Step Inside a Memory

Last evening I was watching Neil deGrasse Tyson's mini-series "Cosmos." My head always spins at warp speed during that program: my brain reaching to understand what he just said before he jumps Universes to another thought. (Thank goodness for commercials.  I am not sure my brain could handle 60 minutes straight with Tyson.) 

Somewhere in last night's dizzying episode, Tyson said something that so pierced me with possibilities that my brain didn't even try to figure out the point he was making.

"Step inside a memory." 

I truly don't know where the rock-star astrophysicist went with that, but I just moved into my own Universe.  What a really cool concept!  Stepping inside a memory.  If I could step inside a memory, I could go back to all the special moments and all the important people of my life, again and again.  And if I could step inside a memory, I might even get a do-over on the times that didn't end up the way I wished they had.  I'm liking this idea a lot.

Yet even as I revelled in the possibilities of stepping inside a memory, I realized that miracle already exists.  As human beings we have the incredible ability to travel through time at any moment through our memories and imagination. 

A friend sent me a link to picture on the web of something we did together almost 30 years ago, and it was just like yesterday.  When I stepped inside that memory, I could see the sites and smell the smells as if I were there today.

My kitchen walls are covered with photographs of travel to Italy, and I can...and do...gaze on one occasionally...and just drift back in time.  I can taste that wild boar with chocolate in the rich, rich sauce with toasted pinenuts as if it were yesterday.  (Finest meal ever, I think.) I can remember the tenderness of a gaze and the gentleness of a touch as if it were yesterday. 

I can remember vigorous political conversations after dinner with my father who has been gone almost 30 years now, and it's funny to think about it, but as I step into that memory, I recall his smell. A mixture of tobacco that had gotten into his skin from years of smoking and grease from the machinery he worked on, muscling up through the bouquet of Irish Spring soap.  I am not sure I've ever consciously thought about that before, yet the smell is in my memory.

"Step inside a memory."

Step inside a memory, indeed.  What an awe-inspiring...and ever present...possibility!

My Amazing Machine

This weekend I've been reading a book about my body.* I read a book about how my body works and what it needs at least once a year. I watch TV programs and read articles about health, nutrition, and exercise. I am always struck by what an amazing machine my body is. Of course, it's not just my body: we all have one, and they are truly remarkable.

When I was 10, my father almost died. He was 39. He almost died because of body neglect and abuse. He rarely exercised, and he consumed all matter of unhealthy fats and sugar.  He was significantly overweight at that point in his life. He had a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit. A team of surgeons, experimenting with what was a new technique back then, put him together. His task was to keep himself healthy.

My maternal grandmother, who had always been interested in how we create health, took his health on as a mission. She read everything she could get her hands on, and she did a lot of research. My grandfather had been an organic gardener long before it had a name, primarily because he had limited financial resources, and his compost pile was less expensive than buying fertilizers. As Grandma read about creating health, his gardening took on new purpose. For almost as long as I can remember, I have understood that what goes into our bodies determines how healthy we are.

After almost a lifetime reading about my body, I have learned almost nothing new from this book. It is comprehensive, but so is my knowledge bank. Why, then, did I buy the book and spend most of my weekend reading it? And, why do I do so at least once a year with one new body book or another? Reinforcement and discipline.  Each author packages the information I know differently, so every time I read, there is a slightly different twist to what I know.  But there is more.

A friend once said to someone joining us for a meal for the first time, "Eating with Kay is an exercise in consciousness."  I don't think she meant it in a bad way. I don't have expectations that others will eat the way I choose, and I rarely talk about it unless I know someone shares an interest.  Most, who have eaten at my home, find what I serve delicious and satisfying, and many, if not most, would have no clue that I am serving "healthy" fare.  I think what she meant is that I really give thought to what I prepare, what I eat, and how I treat my amazing machine.  (She did ask if I'd leave her my recipes when I die.)

I read because, as conscious as I am, I slip into unconscious patterns.  I find something new I like, which is healthy, and I begin preparing that dish a lot.  I forget certain nutrients that were in dishes that dropped off my radar when I replaced them with the new recipe. Reading helps me remember.

For example, for much of the last dozen years, dinner has been some kind of spinach salad several times each week. I know that the dark green vegetables have remarkable healing powers, but about 18 months ago, I discovered a different, healthy salad with which I've been obsessed. I didn't even realize it until I read this book, spinach has taken a back burner in my eating.  That will change this afternoon.

This time I am also reminded of water.  I used to take a gallon jug to my desk with me each morning when I had a home office. I would drink the whole jug every day. My office away from home provides me access to filtered water, but I have to walk for it. I am sure I don't drink as much now as I should.  Besides having to walk to my water, I discovered a great new decaf coffee roasted locally, and I've been making and drinking more coffee instead of water.  If nothing more, this reading will bring me back to water.

I hope this reading will also get me back to regular exercise.  Since I don't have a car, I walk a lot, so I am not without exercise.  However, I exercised an hour a day, seven days a week, for much of my adult life.  As regular readers of this blog have heard before, the demands of my current and recent jobs have that number down to two or three times a week, and sometimes less, in addition to my necessity walking.  I make excuses, but the truth is that they are just excuses.  In my heart, I know they are just excuses.  I will make time for exercise.

My intention is to live a healthy life, and I know that is fully within my control.  My father, who almost died at 39, lived to be 65. I got an extra 26 years with him because of what went into his body--and more importantly, what didn't go in his body. I am sure if he had been able to break the cigarette habit, we would have had him much longer.  I have a deeply personal lesson in front of me.

Whether it is creating physical health or maintaining my spiritual practice, living with intention is a matter of constantly assessing how I am doing and what adjustments I need to make to bring me back to my target. (The example of this being at least the third time since I began writing this blog that I have refocused on regular exercise.)  So, at least once a year, I read a book about my amazing body, figure out what adjustments I need to make and make them. I am living with intention. The annual (or more frequent) aiming over process is one way that I respect the amazing machine that enables me to do all the things I love doing.



*The Body Book by Cameron Diaz (Harper Wave 2014.)


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Life's Little Miracles

Today I visited my balcony again, and, quite to my surprise, bulbs are shooting up everywhere. Where there were none yesterday, one was five inches high. I should have been able to see it growing if I'd been watching carefully. Many other shoots had burst through the soil as well, boldly forcing winter to yield to spring.

Intellectually, I knew this would happen; something similar occurs every year about this time. Yet every time it is a miracle unfolding before my eyes. My mind--my memory--cannot capture and recall the true wonder of it all. The best I can do is some kind of single-dimensional, black and white version of a 3D bursting with color miracle--a true miracle--that I experienced today.

Life is full of miracles--everyday miracles. Most of them are eclipsed by activities that distract us from the wonders around us.

Our bodies totally replace themselves every 13 months. Yet even as they do, we retain our uniqueness. Our bodies have the same peculiarities, aches, and pains, and I have the same mop of curls I've had since I was a toddler, yet every one of them is new each year.

Having coffee with a new friend consumes five hours like they were an instant. There is a magical familiarity though you never met before. A play date with an old friend unwinds perfectly and totally without conscious intention. Conversations with my college roommate always pick just as though we'd talked yesterday when it may have been a year...and they've been doing that for decades. When I think about them, all of these are miracles.

As a dancer, I've had dances with people that were other worldly. In one case a Viennese waltz unfolded so effortlessly and flawlessly that I am sure we must have been dancing that dance together for lifetimes. Although my partner and I danced together for seven years, that one dance stands out in my memory a dozen years later. In another case an Argentine Tango was pure magic with a partner I only ever danced with one time. A theater arts performance left me sure that I actually could fly.

Of course, the most perfect miracles are those of love: the pride of a parent at a child's accomplishment or the care of an aging parent who has become dependent on the child, who once depended on him or her. And, of course, there is nothing quite as wonderful as the equally miraculous gaze in the eyes of new love or the mellowed, appreciative look of matured love.

Everyone of these is a miracle. Too often the miraculous moments slip through a crevice in time, not unlike my memory of spring bulbs coming up anew each year. In tensions of other moments, the miraculous ones may totally disappear from memory. I regret that I have learned too late to savor those moments before they slipped away, many lost forever.

Yet there is a miracle greater than all if these, and that is being able to start anew each day with the wisdom gained in all the days before. Tomorrow I can start again with new appreciation for every miracle with which I am blessed and truly savor each.

All of these are truly miracles.








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Writing

In yesterday's post I wrote about coming to understand my practice of observing the Sabbath. ("What is work?" 3/28/14) The acting of writing helped me to determine what the observation of the Sabbath meant to me and to commit to an intention for how I want to live.

