Keeping Heart Open

       In The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer urges us to keep our hearts open – always.  Most of us, he notes, instinctively close our hearts to protect ourselves from experiences we don't like.

       "But closing your heart does not really protect you from anything; it just cuts you off from your source of energy…  Defining what you need in order to stay open actually ends up limiting you…  As long as you are defining what you like and what you don't like, you will open and close…  You are allowing your mind to create triggers that open and close you.  Let go of that.  Dare to be different.  Enjoy all of life."  (pp 46 – 47)

       "If enjoying a full life means experiencing high energy, love and enthusiasm all the time, then don't ever close…  You can learn to stay open no matter what happens in this world…  Do not let anything that happens in life be important enough that you are willing to close your heart over it…  Remember, if you love life, nothing is worth closing over.  Nothing, ever, is worth closing your heart over."   (pp 44 – 47)

       Inspired by his passionate message, I've been experimenting lately with keeping my heart open, playing with various ways to do so and feeling amazed by the difference it's making in my life.  There is so much to say about how to stay open.  Right now I want to offer a couple thoughts about what's been working for me.

       Be mindful.  Notice when you close.  Notice physical tightness and emotional contraction.  Notice the stories of fear and shame and outrage that swirl in the mind.  Pay attention to the suffering brought on by closing down.  Whenever we close, we suffer.

       Breathe.  Soften the belly.  When something painful or difficult comes our way (from outside or inside), we can breathe, soften and hold ourselves in compassionate spaciousness.  We can interrupt old tendencies to tighten, close, protect and defend.  We can bring care to our suffering self.  In the spaciousness of self-compassion, suffering melts.  When we bring love to our discomfort, we naturally open – first to ourselves, then to all of life.

       Practice.  Practice.  Practice.  Just as closing down becomes automatic and habitual, so too we can develop habits of remaining soft and open.  It takes practice, lots of it – formal meditation practice and the moment-by-moment practices of staying present and embodied in everyday life.

       Staying alive – supple and free – is a conscious choice and a choice to be conscious.

       Enjoy!

Deep Listening

       I just picked up The Exquisite Risk:  Daring to Live an Authentic Life, by one of my favorite authors, Mark Nepo.  He talks about the connection between listening deeply and the authenticity of spirit that is so essential for our well being.  "We must meet the outer world with our inner world, or existence will crush us…  If we don't assume our space as living beings, the rest of life will fill us completely the way water fills a hole."  (p. 11)

       "When we can listen deeply, we are strengthened to feel that everything around us lives within us and that everything within us lives as part of the world.  When we experience both the circumference and center of the circle of life at once, we are then in the larger Self, the Universal Self, as Carl Jung describes it."   (p. 4)

       "But how do we listen?  It is so simple and so hard.  So obvious to begin and so elusive to maintain.  In this lies the vitality of deep listening.  To keep beginning.  Over and over.  To keep emptying and opening.  And simply to keep listening.  For to listen is to continually give up all expectation and to give our attention, completely and freshly, to what is before us, not really knowing what we will hear or what that will mean.  In the practice of our days, to listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear."  (p. 5) 

       "In truth, listening deeply and inwardly allows us to keep meeting the outer world with our inner being, and this mysteriously keeps us and the world vital.  Often, the nature of the dance cycles us from being self-centered to being other-centered to being balanced as an integral part in an integrated whole.  And when we're blessed to experience those balanced, integrated moments, it becomes clear that everything is relational.  Everything inside us and between us is circulatory – and ongoing exchange of what matters."  (p. 12)

       "In my life, I have known truth and beauty and peace to be ever-present companions that I often sit beside, bemoaning their absence."  (p. 15)

     Enjoy your listening Self.

Joining the Listener

        Last night, I bought a book, The Untethered Soul.  I'm considering it as a text for this fall's Connecting group.

       In his first chapter, Michael Singer discusses the incessant chatter of inner voices.  These voices take many viewpoints and assume many "personalities".  Which one, we wonder, is my true voice?  Which is the real me?

       Singer's answer is none of the above.  We are none of those talkers.  We are the one who listens. 

       In meditation this morning, I played with his idea.  My mind was filled with chatter – heavy drama happening.  I turned to the one who listens and asked:  "Are you enjoying all this?  Are you entertained by the drama going on inside me?"  I remembered how I was as a 7-year-old hunched over the radio on Sunday afternoons, raptly absorbed in episodes of "The Shadow".  I wondered if the listener were engaged in a similar way with my drama.

       The listener remained quiet – very quiet, gently quiet.  Yet, somehow, there was an answer – a felt sense.  No words.

       My translation of this felt sense was "duh-uh" – a bit like the expression teens use with parents who seem clueless in the face of the obvious, except there was no attitude in this "duh-uh".  I got the message.

       Shortly after, during an extended period of grace, I joined the listener.  We sat together, connected as one, in a delicious quiet.

       I'm amazed.  The listener is so patient, so unafraid.  What a wondrous companion – pure presence, loving and detached, with no judgment, no power in the traditional sense and no inclination to control or change anything.

       I think of God.

A Reminder

No matter where

you go

Or who

you know

Or what

you do

Or think

or feel

YOU CANNOT

NOT BELONG

Unexpected Awe

       I spent much of last week in the wilderness on the Canadian border, as part of a great group of guys who have been traveling boundary waters each summer for nearly 30 years.

       Mid-trip, I took a day of solo retreat on a high bluff overlooking a majestic expanse of big water and picturesque islands. 

       At one overlook, I sat for an hour watching a spider, who clung to pine needles and waved with the breeze as he advanced from various directions, trying in vain to poach a dead mosquito from what appeared to be another spider's web.  All this action took place maybe three feet in front of my face.  Still sitting in that delightful spot, I closed my eyes and tried to meditate – with no more success than the spider trying to navigate the wind and nab a dead mosquito.

       Letting go of formal practice, I sat for another two hours reading the second volume in a science fiction fantasy series.  A recurring theme in the book is that if you try too hard to grasp something, you won't discover its true nature.

       Butt-sore by now and tired of focusing on a book when surrounded by such beauty, I dug out my ipod (something I rarely use) and, over the next couple or three hours, found a number of nearby places to stand and lean and sway and gaze, while I listened to the music of Leonard Cohen.  For me, this was a very sweet, multi-sensory immersion in beauty.

       At one point, as I looked across the water toward a rocky cliff face I'd probably glanced at dozens of times, I was suddenly jolted by its beauty and the awe-filled sense that I was seeing it for the first time.  Greedily, I tried to grab the experience and hang on to the awe I felt.  I searched for words to describe it, so I could keep it with me.  And, of course, it vanished.  And, of course, even though I felt as if it had left me, I knew I was the one who'd left it.

       I re-remembered an old lesson – how grasping never leads to having – and resolved to do better next time.

       Next time arrived about a half-hour later, as I noticed puffs of clouds on the low horizon and was flooded once more with awe.  Again, it was like the first sight of an amazing beauty never before seen.  Again, I was graced.  And again, automatically, I grasped, vainly trying to control what can only be freely and spaciously received.  Awe gone, I tightened in defeat and then smiled, as humor and humble appreciation of my human condition replaced embarrassment over experience lost.

       I see how uncomfortable ego is with the grace of unexpected awe, which arrives and departs by its own rhythms, heedless of ego's efforts to predict it, call it, hold it or control it.

       "Soften," I say to myself.  "Soften to grace.  Practice softening every day, practice receiving, practice staying present in the body – soft belly, soft heart, soft eyes.  Soften, James.  Make ready.  Make room for unexpected awe."

       Maybe next time awe arrives, I'll have more space for it.

Oddly  One

If we follow

Our uniqueness,

We’re all

A bit weird.

Odd ducks

In God’s pond.

Oddly One.

Make Room for Messy

Messy life

Messy love

Messy me

Messy you

Forgive messy

Honor messy

Make room.

Make room

For love

Make room

For life

All messy

Awe worthy

Make room.

       Hearing that I might be looking for quotes to share with you, my friend Richard gave me a beautiful volume, Through God's Eyes, wonderfully organized and annotated by author, Phil Bolsta.  The book brims with over 500 pages of short passages by various spiritual teachers.  Here are three quotes (from pages 56-57) that resonate with me. 

Seeking Love

       "A person desperately searching for love is like a fish desperately searching for water."

                                                         Deepak Chopra

       "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."

                                                    A Course in Miracles

       "Love is a state of Being.  Your love is not outside; it is deep within you.  You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you."

                                                        Eckhart Tolle

       When it comes to love, finding is more fun than searching.  Enjoy!

Have Fun

       Dusty and Lefty, two fictional cowpokes on the NPR radio show A Prairie Home Companion, ended a recent sketch with these words: "If you can't enjoy misery, you've got no business being a cowboy." 

       Thursday, after a full day and long week, I went home to mow the lawn.  The day was hot and sticky, and I grumped through most of the mowing.  There was enjoyment to be had, but I missed it – blue sky, a bit of a breeze, flowers blooming, lush and varied shades of green all about, and even some exercise-induced endorphins as I urged the mower up and down our hilly yard. 

       I missed an opportunity for conscious choice on Thursday.  For example, I could have acknowledged my discomfort and grumpy mood, stayed there as long as I wanted, and then looked around for what else was present, for something that might feed my spirit.  I could have, and can, make room for both discomfort and enjoyment.

       No doubt, you've heard the expression: "Any job worth doing is worth doing well."  Right now, I'm more inclined to say:  "Any job worth doing is worth doing with joy."

       Have fun.

Survival Strategies

       For some time now, I've been listening to myself and others from a curiosity that inquires:  "What did you learn early in life about how to survive in the world?"  Those early rules had value.  They allowed us to belong in the family culture into which we were born.  And, as youngsters, in order to survive we had to belong.

       Some kids learn to stay small, to be nice and not threaten anyone.  Others learn to be safe by being tough and fighting for themselves.  Some learn to take care of others and to ignore their own needs – to give and not receive.  Others, responding to scarcity, conclude that giving is losing and that they need to take care of themselves, because no one else will.  Some discover invisibility as a way of being safe.  Others survive by expressing themselves loudly and often.  Many kids learn to mistrust themselves.  Others learn to place trust in external authority.  Still others learn to trust no one. 

       Because the rules have survival value, we learn them quickly and don't easily release them.  We attach to these early conclusions about ourselves, about life and about how to survive.  And, because they're so well practiced, our survival strategies soon become automatic, unconscious and as natural as breathing. 

        But they don't always feel good.  At some point, usually not too far down the road, the original strategy presents its limitations.  It stops serving us.  Typically, our first response is to shore up the old approach by doing more of the same.  Over time, as we begin to sense our imprisonment, we try breaking the rules in an attempt to free ourselves.  And that's when we feel the fear – a powerful, nameless dread and lack of permission, whose job is to hold us back and keep us in place.  At its deepest level, this fear we can't name is about survival.  And so, of course, we resist like crazy the very growth – and freedom to be – we so deeply desire.

       Fortunately, the story does not end there.  Over time, for each of us in our own way and at our own pace, the growth impulse invites us to stretch past the old rules.  We expand our tolerance for the experience of dread.  We don't run from it quite so fast.  We don't return quite so quickly to the "safe" harbor of the old strategies.  Eventually, we come to see the fear for the fiction it is.  We're scared, of course, but not really in danger.   We're just breaking old survival rules and growing into new territory.  

       In fits and starts, we make awkward and unsteady, graceful and inspired movements toward freedom, wholeness, and permission to be – movements that take us from survival toward vitality. 

       This is hard, heroic work – requiring faith, commitment, persistent mindfulness, and the regular exercise of spiritual muscle.  In my experience, it's an ever-unfolding journey – with no end in sight.