or manage because I can’t anyway. Nothing is up to me. I can surely be a vehicle for energy, but it is the divine will that is being expressed. Regardless of how much I effort, the flow is a flowing. I can either accept and flow along, or bang my head against the passing moments. Hmph.
I guess for now all I am working with is a choice not to ruminate, not to chew what I have already chewed. Not to try to control the world through cognitive self-copulation. The next time you find yourself in a funk or headed towards one, stop thinking so much. Drop into the present moment. Just this moment here. This one here, this one here.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
So what is it that I want?
I want to nurture my spirituality—for me that involves connecting with my Higher Power through prayer, meditation, nature, and having conversation with other people who are connected to a higher power. I don’t care what other people call it or envision it to be, but the belief in a power greater than myself has always sustained me on my path.
I want to be healthy—that involves looking at what I eat, how it makes feel, my overall energy level, how I move my body, how I feel about my body, and my body in relationship to other bodies , i.e. sexuality.
I want to be financially secure (security means able to spend money on things that enrich my life, able to save money, not constantly worrying about money)—that involves budgeting, getting out of debt, saving, and increasing my overall sense of abundance and prosperity.
I want to enliven my connection with my creativity—that involves setting aside time to dedicate to creative acts, sharing art with the public, spending time with other artists, and seeing the world through the eyes of an artist.
I want to participate in life-affirming relationships—that involves increasing my social contact with people who exude life and are willing to share their exuberance, creating groups where like-minded folk can connect, keeping my spiritual closet clean so I can be a life-affirming friend and lover, dedicating time to connect & process & enjoy life with my friends & lover. This also involves wise discrimination—decreasing time & contact with “crazy-makers” or “energy-suckers”—I extend compassion and assistance when I can, but I have to be careful about my boundaries.
I want kindness.
I want to enjoy my life.
Those are the basics. If I have left out something you think is vital to happiness, let me know. Not only do I want these things, I think having them is not only possible, but my birthright. I think I was created to live a life beyond my wildest dreams. But I do have to dream and dream bigger and bigger every day. Do you know what you want?
I want to be healthy—that involves looking at what I eat, how it makes feel, my overall energy level, how I move my body, how I feel about my body, and my body in relationship to other bodies , i.e. sexuality.
I want to be financially secure (security means able to spend money on things that enrich my life, able to save money, not constantly worrying about money)—that involves budgeting, getting out of debt, saving, and increasing my overall sense of abundance and prosperity.
I want to enliven my connection with my creativity—that involves setting aside time to dedicate to creative acts, sharing art with the public, spending time with other artists, and seeing the world through the eyes of an artist.
I want to participate in life-affirming relationships—that involves increasing my social contact with people who exude life and are willing to share their exuberance, creating groups where like-minded folk can connect, keeping my spiritual closet clean so I can be a life-affirming friend and lover, dedicating time to connect & process & enjoy life with my friends & lover. This also involves wise discrimination—decreasing time & contact with “crazy-makers” or “energy-suckers”—I extend compassion and assistance when I can, but I have to be careful about my boundaries.
I want kindness.
I want to enjoy my life.
Those are the basics. If I have left out something you think is vital to happiness, let me know. Not only do I want these things, I think having them is not only possible, but my birthright. I think I was created to live a life beyond my wildest dreams. But I do have to dream and dream bigger and bigger every day. Do you know what you want?
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Happiness Set-Point
So the set-point theory basically states that we inherit our capacity for happiness and that external circumstances (such as whether or not you are objectively attractive, material success & other life events ) do not hold much weight. If you grew up with frowning parents, that’s bad news. BUT the NEW SHIT is that this set point only amounts for 50%, external events for 10%, and the other 40% we actually have some say about (at least according to Sonja Lyubomirsky, University of California-Riverside professor of psychology, who has studied happiness for the past 18 years and has written a book about it which I will surely check out at some point on my journey). If you still have doubts about set-point theory or the ability to change it or what have you—go on and google (or wait until I have the time to post book lists, video lists, blogs, etc).
I have heard enough through my studies at Naropa, and in the underground community of rebels like myself who are on the quest, not to mention personal life experience as a seeker to believe that up until this stage on my journey, I have been swimming at a certain level of happiness and dissatisfaction. And, it is only because I have felt a slight movement towards greater happiness—a new baseline, that I find this endeavor at all worthwhile.
Based on the research, it seems not only do I need to discover happiness (which hopefully is really just lurking sleepily behind my ribcage or an eyelid) for myself, but I have to for my children and their children and maybe one day in the future the babies birthed along my bloodline will be born happy (Viva le resistance)!!!
Now people, such as SL, have studied what we should do to increase our happiness and I will dibble and dabble in what most strikes me and report back. I think the first thing I admonish is to become more attuned to your inner wisdom-intuition-God voice- higher self. You have to be able to trust yourself and be honest with yourself to undertake such a quest. Ask yourself as Rumi asks, “do you pay regular visits to yourself ?” If you don’t, start today: write a bit daily in a journal, or take a walk, or close the door, or whatever it takes to start a conversation with yourself. There are no wrong ways to do it. But one thing we must begin to ask ourselves is “what do I want?” More on that next.
I have heard enough through my studies at Naropa, and in the underground community of rebels like myself who are on the quest, not to mention personal life experience as a seeker to believe that up until this stage on my journey, I have been swimming at a certain level of happiness and dissatisfaction. And, it is only because I have felt a slight movement towards greater happiness—a new baseline, that I find this endeavor at all worthwhile.
Based on the research, it seems not only do I need to discover happiness (which hopefully is really just lurking sleepily behind my ribcage or an eyelid) for myself, but I have to for my children and their children and maybe one day in the future the babies birthed along my bloodline will be born happy (Viva le resistance)!!!
