A Gift from Rumi...

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.

Merry Christmas
Nx

The Feather

Egyptians believed every person at the end of their lives faced a "Trial by Heart Ceremony". Once a person had died, their hearts were weighed before the Court of the Dead. We can see, from the hieroglyphics of the time, that the departed's heart was balanced on a scale against an ostrich feather, which symbolized truth. How much the heart weighed in relation to the feather was an important assessment of whether the person would be able to reside with the gods.
The Egyptians believed that everlasting peace came from a balanced and open heart. If the heart was heavier or lighter than the feather, the deceased could not enter into the presence of all that is eternal.

If the heart was lighter than the feather of truth, it was believed that the heart had not experienced enough; had not participated fully enough in the journey to glimpse or understand the timeless truths. If heavier than the feather, it was believed that the heart had harbored too much of its experience; not surrendering enough, but churning too much with its backlog of envies, and ledgers of wrongs and misfortunes.

"As I explore my own trial of heart, I realize how much I struggle with this each day. I find myself trying to discern just how much I shy away from life and how much of my experience I am clinging to. It is an endless practice. And so I find myself involved in learning how to love it and not to fight it.

One quiet and powerful thing I've learned is that letting go is not just about putting things down. On a deeper place, letting go is about letting your heart crumble, about letting yourself be rearranged by the journey of being alive. For the more we tense and harden ourselves, the more painful and bumpy our ride through existence. This is why grief expressed is freeing and grief held only makes us want to join the dead. So often, in trying to protect ourselves, we hurt ourselves further.
To soften and crumble is not to die."

Mark Nepo

I feel stuck....

I have heard the expression, "I feel stuck" a number of times in the last week, and it got me thinking about what is "being stuck". We all seem to know when we are stuck, so what is it that we are recognizing about the sensations in our bodies or thoughts in our minds that creates this knowledge?  Maybe we can deconstruct this "stuckness" a bit to make it easier to recognize when it knocks on our front door for the next visit.
 

I would like to move away from just the story we tell ourselves about "being stuck, as I think what is required is a more intimate relationship to "stuckness". One that informs our experience. Liberation is not knowing.....it is feeling. Let's start by "not knowing".

We usually just tell ourselves the story of "being stuck". The story tells us about the experience of finding ourselves thinking and telling stories about the same painful state of body and mind over and over again. Even when we understand that this thinking, and the retelling of this story is simply causing us more harm, we watch ourselves persist with the telling and the harming. We say "I thought I had dealt with this; why is it here again?". So there is a perception that this uncomfortable state of being is revisiting....without our consent. We had believed that this obsessive, not invited, state of mind had disappeared permanently and would not visit again. We had conquered this demon. What is it doing at my front door? How frustrating it is to see it's harmful effects again. 

Maybe it would help to just work with the feeling and the impermanence of feeling.

What is the experience of being stuck.? Just one question will do.....what is it?

I would first like to share a lovely metaphor by Mark Nepo. The metaphor challenges us to have patience. Patience is the understanding that we have everything that we need right now. And it insists that we access our faith in the "unstoppable current of the Spirit".

"Though we cannot see it, our life is carried in an open vessel that some mystics have called the soul. Think of it as a canoe. Anyone who has been in a canoe or rowboat knows that if left alone, the boat will drift. In a stream or river, the current will carry us, but we need from time to time to paddle or row, to steer our way back to where the current is clear and strong.
This is the purpose of faith; to believe that this current is there even though we can't see it. And this is the purpose of will; to correct our inevitable drifting with a paddle here and a paddle there, not trying to do it all ourselves, but trying to restore our native position in the ancient and immediate current, so it can carry us into tomorrow.
This image also gives us a way to understand our humanness and our need for inner practice. For when a canoe drifts left or right, or gets stuck in the roots of an old willow, it is not wrong or evil or lacking in character. It is just being a canoe. Likewise, our rush to judge ourselves and others for what goes wrong, or not as we planned, is a distraction from engaging the nature of living, which is drifting and steering.
With discernment but without judgement, the human journey is one of steering our way back to center over and over. So, this is really about learning the art of canoeing."

I think that when we wake up and find the same thoughts and feelings that we had worked so hard at not thinking or not feeling again. I think we may have just fallen asleep in the canoe. Because of moments or even days of not experiencing the uncomfortable feelings, we have been lulled into unconsciousness. We have relaxed into the feeling of permanence of this comfortable place (let's call this place the "status quo") and forgotten that the canoe needs mindful attention to stay in the middle "where the current is clear and strong".