After finishing that post, I continued to ponder the gift my writing has been to me. (Pondering the big questions is a legitimate use of the Sabbath.) I've known for a long time that I used my writing to figure things out, but I am not sure that I fully understood until this morning that my writing is how I discover my intention for life.

In the instant that I had the thought that by writing I discover my intentions in life I understood for the first time the books I had written--I mean fully understood them.  Over 20 years ago, when I was well into writing the first draft of Leading from the Heart, I remember sinking into my chair as dusk had darkened my office and having the thought: "This is my Truth!" In the split-second that followed, however, two contradictory thoughts came almost simultaneously: "I've always known this," and "Somehow this is all new."

I think the act of writing had helped me know how to put my Truth into action--how I would attempt to live the rest if my life. I had somehow known my Truth before writing it, but I hadn't really figured out what that meant for a real world, day-to-day life.  Now, I want to be clear: I haven't gotten there yet. But like the practice of Sabbath, having a blueprint for how I wanted to live established a bar that I want to clear: it has become my intention for how to live.

As I reflect on it, The Alchemy of Fear and The Game Called Life were refinements to that intention.

When I began writing this blog last fall, I felt that I had lost my way. Intuitively, I knew that writing was the answer, and having an almost-daily blog would bring spiritual rigor and discipline that I desperately needed.

In describing how I write the blog to a friend, I said that I often didn't know what I would write until I sat, and words were coming. Then, the words just made sense as they spilled onto the screen. Given my intention in naming the blog "You Know In Your Heart," I should not be surprised that my writing has brought forward for shared examination what is written on the back side of my heart. ("Intention," 3/13/14)

Those of you who have been reading this blog for awhile will know that I've been working in a memoir. Humbly, I think the writing has been some if my best, but it just hasn't hung together. With this new insight, I think I will be able to add structure that will help it to coalesce.

In The Game Called Life I wrote that we have three intentions for life: to perform special service to which we feel uniquely called, to learn lessons, and to fully develop and use our gifts and talents. As I have enhanced my understanding of my writing and probably my memoir today, I think I've done all three.

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What is work?

As promised when I wrote "Sabbath" (3/22/14) last weekend, since I chose to work on my Sabbath I am taking today off for that practice. I struggled as I wrote the word "practice" because for me Sabbath requires practice. Perhaps it is because this odd weekday Sabbath doesn't have any routines like getting up and going to church that I am much more aware of the state of mind required for Sabbath practice.

After working out of town most of the week and getting home when it was almost dark, one of the first things I wanted to do this morning was to check for signs of spring on my balcony. Although I left town in Washington's latest snow storm, two days of warmer temperatures had sent new flower shoots bursting through the soil, some already three inches high. I raced to my kitchen sink for water to encourage their growth.

Just as I was doing so, I was struck with the question: "Isn't watering my plants work?" Hmmm. Caring for these living things that I love brings me such joy, can that really be considered work? I have often experienced joy in my work for which I get paid, and I was pretty certain that didn't make doing my job appropriate Sabbath activity. I continued to water, but I was really present to the living things upon which I was showering not only water but love.

I came in and made myself my normal breakfast fruit starter of fresh fruit, and I realized that the preparation might be work, certainly the way I was mindlessly going about it I stopped, took a deep breath, and began mindfully slicing and creatively arranging the fruit in my plate. I felt that was the way I should do food preparation on the Sabbath. (I know the rabbis in the temple would probably say that we aren't supposed to do food prep at all on the Sabbath.)

Next I filled my teakettle with water to make tea. Once again I wondered: "Was this activity work?" About that time, I knew that I wanted to share my thoughts in this blog, but once again I was struck with the question: "Is that work?" How could soul-searching be considered inappropriate activity for the Sabbath?

As I often do as I've written, the act of writing has brought me clarity. That is how I ended up using the word "practice" at the beginning of this post. Although the rabbis in the temple may disagree, I have come to understand two things about my Sabbath practice that I didn't know when I awakened this morning:

1) I think that the Sabbath is less about what we do and more about how we do it. By slowing the pace, we can bring more consciousness to whatever we do, and I think the consciousness we are to bring is a state of godliness. For me, personally, that means holding myself in love, joy, and peace--states that make me feel at one with all that is.

2) I arrived at the word "practice" because I realized this really is the state of consciousness that I want all the time: Sabbath gives me time and a pace to practice this way of being so that maybe I will be able to live and work this way more
of the time in the other six days of the week. I even think that my realization will make me more aware of how I will live all the time.

Unless it rains, I will go for a walk this afternoon, but instead if just going for a walk during which my mind continues to work, my Sabbath walk will be practice in consciousness for the week ahead and a time to delight in being present to spring budding around me.




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Living Consciously

I was working with a group today, and since it had been over a year since they'd had a retreat during which they'd developed values and norms, we started with reflection on how they'd done at living them.

At one point a participant said, "We may not get it every time, but most of the time we stop and think."

Over the years, I've heard many people say something similar. I believe that stopping to think is the first step and most major hurdle cleared to living consciously. The moment we can break free from automatic thinking, or what I call putting our lives on autopilot, we are 3/4 of the way to making the right decision. If we know our intentions and are conscious, then most of the time we can act in accordance with them. It is only when we don't recognize that we are even making a decision that we have lost the battle.




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Guilt and Self-Forgiveness

Although I ended up working several hours on my Sabbath yesterday, it was not until late afternoon.  Both my pastor's message in the church service that I attended and the guests on "Super Soul Sunday" (OWN) provided me with much material for reflection.  Yesterday I wrote about the pastor's message which led me to decide that I really want a soft and open heart again.

Today, I'd like to share from one segment of "Super Soul Sunday."  Rabbi Irwin Kula was the guest "expert" with several guests, each of whom was dealing with significant guilt.  Kula, co-author of
Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life, talked about guilt getting us stuck and the value of forgiving ourselves.  When we wallow in our guilt, it is usually because we obsess on replaying the thing for which we feel guilty, attempting to replay the circumstances over and over again with "What ifs?" 

One of the wisest things that he said is that in order to move beyond our guilt that we must redirect the "What ifs?" into "What now?" or "What next?" His words really got me thinking. "What-iffing" is destined to frustrate us repeatedly because there can never be a satisfactory outcome.  No matter how many ways we replay the past, there is no way to change it; there can never be reality in any of the alternatives that we imagine.  The past is the past, and nothing can really change it.  The only place to make change is now.

Mostly, I've lived my life without regrets but there are three things that really bug me.  I have been guilty of what-iffing...for years, even decades...thinking that if I imagined the perfect combination of events that somehow, like magic, I would be transported in time back to the event for a do-over.  There are no do-overs.  Yet over and again, I've been unable to pull myself out of the do-over mentality.

In each case, I did the very best I could do with what I knew at the time.  No matter how many more resources I have now or how much more I know, it doesn't matter. Although it seems like I've spent lots of time grieving, I may need some more conscious grieving. But, my real work now is to focus on the "What now?" and "What next?" The time has come for forgiving myself, so that I may move forward.

I've often said that the biggest regret in my life is my inability or lack of resources to have saved my marriage and to have hurt the person I loved most in the world (still do) in the process.  I have grown a lot.  Now I can actually see what I could have done differently, but I couldn't learn that without having been where I've been in the last 20 years.  Not only are there no do-overs, but if we could, we couldn't employ resources that we didn't have at the time.

While that is clearly my biggest regret, as I've reflected over the last 28 hours, I think I have much more guilt over the failure of my business.  Actually, it isn't the failure of my business that has caused the guilt, but what happened because of it.  Many people think that the best entrepreneurs are those who have had at least one business failure.  One of my clients--a multi-millionaire in the hundreds of millions--had experienced several business failures, along with his several huge successes. 

Knowing this, I don't beat myself up too much about an economy that went bust at the time current events cut deeply into another revenue stream and just as my publishing house closed the part of the business which published two of my books.  I had been very prudent about having multiple revenue streams and months of retained earnings to carry me over the bumps.  Mostly, I just shrug about that: there really was nothing I could have done to change those circumstances that I hadn't already done.

What makes me ache about my business failure is that when I lost everything, I lost a small nest egg that my father had left me.  My father worked very hard to provide for his family and to send me to college.  I can remember many long days in even longer weeks of doing pretty physical labor.  Quite frankly, I don't know how he did it.  My parents were frugal and good savers. The owned everything outright with no debt. All that hard work and frugality allowed me to start my business and take time to write three books in the first place.  I am truly grateful for those opportunities, and at the same time, it makes me ache that all my father's hard work just evaporated. 

I have serious guilt about losing that money.  In my "what ifs?" about this, I've even imagine having a conversation with him, hoping that somehow if he understood it, I'd feel better.  The truth is that I don't think he would ever understand it.  He wouldn't blame me, but I am sure he would have a very difficult time understanding me being entrepreneurial instead of working at a more conventional job.  "What-iffing?" will never change that.

Finally, I've ended up later in my career in a dead-end job that has been financially devastating to me in the wake of my business failure.  I took a huge pay cut to take a job that I thought would allow me more upward mobility, as well as the opportunity to sleep in my own bed on weeknights.  That was just as the Federal government went into a three-year pay freeze, and now that we've gotten a whopping 1% increase when local cost of living has gone up way more than that, I've netted enough each pay period to buy a latte at Starbucks...if I don't buy a vente.  To add insult to injury, the work environment has been toxic.  Water under the bridge.  I made the move.  It is good resume material, and I have gotten to sleep in my own bed every work night since I took the job...until tomorrow. (A sign?)

The time has come for me to grieve my losses and move on.  The past is the past.  Populated by ghosts, it isn't a good place to live.  I even think it may have had something to do with the hardening of my heart about which I wrote yesterday.  Yet, I don't want to be glib about this.  I plan to set aside a time for a grieving ritual, and then, I think, literally plant some seeds to remind me that, when I plant for the future, something can actually grow. 

Rabbi Kula said that forgiving is not forgetting.  I believe that forgiving is how we free ourselves.  I've written in the blog before about forgiving others.  Now it's time to forgive myself.

A Hardened Heart

Following the singing of a hymn which repeated a line about our hardened heart at church this morning, our pastor spoke about how the same circumstance that hardens the heart of some of us actually softens the heart of others. He described how if we drop an egg in a pot of boiling water, it becomes hard--a hard-boiled egg. A potato dropped in the same pot of boiling water becomes soft and malleable.

Unfortunately, I fear that my heart has hardened. I am not sure when it happened, this hard heart of mine: I know it used to be soft and open. I think I know how it happened.

When I had a soft and open heart, I trusted easily. I think that too many times I trusted those who were not trustworthy. With each injury, my heart hardened just a little bit until suddenly one day I realized it was hard...and I have no idea how to soften it again. I want to. The next time something drops onto my heart, how can I assure that it is soft like the potato instead of hard like a cooked egg?

I don't have the answer but I know in my heart that I want it to be so. I am sure that having the intention--knowing that having a soft heart is written on the back side of my heart--is the first step. Then, bringing consciousness to every encounter, will gradually soften it's hard edges.

I fear that our world has become over-populated by hard hearts bumping into each other instead of soft ones, opening and melding with others. Now that I am aware of my own hard heart, I no longer want to be part of that hard-hearted world. Like a couple that our pastor described, I think that I shall begin praying to become a potato.




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Sabbath

Although I grew up in the American "Bible Belt," where going to church on Sunday, followed by a big Sunday dinner which often involved inviting friends from church or family, there were never any verbalized strictures around the Sabbath.  In fact, we almost never used the word.  I can remember asking my mother sometime in my grade school years, what "Sabbath" was.  Her response was inexact if not imprecise: going to church--for Christians Sabbath is Sunday and for Jews it occurs on Saturday.  That told me when it was and what people did, but it really never said what it was.

The Sabbath in the Abrahamic traditions derives from God's creation of the world in six days and God's rest on the seventh day.  In 1994 I began strictly observing a Sabbath (strict by my definition)--a day of rest each week. Most of the time, I observe on Sunday, but occasionally, I choose another day.  In the beginning, I spent most of the day reading spiritual writing and meditating; then, at 4 p.m., I would walk two blocks to a Kundalini yoga class, which ended in another meditation.  I would often meet a friend for dinner at the end of my day.

Over the years, my practice has morphed to fit with circumstances in my life.  For a period of time, my job required me to travel six days a week, and the only day I had at home was needed for laundry, opening mail, paying bills, watering plants, and, of course, packing for another week.  Although I travelled much of the day on Sunday, I didn't work.  Even on the plane I'd meditate. I would read spiritual material. Cooking is a delight to me, and I never consider it work.  I often cook on my Sabbath. Since taking up dancing, dance has frequently been part of Sunday evenings.  It is the most joyful thing I do. I am quite comfortable dancing on my Sabbath. All these activities feed my soul and renew me.

Various religious traditions do have strict guidelines for the Sabbath.  In the 1981 Oscar-winning movie, "Chariots of Fire," athletes were not to train on the Sabbath.  Now some people take a Sabbath from electronics. 

A friend who knew my practice gave me a copy of William Muller's 2000 book, Sabbath. Muller describes the evolution of the Sabbath. In ancient times, he says, the Sabbath "created an oasis of sacred time within a life of unceasing labor." He continues that in our harried modern lives a Sabbath can be a "special time of rest, delight, and renewal--a refuge for our souls."

He describes the Sabbath as a "time of sacred rest to refresh our bodies and minds, restore our creativity, and regain our birthright of inner happiness."  Ah!  Although they have varied to include church services, time with friends, a hike in nature, lunch with friends, walking to the National Cathedral and spending time sitting or napping in the Bishop's garden, or watching "Super Soul Sunday" on OWN, my Sabbaths have generally been so.  They truly renew me. I am happy and peaceful. The key thing for me has always been that I would not do "work."

For the last 36 hours, I have been agonizing over the upcoming Sabbath.  I have a number of very big projects with immediate, eternally-driven deadlines at work.  My whole team is working very long hours, so there is no one to whom I can off-load work. I will facilitate a three-day retreat this coming week, and I would usually spend four or five days preparing.  Because of other projects, I had no time before Friday afternoon to prepare.  I worked Friday afternoon and early evening, and I've work about six hours today, but I am far from ready.

If I don't work at least a few hours on Sunday, even with a marathon Monday, I won't be at all prepared for the meeting on Tuesday.  Just thinking about it created stress.  I would rather work on Sunday and have a saner, more satisfying week.  But, this is a slippery slope; if I make this exception, will it become easier the next time deadlines encroach on my Sabbath.  Will my boss come to expect me to work my weekends, as has happened before when I travelled?  With the crazy pace, I need a Sabbath.

What to do?  I will go to church and probably watch Super Soul Sunday when I return, but I will work several hours.  I will take Friday off...no matter what...and renew myself after the retreat is behind me.  I am uncomfortable with the solution because having become accustomed to a Sabbath, I know how much I need one, especially before several days of facilitation.  However, I am unwilling to pull an all-nighter on Monday because I took Sunday off, and I get great joy from serving my client groups well.  This week I accept a Sabbath in a different form and commit to return to rest and renewal next week.

Adventure

A number of years ago I attended a singles workshop which was designed to help us explore ourselves and what we were looking for in a mate. After having completed several exercises, we were supposed to share our most important discoveries about ourselves with three others at our table, and they were to respond by saying what they'd heard.

The very first man that I shared with responded, "Adventure must be very important to you."

I was dumb-struck. "Adventure must be very important to you." Well, of course, it was. I cannot imagine anything worse than a life without adventure, but I had not only never articulated it before, I am not sure I knew how important it was to me until that very moment. Clearly in my top five qualities in my mate, but more importantly, in my top five qualities I want to honor in myself.

I've just finished watching a program on Turkey, a definite bucket list destination. There were so many places I wanted to explore--places on the edge of the screen, just out of focus--that I could hardly contain myself. I could almost taste the fresh mackerel, smell the fresh spices in the old market, and feel the grittiness if the mitts in the Turkish bath.

While it is easy to imagine adventure in a place like Istanbul, I must be much more intentional about finding it on ordinary weekdays at home. Yet some of the richest adventures I've been on have been near my home. A newly discovered hiking trail in the park right behind my apartment. A just-found hole-in-the-wall Malaysian restaurant. The old jumbled up mess of a variety store, which offers everything you can imagine...and some you can't. Often some of the best adventures (and sometimes misadventures) happen in my kitchen. Who knew that Moroccan winter vegetable stew could be such a taste sensation?

When I've traveled, often the highlights have been adventures most tourists would never have considered. Hiring a junk in the Hong Kong Typhoon Shelter to take us to the back side of an out island and then hiking along a three-foot wide "highway" by the South China Sea, by fields being farmed by musk oxen, passed women playing majan (sp?) while bread baked in community ovens, and over a mountain to the main port is as fresh in my memory as the day I walked it 25 years ago.

