On this last New Year’s Day, a young woman who lives in my house said that her wish for the New Year was “Infinite bliss, right now”. I didn’t want to rain on her parade, but I think that the closest I could get to a neutral response was “Good luck”.
When she asked my wish for the New Year, I said that I want life to surprise me. And that is mostly the truth.
Oh, sure, I do have some addictive longings: I’d like more money and less stress. I’d like regular, more lucrative employment and more fun. I’d like to get to the mountains more. I’d like a girlfriend or at least to get laid. The list goes on. I suppose there is a part of me that also wants “Infinite bliss, right now.” I don’t hear it, but it’s likely to be there somewhere.
But I am less and less taking these kinds of wishes seriously. It’s clearer to me all the time that life is way smarter than I am. I would be a poor choreographer for my life – or stage director, traffic cop, etc. What life hands me is often not what I would have chosen. Sometimes I don’t recognize right away why this particular happening is the best thing for me – often I will never know.
Carlos Lopez, a student of Ramana Maharshi, likes to say that the clearer we get, the less we try to control our lives – which we will never manage to do, anyway – the more life tends to surprise us. And this is truly the best and highest aspiration - to be curious, open, observant, and to let life take us where it will. This is what it is going to do, whether or not we cooperate, and it’s lots more fun to cooperate.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Looking Meditation
Our sense of vision, which is the lead sense for most of us, is kind of addictively tied to seeing separation: it breaks the panorama of stuff around us into distinct “things”. This activity relies on depth perception and takes some fairly sophisticated sensory and neural gymnastics to make all this separating work. (Our auditory and tactile senses are much more likely to perceive global waves of stimuli.)
But there are ways to get around this misperception of what is actually all connected. One is to briefly unplug our depth perception. You can look at what is around you as if it were a photograph or painting – flat, with everything connected on that two-dimensional surface. It’s a little tricky to do this and will usually only work for moments, but is a fun experiment.
The other work-around of this erroneous perceiving is more cognitive and is a perceptive skill that we actually can grow. In order to see everything around us as separate, self-contained objects – which is how we have learned to perceive things - we have needed to do two things:
1) We need to believe that this object we are looking at stays in one place and does not intermingle with the objects around it. That vase is separate from the table it is sitting on. But modern physics tells us that, on a subatomic level, each object has only a tendency to exist where we see it. In fact, most of that object is actually space, with its electrons moving around so fast that it looks solid. Secondly, these electrons don’t stay put within the edges we see around the object. The electrons of the vase actually do tend to intermingle with the electrons of the table. So what looks solid is mostly space and what looks like a clear separation is actually not. Things are neither as solid nor as separate as our visual sense would tell us. Remembering these two things – even momentarily, because the old habits of our visual sense will tend to reassert themselves – can help us take more lightly the separations that we think we see.
2) The other deceptive cognitive spin we tend to put on our visual sense is that we decode the space between things as being empty – that’s what allows things to stand alone, separate. But that empty space is anything but. In scientific terms, it’s loaded with particles. In energetic terms, it’s loaded with life energy, prana – aliveness. So then how does anything stay separate? If everything we see has in common this subatomic chaos, is actually made up of the same energetic structure, where each electron flashes back and forth between matter and energy – and this is equally true for what looks like empty space as it is true for what looks like solid objects – then what happens to what looks like solid boundaries?
Again, this shift in our perception relies on a cognitive process – our visual sense does not yet know how to perceive energy filing the space around us or the space that these super-fast electrons are always leaving all through that vase. I think that some mystics are able to literally see all these interconnections and mushy boundaries. And sometimes one can see it during or after deep meditation. LSD pretty surely induces this kind of perception, at least some of the time – no wonder that so many “seekers” have been attached to dropping acid, especially in the 70’s. Many martial arts, perhaps Tai Chi especially, rely on working with and moving around the chi or Qi – the life energy – around us. When you are doing a good Tai Chi push, you can feel or even see the energetic force that you are pushing in front of you.
If you have ever done the exercise where you rub your hands together fast, then hold them out just inches apart until you start to feel the ball of energy between them, you have had a glimpse of this. The more you play with this exercise, you can feel the ball of energy between your hands even as you move them further apart. During a ten-day silent meditation, I became able – with my hands out to my sides, my body and mind relaxed, and moving very slowly – to feel the energy boundary of a tree, which extends out way beyond what looks like a solid physical boundary. I even tried to teach my young nieces how to do this, which they found totally hysterical. (“Uncle John has always been a little odd – in a nice way – but this is the farthest out he’s ever been.”)
But, even without LSD or advanced martial arts or meditation-induced mystical perception, knowing that all this is true can actually shift the way we look at things. Especially in repose, we can look at the world in front of us as if it were all connected. Allowing our breathing to get deep and full, our body relaxed, and maybe our eyes soft and half-closed – all of this can help. And perhaps all of these ways of starting to see connectedness where we had before seen separation, perhaps all of them rely on not trying – letting our eyes and maybe even our minds get soft, receptive. The more receptive we get, the more we are available to life giving us glimpses of this connected reality – even when we are not looking for it.
But there are ways to get around this misperception of what is actually all connected. One is to briefly unplug our depth perception. You can look at what is around you as if it were a photograph or painting – flat, with everything connected on that two-dimensional surface. It’s a little tricky to do this and will usually only work for moments, but is a fun experiment.
The other work-around of this erroneous perceiving is more cognitive and is a perceptive skill that we actually can grow. In order to see everything around us as separate, self-contained objects – which is how we have learned to perceive things - we have needed to do two things:
1) We need to believe that this object we are looking at stays in one place and does not intermingle with the objects around it. That vase is separate from the table it is sitting on. But modern physics tells us that, on a subatomic level, each object has only a tendency to exist where we see it. In fact, most of that object is actually space, with its electrons moving around so fast that it looks solid. Secondly, these electrons don’t stay put within the edges we see around the object. The electrons of the vase actually do tend to intermingle with the electrons of the table. So what looks solid is mostly space and what looks like a clear separation is actually not. Things are neither as solid nor as separate as our visual sense would tell us. Remembering these two things – even momentarily, because the old habits of our visual sense will tend to reassert themselves – can help us take more lightly the separations that we think we see.
2) The other deceptive cognitive spin we tend to put on our visual sense is that we decode the space between things as being empty – that’s what allows things to stand alone, separate. But that empty space is anything but. In scientific terms, it’s loaded with particles. In energetic terms, it’s loaded with life energy, prana – aliveness. So then how does anything stay separate? If everything we see has in common this subatomic chaos, is actually made up of the same energetic structure, where each electron flashes back and forth between matter and energy – and this is equally true for what looks like empty space as it is true for what looks like solid objects – then what happens to what looks like solid boundaries?
Again, this shift in our perception relies on a cognitive process – our visual sense does not yet know how to perceive energy filing the space around us or the space that these super-fast electrons are always leaving all through that vase. I think that some mystics are able to literally see all these interconnections and mushy boundaries. And sometimes one can see it during or after deep meditation. LSD pretty surely induces this kind of perception, at least some of the time – no wonder that so many “seekers” have been attached to dropping acid, especially in the 70’s. Many martial arts, perhaps Tai Chi especially, rely on working with and moving around the chi or Qi – the life energy – around us. When you are doing a good Tai Chi push, you can feel or even see the energetic force that you are pushing in front of you.
If you have ever done the exercise where you rub your hands together fast, then hold them out just inches apart until you start to feel the ball of energy between them, you have had a glimpse of this. The more you play with this exercise, you can feel the ball of energy between your hands even as you move them further apart. During a ten-day silent meditation, I became able – with my hands out to my sides, my body and mind relaxed, and moving very slowly – to feel the energy boundary of a tree, which extends out way beyond what looks like a solid physical boundary. I even tried to teach my young nieces how to do this, which they found totally hysterical. (“Uncle John has always been a little odd – in a nice way – but this is the farthest out he’s ever been.”)
But, even without LSD or advanced martial arts or meditation-induced mystical perception, knowing that all this is true can actually shift the way we look at things. Especially in repose, we can look at the world in front of us as if it were all connected. Allowing our breathing to get deep and full, our body relaxed, and maybe our eyes soft and half-closed – all of this can help. And perhaps all of these ways of starting to see connectedness where we had before seen separation, perhaps all of them rely on not trying – letting our eyes and maybe even our minds get soft, receptive. The more receptive we get, the more we are available to life giving us glimpses of this connected reality – even when we are not looking for it.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
But I was so sure…
This morning I drove myself absolutely crazy looking for the little spiral notebook in which I keep some of my daily to-do’s (those I need for quick visual access) and other notes I make during the day. I tend to get pretty behind on transcribing those notes, which makes the pad more valuable for me, so I don’t lose all those bits of information.
I had a very clear memory, this morning, of putting that little notebook (3 inches by 5 inches) into my left front pocket (where I like to carry it), as I prepared to leave work last night (in the gift shop of the big downtown hotel). I kind of remembered, this morning, stopping somewhere along my 10 minute walk home, to make some kind of note about something that crossed my mind as I was walking. My little spiral notekeeper could possibly have fallen out of my pocket then – but that was not feasible, because I absolutely remembered putting at the end of my bed when I got home last night. That’s where I like to put it, in case I want to add a note to it or record a note from it – typically into my computer database.
I had a very clear image of tossing it on that end of the bed last night. I could not, however, remember putting it either on my dresser or the on the filing cabinet, the two places I tend to put it when I’m going to bed. So it might have gotten caught up in my blanket or bedspread – or fallen under or behind the bed.
I checked all those places thoroughly – three times. I checked the dresser probably four times – likewise the top of the filing cabinet. Both of these surfaces had lots of other clutter, but not really enough to conceal the notebook – especially the third or fourth time I moved everything around. Then I looked in places where it should not have been, where I never put it – some of those twice. I checked the wastebasket – sometimes I have found missing objects there.
The more I looked, the more frustrated and angry I got. I hate it when I lose these notebooks, and this would not be the first one I had lost – probably the third in the last year. And each time pisses me off no end. Why do even bother taking all these little notes – books or movies I want to remember, addresses, phone numbers, future to-do’s, etc. – if I’m going to just lose them?
I told myself a couple of times to just let go of it and to trust that it would eventually turn up. I knew that was good advice, but I couldn’t take it. I grew more and more intense and my language more and more obscene.
A couple of times I thought to call work, but that made really no sense, as I knew I had had it at home last night. I was working again tonight and could look for it then, but was sure that I would not find it there. Finally, when I could not shake my frustration and upset, I kind of gave up and called the gift shop. I knew that would not help, but I could no longer think of anyplace else to look – and still could not take my advice of letting it go.
Andrew, my boss, was working the a.m. shift. He said, brightly, “Yes, sir, I’ve got it right here. I put it in the drawer with the work shift calendar.”
But how? How could it possibly be there when I had such clear memories of putting it into my pocket before leaving and then of taking it out of my pocket at home? This made no sense.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen master, likes to ask people (sometimes in very large groups, at one of his public talks), “Are you sure?” After time for people to think about this question, he likes, then, to ask, “Which way is up?” He then will point towards the sky and say, “Probably most of you said this way. But are you sure?” (Long, dramatic pause…) “Our friends in China would not agree with you.”
Oops. When we say, “He doesn’t know which end is up”, this is such a classic put-down. And here it is true of most all of us in this crowd of hundreds – or thousands.
Well, if I don’t know which way is up, then just what am I sure of? I could say that this is a rock I am holding, and be pretty confident of that one. But I will probably also assume that what I am holding is “solid as a rock”. But atomic physicists tell us that this rock is mostly space – with its electrons moving around so fast that it seems solid. Hmmm.
I was sooo sure about that notebook this morning, but I was wrong. How many other times that I think I am sure, is this also the case?
But, aside from maybe being wrong a lot of the time, what’s so wrong about feeling sure about things? Going around questioning everything does not seem such a useful state.
When I tell myself that I know something for sure, I tighten. I build a rigid wall around that piece of knowing, which resists any information to the contrary. So I may become more and more out of touch with reality. I am responding to my own internal belief, rather than the concrete details of what is actually in front of me in the here and now.
When I was looking for my notebook, the evidence of my senses said that it was not in my room. But I would not believe this – I couldn’t believe it. Why was I so sure of things – putting it in my pocket at work, taking it out of my pocket at home – which had not happened?
Us humans like structure. We live actually in a world where there is so much we don’t know – what that person in front of us is thinking or is about to do, what is around that next corner, what’s going to happen tomorrow. Buddhists like to remind us that we don’t know even if we are going to make it to tomorrow. “The only thing we know for sure is that we are going to die – and we don’t know when. How then shall we live?”
