Put it in the “Things I have learned” box and stop beating yourself up May 21, 2008

So this morning I was getting ready for work and my thoughts turned to this decision I made a few years ago, and it turned out (in hindsight) to be a huge career mistake which has delayed my progress, postponed my goals and dreams, and generally has taken me down a road I didn’t want to travel… and I felt (once again) really bad about myself, and stupid for making this mistake. Even when I ran through the reasons why, and the rationale I had at the time, it still causes me tension and angst that I did this. And there were other mistakes… I married that guy. I trusted that person whom I knew to be untrustworthy. You know, the usual. So then later today I was talking to a friend about a guy she had dated (dating is really not the right word, but it’s more ladylike) and he’s calling her again, and my advice to her was to put that guy and that situation in the “Things I have learned and don’t need to learn again, thank you very much” part of her journal, or heart or mind. And then I realized “oh - this applies to me too.” Epiphany. Doh!

So yeah, I figure that you, and I, and all our friends who are intelligent and humane and have good intentions, as well as compassion and a healthy sense of wanting to do the right thing for ourselves and others, we can look at those mistakes from the past, take the nugget of learning out, and then put the experience in the “things I have learned” box.” So you get to look at it, roll it around, squeeze the wisdom out, then throw out the empty peel. Go ahead - do it now.

Also, you can now stop thinking of yourself as: stupid, lame, ridiculous, evil, bad-tempered, lacking the sense that God gave watermelon, unable to control your impulses, etc. This bad decision - the Jagermeister, the wedding, the decision to move to the Valley, whatever - this decision happened in the past. You only knew what you knew then. Even if you vaguely felt at the time that this decision had a red flag, (ok, me too) you still went ahead with it, and here you are - older, wiser. You could still be living with the consequences, or not. You could suffer moments of regret and subsequent self-torture while driving, or trying to sleep, or whenever. My advice to myself (and to anyone who wants to take it) is to remember that ~

• it’s now in the past
• you can’t change it
• you can accept it and go forward
• you learned something
• if you really learned it you will probably make better decisions in the future
• you’re human, it’s ok to make mistakes (ok, this one may take me awhile to believe)
• put it in the “things I’ve learned” box and stop hitting yourself with it

It’s pretty refreshing, isn’t it? Maybe it will help you to write them down, in a column to the left entitled “Mistakes” and a column to the right entitled “What I learned.” Maybe just the realization that you have the power and the permission to put these things in the past will help. The cool part is, you get to stop feeling bad about this. You are now free to make new decisions. Whoo hoo!

Live in the Now - a quote, a story and a Ziggy moment May 14, 2008

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you should begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Two traveling monks reached a river where they met a young woman. Wary of the current, she asked if they could carry her across. One of the monks hesitated, but the other quickly picked her up onto his shoulders, transported her across the water, and put her down on the other bank. She thanked him and departed.

As the monks continued on their way, the one was brooding and preoccupied. Unable to hold his silence, he spoke out. “Brother, our spiritual training teaches us to avoid any contact with women, but you picked that one up on your shoulders and carried her!”

“Brother,” the second monk replied, “I set her down on the other side, while you are still carrying her.”

Babette’s Feast - Mercy and Truth meet together April 28, 2008

Mercy and truth have met together. Righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another.
Man, in his weakness and shortsightedness believes he must make choices in this life.
He trembles at the risks he takes. We do know fear. But no. Our choice is of no importance.
There comes a time when our eyes are opened and we come to realize that mercy is infinite.
We need only await it with confidence and receive it with gratitude.
Mercy imposes no conditions.
And lo! Everything we have chosen has been granted to us.
And everything we rejected has also been granted.
Yes, we even get back what we rejected,
For mercy and truth have met together, and righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another.

~ From Babette’s Feast

Babette’s Feast operates on many levels;

It’s about food, and it’s about how meals can bring people together.

It’s about the tension and the reconciliation between earthly pleasures and divine transcendence,

simplicity and sensuality.

It’s about creativity and the nature of the artist.

It’s about poverty and wealth.

It’s about forgiveness and finding your way.

It’s about loss and regret, and is also about being a receiver of everything, and losing nothing.

It’s about mourning and the healing that it brings, and also about true love and joy.

It’s about being able to finally say the words you need to say, and to finally be able to give the gift you want to give.

It’s about knowing who you *really* are.

It’s about giving that comes right from the heart.

It’s about grace coming to live in a modest and remote place, both in the physical and the spiritual sense.

It’s about Christ-consciousness.

It’s about time you watched this movie or read this story!

(thank you Jo Owen!)

