Going Gently into that Good Night

In Buddhism, the most transformative act is to wake up, to see what is present, to actually open up our eyes. It can take a lifetime to accomplish this simple, this monumental feat.

With many of my clients who have experienced deep trauma, the process of awakening can feel like crawling blindly forward until the film in one’s eyes finally clears. And yet even those of us who have somehow managed to live this long without experiencing intense trauma, it is still difficult to open to what is rather than twisting ourselves up in with the illusion of our own grand design.

These last few months of coaching, of living, have rendered this truth acutely. Not everyone is on a spiritual path, or at least, perhaps, not overtly. But most of us are seeking a way of living that can allow for our intentions, our challenges and the truth of what is around us. And if we are not able to acknowledge what is, we cannot open to what else can be.

When we become tethered between our wants and our struggles, eyes wide shut to our circumstances, our bodies always step in to remind us, to demand that we pay attention. With our eyes, ears, hearts closed to what is, we get ulcers, injuries, our tissues become inflamed.

This is the great gift of our bodies, of our spirits’ fundamental refusal to ignore what is. When we get so wrapped up in our needs and desires, designing for them, against them, in elaborate paths that circumnavigate them as if the deepest truths of our lives were islands to be glimpsed only through binoculars from far, far away, we get panic attacks, insomnia, tendonitis. The body demands our attention.

This time of year when there is more darkness than light, more time to plan away the present, give yourself a practice of opening your eyes. Be gentle. You do not need to toothpick yourself awake. Simple ask yourself what is true right now? What are the circumstances of your life? What is your body telling you? What in your life is demanding your attention?

The process of awakening does ask of us deep curiosity, impeccable honesty, and an incredible amount of compassion, for ourselves most of all. What it yields is a body, a life, a way of living in which we can breathe deeply. A gentleness even in the face of difficulty. A place where we can be comfortable in the darkness, present to both the density and the luminosity of each moment.

The Mammalian Dilemma

It has been, for me, a strange, difficult and wondrous summer, one than cannot be easily summed up in a string of words. The best expression of it would be a line, which mentor, writer and scholar, Renate Stendhal read at a recent retrospective on the work of Gertrude Stein. "Every moment is a new beginning that contains all that happened before." It is so Stein to slow things down to their most apprehensible, their most syntactical. There is such simplicity to her arrangement of nouns, adjectives and verbs and yet the meaning is quite profound. We are everything that has come before and we are always, perennially, renewed.

As I prepare to move into a new home, a new space, a new way of being, I find myself continually pulling and being pulled back to my old habits, my old ways of living. It feels, quite literally, as if I am the beginning sitting anxiously on top of the end, a black-tail deer, nose twitching, perched on the edge of a rock. Beneath the rock is the layers of strata, of years, of past experiences. From my stand above the profusion of sediment, there is an immense vista. But the vista is visible as a result of my perch on the past and to shift, move, leap into the present, the future, I must jump off the rock, let go of the view. From the old place everything is known; everything is seen. From the new place, well I am not there yet, and I most certainly can't see a thing.

This is the mammalian dilemma, our collective dilemma. On the precipice of change, do we take a deep breath and leap or do we stand on the edge of our life and take comfort in the view? The leap requires we have faith in the clarity of our choices, in our alignment with our life purpose. Staying still requires a willingness to live our life as past tense.

This fall take some time to reflect on the beginnings that arise with each dawn, each opening of the great circle, and the ends that are marked by dusk, its close. Each day, like each breath, "is a new beginning that contains all that happened before."

Ask yourself where are you gripping tightly and where, in your life, would you like to leap forward. Experiment a little. Take a deep breath. Close your eyes. Name the new place, the new way of living, that you intend for your life. Bound a few feet forward. The view may be blurred, but you will be right there beside yourself, cheering wildly onward.

We Are What We Practice

A few days ago, one of my favorite yoga teachers said something while we were pressing our palms and feet deeply into the earth in Adho Mukha Svanasana, downward facing dog. It was such a simple reminder and yet it struck me as a deeply important instruction. “We are what we practice,” she said.

I took another deep breath and settled more softly into the pose. Yes. We are what we practice, I thought. Then the question arose, what am I practicing? In yoga, I often find myself pushing my body into positions, straining toward something. But what exactly? Each day, I wondered, what am I creating with my habits, my beliefs, my behaviors? The answer was not what I wanted it to be.

But before turning against myself by making a painstaking list of all the things that I am not doing right, I reminded myself of the purpose of the question. The purpose is to realign practices with intentions. To make gentle, but firm corrections.

If my intention is to be kind and loving with others, do I practice this by being kind and loving with myself? Beyond the ways I nourish myself, these daily acts of care, am I kind and loving in my thoughts as well?

Often, it is not our habits of behavior but our habits of mind that can benefit most from realigning our practice with our intention. And it was here that I focused my energy.

Every time that the story that my mind strings together throughout the day did not support my kind and loving intent, I would guide the language to one that did. Thoughts about what was hard become thoughts about the gift in the present circumstances. Worries about how others might be preventing me from having what I want became reminders of all the ways people have helped me get where I am.

I offer this simple reminder and invitation to practice the life you want to live, the person you want to be. In this way, you tap into the deeply joyous person you are, that we all are. That great spark of life that began us can shine bright if we allow it to. In each moment, we are here, luminous.

Connecting to What Matters

Life is filled with distractions, demands, opportunities, and obstacles. Sometimes in the cacophony of all that is happening around us, we loose sight of what truly matters. It is easy enough to start spinning around and around in circles. This motion can create a strange sense of integrity, as if the movement itself keeps everything connected, establishes an orbit to our lives. But, by getting caught up in the spinning, we loose contact with what matters. We cease to be present in our own experience; we become disconnected from the deep wisdom of our bodies. Absent this fundamental connection, we are adrift.

