Hallelujah
Dad, I want to tell you again I love you. And you’ve been brave.
My father passed away and I was there. A profound experience, the most profound ever for me. I want to tell you what I felt, what I heard, what I saw. Though I know that you can never know really. But if you could, if I could show you, I would like that. I suspect even a gifted writer is not able and that there is an important reason why that cannot be done.
You surprised me, my siblings and their partners, my nieces and nephews, my mother. How do we all know how to be with a dying man? Is it instinct? I want to tell you it was perfect. No one planned anything. No one knew what was to come. Sometimes we said things that didn’t feel good. More than once I got annoyed. All the while we loved and understood. We all had pain, fear and yet accepted our individual manifestations of our unique inner experience. We all love dad. Who knew the myriad ways this was so?
Kindness and caring, sweetness and strength. It was palpable. There is an energy in the blood that we share. Chemistry has an energy, a very sacred energy. Ours probably tastes the same if we could touch it with our tongues.
I want to tell you that death is the most perfect thing. I know this because I was there. And I can’t even tell you why this is so. Therein lies a wisdom. I believe we can indeed touch it outside of death as well. I was gifted a window into it. I was granted a taste.
Birth is the same, I see that clearly now. Breath begins and inflates the soul, the heart beats one body from another. In death the reverse. The breath slows and speeds and stops and speeds and stops, finally being drawn from the body by the soul. The heart having no more oxygen for fuel comes to a soft stop. I want to tell you I saw this, I felt this and I am honored. With every cell of my being I am honored. And I am changed forever.
I want to tell you I don’t know where he is and I don’t always feel his presence, but I did today in the stirring of an unfeigned “Hallelujah.”
I Have a Problem
I have a problem. And I’m not the only one. Well, don’t you? We all have problems I suppose, if we so choose to look at it that way. Let’s say I found myself in a situation where the outcome was unknown and unknowable. And yet if we’re honest with ourselves, that pretty much covers most situations, doesn’t it? So I did what any card-carrying brain-centered American would do, I picked the problem apart systematically and thoroughly. Yet after hours and hours of discussion with friends and family, (God bless them) they helped me come to the conclusion that I don’t have enough information to solve this right now. There’s absolutely nothing I can do. I can talk about or think about it until I’m blue in the face, but it won’t solve anything. I need more data and that takes time. And so I wait. Excuse me? What do I do until then? How do I proceed? How do I not think about it constantly?
How is it that I know there is nothing to do now, no solution, no figuring anything out, but I still insist on thinking about it as if there is? There are too many variables, too many possible outcomes that I will only drive myself (and others) crazy playing them all out in my mind. And yet it drives me crazy to not know or not have control over what’s going to happen….if I let it.
So how does one let it lie? This is a constant struggle for me with my ever active mind. It simply is more blatant when there’s an actual event or situation on which to focus. Justification for thinking in those more obvious situations, Yeah!!! Happy day! But I don’t necessarily need there to be a problem in order to engage in spinning. I can create it quite effortlessly. In fact, there are times that my mind may be quiet, empty, and still and I’ll suddenly interrupt that peaceful place to try to remember what it was I was thinking before. Huh? This takes a vast amount of energy, this spinning. I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of being completely drained after obsessing over something – your best friend is angry at you and you don’t know why, worrying about an exam or report, planning an important party, etc. Mental activity takes energy and just as an athlete tries to be most efficient with their body through correct form and proper use, we could save a boat load of energy if we learn to use our minds at a time and in a way that is most productive.
Here are a few things I’m doing to work with my problem-solving/problem-creating mind. In this particular situation, on one occasion I found myself worrying about me and how this was going to affect me and how were my needs going to be met. Then I realized, this is not all about me, it’s not easy for anyone to be in a state of unknown, so how can I be a support and help the other people in the situation. That immediately cleared much of the cobwebs from my mind. I hadn’t even done anything yet, only energetically shifted my focus and opened my heart to other people with the intent to reach out.
On a more practical level, the goal is to move my energy away from my mind. The most obvious place to go then is my body. I’ll pick different body parts and put my focus there. The feet are good because they are the furthest point away from my head, helps ground me out and feel the earth under my feet, supporting my body and being. Sometimes I tune into my chest – heart beating, lungs breathing. This usually will connect me with my feelings which aren’t cognitive and mental, often are even wordless in the description of them, and launch me into the moment. Not always comfortable, but real, full and often cuts through much of the thinking that often is simply a distraction from the difficult feelings that arise. Much of the time I have an overall focus on my posture and movement, aware of whether I am upright, centered, moving smoothly and relaxed versus hunched over, fragmented, clumsy. This helps keep the energy in my body, allowing me a better shot at experiencing physical efficiency and enjoyment in what I’m doing as well as aids in keeping me from automatically and unconsciously engaging my mind in unproductive thought.
Related to that, I’ll focus on being present with the activity or task at hand, every little thing about it. For example, if I’m washing the dishes I’ll feel the temperature of the water, the white of the soapy bubbles, the texture and weight of the dishes, hear the sounds of the water, the transformation from dirty to clean, have attention to be thorough, challenge myself to work fast but with quality. If I’m working with others I make an effort to have eye contact, listen to them intently when they are speaking, engage my face with expression, appreciate how they work, enjoy the cameraderie of working together. Underneath all the sound and behind the visual impressions is silence, stillness, and emptiness and I try to make contact with that as well. There is space between every ‘thing’ – space between the trees, space between your desk and your chair, space between the words, and eventually we may notice there is even space between each of our thoughts.
Another way to create space is to take breaks which includes emphasizing the already natural transitions in my day – waking in the morning, going to work, filling my car with gas, arriving at work, lunch break, leaving work, grocery shopping, arriving home, having dinner, evening activities, bedtime. Here I’m talking about stopping what I’m doing, looking up and around my environment and noticing what else is going on besides the task I’m performing and the thoughts I’m thinking. Oh, the lights are off. Look, Paul and Mary are excitedly rushing off to an important meeting. Nice, the leaves are flickering and a flock of pelicans just flew overhead. I don’t want to lose the flow, momentum, and rhythm with what I’m doing, but I try to notice as much as I can, open my eyes wide, open and soften my chest and draw all that energy into me or just let it make me smile inside. It gives me an opportunity to take in an experience whether I was active in it, as in writing a report, or it was delighting in my neighbor’s peonies. Life is happening all around us, that’s obvious in the natural world, but even in the seemingly inanimate objects – someone designed it, someone created it and built it, someone sold it, it serves a function – it has energy and that energy is available to us. We are so constantly in motion – in this culture it’s fast motion – and our mind is trying to keep pace, too often setting the pace. If we slow ourselves externally, it will assist the slowing of our minds. At the very least it will help us see the speed in our mind perhaps enough for it to feel unpleasant and motivate us to do something about it.
This is not a one-time solution to the mental ‘problem’. It’s on-going, at least it is for me. But the old adage, practice makes perfect, well, need I say more? When I set myself up in the morning to contact that place of stillness, silence, emptiness (see blog on Active Mind), make strong intentions to not engage my mind at inappropriate, unproductive times during the day and use the focuses above as often as I can remember, there do become times when it just happens. I can enjoy the quiet, not feel the need to corrupt it, not experience it as something to run from but rather allow its nourishment to penetrate to my soul. In fact, I consider it sacred, I savor it, and protect it by doing more of the same. And the only thing that feels worse than incessant thinking is spanking myself for doing it. Notice it, feel what it’s doing to me, remember my intentions to not do it and my strategies for working with it, work with it, appreciate it how it works, enjoy life, repeat.
To Return to Me, I Need to Be
You know those times when you feel like something is not right? I’m currently emerging from one of those states. There has been a lot of movement internally and externally in my life over the last 6 months, many major life changes or at least initiating movement and momentum in other directions: new home, new relationship, my father sick with cancer, reuniting with siblings and the dynamics that come with that – good and bad – change in career. All the major stressors! Don’t get me wrong, aside from my father’s sickness, I’m not complaining about any of it. It’s all good and right and moving in the direction of my vision. In fact, even my father’s sickness has some light and positivity that has come with nurturing our relationship, something that hasn’t happened with such intention, presence and love in my 42 years alive, so I am eternally grateful for that.
One of my recent adventures was a 10 day trip to Alaska to visit with an old friend. Upon my return, I was greeted by my over-scheduled calendar to make up for my time away, at the same time energized by my time in Alaska, simultaneously processing the myriad experiences and feelings that I carried from it. By the end of the entire two weeks, I was stretched THIN. July 4th weekend and all I wanted to do was sit home, stare out the window, and be alone. I resisted making plans for much of the week, but by Monday the 4th presumed I would be replenished, ready to socialize and watch the fireworks display with a couple friends. Hmm, just not so. Cancelled. A movie on the couch proved to be about all I had the energy for. And it was delightful.
After such an inactive, restful, and solitary weekend I was feeling better. But not yet as resilient as I thought – one social engagement later and my exhausted body and foggy mind informed me my time of solitude was not over. I was familiar with this feeling and I knew of only one solution: Be with yourself in Nature. And so I did. I plunked myself down on a blanket next to a creek and vowed to myself that I would stay there for 3 hours no matter what. At first my mind was competing with the speed of the creek to keep pace, yet slowly it resonated with the slight flicker of the leaves in the breeze, the float of the butterflies through the air, and rested at times with the stillness and solidity of the boulders that stood firm with water crashing it from all sides.