I used to go on Saturday adventures with a friend, during which time one or the other of us would take the other to places they'd never been and probably didn't know existed. I am not sure which was the most fun: finding new places to introduce to my friend or being led on the adventure.

I've come to understand adventure as a state of mind--an intention--to find something new and different...noticing the adventures right under our noses. The sad thing is that I too often fall into a comfortable routine that I live almost without thinking. I can't do that if I don't raise my consciousness about doing so in each moment. Otherwise I will arrive at the end of my life having lived the same well-worn path that everyone else has rather than the road less travelled--the one that is my own unique and wonderful life.

Embracing everything I do with a spirit of adventure not only brings richness to my life's memories, but, as I reflect on it, I think doing so has allowed me to surf life's challenges rather than fight them. As I walk into the building where I work today, I face 5 major projects, all of which should take many hours and must be done this week. I am in meetings for the next six hours. I have no clue how this will be accomplished, but somehow it will. I'll embrace the adventure.

A number of years ago I was part of a small group talking to a woman who has researched the mind-body connection in health. In that role she has spent significant time with people who were dying. I remember her saying that people who tried to control their lives often fought death, but those who had embraced personal growth as an adventure just considered death as one more adventure. I think my attitude about adventure is good training for whatever comes next.








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Spontaneity

After publishing "Living Like It Was My Last Day--Part II" (3/15/14) late Saturday night, I emailed my college roommate that if that were my last day, I'd want to talk with her.  Late Sunday afternoon I received a text "...how about now?" In a split second, I had pushed her number into my phone, and we were talking. We laughed...a lot.  We recalled sitting on her sofa during a visit three or four years ago, lingering over tea and laughing.

The wonder of it all was the ease and spontaneity with which both those events happened.  We didn't plan the call for weeks: it just happened in seconds.  As I recall the visit was similar.  I had a wild hair a few days before Labor Day and called her about getting together. After a couple false starts, I was headed to Cincinnati for the weekend...and it was a rich one.  Nothing fancy. Sitting on the deck, sitting in a café, walking along the river, sitting on the couch. Perfect!  It just doesn't get better than that.

This evening I was the beneficiary of a similarly rich spontaneous evening.  Netflix notified me that a film a friend and I had talked about seeing was going to arrive today.  I forwarded the email.  In seconds came a reply, "I'm in."  I grabbed a couple things for a simple dinner in front of the movie.  We laughed as I prepared food. We enjoyed the movie together.  No planning.  It just happened...easily.

The movie friend above and I traveled to Tuscany a few years ago--completely without itinerary except for our flight arrival and departure.  We did what we felt like doing when we felt like doing it.  When a hand-scrawled sign advertised "guest rooms," she did a U-turn on the narrow windy road, and we had a magnificent evening in a small guest house with a spectacular view, drinking 10-year old wine that was on sale because it was so old.  We had 16 days like that.

With each passing year, I've come to relish spontaneity more. I don't know if it is my over-scheduled work life that leaves me running from one 30-minute meeting to another 30-minute meeting from 7:30 to 5:30 or if it is just being more comfortable in my own skin and knowing the there is something refreshing about listening to my inner guidance system and "just doing it," but it just fits. I almost bristle at having to plan things in advance that get so complicated that I've lost the excitement before we make schedules work. I am pretty sure that whatever is written on the back of my heart must include something about spontaneity.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Whoever "they" are, they say that everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day, the March 17th day that we recognize the patron saint of Ireland.  But, I actually am Irish...a way back, but my name attests my genes.  Since I didn't grow up in a religion that recognizes saints, I decided that I'd learn a bit about St. Patrick today.  So, I turned to my fast friend Google to help me figure this out.

First of all, our patron saint wasn't even Irish, and he was not even religious until he was kidnapped as a young adult.   Well!  At least, he did bring Christianity to most of Ireland in the fifth century, but as far as I can tell he didn't have anything to do with green beer.

I think I was happier not knowing; at least, then I could make up something more glamorous.

How much of life is perception: we make up something good or bad about a person, based on a miniscule impression.  Then we go merrily along thinking just because we made it up, it must be true. Before long, we actually begin to believe our make-believe story is true.

Last week a colleague said to me, quite seriously, "You're not a bad person." Well, really?!  I'm glad she figured it out, but where did that come from?  She really acted shocked.

So, St. Patrick wasn't Irish or religious early on, and I'm not a bad person.  I wonder what else out there each of us could discover isn't really true.

Resilience

A few months ago when the movie was still in the theatres, I saw "All is Lost," starring Robert Redford as a lone aging sailor who's boat is sinking far out at sea.  Throughout the whole movie, we see him struggling, literally attempting to save his life far from any civilization.  I was amazed at his resilience--the ability to bounce back after a set-back.  Over and over again, we'd see him "give up" in exhaustion, literally out of resources and creativity.  Then the next scene would be the next day, and he was at it again, with a fresh idea and a new way to survive whatever dilemma was in front of him at the time.

Today in my mediation time, I kept flashing on his character waking up and attempting something new.  Those meditational snapshots have been on my mind all day. With yet one more snow storm dropping white stuff on Washington, perhaps my snapshots were foretelling the attitude I may need to make it through winter, but I suspect something more than that.  While it feels like I cannot survive one more snow storm, I am sure there is nothing life-threatening at stake for me this evening.

As I reflect on the sailor's resourcefulness, it was only when certain more obvious avenues to survival had proven unsuccessful that he was forced to become more creative.  Right up to the end of the movie, which I won't share lest I ruin the movie for any who haven't yet seen it, when he did something that almost seemed to assure his demise did he actually assure survival.

I think about my many efforts to get Choice Point published over the 17 years since it was "finished." I just gave up about 12 years ago, but I am wondering if I should literally dust off the now out-of-date book and bring more creativity to marketing.  Similarly, The Game Called Life, which I self-published because I didn't want to repeat my experience with Choice Point, has really never gotten off the ground, largely because avenues with which I was familiar for marketing a book with a publisher are closed to self-published works. 

My business, which failed in the dot.com bust, is another challenge wherein I felt at my wit's end in marketing before I finally gave it up completely six years later.  The economics of doing any of these things is more than a little terrifying to me after having my own economic "All is Lost" several years ago.

But the bottom line is that all wasn't lost.  Like the sailor in the sinking boat, I got creative.  I had to move, and I had to shift my expectations about how my work life would play out.  I did it though.  I have a regular income, a benefits package, and even some retirement savings I've been able to squirrel away.  I even bought a home again 15 months ago. While I may not be very happy in my current work, I actually do have choices.  All was far from lost. 

I think something in me is saying I should revisit some of these challenges, think like my life depended on succeeding, and discover how resourceful I could actually be.  That is what resilience is about, stepping back and taking one more run at it when all appears to be lost.  Like the sailor, I may actually need to put my life on the line to save my life.  If I don't try, how will I ever know?  I am reminded of a question I've asked in my books and many coaching sessions: "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" If I could not fail, why wouldn't I put everything on the line?  Now that is the question.

Living Like It Was My Last Day--Part II

Back in November, I published a post about living each day like it was my last. (11/28/13)  That was really about doing things on my "bucket list"--those things I've known for a long time that I wanted to do before I died.  Earlier this week (3/11) I wrote about not putting off those things that we yearn to do.  I firmly believe in the importance of doing those things in life, and I regret that time seems to pass so quickly that whole years pass in a blink without more of them happening.

Last night's movie viewing started me thinking about living each day like it was my last in a different way.  If this happened to be the last day of my life, what regrets would I want to fix?  Who would I want to forgive? What frayed relationships would I want to mend? To whom would I want to say "I love you?"  To whom would I want to thank or express gratitude?  This train of thought opens a whole new set of possibilities of living without regret. 

I've often wondered why it is that people who haven't spoken to each other for decades wait until their final days of life to mend fences and express regrets.  Of how many hours or days of joy have they robbed themselves?  Why is it that all those years during which the pride was so hard to swallow, but when the end is near, those are the people that they want to see, to touch, and to love again?

I have someone who was very special to me for the first 20 years of my life.  I have only seen her incidentally two or three times since then.  We started talking by phone again 10 years or so ago.  I would really love to see her again.  I would crawl on my hands and knees halfway across the country to see her again, but when I've asked she says, "No."  While I know I am responsible for the frayed relationship in the first place, I ache that my olive branches have been spurned.  She is much older than I, and each time we speak I hope that she doesn't die before I see her. 