We have been so distracted. Lets face it, sleep is the ultimate distraction. We have not been present enough to catch the first sensations in the body and the arising of the urge to tell a story about it. Now the demon is sitting in your living room with your favorite coffee cup in his hand, telling you the same old obsessive story about why you have uncomfortable feelings. And you don't remember inviting him in or serving him coffee. And he is seductive with his story. The story is well written. It wasn't developed in an hour....many sleepless nights have been devoted to just the right story. It is an opera.

 Now it is not as easy as grabbing your best oar and gently steering yourself to the center. Your canoe is clearly in the willow roots. You may be so deep in the roots that it is necessary to get out of the canoe and into the mud to push it towards the route to clear water. I guess it would depend how long you have been absent from your canoe.

What is it?

First come the feelings. Be mindful as much as you can in your day about what is going on in your body. Take a moment in your day to return to the present moment and feel your body. Breath deeply into the contractions that you find. Release them with your out breath. If we can catch the energy in your body ("I feel alittle uncomfortable in my stomach right now")...and use your breath as your oar.....we are back to the center with a small adjustment.

If we don't catch the feelings, then they escalate. As they will. God bless them....they are our teachers. They plead for our attention.

Then comes the reaction. The reaction says this is good or bad. "I feel very uncomfortable..... I hate the way I feel..... I am not supposed to feel like this....other people don't have these feelings..... I need to make it go away". Already we have moved away from this just being impermanent energy in your body. We are already into our comparative study of our suffering.  The running away has begun.
We run to our story of our suffering.

Now comes the thoughts. Let the nasty story of blame, hatred and self pity begin. We begin to generate desperate obsessive thoughts. This is the running.  Obsessive thoughts about our pain are like a train traveling faster and faster along the tracks. We can put on the brakes, but the train does not stop right away. Now we are deep in the weeds and the mud. Returning to the center will take some effort and concentrated focus.

Be gentle with yourself. Now is the time of compassion for all humans. We share this place with everyone. This is our human nature at work. Do not feel alone. We just need to return. Life is just returning over and over again.  This is why we practice.

The treatment is the same. Stop. Stay. And Breath. Create no more movement in the wrong direction. Go to the present moment and stay there until your canoe is directed back to the safe, unimpeded current of the universe.

How would we recognize "not being struck". This may be helpful so we can remember to be grateful when we have used our oar skillfully and mindfully to make the necessary adjustments to the river.

Let me try.....stuck is very familiar to me....I am not so mindful about when I am not stuck. This is how it would feel to me in this present moment.

It would be light and flowing, like water. I think I may fly a little off of the ground. No. I am not off the ground, it is just that the feeling for me would not be so heavy as being stuck. However, it would have some earth in it. Just enough earth to stay stable and keep my balance and enough air to keep it light. Like birds need some earth so they can fly through the sky. Just enough earth not to fall to the ground. There would be no extra effort required. Just the right amount of effort for the task. The breath would flow deeply into my body and escape effortlessly, right to the small gap of no air at the end of the breath. I would rest for a moment there. I would feel the "no breath" and not be afraid. I would access my faith in the next good moment of life. Complete letting go of the past breath. And then an involuntary expansion of the body to receive the present breath, all fresh and clean and new.

just this is enough

Nx

Mindfulness in Plain English...

I have started to read, “Mindfulness in Plain English” by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana for the second time, and I am wondering who read it the first time. It may be because the articulation of this man’s description of mindfulness is so brilliant and whole, that one stops having ones own ideas while in the presence of the simple truth. Not once have I found myself saying, “oh, yeah, I remember that” and skipping down to the next paragraph, even though I was sure that I had read this book so carefully before. When you hear the truth, it drops you into the present moment. This present moment has never been experienced before, so I guess it shouldn’t seem so unusual that I would not even remember the last present moment that this teacher dropped me into.

I would like to share a little of the moments of dharma that I experienced yesterday, sitting on my porch in the blessed sun. I read six pages in two hours. This book is a masterpiece and the  gift of a great teacher.

“When you relax your driving desire for comfort, real fulfillment arises. When you drop your hectic pursuit of gratification, the real beauty of life comes out. When you seek to know reality without illusions, complete with all its pain and danger, real freedom and security will be yours. This is not a doctrine we are trying to drill into you; it is an observable reality, something you can and should see for yourself.”

