Instant Affirmation

I love when the Universe is not only affirming, but is so instantly affirming.  Last night I made a post about allowing things to be easy.  This morning before I left for church, I asked for guidance.  Before I made it to my pew, another blog post had been seeded.  I knelt quietly for a few minutes before the service began, and once again, I asked to receive guidance on having life be easy.

When the service began, and the congregation, including me, stood to sing, the first words of the first hymn:

"Now quit your care and anxious fear and worry

for schemes are vain and fretting bring to gain..."

Really! So I am quitting my care, anxiety and worry, and I'm going to go take a Sunday-afternoon nap. How much easier can it get? Ah!!

Let It Be Easy

Integrity is very important to me.  Maybe it is the most important thing to me.  Integrity is not simple honesty, which is also important, but it is much bigger than that.

For me, integrity is knowing my soul's intentions when I came into the world and then living those intentions. I know the spiritual growth lessons that I came into the world to learn.  I know at least several gifts and talents that I have been given to develop and use. I also have a sense of the service that I am here to do, although I confess that isn't nearly as clear as I thought it was 20 years ago. When my life is aligned with those things, I am in integrity.  When I am not, the weight of the disconnect weighs on me.

I try. I really try to live in integrity, but I know that I fall short. Sometimes I fall woefully short.

What I notice is that the more I am out of alignment in one area, the more I become out of integrity in other places.  Returning to my regular job has been struggle for me.  I know I am being of service, but the work I am doing is pulling me down.  I feel stressed.  I know I am not working anywhere close to my capability, and I do fear that I am losing my edge to do my higher skill work. Then, I am irritable with myself and with others. Even though I am being of service, I really feel out of integrity.

Even though I've just been back for three weeks of work, I feel a heaviness descend on me when I am getting ready for work, and as I approach my office building I feel more and more darkness pulling me down.  The work is really dark.  Some days I want to come home and take a shower just to wash it off of me. While I was also sick last week, which complicated the issue, I was short with two people who have been nothing but nice to me.  That really felt out of integrity.

I do feel that learning to do my work in the world and to financially support myself is one of my life lessons.  Yet increasingly I think that it must be easier. I now think that a life lesson for me must be to let it be easy.  I have one of those Staples "easy buttons" from the 90s on my desk.  When I allow myself to let something be easy, I enjoy hitting it and hearing the message, "That was easy!" I admit I don't hear it often enough, mostly because I "effort" too much--try to make things happen, when they obviously don't want to happen. The drive to support myself overwhelms and forces me to push more and harder.

Since I began writing about intention 20 years ago, I have really felt like it was my responsibility to role model integrity.  Sometimes the standards to which I hold myself are insufferable.  I am exhausted.  I really need it to be easy.

Based on my numerologic spiritual lesson for 2016, my work is to learn balance and to take care of myself first: put the oxygen mask on me before trying to save others.  Twice this week I'd had to make decisions to not do something I thought I "should" do.  In each case, as soon as the deed was done, I felt more relaxed, lighter, brighter.  In the one case when that occurred at work, I received compliments all day about how great I looked...and it wasn't even a good hair day.  I am sure those observations were a reflection of the stress being drained from my face.

All of these things are what a colleague of mine describes as "good data."  Who says that "data" should be quantifiable?  Why can relaxed muscles and lack of stress in my smile be valid data as well?  So I take a deep breath, really consciously enjoy the relaxed shoulders and jaw, and embrace the challenge of letting it be easy.

Accepting that I am a Mere Mortal

I had an inspiring all-day class at the Smithsonian last Saturday--A Day at the Louvre.  When I emerged at 4:15, I was delighted to discover not only a beautiful summery day in the mid-60s, but that, now two months passed the winter solstice, the days are noticeably longer.  After being in a cavelike classroom all day, I relished the warmth of the sun on my face, and rather than ducking into the Metro station that was feet away, I decided to walk 20 minutes to a more distance station to enjoy the day and movement.