Oh, man, we don’t like that one. If there is one thing we want to be ble to count on, it is that we have at least a little more time. If we didn’t know that, then what would we do? Quit our jobs? Spend our money? Have an affair? Have it out with a friend? It looks like chaos, just ready to break out. I want to know that I have tomorrow, that I will go to work tomorrow, that my partner will come home tomorrow, etc., etc., etc.
The truth, though, is that each of these items is unpredictable. When I make myself sure of them, I build a brick wall where right now there is open space.
What actually could happen, were I to release my clinging to these things, is that I could experience life as flow, not solidity. I could experience myself as fluid, rather than rigid. I could stay open and receptive to how this person in front of me is going to turn up – or how I am going to turn up. I might learn to relax more and to trust the process of my life, rather than trusting in things. Another Thich Nhat Hanh quote: “Science is now showing that the whole of the cosmos is reflected in this speck of dust – and we think we know the person in the passenger seat of our car.”
In some ways, this kind of humility about the life around us might seem more challenging. But, actually, building up and holding on to these rigid structures is very hard work – it uses up most of our energy. To stay open, maybe confused sometimes, available to surprise, is actually lots less work – and way more fun.
I had a very clear memory, this morning, of putting that little notebook (3 inches by 5 inches) into my left front pocket (where I like to carry it), as I prepared to leave work last night (in the gift shop of the big downtown hotel). I kind of remembered, this morning, stopping somewhere along my 10 minute walk home, to make some kind of note about something that crossed my mind as I was walking. My little spiral notekeeper could possibly have fallen out of my pocket then – but that was not feasible, because I absolutely remembered putting at the end of my bed when I got home last night. That’s where I like to put it, in case I want to add a note to it or record a note from it – typically into my computer database.
I had a very clear image of tossing it on that end of the bed last night. I could not, however, remember putting it either on my dresser or the on the filing cabinet, the two places I tend to put it when I’m going to bed. So it might have gotten caught up in my blanket or bedspread – or fallen under or behind the bed.
I checked all those places thoroughly – three times. I checked the dresser probably four times – likewise the top of the filing cabinet. Both of these surfaces had lots of other clutter, but not really enough to conceal the notebook – especially the third or fourth time I moved everything around. Then I looked in places where it should not have been, where I never put it – some of those twice. I checked the wastebasket – sometimes I have found missing objects there.
The more I looked, the more frustrated and angry I got. I hate it when I lose these notebooks, and this would not be the first one I had lost – probably the third in the last year. And each time pisses me off no end. Why do even bother taking all these little notes – books or movies I want to remember, addresses, phone numbers, future to-do’s, etc. – if I’m going to just lose them?
I told myself a couple of times to just let go of it and to trust that it would eventually turn up. I knew that was good advice, but I couldn’t take it. I grew more and more intense and my language more and more obscene.
A couple of times I thought to call work, but that made really no sense, as I knew I had had it at home last night. I was working again tonight and could look for it then, but was sure that I would not find it there. Finally, when I could not shake my frustration and upset, I kind of gave up and called the gift shop. I knew that would not help, but I could no longer think of anyplace else to look – and still could not take my advice of letting it go.
Andrew, my boss, was working the a.m. shift. He said, brightly, “Yes, sir, I’ve got it right here. I put it in the drawer with the work shift calendar.”
But how? How could it possibly be there when I had such clear memories of putting it into my pocket before leaving and then of taking it out of my pocket at home? This made no sense.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen master, likes to ask people (sometimes in very large groups, at one of his public talks), “Are you sure?” After time for people to think about this question, he likes, then, to ask, “Which way is up?” He then will point towards the sky and say, “Probably most of you said this way. But are you sure?” (Long, dramatic pause…) “Our friends in China would not agree with you.”
Oops. When we say, “He doesn’t know which end is up”, this is such a classic put-down. And here it is true of most all of us in this crowd of hundreds – or thousands.
Well, if I don’t know which way is up, then just what am I sure of? I could say that this is a rock I am holding, and be pretty confident of that one. But I will probably also assume that what I am holding is “solid as a rock”. But atomic physicists tell us that this rock is mostly space – with its electrons moving around so fast that it seems solid. Hmmm.
I was sooo sure about that notebook this morning, but I was wrong. How many other times that I think I am sure, is this also the case?
But, aside from maybe being wrong a lot of the time, what’s so wrong about feeling sure about things? Going around questioning everything does not seem such a useful state.
When I tell myself that I know something for sure, I tighten. I build a rigid wall around that piece of knowing, which resists any information to the contrary. So I may become more and more out of touch with reality. I am responding to my own internal belief, rather than the concrete details of what is actually in front of me in the here and now.
When I was looking for my notebook, the evidence of my senses said that it was not in my room. But I would not believe this – I couldn’t believe it. Why was I so sure of things – putting it in my pocket at work, taking it out of my pocket at home – which had not happened?
Us humans like structure. We live actually in a world where there is so much we don’t know – what that person in front of us is thinking or is about to do, what is around that next corner, what’s going to happen tomorrow. Buddhists like to remind us that we don’t know even if we are going to make it to tomorrow. “The only thing we know for sure is that we are going to die – and we don’t know when. How then shall we live?”
Oh, man, we don’t like that one. If there is one thing we want to be ble to count on, it is that we have at least a little more time. If we didn’t know that, then what would we do? Quit our jobs? Spend our money? Have an affair? Have it out with a friend? It looks like chaos, just ready to break out. I want to know that I have tomorrow, that I will go to work tomorrow, that my partner will come home tomorrow, etc., etc., etc.
The truth, though, is that each of these items is unpredictable. When I make myself sure of them, I build a brick wall where right now there is open space.
What actually could happen, were I to release my clinging to these things, is that I could experience life as flow, not solidity. I could experience myself as fluid, rather than rigid. I could stay open and receptive to how this person in front of me is going to turn up – or how I am going to turn up. I might learn to relax more and to trust the process of my life, rather than trusting in things. Another Thich Nhat Hanh quote: “Science is now showing that the whole of the cosmos is reflected in this speck of dust – and we think we know the person in the passenger seat of our car.”
In some ways, this kind of humility about the life around us might seem more challenging. But, actually, building up and holding on to these rigid structures is very hard work – it uses up most of our energy. To stay open, maybe confused sometimes, available to surprise, is actually lots less work – and way more fun.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Second-guessing
To second-guess ourselves – to criticize what we have done, to wish we had done differently, etc. - is so human, so natural, and so not helpful. But, since we are not likely to completely stop second-guessing ourselves in this lifetime (ok, some of may become fully enlightened in this lifetime, but just in case not), the thing to do is to not second-guess (criticize) ourselves over just having indulged in some second-guessing.
If we don’t succeed there, it’s just turtles from there on down. We really just tumble down through infinite levels of second-guessing – almost simultaneous and mostly unconscious. At some point, grace may reach out to us and we finally accept the whole parade of second-guesses – all of it. We then can see how human all of it is, breathe a big sigh of relief and be full of empathy for how hard it is being a human being (not knowing who we really are).
If we don’t succeed there, it’s just turtles from there on down. We really just tumble down through infinite levels of second-guessing – almost simultaneous and mostly unconscious. At some point, grace may reach out to us and we finally accept the whole parade of second-guesses – all of it. We then can see how human all of it is, breathe a big sigh of relief and be full of empathy for how hard it is being a human being (not knowing who we really are).
Sunday, March 18, 2007
A Good Story
“You can play the game, you can act your part – I know it isn’t easy to do.” James Taylor
“Who is playing out this drama? Who decides if it is a comedy or a tragedy?” Carlos Lopez
“It’s not just something I made up – It’s something I know. It’s something I read.” (Overheard in passing, as I was thinking about this piece)
My mom, when she heard somebody acknowledge that they weren’t really sure that they were remembering something accurately, liked to say, “Well, it makes a good story, anyway.” And it was clear that she considered a “good story” to be every bit as important as the literal truth – maybe even more so. (This may have partially been the Irish in her.)
What makes a good story? Is it drama? A happy ending? Good laughs?
What is the punch line of the story, the final act, the curtain coming down?
It’s clear that there are stories within stories – including shorter, self-contained segments within our life stories. Some stories chronicle many generations – and show the linkages among several successive life stories. Or a really good storyteller (novelist, film-maker, even sometimes a historian or biographer) can weave together many stories simultaneously – even those that are geographically, demographically and/or socioeconomically very separate.
So who decides what chunk of a person’s life makes up a separate story? Who sees the linkages among two or more life stories? Whether the decider or seer is a protagonist in the story or an outside storyteller, it’s clear that there is lots of room for subjectivity in creating most any story.
So it’s subjective – so what? What’s the difference? Maybe lots.
If I tell myself a story in which I am a victim, I may succumb to helplessness – or fight back. These situations can lead to paranoia – and/or domestic tragedies. (A few days ago in our area, a jealous husband killed the 18-year-old student with whom his 30-year-old wife/teacher was sleeping. This husband, as contrasted to the ever more common legal action against teachers, picked the kid as the villain in this story.)
So who/what/how determines a “true story”?
- The guy I quoted at the beginning of this piece believes that the story must be true because he read it somewhere. Others might put faith in what they hear on the TV or radio news.
- Most of us tend to pick and choose our sources – some will give more credence to the New York Times, others to Fox TV.
- Most of us tend to believe the stories we tell ourselves.
I really like a bumper sticker I’ve been seeing around town that says, “You don’t have to believe everything you think.” For me this gets to the heart of the story I am creating now as I write this. In the story I’m telling myself, right here and now (though I have thought these same thoughts many times in the past), there is tremendous subjectivity in the stories we tell, see, believe – even in the ones we tell about ourselves about our own lives. Maybe these especially.
So what? What if we concede this subjectivity in our own stories about ourselves? And not everybody will concede this about his or her own story. This area, the stories we tell ourselves – and sometimes others – about our own lives, are often the stories we will most resolutely defend.
In another post, I quote Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen master, as encouraging people to ask themselves, “Am I sure?” That previous post refers to which perceptions are accurate in the here and now. But the same principle can be applied to our stories. Am I sure about the veracity of this story?
As I described in that piece about here-and-now accuracy, holding on to certainty about our stories tends to create tension and rigidity. We fight to defend our version of the story. This can lead to shooting 18 year old kids, or even to full-scale wars.
But what is the advantage of staying looser with our stories?
- We make ourselves less defensive, less tense – more open.
- We need less distance from others. We don’t compete for whose story is more accurate, but see a bigger story that contains all these sub-stories. It then becomes not my story vs. your story, but “our story”, which contains all our various versions of the truth.
- If we accept that we are always, at every moment, making up stories – which may hold some specific accuracies, but never manage to include all important elements of the truth, including the stories of the other characters in our story – this gives us a lot of room to get more creative with the stories we tell.
A story that I am telling myself these days is that any time I make myself the hero of my story (or any of my sub-stories) – or even make myself causal, even the protagonist – I am missing the boat. If I were to trace the antecedents of this story fully enough, I would find that my current behavior has been shaped by so many previous scenarios, so many other people, that it is in no way separate at all – I am in no way separate at all.
Some would say that this perspective is limiting, that it keeps us from being proactive, from acting heroically. I would say that when we are telling ourselves a story in which we are the hero, it is just as subjective as when we tell a story where we are the victim.
It seems to me that the only even-close-to-accurate story is the story of the human race, imbedded in the much bigger story of the planet earth, within the even bigger story of the universe. I tend to call this big, big story, “life”. We sit within a bigger context – life. We are not truly causal, but life is. Or maybe (and I am definitely leaning more and more this way), causal stories are just one genre of story. Maybe the whole notion of one thing causing another is simply one way of looking at things.
Yeah, the story I’m most liking these days is one where nothing is separate from anything else, which leaves no “things” - and no “thing” to cause any other thing. Some quantum physicists these days are telling similar stories, but they may be equally locked into the particular lens they are looking through. I am seeing quantum physics and mechanistic physics as not in competition with each other, but as part of a still larger story – in which neither camp is “right” or “wrong”.
Because “right and wrong” is just one more kind of story.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Why?
“Why” is a lie. “Why” lives in the world of mechanics, of cause and effect, of billiard balls bouncing endlessly off each other. The true nature of reality is much more quantum than that - more holistic, more interconnected, more holographic.
Every bit of our behavior is an outgrowth of everything that has gone before. It is our path – every bit of it. Ours uniquely, as no other. And it all hangs together – it fits together as our own little jigsaw puzzle, or a rare vase that has fallen and shattered, and which we spend our lives piecing back together.
