Category Archives: Meditation

Flow

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A whole month passed without a post, though I’d thought about it. I’ve been immersed in some personal work and stepping out into new areas that feel exciting. The depression has abated. I feel a need to write but am doing so with interruptions by my little girl and husband every so many minutes, so this post will be less polished.

We’ve been camping twice and will go again soon for the last summer trip. In June we went to Pfeiffer Big Sur, and in July we camped at Prairie Creek Redwoods. Our next trip is to Calaveras Big Trees. We like big trees and rivers a lot, and we like the ocean some. Camping is uncomfortable and requires more work, but it’s also relaxing and restful. My body aches in the morning from the less-than-ideal sleeping arrangement, but the peace I feel compensates. I am bathed in Being, in nature, in the Mystery; living outdoors brings complete contact with the world that creates itself.

After exploring the Quaker Society of Friends, I talked with Hub about where I’m at and what Claire wants. She wants to go to church. Hub was raised Unitarian Universalist and I attended as one years ago. It’s the best fit as far as spiritual community goes. Claire loved it the first time we visited two years ago. The Quaker group only had children’s program once a month, and unfortunately the one time I brought her no one else with children came, and there was no program. I realized, too, that I need and enjoy the ritual of a service. The Quaker service was traditional silent meeting with socializing after. The UU service includes the usual ingredients of a service: hymns, readings, sharing of joys and concerns, a sermon. Hub isn’t a seeker and doesn’t have the same community needs, but we came to the conclusion that the UU church is good for me and Claire. I attended the UU Fellowship in Los Gatos the past two weeks; both Claire and I enjoyed it, and the members are very welcoming.

I had a pilot zazen session on the first Saturday in July. I got cold feet and cancelled on the one person who’d signed up; then another friend last minute showed up. As I set up the small altar on my coffee table, it felt right, like putting on a perfectly fitting outfit. I also reached agreement with Hub that I will go to Hazy Moon Zen Center a couple times a year to attend sesshin and meet with my teacher.

I’ve continued attending salons called Intimacy With Truth, led by a dear friend. They occur in a format similar to Honesty Salons but move into deeper exploration within and between ourselves. I’m learning to listen to, trust, and speak from my intuition and truth. I’m also sitting with the idea of becoming trained to facilitate Honesty Salons or becoming a Getting Real Coach with Dr. Campbell.

I’m re-reading and incorporating the practice that Eckhart Tolle’s books explore. One thing I appreciate about his work is that he echoes my favorite quote, a koan I have cherished for years:

The secret is within your self. – Hui-Neng

Tolle claims that he’s not teaching anything that we don’t already have within us. His work is guidance to excavating it.

In conjunction, I’ve started to explore the process of healing offered by Al-Anon meetings.

After years of thinking about it, I attended a mixed-media collage Meetup at Lori Krein Studios. I immersed myself in the process and enjoyed it, as well as enjoyed the other people who attended. I’ll be going back.

This encounter with collage at the studio prompted me to rearrange my art supplies so they are stored in the same room as my work desk. Proximity will probably inspire more play!

I gathered my many small pieces of art into a binder, and I was astonished at the variety and amount. Seeing them all together gave me a surge of excitement to make more. A friend has suggested I have my own art show at home; I’m not ready to do that yet, but I’m ready to show and share from the binder.

I enrolled in a November training to learn a process called SoulCollage and to facilitate in groups. SoulCollage is a creative, meditative process of exploring one’s inner wisdom in all the ways it manifests. It’s rooted in Jungian psychology.

I’ve emphasized boundaries in certain relationships by limiting what I can listen to and discuss. The immersion in repeated stories about the problems of people I love when I cannot do anything to help was contributing to the depression.

Lastly, I’m contemplating becoming a volunteer at a hospice. For many years (since the mid-1990s) I’ve felt a pull toward it, and in 2004 I took steps in a parallel direction by training to provide grief support to survivors. It was the Centre for Living With Dying. However, my father-in-law was dying of cancer at the time, and I just didn’t have the energy to serve. Since that time the Centre was bought by another social service provider, and it seems they don’t use volunteers any more. But hospice does.

The call to hospice coincides with the sad news that a friend — Jen Bulik-Lang — who is only 35 is dying of stage-IV lung cancer. She began feeling ill in October 2012, and it took awhile for professionals to come to the correct diagnosis at the end of January 2013. She’d been shopping in December for engagement rings with her boyfriend, Jeffrey Lang. She got aggressive treatment, and there was hope they eradicated it, but in mid-June she received news it had metastasized to her spinal fluid. My insides quicken with grief and love as I watch her live with this news. She chose to celebrate life, and she and Jeff got married in a marvelous wedding. I admire Jen for embracing what is and fully experiencing it as a transformation with the faith, as she says, “that [it] will benefit the highest good for all those concerned.”

