Category: relationships

Complexity and View

June 5th, 2018

Now that I’ve gotten a few posts about my meditation and spirituality background down, I want to begin to move away from those kinds of ‘testimonial’ type writings, into a voice that more closely conveys current complexities. I felt that it was important to give a little context to my choice to change the name of this blog from one that many seemed to like – which I’ve now done, albeit in a simple way.

In contrast, there is not much simple about our times, nor is it easy to be satisfied with cute little stories about enlightened moments, when almost all of us are facing very difficult choices every day, dealing with those we love, and trying not to hate those seeing the world in very different ways from our own. It seems as though we have to have an educated opinion on almost everything, while suspecting every source that seeks to educate us, while functioning in the world with others, yet without risking deep conversations that might jeopardize our livelihoods and family harmonies.

Some may say it has always been thus, and indeed it has been always the case that political/religious lines have created divisions and forced thoughtful people to live at different levels of secrecy. I myself was born in 1970 and didn’t live through the cataclysmic changes that occurred for my parents’ generation, but I did live out the reverberations, attempting to make sense of how views became tangled, one with another.

I think those years, while not first quakes by any stretch, were especially significant because they were happening in a new country, a kind of test country for what ‘the future’ might mean, daring to ask a question I’m not sure ever ‘could’ be asked before then: “War OR Peace?” I think confronting Vietnam with post-WW2 eyes stirred the will to find a way out of war for more people than had ever fathomed the possibility before. Then the younger generation dared to try to play that out, resulting in a material collaborative creativity that, I feel eventually obscured the question at heart, trapping a whole country in the beauty of its own reflection, and into a quest fortifying itself to protect those seeming gains.

Still, I recognize that mine is a partial view, inseparable from core beliefs about what I take the universe, the world, and humanity to be. Therefore I often find it impossible to confront the puzzles of our time by giving a right or more full logical answer, adhering to what has passed (in the past!) for normal parameters of debate. Pushing beyond limits in this sense, mirrors into what buddhists call emptiness, so every situation and conversation and relationship that arises as phenomena, must indeed become unique. This makes opinions mere snapshots in time, with an underlying aspiration toward openness that I pray might leave room for radical changes to occur.

Advertisement
Unlearning Isolation

May 27th, 2018

A month between posts again, but with good reason. I’ve been on a book binge, have traveled a little for work, and have been participating in a focused practice with friends, called “99 Days” — a play on the song 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, but with a positive overall intention of seeing and potentially affecting long standing habits.

You may remember that years ago research came out suggesting that it would take roughly 100 days to undo an old habit or to install a new one. So basically what we do is check in with one another every day for 99 days, which keeps our focus pretty steady. We each choose something different at first, although as time goes on and we support and follow one another, the practices have a way of blending.

My focus? I started with one, but moved into another I titled Unlearning Isolation, after a phrase in Rebecca Campbell’s book Light is the New Black.

In Rebecca’s book, it was almost a throw-away line, but one that jumped out and seized me strongly, becoming an easy intention to hold and remember day to day. My idea was to see if I could undo some of the isolating patterns I’ve cultivated as part of my personality for longer than I remember, by first noticing, then stepping out of them in a systematic way. I’ve had fairly good results so far.

It hasn’t been predictable. My early ideas feel almost quaint now – things like reading at the pool instead of inside of my apartment, or occasionally answering the phone without fielding calls. Instead, invitations have come up, and challenges to do things differently while traveling, like not wearing my i-pod as much, actually engaging with those around me.

Honestly, it has been a lot of fun.

One of the first things that happened was that I seemed to become hyper-aware of micro-expressions people, including myself, cycle through when engaging with the world. For many of us, there is a polite openness followed by a sudden gear switching, that if you really see in action, is quite amazing. Getting to that closing point, then breathing to relax and stay open a little longer, can feel like ‘going lucid’ in a dream.

In fact I had one quite wonderful encounter alongside a quite stressful one that I don’t think would have occurred if I’d not been out of my comfort zone in the first place.

There are stubborn obstacles that remain however, like a drained feeling after talking on the phone, that if I don’t slow down to work with, turns into a dread I then want to avoid. I suppose becoming more sensitive, making it into a thing, is part of the process, though. It has helped to hear from others that what I think of as highly personal struggles, are not too uncommon, like wanting to avoid events, being happy one didn’t, and then being very thankful when said events are over. 🙂
Savoring

April 28th, 2018

Studying happiness seems counter-intuitive. My tendency is to think that the more time I spend on studying how to be happy, the less time I’m spending ‘just being’, which is a happy state, isn’t it? Yet, I was drawn by two respected sources (a Buddhist teacher and the less respected Very Bad Wizards podcast), to a popular Coursera class, taught by Yale professor Laurie Santos, called simply The Science of Well-Being, and thought, “Why not give it a try?”

Everything about our technological age tells me we have to learn to operate in ways that go beyond basic intuitions we trust in. Certainly everything until now has pointed to a belief that my own sense of myself is closest to correct, precisely because I do invest in knowing myself, do pay attention to examining deepest motivations. I’ve made daring, dramatic changes so as to line up authentically with the resulting realizations.

But what about operating in a world where data may have a better read on my core-motivations and ingrained habits than I do? Data has no motivation to look away from blind spots. What about functioning in a world that, I won’t say weaponizes but definitely capitalizes, on pushing all my high-school level comparative triggers, to get me to look away from what I might best benefit from seeing? Rather than rant about the effects of social media on our psyches and society we keep having strong and frightening glimpses of, why not try to learn more about what I’m contending with?

The course offers upgraded versions of familiar strategies such as gratitude & savoring.

Savoring might be as simple as taking time to write out a pleasurable experience or accomplishment… to go back and notice with better attention. It is conjuring something positive twice, stretching it out, lingering it longer (yes that’s an odd way to say that but it means what I mean). 🙂 The key point is bringing the sensation stronger to memory, so that as you come into the next moment/next opportunity, gratitude is the nearest frame at hand.

4.28.2018 Miami

Doing this intentionally over a few weeks, even though I thought I had a good gratitude game going already, has meant that in most transitions modes where I’m switching from one thing to another, I have found myself a tiny bit slower to reach for quick hits of emotion like frustration or judgment.

At first, the practices felt to me like magical thinking, but there is a very strong foundation, rooted in acceptance of human ‘hedonic adaptation’, rather than crediting happiness to the powers of self and will. Really, understanding this concept of hedonic adaptation is already worth taking the course. It basically means that what we think will make us happy, is not what actually makes us happy. Scientists have found various ways to test this idea and have come up with pretty useful tools to thwart or delay the tendency to follow our outdated intuitions on this, like increasing variety and interrupting consumption, and switching reference points.

I come from a background of nurturing greater awareness-in-general, or awareness-for-its-own-sake, as a kind of panacea. I’ve figured out that experiences are weightier than things, for instance, but it was still interesting to consider the studied reason behind that: that things more often stick around long enough for us to grow tired of them.

My daughter has issues with migraines recently, so we’ve been going from appointment to appointment and test to test, to get a sense of what might be going on. In the process we’ve learned a lot about how people have to live now when it comes to basic things like sitting and standing, not always looking forward. We may ‘know’ that “sitting is the new smoking” when it comes to health, that posture is crucial, that interrupting the flow of productivity to check on well-being is actually not optional, but it can still take something disruptive to make us actually DO THINGS (like savoring, gratitude) to change our ways.
“If We Started at the End” – a poem

April 22nd, 2018

Poem written with the Play-as-Being group in mind, for our 10th Anniversary.

If We Started at the End

If we started at the end

perhaps this is a beginning

Perhaps this very celebration

Is an Original Prayer

playing as culmination

Our shared ritual of

Avatarness

Flashing in, flashing out

Of existence

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Could you see,

the ‘true person of no rank’

always coming in and going out?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

What about now?

.

