spirituality Archives - Page 3 of 3

March 11, 2018April 12, 2022

The Art of Being, Not Doing

When I look back on the year, my favorite days were usually the ones when I was doing nothing.

I was just being.

Not just as in “barely or by a little.”

The way it seems just gets used or referenced most of the time nowadays.

Just as in “simply, only, no more than.”

But for a long time, I thought this way of being was a luxury, something only accessible on vacation.

Actually before that, I forgot that this was my favorite way of being.

And before that I forgot this was a way of being at all.

Busy Beings

But how could this be? How could one forget that we are human be-ings?

Because nowadays we feel more like human do-ings.

In Overwhelmed, Brigid Shulte interviewed a researcher who studies Christmas Holiday cards who discovered, “My God, people are competing about being busy. It’s about showing status. That if you’re busy, you’re important. You’re leading a full and worthy life.”

We have slipped into the cult of busy. I know I did.

I spent the better part of my teens and 20s being an active member.

Too many commitments and expectations, I lived back-to-back and double-booked with a ton of worry and anxiety gluing it all together.

I thought I was “living life to the fullest.” I wasn’t.

My life wasn’t full, it was just compulsively busy.

Busy doing, not full of being.

Loved for Doing

“The difficulty of always feeling that you ought to be doing something is that you tend to undervalue the times when you’re apparently doing nothing, and those are very important times. It’s the equivalent of the dream time, in your daily life, times when things get sorted out and reshuffled. If you’re constantly awake work-wise you don’t allow that to happen,” said musician and producer Brian Eno within Scott McDowell’s essay in Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus & Sharpen Your Creative Mind.

“Most of our current work and life structures have been devised to emphasize production and how much we can accomplish rather than the nurturing of the soul,” wrote Tami Lynn Kent in Wild Creative.

“Because of the general emphasis on production, achievement and building a career, we typically learn to create by becoming self-sufficient and actively doing whatever needs to be done.”

Our culture models and celebrates self-sufficiency, doing everything for ourselves instead of relying on help from others, which makes a lot more work or doing for us.

It’s a slippery slope to always doing as Brian Eno describes, and/or to over-doing.

Economist Juliet Schor argues that with the introduction of the clock in the thirteenth century and the rise of manufacturing time became money, as Schulte shared in Overwhelmed.

Add productivity and competition to self-sufficiency and independence and you quickly get a value for achievement.

More, faster, better, best.

This state of achievement celebrates us for what we do, not who we are.

It’s a pretty easy detour to mis-interpret this as the recipe for worthiness and love:

“As long as we are working hard, using our gifts to serve others, experiencing joy in our work along with the toil, we are always in danger…” wrote Lynne Baab.

In danger of believing we are loved for what we do, not who we are.

Loved for Being

Baab said that only in stopping, really stopping, do we teach our hearts and souls that we are loved apart from what we do.

For me, as soon as I was paying attention to the rest of the world in high school, I picked up on this message: doing = love.

I longed for love. Always had.

And always had it. But, I didn’t realize that back then.

I just sensed that I was different and misunderstood. By others and by myself.

In looking for models of love in my life, I saw the celebration of achievement – on the news, at school, at home – and I took that to heart.

Along the way, I lost track of my favorite way of being: my true nature.

Reconnecting with my being and shedding layers of achievement accumulated over the decades has been transformative. Relearning that I am loved —always— and especially for who I am has been one of the biggest life lessons for me.

I believe we all still inherently know how to be. Just as we are all loved for being. But, we are often too distracted to notice or remember.

So, first we have to stop.

Easier said than done.

Being

“The popular assumption is that no skills are involved in enjoying free time, and that anybody can do it. Yet the evidence suggests the opposite: free time is more difficult to enjoy than work. Having leisure at one’s disposal does not improve the quality of life unless one knows how to use it effectively, and it is by no means something one learns automatically,” said Mihaly Csikszentmihali.

As one of the leading researchers of flow, or that ultimate state of being, he should know.

Point taken: just being can feel lonely, boring, and/or uncomfortable when infrequent because of too much doing.

Or when one does not first feel connected and loved for being.

In her research about overwork, Schulte also explored leisure which often creates flow when practiced frequently.

“In the purest sense, leisure is not being slothful, idle or frivolous. It is, in the words of leisure researcher Ben Hunnicutt, simply being open to the wonder and marvel of the present. ‘The miracle of now,’ he calls it, to choose to do something with no other aim than that it refreshes the soul, or to choose to do nothing at all. To just be and feel fully alive.

“…a time not just for play, recreation and connection with others but also for meditation, reflection, and deep thought…Throughout the course of history, in this leisure time away from toil, elite men…came up with some of the most brilliant innovations, enduring art, and soaring discoveries humanity has ever known,” wrote Schulte.

Oh, the irony: in not doing, we find our greatest achievements.

Once upon a time, a third of the year was dedicated to days off, eg: festivals, Saint’s days, milestones like births, deaths and marriages, Sabbath and other official rest days.

Further back in Roman times, almost half the year were public festivals—days of being, not doing.

This is what I find in my Sabbath time each week.

Time to put all the doing aside with lots of space for relating, dreaming, being.

And being inspired. Some of my most original ideas have been showing up on Sabbath even as I’m trying not to think or do.

Ways of Being

When I’m just being, life is full of:

Mindfulness
Intention
Attention
Clarity

I discard what’s distracting or disintegrating me from the world.

I reconnect with what matters most and with my true nature:

Being outside or at the beach.
Reading inspiring poems and books.
Napping and dreaming.
Sitting by the fire and telling stories.
Savoring beautiful works of art.

