On Journeying

       I'm just back from a week of retreat with Richard Moss and a wonderful group of sojourners.  We adventured toward full embodiment of being:  Inhabiting the body more completely, listening more deeply to ourselves and each other, tending and attending to the field of relationship among us, working with dreams, and inviting what's in the shadow of consciousness into the light of awareness.  It was a powerful and transforming week.

       Here are some quotes about life's journey.  The first was gifted to me just before the retreat.  The next two were shared by members of the group on our last day.  Thanks Dana, Nicky and Bija.

To journey and not be changed is to be a nomad.

To change without journeying is to be a chameleon.

To journey and be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim.

Mark Nepo

Deep in the forest there's an unexpected clearing that can be reached only by someone who has lost his way.

Tomas Transtromer

One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

Andre Gide

Engage!

Jean Luc Picard

A Love Paradox

       Relationship has always seemed mysterious and paradoxical to me – a dance of otherness and oneness.  The paradox invites us to embrace gently these apparently contradictory aspects of the human condition, making space for them as we dance to the music of knowing and being known in the ballroom of love.

       Bija Bennett, a friend of mine and fellow student of Richard Moss, wrote Emotional Yoga, a wonderfully healing book that Wayne Dyer calls: "A brilliant design for emotional and spiritual stability".  In her chapter on love, she speaks to the paradox of relationship in a thought-provoking way.

       "Love is the glue that holds things together as well as the boundary that defines and separates them.  This discernment quality sees the difference between two things and holds them separate so that they may know each other.  One end of love is absolute separation.  The other end is absolute union.  In our relationships, we discern our differences so that we may know both ourselves and one another…

       "This concept of love is obviously different from any idea of romantic love.  But in order to have romantic or even spiritual love, you have to have discernment.  You can't just merge with someone or something.  No matter how close you are to someone, there is always something separating you.  And no matter how distant you are from someone, there is always a connection between you.  Love is a discernment quality, a recognition of the one and the other.  It is the nexus between two dissimilar things, and this connection breeds hope, faith, and the possibility of a future.  Although love acts as a unifying force between things, the strength of love lies in the differences."  (pp. 109-110)   

       Honor otherness.  Remember oneness. 

Following the Exhale

       A Tibetan practice, called the Shambhala Warrior meditation, invites the meditator to follow an exhalation to the edge of the universe.  It's a powerful, expansive practice – one of many relaxation and centering techniques that focus on the exhale.  Here are a couple more I've been using lately in my personal practice and with Thursday night's group.

Chakra Opening and Clearing

       This breath-oriented meditation mixes traditions from China and India.

       With each inhalation, we focus on drawing energy into what QiGong masters call the lower dan tien – the primary energy center of the body, located just behind and below the navel.  With each exhalation, we send forth this energy to open, clear and balance the seven chakras – the energy collection and distribution centers of the body described in ancient Hindu texts.

       In practice, as we inhale, we visualize light moving into the lower dan tien through the navel.  As we exhale, we send the light to each chakra, inviting the chakra to open like a flower bud blossoming.  I recommend devoting three or four exhalations to each energy center, in the following sequence:

1.      The root chakra at the base of the torso.

2.    The sacral chakra in the lower belly.

3.    The third chakra in the solar plexus.

4.    The heart chakra in the center of the chest.

5.    The throat chakra in the center of the throat.

6.    The third eye behind the center of the forehead.

7.    The crown chakra at the top of the head.

       In my recent practice, the chakra opening meditation served as a warm-up to the following meditation.

Journey to the Center

       Inhale light into the heart (or perhaps into the crown), then exhale down the body into the center of being.  Let your intuition guide you there.  For me, it feels like the center is somewhere in the belly and, at the same time, beyond the belly – as if the belly is a gateway to a larger space.

       This is a place of deep quiet, where the center of each being meets the center of all being – a place of profound rest and re-creation, repair and restoration, renewal and re-orientation.  I believe it's our origin and our destination - a wonderful place to hang out for a while.

       I call it home. 