In the short duration of a 15-minute train ride, by the time I emerged from the subway, I was feeling really tired and a definite tickle had developed at the back of my throat.  Determined not to let the feather at the back of my throat spoil this splendid day, I nearly sprinted toward the pharmacy and grocery to run my errands.

But my determination was thwarted.  With every step, my feet became heavier until, as I walked into my doorway, my shoes felt like I was dragging lead.  I tossed perishables into the refrigerator, put on my jammies, got a hot pack, and curled up on the sofa, where I vegged until my eyelids, now equally heavy, would no longer stay open.

Mid-evening I awakened, and pushed into the kitchen to mark my name on freezer containers, which held my contribution to parish lunch.  I gathered books for a lecture the next day.  I kept pushing.  I was not about to let something like an upper respiratory irritation keep me from my plans.

I should know by now, but the will of my ego is intransigent.  If I push hard enough, I can will my way through anything, I seem to believe.  I think that may have been more true at some point, but as I focus more on spirit, my inner knowing will no longer allow it.

I coughed a lot in the night as the congestion in my chest grew thicker.  Yet, I still wouldn't surrender.
Finally, at 7 on Sunday morning, I gave it up.  I emailed a woman in my building who attends the same church to take my contribution and the pastor to let him know she would bring my goodies.

I crawled back in bed and slept for what totalled 13 hours.  (You think my body was trying to tell me something?)  I moved from bed to the couch, watched something on TV, and passed out for a few more hours.  Repeat the pattern.

Monday morning the ego rears its head yet again, and I push through to the office where I cough, am cranky, and feel miserable all day.  At 4, I tell my boss that, if I can get out of here, I will go home early.  I couldn't get people out of my office, phone and email to make that happen.  Finally at 5:15, I left. Finally! I went home and slept another 36 hours or so.

Why is it so hard for me to admit that I am a mere mortal?  My body gets tired and stressed, and my compromised immune system fails me.  Through the ancient miracles of surrender and sleep, I feel great today, but I really wonder why it is that I have to fight this up and down thing.

Most of my life my commitment to health and fitness have been a testament to my intention to create wellness in my life.  Even my struggles with sugar are against amounts miniscule compared to the general population.  Am I so hard-headed and strong-willed that I cannot seem to listen to my body when it speaks?  Or, perhaps even worse, am I so hard-headed and strong-willed that I will not listen when God speaks to me through my body?

I am very busy much of the time, and perhaps the only way that God can get my attention is to knock me off my feet.  OK.  I get it.  I listened.  It is Lent: my very work is supposed to be prayer, meditation, and reflection.  So, if it takes a respiratory infection, and it would seem it does, I finally listened. Ahh!

Zen and the Art of Massaging Kale

"Zen and...." whatever you fill in the blank in has become an expression of the practice of mindfulness through that given activity.  Mindfulness is the practice which has grown out of Buddhism of really being totally present to any activity.  The expression "Zen and..." evolved from the popular  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the 1974 book by Robert Pirsig which has been called one of the most important books in the last half century.

This afternoon I practiced Zen and the Art of Massaging Kale.  About two years ago I discovered a delicious and ultra-nutritious salad--Winter Kale Slaw*--in the pages of O Magazine. Preparation is quite time-consuming but has big pay-off from the wonderful flavors and nutritional value. The foundation of the salad, as you might guess from the name is kale, that hard, coarse, bluish leafy vegetable which is professed to have countless health benefits.  I'd never been a fan of kale before discovering the recipe, but my commitment to healthy eating enticed me to try the recipe.

The recipe starts by asking the preparer to massage the kale with lemon juice and olive oil for five minutes.  Five minutes! Really?! In the beginning I would watch the clock through every painfully slow second. It seemed interminable. Most of those early times, somewhere around two minutes, I would decide that was enough.  What more could be accomplished in the last three minutes that hadn't in the first two.

