Running this morning, I came upon a deer on my path. I slowed to a walk and eventually stopped as he did. He was not afraid of me. In that moment, I realized that in sensing his fearlessness, my fear rose. The beginning of so many relationships goes this way, whether it is an intimate relationship, a career development where we are receiving a "go ahead," a "yes" to a new artistic endeavor, or a sudden liberating insight about ourselves. When we finally meet someone who is not afraid to be there with us, when the new path is the very thing we have wanted, there is a tremble that occurs that can either cause us to push away or invites us to draw out the courage to keep moving closer. Sometimes we, knowingly or unknowingly, sabotage ourselves because that is the best we can do in that moment. That place needs to be respected, too, out of its goodness of self-protection. Though, eventually, there comes a time when we find the ground underneath us and though we may be trembling, we know it is solid and we tenderly take another step toward the deer that decided to bravely share the path with us. This morning, I saw that deer, felt my reaction, saw how it relates to other places in my life and I asked myself, so how do I find that place again? How do I tap into that inner-knowing that allows me to feel shaky while trusting the solid ground and continuing to move in this new direction? What allows me to not build up armor in self-protection, which has the allusion of confidence, or recoil into a small shell that limits what I am truly capable of? What enables all of us to be real, tender, vulnerable, and courageous?
I close my eyes and ask the question again. Only one word emerges, "love" and, at first, I don't know why. So I close my eyes again and stay with the feeling of fear and the word "love." A second sense emerges that knows that as long as I keep staying present with each new challenge and not meet it with strength, but with softness, with honesty, with true presence to the person, the group, the subject and be willing to not know how he/she, they or it will respond, I can do no wrong. That is true strength. I don't know how my classes will go, how my clients will receive me, how a relationship will evolve, how my parenting will be, but I trust that if I come from love in each moment, I will be safe and where I need to be. There is no danger because no one or thing can take love from me. When I live from that place, coming from love means respecting all of life by listening and speaking with care, by knowing when I am receiving and being in touch with gratefulness, by recognizing moments of judgment and asking myself what it is really about, by being present to people, places and experiences, and by remembering again and again what really matters. If I stay close to these values, then I am coming from love. Nothing bad can come from that place. There is an open-heartedness to it. It is as if I could say, "here is my exposed heart; I trust that even if death should come, what is in my heart cannot be touched." What amazing freedom there is in that. Imagine if we could all practice trusting in that way. It would be a practice though, not something to attain. I will keep practicing and the next time the deer, the event, the person meets me with a "yes," I hope I can meet it on an equally resounding affirmative note.
Reflections on striving to live with greater presence and ease, more compassion and kindness, and how to tap into that renewable spring of wonder and inspiration.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Friday, October 25, 2013
Wanting What You Can't Have
This month, I did something I
never did before. I decided I wanted to eat better and be less dependent on
coffee so I went on a detox. Don’t worry, this blog post is not about dieting.
The most difficult part was letting go of my daily intake of something yummy
that involved chocolate. Well, on one of the 21 days, I had one of those
experiences that strikes you the way the low lying sun hits your eyes suddenly
turning a street corner on an October morning. I was walking to the subway
after a long day and passed a storefront that had a delicious, sweet smell
wafting from its open door. In that tempting moment, I took in the aroma and
then said something that surprised even me. I said, “what if I could enjoy the
smell as much as I would enjoy taking a bite of the actual food; can’t the
smell be filling and enough in and of itself?” Now before you roll your eyes
and click to close this page, I ask that you stick with me the way I stuck with
the diet for 21 days.
Desire. It emerges over all kinds
of things and some of its appearances are more crazy-making than others. This
past week, it emerged for me in a mild form when I visited my favorite place in
Maine. I got there and enjoyed it so much that I was left wanting to move
there. I wanted it, more of it. I wanted to “have” it, as if it could fill
something in me. The hardest desire for me has been over a person. Have you
ever wanted a person that you could not have? It could happen for all kinds of
reasons. The person might not be available. Though you connect on many levels,
the person might ultimately not be the right one for you. The person might be
your husband/wife who is temporarily or seemingly permanently unavailable. The
person might be a friend or family member who is far away. In whatever form,
when it happens, it leaves you deeply longing. It could even go on painfully
for years. For those of you who have ever been here, you know what a hard place
it is. For those of you who haven’t, I don’t wish it upon you. Yet, that
particular, unfulfilled longing holds open a door of profound insight when
we’re willing to walk through. There is no end to desire. But, in the wanting,
there is something essentially beautiful.
I remember saying, in
exasperation, about the person I was longing for, “but, I can’t have you!” It
was a painful, constant refrain that had to instantly call forth a bigger
question, “what is it to ‘have’ something at all?” When we eat things, we want
to “have” them. That is why we have the expression, “I just wanted to eat him
(or her or it) up.” But, I can savor an experience without “eating it” or “having it.” When I eat a pint of Hagen
Daz chocolate ice cream, I am not full at the end. In some way, as much as I
enjoyed it, I never get the experience of actually having “had” it. (Now, don’t
get me wrong, I’d still do it.) We don’t ever own anything anyway, even if we
eat it! It comes through us and the craving begins again. If it is an object we
can buy, we think we have it, but we eventually come to our life’s end and we
don’t get to take the thing with us. Money is another big one, causing us to
think if we would just have more, we’d be okay. And sometimes it’s power or
status where we can stumble into the quicksand. So, what do we do with an
insatiable desire that arises again and again? How can we work with this human
experience of wanting so that it doesn’t keep us from missing our life, what we
already have, what is right here? Certainly, it’s not about getting rid of it.
The answer I’m learning over and over again is to stay with the actual
experience. It is what I write about in every blog post. It is what I keep
returning to.
What does longing feel like? Not
the thoughts that come with the longing, but the actual feeling of longing. Can
I feel the constriction in my chest, as if rubber bands were getting tighter
across my sternum, drawing the two side of my chest together? Can I feel the
ache as it pulls on my heart as if connected from a rope to something outside
of me? Can I experience the sensation and not add on the thoughts and judgments
about it? If we didn’t have longing, we would never be happy because we
wouldn’t know the joy of receiving. Take it even further and we can see that we
can’t really “have” a person, a food, a landscape, anything that we desire. All
we really have is our experience. The experiences of longing, receiving,
wanting, enjoying, fearing, loving, struggling are amazing in and of
themselves. No one is greater than another.
It seems like a tall task to ask
of myself to be able to view things with such equanimity. But, I have realized
that it is a practice, like any other. I can practice with the simple
things first like savoring food when I eat it, with enjoying my morning shower
and the fact that water flows from my faucets simply by the turn of a knob,
when I take in the beauty of someone who smiles at me, or the fact that my
train was on time. When I savor these daily moments, I am strengthening my
ability to stay present to the bigger, more challenging ones, the ones that
pull at my heart, as if it is bound to be taken right from my body. This does
not mean I won’t ever complain or cry or get upset. Of course I will, but with
a greater understanding.
If that is not enough, there is
even more I learned from staying in that painful process of longing for someone
I could not have. The reason the desire existed was a good one. I had an
experience of the person that made me feel alive, inspired, happy. Of course I
wanted more! The gift comes in recognizing that because I know what that
experience feels like means that I can recall the good feelings at any moment.
Essentially, I already “have” it. I have the actual thing I have been longing
for inside myself and it doesn’t get any more real than that. This does not
mean I stop trying to have the physical experience, the actual thing or person,
but I can rest and even enjoy the process and not wait until I “have” it.
Eventually, we usually do get the thing or person or its equivalent in some
form, though it may not be what/who we expected. In those moments of finally
receiving what we want, if we have been practicing staying with our experience,
we can truly soak in the fact that we are now receiving. We know how special it
is because we know how to stay present. The longing and the desire are what
help us to truly “have” in a more lasting way. This is genuine happiness.
On my drive to Maine, after 25
days of not having dessert, I let myself enjoy a chocolate ice cream cone. I sat
down and ate it and savored it in a whole new way. It was even more delicious than I had remembered. I now know
that when I do get to have the thing I wanted, if I had let myself long for
it and not push the difficulty away, the person or thing can actually fill me,
not in the way I thought it would, but in ways I could not have known possible.
The feeling comes from within, not from an external source, and comes out in
deep gratitude and lasting appreciation.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
The Fall, A Monk, and Fear
The
acorns keep hitting my car as I drive, startling me or making me wince at, what
sounds like, possible damage. The leaves now cover the trails I run on, making
the rocks invisible to my feet finding their balance. The slightest chill in
the air is already making its way right to my bones, like an e-z pass allows
cars to slip right through a toll. Yet, the October sunsets have lit the skies
ablaze in glorious streaks of pink and orange. Yellows, greens and reds are
falling through the spaces in front and around me. As I walk the trails, the
smell of crumpled leaves permeates the air, accompanied by that particular
sound each footfall makes upon the fallen beauties. Migrating Starlings take
over a section of the forest stopping me in my running tracks. Hundreds and
hundreds of birds swooping from trees to the forest floor and back again, a
tornado of wings flashing through the sky in improvised cannons. I stand in awe
as other runners and bikers pass me by. This is my fall life outside the
city.
In the
city, there is a brisk buzz of activity on the sidewalks, in the parks, cafes,
restaurants and stores. The presence of the NYU students by my office building
is thick with an energy of youthful academic and social busyness. I arrive in
the city and step into pace with another world, realizing that I can apply the
same walk there as I do in the woods. I look up at the architecture of the
building or the shapes of the trees that have so gracefully grown, surrounded
by concrete. They, too, are changing. I soak in the ivy that hugs the
brownstones, happy for the vertical, green blanket for as long as it can last.
As I leave my office building at night and step into the spacious street after
having been in a small office for hours, I first savor the size of everything
around me and the pleasant feeling of being a small part of something very big.
It feels like freedom. I then look up at the building ahead of me to see the
symmetry of two lamps lit in side-by-side windows in the very top floor. It
must be that their order, amidst so many competing visuals, strikes a note of
serenity in me. The warmth of those lamps feels like a secret. I wonder who
else takes comfort in them or if the owners have any idea that the lamps are so
appreciated by some stranger down below. I take in a deep breath of the now
cooler air and head to the train to take me home feeling tired and full. I pull
my jean jacket tighter across me, enjoying that fall feeling of a chill in the
air and knowing, soon, I will look more like the Michelin Man in my coat. I
walk from the subway to Penn Station and pass the homeless, who have moved and
are now sitting on the grating that blows warm air. I am aware of the greater difficulty
the falling temperatures will bring to them. This is my fall life in the city.
Along
with these observations of the fall, a story from my past as an NYU student
emerged from my bank of memories this week. It could be the way the fall brings
out my dread of the cold and limited light, but whatever the reason, it arrived
for me to share. It is a story that a captivating professor shared in an
Eastern religious studies class I took at NYU one fall, years ago. He described
a meeting he had with a monk who was visiting NYC. It was the dead of winter.
The monk arrived at his office dressed only in his sleeveless robes and
sandals. As the monk sat down, a drop of sweat slid down his brow. A simple
story, but I never forgot it.
What if
we could all discover that immense power of our minds and use it well? Being mindful of our minds, we can
change how we are physically and emotionally. To do it, though, requires an
ability to stay with our experience. The more we do it, the easier it gets.
This week, I was at a loss as to what I could write about next. How do you
follow a blog post about mortality? I was stuck, inspiration-less. And when I
asked “why,” I sensed fear. One part of my life where I was feeling anxious
took over, making me contract into a small self that didn’t have permission to
tap into those places of wonder and joy. So I stayed with that sense of fear
and contraction, just letting it be and could then write. That is the training.
I’m guessing the monk in Professor Carse’s office trained himself not only to
feel when he contracts against something, but then actually opens to it.
What if I
walked into the cold and opened like a Peony to sunlight or Night Blooming
Jasmine to the moon? It wouldn’t make it any more cold, but it might make my experience
more alive, more full, more present. And, maybe that fullness will actually
produce warmth; okay not sweat exactly, but warmth. Why not? Throughout the
day, we confront fear. Fear is at the bottom of everything. Rather than just
experiencing what is happening and tending to that current moment experience,
it is deeply and protectively rooted in us to tense up against it. Fear comes
up in simple interactions or the looking away from another to avoid an
interaction. It comes with any moment that produces a strong unwanted feeling
of boredom, pain, anxiety, restlessness, loneliness, despair. It even comes
with joy in anticipation of it ending. If we get to the bottom of each
difficult experience, we can surely find our friend, fear. And, friends we should
certainly be. The training begins here.
If we
make fear a friend, we know how to treat her. We can listen and offer support.
We can stay and be fearful, knowing it won’t kill us. We can say, “I’m fearful
right now that I will be rejected. I’m fearful that I won’t know what to say.
I’m fearful that I won’t be received. I’m fearful that I won’t get what I need.
Or, ultimately, I am fearful that I will die.” Whatever it is, if we stay there
and not add on self-judgments or blame someone or something outside ourselves,
the feeling can live and change on its own time, like a wave builds and
dissolves. We don’t have to push others away or defend ourselves or beat
ourselves up. Our concentrated ability to be aware of what we think, feel and
do and to stay with it is a gift.
Of
course, it doesn’t always feel so straightforward. Last Sunday night, I was
leading the weekly meditation group and realized that the fruits of my practice
don’t necessarily come in the actual moment of practice. In fact, most of the
time they don’t. The fruits make themselves known later, in the moments of
recognizing what I am feeling and not running from what I see. Even if I
do react too quickly, I am soon to realize it and take a next slower step with less self-recrimination. When
I sometimes wonder why I commit myself to sitting every Sunday night or at other times during the week, I can remember the
sleeveless monk walking the city streets in winter and be inspired. For others,
it may be a different practice, art, work or spiritual path, that reminds us of
what we are capable of and how to stay present in this life that is always full
and waiting for us to receive it. In the city or in the woods, I'll step into the fall today and invite myself to keep noticing. Maybe someday I can walk the city streets, sleeveless in winter, and still be warm.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Profound Beauty
Though
this entry is couched in a very personal story, I hope it resonates in a more
universal way. And, though this one won't make you laugh, I write it with much joy, as I hope you can hear. It is actually from this deeper reflecting that I am able to laugh as much as I do...
For
whatever reason, when we hit that troubled age in childhood, where our physical
awkwardness strikes, like many kids, I began to look in the mirror and struggle
with the image looking back at me. A voice took over at that time which,
unfortunately, did not pass when it should have. Instead of saying “you’re
ugly” and then eventually saying, “huh, I’m not so bad looking,” only the first
expression echoed. Then, one day,
in my late 20’s I was looking at childhood pictures and started to cry as I saw
the beautiful girl I was and could never appreciate. I asked myself, “what was
I thinking? What was I seeing?” I then felt a deep loss. What a shame it was to
have experienced myself that way for so long, that my perception was so off
kilter and how, on some level, it kept me from being all I could be. But, with
that awakening, there was healing and a new path. At the risk of sounding
cliché, over the years, I have come to truly appreciate who I am, from the
inside out. I now look in the mirror at night and actually like what I see. I
often smile at the reflection staring back at me in appreciation and gratitude.
What a difference. But, what is it I am really seeing that I didn’t see before?
The other
day, I was at work washing my hands for the hundredth time between clients when
I looked in the mirror and had one of those reoccurring moments of recognizing
that my body, as much as I like it now, is going to keep changing and not in
the ways I necessarily want it to. My skin is going to wrinkle and increasingly
show the marks of age. My muscles won’t be so tight or look so toned. At some
point soon, I will be one of the middle aged women walking down the street. At
another point further off, if I am so blessed, I will be the older woman
walking down the street. With those realizations comes the very human fear of
becoming invisible, unrecognized, insignificant, of fading away (And, this
fading away is our ultimate fear, isn’t it?). Then comes the fight, a digging
in of my heels and a voice in me that says, “no, I don’t want that!” But, as
soon as that voice let itself be heard, another wiser voice gently asked again,
“Jean, what is beauty? How does it show in a person? Can what I see so easily
now in myself truly disappear?”
There is
a higher place within that lives far above the concerns of appearance and age,
and ultimately of the fears of our mortality. Remembering this calms me like a
gentle wave washing the sand from my feet at the edge of the shore. That voice
tenderly reminds me to concern myself with growing in presence, kindness,
compassion, wonder. There my true beauty lies and reveals itself. This
radiating presence can’t be ignored or overlooked. This place knows of
something greater; it recognizes my part connected to a much larger place in
the world that goes way beyond this particular life. This place isn’t concerned
with what I look like or do, but with a certain aliveness, what I emanate and how I relate to
myself, to other people, animals and things. It is a rich existence. It is what
truly matters to me and why the practices of mindfulness, beyond the word’s
current trendy use, are at the center of my life. I can only fade away if I resign my gift of taking in this life with gratitude and joy and stop seeing the beauty that is everywhere. I share the questions with you…what is important to you, knowing you are changing every day? In what ways
can you see yourself in a greater form, one that doesn’t fall apart at the
thought of this unstoppable change? And, if the thoughts produce fear or
discomfort, is there a way to find tenderness, compassion and love in the
search for yourself and for what matters to you? Something no one else and no
physical body can take away. It is a serenely powerful place.
So when
these fears of aging arise in me again, as they will surely do, I can remember
this deeper place of understanding and breathe easily again, at whatever age I
find myself. And for right now, when I remember to tap into it, I will savor my
current state. I will enjoy my limber and agile body, my skin, my ability to
run and feel sexy, my ability to hold too much in my head at once and respond
with clarity. I can also experience the changes as they gradually come along
with that ever-growing sparkle that youth can’t possibly know. And, when it is
time to let go of my spot on earth to make room for another, I’ll be taking
that inner beauty with me as I take my last breath. And, my body, in all its
outer beauty, can rest after all the tremendous joy it gave me.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Opening The Door: Inspiration Lost and Gained
On a
recent evening, as I stepped out into the night to walk my dog, I felt some
unwanted feeling in me. It was as if an unexpected visitor arrived, a visitor
who had nowhere else to go and the simple fact of her presence gave me no
option but to invite her in. So, I opened the door further to make way and, as
I did, I felt a wave wash over me, a wave devoid of inspiration. I stood there
chilled by the sudden coolness of the fall evening and asked what this
temporary lack of aliveness was about. Quickly, a list unrolled, like a scroll
with all of the reasons why this deadened sense was before me. The way in old
cartoons, there would be a god-like character with a scroll of names that
inevitably didn’t have the one sought for. And then, the list dropped and it
came to me, a moment of clarity. The way sunlight finds its way through tree branches
onto a creek and in just one spot illuminates the way to the rocks on the
bottom. A patch of clarity surrounded by, what appears to be, darkness all
around. I realized that to be inspired, I needed to stop and slow down, feel
this absence, and just “be” again. To take in the simple. To walk slowly. To
listen without doing. To see without trying to gain. To simply be.
We can’t
be inspired all of the time. The word and the feeling couldn’t exist if we
were! Isn’t that great to know? It’s a relief, as if I can say, “oh good, I can
be uninspired right now and not worry about it.” Sometimes it shows itself in
the slightest of forms. It might wear a mask of boredom, lethargy, drudgery. In
those moments, I can remember that nothing is wrong, rather, there is a
generous opening that makes itself continually available if I do the first
step. The first step is to acknowledge and allow the need for inspiration, that
particular longing, with kindness. I can literally say, “oh, this is what it
feels like to be uninspired.” From here, I can recognize that the world is not
against me in this feeling. It is not being done to me. In fact, I can remember
to soften to the world and let it take me in, just as I am, so that I can take
it in, in all it’s beauty, as it is. There is, actually, benevolence here, a
force that wants me to do well, that wants us all to thrive. We all want to
survive, flourish, and be happy, and we all depend on each other and the earth
we’re a part of, whether we recognize it or not. When I’m on the subway,
walking down a busy street, or simply passing by one person, I can take in the
person/people with a soft approach, defenses down, not trying to understand or
gain or give or fix or do.
Physically, I can walk with a more gentle step on the earth, my gait not
pounding down. I can see the blue sky or the way the clouds form and shift. I
can hear the sound the dried leaves make as they land from their descent. Life
becomes easier, gentler and bigger. Then, from this place, I can unlock the door
and find inspiration standing there to be invited in again.
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