But the clear and concise articulation of humanness was like a soft breeze of forgiveness in my afternoon.

“There you are, and you suddenly realize that you are spending you whole life just barely getting by. You keep up a good front. You manage to make ends meet somehow and look okay from the outside. But those periods of desperation, those times when you feel everything is caving in on you—-you keep those to yourself. Meanwhile, down under all of that, you just know that there has to be some other way to live, a better way to look at the world, a way to touch life more fully. You click into it by chance every now and then; you get a good job. You fall in love. You win a game. For awhile things are better, Life takes on a richness and clarity that makes all the bad times and humdrum fade away. …..smoke in the wind….you are left with just a memory and a vague awareness that something is wrong.

You feel that there really is a whole other realm of depth and sensitivity available in life; somehow you are just not seeing it. You wind up feeling cut off. You feel insulated from the sweetness of experience by some sort of sensory cotton. You are really not touching life. You are not “making it” again. Then even that vague awareness fades away, and you are back to the same old reality. The world looks like the usual foul place. It is an emotional roller coaster, and you spend a lot of you time down at the bottom of the ramp, yearning for the heights.

So what is wrong with you? Are you a freak? No. You are just human. And you suffer from the malady that infects every human being. It is a monster inside all of us, and it has many arms; chronic tension, lack of genuine compassion for others, including people closest to you, blocked up feelings and emotional deadness,—–many, many arms. None of us is entirely free of it. We may deny it. We try to suppress it. We build a whole culture around hiding from it, pretending it is not there, and distracting ourselves with goals, projects, and concerns about status. But in never goes away. It is a constant undercurrent in every thought and every perception, a little voice in the back of the mind that keeps saying, “not good enough yet. Need to have more. Have to make it better. Have to be better.”"

“Meditation is running straight into reality.”

“It allows you to blow aside the illusions and free yourself from all the polite little lies you tell yourself all the time.”

At one point, he describes the “surge” of life. This really impacted me, yesterday. I have been doing a lot of investigation lately on intense, uncomfortable feelings in the body and the accompanying thoughts that freeze these feeling and make them heavy and solid. My experience is that this intense energy would not be so uncomfortable and we would not be so inclined to run away to our thoughts, if we conceptually labeled it as something normal and natural in our human body.  What is really the difference between the energy of joy and anxiety accept the running away and the thoughts? I think that both of these energies are divine energy. We need to accept the feelings of intense anxiety in our bodies with the same welcome mat that we put out for joy and bliss. The are both the “surge” of life. Let it flow. Don’t grab on to it in fear or pleasure. Let it flow…..in and out……everything passes, everything changes…

Nx

directly experiencing emotion....