His suitcase is full

of elaborate costumes

Sad mask, happy mask

Dragon tails

Sunshine and storm clouds

play across his face

.

Offering magic

to our time

Amazed am I

Am I?

.

The scene keeps changing

alterations happen,

Appreciation overwhelms

Wild open hearts suddenly

leap out

Let the stories lag

behind the Knowing.

(end)

**With thanks & apologies to Shodo Harada, Rinzai
Appreciation: Presenting what Presents

April 18th, 2018

Have returned from a trip – my first to Europe – and from writing elsewhere about the trip in a way that surprised me. The recounting poured through like sunshine first thing in the morning, and I could hardly leave my bed–where I’d started off writing just a few simple notes–for most of the day. :

By 6 pm I was hobbling in pain, my back loudly protesting what I’d done, but wasn’t sorry. In the community, there came genuine appreciation that I’d tried to bring into the experience those who had not been able to go, to include them in the adventure. Of course, it wasn’t that I could include anyone anywhere, but they appreciated that I took the time to show they were already included… something the dynamics of the group have taught me to see throughout ten years involvement.

This felt connected to my waking a few weeks ago with the thought loudly before my eyes: “I don’t want to teach. I (just) want to write!” Which seemed odd out of context of the many years in which I’ve worked to articulate knowledge I feel has empowered my life, with the idea of ‘helping’ others. I felt released from that burden.

Why have I done that anyway? In part, out of a desire to show appreciation, to ‘make good’, like a child who is well aware of what their parents have sacrificed to give them greater opportunities. But times have changed. There is a hierarchical way of sharing, of giving and receiving, that isn’t quite appropriate anymore, even if our institutions and formulas have not moved beyond that way of thinking. We’re walking funny lines.

The ‘appreciating food’ practice a friend on the trip shared, consisted of taking a moment to contemplate how our meals, in all their myriad components, had reached our table. Each time we ate together she walked through some of the many factors and relationships required for any given meal, much less the innumerable factors necessary to gather such disparate people as we ourselves from all over the world, to appreciate that presentation. This practice, although simple, deeply affected my way of seeing during the trip. Perhaps the writing took on that flavor as a natural overflow.

It is far too easy to snap into a category and write ‘about that’, to try to line things up with calculations of what is wanted… what is most ‘useful’. However, the benefit of going with what pours out is that there is 0 pretending. There are too many factors, so you give up on capturing them all in advance, and go along with the momentum appreciatively.

This may be what Steve Jobs was getting at when he said that people don’t know what they want until you show them. Market research is useful, but incredibly limited. It matters to me that I’m clear and that what I write takes in mind the benefit of others, but I can’t be driven by that. I can’t be driven by a motive to ‘do good’. That’s an effect that in a way, I trust to happen from a deeper devotional intention.

There is a TED Talk that speaks to this beautifully, given by Elizabeth Gilbert who wrote Eat Pray Love. She gave this talk about genius and inspiration after the gigantic success of that novel, so it comes from a vulnerable place, asking, “What if my best work is behind me?” It isn’t a talk centralizing on fear. Rather, it draws upon the way genius moves, and what genius is… how much wider and free-er than can be contained by the will of a vessel trying to do well or be special.

If you haven’t seen it, it is worth the 20 minutes, and gets better and better as it goes on.
The Singing Gecko, a Story – Part 3

March 27th, 2018

Wondering where the singing gecko part of the story is? You’ve arrived.

Many changes flowed from that ‘happening’, almost all of them subtle and light. I felt a breezy new energy and wanted to read more, meditate more, ‘just be’ more. But we’d bought an older house which needed constant repairs and improvements, which was taking up a lot of time.

Just outside our new bedroom window stood an old black olive tree grown too large for the space. Its branches scraped against the roof, leaving streaks and scars, and its roots endangered the foundation.

But the tree also provided shade from the intense Florida sunshine and a resting spot for lots of birds. And a gecko.

A loud gecko.

A loud gecko who, every night when I would crawl into bed, would make a horrible noise, something like >rwaaaaak< >rwaaaak< >rwaaaak<.

