Awakening - Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

Discussion in 'Your Religion & Spiritual Center' started by CarolineJ., Jan 1, 2011.

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  1. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    June 3 - More Than Our Mistakes

    ~The buffalo fed on the buffalo grass that was fertilized by their own droppings. This grass had deep roots bound to the earth and was resistant to drought.~ - David Peat

    Try as we will, we cannot escape the making of mistakes. But fortunately, the everhumbling cycle of growing strong roots comes from eating what grows from our own shit, :eek: :D from digesting and processing our own humanity. Like the buffalo, we are nourished by what sprouts from our own broken trail. What we trample and leave behind fertilizes what will feed us. No one is exempt.

    A pipe falls on a dancer's leg and the dancer must reinvent herself, while the worker who dropped it is driven to volunteer with crippled veterans. A dear friend discovers small bulbous tumors and his tulips begin to speak, and when he dies, his nurse begins a garden. Things come apart and join sometimes faster than we can cope. But we evolve in spite of our limitations, and though we break and make mistakes, we are always mysteriously more than what is broken. Indeed, we somehow grow from the soil of our mistakes. And often in the process, the things we refuse to let go of are somehow forced from our grip.

    I have been broken and have failed so many times that my sense of identity has sprouted and peeled like an onion. But because of this, I have lived more than my share of lives and feel both young and old at once, with a sudden heart that cries just to meet the air. Now, on the other side of all I've suffered so far, everything, from the quick song of birds to the peace trapped inside a fresh brook's gurgle, is rare and uncertain. Now I want to stand naked before every wind; and though I'm still frightened I will break, I somehow know it's all a part - even the fright - of the rhythm of being alive.

    You see, no one ever told me that as snakes shed skin, as trees snap bark, the human heart peels, crying when forced open, singing when loved open. Now I understand that whatever keeps us from burning truth as food, whatever tricks the heart into thinking we can hide in the open, whatever makes us look everywhere but in the core, this is the smoke that drives us from what is living. And whatever keeps us coming back, coming up, whatever makes us build a home out of straw, out of heartache, out of nothing, whatever ignites us to see again for the very first time, this is the bluish flame that keeps the Earth grinding to the sun.
     
  2. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    June 4 - Holding Out

    There's an old story about a young man who's freezing on the side of the road in Alaska. He's hitching a ride to Miami. He's so cold he can barely hold up his handmade sign. After a long wait, a friendly trucker stops and says, "I'm not going to Miami, but I'm going as far as Fort Lauderdale.

    Dejectedly, the young man says, "Oh," and turns the ride down.

    This is a folk myth of our modern culture that warns us against our want for perfection. How often do we refuse our fate under the guise of holding out for the right thing? How often do we turn down the path presented like a gift because it's not exactly what we're dreaming of? How often do we hold out for the perfect partner, the perfect job, the perfect house? How often do we martyr ourselves to some imagined ideal?

    How often do we lose sight of what we're really after, insisting on all or nothing, when there is so much abundance wherever we are and so many opportunities that can help us on our way?
     
  3. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    June 5 - The Spaces In-Between

    ~There's no need to seek the truth - just put a stop to your opinions!~ - Seng-Ts'an

    Just as life is made up of day and night, and song is made up of music and silence, friendships, because they are of this world, are also made up of times of being in touch and spaces in-between. Being human, we sometimes fill these spaces with worry, or we imagine the silence is some form of punishment, or we internalize the time we are not in touch with a loved one as some unexpressed change of heart.

    Our minds work very hard to make something out of nothing. We can perceive silence as rejection in an instant, and then build a cold castle on that tiny imagined brick.

    The only release from the tensions we weave around nothing is to remain a creature of the heart. By giving voice to the river of feelings as they flow through and through, we can stay clear and open.

    In daily terms, we call this checking in with each other, though most of us reduce this to a grocery list: How are you today? Do you need any milk? Eggs? Juice? Toilet paper? Though we can help each other survive with such outer kindnesses, we help each other thrive when the checking in with each other comes from a list of inner kindnesses: How are you today? Do you need any affirmation? Clarity? Support? Understanding?

    When we ask these deeper questions directly, we wipe the mind clean of its misperceptions. Just as we must dust our belongings from time to time, we must wipe away what covers us when we are apart.
     
  4. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    June 6 - Two Monkeys Sleeping

    ~Tenderness does not choose its own uses. It goes out to everything equally.~ - Jane Hirshfield

    We wandered into a corner of the Central Park Zoo, and there, despite the dozens of tourists pointing and tapping the glass, two monkeys were squatting on a perch of stone. To our surprise, they were both in deep sleep, their dark heads bowed to each other, their small frames limp.