I have been reading steadily on the energies of what we humans call “difficult emotions” and the process of the rising thoughts that always accompany them. There are a great many brilliant teachers who speak on this subject. Grace has gifted me with their words as a support for my own internal work. One of my favourite is Gangaji. She touches me with her truth. This quote from her “Diamond in my pocket” cd, is one of my favourite teachings. I am sitting in my office, looking out into the forest…..it is warm, damp and quiet….a perfect time to share. I am sorry if it seems long. I trust you will quit when you have had enough.
“The questions I am most frequently asked are related to the emotions. Many people seek to be free from difficult emotions, which are anger, fear, and grief…..and seek the more pleasant emotions…….such as joy, happiness and bliss. The usual strategies for achieving happiness involve either repressing or expressing negative emotions in the hope that they will be pushed from sight or released. Unfortunately, neither way reflects the truth of one’s inherent self, which is an unmoving purity of being…..that exists deeper than any emotion and remains unaffected by any emotion. There are certainly times when it is appropriate to repress or express an emotion. But there is also another possibility, to neither repress or express. I call this direct experience.
To directly experience any emotion, is to neither deny it nor to wallow in it….and this means that there can be no story about it…..there can be no story line about it…..who it is happening to, why it is happening, why it should not be happening, who is responsible, or who is to blame. In the midst of any emotion, so called negative or positive, it is possible to discover what is at the core. The truth is that when you really experience any negative emotion, it disappears. And when you truly experience any positive emotion, it grows and is endless. So relatively, there are negative and positive emotions, but in inquiry, only positive ones……that is the positivity that is absolute consciousness. Because there is not much in our culture that confirms this amazing revelation, we spend our lives chasing positive emotions and running from negative emotions. When you fully experience any negative emotions with no story, it instantly ceases to be. If you think you are fully experiencing an emotion and it remains quite intense, then recognize that there is still some story being told about it……how big it is….how you will never be able to get rid of it….how it will always come back….how dangerous it is to experience it. Whatever the story of the moment may be, the possibility of postponing direct experience are endless.
For instance, when you are irritated, the usual tendency is to do something to get rid of the irritation, or to place blame either on yourself or someone or something else…..as the cause of the irritation. Then the story lines around irritation begin to develop. It is actually possible to do nothing with the irritation. Do not push it out of awareness or try to get rid of it, but to directly experience it. In the moment that irritation arises, it is possible to be completely, totally, and freely irritated without expressing it or repressing it. Direct experience often reveals a deeper emotion. Irritation is perhaps just a ripple on the surface. Deeper than irritation, there may actually be rage, or fear. Again the goal is to neither get rid of the rage or the fear nor to analize it, but to directly experience it. If rage or fear is revealed to be beneath irritation, than let your awareness go deeper. Let yourself be absolutely, completely and freely fearful without acting out or repressing.
Fear is often the biggest challenge. Because it is what most people habitually try to keep away. Of course, as they try to keep it away, it grows even larger and hovers even closer. What I am suggesting, is that you can actually open to fear. You can experience being afraid, without any need to say you are afraid and without following any thought of being afraid. You can simply experience fear itself.
When I speak of directly experiencing fear, I am not talking about psyiologically appropriate fear. Response to physical danger……fight or flight…..is natural and appropriate to the human organism. It is hard wired into the body for survival. But the fears that suggest be directly met all the way through are the psychological fears. The fear that keep our energy and attention bound unnecessarily in protection and defense. Such as the fear of emotional pain or the fear of loss or death. When a psychological fear is met rather than resisted and run from it often reveals an even deeper emotion……a deep sadness or hurt may be revealed under fear. This too can be directly and completely experienced with no need of a story line.
If you are willing experience these emotional layers all the way through you will finally approach what seems to be a deep abyss. This abyss is what the mind perceives to be nothingness…..emptiness….no body-ness. This is an important moment, because the willingness to be absolutely nothing….to be no body….is the willingness to be free. All of these emotional states or layers of defense against this experience of nothingness. The death of who you think you are. Once the defenses are down, once the door is open, then this nothingness that has been feared can be met fully. This meeting is the revelation of true self inquiry, revealing the secret gem of truth that has been hidden in the core of your own heart all along. The diamond discovered is you.”
Deep bows to Gangaji
Nx

Does anyone remember Fritz Perls?.....

I was reading a Kornfield book today and he mentioned the Lomi School. Instantly, all these vague but surprisingly intense memories arrived …… I could not remember any factual information about the Lomi School, but I felt a slight uplifting in my heart and a kind of soft sadness in my eyes.
I immediately googled it and, of course, the name of the renowned psychiatrist, Fritz Perls, appeared on screen. Gestalt Therapy.

In 1967, when I began my formal education in psychology, there was this “thing” called Gestalt Therapy. Not that we studied it in a class…..no, this was not offered as a useful source of information by the academic institutions of the time. We studied it sitting in groups on the floor in hallways, over cold and very unpleasant cups of vending machine coffee. We held tutorials on the weekends in the homes of friends with the left over people from very late nights of non ordinary states of mind …..these discussions would sometimes last until morning and found us sitting on dewy grass watching the sun come up…….filled to the brim with lofty ideas and warm interconnected hearts…..I will always long for the deep, loving sense of community that was so strong in those years.
As I was reading the Wikipedia definitions of the work of Fritz Perls, I was struck by how little “therapy” as I know it today ,after many, many years of formal study, and practice, has changed since all of those young, astonished minds and willing bodies sat on the dewy grass and watched the sun come up.

“The core of Gestalt Therapy process in an enhanced awareness of sensation, perception, bodily feelings, emotion, and behaviour, in the present moment”.
Wait a minute!…isn’t that meditation?

“Relationship is emphasized, along with contact between self, its environment, and the other”. Ok….have I just come full circle! It was such a long walk to the same familiar place. I feel like I want to cry. Instinctively, we all knew what to do, we just didn’t know what not to do.

I would like to leave you with what is call the “Gestalt Prayer”. I am sure that there will be some old timers, that when they hear these words will feel alittle uplifting in the heart and a soft sadness in the eyes.
In 1969, it was such a relief.

