Ego

Compares

Critiques

Controls

Battles

Belittles

Blusters

Anguished

Angry

Alone.

Awful

Or

Awesome

Gotta

Be

Special.

Youngster

Yearns

Yes -

Acceptance

Admiration

Affirmation

Belonging

Believing

Befriending

Comfort

Compassion

Companionship.

Embrace

Young

Ego.

Accept.

Befriend.

Companion.

Be nice.

Be with.

Be love.

Own and Choose

We grow

and

Resist growth.

We see deeply, wisely,

and

We cover our eyes.

We give generously

and

Withhold stingily.

We can be merciless in judgment

and

Mercifully forgiving.

Complex

and

Simple,

Goofy

and

Grand,

We can own it all

and

Choose what to feed.

A New Year's Thought

       Just tidying my office a few minutes ago, I opened Brian Browne Walker's translation of  Tao Te Ching, and this one caught my eye.  It seems appropriate for the season.  Enjoy!

Act by not acting,

        accomplish by not straining,

                understand by not knowing.

Regard the humble as exalted

        and the exalted as humble.

Remedy injury with tranquil repair.

Meet the difficult while it is still easy;

        cross the universe one step at a time.

Because the sage doesn't try anything too big,

        she's able to accomplish big things.

Those who commit lightly seldom come through.

Those who think everything is easy

        will find everything hard.

The sage understands that everything is difficult,

        and thus in the end has no difficulties.

2012

       Lot of buzz with this new year.   Big elections in November.  Mayan calendar ending in December.  Turmoil, it seems, everywhere.  Fear stories abounding – from all over, right and left. 

       I have a New Year's invitation for us – me and you.  Let's not pay much attention to the buzz out there.  Its vibration weakens us. 

       Let's focus on the quiet voice inside, the gentle wisdom of the inner master.  We need to breathe and soften to hear this voice.  And sometimes, we don't hear it all.  We just feel it.

       We feel the sigh of "yes", as inner connection happens.  The connection guides us.  It steers us with purpose.

       In 2012, let's listen to our own teaching.

       Happy New Year.  Happy listening.

From Solstice to Christmas

       I'm feeling quiet this holiday season – more like solstice, right now, than Christmas.  Winter solstice invites us to embrace the dark, quiet, fertile emptiness within.  For me, this darkness is a spiritual womb.   Its rich environment nurtures growth, invites incubation and prepares us for transformation.  It births us.

       Tonight in group, our meditation took us into the fertile darkness of solstice.  We rested peacefully in the quiet, letting the darkness hold us, for maybe half an hour.  No work.  No agenda.  Simple allowing.

       When the time seemed right, we invited a spark to enter our hearts.  With each breath, the spark grew more radiant.  It became a flame, then a roaring blaze.  Within each of us, darkness gave birth to light.  We radiated together – each light a unique expression of the one light, each heart uniquely expressing the one heart.

       Christmas celebrates the birth of light.  Solstice, perhaps, like the womb of Mary, provides the incubation light's birth requires. 

       Have a beautiful and memorable holiday season.  Let the quiet darkness hold you gently and let your love-light be born – again and again and again.  Merry Christmas!

Re-Run

        I'm running full speed this week.  In addition to my normal case load, I'm leading two retreats, two consultation sessions and a couple groups.  Despite the pace, I'm energized, feeling alive and, for the most part, loving it all.  Reminds me of my first piece in the Weekly Wisdom series – posted nearly three years ago – titled: An Antidote for Exhaustion.  Here it is again.

An Antidote for Exhaustion

Poet David Whyte once asked his friend,

Brother David Steindl-Rast,

about a cure for exhaustion.

The reply went something like this:

The antidote for exhaustion is not necessarily rest –

though in some cases that may be true.

The antidote for exhaustion is wholeheartedness.

Heart-sight

       In group Thursday night, Mary mentioned a practice she's been using in her interactions with others.  She visualizes heart energy moving up to her eyes and out toward the other.  Her gaze is peaceful and spacious – without sentimentality.  It's a way of being present that's powerful in its impact on her and on the interaction.

       Inhale the love-energy of the universe into your heart and exhale it through your eyes toward the friend you face. 

       Heart-sight creates a safe and loving space for conversation.  It's good looking. 

Happy Thanks Giving

       In this nation and on this planet, poverty – as in lack of food, shelter, health care, education and other basics – is real.  It's a major challenge in our world, one that deserves concentrated and coordinated efforts by all of us.

       Impoverished spirit – a belief in scarcity and a grasping for more – is perhaps even more pervasive on this planet.  Especially in the west, we've become quite skillful and practiced in noticing what we don't have.  In our restlessness, we hunger.  In our grasping, hearts contract and grow stingy.  Spiritual scarcity begets emotional emptiness.

       I see a synergistic relationship between gratitude, abundance and generosity.  Like good family members, these qualities nurture each other.  For example, to experience abundance, we cultivate an attitude of gratitude, which allows us to see, appreciate and actually have the abundance within and around us.  As we freely open to life's cornucopia, our sense of abundance overflows naturally into generosity toward others.  Gratitude gives birth to abundance.  Generosity confirms it. 

       Imbedded in my wish for all of us to have a Happy Thanksgiving is this blessing:  May each heart beat in grateful resonance with the one heart.  May gratitude guide our release into the generous and abundant flow that is the heartbeat of this universe – a heartbeat we share.  

       Have a wonderful Thanks Giving. 

New Now

Feeling bored?

Life a bit stale?

Try opening

Eyes and ears

Skin and

Taste buds

To novelty

And mystery

In this moment

Unfolding now.

Ego ho-hums,

"Same old, same old."

Not true,

Not true.

Spacious hearts

And intimate eyes

Greet and treat

Each life-moment

As unlike

Any other.

Want aliveness?

Adventures new?

All yours –

Right now.

       The week in Ojai with Richard and the mentoring group was beyond awesome.  We practiced presence, nobility in the body, focused spaciousness, and eyes-open meditation.  We sang, danced, hiked, spent a night under the stars, shared dreams and enjoyed fabulous vegetarian fare.  Back home now, I received the seed for this short poem yesterday evening during group meditation.  It germinated overnight.  Its roots are in Ojai.

Conversation Complete

Breathing in

and

Breathing out

Letting in

and

Letting go

Being loved

and

Loving forth

Conversation

with

Life flows.