I saw it once, and couldn’t believe the giant sound came from such a tiny creature!

This went on for weeks. Some nights I was nearly in tears, pleading “Please, please stop…” to no avail. I would lean on friends’ sympathy so hard that the gecko became our daily news. I even wrote one night in my journal, “I’m sure he’s here to teach me something if I let him.”
Not realizing it was a prayer.

I don’t think it was that very night, but it might have been. I fell asleep early, deeply, and at some point began to stir, woken by the most Astoundingly Beautiful Music. It seemed to be playing both within and without me— a layered, heavenly sound I wished would go on and on forever.

Yet as I continued to wake, the song began to change, warping into a sound I thought I recognized. It was… sigh, yes, there it was: the >rwaaak< of the gecko.

I came to myself, realizing I was in my room, except that now, I couldn’t hear *just* the >rwaaak< alone. I could also hear, alongside, this deep and ethereal music.

After that, the gecko was gone. Or at least he was gone from the tree. I never heard from him (her?) again,

There’s a lot here to consider inspirationally, also to see about our minds and the wonders of consciousness. A fascinating link that showed up in my life later, helping to convey:

Someone Recorded Crickets then Slowed Down the Track, And It Sounds Like Humans Singing

“Composer Jim Wilson has recorded the sound of crickets and then slowed down the recording, revealing something so amazing. The crickets sound like they are singing the most angelic chorus in perfect harmony. Though it sounds like human voices, everything you hear in the recording is the crickets themselves.”

Just, I mean, Wow.

One of the richest places for dream or meditative practices, is in what some traditions call the amrit vela (nectar veil). Sikhs call it the ‘hour of God’. It is around 3 or 4 am, when barriers are softer. before we’ve put on roles and agendas. This doesn’t seem to be a rule implemented, but rather to be based on discovery of natural ‘thin place’ openings.

Hypnopopia is specifically the boundary state on the edge of waking, whereas hypnogogia is the opposite. In my hynopopic state, the gecko transformed from a nuisance that didn’t fit in to my plans and didn’t seem to benefit my life, into a guide who taught me how to further lower my guard and trust (the groundlessness, openness, emptiness, vastness) what Life is doing.

The singing gecko imparted ‘ears to hear’.

(Part 1, 2)
Sharing the Important Things

March 10th, 2018

After a long conversation with a fellow in the neighborhood, I come running to my keyboard to write about the disjointed thoughts it evoked. What it is about this blog that makes it the right medium? Or is it? Honestly, I don’t know. It just seems that way.

A man and woman, or perhaps young girl, crossing a long suspension bridge across mountains, with endless pine trees beneath. It looks as though they could almost reach their feet down to brush the tops. I found this wonderful image on Life of Pix!

It seems as though this spot is the one that allows for different levels of communication at once, which is how the conversation felt as well. Such an interesting person who has lived many lives, which brought out my curiosity, but also wariness.

It is worth noting when one gets to talk with another who is honest about how they are feeling in the world that very moment. I’ve found that quality to be a rare one: the attention span, capacity, to be with the person you’re with, in the place you’re at. It may matter that he doesn’t watch much television (unlike me! :), and isn’t addicted to his phone.

Our conversation touched on how strange it is to be reinventing one’s life after being so sure of course early on. We’re both like fish used to brackish waters with one eye toward the lively sea, but conversation nonetheless has a habit of “Dance or don’t dance?, Drink or don’t drink?, Films?”

Underneath everything, a fierce guarding of the individual freedoms worked and sacrificed toward.

And that’s where it keeps ending, now several meetings in, over the course of the last few years. 🙂 He probably thinks he knows a lot about me, because one picks up a lot residing in the same building for a while, but almost always I walk away feeling that I’ve ultimately shared very little.

And that the things I leave out are pretty important things.
Finding the Natural Course

March 3rd, 2018

It must be quite hard for people who have not had to revisit much of their psychology, to understand those like me, who have had to deconstruct almost all their thinking and rebuild it with intentionality.