Now people, such as SL, have studied what we should do to increase our happiness and I will dibble and dabble in what most strikes me and report back. I think the first thing I admonish is to become more attuned to your inner wisdom-intuition-God voice- higher self. You have to be able to trust yourself and be honest with yourself to undertake such a quest. Ask yourself as Rumi asks, “do you pay regular visits to yourself ?” If you don’t, start today: write a bit daily in a journal, or take a walk, or close the door, or whatever it takes to start a conversation with yourself. There are no wrong ways to do it. But one thing we must begin to ask ourselves is “what do I want?” More on that next.
Monday, May 30, 2011
From here to there: the NEW SHIT!
Two years and more than half of another master’s degree later, I am at what feels like an existential crossroads or should I say that I am wondering again, really, if happiness is possible. I think this question emerges again and again throughout one’s life. I came here (to Naropa University in Boulder CO) in search of happiness. After 10 years “living the dream” in New York (fancy writing degree, great friends, super handsome and sweet boyfriend, trendy apartment in a trendy neighborhood, teaching writing, champagne for breakfast and whiskey for dessert), I wasn’t fulfilled.
For the past two years, I have gone through a subtle yet powerful shift in worldview that has certainly increased my capacity for happiness. I can recognize my thoughts as thoughts and I am less likely to identify with them (I no longer think my thoughts and feelings = who I am). I can watch how my thoughts become stories which lead to reactions which can cause me and others suffering, and sometimes I can interrupt the chain reaction. I have a greater capacity for compassion. I can sit with greater levels of discomfort. I think that at the bottom of my recurrent sense of dissatisfaction is a) a tendency to focus on the past or the future, rather than the present and b) a deeply conditioned belief that there is an “I”—a belief in the illusion that “I” have to protect “me” or make “me happy.” Two years of Contemplative education and countless hours of meditating has begun to weaken the links of my Western “me, mine” conditioning. But I still don’t feel joyful.
I still am curious about how to raise my happiness set-point.
There is a bunch of research out there (which I will discuss in the next blog) that says that we have a happiness set-point that we’ve inherited or subconsciously settled upon—it’s our baseline. And if we don’t fiddle with it, it will stay where it is, regardless of if we win the lottery or if our lover dies. We will return to this basic place. I believed I have moved my happiness set point an inch or two, but I do think I can cultivate a higher baseline. And there is bunch of research and advice on what we should do in order to raise our setpoint (which I will also talk about). But I want to know and feel it for myself. I think that perhaps this quest for happiness depends on wise discrimination-- knowing what to cultivate and what to refrain from. I guess the question is, what really makes a difference? We get so much advice on how to be happy and what really matters: it’s what we eat, how we look, how we feel, what we’re repressing, whether or not we pray, whether it’s yoga or pilates, how much we meditate what form of meditation we do, etc etc etc. I have some ideas of my own about what I need to be doing in order to find daily enjoyment in my life and I plan to document the journey. Stay tuned.
For the past two years, I have gone through a subtle yet powerful shift in worldview that has certainly increased my capacity for happiness. I can recognize my thoughts as thoughts and I am less likely to identify with them (I no longer think my thoughts and feelings = who I am). I can watch how my thoughts become stories which lead to reactions which can cause me and others suffering, and sometimes I can interrupt the chain reaction. I have a greater capacity for compassion. I can sit with greater levels of discomfort. I think that at the bottom of my recurrent sense of dissatisfaction is a) a tendency to focus on the past or the future, rather than the present and b) a deeply conditioned belief that there is an “I”—a belief in the illusion that “I” have to protect “me” or make “me happy.” Two years of Contemplative education and countless hours of meditating has begun to weaken the links of my Western “me, mine” conditioning. But I still don’t feel joyful.
I still am curious about how to raise my happiness set-point.
There is a bunch of research out there (which I will discuss in the next blog) that says that we have a happiness set-point that we’ve inherited or subconsciously settled upon—it’s our baseline. And if we don’t fiddle with it, it will stay where it is, regardless of if we win the lottery or if our lover dies. We will return to this basic place. I believed I have moved my happiness set point an inch or two, but I do think I can cultivate a higher baseline. And there is bunch of research and advice on what we should do in order to raise our setpoint (which I will also talk about). But I want to know and feel it for myself. I think that perhaps this quest for happiness depends on wise discrimination-- knowing what to cultivate and what to refrain from. I guess the question is, what really makes a difference? We get so much advice on how to be happy and what really matters: it’s what we eat, how we look, how we feel, what we’re repressing, whether or not we pray, whether it’s yoga or pilates, how much we meditate what form of meditation we do, etc etc etc. I have some ideas of my own about what I need to be doing in order to find daily enjoyment in my life and I plan to document the journey. Stay tuned.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Poem
I wrote this poem last week as a gift to my classmates in a class called community. Note: it is not about a specific person, but rather how all of paradoxically love and fear being loved.
This is not a love poem
This is not a love poem because you don’t believe in love
This is not a love poem
because I know you don’t want to be loved
At least, not by me
because I am not afraid to look into your eyes
If this were a love poem
Then love would be pouring out like holy water
from my mouth
Kissing your third eye
like a cross marked on your forehead
as you come to kneel
in the chapel of this poem
If this were a love poem
then it would feel like
invasion, it would feel
like when your mother would wake you
From sleep
after a long roadtrip in the car
If this were a love poem
maybe it would feel
like you first felt
When someone finally kissed you the way you longed to be kissed
and meant it
Maybe it would make you melt
Like the first time you ever went camping
and sat around the fire singing
your longing
and getting what you longed for
like smores Yes
like melting marshmellows and chocolate on graham crackers
in the middle of a long long winter
See
this is not a love poem
but if it were then you would know
How it felt for someone divine in their humanity
and busy as all hell
To take the time to learn
how to touch you exactly where and when and how
You long to be touched.