Courses on “Interviewing Skills” teach people to not use the “Why?” question, because it makes people defensive. These courses might say that people get defensive because this question pries into their motivations, their inner states. That’s all true, but there’s more: the question “Why?” has no valid answer. We might not be able to verbalize this truth, but some part of us knows it.
When we try to answer the “Why?” question, we just go back and make up a story. The story might be interesting – it might even disclose some meaningful information about us. But it doesn’t answer the question.
We might get into ballpark answers if we said things like:
- Because I’m me, having had all the experiences I have had in this life.
- Because, in that particular moment in time, that was all I could possibly have done.
- I have no real answer for why I did it. I can glimpse pieces of what was going on in me just before I did it, but I don’t know how those pieces got there. It’s all way too big, too complex for me. And it will make me crazy trying to figure it out. So I’ll let it go. It was what it was, this moment is as it is – and the next moment will be exactly what it will be. And it will surprise me.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Waiting for a “Yes”
Aliyah, one of my favorite Jubilee poets, performed a piece this morning (jamming with this two-time Grammy winner on acoustic base – very exciting) with no title (Aliyah doesn’t do titles), but loosely about her recently-developed process of waiting to act until she gets a clear Yes about a particular course of action. Obviously, she is not totally consistent about this. I bet she doesn’t apply it to brushing her teeth, crossing the street – or even many activities where it might actually be more appropriate or useful. But I liked the idea of it. It’s actually not a new idea – my friend Monty has spoken and written eloquently and persuasively about the ways he applies this principle. But it was good to be reminded of it.
Sitting outside in the sun just now, smoking a cigarette, across the street from a coffee shop where some friends were gathered – a couple of them expecting me – I just could find no “Yes” in me about going into the coffee shop. So I sat there in the sun, at first judging myself for this lack of action. I actually was feeling somewhat shy and awkward this morning, so I started (so drably predictable) by criticizing myself. But the self-criticism dropped away with relative ease, as I let myself rather just pay attention to the uncomfortable feelings. Then I got a very distinct “Yes” about capturing this moment in writing. I spent about 15 minutes getting this down on paper, really kinda having fun, considering the squeamishness of the topic.
Then I got a “Yes” for going into the coffee shop – not a totally enthusiastic Yes, but a Yes nonetheless. I was moving slow. I got my coffee, then didn’t sit down right away. There were about eight folks, all of whom I knew, around a fairly big circle – and I didn’t sit down right away. I didn’t know really where I wanted to sit – what spot called to me – and I waited, again, for a Yes. I finally got one and sat down between Jeff and Richard.
Then I had some great little eye contact and non-verbal greetings with Robin, with whom I feel lots more connection (based on actually very few words ever exchanged, much more on eye contact, smiles, and occasional hugs). And it was totally spontaneous and enthusiastic for me to go around the table and sit just behind her (no room around this side of the table).
Then a few minutes later, Robin left, leaving me maybe ten feet outside the circle – with now a clear open spot, Robin’s spot. I checked inside myself about moving up. I wasn’t really asking myself, “Do I want to move up?” I was much more scanning my insides for some attraction, some leaning towards moving up. I could find none, so I sat where I was. Not particularly gregarious, that – but I still was not feeling gregarious. Not really so shy and awkward, after my writing outside (ah, the miracle of surrendering to the muse), but also not gregarious.
I also recognized that I was not the least bit interested in the conversation and was more enjoying simply listening to all the interesting sounds in the café. Then I got the impulse to write something down – about this very process of waiting for a Yes. I had a really nice little notebook, which I had just used outside, in my backpack on the other side of the table. Shall I go get it? Nothing in myself that I could identify wanted to get up and go over there. I did want the notebook – if I could have somehow teleported it from my pack to my hands, I would have done so. But I didn’t want it enough to go around the table for it. And, choosing to not get it, I breathed a little sigh of relief. Some part of my mind and/or body was grateful that I had simply stood my ground (or sat it, I guess). Then I pulled out a business card and filled the entire back side (and all the white space on the front) with a fun little note about Yes’s. Not a napkin (of which there were none on the table), but just about as cool.
Am I going to spend the rest of my life waiting for Yes’s before I act? Hardly. The whole notion mostly went out of my head in the two hours since then, emerging just a few minutes ago. Sometimes my Yes will not come from that actual word, but from observing what my body is pulled towards or literally from watching where my feet lead me. Sometimes I will learn as much from good, clear No’s. No’s seem (and I guess are) more negative than Yes’s, but I think just as important. Our Yes’s get their power and integrity from the clarity of our No’s.
Do I have more to write about this topic right now? I’m not getting a “Yes”. Do I want to stop now? A clear “Yes”. Bye.
Sitting outside in the sun just now, smoking a cigarette, across the street from a coffee shop where some friends were gathered – a couple of them expecting me – I just could find no “Yes” in me about going into the coffee shop. So I sat there in the sun, at first judging myself for this lack of action. I actually was feeling somewhat shy and awkward this morning, so I started (so drably predictable) by criticizing myself. But the self-criticism dropped away with relative ease, as I let myself rather just pay attention to the uncomfortable feelings. Then I got a very distinct “Yes” about capturing this moment in writing. I spent about 15 minutes getting this down on paper, really kinda having fun, considering the squeamishness of the topic.
Then I got a “Yes” for going into the coffee shop – not a totally enthusiastic Yes, but a Yes nonetheless. I was moving slow. I got my coffee, then didn’t sit down right away. There were about eight folks, all of whom I knew, around a fairly big circle – and I didn’t sit down right away. I didn’t know really where I wanted to sit – what spot called to me – and I waited, again, for a Yes. I finally got one and sat down between Jeff and Richard.
Then I had some great little eye contact and non-verbal greetings with Robin, with whom I feel lots more connection (based on actually very few words ever exchanged, much more on eye contact, smiles, and occasional hugs). And it was totally spontaneous and enthusiastic for me to go around the table and sit just behind her (no room around this side of the table).
Then a few minutes later, Robin left, leaving me maybe ten feet outside the circle – with now a clear open spot, Robin’s spot. I checked inside myself about moving up. I wasn’t really asking myself, “Do I want to move up?” I was much more scanning my insides for some attraction, some leaning towards moving up. I could find none, so I sat where I was. Not particularly gregarious, that – but I still was not feeling gregarious. Not really so shy and awkward, after my writing outside (ah, the miracle of surrendering to the muse), but also not gregarious.
I also recognized that I was not the least bit interested in the conversation and was more enjoying simply listening to all the interesting sounds in the café. Then I got the impulse to write something down – about this very process of waiting for a Yes. I had a really nice little notebook, which I had just used outside, in my backpack on the other side of the table. Shall I go get it? Nothing in myself that I could identify wanted to get up and go over there. I did want the notebook – if I could have somehow teleported it from my pack to my hands, I would have done so. But I didn’t want it enough to go around the table for it. And, choosing to not get it, I breathed a little sigh of relief. Some part of my mind and/or body was grateful that I had simply stood my ground (or sat it, I guess). Then I pulled out a business card and filled the entire back side (and all the white space on the front) with a fun little note about Yes’s. Not a napkin (of which there were none on the table), but just about as cool.
Am I going to spend the rest of my life waiting for Yes’s before I act? Hardly. The whole notion mostly went out of my head in the two hours since then, emerging just a few minutes ago. Sometimes my Yes will not come from that actual word, but from observing what my body is pulled towards or literally from watching where my feet lead me. Sometimes I will learn as much from good, clear No’s. No’s seem (and I guess are) more negative than Yes’s, but I think just as important. Our Yes’s get their power and integrity from the clarity of our No’s.
Do I have more to write about this topic right now? I’m not getting a “Yes”. Do I want to stop now? A clear “Yes”. Bye.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Non-resistance
This morning I was waiting in line outside a government office that opens at 9 a.m. The handful of other people who were also standing there at 8:30 a.m. probably knew, as did I, that this was the way to get at the head of the line, which can grow exponentially by 9 o’clock.
The 50ish guy in front of me seemed harmless. In his good old boy southern accent, he turned to me and the folks behind me and commented on how a few more warm days like this one in early March and the still-brown grass would “come on like crazy”. Talking about the oncoming spring felt very comfortable to me.
Then, from some connection known only to the speaker, he shifted to how much colder the winters used to be, how he had to walk through the snow to get to school because “they didn’t cancel school like they do today”. Pretty classic – almost archetypal – stuff about “When I was a kid” (“When I was your age”, etc.). I started then to only half-listen, because these stories can get a bit tedious.
Then another shift in the trajectory of this guy’s (so far unencouraged) soliloquy, which I had not predicted: “They used to give us whippin’s, too. If you got out of line, that paddle came out. Nowadays, if you even look at ‘em wrong, they sue you…. And then they wonder why kids come into school shooting people.” I felt the tension start to build in my body.
“They believed in the Ten Commandments back then. Now they’re getting rid of those, too.”
“Now that’s the real problem.” This last had obviously hit a nerve for the 70ish lady behind me. Now I was no longer just face-to-face with this guy who held beliefs very different from my own – and who, as he warmed to the task, was expressing them with a growing level of belligerency. Now I was trapped in the middle of some reactionary call-and-response, with no place to go unless I wanted to give up my place in the line.
Before things “got all pear-shaped” (I loved that expression from a Brit colleague I had worked with a few years before, to describe a situation that had suddenly become problematic), I had been feeling kind of nice and relaxed, if maybe not fully awake yet - no time for coffee before heading to this office.
I had even, as I stood in line, been practicing the “body awareness” exercise I describe in another post. Noticing my breathing and the various sensations in my body, I had even been a little bit peaceful.
But not now. The hairs were standing up on the back of my neck. I had an impulse to say something, to not let all this oppressive (by my standards) shit just sit. “Speak up for yourself.” I was right in the middle – in the middle – of the kind of attitudes that I hate about living in the South.
Then I heard a little whisper from somewhere in me, just ever-so-lightly inserting itself whenever my angry protestations took a moment to breathe:
“What if you didn’t resist this?”
I knew immediately to what this inner voice was referring. It was reminding me of a principle in which I deeply believe and occasionally even practice – if not at all in this particular moment.
What if I were to remember – and even feel in my body – that nothing was going wrong here? What if I did not shift from peace to alarm bells, based simply on some stuff people said – which was not in any way aimed at me, but I just happened to be standing in the middle of? Sure, getting accidentally in the middle of a drive-by shooting would be very bad – but these were words, for Pete’s sake. Maybe kind of angry, negative words. Maybe words with which I strongly disagree, but still just words.
I started in that last sentence to say, “with which I violently disagree”. Ah, here is a lead for me; here is something I can work with. The problem here was really not in any of the words I was hearing, but rather some violence within me – the part of me that feels it needs to “fight back”.
What if I did not need to fight back?
What if I reassured myself that, in the here and now, no one was in any danger? There weren’t any kids about to be paddled, etc.
There was no way for me to change anybody’s mind – and really no need to. In this moment, it really did not make any difference what these people thought and believed.
There are so many stimuli around me that I have the impulse to resist. A little later in the morning, I saw a guy walk by who was way overweight. Something in me tensed up from just watching him. I didn’t want to be seeing this. But why? I’m not him, carrying around all that extra weight. I have no idea what it is like for him to be so heavy – for all I know, it does not bother him at all. But it bothered me.
How many other things do I see, hear, read, etc., in the course of a day that lead me to tighten inside? I started in that sentence to say, “make me tighten”. But these stimuli obviously don’t make me tighten – they don’t make me do anything. It’s me that does it.
I think it’s safe to say that at least some of my tightness is an expression of disapproval. I don’t approve of what these people say, of how heavy that guy is, etc. But whether I approve or not is certainly not going to make any difference in what I see, now is it? My approval or lack of it has no impact on anything in the outside world, unless I feel compelled to mess with it – which will almost certainly just create more mess. No, my disapproval affects nothing out there – only in here. I get tense when I disapprove of some part of my world. I may get irritated, self-righteous, angry, defensive – all manner of lesser or greater discomfort. I make myself unhappy.
It obviously doesn’t have to go that way. It would be totally possible to remind myself of something else I deeply believe, no matter how often I forget it: nothing is going wrong. It is all as it is meant to be. There is a wisdom operating here that’s a lot smarter than my little mind. I don’t have to be the traffic cop or babysitter for how other people, think, feel, or speak. I don’t need in any way to get in the middle of how much or badly they eat, whether they work out, etc., etc., etc.
No, if I let go of patrolling the rest of the world, but just walk my own beat, that’s really plenty to keep my hands full. And, when I’m lucky, I will apply some of these same insights to what I see, hear, feel inside of me. I don’t have to disapprove of any of it, try to change it – I don’t have to go on alarm at all. Trying to mess with what I find in myself will most likely be as little effective as if I had waded into the reactionary deep water on line in front of that office this morning.