My true nature really likes being with myself. I get recharged in solitude. I also enjoy solitude in community. And groups of people I know well.

For others, it’s different. There are many ways to access our own being.

“Sabbath time offers the gift of deep balance; in Sabbath time, we are valued not for what we have done or accomplished, but simply because we have received the gentle blessing of being miraculously alive,” said Wayne Muller in Sabbath.

Being Today

As Baab reminds us in her book Sabbath Keeping, “what we choose to do on the Sabbath needs to bring us rest and life over time. The challenge is discernment, experimenting to find what works for us and the people we love, what helps us catch our breath and remember who we are.” (italics added for emphasis)

Remembering the Sabbath each week has been an important part of reconnecting with myself over the years.

As rich as those days are, they’re only a fraction of my year. The other days contain a lot of doing.

Schulte asked and I often wonder as well:

What, when you really come down to the quotidian details, does it look like every day to have time to do good work, to spend quality time with your family and friends and to refresh your soul?

To be in flow throughout life and not only one day a week, I imagine life needs to look differently. A lot less doing, I bet.

And also probably a different kind of doing: less effort and more energy.

More of the art of being—in our true nature, a state of integrity—everyday.

Join others from around the country in the next Sabbath Course as we explore and practice together, inspired by an interfaith, personal approach to this universal tradition. This 7-week course includes fun weekly activities, weekly community gatherings online and your own practice. You’ll experience what students describe as a “positive and significant impact on my personal growth and spiritual exploration.”

March 9, 2018August 21, 2018

What Matters Most

This was the moment when I really felt it: this.

“This is bliss.”

“This is what matters most.”

Why?

Because it was a combination of what’s important to me and how my soul glows.

These moments used to be fewer and farther in between. Accidental connections to my truest nature. I wanted more.

Nowadays, I have found the words to define my personal guidelines for living a whole life. Living wholly and soulfully. Not accidental, but intentional.

That doesn’t mean life is perfect. Far from it.

I am always practicing and I have a light to guide the way: my personal guidelines for the day-to-day and my inner guide for when things get really tricky.

Everyone has this light, though not everyone has the words.

How does one learn what matters most?

By preparing for the answers: keeping sacred space, knowing your inner guide and asking the big questions, and then, living into them.

Start with Perspective

In one of my favorite movies, About Time, the lead character can time travel.

He doesn’t need a machine like Bill & Ted. He can just close his eyes, focus on a moment, and go there.

The most powerful thing he discovers? He has do-overs.

He can go back and re-do every day, savoring the moments:

Acknowledging the clerk at the market with a smile.
Noticing the beautiful windows as he’s running to catch his train.
Greeting his crying, messy child after work.

Eventually, he stops time traveling and literally only lives in the present.

Feel free to stop reading and go stream it (it’s so good).

Then, you can come back to this post and learn about how to live this way.

Why isn’t life only about what really matters?

According to the movie, life is only about these precious moments—what really matters—it’s just about our perspective on it.

Yes, and, you might be thinking.

There’s actually a lot in our lives that doesn’t matter. More so for some people than others.

How do we know what does and doesn’t matter?

“To discern what is truly essential we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make. Ironically in [our] culture these things—space, listening, playing, sleeping and selecting—can be seen as trivial distractions,” wrote Greg McKweon in Essentialism about the disciplined pursuit of less.

How do we find space and time and permission and wisdom?

We practice.

Keeping Sacred Space

I find the best time for me to practice creating sacred space is when I’m backpacking, when I’m on retreat and when I observe Sabbath, my “weekly retreat.”

In his book, Sabbath, Muller writes, “Sabbath is an incubator for wisdom. When we allow the rush and pressure of our days to fall away, even for a short period of time, we are able to discern the essential truth of what lies before us.”

Poet Wendell Berry, who has a longstanding practice of Sabbath, wrote:

During the Buddhist Sabbath, lay people and monks gather to recite the precepts that govern their practice. There are hundreds of these precepts for monks, concerning everything from how you meditate to how you eat your food and how you wash your bowl.

But more than the specific precepts, it is a time to reiterate what is ultimately important, sacred. Whether the Eightfold Path of Buddhism, the Five Pillars of Islam, or the Ten Commandments, most religions consider certain precepts to be guiding lights to help us find our way through darker times.

Berry often writes poetry about what’s ultimately important, sacred, on the Sabbath. There is a sense of divine inspiration in his observations of the world and its interconnectedness.

“Sabbath is a time when we retreat from the illusion of our own indispensability. We are important in that we are part of something larger,” adds Muller.

Something larger that’s often hard to comprehend without some guidance.

Knowing Your Inner Guide

“Whether we choose spirituality or religion, we need a system of experiences and beliefs that is true to our own experience. We must once again look at our own lives and discover what we already know,” says Cecile Andrews, author of The Circle of Simplicity: The Return to the Good Life.

Anthropology Professor Roger Walsh wrote:

“We know more than we know we know. The inner source has been called by many names: for example, the Hindu’s “inner guru,” the Tibetan Buddhist’s “personal diety,” the Christian Quaker’s “still small voice within,” or the psychologist’s “higher self.” Whatever the name, the implications are the same. We have within us remarkable wisdom that will guide and help us if we learn how to recognize and draw on it.”

Just that simple.

Ultimately, yes, and…

From my experience the learning how to recognize [and listen] and draw on it, is a lifelong quest for the monks and us lay people alike.

Over the years, I’ve come to know and listen to this.

My inner guide is the filter for what is true to me, at any given time, on my path.