The answer: a lot. But, it didn't have much to do with the kale.  I really can hardly tell the difference to the kale between the two-minute massage and the five-minute massage, but similar to my bodywork earlier this week, I can really tell the difference inside me between my 60-minute massage and a 90-minute one.  That extra time is internally transformative.

As preparing the salad became a weekly ritual, I got into the kale massage more and more.  I stopped watching the clock so much.  At some point I stopped watching the clock at all and started to just enjoy it until a timer that I had set signalled that my five minutes had passed.  Now I just enjoy it.  No timer. Just allowing my fingers massaging the kale.

A remarkable thing has occurred.  When I stopped watching the clock and was just present to my activity, time fell away.  I began to feel the leaves transform in my fingertips, the unyielding leaves softening in my hands.  Then, I could notice the kale started to massage me--really giving back to me, especially two knuckles that have a little arthritis in them. Somewhere between the beginning and five minutes, my shoulders soften and drop.  Rather than attacking the kale, the exercise has truly become a mutual massage.

Last summer when I was taking the Psychology of Happiness class, I wrote a number of times about the importance of mindfulness to our happiness.  What better experience than that my vegetables had started giving me a massage.  I'd been in bed sick since about 9 last evening when I retired early.  The Art of Massaging Kale erased the discomfort from my experience and filled my mind instead with a desire to write.

Spiritual teacher Carolyn Myss has said that our most important spiritual work is learning to be present.  As long-time readers will acknowledge, being present has been a major lesson for me to learn, and what a gift this afternoon to learn that being present to my kale could have such a wonder impact on me.  Thankfully, I may never approach making the salad in the same way ever again.





*http://www.oprah.com/food/Winter-Kale-Slaw-Recipe

When they've achieved every goal...

Today was a beautiful chilly day in Washington, and since I had the day off, I decided to walk my errands and appointments.  I relished the wind blowing in my hair and walking through several different neighborhoods, each with its own distinct character, as I wended my way through the city. From the dentist to coffee to brunch at the gluten-free bakery and then to a massage and eventually home, I revelled in the present.

Yet even as I was in the present, I think there were reflections playing unconsciously in the back of my mind.  In the complete relaxation of the massage and the peaceful, sunny walk home, the ideas made their way into consciousness.  What started as a seed from yesterday's blog post "Celebration" had sprouted into a fully formed thought.

Goals rob us of the present. They leave us feeling as we don't have enough or aren't enough. Implicit in having goals is the dissatisfaction with where we are. If we just reach that goal, then everything will be wonderful.  At least, until we reach it, and then we will need another goal to chase. If I'd been trying to achieve something today, I would have missed the wonder of the day.

Almost as I had the thought, I recalled a conversation that I'd had with a marketing consultant in the depths of the dot.com bust, who was trying to help me jump-start my consulting firm after the devastation that the economy had wrought on it.  When we were attempting to define the "sweet spot" of my coaching to communicate what made my work different, I'd said, "My clients have achieved every goal they ever set and still feel empty."  That was just not a suitable response with which she could work.

"Why," she asked, "would someone want to hire a coach if they've achieve every goal they ever set?"

Smiling to myself, I replied, "Because they feel empty."

I'm sure I've had similar thoughts before, but today they connected differently.  I'm not certain that I've ever communicated that I coach people on being present, but I believe that is what I do.  As I look back over my intentional living intensives, three-day coaching intensives that I guided in the 1990s and early 2000s, every unique activity designed for each client was somehow helping him or her come home to the present.  To be happy in the "just being."

Suddenly, I wanted to do the happy dance.  At once I knew why I've often so bristled at goal-setting, even when clients often expected goals.  My sweet spot is helping people be present to the miracles that present themselves when we are just being in the present. I want to help them, and by extension, myself, be awake to what the Universe is offering up when we let go of our goals.  Today I was delighted that I had no goals.