I’ve really got better things to do, like noticing my breathing.
The 50ish guy in front of me seemed harmless. In his good old boy southern accent, he turned to me and the folks behind me and commented on how a few more warm days like this one in early March and the still-brown grass would “come on like crazy”. Talking about the oncoming spring felt very comfortable to me.
Then, from some connection known only to the speaker, he shifted to how much colder the winters used to be, how he had to walk through the snow to get to school because “they didn’t cancel school like they do today”. Pretty classic – almost archetypal – stuff about “When I was a kid” (“When I was your age”, etc.). I started then to only half-listen, because these stories can get a bit tedious.
Then another shift in the trajectory of this guy’s (so far unencouraged) soliloquy, which I had not predicted: “They used to give us whippin’s, too. If you got out of line, that paddle came out. Nowadays, if you even look at ‘em wrong, they sue you…. And then they wonder why kids come into school shooting people.” I felt the tension start to build in my body.
“They believed in the Ten Commandments back then. Now they’re getting rid of those, too.”
“Now that’s the real problem.” This last had obviously hit a nerve for the 70ish lady behind me. Now I was no longer just face-to-face with this guy who held beliefs very different from my own – and who, as he warmed to the task, was expressing them with a growing level of belligerency. Now I was trapped in the middle of some reactionary call-and-response, with no place to go unless I wanted to give up my place in the line.
Before things “got all pear-shaped” (I loved that expression from a Brit colleague I had worked with a few years before, to describe a situation that had suddenly become problematic), I had been feeling kind of nice and relaxed, if maybe not fully awake yet - no time for coffee before heading to this office.
I had even, as I stood in line, been practicing the “body awareness” exercise I describe in another post. Noticing my breathing and the various sensations in my body, I had even been a little bit peaceful.
But not now. The hairs were standing up on the back of my neck. I had an impulse to say something, to not let all this oppressive (by my standards) shit just sit. “Speak up for yourself.” I was right in the middle – in the middle – of the kind of attitudes that I hate about living in the South.
Then I heard a little whisper from somewhere in me, just ever-so-lightly inserting itself whenever my angry protestations took a moment to breathe:
“What if you didn’t resist this?”
I knew immediately to what this inner voice was referring. It was reminding me of a principle in which I deeply believe and occasionally even practice – if not at all in this particular moment.
What if I were to remember – and even feel in my body – that nothing was going wrong here? What if I did not shift from peace to alarm bells, based simply on some stuff people said – which was not in any way aimed at me, but I just happened to be standing in the middle of? Sure, getting accidentally in the middle of a drive-by shooting would be very bad – but these were words, for Pete’s sake. Maybe kind of angry, negative words. Maybe words with which I strongly disagree, but still just words.
I started in that last sentence to say, “with which I violently disagree”. Ah, here is a lead for me; here is something I can work with. The problem here was really not in any of the words I was hearing, but rather some violence within me – the part of me that feels it needs to “fight back”.
What if I did not need to fight back?
What if I reassured myself that, in the here and now, no one was in any danger? There weren’t any kids about to be paddled, etc.
There was no way for me to change anybody’s mind – and really no need to. In this moment, it really did not make any difference what these people thought and believed.
There are so many stimuli around me that I have the impulse to resist. A little later in the morning, I saw a guy walk by who was way overweight. Something in me tensed up from just watching him. I didn’t want to be seeing this. But why? I’m not him, carrying around all that extra weight. I have no idea what it is like for him to be so heavy – for all I know, it does not bother him at all. But it bothered me.
How many other things do I see, hear, read, etc., in the course of a day that lead me to tighten inside? I started in that sentence to say, “make me tighten”. But these stimuli obviously don’t make me tighten – they don’t make me do anything. It’s me that does it.
I think it’s safe to say that at least some of my tightness is an expression of disapproval. I don’t approve of what these people say, of how heavy that guy is, etc. But whether I approve or not is certainly not going to make any difference in what I see, now is it? My approval or lack of it has no impact on anything in the outside world, unless I feel compelled to mess with it – which will almost certainly just create more mess. No, my disapproval affects nothing out there – only in here. I get tense when I disapprove of some part of my world. I may get irritated, self-righteous, angry, defensive – all manner of lesser or greater discomfort. I make myself unhappy.
It obviously doesn’t have to go that way. It would be totally possible to remind myself of something else I deeply believe, no matter how often I forget it: nothing is going wrong. It is all as it is meant to be. There is a wisdom operating here that’s a lot smarter than my little mind. I don’t have to be the traffic cop or babysitter for how other people, think, feel, or speak. I don’t need in any way to get in the middle of how much or badly they eat, whether they work out, etc., etc., etc.
No, if I let go of patrolling the rest of the world, but just walk my own beat, that’s really plenty to keep my hands full. And, when I’m lucky, I will apply some of these same insights to what I see, hear, feel inside of me. I don’t have to disapprove of any of it, try to change it – I don’t have to go on alarm at all. Trying to mess with what I find in myself will most likely be as little effective as if I had waded into the reactionary deep water on line in front of that office this morning.
I’ve really got better things to do, like noticing my breathing.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
What am I going to do next?
Life is more and more having its way with me.
I’m sitting at the 11:15 Jubilee Sunday service (roughly 300 folks at each of the two services), wondering what I’m going to do when it’s over. Across the big room, I see a couple of guys with whom I sometimes go for coffee. Will I again go out with them? I don’t know – part of me wants to and part not. Why not? I’m not sure, it’s just so.
But more true still is that I really have no idea what I’m going to do next. I can make myself anxious by trying, now, to figure it out. I can make myself tense and tight by, in this moment, deciding a path and determining to make it happen. In this way, I can cut myself off from whatever feelings, impulses and aversions might bubble up in me between now and the end of the service. Making decisions is way over-rated.
It feels soothing, in this moment, to remind myself that I don’t know, in this moment, which path will nurture my spirit more. More even than that, I really, really don’t know what I will do. To tell myself that I do know is just a useless conceit.
How will I know? I will really know only when that after-service moment arrives. I will know only when I see – just see – where, in that moment, my feet take me.
A few weeks ago, a good friend came up to me during the noisy exchange-the-peace part of the service and asked me what I was doing afterwards. It was really kind of thrilling to announce out loud – and to have it witnessed by a close friend – that I just didn’t know. I literally told her that I wouldn’t know until I see where my feet take me. Geez, it was fun to say that!
She seemed a little surprised. I imagine she was in that little bubble of thinking that we choose these things. I was in a different bubble – or maybe out of the bubble – where choice is not as important as consciously surrendering to life, and knowing that it will have its way with me whether I like it or not.
I’m sitting at the 11:15 Jubilee Sunday service (roughly 300 folks at each of the two services), wondering what I’m going to do when it’s over. Across the big room, I see a couple of guys with whom I sometimes go for coffee. Will I again go out with them? I don’t know – part of me wants to and part not. Why not? I’m not sure, it’s just so.
But more true still is that I really have no idea what I’m going to do next. I can make myself anxious by trying, now, to figure it out. I can make myself tense and tight by, in this moment, deciding a path and determining to make it happen. In this way, I can cut myself off from whatever feelings, impulses and aversions might bubble up in me between now and the end of the service. Making decisions is way over-rated.
It feels soothing, in this moment, to remind myself that I don’t know, in this moment, which path will nurture my spirit more. More even than that, I really, really don’t know what I will do. To tell myself that I do know is just a useless conceit.
How will I know? I will really know only when that after-service moment arrives. I will know only when I see – just see – where, in that moment, my feet take me.
A few weeks ago, a good friend came up to me during the noisy exchange-the-peace part of the service and asked me what I was doing afterwards. It was really kind of thrilling to announce out loud – and to have it witnessed by a close friend – that I just didn’t know. I literally told her that I wouldn’t know until I see where my feet take me. Geez, it was fun to say that!
She seemed a little surprised. I imagine she was in that little bubble of thinking that we choose these things. I was in a different bubble – or maybe out of the bubble – where choice is not as important as consciously surrendering to life, and knowing that it will have its way with me whether I like it or not.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Two hands
Two hands
I’ve been breaking things lately. Breaking and dropping things. Breaking and dropping and spilling things. And, for every actual breakage/droppage/spillage, I have had two or three or four close calls.
How I have been making this mess, more specifically, is that I have been setting cups, glasses and other containers too close to the edge of the surface where I am putting them. Actually too much hanging over the edge. And there have been lots more instances, when I go to retrieve an item, where I discover that it, also, is hanging precariously over the edge.
Now, why/how do I do this? Am I a daredevil who likes to beat the odds or trod just as close to a potential accident as possible? Are these surfaces so crapped out that there is no room for these additional objects? (There actually is some truth in this one, but I don’t think it is the primary factor here.)
No, there is another factor that runs through most of these little mishaps (not all of them little, as when, the other day, I dropped my favorite ceramic coffee mug into the porcelain sink). In each case, I was trying to do two things at once. Or actually I stopped paying attention to the first task (placing the container on a surface) before it was completed, in order to move on to another. Literally, in each of the instances that I have recently tracked, I had shifted my head and body orientation in a different direction before the item had settled onto its new resting place. I had not stuck around to actually see the container get successfully placed where I had aimed it. Rather, some part of me had put that task on automatic pilot, trusting that it could finish getting done without any focused attention on my part. And, clearly, in each of these cases, my unconscious strategy proved wrong.
Some mindfulness teachers (Zen Buddhists, etc.) suggest that you use two hands for tasks like these – even if, literally, only one hand is required. This physically prevents you from beginning another task before this one is done. Or any physical task, at any rate – you could still be, in your mind, writing a letter or planning your day. Using two hands, especially as you grow familiar, could still allow for you to do two things at once. But it’s not as easy.
The mindfulness teachers regard this two-hands exercise as a little meditation – a reminder and practice of being fully present to each moment of our lives.
I haven’t even gotten around to trying this little exercise yet, even though I have given myself that assignment after my last few drops. I am quite the creature of habit, and very inclined to be in my head, regardless of what other tasks I may be doing. So I have both not stopped shifting on to the next task before finishing the first, but I have not yet remembered to try the two-hands practice – even having put a little note on my dresser, reminding me to do so.
I think I’ll go over there and post a bigger note. And I’m hoping that writing this piece here will help get my attention. Or maybe I’ll get up from this computer and right now go practice carrying things with two hands. I like that idea. I’m going to go do it for a couple of minutes now, and maybe give myself a little reminder to try it for a couple of minutes every day, until it becomes a new habit.
I do realize there is a risk of the two hands becoming a new habit – and that I will be writing or planning or whatever as I do it. But I’m already thinking of ways to make that practice even stronger – by paying close attention to the feel and heft of the object I’m carrying, looking at it fully, hearing the sound of it landing on the new surface, feeling all the little physical sensations from lifting, moving, turning, etc.
I’m getting excited – this could all be a lot of fun.
I’ve been breaking things lately. Breaking and dropping things. Breaking and dropping and spilling things. And, for every actual breakage/droppage/spillage, I have had two or three or four close calls.
How I have been making this mess, more specifically, is that I have been setting cups, glasses and other containers too close to the edge of the surface where I am putting them. Actually too much hanging over the edge. And there have been lots more instances, when I go to retrieve an item, where I discover that it, also, is hanging precariously over the edge.
Now, why/how do I do this? Am I a daredevil who likes to beat the odds or trod just as close to a potential accident as possible? Are these surfaces so crapped out that there is no room for these additional objects? (There actually is some truth in this one, but I don’t think it is the primary factor here.)
No, there is another factor that runs through most of these little mishaps (not all of them little, as when, the other day, I dropped my favorite ceramic coffee mug into the porcelain sink). In each case, I was trying to do two things at once. Or actually I stopped paying attention to the first task (placing the container on a surface) before it was completed, in order to move on to another. Literally, in each of the instances that I have recently tracked, I had shifted my head and body orientation in a different direction before the item had settled onto its new resting place. I had not stuck around to actually see the container get successfully placed where I had aimed it. Rather, some part of me had put that task on automatic pilot, trusting that it could finish getting done without any focused attention on my part. And, clearly, in each of these cases, my unconscious strategy proved wrong.
Some mindfulness teachers (Zen Buddhists, etc.) suggest that you use two hands for tasks like these – even if, literally, only one hand is required. This physically prevents you from beginning another task before this one is done. Or any physical task, at any rate – you could still be, in your mind, writing a letter or planning your day. Using two hands, especially as you grow familiar, could still allow for you to do two things at once. But it’s not as easy.
The mindfulness teachers regard this two-hands exercise as a little meditation – a reminder and practice of being fully present to each moment of our lives.
I haven’t even gotten around to trying this little exercise yet, even though I have given myself that assignment after my last few drops. I am quite the creature of habit, and very inclined to be in my head, regardless of what other tasks I may be doing. So I have both not stopped shifting on to the next task before finishing the first, but I have not yet remembered to try the two-hands practice – even having put a little note on my dresser, reminding me to do so.
I think I’ll go over there and post a bigger note. And I’m hoping that writing this piece here will help get my attention. Or maybe I’ll get up from this computer and right now go practice carrying things with two hands. I like that idea. I’m going to go do it for a couple of minutes now, and maybe give myself a little reminder to try it for a couple of minutes every day, until it becomes a new habit.
I do realize there is a risk of the two hands becoming a new habit – and that I will be writing or planning or whatever as I do it. But I’m already thinking of ways to make that practice even stronger – by paying close attention to the feel and heft of the object I’m carrying, looking at it fully, hearing the sound of it landing on the new surface, feeling all the little physical sensations from lifting, moving, turning, etc.
I’m getting excited – this could all be a lot of fun.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
The right place at the right time
A few years ago, I was having one of those days where I just knew that I was running late.
I had no actual appointments that day – nor any pressing deadlines. So, literally, there was no way that I could be late. But I knew, somehow, that I was behind where I should be.
I used to have lots of those days back then – unstructured days with unrealistically long to-do lists. Everything, maybe especially errands but really everything, took longer than I had allotted for it. As I went from one errand to the next, the tension would just ramp up in me as I pushed a little harder, with each failure, to keep up with my internal schedule.
On this particular day, I was especially behind the eight ball – particularly disappointed in my performance with the tasks I did at home, and then even more as I “ran” (now there’s an interesting word) my errands.
I finally kind of gave up. I didn’t “surrender to the flow” of my day. I didn’t forgive myself for being so ineffective. No, I just gave up – and entered a familiar state of feeling inept, scattered, maybe just one step this side of absolute loser.
Then something pretty amazing happened. I was walking down the street in Evanston, a north side suburb all the way across Chicago from Oak Park, the west side suburb where I lived, performing one last errand for the day – maybe number 7 out of 11 on my list. Since I had given up on success and resigned myself that this was the last thing I was going to accomplish this afternoon, I was walking a lot slower. I actually was more present to that particular moment than I had been all day.
As I was walking south down the street, coming up to a corner, I looked across the street and saw a young guy riding his bicycle north through the intersection. And, coming from the east, a car that had just barely slowed at his stop sign as the driver prepared to come through the intersection – directly into the path of the bicycle, which he obviously did not see.
They were about ten feet from each other when I involuntarily screamed – really loud. Each of them looked up from whatever daydream in which they were immersed – and the car slammed to a halt, maybe three feet from the bike. The cyclist continued through the intersection. The driver hesitated until the bike had cleared his path, then also resumed his trip.
I was almost immediately very relieved from the absolute fright I had just felt. As I resumed walking down the street, one thought grabbed totally hold of my mind: I had been in exactly the right place at the right time. Had I not been there to scream, there seemed no question that the car would have hit the bike rider – possibly rode over him.
This realization threw all my certainty of my behindness into a cocked hat. Had I not been walking down this particular street at this particular moment of time, a potentially very bad accident would have occurred – which I was now able to avert. So, what then of running late? Had I been more “efficient” with any of my tasks at home or any of my errands, I would not have been at that particular place at that specific moment.
I suddenly had to let go of my particular frame around this day. My certainty that I was “behind” had been completely wrong. I was very, very grateful that I had been exactly where I was.
I couldn’t help but extrapolate this new perspective. What if, on the other days that I had felt equally impatient with my forward momentum (which was most days back then), I had been equally wrong? What if on at least some of those days – even if I didn’t so obviously prevent an accident – being exactly where I was, when I was, was equally just right? Maybe, had my timing been different, I would have been the one to have the accident, or the car behind me would have been able to go faster and might have had an accident. Or whatever – all the infinite number of whatevers that might have occurred, were I not where I was, when I was.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. There was obviously no way to know any of this, but I couldn’t avoid speculating. While I couldn’t know “what if”, I suddenly trusted all my going-too-slow judgments a lot less. All I really knew was that, on this particular afternoon, I seemed to have been exactly where – and at the exact right moment – that I was meant to be.
This all happened maybe seven years ago, and I still think about it. It has become a kind of symbol for me. These days, when I feel like I am running late (which is actually lots less often now), I am likely to remember that moment – and it upends my certainty. I may not, in every instance, go all the way to trusting that all is well – but I’m a lot humbler about trusting the idea that something is not well.
I had no actual appointments that day – nor any pressing deadlines. So, literally, there was no way that I could be late. But I knew, somehow, that I was behind where I should be.
I used to have lots of those days back then – unstructured days with unrealistically long to-do lists. Everything, maybe especially errands but really everything, took longer than I had allotted for it. As I went from one errand to the next, the tension would just ramp up in me as I pushed a little harder, with each failure, to keep up with my internal schedule.
On this particular day, I was especially behind the eight ball – particularly disappointed in my performance with the tasks I did at home, and then even more as I “ran” (now there’s an interesting word) my errands.
I finally kind of gave up. I didn’t “surrender to the flow” of my day. I didn’t forgive myself for being so ineffective. No, I just gave up – and entered a familiar state of feeling inept, scattered, maybe just one step this side of absolute loser.
Then something pretty amazing happened. I was walking down the street in Evanston, a north side suburb all the way across Chicago from Oak Park, the west side suburb where I lived, performing one last errand for the day – maybe number 7 out of 11 on my list. Since I had given up on success and resigned myself that this was the last thing I was going to accomplish this afternoon, I was walking a lot slower. I actually was more present to that particular moment than I had been all day.
As I was walking south down the street, coming up to a corner, I looked across the street and saw a young guy riding his bicycle north through the intersection. And, coming from the east, a car that had just barely slowed at his stop sign as the driver prepared to come through the intersection – directly into the path of the bicycle, which he obviously did not see.
They were about ten feet from each other when I involuntarily screamed – really loud. Each of them looked up from whatever daydream in which they were immersed – and the car slammed to a halt, maybe three feet from the bike. The cyclist continued through the intersection. The driver hesitated until the bike had cleared his path, then also resumed his trip.
I was almost immediately very relieved from the absolute fright I had just felt. As I resumed walking down the street, one thought grabbed totally hold of my mind: I had been in exactly the right place at the right time. Had I not been there to scream, there seemed no question that the car would have hit the bike rider – possibly rode over him.
This realization threw all my certainty of my behindness into a cocked hat. Had I not been walking down this particular street at this particular moment of time, a potentially very bad accident would have occurred – which I was now able to avert. So, what then of running late? Had I been more “efficient” with any of my tasks at home or any of my errands, I would not have been at that particular place at that specific moment.
I suddenly had to let go of my particular frame around this day. My certainty that I was “behind” had been completely wrong. I was very, very grateful that I had been exactly where I was.
I couldn’t help but extrapolate this new perspective. What if, on the other days that I had felt equally impatient with my forward momentum (which was most days back then), I had been equally wrong? What if on at least some of those days – even if I didn’t so obviously prevent an accident – being exactly where I was, when I was, was equally just right? Maybe, had my timing been different, I would have been the one to have the accident, or the car behind me would have been able to go faster and might have had an accident. Or whatever – all the infinite number of whatevers that might have occurred, were I not where I was, when I was.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. There was obviously no way to know any of this, but I couldn’t avoid speculating. While I couldn’t know “what if”, I suddenly trusted all my going-too-slow judgments a lot less. All I really knew was that, on this particular afternoon, I seemed to have been exactly where – and at the exact right moment – that I was meant to be.
This all happened maybe seven years ago, and I still think about it. It has become a kind of symbol for me. These days, when I feel like I am running late (which is actually lots less often now), I am likely to remember that moment – and it upends my certainty. I may not, in every instance, go all the way to trusting that all is well – but I’m a lot humbler about trusting the idea that something is not well.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
The Case Against “Personal Growth”
Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve really got nothing against people investing time, energy and money on activities (“workshops”, “programs”) that would identify themselves as furthering “personal growth”, “consciousness raising”, etc. God knows there are lots of worse ways to keep busy. (I love the bumper sticker that says, “Jesus is coming – look busy.”)
And I, for sure, have – at other points in my life – also invested time, energy and money in many of the same kinds of activities. So I by no means want to suggest that there is anything wrong with this stuff. To do so would be exactly the kind of dualism that I describe in an earlier post. (One of my friends said to me recently, “I don’t really understand what is this dualism that you talk about, but I get it that it’s a bad thing.” That was pretty funny. Ok, let’s back up here and take another crack at this thing...)
No, rather than suggesting that there is anything less valuable or valid about keeping busy this way, I more want to make a case for why it can also be valid to take a pass – why, for some people at some points in their lives (like me, now) all these activities might actually not be all that valuable.
How can someone who once embraced all manner of personal growth activities now eschew them? Doesn’t that mean that he (me) is rigid, defensive or “stuck”?
I no longer have any desire to “grow”. I also have no interest in trying to shift (“expand”, “raise”, “liberate”) my consciousness. The emphasis there is on the word “try”. I honestly also don’t know exactly what “consciousness” is. I think it actually is a construct created by people who want to help you raise it.
Stephen Covey says to “Begin with the end in mind”. I don’t know that I actually want to make a habit of this, but this seems to be an instance where it actually might be useful. Where is all this going? “Where we are going” is a notion on which I and many of the growth purveyors would agree. If I said that where I am going is to more and more realize/feel/perceive/know that all of life is one and that I am a spiritual being having a human experience, I think that lots of these folks would stand up and salute. The real difference is in our perceptions of how to get there.
The way I see it, life is pretty much always working us over already. It gives us experience after experience offering the possibility of us seeing through the game of separateness (“Illusion”, “Maya”). Sometimes it gives us the lightest of nudges or even just a whisper, inviting us out of the prison of self. Other times it basically beats the crap out of us, all with a loving intent, to help us release our ferocious attachment to attachments – to all those things we think we need, including how we need to think of ourselves.
If life is the great workshop, then we don’t need to go seeking any teacher or facilitator, nor any modality/discipline/teaching/school or even any coach or counselor. What we really need is to slow down, breathe, relax – and begin to smell/taste/glimpse/hear the subtle hints that we are not alone.
Here’s the other kicker, though. I don’t believe there really is anything we can do to speed up the process. All this breathing, relaxing, tasting, etc. is stuff that surfaces in us when the time is right. Life has its own rhythm for waking us up. I won’t even claim to know exactly what “life” is, except that it is everything, including me. So that deeper level of me, underneath all the stuff that I think is me, is unfolding exactly right – and doesn’t need any goosing.
When people are inclined to attend a personal growth workshop, that is exactly right for them, then. But it just doesn’t make any difference. Whatever we are doing now is always perfect. It always is just what we are meant to be doing then - in fact, all that we could possibly be doing. The real sweetness is when we are gifted with moments of “getting” this (“seeing it” or whatever other metaphor). That’s when we are able to more let down into life.
Whether that moment surfaces when we are on a Vision Quest or walking down the street or enjoying a margarita with a friend – none of that makes any difference.
So, to my friends who are going off to a workshop, you have all my blessings. I think it’s perfect for you to be doing that. Just don’t try to recruit me.
And I, for sure, have – at other points in my life – also invested time, energy and money in many of the same kinds of activities. So I by no means want to suggest that there is anything wrong with this stuff. To do so would be exactly the kind of dualism that I describe in an earlier post. (One of my friends said to me recently, “I don’t really understand what is this dualism that you talk about, but I get it that it’s a bad thing.” That was pretty funny. Ok, let’s back up here and take another crack at this thing...)
No, rather than suggesting that there is anything less valuable or valid about keeping busy this way, I more want to make a case for why it can also be valid to take a pass – why, for some people at some points in their lives (like me, now) all these activities might actually not be all that valuable.
How can someone who once embraced all manner of personal growth activities now eschew them? Doesn’t that mean that he (me) is rigid, defensive or “stuck”?
I no longer have any desire to “grow”. I also have no interest in trying to shift (“expand”, “raise”, “liberate”) my consciousness. The emphasis there is on the word “try”. I honestly also don’t know exactly what “consciousness” is. I think it actually is a construct created by people who want to help you raise it.
Stephen Covey says to “Begin with the end in mind”. I don’t know that I actually want to make a habit of this, but this seems to be an instance where it actually might be useful. Where is all this going? “Where we are going” is a notion on which I and many of the growth purveyors would agree. If I said that where I am going is to more and more realize/feel/perceive/know that all of life is one and that I am a spiritual being having a human experience, I think that lots of these folks would stand up and salute. The real difference is in our perceptions of how to get there.