As I’ve quieted and settled what Walsh describes as “the outer self” of surface emotions, habits and personality, and then “the inner self” of secret hopes and fears, self-image and beliefs, the listening grew easier, the voice grew louder and clearer.

This so-called voice lies within our “deep self,” or soul.

For some this conversation comes through deep, committed practices with meditation or yoga.

For me this conversation comes mainly through intentional practices of:

Going on a personal retreat almost every season from 2007-2017, as well as solo backpacking trips since 2015.
Digesting and listening each week on Sabbath since 2015. In the absence of work, of plans, of internet, of emotions and habit, and of self-image, I hang out with my soul.

It is in these sacred spaces and times when I’ve become acquainted with my inner guide, my deep self, my still small voice within.

It’s always been there, I just hadn’t asked or hadn’t really listened before.

Asking the Big Questions

Listening starts with asking. The curiosity to receive whatever shows up.

Questions like:

What inspires me?
What is it like when I’m “in my element”?
What is love?
What do I believe?
What do I fear?
What’s always been important to me?
What connects me to Source?
When do I feel whole?

I’ve been amazed at how often it’s in the most minuscule moment of awe, perhaps examining a worm slithering through the soil, that my inner guide reveals my deepest knowing, the answers to these questions.

“Sabbath honors this quality of not knowing, an open receptivity of mind essential for allowing things to speak to us from where they are,” wrote Muller.

It is a lifelong conversation to recognize our own wisdom.

There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom.

In Essential Spirituality, Dr. Walsh said:

Knowledge informs us, wisdom transforms us.
Knowledge is something we have, wisdom is something we must become.
Knowledge is expressed in words, wisdom in our lives.
Knowledge empowers, wisdom empowers and enlightens.

Wisdom is our deepest knowing.

As such, often our most heartfelt questions are more of a feeling than a thought.

They don’t always formulate into neat, little sentences.

Because it’s not about figuring things out. That’s knowledge.

This is about feeling things out as our being connects the dots and then the answer emerges.

Wisdom.

The wisdom, courage, and clarity we need are already embedded in creation—in nature, in the world, in our lives. The solution is already alive in the problem. Thus, our work is not always to push and strive and struggle. Often we have only to be still, and we will know, wrote Muller.

The Tao Te Ching asks us:

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?

In other words, until the right answer arises by itself?

Moments Matter Most

Once you start having the conversation, you can discern what is truly essential, what matters most, as McKweon describes.

You’ll know what is important to you and how your soul glows.

You’ll know what this feels like and you’ll be able to start putting the words together to define your personal guidelines for living a whole life.

Once you name it, you can live it even more intentionally. Remembering and practicing these fundamental precepts each week, they become your every day.

“When I am fully aware of clouds moving, birds trilling, insects buzzing and downy feathers floating on the still lake, I lean into the portal from this moment, beyond next week, and into the grand scale of things, weighing the collection of meaningful moments holding my life together,” wrote Shelly Miller.

This is living life to the fullest.

February 1, 2018

Gone Sabbathing

Just as a fisherman makes new bait and packs up his tackle box so that he has what he needs to peacefully sit in his boat and do nothing while he’s “gone fishing,” I’ve noticed that preparing for Sabbath makes the time so much sweeter.

Over the years of observing the gift of Sabbath there have been days when everything was ready and days when everything was in disarray.

And even a day or two when I skipped Sabbath because I wasn’t “done” with the week yet.

The following week was even harder to get through, not easier.

Happy (& Unhappy) Sabbath

When my cottage has piles of good intentions and undone to-dos scattered around when the weekend arises, I’ve ended up in a vegetative state of “rest” on Sabbath.

I’d watch movies or read for hours on end.

Technically, I’m not doing anything, so still “sabbathing,” right?

Yet, the following day I’ll feel empty and drained instead of full and invigorated.

Other times, I’ve escaped the mess, spending the day out exploring in the world. I return feeling full, but still a bit spent.

I understand the intention behind many traditions having specific guidelines (or often very specific rules) about how to enter Sabbath.

It’s true, the day is more accessible and sweeter when my life is ready to take a break.

And, interestingly, my mindset matters more than the mess.

When my body is ready to take a break as well, when I’ve emptied my mind and heart of grievances and concerns, then it doesn’t bother me as much.

Acts of Service, Acts of Love

As Shelly Miller writes in Rhythms of Rest, “when we run errands early in the week, clean up the house, prepare food for the weekend, these are acts of love at the root.”

She says that preparation is an act of love and rest is an act of faith.

I usually think of errands, cleaning, cooking etc. as acts of obligation.

But, when they are in preparation for something special, like a holiday or a holy day, they do take on a different motivation.

I sense the devotion to myself and my loved ones as I double down on the housework or email.

In his book, The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman describes this as Acts of Service: “doing things you know ____________ (name of someone you love) would like you to do.”

In other words, Chapman says, you seek to please them by serving them, to express your love by doing things for them.

And, I think this starts with ourselves.

But, I think the idea of self love is misleading. Self love doesn’t exist.

There is always love there.

A love that is whole and keeps me whole. Because, the whole cannot be whole without all of me.

But, when my devotion is lacking, when there are holes of fatigue or hurt or disappointment or fear, it is harder to do these acts of service, acts of love.

This is where the faith comes in.

Preflight Checklist

Knowing, from wisdom and intuition, what will make things better for later.

Knowing that the satisfaction, joy, elation later will be far greater than the effort now.

And, it can be even more effortless when done already feeling joyful anticipation.

What will make Sabbath easier?

This list can get very long, but I’ve noticed that there are usually a few key things that really matter.