As I reflect upon it, there are people that have been special to me and with whom I don't have frayed relationships, but as we've moved around the country, I've just lost touch.  If this were the last day of my life, I'd like to have one last conversation, a good laugh, and one final hug. In these days of the Internet and Skype, there is no reason for me not to have that conversation and laugh, although the hug will be a bit more challenging.  Facebook has given us the illusion that if we connect as "friends," we are really connected, but Facebook knows nothing about an afternoon laughing and spinning stories together over coffee.

In the last 15 hours or so since I've been thinking about this other side of the "last day," I've also thought about unspoken or under-spoken gratitude.  It is funny how people have just popped into my mind that I haven't thought about for decades.  I don't know why, but my high school government teacher has just been hovering there.  I would love to thank her for the passion she instilled in me for government watching.  I went on to major in political science, and politics-watching has been my favorite indoor sport for all of my adulthood...and probably before.  I remember impassioned debates with my father, lingering at the dinner table, when I was still in school.  I don't know if she's even still alive, but I think it is time to reach out. 

I think, too, about nameless people to whom I will be eternally grateful, like that college advisor that suggested that he thought I might find another career more satisfying than accounting, a potential job I'd selected because I thought it would always be secure.  After all, we always need accountants, no matter what the economy is.  EEK!  While I completely value those who do this work, it is mostly so I don't have to do it.  I am sure I would have slit my wrists in a few short months.

Writing this blog seems to have the effect of causing me to start a lot of lists, and while I don't always make it through all of them, the intention gets me started.  Sometimes I do make it through the whole list after a few months: this list seems too important not to write.

What Holds Me Back?

Yesterday I wrote about my understanding of "intention" as an inner compass imprinted on the back of our hearts. It keeps us on track for what we are supposed to do in this life.  Kind of like a "purpose" but bigger than a "job," our heart's intention includes things like gifts and talents we have to develop and spiritual lessons that we are to learn in this life.

Almost since I clicked "publish" last night I've been struggling personally with what holds me back.  I don't think the answer is one thing but several (perhaps many?) things. All of those things might boil down to "fear."  Most religions have some concept about what separates us from God is fear, so , given the closeness to God that our intentions are, should we be surprised that it is fear that often keeps us from realizing them?

There is the fear of leaping--doing something big that we've never done before, and we don't really know how to do. Fear of failure is a big one: "What if I leap and fail?" haunts many of us.  I believe even bigger is the fear of success.  "What if I leap and succeed beyond my wildest imaginings, what would I do?"  Most of us might chuckle and think we'd like to have that problem, but when we look in the mirror we know that huge success can intimidate those around us, change relationships, and depending on how different our new world might be, make close friends and family uncomfortable to be around us.

One that I've struggled with often is the fear of success followed by failure.  I did experience incredible success for many years before things crashed.  Failure after success is way worse than being in the same spot before the success.  I didn't really know how it could be until I'd been there. Relatively speaking, being in the same spot is not the same. (I think this may be why some fear success: they'd just rather never know what is on the other side.) Fortunately, I think I've mastered the spiritual lesson of resilience: I keep coming back in different manifestations.

Over the last 12 hours or so of thinking about what holds me back, I find myself repeatedly coming back to places I've been many times.  Spiritual places.  I really want to get this right.  Some spiritual lessons I've repeated over and over again; I don't want to walk away from one without getting it right this time. 

For instance, I'd like to be able to add "check" to the spiritual lesson that is being treated abusively by women who have power over me.  Since my mother first initiated me into that lesson when I was about three, I have had several women (current boss included,) who have had power over me, that were psychologically abusive. The form has been varied from compromising my integrity--I walked away from that one--to threatening me financially. (Not so much on that one.)

Usually I have walked away from those women. What I know about spiritual lessons is that walking away must not be the answer or else the lesson wouldn't keep popping up.  Over the last four years, I've attempted several things.  None have produced satisfactory results, so that also tells me I haven't found the right answer or approach yet.  My experience is that when we learn the spiritual lesson, it melts away almost instantly. So, yes, I am held back from walking away because I really want to dispense with this lesson. Enough already!

There is also what I will call economic reality.  I admit that I was much more spiritually confident when I had a generous investment portfolio than since the dot.com bust wiped it out over a decade ago.  Walking away from my current situation could have severe economic consequences when I have no cushion.  I freely admit this fear. I also wonder if delayed gratification--something I haven't been so good at--could be the lesson.  My experience is that when we get all the intentions aligned--service, lessons, talents--magic happens, so I am a bit skeptical about that as an excuse.

Everything I know intellectually tells me that, before I let go of what I have, I should have something to move toward.  Honestly, I don't have the burning desire to do something different that I've had in the past.  When I knew in my heart something I just had to do, it was easy to move forward.

I feel impatience from my heart--like it has been telegraphing something to me impatiently, and I'm just not getting it.  I almost said to someone yesterday, "Sometimes we just have to close one door before another will open."  I didn't.  It seemed like I needed the advice as much as she did.  But, while I intensely feel the impatience, I don't have any kind of compelling desire or vision for what's next. 

(I remind old readers and inform new ones that I've taken some pretty dramatic leaps before, but I always knew what I wanted out of the transition.  I left rainy Oregon to move to sunny North Carolina where I knew no one and had no economic prospects just because I'd wanted to live there since I was a child and in sunny climes for a decade. I also needed to be alone, so I could find myself, but that complicates the description. That cross-country move was an easy leap for me.)

When I was younger, I tended to get a "wild hair," which I actually think may be a thunderbolt from the back of my heart, and, to paraphrase the ads, I just did it.  Now I am more aware of the spiritual lessons. I may have just answered my question.  If I get a thunderbolt from my heart, doesn't that imply that I can't get it wrong?  I think it does.  I am waiting for the thunderbolt.  Judging from the impatience in my heart, I think it will be here soon.

Intention

The word "intention" has gotten thrown around a lot in recent years.  Mostly, God/the Universe or some mystical force is treated like "the great carhop in the sky," who willy-nilly gets people whatever they want.  A Jaguar F-Type S: check. A cruise of the Caribbean: check. iPhone 5S Gold: check.  Lose 20 pounds: no check unless you eat more healthfully and exercise, although focusing on it may help. 

Although there probably is no way to prove it in this world, I am pretty sure things don't work that way.  Oh, you might get those things, but I am pretty confident that the spiritual concept of intention doesn't work that way.  I realize that what I am about to say will probably put me at odds with a lot of New Agers, who actually like the carhop concept: it is a lot of fun, and, truthfully, focusing on something often makes it come true.  But that is not intention.  Some call it master-minding.  That works for me.  What doesn't work for me is calling it "intention."

I am pretty confident that "intention" is what we know in our heart--and only there.  We don't know it in our minds. We can't think it. We can't create it on earth. It is highly unlikely that it is about stuff. 

When I started this blog, my "intention" (spiritual use of the word) was that it would be about "intention." Over the months, though, the content has been all over the ballpark, yet more often than not, when I have posted many, if not most, days, a little voice has whispered to me something like: that was about "intention."  And, more often than not, I have regretted that I hadn't or couldn't write about it more directly. Yet I am not certain that intention can be written about more directly. 

I can tell you what I think the "tee-up" is.  But, in truth, "intention" is a daily, even hourly, process of discovering our soul's truth...and most days, what I have written has been what my soul was wrestling about that particular day.

I will attempt to describe the "tee-up," and I am forced to describe it in anthropomorphic terms, even though I am not sure that is how God exists.  Whatever form, I am nearly certain that the process would be similar.

Now, I ask you to imagine your soul, sitting with God, before you were conceived. For some reason when I imagine this, it always comes to me that I am sitting on a precipice overlooking a great canyon--think Grand Canyon, only more magnificent, if that is possible.  I don't think that it really matters where you imagine this; maybe the reason I imagine it so is that I connect deeply with nature and, when I think of the grandeur of the Universe, this is what comes.  (Although I have to say some of those scenes on the new "Cosmos," could entice me that it might be in a field of stars.)

So, as I was saying, I am sitting with God, and we do something like a mind-meld, except that it is a heart-meld: my heart becomes one with God.  In that moment, our combined heart does an assessment of my soul's history: it determines what my soul needs in order to grow. You might think about this as the famous "life review," but this is many lives review, and I am not sure, but I don't think it has nothing to do with other people.  I think it is an assessment of whether we stepped up to our potential, whether we contributed more to the world than we took, and whether we evolved as souls.

At that point, the way that I imagine this happening is my soul says whatever it is that it thinks it needs and with the combined energy of God simultaneously assesses what the world will need in my lifetime, and just at the moment we move to form a human embryo, we agree to perform service that will be needed and evolve our souls. In that instant, we are given special gifts and talents to assist in those two missions.

Now this is where the "intention" and "you-know-in-your-heart" part come in.  As soon as that compact or contract seals, this assignment for life is written on the back side of our hearts.  We can't see it, but we can feel it.  I have been coaching people around intention for 25 years.  I have never seen it fail that when a person detaches from their mind (key condition,) takes a few deep breaths, and tunes in to his/her heart, in that instant the person will know some crystalline truth that they didn't know a split-second earlier.

I think "monkey mind" is a Buddhist concept. In the modern world, it is increasingly difficult to turn off our minds.  Our obsession with technological gadgets feeds monkey mind.  (I am as guilty as anyone. I love my smartphone. And, I know it distracts me from what is important.) The busier our minds get, the harder it is to hear the still whispers from our hearts.  Thus the daily wrestling matches I've shared with readers, as I struggle to learn the truth of my heart.

The spiritual concept of "intention" is what is written on the backs of our hearts--the contract or compact that we entered into with All That Is in the split second before we became human. I am confident that complete alignment with that heart "intention" is the only way we find peace.  Finding it or hearing it or feeling it is how we accomplish the work of this life.  In the end, that is all that matters. 

Events that go on or people in our lives are props to allow us to do what we came here to do. That makes them no less important, perhaps more so.  It's just that the people and events have no meaning except to allow us to do our work, which makes them the very most important thing in life.

When we listen to what we know in our hearts, it will surely lead us the intention on the back side of each heart, and there is where we find God.

Hold on!

I can't remember where I heard what I am about to relate, but it's been years ago.  It may have been Carolyn Myss or Mary Anne Williamson  The story goes that you turn your life over to God, and the first thing that you hear is, "Thank you."  The second thing that you hear is, "Hold on!"

The wind is howling outside--really howling, like shake-the-windows kind of howling.  It was 70 today in Washington, and tomorrow single digits are promised again.  That is the calmest thing in my life right now.  Rather than resist, like a surfer, I've learned to ride the waves.

I turned my life over to God decades ago, and I have to admit that it has been a ride. But, then again, that is how I learned to surf. We are now in Lent, and each year at this time, I find this force that I call God toys with me a bit.  Things are almost always unpredictable. Often good things happen. Always unexpected things occur.

Today two people in my office who have fought me for years were actually nice to me...both...on the same day...actually in the same hour.  Now that is certainly unexpected.  I am not sure I am ready to say it is good, because this feels more than a little like waiting for the other shoe to drop. For today, however, I am grateful...even if a bit mystified. 

There are definitely times when it is better to ride the waves of the unexpected than to fight the unreality of expectation.  I'm holding on as I get out my surf board.

If not now, when?

Anne Sweeney, a senior executive at the Disney ABC Television Group, announced today that she will retire early next year.  Assuming the picture that looked down over Diane Sawyer's shoulder is a recent one, the executive will be making an early retirement. The newscast announcement quoted Sweeney, "...there has always been a nagging voice in the back of my head pushing me to step out of the comfort zone of the executive ranks and more directly into the creative arena that enticed me to TV in the first place. I finally listened to that voice and thought, ‘if not now, when?’"

What a question!  It landed on my ears the day after one of my favorite clients lost her battle with cancer.  My client retired just about a year ago.  She, too, took an early retirement: she wanted to play golf and spend more time watching her college age kids in dance competitions. She did that for three or four months before shocking diagnosis. 

Sweeney's words, "If not now, when?" seemed to echo over and again in my head as I thought about my client.  I am certain that she would have given anything to have answered that question a few years earlier. 

When?  Interesting question.  People on both sides of my family live into the triple digits, so I both need to work longer to build enough of a nest egg to live on all those years and want to stay engaged.  The idea of being retired almost as long as I've been alive isn't exactly inviting to me.  And, if I get bored, I expect that reentering the work force at 85 or 90 might be challenging.  So I toil on. 

But, I'm sure that my client didn't expect the first year of her retirement to be the last year of her life.  When, indeed?

I am not sure if it has happened with every generation, but I don't feel any different than I did at 30.  I have gotten bored with what I do, but it is rewarding to help people experience more satisfaction in their work, and I am not inspired to do anything else. 

As I write this, a little voice is whispering in my ear: it's not about the work. I am sure it is right.  I've written before about living as if this were my last day, and who knows? Maybe it will be. We never really know. There are dozens of things that don't involve retirement that I want to do.  Maybe it is time to look at that bucket list and figure out what I should be doing now instead of putting off for another year. If not now, when?

Am I Nuts or What?

In Sacred texts, God often speaks to people.  Sometimes those "words" are literal words, but often God speaks to people in other ways.  He spoke to Joseph through dreams. Others had visions that shared a message. Sometimes God speaks to us in our meditations. Somehow most of us don't have any problem with God speaking to those people way back when, but somewhere along the way, many, if not most, of us lost our faith in the credulity of God speaking to our contemporaries.

Last night I watched the first episode of the revival of the Carl Sagan's 1980 program "Cosmos."  The story of a 16th Century Dominican friar Giordano Bruno consumed one portion of the hour.  Bruno had a dream that he was sure have come from his "infinite God," which showed him an infinite universe in which the Earth rotated around the sun, and in fact, our sun was really a star, like countless other suns which were also stars, going on forever.  Now, this was at a time when telescopes didn't exist, and it was "well established fact" that the sun rotated around the Earth, and that the only planets were the ones that could be seen with the naked eye.

Bruno believed so completely that God had spoken to him and shared this vision that after he was kicked out of his monastery, he went to several different countries to teach and write books.  He was kicked out of each of them.  Eventually, he was tried and burned at the stake...along with his books...for heresy...for claiming God had shown him something that was "well known" that it was false.  He never recanted what he knew to be the truth.

The problem is that he was right. And he had been right in knowing that the vision of the Universe which had been revealed to him was precisely accurate.  With the passing of each year, as space discovery vehicles probe more and more deeply into space, his accuracy continues to be affirmed.  The more we know, the more we know Bruno was right.

Most of us have had an amazing, even revelatory dream, at some time.  Countless stories have been shared of premonitory dreams that foretold a situation and allowed someone to "save the day."  Yet, how many of us would go to the mat for what we learned in a dream?

I am certain that God speaks to us all the time, in dreams and other ways.  I have absolutely no expectation that God would have stopped speaking the human beings when the ink was dry on the Bible.  When I look around the world at the messes we've collectively gotten ourselves into, I can't keep but wonder isn't there a Joseph out there somewhere who is sitting on a dream that would reveal what should be done or a Moses who has been talking to a burning bush and knows how to lead people out of their misery? 

But can you imagine it?  Imagine a man coming into Damascus today, saying he'd been out in the mountains having a nice conversation with a burning bush, and that now he knows how to bring the conflict in Syria to an end.  Or better yet, think about a woman bolting out of bed tomorrow in Kiev saying that she dreamed the solution to the problem in the Crimea.

Where are the people with the spiritual fortitude of Bruno who might really change the world with what they knew...if they'd just share it.  Well, I have that thought right before I have the one about Bruno being burned at the stake.  I have no more confidence that our generation would be more receptive of divine information than Bruno's fellow monks. (At least, I hope that we've stopped burning people at the stake.)  Today they would probably be turned away because they don't have a Ph.D. from the right universities and the right experience with the right think tanks.

I've heard, and I've acted.  Oh, never anything quite as remarkable as a vision of the cosmos as astrophysics has now proven to be correct in a time before the telescope had been invented. People have said I was brave; others have said I was crazy or foolish.  But, like Bruno, once I've heard God speak to me, I just couldn't not do what I'd heard. 

Skip The What-ifs

On NPR's "All Things Considered" recently, I was literally stopped in my tracks by a story.  Was I hearing what I thought I heard?  Sure enough.  18-year-old Kayla Montgomery won the title for her distance in track and field in North Carolina, making her one of the country's fastest young distance runners. She is currently ranked 21st in the nation in the 3,200 meters and will soon compete nationally.*

While that accomplishment is commendable, her title and ranking are not what make her story extraordinary.  What makes her stand out is that she has accomplished them while having multiple sclerosis.  She cannot feel her legs much of the time, and her coach must meet her at the finish line to catch her, or else she will fall on the track and not be able to get up.

I personally cannot imagine how she does this, but she has the heart of a champion. She is obviously good at her sport, she loves it, and she wants to be the best.  What is even more remarkable about Kayla is her attitude.  In the NPR piece, she says, "For a few years, I was terrified that I might not be able to run tomorrow or the next day. I kind of decided that that wasn't really helping me and I wasn't happy living like that. So I stopped focusing on the what-ifs, and [started] focusing on what I'm able to do now."

Boy, am I ever humbled!  She's ranked 21st in the nation, she can't even feel her legs, and she won't let herself be stopped by what-ifs.  One of those what-ifs is falling on the track and not being able to get up.  That  happened to her recently.  Motivated by another competitor passing her, she grabbed a fence, pulled herself back to her feet, and continued the race.

Now, just what is it that I've been putting off doing because of what-ifs? Kayla's inspiration tells me that if she could pull herself back to her feet and finish the race, there really isn't anything I couldn't do, if I was willing to embarrass myself a little and figure things out when they happened. You see, if did fall on the track of my life a few years ago, but unlike Kayla, since I pulled myself to my feet, I've been limping along on someone else's dream rather than my own. 

I think of how many times I've been stalled because of concerns about things that might go wrong again, when really all that matters is that I get started on my life. Even taking a single step in the direction I want to go is better than being a stuck in someone else's life.  When I finish this column, I plan to sit down and make a list of things I would do if there were no what-ifs and then figure out something I can do to start them in the next two weeks.  The only way I can really fail is if I don't show up--for my life and my dreams.  I've been doing that too much in recent years.  Now, it is time for me to find the heart of the champion that I can be and get started.

*http://www.npr.org/2014/03/08/287751438/catching-kayla-running-one-step-ahead-of-multiple-sclerosis

Climate Change

I am intensely experiencing climate change today. Not that kind of climate change--the kind where temperate Washington is hammered with a brutal 4-month icy, snowy, cold winter and my former rainy home in Oregon is experiencing drought and forest fires in what is normally the rainy season--although the kind I write about today is related.

I've spent the last two weeks indoors, mostly in darkened rooms, recovering from eye surgery. Yet even in that environment, I've experienced my own personal climate change. My retina has been liberated from film and fluid that have darkened my world for almost two years. Even in dark rooms, I have felt like I have burst from an all-twilight life boldly into sunny high noon...24x7.

I've always been someone who needs light, but I didn't fully understand the impact until this week. I not only see better, but I feel lighter and brighter emotionally too.

Climate change worked it's way into my life in another way today. Just five days ago wind-chill temperatures were zero. Even though I was out very little, I could judge the temperature by how hard my heating system worked to keep my normally toasty apartment a little chilly.

Like a miracle, today temperatures have broken into the 60s (16-17 C). Street musicians once again serenade walkers and runners on the sidewalks. Attired in shorts and skorts, tennis players flocked to the University courts near my home. Undaunted by many remaining piles of snow up to three-feet high, I spotted several 80-and 90-somethings walking with their push-carts to run errands, and one  elderly women, who had walked to a bench with her walker, stopped me to chat.

Like them, I feel lighter, too. I lost 10 pounds today! Layers of turtlenecks, sweaters, our heaviest coats, boots, hats, earmuffs, and scarves finally shed in a day after months of being one with us.

We have many kinds of climate in our lives. While the reality of global climate change cannot be denied, many of them are influenced by our minds and hormones. The reality of the change I feel in my brighter world cannot be denied. Nor can the uplift of spirit in shedding that 10 pounds of winter attire to walk in the warmth of early spring sunshine. It's enough to make me jump for joy...and that, too, can be a climate change.

Harvard researcher Amy Cuddy has researched the victory stance. You know it: arms extended upward with chin up and head back, just as an athlete crosses a finish line. She says that when we take that position, our bodies release hormones associated with winning, without doing anything else! If we want to be winners, all we have to do is take the stance, and we change to the inner climate of a winner. (If you haven't watched her TED talk, it should be must-viewing for life.*)

So today I am going to jump for joy, change my inner climate to match the outer climate...and head to my balcony to get ready for the inevitability of those first crocus sprouts, which will pop through the soil any day now. Yes!

*Link to Amy Cuddy's TED talk. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc


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I'm Happy!

"Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth...I'm happy!" I truly feel it!

I am not much of a music person anymore, except for music to which I dance. Not because I don't like music, but mostly because I love the stillness of just BEing.  That said, I have a crazy earworm for the Pharrell Williams' song, "I'm Happy!" (from Despicable Me 2.)  Since I've already confessed that I am not much of a music person, then I guess it is safe to admit that I'd never heard this song until Sunday evening on the Academy Awards program.  I guess I may be the only person on the planet who could actually say that, but I am sure there must be someone else out there.

Confessions behind me, I love this song.  It is so infectiously...well, happy.  I can't listen to one play-through of that song without feeling really good...no, great.  When I was hall-walking tonight, I felt like I was flying down the halls.  I had a spring in my step that is usually reserved for those first delicious spring days. (I admit that I even danced a bit, clapping to the music.)

The line above, "Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth," haunts me.  I really believe that "...happiness is the truth!"  I think that as human beings we are hard-wired to be happy, but sometimes life gets in the way, and I forget.  I can remember working at a place where my nickname was "Little Mary Sunshine," and I mourn the amnesia of the part of me that knows I am happy and knows that happiness is the truth.  This week it has awakened.  Did a piece of music jar me back into happiness?

The mail today brought the Omega catalog.  (Toys R Us for personal transformation.)  The CEO's opening letter reminded me of a Native American myth with which I always resonate.  In the myth, a grandmother is teaching her grandson, "A fight is going on inside of me.  It is a fight between two wolves.  One is an angry, greedy, self-pitying, arrogant, jealous and prideful wolf.  The other is a joyful, generous, kind, peaceful empathetic, and humble wolf.  The two wolves are always fighting. And that same fight is going on inside you--and inside every other person, too."

The grandson reflects for a moment before asking, "Which wolf will win?"

The grandmother smiles and responds, "The one you feed.  The one you feed."

I am certain that I have not been feeding the joyful, happy wolf in me nearly enough.  "Happy" is a rich, wonderful, and delicious meal for the happy part of me.  I also feel the happy wolf when I write, and I freely admit that I've missed writing and the happiness it brings while I've been recuperating.  Exercise and healthy foods feed the happy one, too. And, always, always, dance feeds the happy, joyful one. 

But the grandmother is right.  The two are always fighting.  My second full day of Lent had been consumed with nervousness as my body withdraws from sugar...until "Happy."  Less than one minute of feeding the happy wolf, and I am excited, joyful, and energetic.  The two cannot co-exist: they  stand in juxtaposition, but they cannot co-exist. 

So, as I wrote in Leading from the Heart (and a lot of other places.) Life is a choice: you choose.  I am choosing to be happy and to feed the happy wolf in me.

What Separates Me From God?

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the 40-day Lenten season. Lent is traditionally observed by certain sects of Christianity, although my first Lenten observance far pre-dated my association with a church that observes Lent. 

I feel pretty ecumenical about my spiritual observances: when I learn about a practice from any religion that I believe will enrich me spiritually, I keep it.  I have grown from a number such practices.  That is how I came to observe Lent before doing so actually was part of my dedicated celebrations.  Now that I officially mark Lent, I find that many do not give up things with the seriousness to which I have brought to the practice.  ("I am going to give up smoking."  "Oh, really?  I didn't know you smoked." "I don't.)

During Lent, we are to take an accounting of our lives and determine what it is that separates us from our relationship with God, our Higher Power, All That Is, or however we describe that presence in our lives. While some give up things they never partake in, I think the determination of what separates us is every bit as important as the relinquishment.  Over the years, I have given up one thing and another, and each time I found myself much closer to the divine at the end of Lent. 

For at least a decade, I have given up sugar because I have found that there is nothing in my life that more quickly numbs me out than sugar.  Giving up sugar implies giving up alcohol because sugar is a basic ingredient in alcohol, and I have found a cycle between sugar and alcohol.  I am more easily able to resist that sweet dessert that I crave if I haven't had a glass of wine with dinner.

What astounds me each year though is that within a week or so, I miss neither the sweets nor the alcohol.  I am calm and connected and peaceful. I know I am closer to God.  Some years I've continued to observe the omission of sugar for weeks and even months, but sometime I slip down a slippery slope into Candy Land, until Lent is upon us again. 