Easter Messages March 17, 2008

My Easter meditation ~

Père Henri: Do I want to speak of the miracle of our Lord’s divine transformation? Not really, no. I don’t want to talk about his divinity. I’d rather talk about his humanity. I mean, you know, how he lived his life, here on Earth. His *kindness,* his *tolerance.* Listen, here’s what I think. I think that we can’t go around measuring our goodness by what we don’t do; by what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. I think we’ve got to measure goodness by what we *embrace,* what we *create* … and who we *include.* ~ Chocolat

“OK - Yes” March 14, 2008

Acceptance

There’s an Italian man who says “OK - Yes” to almost every situation in Under the Tuscan Sun. When the wall he is working on starts to rumble and crumble and begins to fall down, he runs outside with everyone and says, “OK - Yes.” Now, those may not be the first couple of words you hear yourself saying when things are stressful, or crumbling around you. But, if you can manage to say “OK - Yes” to any situation, it enables you to recover and move on more quickly than if you resist, complain, curse, or punish yourself or others. Eckhart Tolle has a metaphor for this too. He says, if you find your self stuck in the mud, you can curse it and complain about it, try to figure out why the mud is there in the first place, and flail around, but you will still be in stuck in the mud - and you’ll just be a bit dirtier. Instead of resisting the mud, say “OK - Yes, I see that I am stuck in the mud, I don’t like it, and now I’m going to do what it takes to get out.” Coming from a place of acceptance allows you to move forward more constructively, and freer of the psychological pain that comes with being opposed to the present moment. Acceptance allows you to deal with it and move on, while resistance keeps you stuck.

“The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Alignment

Yesterday a friend described how her rowing team works together. She’ll be competing in a world-wide competition, and her coach has taught them that “rowing like a jackass” will not win the race. In rowing, the forward motion of the boat not only depends upon the exertion of the rowers, but also on the alignment of the rowers with the forward movement of the boat. If you’re “rowing like a jackass,” you are not only wasting energy, you are creating negative momentum by pushing your body toward your feet while the boat is moving in the opposite direction. Teams who win are not the ones rowing hardest, but the ones in which each team mate is rowing in alignment with the boat and with her team mates. This seems like a great analogy for living a peaceful life - stop rowing like a jackass, for one. Also, it helps to have good team mates. And finding your sense of alignment, and staying with it, will move you forward.

Thoughts on the Heart January 29, 2008

What is the nature of the Heart? Rob Brezsny asks, “Are we being sentimentally unscientific when we refer to the heart as the seat of the soul? Or does that idea contain a truth that surpasses reductive rationalism? In A Dictionary of Symbols, J.E. Cirlot reports that in the Jewish tradition, meditation involves “speaking to one’s heart.” According to Christian tradition, the Kingdom of God resides in the heart. Hindus say the supreme god Brahma lives there, and in Islam, the heart is referred to as the throne of God. ……. Have a sustained, intimate, heart-to-heart communion with your heart. Learn more about its secret thoughts. Converse with it as if it were the literal source of your emotional intelligence. Proceed on the hypothesis, as French philosopher Pascal did, that “great thoughts come from the heart.”

Our heart is viewed then, as the “place” where we experience the Divine, the facet of ourselves where we receive love, grace, wisdom and peace. It is the seat and the source of our compassion, for ourselves and others. How then, do we connect with our heart to listen to it, or to perceive what is there? Meditation is one way. Quieting the mind so the heart can come through, we are able to touch the heart, and as Pema Chodron writes: “When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it’s bottomless, that it doesn’t have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.”

Paul Beattie looks at meditation, (when the “mind is still”) and examines the connection between the Heart and the Mind in this poem -

When My Mind is Still

When my mind is still and alone with the beating of my heart,
I remember things too easily forgotten:
The purity of early love,
The maturity of unselfish love that asks -
desires - nothing but another’s good,
The idealism that has persisted through all the tempest of life.

When my mind is still and alone with the beating of my heart,
I can find a quiet assurance, an inner peace, in the core of my being.
It can face the doubt, the loneliness, the anxiety,
Can accept these harsh realities and can even grow
Because of these challenges to my essential being.

When my mind is still and alone with the beating of my heart,
I can sense my basic humanity,
And then I know that all men and women are my brothers and sisters.
Nothing but my own fear and distrust can separate me from the love of friends.
If I can trust others, accept them, enjoy them,
Then my life shall surely be richer and more full.
If I can accept others, this will help them to be more truly themselves,
And they will be more able to accept me.

When my mind is still and alone with the beating of my heart,
I know how much life has given me:
The history of the race, friends and family,
The opportunity to work, the chance to build myself.
Then wells within me the urge to live more abundantly,
With greater trust and joy,
With more profound seriousness and earnest service,
And yet more calmly at the heart of life.

***

So, saying the treasures of the heart are great seems like an understatement. The profound importance of your heart to your self-awareness, your humanity, and your ability to “see” what is real can’t be overemphasized. Many of our greatest thinkers (even scientists!) and artists have given us thoughts on the heart ~

Carl Jung Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

William Shakespeare: Go to your bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Albert Einstein: A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Benjamin Disraeli: Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

Blaise Pascal: We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

Confucius: To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.

M. Scott Peck: The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual - for it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.

Pearl S. Buck: The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.

The Dalai Lama: This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. …….. I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being. Cultivating a close, warm-hearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. It is the ultimate source of success in life.

***

I wish you the time, the space and the grace to listen to your heart.