If undone, they’ll hang over me or get in my way. Or create a gap that jerks me out of my flow.

Like not having anything in the house to eat.

Everybody’s checklist of priorities is different.

For me, it is:

An empty sink,
A tidy home,
Groceries and optimally pre-made meals,
Critical emails sent

And, if I’m really in a groove, what will make the day after easier?

Errands run
Quick look ahead to following week
And in my current routine, my next blog post done and newsletter prepped

Acts of service go beyond showing devotion to ourselves and to others, and include receiving service.

Which begs the question: Who can help with these preparation priorities?

Asking for and receiving help may actually be the greatest form of satisfaction, joy, elation.

And this is all before Sabbath!

Weekly Wind Down

“As I prepare on Saturday by cooking meals and completing chores, the process becomes a door slowly closing on distractions in order to be fully present with my people. The day is aromatic with anticipation as the kids hover around me in the kitchen, salivating over the smells simmering on the stove top and bread baking in the oven. Joy is an undercurrent of Sabbath when we make the day celebratory. And rested people make for a peaceful home,” writes Shelly Miller.

Whether Sabbath falls on Saturday or Sunday or some other time of the week, whether it’s seen as the end of the week or the beginning of the week, it is a transition.

A way to digest what was and pause before entering what will be.

In order to more fully pause, it is an opportunity to digest, process and release.

Worries, misbeliefs, concerns, joys, questions, discoveries.

And that opportunity starts in the preparation.

In Jewish traditions, varying greatly per movement and especially between Orthodox and Reform from what I’ve learned, there are specific rituals or steps to Sabbath preparation.

For example: shopping for ingredients then cooking, baking or picking up the challah, bathing, cleaning and beautifying the home with flowers, for example.

There is a bit of hustle to it, but these steps go beyond effort, they slowly get one out of the mind, into the body and back into the soul.

January 17, 2018

The Cult of Busy

I was a full-fledged member of the cult of busy. We all are.

I don’t recall when, but it probably began before I started using a planner in high school (that I designed for optimal homework, goal and activity tracking).

Or was voted “Most Involved” in the yearbook our Senior year.

And it just got worse from there: overcommitted, overachieving, overwhelmed for the next 15 years. Welcome to “adulthood”!

A vicious cycle of apps to optimize my time and practices to mitigate my stress.

Constantly acknowledged with awe and trepidation by others: “I don’t know how you do it all!”

I had become the epitome of a busy body filling in my life with busy work.

But as Henry David Thoreau asked in the 1850s, “it is not enough to be busy (the ants are busy), we must ask: what are we busy about?”

Why was I so busy?

Compulsive Busyness

“…much of the busyness that we see around us everyday is compulsive busyness. Somebody is avoiding something…[The busyness] can involve us in the most worthy of good works only to distract us from entheos and deny us the privilege of being really useful,” wrote Robert Greenleaf back in the 1970s.

That’s a mouthful, but it is exactly how I was living before I started this blog. How?

I was “compulsively busy” – constantly doing to be doing.

Multiple service and leadership commitments, multiple client projects, running a business, spending time with my family and so many friends – all over the country, traveling all the time, personal growth projects and groups, extensive spiritual practices, hyper-organized home, baking from scratch, driving friends to the airport and the list goes on somehow.

Still “Most Involved” in seemingly the most worthy of good works.

Living life to the fullest, right?

Then, what was I avoiding?

Entheos, the Greek word for the God within, the way the divine creative energy moves through us toward what the world really needs.

In other words, my personal mission: I am in the world to change the world with my creativity.

And as Greenleaf says: the privilege of being really useful.

Everything is Work

What does really useful look like?

My sense is it has little to do with time or effort or money. The resources we measure our lives in.

I think it has to do with our other main resource: our energy.

Or as Julian Gresser describes as our “creative emotion or vitality” when speaking to the relative value of these four resources in Piloting Through Chaos (time, effort, money, energy).

In his TEDTalk and book about The Art of Stillness, Pico Iyer shares that after a 30-year study of time diaries, two socioligists found that Americans were actually working fewer hours than we were in the 1960’s, but we feel as if we are working more (underlining added for emphasis).

Perhaps because everything is “work” nowadays.

And/or we approach everything with the attitude that it is work, that it is labor – taking time, requiring effort, costing money. And draining energy.

In preparation for a session about work and spirituality I was leading in 2015, I audited my own work.

All of it. Paid work, unpaid service, leadership and pro bono work, domestic work (including caregiving and housekeeping) and informal work (including favors). Pretty much anything that didn’t feel like play or leisure.

I was shocked.

Adding in caregiving, housework, volunteering, commuting, grooming etc. and it seemed like 80 percent of my life was “work.”

For some, sleep is the only time they’re not “working.”

No wonder I constantly felt depleted, my energy in frequent flux of high highs and low lows, and completely burning out every few months.

Why did everything feel like work – so effortful, instead of effortless? Or simply neutral?

I was drawing my energy from an empty well.

Like one researcher who studies Christmas Holiday Cards discovered and shared in an interview with Brigid Shulte for Overwhelmed,

“My God, people are competing about being busy. It’s about showing status. That if you’re busy, you’re important. You’re leading a full and worthy life.”

Taking a Break

“Without time to reflect, to live fully present in the moment and face what is transcendent about our lives, we are doomed to live in purposeless and banal busyness…It creates this ‘unquiet heart,’ as Saint Augustine said, that is ever desperate for fulfillment,” said another researcher in an interview with Shulte.

It was a few years ago when I was asked, “But, when do you rest?”

In a quick, instantaneous audit of my life, I could only think of one example.

Going away on retreats every few months.