    What was amazing was that their small delicate hands were touching, their monkey fingers leaning into each other. It was clear that is was this small sustained touch that allowed them to sleep. As long as they were touching, they could let go.

    I envied their trust and simplicity. There was none of the human pretense at independence. They clearly needed each other to experience peace. One stirred but didn't wake, and the other, in sleep, kept their fingers touching. How deeply rewarding the life of touch. Each was drifting inwardly, dreaming whatever monkeys dream.

    They looked like ancient travelers praying inside a place of rest made possible because they dared to stay connected. It was one of the most tender and humbling moments I have ever seen. Two aging monkeys weaving fingertips, as if their touch alone kept them from oblivion.

    I pray for the courage to be as simple in asking for what I need to be.
     
  5. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    June 7 - We All Spill Soup

    ~Wanting to reform the world without discovering one's true self is like tryng to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.~ - The Hindu Sage Ramana Maharshi

    Everyone personalizes and projects. Personalizing is mistaking what happens in the world as always having to do with you. An extreme example would be when a child doesn't do her homework and learns the next day that a plane went down in Dallas; she somehow believes that she was responsible. A more common adult version of this, and less extreme, is when your partner come home sullen and moody, and you immediately believe it is your fault.

    Projecting is the reverse. It occurs when we place the things that happen in us onto the world around us. Often unknowingly, we attribute our fears and frustrations to others. Rather than accept my own anger, I see you as angry. A generational example would be that if I am afraid of dogs, I protect my children from dogs and, without asking how they feel, keep them away from dogs too. A subtler example of this is when someone is crying, and we say there is no need to be upset, because we are uncomfortable with all the emotion. Or when we keep asking the other person if they are okay, when it is we who are not.

    The truth is that no one can avoid personalizing or projecting. There are only those of us who are aware of it, and those of us who are not; only those of us who own it when it happens, and those of us who don't. But this difference is crucial. Not owning these things can end relationships. Owning them can deepen relationships.

    Humans have spilled soup for eternity, and generations have made excuses, saying, "It was the Earth. The Earth shifted," and generations have secretly thought, "He meant to do it."

    If you want to save the world, then when you spill the soup, simply say, "I'm sorry I spilled the soup."
     
  6. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    June 8 - To Rest Like a Tree

    ~Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind. To be happy, rest like a great tree in the midst of them all.~ - Buddha's Little Instruction Book

    It helps to remember this. Of course, it's hard to remember this when feeling blame, loss, or sorrow. But that's when we need this wisdom the most.

    Like everyone, I'd rather not experience the undercurrents of life, but the challenge is not to shun them, but to accept that over a lifetime we will have our share of them.

    Avoiding the difficult aspects of living only stunts our fullness. When we do this, we are like a tree that never fully opens to the sky. And dwelling on our difficulties only prevents them from going on their way. When we do this, we are like a great tree that nets the storm in its leaves.

    The storm by its nature wants to move on, and the tree's grace is that it has no hands. Our blessing and curse is to learn and relearn when to reach and hold, and when to put our hands in our pockets.
     
  7. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    June 9 - These Are the Signs

    ~Pain is often a sign that something has to change.~

    Our hearts and bodies often give us messages we fail to pay attention to. Ironically, we are all so aware of pain, can hardly ignore it, but we rarely hear what it has to say. It is true that we may need to withstand great pain, great heartache, great disappointment and loss in order to unfold into the rest of our lives. But our pain may also be showing us exactly where we need to change.

    If we view our bodies as bridges that carry us from our inner life to the outer world, then pain often gives us insight as to where the bridge is experiencing the most stress. Pain lets us know where we might crack, where our lives need to be reinfored and rested, in order for us to keep bringing our inner and outer lives together.

    During my struggle with cancer, I experienced a variety of deep and acute pains. I learned how to hold on and let go, learned how to endure - that is, let the pain go through without denying its hurt. But the most crucial thing I learned was to listen to the pain.

    I was being worn down by my chemo treatments, which were very aggressive. I was trying the best I knew how to live through as many treatments as I could manage. Everyone was coaching me to stick it out. "Certainly," I was told by those more afraid than I, "you want to swallow as much poison as you can tolerate, so the cancer will be stricken from your body completely." I remained committed to this approach.

    But after four months, I lost feeling in my fingers and toes. The chemo was causing nerve damage, and I had lost my reflexes. I struggled, unsure whether to continue or not. I felt that the cancer was gone, but the chemo was insurance. Endure more, if you can. Hold on.

    Within twenty-four hours, I was up in the night with the worst stomach attack I have ever experienced. There I was, pacing the living room floor at three in the morning, trying to endure the pain, asking God for a sign. The chemo had now ulcerated my esophagus. Another attack gripped me. I doubled over: God, give me a sign. What should I do? I want to live.

    Another attack. This happened three more times, when I suddenly realized - the pain was the sign. And its message was to stop. It was over. There I stood, hunched over with my windpipe bleeding and numbness in my hands and feet, and God was saying, "These are the signs. Do you want more? I can give you more."

    The next day I told my sweet doctor that I would not take that needle to my arm again. And it was over.
     
  8. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    June 10 - The Exercise of Gentleness

    ~I have no power of miracle other than the attainment of quiet happiness, I have no tact except the exercise of gentleness.~ - Oracle of Sumiyoshi

    This Shinto sage from the hills of Japan affirms what we all know in our hearts but seldom honor. I have worked hard to give up attaining a place ordained by others in the world, for this always leads me into noise, confusion, and gruffness. Often it is some grief or pain that halts me, jars me into remembering the exercise of gentleness that opens the quiet world.

    The truth is that, more than forgetting this, some unloved part of me whispers insistently that I can have both. Foolishly, I tend to listen, out of pity or pride, only to find out painfully, again and again, that is just doesn't work.

    In beautiful mystery, the extraordinary edge to everything is covered over with a current of speed and noise, the way beautiful stones are not quite seeable under the rush of the river's face. Only when we can still the river of the world and the river in our face do things become extraordinary and clear.
     
  9. June-

    June- New Member

    I love the poetry and truth of the quote.

    THe discussion resonates with me as well.
     
  10. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    I still am enjoying these readings. So much of it resonates with me and I have so much growth to accomplish. :) But at the same time I don't feel bad for where I am because life is about growing, changing and adapting.
     
  11. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    June 11 - Sharing the Climb

    ~Those who drink from the one water gaze at the same stars.~

    The climb was long. The day was hot. Tom had thought ahead and had frozen his water bottle, so his water would stay cold. But once he drank what had melted, he was left with a small chunk of ice rattling in a plastic bottle. That was when Bill, another climber, who hadn't thought ahead, asked Tom to share his ice. Bill had plenty of water, but it was hot from their climb in the sun.

    Tom was glad to share his ice, and tried to break the chunk up so he could pass ice chips into Bill's bottle. After a long frustration, it occurred to Tom to let Bill pour his hot water over the ice and to then let Bill drink form his bottle.

    This small moment changed Tom's life. He suddenly realized that if he let things in, he could share more easily than if he kept breaking things down in order to get them out.

    As he came back down into the world, he understood the three mysteries of sharing: First, if there's time, let the cold things thaw. But if there is no time, let the warm things in, and only when necessary, break the hard things remaining and pray like hell you can pass them.
     
  12. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    June 12 - To Count by Touching

    ~We need to count by touching, not by adding and subtracting.~

    When we count with our eyes, we stall the heart. For the eyes can see clearly what is broken without ever feeling the break, and the mind can calculate the loss without ever sewing up the wound. Without touching the life coming apart before us, we can race to rebuild before the wrecked dream ever hits the ground. While this makes us resilient and efficient as ants, it also keeps us from ever living in what we build.

    Alas, what makes us precise and efficient can also begin a life of neurosis: not touching what we see, not feeling what we know. This is how the mind skips the heart's step. How we forget that blood on the news is real, that the cry from the street is attached to something living.

    I remember waking after rib surgery to find a dear friend at the foot of my bed. I was elated to have arrived on the other side and called to her, but she was staring off. I knew in that instant she was already mourning me, and so she missed me coming alive. She was already preparing for life without me, and so, the deeper closeness awaiting us was never felt or worn. We think we protect ourselves by taking inventory and moving on, but we only spin our web tighter.

    Recently, another friend had a dream in which we were building a home with sturdy shelves for the things we loved. She tried to count the shelves, but couldn't keep the numbers in her head. She had to go over and count the shelves by touching each one. Mysteriously, as she did this, the shelves kept multiplying. Her touch made more shelves possible.

    Such a profound and simple lesson: to count with our hands brings us deeper than all counting. Then numbers give way to notes, and sums give way to song.
     
  13. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    June 13 - Against Our Will

    ~As an inlet cannot close itself to the sea that shapes it, the heart can only wear itself open.~

    One of the hardest blessings to accept about the heart is that in the image of life itself, it will not stop emerging through experience. No matter how we try to preserve or relive what has already happened, the heart will not stop being shaped.