A few days ago, I found out that my dearest friend has cancer. This news sent me into an old orbit, one about illness and isolation, about loneliness and suffering. For almost two days I was spinning in this place, utterly unable to be breathe, to be present for the sadness this news brought and too unable to be present for the immense gratitude I have for this woman, my dear friend, and her radiant life. I lost contact with the joy of life, of love, of friendship. It took Buddhist author, Tara Brach’s reminder to sit still and breathe in order to stop the spiral. Once I reconnected with my body, once I sat in the feelings rather than spinning in the endless stream of negative thoughts, I could finally reconnect to what matters.

As we move into the myriad of summer activities, remember to stay connected to your body, to breathe into your life. From this place, you can open to all of life’s gifts and stay grounded in the face of life’s challenges. From this place, a life of authentic joy is possible.

Fearlessly, Exuberantly You

We are in the full flush of spring and all its celebrations of life. All around us the earth shows itself in a chromatic display of vivacious living. Spring is the time for rebirth and renewal, to nourish oneself and to flower boldly in the world. There is a simultaneity to this, the rooting down and rising up, the grounding and pushing toward the sky.

Flowering is both metaphoric and literal. Just as plants spread their roots while blossoming in luscious, rich hues, you can fortify yourself while bursting forth in a brilliant display of the many gifts inside of you. To draw on your own immense capacity, you need only ask yourself, how can I best nourish myself and my life? What do I want to open myself up to?

Inside of you is sweet nectar. Open fearlessly, exuberantly, yourself, your life and show the world the thrilling color of you.

Living an Authentic, Joyous Life

Outside my friend’s apartment window in Honolulu, there is a rainbow. Hawaii is known for its rainbows, so much so that to mention the unbelievable beauty of the purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red arch is almost trite. Any yet the rainbow is a meteorological phenomenon, a spectrum of light appearing in the sky when the sun strikes moisture in the earth’s atmosphere. Rainbows occur when there is sun and rain, fire and water. Rainbows reflect the complexity of the earth’s elements, the diversity of human experience, the light and dark that surface in each of our lives.

The greatest joy, it is said, comes from being connected to one’s life purpose, to living an authentic life. This does not mean that life is without it storms, its black clouds and torrents of rain. It does mean that with rain and sun, there are rainbows, spectrums of light so spectacular that it is impossible to witness them without gratitude and joy.

Rainbows are a symbol of authenticity, of our connection to our truest selves. When we are coming from that place in us that is most resonant, our decisions are clear, our purpose is true. We are grounded and yet able to cross the expanse of a sky streaked with storm clouds and sunlight.

Connecting with your life purpose is a process of listening to yourself. What are the things that bring you the greatest joy? Who are you being in those moments? What is the life you want to create for yourself and those you love? What are you willing to do to create this life? What will sustain you in this process?

As we move into spring, remember the rainbow. It is outrageously colorful, at once utterly itself and able to inhabit, with beauty and purpose, the intensity of atmospheric disturbances. It is you living an authentic, joyous life.

The Mysteries of the Human Heart

The heart is a muscle about the size of your fist. Its purpose is to move blood through the body, taking in the de-oxygenated blood through the right atrium and moving oxygenated blood through left ventricle back into the body. It, like all systems in the body, is perfect in its symmetry. As in all aspects of life, there is the in and out, opening and closing, acceptance and rejecting, attachment and release. Rather than situating these oppositional movements in a rigid polemic of good and bad, there is great value in honoring the fluidity of the process.

Around Valentines Day—that strange holiday which honored the martyred Saint Valentine of Rome and during the Middle Ages of Chaucer became associated with romantic love—we tend to focus on what we do and do not have. If we have a lover, we tend to evaluate the romantic-ness of that love (that is its presence and lack). If we do not have a lover then our attention is often on the absence of love. And yet, there is such an abundance of love in the world, in our lives. We have the love of the rain, of our friends and family, of the pink and blue streaked sky at dusk.

And too, within relationships, there is often a tension between closeness and distance, between acceptance of love and fear of its limitations. Here to, we have a unique opportunity to open to the full spectrum of de-oxygenated and oxygenated moments of love, knowing that the blood of it moves throughout our system, that we are fed through its circulation.

Whatever the circumstances of your life, your ways of loving, may this day, this week, this month, open you to the fluidity of love, to its presence in all its forms, to your own breathtaking cycle of vulnerability and connection, contraction and release.

Widening the Margins

At this lip of the new year, we tend to focus on all that we will do better, or right. Often the voice in our head is something like “finally, darn it, I will change this thing about myself, my relationships, my life.” And then we buckle down and get to work. But there is so much more to living, to being, than to seeing our life as work, as labor.

The other day, someone reminded me of the words of Henry David Thoreau in which he speaks to loving a broad margin to his life. There is so much generosity in this image, in the empty space between words and the borders of the page, a generosity to self, a spaciousness.

This year, consider broadening your margin. Cultivate spaciousness. Give yourself the permission of ease.

Some people find spaciousness comes from giving oneself precious moments of quiet and reflection through meditation or writing. Others find a good long run opens their hearts and minds, widens the page. There are those who find the greatest opening comes from spontaneous play, from breaking out in song, dancing an impromptu jig in the living room. I often go to the ocean to breathe in the immensity of our planet, to do cartwheels in celebration of our water world.

What ever it is, where ever you find it, give yourself some time each week to cultivate the joy of spaciousness. Widen the margins to your life.

“There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life.”
- Henry David Thoreau