When I have a relatively unstructured agenda, gorgeous weather, and no expectations of me, I am really pretty good at being in the present and taking in the everyday miracles.  My spiritual journey at this point in my life seems to be learning how I do that when I have a half dozen very senior executives with expectations on my time and back-to-back meetings for eight to nine hours in each day. But, that is for another day.  Today I loved the miracle that was my day.

Celebration!

Today I was privileged to take an hour out of the middle of a busy day to celebrate.  I was part of a team of about 15 people who helped raise over $3.5 million for charities in four months. It wasn't a wild and crazy kind of celebration, just pizza, salad and bottled water...and satisfying conversation over what we had accomplished.

I am taking a week of "staycation," when I stay home, rest, exercise, and enjoy some of the things that tourists come to Washington to appreciate.  At the end of the second day, a friend asked if I'd had a productive week so far.  I responded that I was attempting to not be productive: it's my vacation!

Our culture seems goal-maniacal.  If people don't have goals, there is something wrong with them.  If they aren't being productive, then they must be depressed.  As soon as one goal is achieved, most of us don't even lose stride in moving on to the next thing.  There are times that it seems to be that we've lost the ability to be present to what we are doing for a full cycle, including celebration.

After all, even God rested on the seventh day.  I think there is a message in the biblical creation story. We should follow God's lead and take time to sit back, rest, and just bask in celebration about achieving one truly bodacious goal, taking time to en-joy the fruits of our labors just for the sake of doing so.

A Day of Love

Today is Valentine's Day.  Although the holiday, dating back to the 14th Century, originated as a Christian Feast day, it has always been associated with love.  Apparently, Saint Valentine was known to perform marriages for soldiers, who were forbidden from marrying.  In the 18th Century, people gave keys to invite their intended to unlock their hearts.

Why is it that we lock our hearts? I believe that we are hardwired to love so that we need to lock our hearts seems counter-intuitive.  The heart and love and giving of ourselves to another is turf that I've worked a lot.  I wish I could say I had the answers; I don't.  But that doesn't mean that I have stopped trying to find them.

In my heart of hearts I know that being in that state of Oneness that is love transcends all other human conditions.  I believe it is the closest that we come to heaven on earth. So why do we so fear it?

A 93-year-old World War II veteran was reunited with his now 88-year-old wartime sweetheart this week.  She is in Australia.  He lives in the Washington, D.C. area. When asked about the danger of taking such a long flight at his age, he responded that he would rather risk death than live the rest of his life without her.

My adopted parents who met in the same era at a USO Dance, married after just a few days, and they were like sweethearts for over 60 years.  I remember observing them looking at each other on their 50th anniversary like lovestruck teenagers.  A friend told me a couple days ago about his parents who met similarly, married soon, and spent 54 years together.  These are the stories of Valentine's Day myths, but they aren't myths: they are true stories.

For many of us, I believe that staying in the flow of love with another person may be our most important spiritual journey. It is hard work, and many of us just don't like hard work.  Hearts that have been hurt or broken become increasingly skittish, afraid that they will ever have to endure that horrible ache again.  Yet to not risk the heartache means to risk ever experiencing that blissful "heaven-on-earth" feeling again. Maybe that is why we need keys to unlock our hearts.

In my meditation about the nature of love and opening our hearts today, it came to me that many of us treat our hearts that have been broken like precious crystal that once shattered can never be mended. But, our hearts are muscles.  Even when physically broken open, they do heal.

Many years ago when I was first lifting weights, the trainer told me that we actually build muscle by tearing it.  We lift, the muscle tears, and the muscle heals.  Yet when it heals, the muscle is stronger. He told me that it was important not to work the same muscle groups two days in a row so that the muscle would have time to heal. Allowing ourselves to heal is essential to the process, but we do heal, and the very act of tearing is what makes the muscle strong.

So perhaps it is the act of allowing our hearts to be broken that makes them grow stronger. They are not the undeveloped hearts of untested youth, but instead they are stronger.  Maybe our mission should not be to avoid love because our hearts have been broken, but to actually move toward love because our hearts are stronger, strong enough to fully take in a more enduring love.

While most of this post has inferred romantic love, I believe it is true of all love, and it is especially true of love that connects us as human beings. Because someone from the Middle East did something bad, we shut our hearts so we will not be hurt again.  Yet there are many out there, like millions of refugees, not unlike many of our own ancestors, who would love us and want to be with us. They would make our lives richer.

I have coached a number of people who distrust their bosses, not because that person ever did something to them, but because some other person at another job did. They were hurt and can't trust a new and very different boss.  Others push away a friend who sleighted them, and in these social media times they impale the person on the skewer of Twitter and Facebook.

Valentine's Day then seems like an appropriate time to remember that our hearts are muscles.  They mend. They grow stronger.  They can love again even after being hurt.  It is that ability to love again that makes us human and at the same time makes us divine.  God wants us to love. My Valentine's Day wish for each of you is to love and to love not just where it is easy but to love where it is hard.

What Fans Our Worst Nature?

This evening I went to the movie "Trumbo" with a friend. The picture relates the experience of Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who is credited with Oscar-winning films such as "Roman Holiday," "Spartacus," The Brave One," and "Exodus." 

The only problem is that, because of the political affiliations of Trumbo and other Hollywood screenwriters at the time of Senator Joe McCarthy's "commie witch hunt" in the 1950s, Trumbo only received credit for his work long after it received the awards and, in the case of "Roman Holiday," not at all. Instead, he went to prison as did another of his Hollywood writer colleagues for association guaranteed in our U.S. Constitution. In newsreels from the time, angry and violent mobs berated this film genius, and he and his home were even attacked. As part of the "Hollywood 10," as the writers were known, they and others were blacklisted and unable to work, sometimes for 10-15 years. What an ugly chapter in our history.  

The other problem, though, is that this episode wasn't the only period in our history when the activity or beliefs of U.S. citizens have been the object of demagoguery.  Only a few days earlier I'd been speaking to someone about a friend of mine from Oregon, who was Japanese-American.  During World War II, her family was robbed of the land they had farmed in the U.S. for four generations.  Instead, this family of multi-generations of U.S. citizens were sent to a concentration camp.

American ugliness toward those who are different is not a 20th or 21st Century phenomena. When my Irish ancestors and many like them came to the U.S. in the early 19th Century they were jeered and were the object of degrading political cartoons and slurs.  They were referred to as "white negroes" at a time when slavery still existed in this country and they were often depicted in the cartoons with apelike features. None of this is pretty in a country that is credited with bringing democracy to a large scale, national power.

I fear that we are on the verge of yet another such ugly chapter as demagogues threaten to throw Muslims from our country or confiscate or damage the property of many who have been in this country for generations and/or are loyal U.S. citizens. Because they choose to exercise their right to choose their faith, a right guaranteed in our Constitution, they are threatened. This even after the yet again, hard-won guarantee of rights in the Civil Rights Act. Have we learned nothing from the earlier chapters?   
                                                        

I quoted columnist Tom Ehrich from his column "On the Journey" in my unpublished book Choice Point.  "As Hannah Arent wrote in her disturbing study of Nazi German, that evil empire could only proceed if evil became banal, or common.  For something obviously wrong to proceed, multiple consciences must stop working. Entire communities must grow numb and choose not to see any connection between abusive behavior and oneself..."*

I believe in a God of love, who wants us to love and respect one another.  There were probably bad people in any of these movements but to collectively hate whole groups is an insult to God.  My heart was very heavy as I left the theatre.  It continues to be heavy.  I am troubled with Arent's words that "...multiple consciences must stop working." My conscience has not stopped working.  And, to the point with which I now wrestle, what can I do? I am unapologetic about responding to anyone who makes unjustified remarks in my presence.  