    This is a magnificent key to health: that, despite our resistance to accept that what we've lost is behind us, despite our need at times to stitch our wounds closed by reliving them, and despite our heroic effort to preserve whatever is precious, despite all our attempts to stop the flow of life, the heart knows better. It knows that the only way to truly remember or stay whole is to take the best and worst into its tissue.

    Despite all our intentions not to be hurt again, the heart keeps us going by moving us ever forward into health. Though we walk around thinking we can direct it, our heart is endlessly shaped like the land, often against our will.
     
  14. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    June 14 - Swimming in Our Love

    ~I lose sight of us at times; the way that fish can't see the ocean; the price of lovers swimming in their love.~

    When we first fall in love, the powerful force of possibility grips us and pulls us along deeper and deeper into the days. When first shaping the bonds of love, we look at each other with incredible freshness and appreciate who is before us. We stare into our new lover's eyes the way we might an overwhelming painting in which we imagine the secrets of life have been stroked thickly.

    Inevitably, though, as we grow intimate, we begin to lose sight of each other, and there comes a day when we no longer see our loved one as others do. Now we see the inside of their face, up close. Now we swim in each other like a mysterious river in which we sometimes see ourselves, and sometimes soothe ourselves, and sometimes drink of each other.

    Eventually, we climb into the painting we once stared at with our pounding heart, and from inside the painting, we can forget there ever was such a painting. This is how we can take each other for granted. This is how we can imagine that the magic is gone.

    But, as the reward for being drawn to the sea is to swim with the waves, the reward for being drawn into the depth of another is to feel each other rather than to see each other. This is the paradox of intimacy. On the way, we see what we dream of feeling, but once there, we feel from the inside what we can no longer readily see.
     
  15. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    June 15 - Staying Porous

    ~Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.~ - Rainer Maria Rilke

    I am jogging in the city on a hot summer day, and my legs are in a rhythm, carrying me without much guidance through small crowds, past roses and bus stops.

    I begin to think about my struggle not to give myself away. When growing up, I had to check myself at the door like a coat in order to relate to others. Often, I had to pretend to be less than I was in order to be loved.

    For years, I would shelve my light to take care of others. Like a fireman, I'd drop whatever I was doing to rush to the rescue. For so long, the choice seemed only to stay open and lose myself or to close up and cut others off. But today, while running freely through the streets, close to others but not entangled, I realize I am learning after many attempts that I can stay close and porous, caring and present, without holding everyone's anxiety and without going underground. At least I can try.

    I am dripping and breathing like a small horse. It is clouding over. It begins to rain slightly. I move through the beautiful people and ask for a hot dog with mustard and sauerkraut. As I chew this simple food, rain from the sky meets rain from my body, and in the rain, sweating, the tang of sauerkraut on my lip, I feel joy. Others shuffle by. Today, there is no room for worthlessness.
     
  16. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    June 16 - The Step to Others

    ~All the promises we make from the cradle to the grave, when all I want is you.~ - Bruce Springsteen

    We imagine that so many conditions are prerequisite to finding love, when all that is required is that, like a man stepping from a boat to a dock, we step over the small gap that exists between us. Often there is nothing to prepare for, nothing to set up in advance - just to step over what separates us and to land in what is before us.

    But, giving in to our fears, we widen the gap by creating conditions that must be filled before stepping toward another. This is how we invest in the building of credentials and lifestyles and bank accounts that are often distractions from the simple and essentiial need to be held. In this way, we move up and down and around, but seldom strainght into what will give us love.

    To know love we must do more than understand, we must land and enter. Before we step, the gap to others seems like a canyon. But stepping anyway, the separations we move through look so much smaller once crossed. Often the thing feared, once crossed, turns out to be an unexpected bridge from which we can see who we were and who we are becoming.
     
  17. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    June 17 - Spirit and Psychology

    ~Even the clearest water seems opaque at great depth.~ - Joel Agee

    Each of us is like a great, untamed sea, obedient to deeper currents that are seldom visible. Knowing this gives us three insights worth keeping in our awareness. First, we must consider that the deepest patch of ocean is as clear as its surface wave, though it remains unseeable to the human eye that bobs above it. Second, how far we can see into the deep depends on the calmness or turbulence of the surface. And third, just as the depth and surface of the sea are inseparable, so too are the spirit and psychology of each human being.

    It is our deep-sounding, untamed currents that cause us to rise and swell, dip and crash. Yet that base of spirit remains unaffected by the storms that churn up the surface. It obeys a deeper order. Still, we as being living in the world are always subject to both: the depth and the surface, our spirit and our psychology. Though we can never see all the way to bottom, on clear days - when our psychology is calm - we can know the depth that carries us. When free of turbulence and anxiety, we can know the ocean of God that swells within.