The way I see it, life is pretty much always working us over already. It gives us experience after experience offering the possibility of us seeing through the game of separateness (“Illusion”, “Maya”). Sometimes it gives us the lightest of nudges or even just a whisper, inviting us out of the prison of self. Other times it basically beats the crap out of us, all with a loving intent, to help us release our ferocious attachment to attachments – to all those things we think we need, including how we need to think of ourselves.
If life is the great workshop, then we don’t need to go seeking any teacher or facilitator, nor any modality/discipline/teaching/school or even any coach or counselor. What we really need is to slow down, breathe, relax – and begin to smell/taste/glimpse/hear the subtle hints that we are not alone.
Here’s the other kicker, though. I don’t believe there really is anything we can do to speed up the process. All this breathing, relaxing, tasting, etc. is stuff that surfaces in us when the time is right. Life has its own rhythm for waking us up. I won’t even claim to know exactly what “life” is, except that it is everything, including me. So that deeper level of me, underneath all the stuff that I think is me, is unfolding exactly right – and doesn’t need any goosing.
When people are inclined to attend a personal growth workshop, that is exactly right for them, then. But it just doesn’t make any difference. Whatever we are doing now is always perfect. It always is just what we are meant to be doing then - in fact, all that we could possibly be doing. The real sweetness is when we are gifted with moments of “getting” this (“seeing it” or whatever other metaphor). That’s when we are able to more let down into life.
Whether that moment surfaces when we are on a Vision Quest or walking down the street or enjoying a margarita with a friend – none of that makes any difference.
So, to my friends who are going off to a workshop, you have all my blessings. I think it’s perfect for you to be doing that. Just don’t try to recruit me.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Shy and Awkward
Yesterday I was in some kind of zone, where everything seemed to come easy. On my job at a hotel gift shop, I had wonderful little (and some not so little) interactions with lots of guests. I was fully available – and they seemed to sense this.
Two 12ish girls, bopping around the hotel, told me I was “cool” – pretty much the best affirmation one can get. And this cool-salute was based on nothing special – just, apparently, the tone in my voice and the fullness with which I greeted them. Maybe they like the way I welcomed them – like they were not just “kids”.
Today, on the contrary, I am shy and awkward. After church just now, I found myself awkwardly and abruptly breaking off conversations with people whom I really like – with whom I actually crave more connection. I even thought I recognized disappointment in some of them – or confusion, or I really don’t know what response – as I suddenly said, “Hey, have a great day” and pulled away.
I now am sitting here in the sun, having a smoke (I’ve relapsed again), just outside the coffee shop where I promised to meet a friend. I got my coffee to go, so I could come outside and smoke - and just can’t find it in myself to go back in. There are several of our mutual friends in there – Kent will have plenty of people with whom to visit.
A few minutes ago, I was kind of roughly critiquing myself. “What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong, period? If you were really getting this Life Lived More Deeply stuff, about which you have been writing so much, you wouldn’t be so unable to hunker down and be with people – so not, today, available for connection.”
Then I got it – at least a glimpse of it. “Living Life More Deeply” means embracing this moment, whatever the content of this moment. Today’s shyness is no better or worse than yesterday’s gregarious fun. Be with this.
Then I realized that I wanted to write about this. (I’m really glad I had a good little notebook with me – though I most always do.) On this raw, windy early March day, I’ve found this delightful spot – in the sun and out of the wind – and I’m writing. This is my gift to others and my gift from life. I am doing exactly that which I am meant to be doing. And if I had not found this window into this particular form of flow - if I was still wandering around kind of lost – that also would be perfect.
Pema Chodron, the wonderful, so-compassionate American teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, would ask, “Can I soften my heart into this moment?” I have the opportunity to embrace this particular pain, knowing that it truly leaves me not alone, as I was just feeling, but intimately connected with all the thousands (millions?) of my brothers and sisters around the world who are right now experiencing this kind of pain, or something like it. I can breathe in this pain we are all feeling, open my heart to it – then breathe out compassion, not just for me, but for all of us.
I don’t have to be some kind of expert at Living Life More Deeply, some kind of oneness hotshot (there’s a wonderful oxymoron). We are always teaching that which we are trying to learn. The Course In Miracles says that if I’m not getting as much from this moment of teaching/ counseling/coaching as the person to whom I am “giving” this attention, then something is out of kilter.
So, I’ll breathe and write, knowing that none of this has taken away my shy awkwardness, that – if I do now buck up my courage and go into this coffee shop, I am likely not going to feel much more comfortable than I did a few minutes ago. But, with a little luck, some part of me will wink a little wink at this shy, awkward soul, knowing that I am, in this moment, walking my walk just as much as I did yesterday. In fact, this awkward moment is the only experience I could be having right now – is absolutely, utterly perfect.
Two 12ish girls, bopping around the hotel, told me I was “cool” – pretty much the best affirmation one can get. And this cool-salute was based on nothing special – just, apparently, the tone in my voice and the fullness with which I greeted them. Maybe they like the way I welcomed them – like they were not just “kids”.
Today, on the contrary, I am shy and awkward. After church just now, I found myself awkwardly and abruptly breaking off conversations with people whom I really like – with whom I actually crave more connection. I even thought I recognized disappointment in some of them – or confusion, or I really don’t know what response – as I suddenly said, “Hey, have a great day” and pulled away.
I now am sitting here in the sun, having a smoke (I’ve relapsed again), just outside the coffee shop where I promised to meet a friend. I got my coffee to go, so I could come outside and smoke - and just can’t find it in myself to go back in. There are several of our mutual friends in there – Kent will have plenty of people with whom to visit.
A few minutes ago, I was kind of roughly critiquing myself. “What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong, period? If you were really getting this Life Lived More Deeply stuff, about which you have been writing so much, you wouldn’t be so unable to hunker down and be with people – so not, today, available for connection.”
Then I got it – at least a glimpse of it. “Living Life More Deeply” means embracing this moment, whatever the content of this moment. Today’s shyness is no better or worse than yesterday’s gregarious fun. Be with this.
Then I realized that I wanted to write about this. (I’m really glad I had a good little notebook with me – though I most always do.) On this raw, windy early March day, I’ve found this delightful spot – in the sun and out of the wind – and I’m writing. This is my gift to others and my gift from life. I am doing exactly that which I am meant to be doing. And if I had not found this window into this particular form of flow - if I was still wandering around kind of lost – that also would be perfect.
Pema Chodron, the wonderful, so-compassionate American teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, would ask, “Can I soften my heart into this moment?” I have the opportunity to embrace this particular pain, knowing that it truly leaves me not alone, as I was just feeling, but intimately connected with all the thousands (millions?) of my brothers and sisters around the world who are right now experiencing this kind of pain, or something like it. I can breathe in this pain we are all feeling, open my heart to it – then breathe out compassion, not just for me, but for all of us.
I don’t have to be some kind of expert at Living Life More Deeply, some kind of oneness hotshot (there’s a wonderful oxymoron). We are always teaching that which we are trying to learn. The Course In Miracles says that if I’m not getting as much from this moment of teaching/ counseling/coaching as the person to whom I am “giving” this attention, then something is out of kilter.
So, I’ll breathe and write, knowing that none of this has taken away my shy awkwardness, that – if I do now buck up my courage and go into this coffee shop, I am likely not going to feel much more comfortable than I did a few minutes ago. But, with a little luck, some part of me will wink a little wink at this shy, awkward soul, knowing that I am, in this moment, walking my walk just as much as I did yesterday. In fact, this awkward moment is the only experience I could be having right now – is absolutely, utterly perfect.
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Our Desires
I recently got one of those forwarded emails with warm fuzzy messages, called “Being Thankful”. The first item was:
“Be thankful that you don't already have everything you desire. If you did, what would there be to look forward to?”
I’m also thankful that life doesn’t give me everything I desire. What a mess that would be.
“Be thankful that you don't already have everything you desire. If you did, what would there be to look forward to?”
I’m also thankful that life doesn’t give me everything I desire. What a mess that would be.
Monday, March 5, 2007
Winking
Asheville is a very friendly town. People tend to greet each other, walking down the street. If you make eye contact, it is a little abnormal (out of the norm) to not somehow acknowledge the other person. I still get a kick out of how prevalent is the southern “Hey”, instead of my Midwest “Hi”.
But I’ve been having a lot of fun lately just winking at people.
Actually it’s a whole range of facial cues, not just winking. I wish I could see them all – I might be better equipped to describe them. I know that a lot of it has to do with things I do with my mouth. Also raising my eyebrows – sometimes maybe paired with opening my eyes wide, the opposite of a wink.
I know that my spate of these little eruptive expressions has something to do with my current impulse to greet even more folks, without going through the whole drill of forming words, or even making sounds – especially when our eye contact is so minimal that words might feel forced, like too much. My face has always tended to be fairly expressive, and my penchant for physical comedy has involved things I do with my face as well as the rest of my body. Many of these little acknowledging expressions – as best as I know, never having seen them – carry a very light quality, cute and fun if not actually comic. I think the people I am greeting enjoy these little acknowledgements and that these come across as less odd than they would in a less greety town.
I wrote the title for this piece sitting out in the sun just now, then walked into the coffee shop where several of my friends had pulled up too many chairs around a teensy little table. It really was kind of a little gaggle of us.
Robin and I like each other, although our relationship is based more on greeting and sometimes hugging each other than on a whole lot of conversation. She was sitting across from me – way too far to even touch fingers. There, just maybe two minutes after writing this title, she gave me the most absolutely comic series of winks, eyebrow raisings, twitches and nervous tics that I have maybe ever seen. It was not only delightful in and of itself, but so synchronistic, on the heels of having just set myself the agenda to write about winks. I just had to go around the table, pull up a chair behind her (no room by the table) and tell her of this cute little cosmic joke. She got a kick out of it, but – in this town, where synchronicity happens more and faster – neither of us was especially surprised.
And that’s maybe the point. We are all connected – in ways large and small, obvious and subtle, visible and invisible, serious and silly. And that’s what I’m wanting to acknowledge, without going through all the rigmarole of words.
But I’ve been having a lot of fun lately just winking at people.
Actually it’s a whole range of facial cues, not just winking. I wish I could see them all – I might be better equipped to describe them. I know that a lot of it has to do with things I do with my mouth. Also raising my eyebrows – sometimes maybe paired with opening my eyes wide, the opposite of a wink.
I know that my spate of these little eruptive expressions has something to do with my current impulse to greet even more folks, without going through the whole drill of forming words, or even making sounds – especially when our eye contact is so minimal that words might feel forced, like too much. My face has always tended to be fairly expressive, and my penchant for physical comedy has involved things I do with my face as well as the rest of my body. Many of these little acknowledging expressions – as best as I know, never having seen them – carry a very light quality, cute and fun if not actually comic. I think the people I am greeting enjoy these little acknowledgements and that these come across as less odd than they would in a less greety town.
I wrote the title for this piece sitting out in the sun just now, then walked into the coffee shop where several of my friends had pulled up too many chairs around a teensy little table. It really was kind of a little gaggle of us.
Robin and I like each other, although our relationship is based more on greeting and sometimes hugging each other than on a whole lot of conversation. She was sitting across from me – way too far to even touch fingers. There, just maybe two minutes after writing this title, she gave me the most absolutely comic series of winks, eyebrow raisings, twitches and nervous tics that I have maybe ever seen. It was not only delightful in and of itself, but so synchronistic, on the heels of having just set myself the agenda to write about winks. I just had to go around the table, pull up a chair behind her (no room by the table) and tell her of this cute little cosmic joke. She got a kick out of it, but – in this town, where synchronicity happens more and faster – neither of us was especially surprised.
And that’s maybe the point. We are all connected – in ways large and small, obvious and subtle, visible and invisible, serious and silly. And that’s what I’m wanting to acknowledge, without going through all the rigmarole of words.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Sound Meditation
Whereas vision, the lead sense for most of us, seems especially set up for perceiving separation (“This is not that”, “These two things are disconnected from each other”), sound is much more available to be perceived as waves washing over us. It is much more feasible to not separate this sound from that sound, to let it all join together as one unbroken tapestry of sound.
This is obviously not automatic. Our mind still likes to identify, categorize and name the sounds we hear. It's fairly difficult to absolutely tune out this part of our brain that wants to identify and even make value judgments about the sounds we hear. I love doing this exercise as I am walking around town, but I do notice this identifying and judging process in my brain: bird sounds – good, car sounds – bad, expressway sounds – very bad.
But it is pretty doable to at least partly to unhook from this conceptual process, to go back to the raw data – especially if we choose to do this and invest just the slightest bit of mental discipline around it.
Today is a windy, raw, early March day. When I let go of my griping about the weather, especially the wind, that very wind stirs up some very cool sounds (still identified by me, but after at least a brief moment of just hearing): leaf skittering across the sidewalk, stop sign rattling, wind blowing across my ears. A couple of the coolest sounds sat unjudged – even unidentified - only for a moment: paper bag crinkling under a car tire, plastic cup making its noisy way down the street. After that delicious moment of just hearing, the judgment “litter – bad” asserted itself. But, because I was so much grokking sounds during that walk, it was really not that hard to let go of the mentalizing and drop back into the gloriously diverse sounds.
Just a few minutes earlier, I was really having a ball surrendering to the sounds in a coffee shop where I was sitting with some friends. There were two separate conversations burbling along among my friends – one at 2 o’clock and one at about 11. One way I love to release myself from the conceptual part of my brain and thirstily drink in the sounds around me is to let go of decoding the words and conversations I hear. It is easier to do this when I don’t know the conversers – somehow, some part of me feels it is “supposed to” be a “good listener” when friends are talking, but in the coffee shop just now there were so many other threads or eruptions of sound that it was really not too hard to stop “listening to” my friends’ conversations and simply hear them.
Some of the other sounds I did identify and partly decode, but not completely: other conversations in the room, a musical soundtrack (more seducing me to “understand” because there were lyrics, not just sound). But the juiciest sounds were all the little rattles, bangs, thumps and tinkles coming from behind the counter. They were so much fun partly because I literally did not “know” what they were. I could speculate about their origins, if I chose (and sometimes I did): refrigerator door closing, lattes being whipped by that little wand they stick in them, etc. But, combined with all the other sounds in the room, it was relatively easy to just let them rise and then fall away, just as the sounds they were – no identity.
I had really a lot of luck just letting my hearing swim around the room – words at 11 o’clock, music, bop at three o’clock (behind the counter), words at 2 o’clock, words also at 2 o’clock but somewhere further back in the room (sometimes I couldn’t stop myself from looking to see what table I thought they were coming from, but that less disrupted the ocean of sound than actually being able to make out the words - and sometimes I also let the origin fall away into irrelevance).
I think my friends may have thought I was stoned (especially since they were, for some synchronistic reason, talking about marijuana – which I have laid off for a lot of years, but, surprisingly, most of them in this conversation, which – yes – I was at least intermittently decoding, apparently still actively partake of). So I was behaving somewhat oddly (another judgment), sitting outside the conversation and looking a little maybe aloof, maybe spaced out, maybe just disengaged. At one point, one friend – directly across from me, so he maybe saw my unusually floating presence – said, “You’ve got to stop interrupting so much, Majo.” I didn’t have much trouble coming back with, “I can’t help it, I’m just a buttinsky”, then dropping out again to the symphony of lush coffee shop sounds.
Here at work now in my little gift shop in a big downtown hotel, I’ve gotten caught up in a couple of (really pretty fun) conversations, which have pulled me back to the world of meaning, as opposed to simple audition. (These sounds are all auditioning and none of them have been voted out yet.) But I think the conversations have been so much fun partly because I have brought an easy, free presence to them – and I’m showing up this way just because of my somewhat extended, luxurious sound bath.
Now the other conversers have departed. I’m in my little conceptual bubble of writing. But I’m almost finished with this little piece. Once I have let go of the headlong momentum of this writing, maybe I’ll just drop back into the sounds around me. Maybe. I’ve got a little list going of other pieces pushing through to be written today by me – a big turn-on for the writer in me – but maybe I’ll just let some sounds visit me first.
We’ll see.
This is obviously not automatic. Our mind still likes to identify, categorize and name the sounds we hear. It's fairly difficult to absolutely tune out this part of our brain that wants to identify and even make value judgments about the sounds we hear. I love doing this exercise as I am walking around town, but I do notice this identifying and judging process in my brain: bird sounds – good, car sounds – bad, expressway sounds – very bad.
But it is pretty doable to at least partly to unhook from this conceptual process, to go back to the raw data – especially if we choose to do this and invest just the slightest bit of mental discipline around it.
Today is a windy, raw, early March day. When I let go of my griping about the weather, especially the wind, that very wind stirs up some very cool sounds (still identified by me, but after at least a brief moment of just hearing): leaf skittering across the sidewalk, stop sign rattling, wind blowing across my ears. A couple of the coolest sounds sat unjudged – even unidentified - only for a moment: paper bag crinkling under a car tire, plastic cup making its noisy way down the street. After that delicious moment of just hearing, the judgment “litter – bad” asserted itself. But, because I was so much grokking sounds during that walk, it was really not that hard to let go of the mentalizing and drop back into the gloriously diverse sounds.
Just a few minutes earlier, I was really having a ball surrendering to the sounds in a coffee shop where I was sitting with some friends. There were two separate conversations burbling along among my friends – one at 2 o’clock and one at about 11. One way I love to release myself from the conceptual part of my brain and thirstily drink in the sounds around me is to let go of decoding the words and conversations I hear. It is easier to do this when I don’t know the conversers – somehow, some part of me feels it is “supposed to” be a “good listener” when friends are talking, but in the coffee shop just now there were so many other threads or eruptions of sound that it was really not too hard to stop “listening to” my friends’ conversations and simply hear them.
Some of the other sounds I did identify and partly decode, but not completely: other conversations in the room, a musical soundtrack (more seducing me to “understand” because there were lyrics, not just sound). But the juiciest sounds were all the little rattles, bangs, thumps and tinkles coming from behind the counter. They were so much fun partly because I literally did not “know” what they were. I could speculate about their origins, if I chose (and sometimes I did): refrigerator door closing, lattes being whipped by that little wand they stick in them, etc. But, combined with all the other sounds in the room, it was relatively easy to just let them rise and then fall away, just as the sounds they were – no identity.
I had really a lot of luck just letting my hearing swim around the room – words at 11 o’clock, music, bop at three o’clock (behind the counter), words at 2 o’clock, words also at 2 o’clock but somewhere further back in the room (sometimes I couldn’t stop myself from looking to see what table I thought they were coming from, but that less disrupted the ocean of sound than actually being able to make out the words - and sometimes I also let the origin fall away into irrelevance).
I think my friends may have thought I was stoned (especially since they were, for some synchronistic reason, talking about marijuana – which I have laid off for a lot of years, but, surprisingly, most of them in this conversation, which – yes – I was at least intermittently decoding, apparently still actively partake of). So I was behaving somewhat oddly (another judgment), sitting outside the conversation and looking a little maybe aloof, maybe spaced out, maybe just disengaged. At one point, one friend – directly across from me, so he maybe saw my unusually floating presence – said, “You’ve got to stop interrupting so much, Majo.” I didn’t have much trouble coming back with, “I can’t help it, I’m just a buttinsky”, then dropping out again to the symphony of lush coffee shop sounds.
Here at work now in my little gift shop in a big downtown hotel, I’ve gotten caught up in a couple of (really pretty fun) conversations, which have pulled me back to the world of meaning, as opposed to simple audition. (These sounds are all auditioning and none of them have been voted out yet.) But I think the conversations have been so much fun partly because I have brought an easy, free presence to them – and I’m showing up this way just because of my somewhat extended, luxurious sound bath.
Now the other conversers have departed. I’m in my little conceptual bubble of writing. But I’m almost finished with this little piece. Once I have let go of the headlong momentum of this writing, maybe I’ll just drop back into the sounds around me. Maybe. I’ve got a little list going of other pieces pushing through to be written today by me – a big turn-on for the writer in me – but maybe I’ll just let some sounds visit me first.
We’ll see.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
What is "spiritual"?
Lots of people in my circle like to say that they are not “religious”, but “spiritual”. I understand how someone might not want to be identified with any specific religion – but what does it mean to be “spiritual”?
We like to think that certain activities or experiences are somehow more spiritual than others – maybe meditation, prayer, chanting, etc. We even think that some people are more spiritual than others. Then we complicate the whole mess further by using terms like “very spiritual”, “deeply spiritual” or – my favorite mess-creator – “spiritually evolved”.
Let’s come at it from a different angle. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. This one works for me. But what does it mean?
For me, the fundamental spiritual reality is that all of life is totally connected – there is no seam, no in/out, no better/worse, no higher or lower. Seeing life in terms of those antagonistic pairs is dualism – I wrote about this in an earlier post.
Having a human experience means that we got crammed into a body, with a sensory apparatus that sees things as separate - and a mind that functions largely by analysis, by taking things apart, by assigning things to categories. Our language supports this: subject – verb – object. This separate being does something to that separate being. In science, the mechanistic view of the universe (being challenged now by quantum physics) sees the world in terms of billiard balls enlessly bouncing off of each other. Causality – this caused that.
The spiritual perspective is the dawning awareness that all truly is one, that nothing is separate. Every bit of the mix is totally connected with everything else.
Then, from this viewpoint, what thing or experience could be more spiritual than anything else? Who could be more spiritual than anyone else? A “spiritual experience” might actually be the momentary glimpse of a reality where no experiences are any more spiritual than any others. It’s the big game of hide and seek. We get progressively more peeks, intuitions, subtle messages that there is something more going on under the hood.
Someone who totally gets it, so that now their awareness of this oneness never wavers, is called “enlightened” or “Self-realized”. They realize that, under their small s self, there is this one ocean of life that is all of us. Being enlightened, they take their small s self lightly – they know that it’s not who they really are.
It’s all connected, but the game we got plugged into makes it look like we are separate, different. Why did it get set up this way? Maybe so that, when we get it about our essential connectedness, we really get it.
The Course in Miracles says that we all have already come home to this awareness, the game is over and life (which is all of us) has won – but we are still caught up in a big dream of separation, a dream from which we gradually wake. Some quantum theorists say that it’s all happening at the same time.
If everything is connected, that would mean not just everything now, but everything, period – regardless of what time tag it has on it. When we have a precognition of some event that, when we separate the present from the future, has not yet happened, we’re not really psychic. We have access to that information because we are completely connected with all that is.
Same thing for centuries-old memories. We don’t have to posit “reincarnation”, we don’t have to think, “That was me back there.” If nothing is separate, then “we” have access to all that information, all the time. When people ask Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen master, about reincarnation, he points to the ego-trap in thinking that there is some fundamental “me”, separate from the endless flow of life. He says “I teach that I am not the same now as I was a minute ago. So who is it that would be reincarnated?”
One of my teachers liked the metaphor that we all came out of one big batch of cookie dough, but we got shaped, pulled apart, cut up into all these different pieces. Then we walk around thinking we are all different.
Is it the taste or the smell that breaks down the illusion? Is being caught in the illusion somehow less spiritual than starting to see through it? Ah, there’s that dualistic trap again. We want to break off one experience from another. Oh, well, little by little….
We like to think that certain activities or experiences are somehow more spiritual than others – maybe meditation, prayer, chanting, etc. We even think that some people are more spiritual than others. Then we complicate the whole mess further by using terms like “very spiritual”, “deeply spiritual” or – my favorite mess-creator – “spiritually evolved”.
Let’s come at it from a different angle. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. This one works for me. But what does it mean?
For me, the fundamental spiritual reality is that all of life is totally connected – there is no seam, no in/out, no better/worse, no higher or lower. Seeing life in terms of those antagonistic pairs is dualism – I wrote about this in an earlier post.
Having a human experience means that we got crammed into a body, with a sensory apparatus that sees things as separate - and a mind that functions largely by analysis, by taking things apart, by assigning things to categories. Our language supports this: subject – verb – object. This separate being does something to that separate being. In science, the mechanistic view of the universe (being challenged now by quantum physics) sees the world in terms of billiard balls enlessly bouncing off of each other. Causality – this caused that.
The spiritual perspective is the dawning awareness that all truly is one, that nothing is separate. Every bit of the mix is totally connected with everything else.
Then, from this viewpoint, what thing or experience could be more spiritual than anything else? Who could be more spiritual than anyone else? A “spiritual experience” might actually be the momentary glimpse of a reality where no experiences are any more spiritual than any others. It’s the big game of hide and seek. We get progressively more peeks, intuitions, subtle messages that there is something more going on under the hood.
Someone who totally gets it, so that now their awareness of this oneness never wavers, is called “enlightened” or “Self-realized”. They realize that, under their small s self, there is this one ocean of life that is all of us. Being enlightened, they take their small s self lightly – they know that it’s not who they really are.
It’s all connected, but the game we got plugged into makes it look like we are separate, different. Why did it get set up this way? Maybe so that, when we get it about our essential connectedness, we really get it.