Cherished times of being, of following the divine energy, of feeling full, of feeling whole.

I saw these times as an exception, not accessible in “real life,” on a weekly or a daily basis.

So deep in the belief that busyness was the way that I was being really useful.

I needed more time to reflect, to live fully present in the moment, to face what is transcendent about life.

I needed a break.

And on a regular basis.

As I started to peel away the worthy distractions and set aside time for not doing each week, it became more clear how I was called to be. How I have always been called.

But, had also come to most fear: creating, writing, designing, teaching.

Resting the Whole, Resting the Soul

“In the 1950s, some prominent thinkers predicted that the post-World War II boom in productivity and the ever-rising incomes and standards of living for Americans and the industrialized world could only mean that we were entering a new age of unprecedented leisure,” describes Shulte.

“All our basic needs would be met. Free from toil, we could begin to savor its fruits. True to the Greek ideal of the good life, we would spend our time cultivating the mind and the soul.”

It was just over a year ago on a Circle of Trust retreat facilitated by The Center for Courage & Renewal when I was asked, “What in your life needs a pause? A break? A rest?”

I had been giving my life a break each week, a whole day of stepping out of the busyness, for several years by then.

The question seemed familiar and yet a completely fresh perspective.

But, this question seemed bigger, broader.

Taking a day off per week away from routine and schedules had started giving time a break. And I had been taking a break from money for almost a year by then. And I had started to step back from commitments and focus my efforts.

So, what in my life needed a break?

My soul. My life force. My energy.

Not a break from being (not sure that’s possible), but a chance to simply be without all the resistance.

I am paying especially close attention to my energy. Devoted to being in the sweet spot.

There is still some resistance, and thus tensions, but now it’s to the rest of the world’s busyness, not my own.

Things are feeling more effortless, including doing my “work.” The other work is still work, though I have way less interest in it, so there’s a lot less of it and now feels more neutral.

Not a one time fix. Now, I commit to this intention everyday.

As Naomi Shihab Nye writes in her poem, Red Brocade, from 1952:

No, I was not busy when you came!
I was not preparing to be busy.
That’s the armor everyone put on
to pretend they had a purpose
in the world.

January 16, 2018September 6, 2018

Releasing My Mom, Finding Myself

Authors Note: Originally written/posted in Sept. 2008

Eighteen hundred miles into the roadtrip, I was lost for the first time.

The drive to Grand Junction, Colorado, was my first night ride and exiting the highway I found myself in the middle of strip mall no man’s land. Of course, I was nervous – the last week and a half had been leading up to tonight.

I would come to find out that the last six months had likely been leading up to tonight.

Or even the last five and half years.

Or just maybe, my whole life.

The scent of destiny has been trailing me like sweet perfume this whole trip. Even the frustration of getting lost seemed somehow symbolic in order to disorient any expectations of control of what was to come.

I had set out to Colorado to find closure with my Mother.

While my adolescence with my Mom was tumultuous at best, something finally started to click between us when I took leave from college at 19 and moved home.

Coming Home

Everybody had always said we were carbon copies of each other, not just because we were both “chatty Cathy’s,” but our similar looks with fine, toffee-colored hair, hazel eyes, button noses and barely-able-to-ride-the-ferris-wheel height.

Over the course of my semester off I came to see that we actually processed the world in very different ways, which actually created most of the conflict and challenges between us.

Right before the Christmas during my junior year of college, our family friends gathered together to celebrate the holidays.

We sat in the living room, the 12 kids and four sets of parents snuggled onto couches, chairs and the carpet, and shared what we were grateful for and what we were looking forward to in the coming year.

Through tears and sniffles, I sputtered out that I was grateful for my time off the previous spring and summer, allowing me to get to know my parents as adults, and very much looked forward to having a better relationship with my Mom.

Afterwards, I hugged her tiny, 5 foot frame and whispered, “I love you,” in her ear. This would be the last time I would ever hug her.

Sudden Loss

Three weeks later, she lay in the Intensive Care Unit, barely filling up half the twin hospital bed.

I had dropped her off for a routine outpatient surgery to remove a tiny (annoying, but benign) growth on her reproductive system that morning, expecting to have dinner with her and my family later that evening.

She was in a coma for three days, caused by an unexplained post-surgical respiratory arrest, until our family decided to let her go.

After being without air for several minutes while she lay in the recovery room, her brain was all but dysfunctional and recovery was impossible.

I have openly published my experiences with my mom’s unexpected death in the past as I firmly believe that death and grief are not accepted enough in our society and need to be talked about.

So many of us live with grief, just as we live with other conditions, for instance, allergies for me. It is not a weakness, simply a fact of life. Mostly dormant, but sometimes flares up.

For some reason death and grief are cast to the shadows with the negative stigma of a lurking grim reaper nowadays.

Whereas most societies around the world have joyful and/or sorrowful rituals and ceremonies that recognize, grieve and let go of their loved ones, America as a culture does not.

And so, it becomes fairly easy to cry a lot and think you’ve grieved, but really have just pushed the feelings way deep inside.

Which is what I did from 20- to 25-years-old, until the development of eczema led me in search of a more holistic solution.

Deeper Healing

And so, a series of events led me on a roadtrip to sit with a Marakame (or “shaman”) in Grand Junction, Colorado, who practices healing arts and ceremonies of the native Mexican tribe, the Huichol, amongst other callings.

I left home by myself on my 26th birthday, set to return to Oregon nearly three weeks later.

This Marakame, Deanna, who’d been practicing for a dozen years, was not going to make my skin issues go away, but address the possible source of the stress – grief.