Each year at this time, I ask myself why would I want to put something into my body that not only separates me from God, but leaves me feeling agitated and out of control...not to mention a few pounds heavier...each year.  I am beginning a season of gratitude for having sugar out of my system, and I will once again appreciate the peace and connection.  I am certain I will ponder whether I will do this to myself again, and while I am fairly certain I will, I really do not understand why.  For now, I am going to enjoy the richness of peace and connection for 40 days.

The Gift of Self

I had a delightful afternoon.  This was my last recuperation day, and a dear friend, whom I haven't visited for a while, came to visit and to encourage my healing.  We had a simple soup and bread...and chocolate...lunch. Then we talked and talked...about all manner of things past, present, and future.  We were relaxed, and until we felt rush hour encroaching at the end of the afternoon, we existed in a wonderful timeless space. Ah!

Unlike the typical rush to fit a quick visit in before the next appointment that seems to run much of my life, when she left, I felt happy and satisfied. What a rare and wonderful gift she had given me: a gift of herself.  I like to think I carve out special times for these suspended times of connection with friends, like half-day into the evening play dates with one friend a couple times during pool season. But, I felt so rich today that I think I will do this more often. 

It is such a precious thing to be able to give to another while receiving from that person...and having fun, too.  Somehow I think we did this more when we were younger, or maybe the world wasn't spinning quite so fast when we were younger.  I do recall the ends of afternoons of yard work, which inevitably ended with several neighbors convening on someone's porch for popcorn, chips, and libation.  There was a timelessness about those moments as well.  The thing about those times is that I remember them in much more detail than finely planned and orchestrated parties and dinners that involved the same people.

In the slow-motion of recovery, it is easy to commit to intentionally making more of these times. When the world begins spinning faster, I fear that time will slip by too quickly.  Yet, if I do not commit to doing so, I risk losing something way more important that whatever else I would have done when I was racing through life.  Who knows? Maybe making time for these special moments will slow time as well as quality of life.  I hope so.

What Brings Me To Life?

“I have my own soul. My own spark of divine fire.” George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion and My Fair Lady

I flipped the TV on just in time to hear this line at the end of My Fair Lady over the weekend.  I've seen that movie several times and read Pygmalion at least twice.  I don't remember those two sentences.  For some reason this weekend they grabbed me and nearly paralyzed me.  I went to the desk and wrote down, "My own spark of divine fire."  Then I just sat and looked at it.

That I have my own spark of divine fire is not a new concept. I've felt it burning intensely within me before, often and for long periods of time.  I've written about it.  But Saturday those words captivated me.  As I've thought about it since, hearing those words was an awakening for me.  After many years of having my spark burn so brightly, I don't feel that now.  I may have realized it before, but I am not sure I had named it.   To acknowledge that was quite painful. The haunting questions have been: "How could I have lost that?" and more importantly, "How do I fan the flames of my spark again?"

I definitely feel like the last week of recovery and reflection have brought me to the place where I was ready to really hear those words and realize that somehow I lost myself.  I can't say exactly when it happened, but I do know that over the last two months when I had been writing I felt that divine spark again. I know that when I started exercising I felt that divine spark.  I know when I am in nature, I feel it. 

A number of years ago I was attending a conference at which one participant spoke of his personal way of staying in touch.  He said that when he is in doubt, he asks, "What brings me to life?" and "What brings life to me?" So simple, and yet I believe so true.

The hard part is being awake to that choice in each and every moment: the choice point that inevitably leads to our divine spark.  The divine spark in each of us is what brings us to life and burns brightly in us.

Somehow in my heart I know that I lose myself when I fall into autopilot life, going through the motions of life without really being present to it.  As I think about going back to work day after tomorrow, I know that I can be in that job and feel my own spark of divine fire, but I can only do that when I am awake and present in each moment.  Because, when I am awake and present, I can consciously ask myself, "What brings me to life?" and "What brings life to me?" And, then...just do it! 

What Price Courage?

I love movies, and while my tastes are fairly omnivorous, my favorites have often been true stories.  (Intention and Inspiration, 2/18/14)  Since we are in Oscar season, Turner Classics has been playing Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning films for the last month. Since I am recovering from eye surgery, I really need no more reason than the need to sit in a dark room to allow me to indulge myself in watching some of these great films.

Over this weekend, I've watched Indians fight for independence in "Gandhi," the British withstand incredible torture in "The Bridge Over River Quai," and heroism and leadership as Arabians also fought for freedom in "Lawrence of Arabia."  I recalled other films of incredible courage this year of as I've reflected on "42" and Jackie Robinson's courage to not fight back, "12 Years A Slave," being lost in space in "Gravity," being lost at sea in "All is Lost," and facing real-life pirates in "Captain Phillips."

Over and again, what kept bubbling up in my psyche was a story about which I first became aware as a youngster of about 10, as I explored the dimensions of my grandmother's bookcase to find entertainment in a sleepy small town summer.  Several books all by the same person--Corrie ten Boom--mesmerized me.  They poured out the story of a Christian family in Haarlem, The Netherlands, during World War II.  The family ultimately ended up in Nazi concentration camps, and Corrie's sister succumbed there. 

Their crime was harboring Jews escaping the jaws of those very same concentration camps.  At the very moment that they were captured, six Jews hid in their walls and eventually made it to safety because of the courage and sacrifice of the ten Boom family.  It would have been easy for them to turn away from the many fugitives that passed through their home over several years of that war, but they did not.

A number of years ago there was a theory put forth that age 10 is when we are most impressionable, and what we experience at that age will be defining for the rest of our lives.  Perhaps that is why every time I see a movie in which a character displays extraordinary courage, my mind inevitably drifts back to the ten Booms.  As a 10-year-old just as freshly as yesterday, the question lingers in me: if I needed to demonstrate such courage, would I find it in me? 

My best me would like to think that, of course, I would.  And, in my heart I pray that would be so.  However, I am not sure I would find it.  That leaves me feeling humble and hopeful--hopeful that I would find that courage and hopeful that I won't need to find it.  Thinking about Corrie's family puts everything in perspective for me.  No matter how grim some days might seem, they really don't even scratch the surface of the greater picture of courage in human history. 

I am glad that I have these moments of personal soul-searching brought forth in films of courage.  Somehow, I find it assuring that each time I pledge that no matter how deeply I will need to reach within myself, that I will find the courage I first pledged to find as I read Corrie's story when I was 10 and found again today.

Being My Best Person

In about two weeks I will have been writing this blog almost every day for six months.  The "almost" is a result of a very bad cold and recovery from an eye surgery which has made being on the computer difficult recently.  During that down time, though, I have continued to ponder the questions of the spiritual journey and this blog.

In the beginning, I said of this blog:  I don't claim to have the answers, but often the questions are informative and the intention is powerful. My goal in this blog is to share reflections from my journey that I think others might also find heart provoking. 

While I still believe that is true, after several months of writing what is on my heart each day, I have come to a more nuanced understanding of my mission for the blog.  I want to be my best person.  I intellectualize what that requires of me, and many, maybe most, days I can do that.  But, there are spiritual annoyances that would pull me from my intention.  Some days that has involved re-membering or re-owning what I know to be true in the blog, such as the spiritual growth that comes from experiencing gratitude, forgiveness, or even joy.

More often my postings have reflected the inner battles that I have fought, and continue to fight, such as with being present and being in present time. Gandhi is quoted as saying, "The only devils in this world are those running around inside our own hearts, and that is where all our battles should be fought." I have chosen to share my own inner battles with my readers.

Self-awareness is a platform, perhaps the only platform, from which we may grow spiritually.  I believe there are two levels of self-awareness.  The first is how I think I see myself. This perspective is problematic because from this kind of self-awareness we cannot see our blind spots--what I have described as what I don't know I know and what I don't know I don't know. Problematic at best, this perspective is inevitably sugar-coated with excuses, more what we'd like to believe is true that what actually may be true.

The second type of self-awareness is how I see myself from the perspective that Eastern mystics have called "the observer."  As the observer, I can see the world from inside me as well as what another person observing might see. Stripping away the veneer of sugar-coating, I am able to see my foibles and shortcomings.  We cannot change what we do not know.

Each day I have sought to strip away the veneer and share with readers what I believe others might see if they were being honest with me. I am fairly confident that the devils with which I wrestle are not unique to me alone. Consequently, I have attempted not to stop in that spot, but to determine how I can move myself ever closer to my best self while still knowing that it is only a matter of time before I once again slip and fall...and share that as well.

Thank you for your support as I wrestle with my imperfections and struggle to be ever closer to being my best self.