See if this were a love poem
then right now
It would be ringing and ringing and ring defiant
in its insistence
That you answer the fucking phone
If this were a love poem then for some it would sting
Like the back-handed smack of some god
across your face
demanding that you wake
Up and listen
And you in your insolent anger would turn your back
On her
because somewhere inside
you are so afraid that eventually
she will see you
As you really are
And stop
Loving you
But this is not a love poem so
you don’t have to worry about that No you don’t have to worry
about this poem reaching for you
In the dark of its loneliness
Or calling you by the name only your lovers know
Or putting its palm on your forehead when you don’t feel well
or making you chicken soup
Or trying to learn salsa to keep up with your footsteps
Or trying to carry you when you are too heavy for the world’s sidewalks
Or drawing you a map when you are lost
You don’t have to worry about any of that
Because this is not a love poem
But if this were a love poem
Then maybe here
When I only have a minute left
I would say to you:
Come. Come closer.
Here I can see the bruises
That love has left on your heart
The way in which you
Pull in
and away
and far from my reach
The reasons you are so afraid of me
Of this poem.
Of love.
Fret not. I will not pull you close. I promise.
But here is what I will do:
I will hold your heart in the palm of my hands.
I will not let anything that harms you harm you.
I will keep all things you find sacred sacred.
But this is just a poem.
All it can really do is confess:
I love you.
This is not a love poem
This is not a love poem because you don’t believe in love
This is not a love poem
because I know you don’t want to be loved
At least, not by me
because I am not afraid to look into your eyes
If this were a love poem
Then love would be pouring out like holy water
from my mouth
Kissing your third eye
like a cross marked on your forehead
as you come to kneel
in the chapel of this poem
If this were a love poem
then it would feel like
invasion, it would feel
like when your mother would wake you
From sleep
after a long roadtrip in the car
If this were a love poem
maybe it would feel
like you first felt
When someone finally kissed you the way you longed to be kissed
and meant it
Maybe it would make you melt
Like the first time you ever went camping
and sat around the fire singing
your longing
and getting what you longed for
like smores Yes
like melting marshmellows and chocolate on graham crackers
in the middle of a long long winter
See
this is not a love poem
but if it were then you would know
How it felt for someone divine in their humanity
and busy as all hell
To take the time to learn
how to touch you exactly where and when and how
You long to be touched.
See if this were a love poem
then right now
It would be ringing and ringing and ring defiant
in its insistence
That you answer the fucking phone
If this were a love poem then for some it would sting
Like the back-handed smack of some god
across your face
demanding that you wake
Up and listen
And you in your insolent anger would turn your back
On her
because somewhere inside
you are so afraid that eventually
she will see you
As you really are
And stop
Loving you
But this is not a love poem so
you don’t have to worry about that No you don’t have to worry
about this poem reaching for you
In the dark of its loneliness
Or calling you by the name only your lovers know
Or putting its palm on your forehead when you don’t feel well
or making you chicken soup
Or trying to learn salsa to keep up with your footsteps
Or trying to carry you when you are too heavy for the world’s sidewalks
Or drawing you a map when you are lost
You don’t have to worry about any of that
Because this is not a love poem
But if this were a love poem
Then maybe here
When I only have a minute left
I would say to you:
Come. Come closer.
Here I can see the bruises
That love has left on your heart
The way in which you
Pull in
and away
and far from my reach
The reasons you are so afraid of me
Of this poem.
Of love.
Fret not. I will not pull you close. I promise.
But here is what I will do:
I will hold your heart in the palm of my hands.
I will not let anything that harms you harm you.
I will keep all things you find sacred sacred.
But this is just a poem.
All it can really do is confess:
I love you.
Friday, October 23, 2009
transition to surrender
So much has happened in my life over the past couple of months that when I would think of blogging, it felt overwhelming. So it's a cop out a bit, but I have copied part of a paper that I just had to hand in for my class on "transition." It is a bit heady and out of context, so perhaps it won't make a lot of sense. But feel free to read it and take from it what you can. I promise my future post will be more down to earth.
"If I do what I really must, it will kill me; and yet if I don’t, I’ll die."
- James Hillman
My mother, sister, and boyfriend flew with me out to Colorado, helped me to furnish my apartment and then left. I was utterly alone in transitional space. I began what Bridges (1980) describes as ““the perilous passage across the ‘nowhere’ that separates the old life…from the new” (p. 14), and what Winnicott (1982) defines as “an intermediate state between a [person’s] inability and his growing ability to recognize and accept reality” (p. 3). At first, I did not mind this transitional space. It felt as if I were watching a film of my life. I mentioned this to a classmate and wondered aloud when would this transition feel real? She said it would feel real when I experienced pain. And as the life before Naropa made its gradual departure, the pain came. My boyfriend began to emotionally withdraw. He rarely called, he did not email. I met classmates, but when the events of the day were over, we all retreated to our separate caves. I had never been alone in this way in my entire life. I was deeply entrenched in what Hillman (1996) calls “the spirit of loneliness”. It felt as if “all the networking that [had] interlaced [my] extension into the world…seem[ed] to count for nothing.” I was “exiled” (Hillman, 1996, p. 54).
It was the terror of being born. I recognized the terror as a signpost of an I AM moment (Tuber, 2008), the moment when one comes to realize one is separate from the mother/other, and consequently, feels “infinitely exposed…timelessly vulnerable”(Winnicott as cited in Tuber, 2008). I needed holding and I needed it fast. I reached out to my classmates, I started vocal lessons, I reached out to my therapist from New York, and I started my daily meditation practice. These interactions became a good-enough mother’s arms. In particular, my meditation practice became a mindful attempt to create mini-I AM moments wherein I could practice tolerating the interplay between being alone and being held. I began to view meditation as a practice of re-mothering myself and becoming my own reliable “other,” thereby testing and strengthening the solidity of my True Self (Tuber, 2008). I recognized that perhaps if I could “pass” the test of being there for myself, if I could hold myself enough to realize that time and space are in fact tolerable and that I would not “fall forever,” then perhaps one day I could develop “a capacity to feel life as play” (Tuber, 2008, p. 121). This recognition did not assuage the day-to-day fear, anxiety, and what felt like intolerable loneliness. I found myself holding another paradox.