I won’t deny it, I was squirmy. I had 50 minutes to go. I reminded myself that even if it doesn’t feel blissful now, is perhaps a struggle to simply ‘Be’, nature is working on me in invisible ways, I am receiving and taking in nourishment, this is altering my vibration, frequency and is connecting me back to myself, the elements, the essentials, Source. Still perhaps a concept not fully sensed throughout my body and being, but familiar and a phenomenon I trust.
The following day I planned a long run in the hills. Another immersion, yet this time in motion. The flowers were a little brighter, the light outlining the leaves slightly more luminous, the grass an effervescent green, the smiling eyes of passersby penetrating. My mind wasn’t silent, some voices remain and the struggle to quiet them or the disappointment in hearing them not entirely absent. But more gentle.
One more day, spent at home reading, writing, studying, yoga on youtube, a thunderstorm, drenched from a bike ride after presuming the rain were through. The ‘beingness’ has started to stick. I experienced more clarity of mind, more connection to body and spirit, a spring in my step, a twinkle in my eye, a knowing. I won’t attempt to define the knowing because it’s not like I know ‘something.’ Besides that to return to me I need to ‘be.’ It’s that simple.
Working with An Active Mind and Anxiety
A client was having a difficult time dealing with an overactive mind caused in part, at least recently, by challenges in the workplace. The situation needs to change and he is in the early stages of making that happen. In the meanwhile, the anxiety he experiences is taking its toll on his quality of life: he can’t stop his mind and frequently works his heart rate up just in anticipation of going back to work. I described for him an exercise I was given by my teacher as a way to allow the still, silent, empty, relaxed state of sleep settle you deeply into yourself, making that connection and thereby carrying that state into the busy activity of your day, but with some leverage to avoid getting swept away by the contents of your mind, often triggered by the goings on around you. The following is an email sent to him later as a reminder of the practice discussed in our conversation.
Upon waking, like on your back, preferably with no pillow so your neck isn’t scrunched and your spine is elongated, but be comfy, arms at your sides, palms up, legs natural and straight, relaxed, eyes closed. Just lie there taking in your great night’s sleep, the quiet and stillness, feel the weight of you body on the bed, sense your limbs, let your mind stay as clear and blank and empty as possible. If you start to think, simply and gently return to sensing your body, breathing naturally, noticing the black and darkness, sensing your ‘beingness.’ Let your chest open naturally from lying on your back. Don’t zero in on any particular sensations. It’s about emptiness and nothingness. Contact your center, your hara, which is a point about 2 inches below your navel, and notice your limbs attached to your torso. Do this for 5-12 minutes or whenever it feels natural and right to stop. Don’t react or evaluate if you start thinking . YOU WILL START THINKING. Simply return to your center, your body, and the still, silent, empty space inside. It’s not so much about relaxing, although that will likely happen, as much as it is about contacting your deeper, quiet, inner, silent, still, empty self separate from your thoughts and your doing.
Once you have completed the process above, sit up, look around gently, use a wall or post or something in front of you to help you make contact with the uprightness and solidity of your back and spine. Don’t get rigid or tense but do try to be upright and have an elongated spine, open chest. Feel your sits bones (butt bones) making contact with the bed, stay in touch with your center and sense your beingness from the first part of the exercise. Now add to this your third eye. This point is just above, between and slightly behind the eyes. Focus on both the hara and the 3rd eye and gently connect the two with an invisible pole through the core of your torso. Sense yourself as one integrated, whole, tall, upright, spacious, clear, grounded, still, silent, and empty being. Breathe naturally, close your eyes and settle into yourself deeply. Hold this for 2 to 4 mintues and up to as long as you like, perhaps transitioning into a longer sitting meditation.
You’re basically trying to contact your internal, essentiaal nature before actively engaging your mind, the world, and people which all tend to pull us outside of this quiet place in ourselves. You’re setting up these two principles with this routine, being and consciousness, body sensing and self-observation. You can use this focus throughout the day to return to by being aware of your center and your third eyed and the pole that connects them. I use it pretty constantly as a balliste, to remember not to get all caught up and lost in the world and my thoughts, to recontact that still, silent, empty, clear, spacious part of myself and the very same qualities that are in the world and space, among the busyness and activity that surrounds us. Contact it in you, then contact it out there. Or contact it out there, then contact it in you. It’s alwasy there in both places if we put our attention on it.
Have fun with this and enjoy some Peace and Freedom if but for a moment….it goes a long way!
All my best,
Rebecca
What is Lifestyle?
“We’re talking about lifestyle in terms of how you conduct each and every day and the rhythm of all your activities as they reflect and affect each other. And do they help and enhance each other, promote each other and lay a basis for all them being done and experienced at their very best, or do they undermine each other? Do they help make each other possible and in a measure where none of them rob you of the possibility of doing and enjoying any other of the facets of living a full and harmonious life.” ~Yo