A butterfly sanctuary within David Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens in Miami – one of my favorite places in the entire world, right in my back yard.

Sure, to some extent everyone does this. Each time we make a new friend or begin a new endeavor, we change, we make way for growth and expansion to accommodate the new.

We’re deeply fortunate to know SO MUCH in our time, about fluid selves and identity, but for some of us, restructure is more primary work than it is for others, spending much of each day, every day, vigorously questioning, trying on other ways of knowing, being. I seriously can’t remember a single day in the last twenty years, where I didn’t listen to a spiritual teaching, read a spiritual book, or attend a spiritual event. Along with various, often devotional, disciplines and practices. I knew from a rather young age that I wasn’t seeing clearly.

“Spirituality is pursuing the seeing of life as it really is.” —Adyashanti

This probably sounds like a good thing to those working to get into consistent meditation practices, or to remember to write in their journals, or to read more spiritual materials. And it is, but…

More than once I’ve been told by a person I was in relationship with (romantic & non) that my intensity was a barrier. I wasn’t hurt. I completely get that continually questing can seem obsessive to someone not on that kind of path. Thank Goodness those loved ones were honest rather than resentful.

Or, maybe they were just a little resentful. 🙂

It is just that there was SO MUCH for me to revisit, SO MUCH SUFFERING throughout my family history that I’d then perpetuated thoughtlessly. When you begin to see you have a choice about all that – to effect your own experience and the proliferating of those patterns and cycles – well, how not to be obsessed?

Thankfully, I can see all this as a bit over the top. The feeling of being afraid to be too far from middlemen and lifelines has mostly dissipated; I get way farther away from shore more often now. But doing so is still part of what I’ve trusted in and worked so intensely to comprehend, live, and lean on: a natural course of continual transformation.
Retrospect

June 4th, 2016

At the bookstore cafe’, moving through the line, when the feeling of someone noticing me presents itself. Not looking, but I see – he is dressed far too well for the bookstore. I am disheveled. He lingers, asks about the book I’d purchased … a children’s book, delightful, titled Goodnight Yoga: A Pose-By-Pose Bedtime Story. I look away, but he draws me back, saying he has a son, 6 years old… wonders whether he might like the same.

(Illustrations in the book are by Sarah Jane Hinder)

(more…)
Indra’s Time

June 3rd, 2016

A few nights ago, I was struck with energy of a sort that could be called inspiration, yet didn’t feel particularly special. Rather, it hit like a practical nudge, to write a list.

Probably, this was a build up that started with a question posed during a Brahma Kuhmaris meditation workshop last weekend, about a figure in one’s life who displays admired qualities. I had chosen someone, yet in that choosing had also fathomed others who would fall into that category, then teachers in general, and spiritual friends who have graced my life.

Heian Shrine, Kyoto

As I began to write the list, a flood of other lists and figures began to appear. A teacher category was soon at 50, then over the next few days, grew to an honest 100. I say ‘honest’ because there were some figures who arose that were not quite teachers, but friends and influencers none the less, and then there was also a darker side of those categories… thankfully, much smaller. A separate ‘friends’ list then formed, grew, and branched into other figures who were ‘neutral-positive’ or neutral-negative due to lingering misunderstanding or discomfort. Then came another list – those on the edges with whom I’d like to be closer.

But it was the teacher list that kept growing, because behind each teacher, were other teachers, and those I’d spent deep lifetimes or love affairs with in books, or who had shown up in various guises or dreams along the way. When I reached that territory – the dream and vision territory – another wave came through. Now, it wasn’t just teachers, but lessons and stories. So I began another list, branching even more.

I have tried to intentionally write out insight stories and dreamy moments before, but they have usually waited for some context to float up, if to be shared. This was different.

Dreams and stories that I hadn’t thought about for very long, began to pour out onto the page, big ones next to little ones next to what had felt at the time to be side thoughts, numbering into the hundreds. I thought about how hard it had been at the end of last year, to write out even ‘100 accomplishments’, and how in contrast, this had all seemed to just appear.

So tired, I kept trying to go to sleep. As soon as my eyes would close, more would come up that I didn’t want to risk losing, so I’d write them, releasing a whole ‘nother wave.

Eventually, I remembered Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk about inspiration and muses, and assured myself that whatever was going on could be continued the next day.

And it was, but only sort of. Rather than adding much to the list, this time my hand went to the list of teachers, writing a word or two about what I felt to have learned from each, whatever came forward strongly. From one – spontaneity, from another – confidence, another the question of suchness. With some I had first experiences; some imparted or deepened feelings, evoked emotion, or pushed me over edges at crucial times. Some were not people, but ‘events’.

I made no effort not to repeat myself, yet there were no repetitions; each role was entirely unique and yet, when I would stop writing and see the whole, each also easily flowed easily into another, each other. Longsightedness was also there… to see that there might be more, or a different way of seeing time that I might move into… more comfortable clothes.

It was like staring into a living, loving, mirror. Just openness to openness.

image: David Parrott

I’m not sure who the teacher was, who first exposed me to the concept of Indra’s Net, but to convey the way this practice unfolded, one would benefit from visualizing:

FAR AWAY IN THE HEAVENLY ABODE OF THE GREAT GOD INDRA, THERE IS A WONDERFUL NET WHICH HAS BEEN HUNG BY SOME CUNNING ARTIFICER IN SUCH A MANNER THAT IT STRETCHES OUT INFINITELY IN ALL DIRECTIONS.

IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EXTRAVAGANT TASTES OF DEITIES, THE ARTIFICER HAS HUNG A SINGLE GLITTERING JEWEL IN EACH “EYE” OF THE NET, AND SINCE THE NET ITSELF IS INFINITE IN DIMENSION, THE JEWELS ARE INFINITE IN NUMBER. THERE HANG THE JEWELS, GLITTERING “LIKE” STARS IN THE FIRST MAGNITUDE, A WONDERFUL SIGHT TO BEHOLD.

IF WE NOW ARBITRARILY SELECT ONE OF THESE JEWELS FOR INSPECTION AND LOOK CLOSELY AT IT, WE WILL DISCOVER THAT IN ITS POLISHED SURFACE THERE ARE REFLECTED ALL THE OTHER JEWELS IN THE NET, INFINITE IN NUMBER.

NOT ONLY THAT, BUT EACH OF THE JEWELS REFLECTED IN THIS ONE JEWEL IS ALSO REFLECTING ALL THE OTHER JEWELS, SO THAT THERE IS AN INFINITE REFLECTING PROCESS OCCURRING.[5] –^{Wikipedia Indra’s Net}

Category: relationships

FAR AWAY IN THE HEAVENLY ABODE OF THE GREAT GOD INDRA, THERE IS A WONDERFUL NET WHICH HAS BEEN HUNG BY SOME CUNNING ARTIFICER IN SUCH A MANNER THAT IT STRETCHES OUT INFINITELY IN ALL DIRECTIONS.

IF WE NOW ARBITRARILY SELECT ONE OF THESE JEWELS FOR INSPECTION AND LOOK CLOSELY AT IT, WE WILL DISCOVER THAT IN ITS POLISHED SURFACE THERE ARE REFLECTED ALL THE OTHER JEWELS IN THE NET, INFINITE IN NUMBER.

NOT ONLY THAT, BUT EACH OF THE JEWELS REFLECTED IN THIS ONE JEWEL IS ALSO REFLECTING ALL THE OTHER JEWELS, SO THAT THERE IS AN INFINITE REFLECTING PROCESS OCCURRING.[5] –Wikipedia Indra’s Net

NOT ONLY THAT, BUT EACH OF THE JEWELS REFLECTED IN THIS ONE JEWEL IS ALSO REFLECTING ALL THE OTHER JEWELS, SO THAT THERE IS AN INFINITE REFLECTING PROCESS OCCURRING.[5] –^{Wikipedia Indra’s Net}