The Course in Miracles says that we all have already come home to this awareness, the game is over and life (which is all of us) has won – but we are still caught up in a big dream of separation, a dream from which we gradually wake. Some quantum theorists say that it’s all happening at the same time.
If everything is connected, that would mean not just everything now, but everything, period – regardless of what time tag it has on it. When we have a precognition of some event that, when we separate the present from the future, has not yet happened, we’re not really psychic. We have access to that information because we are completely connected with all that is.
Same thing for centuries-old memories. We don’t have to posit “reincarnation”, we don’t have to think, “That was me back there.” If nothing is separate, then “we” have access to all that information, all the time. When people ask Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen master, about reincarnation, he points to the ego-trap in thinking that there is some fundamental “me”, separate from the endless flow of life. He says “I teach that I am not the same now as I was a minute ago. So who is it that would be reincarnated?”
One of my teachers liked the metaphor that we all came out of one big batch of cookie dough, but we got shaped, pulled apart, cut up into all these different pieces. Then we walk around thinking we are all different.
Is it the taste or the smell that breaks down the illusion? Is being caught in the illusion somehow less spiritual than starting to see through it? Ah, there’s that dualistic trap again. We want to break off one experience from another. Oh, well, little by little….
Friday, March 2, 2007
Fortune Cookies
I never put much stock in fortune cookies, until about 20 years ago.
My friend Mark and I were having lunch in a nice, very informal little Chinese restaurant just down the street from me. (If there were such a thing as a Chinese diner, this would have been it.) Mark and I had a fairly strong relationship, including him at one point renting office space from me in my really too-large office suite – and also, after his girlfriend threw him out, staying with me for a while in my equally-too-large rented farmhouse on a lovely piece of land about 15 minutes from downtown Syracuse, NY. (One of the joys of Syracuse – which almost made up for the long, snowy winters – was having such easy access to nice country.)
Taking in housemates helped my social needs – and helped me pay the rent. The house also had a huge living room, which I used to host a variety of personal growth workshops. I even gave the place a cute little name, Harmony Farm, and a nice little map that showed it as being located halfway between Syracuse and California.
Mark had moved back into town – he was essentially a city boy, who mostly did not appreciate our idyllic, bucolic location. As we finished our meal, he was asking me how things were going out at Harmony Farm. I was exactly in the middle of telling him how much I liked my current housemate and how good the vibe was out there, when I opened a fortune cookie that said, "Harmony in the home”. Now that got my attention. If it had said, “Happiness in the home”, “Harmony in your life”, etc., it would not have seemed like such extraordinary synchronicity. I started paying more attention to these little strips of white paper inside these virtually inedible crunchy little cookies (with mostly nothing better for dessert in the typical Chinese restaurant).
Over the next many years, I got some fortunes that seemed stupid and irrelevant and some that genuinely strove to be meaningful, but related to my life in no way that I could come up with. And some real winners. Actually, well more than half the fortunes I have opened up since then have seemed interesting at least – and many that have hit me right between the eyes, that have seemed at least as much tailored for my specific life situation as that original “Harmony” fortune.
In the last 20 years, I have almost always had one or more cool fortunes taped above my desk. My current posted fortune was opened about two years ago, shortly after moving from Chicago to Asheville, NC. Part of what kept me going in this new town, where I moved knowing not one soul, was the constant support and well-wishing from my friends back in Chicago and other parts of the country. This fortune said, “Friends all joy in your success.” I suppose that could have fit for lots of people, but it seemed especially meaningful to me. Not the kind of knockout synchronicity as “Harmony in the home”, but I still really liked it.
A few months ago, a customer at the gas station where I was working as a cashier, came up eating one of those little Dove chocolates, individually wrapped in foil – and gave me three. (She was a regular and did, I think, already know of my monster sweet tooth.) These individual chocolates carry their own little fortunes, inscribed on the inside of the foil.
The three she gave me were pretty amazing.
I was at that point facing some pretty significant challenges in my life – more even than usual – and was consciously struggling to embrace this juncture, to trust that nothing was going wrong, that life really only meant me well. So the first little enfoiled message said, “Dare to love completely.” Again, really something that could be meaningful to anyone at any point in his or her life, but I liked it a lot.
The second felt even more specifically pointed towards me. In the context of all these life challenges, this guy who usually would be characterized as a go-with-the-flow type, was telling my friends that I was pushing hard to get through this period, that it seemed I needed to, if I was possibly going to reach some calmer, easier shore. So this little chocolaty message (chocolate being my favorite food group, by a long shot) said, “Go against the grain.” This seemed a lot less generic than loving completely – and I could think of no previous period in my life when this message would have fit for me.
But it was the third message that totally knocked my socks off, that left me giving the other fortunes even more credence.
I for many years have not liked red clothes. I was told by someone along the way that my natural coloring was winter, or something like that, and that red was not a good color for me. And, with my ruddy Irish complexion, red – especially shirts – never looked good on me. (I suppose red pants would not have looked all that great, either.)
But there I was, standing at the window of our little booth at this gas station, wearing my red uniform shirt. So this fortune says, “Guess what, you look good in red”!! Now, how the hell do I explain that? Even the sassy little introduction, “Guess what”, seemed to emphasize that life was having a great little joke with me. I immediately, after shaking my head and walking around the little booth, muttering something like “Now, how in the hell…?”, taped that round little bit of foil above the window. My two colleagues, neither of whom liked our uniform shirts, got a kick out of it, too.
So, now I repeat, “How in the hell…?” – or maybe heaven. I left that fortune at the gas station and took the other two home, where they still adorn the top of my bathroom mirror. Since I got through that especially difficult period, I’m not sure that “Go against the grain” still has significance for me, but it feels like it somehow does. Maybe not so globally as to fight against the difficulty of my life, but for those moments when going with the flow truly does not feel like the right response.
And “Dare to love completely” remains a key little mantra for me. Again, probably a nice bit of coaching for anyone, at any point in their life, but – paired with that crazy little message about looking good in red – my response is basically, “OK, life, I get the message.”
Now, I’ll say it again, “How in the heaven…?” What’s going on here? Is there something especially magical about fortune cookies and Dove chocolates? I don’t think so.
I really do believe that synchronicity is everywhere around us, all the time – we just don’t see it or pay any attention to it. Then sometimes we do pay attention. I’ve written in an earlier post how birds sometimes get my attention – how seeing a particular favorite bird (especially ones you don’t see every day, like great blue herons) at a particular moment seems to signal something like, “It’s ok, the truth of life is not the chaos you now see. Everything is connected and you can trust the moment”. And that’s how I think fortune cookies work. Birds get my attention because I have invested them with synchronistic properties. Fortune cookies get my attention because they claim to have significant little messages.
But the truth, I more and more believe, is that all of life is always astonishingly, magically interwoven – and that sometimes we are just more in tune, or more needing to have life get our attention. It certainly is clear to me that the more I read about, write about, journal about synchronicity, the more I see it all around me. Call me a goof, a budding mystic, or simply more and more recognizing the underlying truth of life – call me whatever, these fortunes, foil wrappers and birds really do work for me.
My friend Mark and I were having lunch in a nice, very informal little Chinese restaurant just down the street from me. (If there were such a thing as a Chinese diner, this would have been it.) Mark and I had a fairly strong relationship, including him at one point renting office space from me in my really too-large office suite – and also, after his girlfriend threw him out, staying with me for a while in my equally-too-large rented farmhouse on a lovely piece of land about 15 minutes from downtown Syracuse, NY. (One of the joys of Syracuse – which almost made up for the long, snowy winters – was having such easy access to nice country.)
Taking in housemates helped my social needs – and helped me pay the rent. The house also had a huge living room, which I used to host a variety of personal growth workshops. I even gave the place a cute little name, Harmony Farm, and a nice little map that showed it as being located halfway between Syracuse and California.
Mark had moved back into town – he was essentially a city boy, who mostly did not appreciate our idyllic, bucolic location. As we finished our meal, he was asking me how things were going out at Harmony Farm. I was exactly in the middle of telling him how much I liked my current housemate and how good the vibe was out there, when I opened a fortune cookie that said, "Harmony in the home”. Now that got my attention. If it had said, “Happiness in the home”, “Harmony in your life”, etc., it would not have seemed like such extraordinary synchronicity. I started paying more attention to these little strips of white paper inside these virtually inedible crunchy little cookies (with mostly nothing better for dessert in the typical Chinese restaurant).
Over the next many years, I got some fortunes that seemed stupid and irrelevant and some that genuinely strove to be meaningful, but related to my life in no way that I could come up with. And some real winners. Actually, well more than half the fortunes I have opened up since then have seemed interesting at least – and many that have hit me right between the eyes, that have seemed at least as much tailored for my specific life situation as that original “Harmony” fortune.
In the last 20 years, I have almost always had one or more cool fortunes taped above my desk. My current posted fortune was opened about two years ago, shortly after moving from Chicago to Asheville, NC. Part of what kept me going in this new town, where I moved knowing not one soul, was the constant support and well-wishing from my friends back in Chicago and other parts of the country. This fortune said, “Friends all joy in your success.” I suppose that could have fit for lots of people, but it seemed especially meaningful to me. Not the kind of knockout synchronicity as “Harmony in the home”, but I still really liked it.
A few months ago, a customer at the gas station where I was working as a cashier, came up eating one of those little Dove chocolates, individually wrapped in foil – and gave me three. (She was a regular and did, I think, already know of my monster sweet tooth.) These individual chocolates carry their own little fortunes, inscribed on the inside of the foil.
The three she gave me were pretty amazing.
I was at that point facing some pretty significant challenges in my life – more even than usual – and was consciously struggling to embrace this juncture, to trust that nothing was going wrong, that life really only meant me well. So the first little enfoiled message said, “Dare to love completely.” Again, really something that could be meaningful to anyone at any point in his or her life, but I liked it a lot.
The second felt even more specifically pointed towards me. In the context of all these life challenges, this guy who usually would be characterized as a go-with-the-flow type, was telling my friends that I was pushing hard to get through this period, that it seemed I needed to, if I was possibly going to reach some calmer, easier shore. So this little chocolaty message (chocolate being my favorite food group, by a long shot) said, “Go against the grain.” This seemed a lot less generic than loving completely – and I could think of no previous period in my life when this message would have fit for me.
But it was the third message that totally knocked my socks off, that left me giving the other fortunes even more credence.
I for many years have not liked red clothes. I was told by someone along the way that my natural coloring was winter, or something like that, and that red was not a good color for me. And, with my ruddy Irish complexion, red – especially shirts – never looked good on me. (I suppose red pants would not have looked all that great, either.)
But there I was, standing at the window of our little booth at this gas station, wearing my red uniform shirt. So this fortune says, “Guess what, you look good in red”!! Now, how the hell do I explain that? Even the sassy little introduction, “Guess what”, seemed to emphasize that life was having a great little joke with me. I immediately, after shaking my head and walking around the little booth, muttering something like “Now, how in the hell…?”, taped that round little bit of foil above the window. My two colleagues, neither of whom liked our uniform shirts, got a kick out of it, too.
So, now I repeat, “How in the hell…?” – or maybe heaven. I left that fortune at the gas station and took the other two home, where they still adorn the top of my bathroom mirror. Since I got through that especially difficult period, I’m not sure that “Go against the grain” still has significance for me, but it feels like it somehow does. Maybe not so globally as to fight against the difficulty of my life, but for those moments when going with the flow truly does not feel like the right response.
And “Dare to love completely” remains a key little mantra for me. Again, probably a nice bit of coaching for anyone, at any point in their life, but – paired with that crazy little message about looking good in red – my response is basically, “OK, life, I get the message.”
Now, I’ll say it again, “How in the heaven…?” What’s going on here? Is there something especially magical about fortune cookies and Dove chocolates? I don’t think so.
I really do believe that synchronicity is everywhere around us, all the time – we just don’t see it or pay any attention to it. Then sometimes we do pay attention. I’ve written in an earlier post how birds sometimes get my attention – how seeing a particular favorite bird (especially ones you don’t see every day, like great blue herons) at a particular moment seems to signal something like, “It’s ok, the truth of life is not the chaos you now see. Everything is connected and you can trust the moment”. And that’s how I think fortune cookies work. Birds get my attention because I have invested them with synchronistic properties. Fortune cookies get my attention because they claim to have significant little messages.
But the truth, I more and more believe, is that all of life is always astonishingly, magically interwoven – and that sometimes we are just more in tune, or more needing to have life get our attention. It certainly is clear to me that the more I read about, write about, journal about synchronicity, the more I see it all around me. Call me a goof, a budding mystic, or simply more and more recognizing the underlying truth of life – call me whatever, these fortunes, foil wrappers and birds really do work for me.
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