Forgiveness December 30, 2007

What does forgiveness really mean? I’ve been thinking about this for several years and struggling with the implications of what forgiveness includes and what it doesn’t include. After much reading and discussion, here’s what I’ve come up with:

What forgiveness means:

• Forgiveness means you don’t act in retribution or vengeance to the person who has wronged you. You don’t punish or retaliate.
• Forgiveness means you do (or can) wish for the person who has wronged you, “May the Lord give you Peace” - this is the stance you take toward the person in your heart.
• You realize that forgiveness is a gift you are giving yourself in the sense that you are only responsible for *your* own behavior - you are not responsible for how someone else acts or responds. Letting go of your own anger and hatred sets you free.
• You may open the door to the person to restore the relationship.

What forgiveness does not mean:

• Forgiveness does not mean you are saying what the person did is OK.
• Forgiveness does not mean you have any obligation to continue in the relationship with the person. You can forgive and also protect yourself from toxic people and toxic relationships by no longer engaging in those relationships. Really, its ok. Even if it’s your mother or your brother or your son, you can say to them - or just in your own mind - that “I understand your behavior and I wish no ill to come to you, and (as Bishop Tutu said) I am not going to let you victimize me and hold me in a position where I have an anger against you, a resentment, and [in which] I’m looking for the opportunity to pay back.”
• You may decide to continue in the relationship, and “turn the other cheek”- but I recommend being watchful for patterns of behavior that continue. Destructive behavior is not acceptable, even if it is forgivable.
• Forgiving someone does not necessarily mean that the pain of the situation will go away - this usually takes time and is not usually an act of the will.

What does the person being forgiven need to do?

• If you offer someone who has wronged you the gift of forgiveness, the person being forgiven must open herself to it in order to receive it. They can do do this by confessing, apologizing or by seeking atonement. (see Bishop Tutu’s remarks on this below)

What is the spiritual element of forgiveness?

• Rob Brezsny says “The 17th-century surgeon Wilhelm Hilden had an interesting theory about healing. He developed a medicinal salve that he applied not to the wound itself but rather to the weapon that inflicted it. Though today we may sneer at such foolishness, the fact is that Hilden’s approach has great potential if used for psychic wounds. Jesus understood this when he articulated the revolutionary formula, “Love your enemy.” More than any other action, this strategy has the power to cure you of the distortions your enemy has unleashed in you. Try it out.”

Here’s what Desmond Tutu has to say about forgiveness, from Bill Moyers Journal, 12/28/07

ARCHBISHOP TUTU: I would hope that the world would realize that there is no situation that is not transfigurable, that there is no situation of which we can say, ‘This is absolutely, totally devoid of hope,’ because that is what people thought about South Africa. And that the star turns of this report are those we wrongly call just ordinary people. There are no ordinary people in my theology, but it is the small people, the ones who used to be nonentities, they are the stars and for the world to know that those called-so-called ordinary people are incredible.

BILL MOYERS: What do you actually do when you forgive someone?

ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Well, basically, you are saying ‘I am abandoning my right to revenge, to payback. I mean, I have… By the fact that you have abused me, you have hurt me, or -whatever it is that you have done, you have wronged me. By that you have given me a certain right as - over you that I could refuse to forgive you. I could say that I have the right to retribution.’ When I forgive, I say, ‘I jettison that right, and I open the door of opportunity to you, to make a new beginning.’ That is what I do when I forgive you.

BILL MOYERS: But the Buddhists talk of letting go of the past, dying to the past, when you forgive, of letting loose of the sorrow that you have brought with you from the past. Is that what you’re talking about?

ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes. The thing is, of course that I don’t know that you yourself are able, by an act of will, as it were, to let go of the pain. The will part of it, where your will is, deliberately to say, ‘I am not going to let you victimize me and hold me in a position where I have an anger against you, a resentment, and I’m looking for the opportunity to pay back.’ I am saying. ‘I want to let go of that-that right, and begin to work for the possibility of restoring the relationship.

BILL MOYERS: Do I have to do anything - the person being forgiven?

ARCHBISHOP TUTU: For your own sake, the only way you can appropriate forgiveness is by confessing. That opens you to the possibility of being able to receive it. It’s like, it’s like opening up a window. You see forgiveness can be likened to the fresh air that is outside or the sunlight that is outside and you have a room and the windows are closed and the curtains are drawn. The wind is still out there, my forgiveness is still available to you, but it won’t find access until you open the window and the light streams in. You draw the curtains apart and the fresh air comes in. You by your contrition and confession, say I am sorry, forgive me, open and my forgiveness enters your being.

BILL MOYERS: We’re talking here about genocide, torture. Are genocide and torture forgivable?

ARCHBISHOP TUTU: As a Christian, you have to say, ‘Are there things that are unforgivable?’ I’m afraid we follow a lord and master who at the point when they are crucifying him in the most painful way can say, ‘Pray for their forgiveness.’ And we follow the one who says, ‘Forgive one another as God and Christ forgave you.’ That is for us the paradigm. We may not always reach to that ideal, but that is the standard.

For further inspiration, see No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu