Don't Miss the View

Don't miss the view. 

I feel like this every moment I am at the beautiful Oregon Coast, one of my favorite places in the world. I was lucky to be there over the holiday break with my family, watching waves and enjoy brisk days in front on a cozy fire.

Don't miss the view. What view am I missing today? What am I not seeing, not noticing, not understanding?

In Indian mysticism, they use the process of negation to discover truth, to see the view.  For example:

What is truth?
It is not my hand.

What is truth?
It is not my breath.

What is truth?
It is not this computer.

The process of negation leads one to de-attach from all the things we unknowingly see as "true" or important. The process leads one to a feeling of peace, settling, and the experience of what is rather than attachment to trying to control what is always moving and changing, becoming and dying.

Yet in that same moment, as we experience flashes of the real, we are more deeply attuned to all that is changing around us, because we have found the right viewpoint.  And this leads to the experience of deep, deep love for all of life; for life in all its complexity. Compassion.

2013 feels like a year of discovery, of searching, of finding that right view.

"Our happiness and the happiness of those around us depend on our degree of Right View. Touching reality deeply -- knowing what is going on inside and outside of ourselves -- is the way to liberate ourselves from the suffering that is caused by wrong perceptions. Right View is not an ideology, a system, or even a path. It is the insight we have into the reality of life, a living insight that fills us with understanding, peace, and love."

~Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, page 51

What does it feel like for you?

Finding the Inner Glow of Winter

Nature shows us that Winter is a time of stillness and rest. Even with all the hustle we (now) associate with the holiday season, stillness is very close and very accessible to us, if we take a moment to look and feel for it.

It is the true richness of the season.

Today we are 10 days from Winter Solstice, the darkest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. It is a time of lighting lights, on trees and house and menorahs. We smile and greet others warmly. We give gifts and hope that they are what the other person wanted, fret over what the perfect gift might be.

Isn't it amazing that out of this time of barren branches, cold winds, and falling rain we find all this warmth emanating from inside? Maybe it's because we are stripped back to ourselves more in Winter, more able to find the glow within.

I've put a simple practice at the end of the post to guide you into what I'm talking about. Enjoy and let me know how it goes!

May your holidays be filled with your own inner glow.

Simple Stillness Practice 

Set a timer for 5 minutes and sit down in a comfortable chair. 

Take 3 deep breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth (pursed lips can aid in this), allowing your body to settle down.  

Now imagine falling snow, the quiet of a Winter's night.  Allow that quiet to surround you, as if you were standing alone in a field of falling snow. 

Let your body breathe deeply if that is natural, and also allow the breath to become more shallow as you relax. (We breathe deeply to bring on relaxation, but once relaxed the breath naturally becomes quite shallow.)    

Continue to breathe normally and simply connect to that experience of stillness. Be in that field, feel the quiet and stillness of Winter. 

Taking Care, Being Real, Loving True

The title(s) of this post is an aspiration for me, these are the qualities and experiences I am always reaching for in life.  How can I love better, reach deeper and higher, be more true.  Do you feel the same way?

As I've written here before (and apologies for the hiatus, it was a busy, incredible summer), I found some of my initial foundation for inspiration on the yoga mat.  But maybe I should pause here for a moment and talk about this notion of "foundation for inspiration".

It's hard to be inspired when you're scared.  It's impossible to be inspired when you are not open and looking in some way.  That is why finding your foundation for being 'okay' with life is so important, and why the Buddhists say that we need to meditate on death.

We need to deal with this profound reality: that we are mortal, and that the feeling that we are not is an illusion that will cause us to waste the time that we do have this time around.  When we do this, we learn to face our fears and act despite them.  Once we find this path, we can walk it again, and again, and again.  And we can love the journey.

I'm going to be diplomatic here and say that are many different ways to feel strong, to feel that secure foundation.  But I actually believe that there are proven methods that people have been using for thousands of years, and that those methods are directly available to us, and that we should just use them.  Let's start with Yoga.

Yoga provides a foundation for breath and body that is truly incredible.  If you've been thinking of it, just do it!  And within that, make time to laugh, cry, and eat.  The rest of your life will fall into place around all of that.  Without that foundation, the rest of your life will fall apart.  Or at least not come together too well.

I feel so strongly about this, that I would say to someone suffering from anxiety to go to yoga regularly before coming to therapy.  Try helping yourself first.  If you can't, then find someone you trust to help you get there.  But that's all I can really do, is try to help you to be able to help yourself.

I spent the summer in the mountains and in the city; in the embraces of friends I love and don't see very often; in the whirling changes of a business finding its way.  In all of that, I continued to return, again and again, as I always do, to the breath.  Center, center, center.  First, breathe.  First, breathe.  But first...  you have to learn how!

Have 10 minutes? Start with:

A piece on my website about belly-breathing
My new youtube hero Yogi Tara Stiles
Or some Beethoven with Bernstein

Close your eyes and breathe....

Are you on a journey?

Are you on a journey?

This question popped into my mind today as I searched for a new yoga home.  Not just a class, but a home. I read a quote by a student on a particular website, something about the teacher understanding the journey that that student was on, the one that others did not understand. From the tone of the quote, you could infer that the journeyer herself didn't even understand it. And it occurred to me that that mystery is the heart of the best kind of journey.

Hatha Yoga began the journey I am still on, the journey that has and continues to deepen and beautify my life, some years ago now.  I was a stressed-out, cynical twentysomething who could not put her head to sleep.  I could not stop worrying, thinking, agonizing over the future and myself and what might happen tomorrow.  And I loved to complain.

Then, one day, my massage therapist told me that I should go take classes from her friend Nan.  I can remember the moment so clearly: my head in a face cradle peering at her painted toenails.  Maybe that's because that bit of advice changed so much for me.

Nan had her own studio in the upstairs of a building in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle.  Under a pyramidal roof of exposed beams,  surrounded by ladies of all shapes, sizes, and ages, I discovered something new.  I rolled and unrolled a yoga mat.  I stretched my legs using straps and sat on blocks.  I felt the earth under my hands and feet.  I learned that I had a side-body and sit-bones.  I sweat while standing still.  I laid on the floor and felt my body; and slowly, surely, my mind began to settle down.  I found Savasana.

Finding Savasana, or corpse pose, changed my life.  I found stillness and levity and a kind of peace I had not experienced as a adult.  Yoga buoyed me up when I was drowning in my own future.  I would lay on the floor, my mind quiet and content, my body vibrating with energy and exercise, and feel glad and grateful to just be alive and to be me.  I was feeling a level of contentment with myself and life that I had never experienced.  It makes me giddy just thinking about it.

From that point onward, that core feeling and experience became the foundation of my life. I realized that I would rather live a life feeling at peace and connected to myself and the earth, than endlessly worry about what was going to happen tomorrow.  I decided to let my sense of beauty and hope guide my actions.  I began to make my own experience of happiness-my state of mind-the priority in my life.

And I realized that this was all my choice.

Since then, my inner practice has shifted and moved in many different directions, but the light ignited in Nan's studio, on a dark, Seattle evening in early Spring, has never gone out.  Thank you, Nan, wherever you are!

When I moved to Portland, I tried to find another Nan, but I found my life partner instead, and a happy, fulfilled life ensued.  It always seemed like there would be time and that I would "get back into it", and soon.  But now here I am, 11 years later (!), trying to find another place to move and stand and rest.  Maybe now I'm ready for a next step with Yoga.  I am so looking forward to what this new part of the journey will bring.

Looking Up

There was something about the moment that called for a walk, but when I started walking, all I could do was think.  About what I needed to get done, should get done, didn't do... my mind was frantically untying and retying knots.

But then, standing at the intersection of NW 11th and Burnside, staring at the big sign for Powell's City of Books, waiting for the always slow walk-sign to change, I realized that I was absent from the moment, from living.  So, I took a breath.  And then, as always happens when I take such a moment, I looked up.

Do you do that?

I find that when I look up, I see wonderful, soul-filling things.  Things like leaves fluttering on tree branches and falling down; people talking and holding hands; the wind coming up the street from the river.

This is what everyone is talking about with mindfulness and living in the moment. It is not about letting go of the future, but rather connecting with the flow of life. Living in your life rather than living in your mind.

It's about noticing small things.  And the feeling of noticing something and thinking, "I would have missed that.  I almost missed that!" And the that being a few scattered leaves swirling along the street in an autumn breeze.

For as simple as these moments are, they are not easy to come by.  Initially.  It takes practice, and it takes knowing how to be quiet, how to lean into the moment.

It's not about finding the perfect moment, but about finding the perfection that is already in the moment, the life that is flowing there.

And all it takes is that breath, those first tries at letting go.  Let go, look up, let go, look up.  Keep trying, keep trying, keep trying. Don't give up yourself, or on someone else, or on life.

As His Holiness the Dalai Lama says:

Never give up.

No matter what is going on
Never give up.

Develop the heart.
Too much energy in your country
Is spent developing the mind
Instead of the heart.
Develop the heart.

Be compassionate.

Not just with your friends
But with everyone.

Be compassionate.

Work for peace.

In your heart
And in the world.
Work for peace.

And I say again,
Never give up.
No matter what is going on around you
Never give up.

Give looking up a try this week, see what you can see. Let life fill your heart.

Recipe for stillness...

 

The mysteries of why we say and do what we say and do are never-ending.
This very fact, I suppose, is part of why I enjoy what I do everyday so much. I listen, I explore, I discover. I am allowed to witness so much of the human experience.
I watch the layers of who we think we are, who we've been told we are, lift, slough. I get to experience newness.

Finding the new is a journey. You stop, slow down, let go. And then you're there...

When we feel out of control, it feels like we can't or shouldn't find it. Like we are abandoning all of our responsibilities. But worry and responsibility are not the same thing. Right action emanates from calm.
And calm is found through effort, faith, and hope.
Happy Weekend!

This Too Shall Pass

We are currently living through an historic time, a time that should be learned from and not repeated, but that will probably be forgotten or clouded over with the passing of time. But regardless of how the future looks back on us in this moment, this moment itself is one of intense stress and discomfort for many of us.

A friend of mine called me recently suggesting that I offer some thoughts about dealing with the stress of an impending depression, and the paralysis it is causing people in being able to continue to move and make changes in their lives. There is a beautiful Jewish parable that might be instructive for this moment:

One day Solomon decided to humble Benaiah ben Yehoyada, his most trusted minister. He said to him, "Benaiah, there is a certain ring that I want you to bring to me. I wish to wear it for Sukkot which gives you six months to find it."

"If it exists anywhere on earth, your majesty," replied Benaiah, "I will find it and bring it to you, but what makes the ring so special?"

"It has magic powers," answered the king. "If a happy man looks at it, he becomes sad, and if a sad man looks at it, he becomes happy." Solomon knew that no such ring existed in the world, but he wished to give his minister a little taste of humility.

Spring passed and then summer, and still Benaiah had no idea where he could find the ring. On the night before Sukkot, he decided to take a walk in one of he poorest quarters of Jerusalem. He passed by a merchant who had begun to set out the day's wares on a shabby carpet. "Have you by any chance heard of a magic ring that makes the happy wearer forget his joy and the broken-hearted wearer forget his sorrows?" asked Benaiah.

He watched the grandfather take a plain gold ring from his carpet and engrave something on it. When Benaiah read the words on the ring, his face broke out in a wide smile.

That night the entire city welcomed in the holiday of Sukkot with great festivity. "Well, my friend," said Solomon, "have you found what I sent you after?" All the ministers laughed and Solomon himself smiled.

To everyone's surprise, Benaiah held up a small gold ring and declared, "Here it is, your majesty!" As soon as Solomon read the inscription, the smile vanished from his face. The jeweler had written three Hebrew letters on the gold band: _gimel, zayin, yud_, which began the words "_Gam zeh ya'avor_" -- "This too shall pass."

At that moment Solomon realized that all his wisdom and fabulous wealth and tremendous power were but fleeting things, for one day he would be nothing but dust.

The Examined Life

The unexamined life is not worth living. ~Socrates

To examine one's life is a work of love for oneself and compassion for others. Although taking time for ourselves--whether we're daydreaming as we take a walk on a beautiful fall day or talking about our daily struggles in therapy--can feel self-indulgent, is it?

When we remain unaware of ourselves, we are unable to take responsibility for who we are in the world, and how we affect others. When we are unconscious of our motivations, desires, and fears, we act without insight, and repeat patterns that don't make sense anymore. We are reacting to the world through memory, rather than through lived experience.

Whether in therapy or meditation, talking with a friend or seeking God, when we take the time to look at ourselves and our lives, amazing things happen. Sometimes we are so busy trying to live a life that exists only in our minds, that we miss out on the life that is here, right now, waiting to be lived and loved.