Yet I struggle with how to counter the demagoguery. I think that God will not allow us to have the conscience, the desire, and the will to do the right thing without giving us the opportunity to actually do something. My prayers and meditations have not delivered any billboards telling me what to do, so for now, I will hold the intention and consciousness to continue to give, receive, and foster love.  I have to believe that will be enough.


*Ehrich, Tom, “On the Journey: Society’s sin is a lack of conscience, not religion,” The Herald-Sun, Durham, NC, Saturday, January 3, 1998, p. C1.

Channelling Sheila

In my January 29 post, "Angels Among Us," I wrote about my friend Sheila who passed away recently.  I am certain she was an angel right in my office, and I didn't appreciate her nearly enough when she was there.  I had been on a different job assignment and was just ready to return to my office when she died.  I cried pretty hard at her funeral home visitation.  I was dreading going back to my job and I really couldn't imagine the office without her light.

As I struggled with returning to my job, especially without her light, I experienced a moment when I had a flash: I didn't have to imagine the office without that light.  I knew that anyone could bring that light, and if Sheila was gone, I could bring it. Each of us has that light, and I think we have a responsibility, maybe even a privilege to do so. As a consequence, I've been trying. I know, the Yoda said there is no try, there is do or no do.  I have been doing at times. I have been "no doing" at times. That's just the way it is.

It's been two weeks. What I've discovered along the way is that on the days that I am letting my light shine, I feel better. It really does feel like Sheila's light is there, except it is coming from within me. On the days that I don't quite get there, or maybe don't get there at all, I experience the office as dark and heavy.  It's not the office that has changed: it is me and what I bring to it that has changed.

I am giving up on trying to let me light shine. Lent presents me with an opportunity. One of my tasks is to eliminate whatever separates me from God, and I really believe that light within me is God. Rather than trying to let my light shine, I am going to focus to my intention on feeling and radiating God's light. The light graces me and blesses others around me. I think/hope/imagine that 40 days of focusing on letting my light shine may change my life, and I'd like to think that it will improve the lives of those around me.

40 Days

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Season of Lent. Lent is the Christian tradition of taking the 40 days before Easter for prayer, engaging in spiritual study, fasting, and giving up something that separates us from God for the season.  As those who have been reading my column for a while will know, for me that means that I give up sugar to satisfy the last of those requirements.

Lent is one of many biblical references to the number 40, which some biblical scholars believe to be God's number for times of trial and hardship. Although there are more, some are honored by all three of the Abrahamic traditions. Rain fell on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights in the great flood. Moses spent 40 days in the desert after killing the Egyptian and another 40 days on Mt. Sinah. (For others, see: http://www.gotquestions.org/40-days-Bible.html.)

In the Christian tradition, it is appropriate that Lent is 40 days because before his crucifixion, Jesus was tempted for 40 days and 40 nights, and 40 days also passed between Jesus’ resurrection and his ascension into heaven.  It makes sense that one of the aspects of the holiday is to give up what we are tempted by.  

I find it interesting that biblical scholars consider 40 the number of trial and hardship.  Maybe I am not doing it right, but I find this time to be one of purification or "coming clean." While I am usually fidgety for the first two or three days as I flush out the junk from my system.  I have prepared some detoxifying foods this evening to accelerate that process, and I've done this enough to know that this too will pass.

With three or four days I am noticing that I am much calmer and making healthier choices. While I am very active, I have fought going to the gym in recent years.  On Ash Wednesday instead of heading home at the end of the day, I went down to the gym, and I enjoyed it. Being more disciplined about meditation also contributes to that calm. 

I expect within a week or so, I will feel quite calm and centered. I am more relaxed.  I will move through the world with more ease than any other time of the year.  So, biblical scholars aside, I do not think of this as a hardship at all, and only to the extent that the detoxifying process is a bit of a struggle is Lent a trial for me.  Instead, it feels like coming home.  For that I am grateful.