    So, in love, in relationship, in the brief clarity that living gives rise to, I see all the way through you, as far as my sight can go, and am forever changed. Then the winds come from the east, and suddenly you're all churned up, your depth seems blocked, and I wonder who you are. This happens in the course of knowing one's self as well. It is unavoidable. Watch any patch of sea. It is never completely still. Even when calm, it reflects everything as it spreads and never vanishes. So, too, our feelings, which keep changing in the light.

    The degree to which we are clear and seeable depends on how calm we are and how calm the day. But we are never cut off from our spirit, any more than the surface wave is cut off from the ocean floor. Fear of living often comes when we place all our energy into the moment of the wave, into the turbulent moment of our psychology.

    If revelation is the brief experience of seeing through the surface, into ourselves or others, then wisdom is the recall of that seeing when the waters are murky.
     
  18. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    June 18 - Surfacing Through

    ~This night will pass...
    Then we have work to do...
    Everything has to do
    with loving and not loving....~ - Rumi

    Very often, when hurt or depressed or anxious, we encounter powerful feelings like ghosts without a body, trying to pour themselves into us, trying to dominate our lives. They seem to gather in the cave of our pain, stoking our wounds like stones in a fire that keeps them warm.

    After years of struggling to let my painful feelings out, I'm learning that the other side of this, which is just as essential to my well-being, is not to let the hurt or depresssion or anxiety set up camp inside me.

    I must confess it has taken me all this way to fully understand that the purpose of surfacing these powerful feelings is to continually empty my heart and mind of its sediment, so that new life can make its way into me.

    There are dangers to not letting such feelings out. But once felt, there are dangers as well to not letting such feelings move on through. For just as our lungs must stay clear for the next mouthful of air, our heart must stay unobstructed for the next feeling we encounter.

    There is no freedom until we dance the ghosts from the chambers of our wounds, until we pile our wounds like stones at the mouth of our own quarries.
     
  19. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    June 19 - A Wider Horizon

    ~The eyes experience less stress when they can look upon a wider horizon.~ - R. D. Chin

    Whether it be physics or architecture or Eastern forms of meditation or Western forms of prayer, every field of inquiry affirms the fact that the wider our view, the less isolated we are. The more connected we stay to everything larger than us, the less turbulent our time on Earth.

    This is why it helps to share our journey with others, because in so doing we become a chorus of voices, and the stress of going solo lessens once we discover that we are not alone.

    As light when confined turns to heat, the stuff of our lives when confined ignites brush fires out of our isolation. I felt the difference dramatically when joining a wellness group during my cancer experience. Alone, I was feeling the heat of dying. But once voicing my pain in a circle of others on the same path, my heart relaxed back into the light of living.

    So when you see someone stumbling forward with a stone in their heart, simply go near them and listen. When the pains of living feel sharp, open up your attention and give it freely, and the connections will even out the sharpness. When things feel heavy, reach out to whomever is near and distribute the weight.
     
  20. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    June 20 - The Air after Pain

    ~Live for the air after pain and there will be no reason to run.~

    Hippocrates said that pleasure is the absence of pain. Anyone who has ever suffered knows this is a deep truth. When I fell into the gauntlet of tests that awaited after the pronouncement that I had cancer, I was terrified of being in pain. I introduced myself to every physician and nurse as Mark- put me out -Nepo. But with every procedure, there was some medical reason why I had to be awake. I came to realize that there was nowhere to run.

    Once I accepted this, which took some time, I understood that what was most terrifying about my pain was the prospect that it would never end, that life would somehow freeze in whatever moment of discomfort I came upon. The terror gained its power from not being able to imagine life beyond the pain.

    The breakthrough moment for me came the day I had to have yet another bone marrow sampling. For some reason, these were the worst for me. But with the appearance that day of some deeper grace, I suddenly saw it differently. I recognized that this very uncomfortable procedure lasted at most forty to fifty seconds and I was arranging my entire life and being in anticipation and avoidance of those fifty seconds.

    For the first time I realized I had a choice. The pain of those seconds would be the same, but I could ground myself, including my fear, in the very real fact that my life would resume after those fifty seconds. There would be lift in the air, once again, after the pain. For the first time, I felt in my soul that I was larger than my pain. This empowered me.

    So many times, in our despair, we see our pain as something that will never end. In fact, this often defines our moments of despair: when we believe that our pain contains the rest of us. In contrast, there is this sense of peace to work toward: the belief that our life contains our pain.
     

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