The A's of Love

       A few weeks ago in this space, I speculated about a couple books written by David Richo.  I bought one:  How to be an Adult in Relationships.  I'm glad I did.  It's a delightful blend of east and west, psychology and spirituality.  In the first chapters, he discusses five keys to mindful loving:  Attention, Acceptance, Appreciation, Affection and Allowing.  He calls them "graces of love." (p. 28)

       For any of us to develop a healthy sense of self, we need to receive these five A's.  "Attention from others leads to self-respect.  Acceptance engenders a sense of being inherently a good person.  Appreciation generates a sense of self-worth.  Affection makes us feel lovable.  Allowing gives us the freedom to pursue our own deepest needs, values and wishes…That tender and ever so gingerly ventured bid to be loved is precisely what makes us humans so lovable"  (p. 27)

       For most of us as we develop, we receive the five A's imperfectly from parents.  To the degree that our childhood needs go unmet (and they always go unmet to some degree), we enter romantic relationships from a stance of hunger, looking to our partners for fulfillment.  Here are some quotes I found interesting. 

      "The perfect partner is the mirage we see after crossing the desert of insufficient love."   (p.25)

       "The recurrent fantasy, or search for, the 'perfect partner' is a strong signal from our psyche that we have work to do on ourselves.  For a healthy adult, there is no such thing as a perfect partner … A relationship cannot be expected to fulfill all our needs; it only shows them to us and makes a modest contribution to their fulfillment."  (p. 25)

       "Moderate is the key word for giving and for receiving the five A's.  A nonstop flow of them would be quite annoying, even to an infant.  Our fantasy mindset makes us long for just what we would soon flee.  Hence, what seems like an unsatisfactory compromise is actually the adult's best deal."  (p. 25-26)

       "In healthy intimate relationships we do not seek more than 25 percent of our nurturance from a partner."  (p. 22)

       "In full maturity we do not demand perfection at all, only notice reality.  We access our resources within.  A partner who cooperates in that is a gift but no longer a necessity.  The five A's begin as needs to be fulfilled by our parents, then become needs to be fulfilled by our partners, and someday become gifts we give to others and to the world."  (p.27) 

       Richo strikes a nice balance here.  We can't kiss our own foreheads.  We all need to receive the five A's from outside ourselves in order to internalize a healthy sense of self.  If, however, in our hunger for the A's, we romanticize love and attempt to get all our needs met by a single soul mate, we choke the flow of love we seek.  

       The psychological path to an adult self requires that we find nourishment in a number of different places and that we grow to become reliable sources of sustenance for ourselves and others.  Along the way, we discover that, when we give, we have.

       The spiritual path to full maturity requires that we consciously release ourselves into a larger flow of love – the heartbeat of the universe.  And then we know:  giving and receiving are one.

       I enjoy playing with words and am especially fond of plays on words.  For me, puns speak to the multidimensional nature of things.  Spiritual puns, in particular, resonate deeply.  During a recent meditation on Lent, this pun arrived.  Later it grew into verse.

Traveling Light

We are light beams

light beings

traveling

unfolding

moving through

the kaleidoscope -

rainbow cornucopias of

particles waving -

hues

uniquely balanced

and blended.

As traveling light

we do best

to travel light -

releasing clutter

fear

resentments

unworthiness stories

ego attachment

the confining

boxes of thought

holding us back

weighing us down.

Traveling light

we touch lightly.

We savor

and release

each moment

embracing movement

in stillness -

lithe and

transparent to

the ever-unfolding

parade

of hello

and goodbye.

We can't grasp

the unfolding.

We can't dam(n)

the flow.

It only hurts

to try -

only makes us

denser

and darker.

We are

  traveling light.

Let's

travel light.

Merciful Flowering

       Most of the people I work with (including the guy I counsel in the mirror) are tormented at times by an inner judge whose stance is always critical – and often quite harsh.  Last Thursday in group, as part of an ongoing effort I make to invite mercy into our inner lives, I shared this passage from The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo.

       "We do ourselves a great disservice by judging where we are in comparison to some final destination.  This is one of the pains of aspiring to become something:  the stage of development we are in is always seen against the imagined landscape of what we are striving for.  So where we are – though closer all the time – is never quite enough.

       The simple rose, at each moment of its slow blossoming, is as open as it can be.  The same is true of our lives.  In each stage of our unfolding, we are as stretched as possible.  For the human heart is quite slow to blossom, and is only seen as lacking when compared to the imagined lover or father or mother we'd like to become.