“I am I and you are you, ………I am not in this world to live up to your expectations….and you are not in the world to live up to mine….You are you and I am I…and if by chance we find each other…..it is beautiful……If not, it can’t be helped”…..Fritz Perls

 Nx

Patience.....

  

I have been reading about patience.

Patience.

As I write the word, it seems to me to be one of those words that looks odd and unfamiliar. Like a word from a foreign language. I have twice now glanced back at the word to make sure that I have spelled it correctly. Maybe because I have experienced so little of it in my life.
Zen master, Suzuki Roshi had a problem with the word patience. He felt that “it implied we are waiting for something to get better, we are waiting for something good that will come.” He felt that a more accurate word for this quality is “constancy”. This would indicate the capacity to be with what is a true moment after moment. “Patience means understanding that what we seek is always here. It is what we are.”

All I really know about patience is that during the times when I put out a call for it…..it is usually because my frustration is high and all my habitual strategies to get what I want, when I want it, have failed…..it only arrives after I have surrendered my needs.
True patience is not about gaining or grasping. It does not seek accomplishment. To open to patience requires a surrender to the illusion of the present moments illusion of my needs.

Jack Kornfield writes that patience “asks for steady commitment, that we “take the one seat” in our hearts and willingly open to the unfolding of life.” This clearly requires a surrender of any control that we think we may have over what life is bringing down the path.
No wonder the red flag for a request for patience is the sensations of frustration.
Patience requires that we assess the “one who is not busy”…..it’s arrival allows us to open to that which is beyond time.

I love this story from Zorba the Greek that Jack Kornfield tells in his book, “Bringing Home the Dharma”. It speaks to the steady commitment of “taking our seat” and opening to life’s unfolding. Let me tell the story.

"I remember one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the bark of a tree just as the butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited awhile but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster than life. The case opened, the butterfly started slowly crawling out, and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it, I tried to help it with my breath. In vain. It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of the wings needed to be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear, all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand."

We are not the masters of our life. It is not a matter of weeks or years or lifetime……..then we will not need to be patient anymore…..we will have become….we will have arrived….but a loving and patient unfolding into the mystery of just now.

It takes faith. It takes surrender. It takes practice.

 And you really don’t know what patience is until it is required.

Patience, nothing to do, but to accept what is ultimately true.

Nx

The Barn

Alan has asked me to experiment with writing a new post on the new site. I will record some of my initial reactions to the new space.
I am used to playing with my art stuff in the barn. The barn was always dusty and smelled like wet soil and horses. The floor in the barn had holes in it. Not only could you fall in the holes if you became  too focused on your canvas and absentmindedly  backed up for a longer view, but the holes welcomed other sentient beings to join you in the space. There was no need to feel alone in the barn. The ceiling was high and dark and the home to all sorts. The cats would stalk more than sleep when they visited me there. All the light entered by way of the open stall doors, so with the light came the wind and the rain. The wind blew the paper on the easel and chased leaves across the floor. There was no need to “clean up” much. It would never be clean. It would always be a space that was more outside than inside. So there was no need to worry about flaws.

The barn was imperfection. Perfect work would have looked out of place in this space. I love this kind of space….a space that is all forgiveness. I could listen to my music too loud, sit on hay bails and drink too much wine, throw paint, let energy stream down my arm until it reached the paper uncensured, return and do it again and again and again until it really felt done. The space was wild and free.
When I had to leave my barn last year, I needed to find another space to play in. My new home could not accommodate the throwing of paint.

 That is when I started my blog. A friend convinced me that this could be my “barn”. And this old blog did become a space that was all forgiveness too. I was able to express without censure in this space. How was that possible when it was so exposed and my barn was so private? I made sure to place the images just off center. …and everything needed to go up….no value assigned….just stapled to the wall of the barn.  It had to be imperfection, to meet the genuine quality that I was looking for.

So now an even more sophisticated space…..all dressed up in shiny suit looking so trendy and sophisticated and I am still standing here with wine on the front of my shirt and paint dripping from my fingers on to the floor.  I am already trying to decide how I will put the images up straight. I am not sure I am very comfortable with this space. It is a long way from the barn. I will need to find a way to mess up the corners and make the colours too bright. It will be a challenge to make this perfect space forgiving. We will see how it proceeds.

 I will not check the spelling or punctuation….I think that is a good way to begin.