Levoy (1997) articulates the nature of my paradox clearly: “a calling…flings opposing energies into our lives: One part of us wants to awaken, another to sleep. One part of us wants to follow, another wants to run like hell” (p. 53). I was plagued with doubt. What had I done? Why had I exchanged a perfectly respectable comfortable life for chaos and uncertainty? This doubt was only intensified by the final dissolution of my relationship with my boyfriend. This man was the center of life as I understood it. Even though differences in values, communication styles, and emotional needs had reared their ugly heads time and again, we had built a life together and only a mad woman would destroy what she had built with her own hands. My life felt like it was spinning out of control. I felt utterly unable to wait for the mother/other (my new life), or to tolerate its delayed emergence (Tuber, 2008). According to Winnicott (1982), however, “this sense of loss itself [became] a way of integrating [my] self’s experience” (p. 120). Through the intensity of my grief and my struggle with the idea that “all I…got is what I have not got” (Winnicott, 1982, p. 24), I began to accept the “is-ness” of my experience. The speed with which the ground beneath me had disappeared, the excruciating pain of losing one of the most important relationships of my life, and the refusal of life to stand still long enough for me to hold it with both hands became “the unstoppable bullet hit[ting] the impenetrable wall” of my undeniable thirst to awaken. I recognized that if I could “[witness] their collision in full consciousness…juggl[e] them both… [I could] reconcile [myself]… make [myself] enormously resilient” (Levoy, 1997, p 56.)
I am not yet done cycling through the stages of my grief, but I surrender. I offer myself to this “divine progression” (Levoy, 1997, p. 56). I give the daimon (a personification of my purpose in life) permission to have her way. I make of myself the ultimate sacrifice required to follow my calling. Levoy (1997) believes “if we can let go of the trapeze platform and make our necessary surrenders, we may be liberated, but if, while still suspended in empty air, we can say thank you, we’re damn near enlightened” (p 283). I look in the mirror and see the daimon’s eyes looking back at me. We mouth the words in unison: "thank you."
"If I do what I really must, it will kill me; and yet if I don’t, I’ll die."
- James Hillman
My mother, sister, and boyfriend flew with me out to Colorado, helped me to furnish my apartment and then left. I was utterly alone in transitional space. I began what Bridges (1980) describes as ““the perilous passage across the ‘nowhere’ that separates the old life…from the new” (p. 14), and what Winnicott (1982) defines as “an intermediate state between a [person’s] inability and his growing ability to recognize and accept reality” (p. 3). At first, I did not mind this transitional space. It felt as if I were watching a film of my life. I mentioned this to a classmate and wondered aloud when would this transition feel real? She said it would feel real when I experienced pain. And as the life before Naropa made its gradual departure, the pain came. My boyfriend began to emotionally withdraw. He rarely called, he did not email. I met classmates, but when the events of the day were over, we all retreated to our separate caves. I had never been alone in this way in my entire life. I was deeply entrenched in what Hillman (1996) calls “the spirit of loneliness”. It felt as if “all the networking that [had] interlaced [my] extension into the world…seem[ed] to count for nothing.” I was “exiled” (Hillman, 1996, p. 54).
It was the terror of being born. I recognized the terror as a signpost of an I AM moment (Tuber, 2008), the moment when one comes to realize one is separate from the mother/other, and consequently, feels “infinitely exposed…timelessly vulnerable”(Winnicott as cited in Tuber, 2008). I needed holding and I needed it fast. I reached out to my classmates, I started vocal lessons, I reached out to my therapist from New York, and I started my daily meditation practice. These interactions became a good-enough mother’s arms. In particular, my meditation practice became a mindful attempt to create mini-I AM moments wherein I could practice tolerating the interplay between being alone and being held. I began to view meditation as a practice of re-mothering myself and becoming my own reliable “other,” thereby testing and strengthening the solidity of my True Self (Tuber, 2008). I recognized that perhaps if I could “pass” the test of being there for myself, if I could hold myself enough to realize that time and space are in fact tolerable and that I would not “fall forever,” then perhaps one day I could develop “a capacity to feel life as play” (Tuber, 2008, p. 121). This recognition did not assuage the day-to-day fear, anxiety, and what felt like intolerable loneliness. I found myself holding another paradox.
Levoy (1997) articulates the nature of my paradox clearly: “a calling…flings opposing energies into our lives: One part of us wants to awaken, another to sleep. One part of us wants to follow, another wants to run like hell” (p. 53). I was plagued with doubt. What had I done? Why had I exchanged a perfectly respectable comfortable life for chaos and uncertainty? This doubt was only intensified by the final dissolution of my relationship with my boyfriend. This man was the center of life as I understood it. Even though differences in values, communication styles, and emotional needs had reared their ugly heads time and again, we had built a life together and only a mad woman would destroy what she had built with her own hands. My life felt like it was spinning out of control. I felt utterly unable to wait for the mother/other (my new life), or to tolerate its delayed emergence (Tuber, 2008). According to Winnicott (1982), however, “this sense of loss itself [became] a way of integrating [my] self’s experience” (p. 120). Through the intensity of my grief and my struggle with the idea that “all I…got is what I have not got” (Winnicott, 1982, p. 24), I began to accept the “is-ness” of my experience. The speed with which the ground beneath me had disappeared, the excruciating pain of losing one of the most important relationships of my life, and the refusal of life to stand still long enough for me to hold it with both hands became “the unstoppable bullet hit[ting] the impenetrable wall” of my undeniable thirst to awaken. I recognized that if I could “[witness] their collision in full consciousness…juggl[e] them both… [I could] reconcile [myself]… make [myself] enormously resilient” (Levoy, 1997, p 56.)