       It helps to see ourselves as flowers.  If a flower were to push itself to open faster, which it can't, it would tear.  Yet we humans can and often do push ourselves.  Often we tear in places no one can see.  When we push ourselves to unfold faster or more deeply than is natural, we thwart ourselves.  For nature takes time, and most of our problems of will stem from impatience."  (p. 251)

       Be gentle with your petals.  Flower mercifully.

Growing Pains

       Awhile back, in a catalog from Shambhala Publications, I found a book by David Richo titled: The Five Things We Cannot Change…and the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them.

       The five things are:

1.      Everything changes and ends.

2.    Things do not always go according to plan.

3.    Life is not always fair.

4.    Pain is a part of life.

5.    People are not loving and loyal all the time.

       Right next door in the catalog is another book by Richo:  How to be an Adult in Relationship.  This one, apparently, focuses, not so much on finding the ideal mate, but on developing our own capacity to love and to be more realistic in relationship.

        As I sit here imagining what these books are like, I suspect that Richo's writing echoes life's persistent invitation to grow – and to grow up. 

       I feel an old resistance to growing up.  I remember old growing pains.  I wonder about a connection between the resistance and the pain.

Body of Truth

       Richard Moss makes an interesting distinction between feelings and emotions.  Feelings, he says, are spontaneous reactions to our experience of life, registered in the body.  Emotions are generated by the thoughts and stories we tell ourselves, as we react to life.

       As I sit with this distinction, it's clear to me:  Feelings rarely lie.  Emotions routinely do.

       If I want to know how I truly feel about something, I need to listen to my body, which for me is easier said than done, since I tend to navigate with words, and my body rarely speaks English.  

       There are many ways to listen to the body.  Psychologist Eugene Gendlin wrote about a technique for accessing our deep truth in a book he titled, Focusing.  Lately, I've been experimenting again with a version of the focusing technique, in which I picture a person or a situation and gently ask within:  "How do I feel about this?"  or "What do I want to do about this?"  Sometimes, I receive the felt sense of an answer. I name that felt sense and, if it resonates as truth with the body, I feel a shift inside, a relaxing, a sigh of yes, usually somewhere in the area around my solar plexus.

       At other times, perhaps more often, there will be a stillness inside with no sense of an answer.  I attend to the stillness and gently offer multiple choice options:  Naming a few feelings or possible courses of action – going slowly, careful not to rush the body.  When I name something that's really true for me or right for me, I experience the shift, that felt sense of "yes".  

       I'm still a bit rusty with this.  It doesn't work perfectly all the time.  Sometimes, I suspect, I'm not ready to trust this knowing or this way of knowing.  Sometimes, the mind and old habits insist on running the show. 

       So, I'm invited to persist – patient with myself and a deepening friendship with my body.  I'm invited to see the easy flow this quiet listening brings to the navigation of life.  I'm invited to relax and to remember:

       The body tells the truth.

Odd Moments

Noticing lately

how I fill

odd moments

rehearsing

rehashing

regretting

pondering

planning

preparing.

Chatter

fills the

spaces -

old habits

of forgetting

who I am.

Sometimes

I

remember

I am

connected

 in love -

unique light

in a

universe

where

all is

light

and

all is

love

and all

unfolds

just right.

Odd moments

can

heal

refresh

renew

re-orient.

Odd moments

can be

God moments.

       A friend and colleague recently shared a parable she uses in her psychotherapy practice.  I pass it on for your enjoyment.

The River and the Lion

       After the great rains, the lion was faced with crossing the river that encircled him.  Swimming was not in his nature, but it was either cross or die.  The lion roared and charged the river, almost drowning before he retreated.  Many times he attacked the water, and each time he failed to cross.

       Exhausted, the lion lay down.  In his quietness, he heard the river say, "Never fight what isn't here."

       Cautiously, the lion looked up and asked, "What isn't here?"

       "Your enemy isn't here," answered the river.  "Just as you are a lion, I am merely a river."

       Now the lion sat very still and studied the ways of the river.  He watched and listened.  After a while, he walked to where a certain current brushed against the shore.  Stepping in, he floated to the other side.

Author unknown.