The death ritual she’d perform was meant to help both me and my Mom come to resolution with her traumatic death.

I was surprised by how “normal” Deanna was, tall and lean with curly salt and pepper hair and glasses, wearing a fleece pull-over, jeans and clogs.

We went out into the backyard of her ranch-style home and she made a fire underneath a tree already starting to shed its leaves for the fall.

We sat in camping chairs with a wheelbarrow loaded up with seasoned, dry wood between us.

This was nothing like the scene from one of my favorite movies and books, The Power of One, where a barely clothed shaman dances around a chicken to cure the little boy from his “night terrors,” i.e.: wetting the bed.

But then, that was in the South African bush, and we were in suburban Colorado, so it made sense we were dressed.

Many Crossroads

In appreciation for the sitting, I gave her some fine chocolate, Alder wood from Oregon, and the cigar from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, along with payment for her healing services.

For the most part we just sat and talked around her fire pit in the backyard until it was time for her to do her work around 10 p.m.

We discussed my road trip thus far and my journey since college, including the cross roads I felt I was at in my budding career: to go the corporate route or go an unconventional path.

As we talked about the death, eventually tears trickled down my face like a stream through the woods.

I shared the story of our long days in the hospital and the symptoms of my grief, including my inability to access many memories including my Mother previous to the trauma of her death.

I was in a foreign place with basically a stranger and yet I felt safe. That the grief would not engulf me if I let it out of its cage.

I fear I’ll only dilute the meaning of the experience by trying to describe it, because most of the ceremony was happening within her.

Mainly, like so many other nights on the trip so far, I just sat by the fire adding logs as the heat died down, looking at the trillion stars across the night sky and thinking about random things.

Finally Letting Go

Finally, we talked about the artifacts and mementos of my Mom that I had brought along as requested.

Then, one-by-one I hesitantly added them to the flames.

There was a lock of hair, a shirt she always wore around the house, some photographs, a CD of favorite music.

The cloth, paper, plastic all flashed bright colors in the flames in their last brilliant moments and then turned to grey ashes indistinguishable from each other.

I had brought these along from Oregon as requested in a little bag, expecting that they would help the Marakame “get a feel for” my Mom.

I had no idea they would disappear.

There was one keepsake, a small heart-shaped container I felt strongly about keeping, since it had been a gift from my Mom.

The Greatest Gifts

Deanna shared with me that in many other cultures, from the Egyptians to Mexicans, part of the death ceremony includes a person’s belongings either being buried or burned with them.

In the truest form of this tradition, everything a person owned, even the dirt and dust of his or her home was swept up and added to the fire in order for the person to pass on completely.

There was not a room in my home that did not have something that used to be hers and strongly reminded me of her.

These are the ways that we hold on – physically, emotionally, energetically.

Interestingly, it struck me the sentimental difference between things that were my Mother’s versus things that she had given to me as gifts.

The possessions reminded me of loss, while the gifts reminded me of love.

I wondered, What would the world be like if the only presence we left behind was our presents?

Clearly, in life we would be more preoccupied with giving than accumulating.

While it was hard to let go of her/my treasures, I was truly amazed by the power of the fire to turn everything – a lock of her hair, polyester clothing, CDs, ceramics etc. – into ashes.

Ashes to ashes, so they say.

Answers & Blessings

Six months before the roadtrip, I attended a different fire back home in Oregon, which coincidentally this healer had attended too (though I had not met).

It was a large gathering of some 100 people from around the country and world to hear a respected speaker in the Huichol tradition.

At the end of the evening around one a.m., each person was able to offer a cigar to this man and ask a heartfelt question.

After mulling over questions all weekend, I had decided to ask, “How do I let go of my mom?”

After giving him my cigar, he opened one eye, looked at me and said, “You don’t need a question. You need a blessing.”

He took a puff of his lit cigar, pulled the ashes off the end and dotted them on my forehead like Ash Wednesday.

Curious what the blessing meant, I asked around for interpretations and then eventually went on about my life.

One suggestion was that it was for protection and safe travels.

In Colorado, the fire was similarly over around one a.m. and then I was shown to the guest room for the night.

In the morning, the Marakame and I met and talked to debrief the night before.

We talked about how the ceremony had been a modification of the traditional one due to the long time lapse since death and lack of actual remains, but that it had also been more than just a death ritual.

More than a Death Ritual

We have lost almost all connection to ritual in our culture outside of organized religion.

While we may have strong traditions or habits, we don’t necessarily know or understand their meaning.

In many cultures, birthdays are not significant for the date, but the growth.

Given the timing, having just turned 26 it made perfect sense for the Marakame to say that this ceremony was also about my own initiation into womanhood (celebrated by the Huichol between ages 15 and 26).

Six months after asking the question and just one week after my birthday, I found the answer of how to let go of my mom.

It was time to set out on my own and not live within the safety or the shadow of expectations cast by others.

At a certain age, we must all be initiated into ourselves.

We must have the courage to let go of our parents and independently become our own person. Become whole – in and of ourselves.

Within just twelve hours of arrival, I left Grand Junction with peace of mind and a strong sense of direction.

NOTE: I enjoy the company of new and old friends at monthly fires in Portland as part of the Sacred Fire Community, which I have been attending as part of the Portland hamlet since 2006. The fires, which happen around the world, are a time for people to come together for heartfelt conversation as we so often forget to do these days. You can learn more about local fires at http://www.sacredfirecommunity.org/ and plant spirit medicine healing at http://bluedeer.org/.

January 8, 2018

Your Path to Rest

I had been on my spiritual path for nearly a decade and never asked myself this simple question: when do you rest?

The question showed up one day back in fall, 2014.

I had just signed a big contract with Nike for a 3-month gig. I was in the first year of self-employment and this was way too good to refuse.

But, I had three other consulting projects already, plus service commitments and the rest of life. It added up to 60+ hour work weeks. 80+ if you counted housekeeping and caregiving.

I knew something had to give. And it wasn’t the work.

It turns out it was the Rest.

My Path to Jack

Several women in my interfaith women’s group saw the same spiritual director, Jack Kennedy. At first, I didn’t really know what a spiritual director was, but I had seen therapists and shaman, so it seemed in the ballpark of familiarity.

I got his phone number, called to set an appointment and showed up at the house where he rented a room for his sessions.

Nestled into the the antique striped couch at my first meeting, I explained why I’d come to see him and what was on my heart: the heavy work load, running a business, volunteering, family, the upcoming holidays.

He listened for 15 minutes until I reached the end of my laundry list and this question: How was I going to do it all and not get burned out?

“Well, when do you rest?” he asked.

Not power naps. Not quick breaks between meetings. That’s just more doing.

He meant time and space for deep, restorative being in rhythm with my own body, the world around me and something bigger. He meant Sabbath.

I was speechless.

Sabbath Keeping

It was not something I had experienced yet in my everyday life.

But, as he described Sabbath, it sounded a whole lot like my magical times at the coast on personal retreats.

And I could have some of that magic every week? I was in.

That fall and for the last 3 years since, I have set aside one day a week, usually Saturdays like in the Jewish tradition, for rest and renewal.

Sabbath has become my weekly retreat.

An ancient practice, Sabbath is the fourth commandment. “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.”

It comes before family, before murder, before adultery and more.

Overwhelm and overstimulation are newer human conditions. But, hard work is not new. Labor is not new.

Many call it a merciful gift. Compassion for all this labor. In other words, it is a day that has been given.

There are many ways that different religious traditions remember or observe the Sabbath, including Christian services on Sundays and Buddhist monks’ recitation of precepts.

Barbara Brown Taylor describes her experience in Leaving Church:

“Observing the Sabbath is saving my life now. For the first time in my life, I can rest without leaving home. With sundown on the Sabbath, I stop seeing the dust balls, the bills and the laundry. They are still there, but they lose their power over me. One day each week I live as if all my work were done…Now, when I know the Sabbath is near, I can feel the anticipation bubbling up inside of me. Sabbath is no longer a a good idea or even a spiritual discipline for me. It is my regular date with the Divine Presence that enlivens both body and soul.”

Finding My Spiritual Path

Just as Barbara says, Sabbath has become a highlight of my week.

It is not simply a day to set everything aside, to stop doing and simply be. But a “regular date” to reconnect with what grounds me and inspires me, something bigger than myself.

My path to rest did not start with this practice in 2014. I think it actually started in 2007 when I went to a spiritual community gathering, the first step toward spiritual development I’d taken since leaving home at 18 years old, seven years prior.

Or perhaps I’ve been on the path my whole life?

I was raised in a “new age” household by a former Roman Catholic mother and a former Episcopalian father (more by label than by practice for both of them) who found more inspiration in the outdoors than in the church.

My parents started their own spiritual journey in their 20’s soon after getting married, leading them to a new, broader sense of spirituality (though heavily influenced by the Judeo-Christian traditions).

Growing up, my only exposure to religion was tagging along with friends and most of it was “too churchy” compared to our hikes and seasonal gatherings.

While organized religion was not to their taste, looking back now I see that ritual, ceremony, values, and beliefs were baked into my very spiritual upbringing.

I distinctly remember in high school having a discussion about this with my parents – about not having any religion. Their response?

We were to chose our own religion.

My response: “Huh, well I won’t be doing that.”

Nowadays, I worship at a Unitarian Universalist church, I commune with the Sacred Fire Community outside around the fire, I find fellowship with interfaith, intergenerational women at BBB, I observe Sabbath, I am again practicing yoga in a nearby studio.

While I did no choose a religion yet, I am religious about my portfolio of communities and practices, along with many tools, that help me navigate the world.

It has been a journey of seeking what’s true to me. As well undoing dysfunctional beliefs that I created along the way.

24/6

Some of the dysfunctional beliefs I still struggle with directly conflict with Sabbath.

Rest is earned not given.
Taking naps is being lazy or childish.
Doing creates a worthwhile day.
Living life to the fullest means doing many things at the same time.

These are the beliefs that make me forget Sabbath.

So, how do I remember the Sabbath?

I remember that rest means more than simply being tired.

I remember that rest is a break, a pause.

I remember that rest is an important note in music.

I remember that when I step out of the grind I find space for reflection.

I remember that when I find space, I find perspective.

I remember how I’m connected to everything. Everything.

And over the years of remembering, observing, practicing Sabbath, I have also started showing up differently in the other six days a week.

I am:

more present
more connected
more energized
more focused

While the path getting here has not been easy – the path to rest never is – I bet it would have been a lot easier if I had always remembered the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

Moving forward, I do.

January 1, 2018

Self Love is Always There, Yet Doesn’t Exist

“There is no such thing as self love,” my friend said the other night as we sat around the fire pit in his backyard.

He hosts a monthly community fire as a space for us to come together. We sit and listen and share.

And eat chocolate and some smoke cigars as we consider the whole – of the world, of our society, of our communities, of our selves, of ours souls.

Sitting on the ground near the fire, I leaned forward when he said this, wanting to hear more as “Self Love” was something I’d been thinking a lot about lately in my Winter Solstice and New Year’s intentions setting preparations. Especially since the term seemed silly to me, though I didn’t quite know why. Nor did I have a better term.

The friend relayed the rationale presented by another elder in the Huitchol community, a native Mexican tribe, in which he is an initiated shaman, which I’ll paraphrase.

It all made perfect sense to me.

Self Love is a Misnomer

Self love is a common phrase. Love of one’s self. But, by separating love and self it implies that we can have love for our self…or not.

And in having options, we can choose to love or not to love.

“Unconditional love” is a similar phrase, commonly used, arguably inaccurate.

Though I’m sure there are many people and professions who have explored this topic, I believe I was reading Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen’s essays years ago when I had my Aha! moment understanding the inaccuracy of “unconditional love.”

Here’s how I recall the rationale:

For unconditional love to exist, then conditional love must exist.

But if it’s conditional, then it’s not love.

So when we say unconditional love, we really mean love.

Just so, self love is simply love. And it’s a given. Always.

Just as we all have dignity and are all inherently worthy.

So, there is no such thing as self love.

And yet, almost everyone referenced self love while we were sharing what was on our hearts right now, at this time of year, on the cusp of the holidays and a new calendar year during our conversation around the fire.

So then, what do we really mean when we say self love?

Self Love is Actually Self Devotion

I think nowadays self love is synonymous with self care, of how we take care of our body and mind. Perhaps because there seems to be something deeper that drives self care.

Perhaps devotion, akin to “Bhakti”?

This is a term in Hindu culture and spirituality with many meanings that was introduced to me by one of my yoga teachers, Emily Light.

Most often it refers to one’s spiritual commitment. It also “refers to the perfected state of consciousness – exclusive and continuous love of God, the natural condition of the soul; eternal, enlightened bliss,” according to Radhanath Swami.

Over the years, I’ve been noticing a lack of devotion, of bhakti, to my soul, along with my self and body.

It’s a big realization. Perhaps that’s why it’s taken years to digest.

I had adapted so deeply into the way I thought I should be, I no longer paid any attention to the way I need to be.

The should was driven by attempting to function, fit in, succeed, and ultimately serve basic needs of self care, for instance shelter, warmth, food, healthcare.

When I started working independently years ago, I also starting paying a lot more attention to the way I need to be, or rather the way I am.

And to the conforming routines, habits, thoughts, and beliefs I had developed.

I sensed that if I were to survive “making a living” independently, it needed to be in my own way.

Self Devotion Generates Self Care

A way that simply needs me – my body and self – to follow, to obey.

Given an independent, driven personality, those are not easy words for me to swallow.

For me, it’s easier to understand all of this when I make it tangible and apply human characteristics to this stuff.

Last year especially, I learned that my body and self “knows” exactly how to take care of itself, what it needs, not only how to stay balanced in homeostasis, but how to constantly adapt in allostasis.

For instance, my allergies are a constant personal alarm system. Though often annoying like when a smoke alarm goes off while cooking dinner, it’s very useful!

Quite awe-some actually that my central nervous system is so attuned.

Thus, in being a devoted follower of our senses, intuition, body and being – the “containers” of our soul – we show respect.

A feeling or understanding that “someone [in this case our selves] is important and should be treated in an appropriate way.”

We are indeed “putting ourselves first” or rather attending to ourselves first. Just like love being a given, this devotion becomes a given, and so does self care.

I have noticed that as I follow my bodies’ needs and obey its indicators – feeling tired, hungry, angry, nervous, scared – self care naturally proceeds.

What is “self care” other than caregiving?

Caregiving is most often thought about as something we do for others, especially related to an elderly or disabled person or to children.

But, we’re already doing it all day, every day for ourselves: taking a shower, brushing our teeth, grooming, making meals, transporting, feeding and the list goes on and on.

Love is a Given

During the conversation around the fire about this pervasive, but actually nonexistent idea of self love, someone mentioned how the Greeks has many different words and forms for love.

Greek Types of Love:

Agape – divine love
Phileo – friendship love
Storge – parental or sacrificial love
Eros – romantic love

Note: the Greeks did not have a term for “self love.” More validation that there is no such thing as self love!

Clearly, the through line between all these terms is love, that omnipotent force. That just is – or isn’t – there (for eros, storge, phileo).

Perhaps there are people whose selves or souls are so deeply wounded that love isn’t there.

My optimism makes we believe these people are few.

Love Keeps Me Whole

I know I am not one of them. I would not have fought so hard, “obsessively,” as one mentor noted, pursuing the Way…to get out of my own way…to be in my own way…if the love was not deep and true and always there.

A love that is whole and keeps me whole. Because, the whole cannot be whole without all of me.

This conversation lasted long into the night, actually into the next day, as we all realized around 12:15 am that our bodies were actually quite tired, even as our hearts were stirred.

As I drove home and for the last couple weeks, I have been swishing this revised understanding around and finding so much more clarity about my focal points in my life next year.

I had identified “self love” as the most important area of focus, followed by my new lifestyle business, followed by finances and fitness, and throughout all, lots more fun.

But, wait.

If “self love” is actually love, which is always there, and when devoutly paid attention to automatically generates caregiving. Then, by simply following my being every moment, of everyday will lead to everything.

That’s pretty profound.

So simple, but said that way, seems enormous.

To make it more concrete for now, instead of self love I think I’ll call it Bhakti or self devotion (respect for “the natural condition of the soul”), and work with the mantra “obey my body” to turn the intention into action.

Perhaps now that I understand, I will simply live that. Doubtful, from my experience.

I expect this will be an intention I solidify in 2018, though continue living into the rest of my life.