I am not yet done cycling through the stages of my grief, but I surrender. I offer myself to this “divine progression” (Levoy, 1997, p. 56). I give the daimon (a personification of my purpose in life) permission to have her way. I make of myself the ultimate sacrifice required to follow my calling. Levoy (1997) believes “if we can let go of the trapeze platform and make our necessary surrenders, we may be liberated, but if, while still suspended in empty air, we can say thank you, we’re damn near enlightened” (p 283). I look in the mirror and see the daimon’s eyes looking back at me. We mouth the words in unison: "thank you."
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Monday, August 31, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Pre- Orientation Boulder A.K.A. Isn’t this the coolest camp ever?
Pre- Orientation Boulder A.K.A. Isn’t this the coolest camp ever?
So I have been in Boulder for about 11 days. A mighty feat has been accomplished and pretty gracefully I might add. I came here with a team: Mama/Mommy/Mom, Sister/Rasha/BFF, and boyfriend/Jan/member under suspicion (jokes, baby, jokes…mostly). We did more in 3 days than a larger family could do in a month. Before my folks left, my apartment was fully furnished (thanks to some beer guzzling CU students and a lil place called Savers, with touches from Tar-zhay), my cabinets and fridge were bursting at the seams with all sorts of edibles, I had the nicest cushiest bed I have ever slept in, and I felt like I had lived in this very apartment for months. After the folks and I had a teary parting, Jan and I had another day and half to feel totally weird about living separately for who knows how long after a seven year stint of hardly ever being apart. Thank God for beer and altitude effects to soften that stretch of time. So people told me over and over that Boulder is beautiful— so much so that I was already rolling my eyes at this statement before I left New York. On my first visit out here, I must’ve stayed at a really weird spot where I just couldn’t see the entire expanse of the flatirons, and maybe something happens to the clouds and the sky in February BECAUSE BOULDER IS STUPIDLY BEAUTIFUL. I mean Lord of the Rings beautiful! I am sitting in my lil living room and I can see just a snatch of tree-covered mountain out my window. There are wild sunflowers and types of lavender growing alongside the roads, and the air feels like inhaling…. I don’t know fresh oxygen? BUT let me not hesitate to say that for every beautiful flower I see, there is a matching mini-mall. The streets just scream BUY BUY BUY from Tar-zhay to an APPLE store, from Marshalls to Patagonia, from the Boulder Running Company to the Hallmark store, you cannot walk or bike or do whatever you do ( I prefer the stroll) without wondering in a very deep and existential way, What do I need?
So I had 5 days here sans roommate where I finished unpacking, ate, drank and smoked a lot, hung out lots with my new pal, Ian, watched some Season 5 of The Wire, wrote a song, cried under a tree, went to a party, met Old Daddy Bruce*, saw an unimpressive show as part of the Boulder Fringe Festival, and went to the only black church in Boulder (also not too impressive). I stayed pretty active and felt pretty open, but it pretty much felt like I was at camp and my parents would be coming for me at the end of the week.
Sunday night my roommate arrived and me and some other newcomers helped to unload his car. I was already labeled a strategist/administrator because I used larger bags to group smaller objects to get them out the car. I have cried hard at least twice since I’ve gotten here. Grieving over my old life, missing my old apartment, all my friends, and especially the pitter patter of little Jan feet Oh I meant Bowie, and the heavy thumps of big Jan calves. And I have had doubts, and asked myself, What am I doing here? And there wasn’t an answer immediately. In fact, when people ask me “What brought you to Naropa, ” the pause has become longer and longer. But this morning, a lovely woman who I totally want to be like one day, opened our “Group process” meeting with a reminder. She said “you are here, not to become someone else, not to fix yourself, but to learn to be who you are, to journey to your center and live from there.” I know some of you are like, why would one have to learn to be who one is? She quoted Chogyam Trungpa, the founder of Naropa, as saying we are all clouded like the sun. The program clears the clouds so we can shine. So I remembered, ah yes, this is why I am here, to clear all the debris I’ve accumulated that has dulled the brilliance of who I am. Ah, yes.
So I have been in Boulder for about 11 days. A mighty feat has been accomplished and pretty gracefully I might add. I came here with a team: Mama/Mommy/Mom, Sister/Rasha/BFF, and boyfriend/Jan/member under suspicion (jokes, baby, jokes…mostly). We did more in 3 days than a larger family could do in a month. Before my folks left, my apartment was fully furnished (thanks to some beer guzzling CU students and a lil place called Savers, with touches from Tar-zhay), my cabinets and fridge were bursting at the seams with all sorts of edibles, I had the nicest cushiest bed I have ever slept in, and I felt like I had lived in this very apartment for months. After the folks and I had a teary parting, Jan and I had another day and half to feel totally weird about living separately for who knows how long after a seven year stint of hardly ever being apart. Thank God for beer and altitude effects to soften that stretch of time. So people told me over and over that Boulder is beautiful— so much so that I was already rolling my eyes at this statement before I left New York. On my first visit out here, I must’ve stayed at a really weird spot where I just couldn’t see the entire expanse of the flatirons, and maybe something happens to the clouds and the sky in February BECAUSE BOULDER IS STUPIDLY BEAUTIFUL. I mean Lord of the Rings beautiful! I am sitting in my lil living room and I can see just a snatch of tree-covered mountain out my window. There are wild sunflowers and types of lavender growing alongside the roads, and the air feels like inhaling…. I don’t know fresh oxygen? BUT let me not hesitate to say that for every beautiful flower I see, there is a matching mini-mall. The streets just scream BUY BUY BUY from Tar-zhay to an APPLE store, from Marshalls to Patagonia, from the Boulder Running Company to the Hallmark store, you cannot walk or bike or do whatever you do ( I prefer the stroll) without wondering in a very deep and existential way, What do I need?
So I had 5 days here sans roommate where I finished unpacking, ate, drank and smoked a lot, hung out lots with my new pal, Ian, watched some Season 5 of The Wire, wrote a song, cried under a tree, went to a party, met Old Daddy Bruce*, saw an unimpressive show as part of the Boulder Fringe Festival, and went to the only black church in Boulder (also not too impressive). I stayed pretty active and felt pretty open, but it pretty much felt like I was at camp and my parents would be coming for me at the end of the week.
Sunday night my roommate arrived and me and some other newcomers helped to unload his car. I was already labeled a strategist/administrator because I used larger bags to group smaller objects to get them out the car. I have cried hard at least twice since I’ve gotten here. Grieving over my old life, missing my old apartment, all my friends, and especially the pitter patter of little Jan feet Oh I meant Bowie, and the heavy thumps of big Jan calves. And I have had doubts, and asked myself, What am I doing here? And there wasn’t an answer immediately. In fact, when people ask me “What brought you to Naropa, ” the pause has become longer and longer. But this morning, a lovely woman who I totally want to be like one day, opened our “Group process” meeting with a reminder. She said “you are here, not to become someone else, not to fix yourself, but to learn to be who you are, to journey to your center and live from there.” I know some of you are like, why would one have to learn to be who one is? She quoted Chogyam Trungpa, the founder of Naropa, as saying we are all clouded like the sun. The program clears the clouds so we can shine. So I remembered, ah yes, this is why I am here, to clear all the debris I’ve accumulated that has dulled the brilliance of who I am. Ah, yes.
Friday, July 24, 2009
LIMINAL SPACE
a.k.a I am That
“Liminal Space is a term that applies to those uncertain times in our lives when we stand in the "threshold" between the "old" which may no longer work and the "new" which is not yet clear.” (http://liminalspace.typepad.com)
“Psychologists call \"liminal space,\" a place where boundaries dissolve a little and we stand there, on the threshold, getting ourselves ready to move across the limits of what we were into what we are to be.” (http://parole.aporee.org)
My friend has been using this term for the past couple of weeks. He was using it in a theatrical way— as a physical place between categorized places—for example, we were having a glorious happy hour, with oysters and clams and sparkling wine— and we had opted to sit by open windows that looked out onto the busy corner of 3rd avenue and 13th street, and so we were neither outside nor really all the way in. Liminal Space.
I had a packed box, but it was neither in my packing nook, nor in my to-be-shipped space, but rather under the table in our kitchen. So he says to me, is this permanent, or is it in liminal space?
Finally, as we had cocktails in 20s garb ( I wore a fabulously ridiculous hat, btw), I finally looked up liminal space on my bberry, and realized it had quite apropos psychological implications, and that I have been and am now exisiting in liminal space.
A place betwixt places, a space betwixt spaces. I am neither a resident of New York, nor an ex-resident. I do not yet attend Naropa, but I am considered a new student. I am neti-neti, not this [and] not this. I am neither here nor gone. Neither Buddhist nor Christian.
I am not who I was, nor who I will be.
I guess in some ways I have always existed in liminal space:
I have been neither white nor black.
Neither proper nor street.
Neither mother nor child.
Etc. etc. etc.
So I should be used to both the discomfort and the pleasure that comes from being nowhere and in two places at once. For holding the space that the people around me don’t even realize exists in this particular moment. But it must exist for here I am. Or maybe more accurately, I am that.
“Liminal Space is a term that applies to those uncertain times in our lives when we stand in the "threshold" between the "old" which may no longer work and the "new" which is not yet clear.” (http://liminalspace.typepad.com)
“Psychologists call \"liminal space,\" a place where boundaries dissolve a little and we stand there, on the threshold, getting ourselves ready to move across the limits of what we were into what we are to be.” (http://parole.aporee.org)
My friend has been using this term for the past couple of weeks. He was using it in a theatrical way— as a physical place between categorized places—for example, we were having a glorious happy hour, with oysters and clams and sparkling wine— and we had opted to sit by open windows that looked out onto the busy corner of 3rd avenue and 13th street, and so we were neither outside nor really all the way in. Liminal Space.
I had a packed box, but it was neither in my packing nook, nor in my to-be-shipped space, but rather under the table in our kitchen. So he says to me, is this permanent, or is it in liminal space?
Finally, as we had cocktails in 20s garb ( I wore a fabulously ridiculous hat, btw), I finally looked up liminal space on my bberry, and realized it had quite apropos psychological implications, and that I have been and am now exisiting in liminal space.
A place betwixt places, a space betwixt spaces. I am neither a resident of New York, nor an ex-resident. I do not yet attend Naropa, but I am considered a new student. I am neti-neti, not this [and] not this. I am neither here nor gone. Neither Buddhist nor Christian.
I am not who I was, nor who I will be.
I guess in some ways I have always existed in liminal space:
I have been neither white nor black.
Neither proper nor street.
Neither mother nor child.
Etc. etc. etc.
So I should be used to both the discomfort and the pleasure that comes from being nowhere and in two places at once. For holding the space that the people around me don’t even realize exists in this particular moment. But it must exist for here I am. Or maybe more accurately, I am that.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
ARE YOU EXCITED?
A question that everyone has been asking me for the past several months and one which is not answered easily. In May and June, the answer was no. No, I was not excited to leave my job that I had devoted myself whole-heartedly to for eight years. I was not excited to leave my students who I had grown as attached to as if they were a part of my own family and especially those who I questioned their progress towards graduating on time and felt still needed my particular presence and guidance. No, I was not excited to lose a monthly paycheck that I felt had just reached the threshold of adequate income. No, I was not excited to leave my network of close friendships and social gatherings. No, I was not excited to leave my boyfriend who I have been dating for the past 7 years and who is not coming to Boulder. So why do it then?
Because I was passionate about what I felt was a calling on my life. It was what spirit had instructed me to do. Because this “life” that I had built for myself was not enough. I was operating as a “wounded healer,” helping people but not as much as I could if I had training in recognizing and dealing with my own issues and being truly present and available to others. Because I was growing tired and bitter and fearful that I would never realize my true potential. Because I had come to realize that no one was coming to save me, no one could save me, no one would make me take responsibility for my life, for my happiness, for my intelligence, for my talent. I had become aware of my confusion, my divine insanity, that I was doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. I was plagued with a divine discontent. I was tired of talking the talk, but not walking the walk. Telling others to take risks in their lives, to face their fears, to find a way to fall in love with themselves and that all else would come. Yet in my own life, I was so deeply entrenched in my habitual patterns, I could barely breathe. I wanted a personal and spiritual transformation so badly but I was so lazy about it. Yes, my library of self-help and spiritual books was unparalleled, but what was I actually doing? I rarely went to church, I occasionally meditated, I prayed a lot, but mostly I writhed around in self-pity and self-absorption. I realized as Rilke says, “I must change my life.”
Aren’t you afraid? Isn’t it a big change? I am afraid, terrified, some days scared shitless. But I was afraid before. Fear is a part of life. One of my favorite spiritual teachers, Pema Chodron, spoke of a silent retreat where she was sure that one of the other participants hated her, but of course, there was nothing she could do about it, no conversation she could have. She said that the feelings she had around that experience were excruciatingly painful, that she tried all of the meditation techniques she had ever learned to try and work with her feelings, but to no avail. She couldn’t sleep so she just had to sit with those feelings all night and at one point she realized that she had spent her entire life, that her entire personality was built around not wanting to go to that very place, not wanting to feel those very emotions. My decision to do this comes from a similar place, I don’t want my entire life and my entire personality to be built around avoiding the things I am bound to face on this journey. I don’t want my life and personality to be built around running from the things I find most difficult: loneliness, alone-ness, fear, rejection, isolation, you can probably think of many more. I don’t want it to sound as if I expect no joy, or friendship, or love, or one of the most spectacular learning communities in the country, obviously, that will be part of the journey too. But for me, a large part of the decision was to confront myself face-to-face. Not just by moving across the country, but also in daily meditation practice and through the focus on meditation that the program is based on.
It is July now. AM I EXCITED? Day by day, my answer has grown into a quiet yes. Yes I am.
Because I was passionate about what I felt was a calling on my life. It was what spirit had instructed me to do. Because this “life” that I had built for myself was not enough. I was operating as a “wounded healer,” helping people but not as much as I could if I had training in recognizing and dealing with my own issues and being truly present and available to others. Because I was growing tired and bitter and fearful that I would never realize my true potential. Because I had come to realize that no one was coming to save me, no one could save me, no one would make me take responsibility for my life, for my happiness, for my intelligence, for my talent. I had become aware of my confusion, my divine insanity, that I was doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. I was plagued with a divine discontent. I was tired of talking the talk, but not walking the walk. Telling others to take risks in their lives, to face their fears, to find a way to fall in love with themselves and that all else would come. Yet in my own life, I was so deeply entrenched in my habitual patterns, I could barely breathe. I wanted a personal and spiritual transformation so badly but I was so lazy about it. Yes, my library of self-help and spiritual books was unparalleled, but what was I actually doing? I rarely went to church, I occasionally meditated, I prayed a lot, but mostly I writhed around in self-pity and self-absorption. I realized as Rilke says, “I must change my life.”
Aren’t you afraid? Isn’t it a big change? I am afraid, terrified, some days scared shitless. But I was afraid before. Fear is a part of life. One of my favorite spiritual teachers, Pema Chodron, spoke of a silent retreat where she was sure that one of the other participants hated her, but of course, there was nothing she could do about it, no conversation she could have. She said that the feelings she had around that experience were excruciatingly painful, that she tried all of the meditation techniques she had ever learned to try and work with her feelings, but to no avail. She couldn’t sleep so she just had to sit with those feelings all night and at one point she realized that she had spent her entire life, that her entire personality was built around not wanting to go to that very place, not wanting to feel those very emotions. My decision to do this comes from a similar place, I don’t want my entire life and my entire personality to be built around avoiding the things I am bound to face on this journey. I don’t want my life and personality to be built around running from the things I find most difficult: loneliness, alone-ness, fear, rejection, isolation, you can probably think of many more. I don’t want it to sound as if I expect no joy, or friendship, or love, or one of the most spectacular learning communities in the country, obviously, that will be part of the journey too. But for me, a large part of the decision was to confront myself face-to-face. Not just by moving across the country, but also in daily meditation practice and through the focus on meditation that the program is based on.
It is July now. AM I EXCITED? Day by day, my answer has grown into a quiet yes. Yes I am.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Enlightenment is A Gamble
The journey- Step 1
Every journey must begin with a single step. Followed by another single step and then another. I guess my first steps began at least 4 or so years ago, when while working full-time being an academic counselor and teaching introductory college courses, I realized that though I loved parts of my job, there were parts I didn’t like. For example, having a boss. I have had some great bosses in my day, but I have always had a streak of insubordinance as well. May both God and my former employees forgive me for that. Anyway, I asked myself, as most career books tell you to, what part of my job do I love the most and would I do for free?
Suprisingly, it was not the teaching. I am, without a doubt, a teacher by nature, but not, at least at this point in my life, a real ‘professor.’ I don’t like the traditional lecture format of a typical college classroom. I am more interested in talking about how to make it through the day than I am in talking about literary theory or a specific short story. I like to talk about what lurks beneath the surface of what appears to be an ordinary life, about taking risks and non-conformity, about waking up. So I realized it was more the counseling aspect that got me. And I hadn’t been writing. Which I still tend to blame on time, though I know in my heart of hearts it is lack of discipline. Regardless, I began to try and plot a way that I could have a profession that would allow me to continue my calling as a ‘healer’ in some way— and by healer I mean someone who makes people feel less alone in the world— because to me, that is the most important healing one can do—and also a profession that might one day allow me blocks of time and energy to write.
I also wanted respect, so for the past 4 years or so, I took the undergraduate pre-requisites that would allow me to pursue a PhD. Then at the finish line when it was time for me to take the GREs and choose programs, after I had done research with faculty, etc., I came to the understanding that I didn’t really want to do research exclusively for the next 5-7 years. That I wanted training that would allow me to be a therapist and that it had to incorporate the spiritual because in the end, that connection to the divine is all that allows us to feel less alone in the world. I had happened upon Naropa years ago, but a friend of mine had talked to me about how expensive it was, and how unrealistic that made it. And it is expensive, and unrealistic, but I guess that depends on how you view money, and how you define reality.
People ask me how do you uproot your entire life and move it across country and the answer is, I don’t know. All of us come to points in our lives where we know it’s time. Time to start over, time to try something new, time to risk all that we are for the person we want to be. My time has come. Here is a poem by spiritual teacher, Adyashanti:
Enlightenment is a Gamble
Time to cash in your chips
put your ideas and beliefs on the table.
See who has the bigger hand
you or the Mystery that pervades you.
Time to scrape the mind's shit
off your shoes
undo the laces
that hold your prison together
and dangle your toes into emptiness.
Once you've put everything
on the table
once all of your currency is gone
and your pockets are full of air
all you've got left to gamble with
is yourself.
Go ahead, climb up onto the velvet top
of the highest stakes table.
Place yourself as the bet.
Look God in the eyes
and finally
for once in your life
lose.
Every journey must begin with a single step. Followed by another single step and then another. I guess my first steps began at least 4 or so years ago, when while working full-time being an academic counselor and teaching introductory college courses, I realized that though I loved parts of my job, there were parts I didn’t like. For example, having a boss. I have had some great bosses in my day, but I have always had a streak of insubordinance as well. May both God and my former employees forgive me for that. Anyway, I asked myself, as most career books tell you to, what part of my job do I love the most and would I do for free?
Suprisingly, it was not the teaching. I am, without a doubt, a teacher by nature, but not, at least at this point in my life, a real ‘professor.’ I don’t like the traditional lecture format of a typical college classroom. I am more interested in talking about how to make it through the day than I am in talking about literary theory or a specific short story. I like to talk about what lurks beneath the surface of what appears to be an ordinary life, about taking risks and non-conformity, about waking up. So I realized it was more the counseling aspect that got me. And I hadn’t been writing. Which I still tend to blame on time, though I know in my heart of hearts it is lack of discipline. Regardless, I began to try and plot a way that I could have a profession that would allow me to continue my calling as a ‘healer’ in some way— and by healer I mean someone who makes people feel less alone in the world— because to me, that is the most important healing one can do—and also a profession that might one day allow me blocks of time and energy to write.
I also wanted respect, so for the past 4 years or so, I took the undergraduate pre-requisites that would allow me to pursue a PhD. Then at the finish line when it was time for me to take the GREs and choose programs, after I had done research with faculty, etc., I came to the understanding that I didn’t really want to do research exclusively for the next 5-7 years. That I wanted training that would allow me to be a therapist and that it had to incorporate the spiritual because in the end, that connection to the divine is all that allows us to feel less alone in the world. I had happened upon Naropa years ago, but a friend of mine had talked to me about how expensive it was, and how unrealistic that made it. And it is expensive, and unrealistic, but I guess that depends on how you view money, and how you define reality.
People ask me how do you uproot your entire life and move it across country and the answer is, I don’t know. All of us come to points in our lives where we know it’s time. Time to start over, time to try something new, time to risk all that we are for the person we want to be. My time has come. Here is a poem by spiritual teacher, Adyashanti:
Enlightenment is a Gamble
Time to cash in your chips
put your ideas and beliefs on the table.
See who has the bigger hand
you or the Mystery that pervades you.
Time to scrape the mind's shit
off your shoes
undo the laces
that hold your prison together
and dangle your toes into emptiness.
Once you've put everything
on the table
once all of your currency is gone
and your pockets are full of air
all you've got left to gamble with
is yourself.
Go ahead, climb up onto the velvet top
of the highest stakes table.
Place yourself as the bet.
Look God in the eyes
and finally
for once in your life
lose.
Friday, February 27, 2009
For the traveler
For the Traveler
Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.
New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.
When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:
How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.
When you travel,A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.
A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.
May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.
May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.
~ John O'Donohue ~
Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.
New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.
When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:
How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.
When you travel,A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.
A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.
May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.
May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.
~ John O'Donohue ~
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
traveling
I am on my way to Boulder, CO to interview for a spot in Naropa University's Contemplative Psychotherapy program. I don't ever recall having traveled across the country alone before. Ok, maybe when I went to Toronto my senior year in college. Anyway I was terrified up until I woke up to go the airport at 4 this morning. But all the blessings indicated that this was a good move. I got money just in time, I made both my flights, and now I am writing from my seat in first class. God is good.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Rumi loves us
Open the window of your heart
Do not worry if our harp breaks
thousands more will appear.
We have fallen in the arms of love where all is music.
If all the harps in the world were burned down,
still inside the heart
there will be hidden music playing.
Do not worry if all the candles in the world flicker and die
we have the spark that starts the fire.
The songs we sing
are like foam on the surface of the sea of being
while the precious gems lie deep beneath.
But the tenderness in our songs
is a reflection of what is hidden in the depths.
Stop the flow of your words,
open the window of your heart and
let the spirit speak.
– Translation by Azima Melita Kolin
and Maryam Mafi
“Rumi: Hidden Music”
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2001
Do not worry if our harp breaks
thousands more will appear.
We have fallen in the arms of love where all is music.
If all the harps in the world were burned down,
still inside the heart
there will be hidden music playing.
Do not worry if all the candles in the world flicker and die
we have the spark that starts the fire.
The songs we sing
are like foam on the surface of the sea of being
while the precious gems lie deep beneath.
But the tenderness in our songs
is a reflection of what is hidden in the depths.
Stop the flow of your words,
open the window of your heart and
let the spirit speak.
– Translation by Azima Melita Kolin
and Maryam Mafi
“Rumi: Hidden Music”
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2001
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