So in all, the shift in my life is toward community and participating in healing myself, others, and the world. As I wrote that last sentence my self-talk was, “Boy, that sounds lofty and new-Agey, and grandiose.” And yet… The world is broken and insane and aches for love.

harvest

Harvest / 9″ x 12″ mixed media collage on canvas

Sometimes a Retreat is an Advance

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I’d sunk into a swamp of depression. Why bother going? It was only overnight. I cancelled, one day too late to get a refund. So I went.

Nearly there, I found the road blocked. The tunnel said “Under construction.” What next? Go back home? Try to find another way and arrive late? No and no.

So I broke rules. I drove around the barricade and through the tunnel. There was no ditch to fall into, no rubble to hit. I arrived. I showed up.

Teacher saw me and leaped with joy – literally! She hugged me, and I began to cry. Twenty of us sat in slience; we walked in silence. Zazen is painful drudgery. But the tears subsided.

I sat. I counted my breaths. I walked. I ate. I slept. I met privately with my teacher.

Sick of being mom, managing my child? Then be an easy mother!
Lonely? Get out of the Internet echo chamber. Talk to a person.
Bored? Reflect on what resonates; listen for my voice.
Scared about new responsibility? Just show up. Do the next task.
Stop hiding in the house. The world is right here and now.

Later, walking on the beach alone, I found rusty rose starfish washed ashore. It fit the palm of my hand. It was alive! Waiting for a return ride on the tide.

Hello, friend.

I looked up. Saw a man. Decided this discovery was too good to keep to myself. So I went up to him and shared. And he smiled and marveled. And then I did it again, with a woman jogging. And again, with another woman!

Their eyes widened, awakened. They smiled with the joy of the encounter.

Hello, friend.
****************************

Words swept from my mind
Scatter like moths in the wind
Wave meets rock meets wave

seal rocks, or

Comes a Whisper

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…over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living which we know we are passing by. Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasiness, because we have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power. If only we could slip over into that Center! … There is a divine Abyss within us all, a holy Infinite Center, a Heart, a Life who speaks in us and through us to the world.

-Thomas R. Kelly, 1941
Faith and Practice, Religious Society of Friends (Quaker)

journey

Afterlife

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THE AFTERLIFE

They’re moving off in all imaginable directions,
each according to his own private belief,
and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal:
that everyone is right, as it turns out.
you go to the place you always thought you would go,
the place you kept lit in an alcove in your head.

Some are being shot into a funnel of flashing colors
into a zone of light, white as a January sun.
Others are standing naked before a forbidding judge who sits
with a golden ladder on one side, a coal chute on the other.

Some have already joined the celestial choir
and are singing as if they have been doing this forever,
while the less inventive find themselves stuck
in a big air conditioned room full of food and chorus girls.

Some are approaching the apartment of the female God,
a woman in her forties with short wiry hair
and glasses hanging from her neck by a string.
With one eye she regards the dead through a hole in her door.

There are those who are squeezing into the bodies
of animals – eagles and leopards – and one trying on
the skin of a monkey like a tight suit,
ready to begin another life in a more simple key,

while others float off into some benign vagueness,
little units of energy heading for the ultimate elsewhere.

There are even a few classicists being led to an underworld
by a mythological creature with a beard and hooves.
He will bring them to the mouth of the furious cave
guarded over by Edith Hamilton and her three-headed dog.

The rest just lie on their backs in their coffins
wishing they could return so they could learn Italian
or see the pyramids, or play some golf in a light rain.
They wish they could wake in the morning like you
and stand at a window examining the winter trees,
every branch traced with the ghost writing of snow.

–Billy Collins

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“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”

-David Foster Wallace

Nothing Is Lost, Only Transformed

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God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spilled.

-Author Unknown

Until I attended graduate school at St. Edward’s University, I didn’t know much about Dia de los Muertos. In 1997, after I’d left the fundamentalist non-denominational church I’d been with for years — and with it my entire social network — I struggled greatly with loneliness and depression. Thus I found myself sitting frequently in the Our Lady Queen of Peace chapel, trying to root myself.

On November 1, I discovered an altar covered with painted skulls, candles, photos, and flowers. A number of people gathered, including Dr. Edward Shirley, Professor of Religion and Theological Studies. He led a meditation and gave a little talk about the meaning of this day. I remember at one point asking, “Is it possible to miss someone you never knew?” I was thinking about my maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather; both died long before I was born. Ed answered that yes, he thought so.

After that introduction, I got to know him and spent time talking with him. He was one of the most loving people I’d encountered. His laugh was infectious. His presence was healing. His friendship and guidance were a balm and ballast for me at this time of transition. He accepted people wherever they were at; at that point I was an atheist, certain that traditional Christianity was not my path. I searched for a way to connect with the universe and to find a vocabulary to voice this connection. It was Ed who called my attention to Buddhism.

Ed died suddenly in mid-August, leaving behind a devastated family and community of friends. His impact in the world was deep, and he was much loved. I miss his presence in this world, but his departure brought me to a threshold of understanding what Zen Buddhists call Big Mind.

So, in honor and remembrance of Ed, I offer this tribute on the day that brought us together.

shirleyobit_1541400c

Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.

-John Muir

Thy Sea Is So Great

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At least ten years ago my mother gave me a magnetic notepaper holder to hang on my refrigerator. It had a delicate angel and rainbow picture, with a saying about love on it. For a long time I’ve realized it doesn’t appeal to me anymore. Lately my hands have been feeling restless and unsettled. Tonight I put on Tracy Chapman and pulled out scissors, paper, and glue and gave it a new cover.

I’ve been thinking about God lately, in the context of Being, Consciousness, Love, and Mystery. Back in the 1990s, I slogged through times of aching isolation and loneliness. Friends came and went. I felt so alone and small. I struggled to make ends meet. At one point, I meditated on love as an ocean. The tides of love may be high or low in a given day, but the ocean is always there. It was a reassuring concept.

As I created tonight, the Breton Fisherman’s Prayer floated into my awareness: “Oh God, Thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.” It is, of course, a prayer for protection. But perhaps, at least in the case of Love and Awakening, the boat is our Ego. Maybe I’m not ready to give up the boat entirely, but I could go swimming more often.

sailing

The Most Beautiful Thing

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. This insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms— this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men.

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own—a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism.

It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.

—Albert Einstein

A Question Asked

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I happened across a post on Deepak Chopra’s website where someone asked why we are given the parents we have. Putting aside the knowledge that the question “why” is a sticky, tangly, distracting web, (it doesn’t really free a person, it simply looks for a place to park blame — on oneself or another — disguised as understanding), I was curious to read the answer. His answer was concise and helpful, particularly because he avoided attempting to answer “why.”

It’s true our life circumstances are organized by intelligence of our higher self for our awakening using the material of our past actions. But rather than trying to figure out a particular spiritual rationale for your parents’ behavior, suffice it to say that it has contributed you to the level of strength and self-reliance you have attained so far in your life. Your upbringing also highlights that an important part of your spiritual growth will require you to learn how to be your own nurturer and protector.

–Deepak Chopra

However, I found the first comment below also useful. She doesn’t attempt to assign reasons why either; she also points out the futility in attempting to heal relationships with people who are toxic and chained by delusion:

The influence of our parents on us is so great that when we’re given destructive parents, it’s our special challenge in life to overcome their influence. This, I feel, is the awakening and growth that you can find in your family situation. The dysfunctional behavior of others isn’t our responsibility. We must accept that there are those who will never awaken to their destructive behaviors. In my experience, few abusers (including alcoholic abusers, like your mother) recognize their abuse within their hearts. In other words, they don’t FEEL they’ve done anything wrong because they can always justify to themselves why they did what they did. If they don’t feel they’ve done something wrong, they don’t see that there’s anything to change, and so they won’t change. As the wise Mr. Chopra says, those of us from dysfunctional families must honor the strength we showed in making it through our past. We must face the fact that we can’t heal a destructive relationship with those who don’t see their own destruction.

-Rainbow

art every day month 06 - day 20 - spiderweb 2

On Routines and Union

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Now the same acts drew up the ties between them, put them back together, as though shaping the world from scratch. As they worked, they put the sky in place above, the trees in the ground. They invented color and air and scent and gravity. Laughter and sadness. They discovered truth and lies and mock-lies — even then, Essay played the oldest joke there was to play, returning a stick past him as if he were invisible, cantering sideways, tossing it about in her mouth as if to ask, it’s all play, really, isn’t it? What else matter when there’s this to do?

–David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle