Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Interdependence

In keeping with my discovery that interdependence would likely be an important spiritual lesson for me on this next leg of my journey, I had an amazing "ladybugs*" experience today.  As part of my health coach training, I am required to conduct a free workshop for three to five people in the next week.  I've been attempting to recruit participants for two weeks.  A friend agreed early on, but no one else had volunteered. I had put signs up on every bulletin board of which I was aware.

In desperation, I contacted people who teach two exercise classes in my building to see if I could come, make an announcement, and hand out flyers.  Both agreed.  Like ladybugs, participants just appeared...maybe more than I can comfortably accommodate in my little apartment.  Both teachers were enthusiastic about what I am doing.

As it ends up, most of the volunteers are my neighbors.  I have met all but one, but didn't even know last names for most or even where their apartments were.  They were interested in what I was doing, and they were happy to come and learn what I have to teach.  As easy as that, I had my volunteers.

With the exception of a few physical therapy exercises added after two different accidents, I've been doing the some strength-training workout for 35 years.  As I've gotten more into the exercise part of the health coaching, I've been thinking that I really should hire a personal trainer to reevaluate my needs and update my routine. I didn't really know how to find one. One of the teachers who helped me recruit is a personal trainer. Voila! I have a personal trainer.

Interdependence.  Not only is this easier than trying to do things by myself, but it is more fun too.



*"Ladybugs," 1/17/17

Monday, January 30, 2017

Finding My Voice

We each have a physical voice, which is the sound that comes out when we speak, and a spiritual voice, which is what we are in the world to say.  In the Eastern chakra system, the spiritual voice is located in the fifth chakra--an energy center in the throat.  In Western traditions it is associated with the Will and calling back the spirit. On the Jewish Tree of Life, it is associated with Judgement and Mercy.

As I usually do, last night I finished writing my blogpost and then I meditated.  I concluded yesterday's post with saying, "I refuse for my conscience to stop working.  I refuse to grow numb.  I know that there is a connection between this behavior and me, and I will do what I can stop it..." I felt strong and "willful" as I wrote. It was almost as if I had been wagging my finger at myself, saying "Enough of this nonsense; you know what you need to do." I ended with a burst of energy.

I begin my evening meditation each evening by praying the Christian "Lord's Prayer" in Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke.  It is beautiful to my ear.  I have studied it at length, and the English words that we generally associate with that prayer don't carry either the complexity or meaning that the Aramaic does.  So, I say it in Aramaic. I've said it in Aramaic almost every day for close to 20 years...maybe longer.

Over the last few weeks I've noticed that my voice is gravelly when I say the prayer out loud.  I've stopped several times on occasion and cleared my throat, but it continued to be weak and hoarse. Last night was a different story. The moment I started I was almost shocked by the strength and clarity of my voice.  I wanted to look around and see if someone else was in the room.  No.  Just me. Strong, willful, and confident me, calling back my spirit.

This morning I looked back over the notes from my early January retreat at those I'd made from Caroline Myss's book Anatomy of the Spirit, in which she writes about both the chakras and the parallel meanings in Western religions.  For the Fifth Chakra, my notes say "Every choice we make, every thought and feeling we have is an act of power that has consequences."  It seemed to me that what I wrote last night was a kind of line in the sand about what I would and would not do or allow in the world around me.  That choice was an act of power indeed.

I chatted this morning with the woman friend with whom I'd protested yesterday, and I shared how overwhelmed I'd felt.  She gave me a wonderful metaphor.  She said she thought of herself as just one Lego in a much bigger Lego structure: together we are building something much bigger.  Ah, yes, together we are something much greater.

I've been very independent and strong in my life. In some ways that has served me well. I've been able to feed and house myself and plan for my future.  I take my spiritual growth, my soul's intentions and commitments, and my integrity very seriously.

Yet I must also own that I put a lot on myself.  My friend gave me the lens of interdependence and what we can do together.  That is not something I've been good at. Being part of something bigger, much bigger.  Today I did a few little things, and I didn't worry that they were little things.  I was just doing my part; even though I might have put the bar higher, I believe that is all I am asked to do.

As I think back over the spiritual lessons of the last few days, and my commitment to make the next part of my spiritual journey be about the more pleasant lessons, I am certain that learning the lesson on interdependence will be a big one for me.

Sunday, January 29, 2017

How to Know When God is Speaking to Me

Earlier this month, I wrote about occasions when we may be unclear about whether our guidance is real.* In the middle of a week of meditation, I had been inspired to take off on a trip, and I didn't know if that was guidance or a distraction from spiritual work in front of me at home.  A few days later that was resolved.  Every now and again, there are moments when I struggle with knowing what is real.

There are times, however, when I am certain my guidance is real beyond a shadow of a doubt.  Today was one of those days.  In yesterday's post, I wrote about being conflicted about what I should do this afternoon after church. I was torn between something I felt would be growthful and had been planned previously and something that had just arisen that was clearly out of my comfort zone. In keeping with my intention to be really present and to be conscious of my decisions, I didn't even try to decide before I left for church, but did take things--food and clothes--that kept my options open.

The event about which I had been conflicted was a protest on behalf of refugees being held at airports or being turned back after years of vetting.  One story of a family, where one of the parents had worked for our government in Iraq and was in danger, had been in the vetting queue for 14 years. They were finally cleared to come, and yesterday they were in flight to the US when they were taken off the plane at a stop in Cairo and sent back to Baghdad.

I wrote last week about my intense compassion for the refugee crisis and how, now that I am in this exploration period, opportunities to connect with people supporting those individuals had started falling in my lap.+  I felt like the news stories over the last 36 hours, sharing the plight of these individuals, some of whom were already permanent residents of the US and were living in our country but had been abroad, were just one more opportunity to learn about this international crisis.

Then, in her message today, our assistant rector spoke about conviction.  She started her remarks by talking about courtrooms, where a conviction is supposed to reflect certainty about the defendant's guilt.  Then she broadened to explore how the convictions that we express in our words should be reflected as certainty as our actions.

All that brings me to my dilemma about what I would do after church.  The event which arose last night was a protest at the White House on behalf of those refugees being detained, turned back, or even those who may never get the opportunity to come to this country--a country from before its founding has been known to open its arms to those in need.  I have never participated in a protest before.  Not my style. So definitely out of my comfort zone.

And, it was cold.  The temperature was cold but between the wind and the dampness in the air, the wind-chill factor was another eight degrees colder.  I don't deal well with being cold either. Definitely out of my physical comfort zone as well.

Yet as I walked out of church, it was clear to me where I was to spend my afternoon. I was both in the present and being very conscious of my decision-making.  If my convictions about the refugee crisis were real, the my actions should reflect them.  Intentions are nothing if we don't act upon them. So, I layered up, ate a snack I had brought with me, and joined a small handful of others from my congregation and the crowd assembling nearby.

I tend to wear my emotions on my sleeve, and for some reason, this issue has them ever closer to the skin.  I find that every time I speak with someone about the issue my voice will crack at some point, and often a tear will come to my eye--just as happened 18 months ago when I saw the photograph of the dead child on the beach.  The same thing happened repeatedly during the demonstration today.  I would join in a chant, such as "No hate! No fear! Refugees are welcome here."  I could not get the words out of my mouth without my voice cracking and tears coming to my eyes.  Over and over again.

Some of the signs moved me to tears.  A number being carried by people in their 60s and 70s which said, "I am the child of a refugee."  I can imagine, given their ages, that they might be children of Holocaust survivors.  Some were citations of scriptures from various holy books. There were moving photographs, such as the ones of Anne Frank juxtapositioned with one of a small Syrian girl, with the words "This generation's Anne Frank is a girl from Syria."  I was moved by a drawing woman in a hijab, made of the American flag.  With each of these, I would choke up. There was absolutely no doubt that I was fully present. My convictions were clearly being cemented.

Whether God want me to take off on a trip across the country in January may not be clear to me, but what I am absolutely certain about is that today God was speaking to me and asking me what I was going to do with my convictions.

This afternoon and evening I have been recalling the Hannah Arendt's writing about Nazi Germany, which I quoted in Choice Point:

"...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 really don't know the answer to what I can do about my convictions, but I refuse for my conscience to stop working.  I refuse to grow numb.  I know that there is a connection between this behavior and me, and I will do what I can stop it, whatever that is. This evening I did sign up for a webinar and a city-wide meeting about the crisis.  When God speaks to me this clearly, I am certain that the next step will be clear to me.




* "How Do I Know?" (1/8/17)
+ "Ladybugs" (1/17/17)

Saturday, January 28, 2017

The Only Lesson

Yesterday I committed to a new spiritual path, one on which I would explore the more pleasant side of the journey.  Already I am finding that isn't so easy.

Earlier this week I watched an episode of "The Late Show" from the first week of January.  Oprah Winfrey was Stephen Colbert's guest.  They were talking about resolutions, and Oprah said she'd stopped making them because they always got complicated.  She would resolve for something that was something she wanted, and then as the year progressed she discovered the more difficult sides of that wish.

Every topic I've ever taken on as a major writing project has similarly gotten complicated.  A book about courage resulted in my facing every major fear in my life.  A book about living consciously sucked me into a chaotic period when I lost whole years without really choosing me.

Night before last I enumerated a long list of desirable spiritual lessons.  Then in my meditation I discovered that if I only accomplished being present and being conscious of my choices--and those demanded that I do them together, I would accomplish the others.

Immediately, as if I'd been writing with ink it wouldn't have dried yet, I found myself facing a relatively easy test.  The Skype pop-up message that tells me when a friend is online popped up as I was writing.  At about midnight an old friend, who shares my strong tendency for "nightowlness" (my word) signed on, and I got the message.  I really wanted to talk to the friend with whom I hadn't spoken for about a year, and I really wanted to write.

I had just committed to being in the present and making conscious decisions. Normally, I would have kept writing, and I was conscious of that habit.  That would not have been a conscious choice: it would have been a habitual one.  I also knew that in the past I'd let myself be distracted from writing by fun diversions, and I made a commitment at the beginning of the year that I was going to write every day.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and knew that I should reach out. I did.  My friend and I had a great conversation.  We laughed a lot.  I felt lighter and more energized.  And, what self-respecting nightowl is going to let herself be held back from writing because of a relatively early midnight conversation?  I wrote afterward, easily.  I had made the right decision.

Today I must admit that I was neither conscious of my decisions or in the present much of the day.  I had several things that I "needed" to do, and I set about doing them until I discovered in the late afternoon that I had really missed the day. I prepared dinner and ate consciously, choosing foods that I liked and that were healthy.

Then about mid-evening I checked my email, and there was an invitation to do something after church tomorrow.  It is something that is definitely way outside my comfort zone, and I had already made plans to do something I've been wanting to do for weeks at the same time.  The invitation was to do something relating to one of my "things to explore."  I really don't know which I will do, but I know two things for sure.  First, I am glad that I am being conscious of the decision.  Second, I probably won't know which I will choose until I "check in" and am present to what my heart wants after church tomorrow.

This is what Oprah was talking about, and it is what I experienced with my books.  When we nod to the Universe that we are holding the intention to learn a particular lesson, we will very quickly be given the lessons.  I have had hints of a couple other opportunities to learn this lesson on the horizon.i am being present to what is in front of me now. When I said that I was ready to learn the more pleasant spiritual lessons, I should have been clear that I don't expect them to be easy.  Just different. For now, I am holding on for whatever my "only lesson" has in store.

Friday, January 27, 2017

Turning My Spiritual Journey Upside Down

My normal sequence is to write, meditate, and go to bed, so I get the privilege of meditating and  "sleeping on" whatever bubbled up in my writing.  So it was last night after having written that I'd like "at the very least to allow the spiritual lesson to be to learn to enjoy these wondrous moments."

I really unleashed something. When I was meditating, I "got" that there are spiritual lessons in the good stuff...and I really need to learn them.  A whole list of potential lessons spilled out:  learn to

  • Be conscious of all the choices I make during the day
  • Be fully present
  • Have fun
  • Be in joy: enjoy life more
  • Find peace in whatever is occurring
  • Laugh
  • Find humor 
  • Love
  • Receive love
  • Be grateful
  • Appreciate
....There were many more. I clearly have a lot of work to do. But, as I continued to meditate, I kept coming back to the first two.  I cannot be conscious of all the choices I make during the day if I am not fully present.  If I am fully present, I will be conscious of all the things I normally do on autopilot and start making those choices consciously. I expect that if I do those two things, the others will take care of themselves.  And, that concept has turned my spiritual journey upside down...in a good way.


Thursday, January 26, 2017

Hang on!?

I've been in such a nice place over the last few days that I've been tempted to fall into a chair with arms and legs spread open, relax, and maybe even laugh out loud.  This feels so good.  I'm having fun with class. I'm delighted with my exploration and experimenting with new healthy recipes.  I've been getting exercise.  I'm clicking one or two items off my "things-to-do" list every day. I'm not even stressing about money.

Technology challenges have dominated that list, mainly because dealing with them is usually so stress-inducing that I put them off until I can't do so any longer. Yesterday I spent two hours on a technical support call with the nicest man.  I felt like I was in good hands. During long gaps while software was uploading, we talked about a lot of things.  We laughed.  At the end, I thanked him for taking such good care of me; he said I'd made his day.

Alas the problem wasn't solved. Today, at his suggestion, I headed to the Apple Genius Bar to continue working on it. While I was there, another technician worked on a problem I was having with my new iPhone. I felt really supported by the two technicians dealing with the separate problems.  I even laughed with one of them. Not once did I feel stressed.

That was the pinch-myself moment to make sure that efforts to induce more dreams hadn't resulted in daydreams.  No, I was awake.  This was all real.

I felt so good that I mused about maybe I'd learned whatever spiritual lessons I needed to learn in this life, and I could just enjoy the rest of my life just like I've been doing the last few days.

I remembered times in the past when I'd been in similar periods of my life.  There were different spiritual lessons: not easy but I felt like I was going with the flow of the lessons, instead of struggling. The last 17 years have been a struggle, or more accurately, I've felt like I was in a river of struggles, attempting to keep my head above water.

I recall a time decades ago when I'd been drifting down the wild and scenic Rogue River in Oregon with a friend. We were at a very wide and calm spot, where we were both splayed across the raft, drinking in the sun, hats down over our faces.  Suddenly, my friend let out with an expletive, followed by "Hang on!!" Our relaxed reverie was abruptly interrupted as we went crashing over a waterfall, dropping us several feet into a pool of whitewater where we struggled and fought to move out of the whirlpool.

Each time I've been in one of these "good spots," I have would be thrust into a pool of spiritual lessons for months or even years. Each time the lessons presented to me were more challenging than the previous cycle and developed different parts of me. I have dramatically evolved spiritually during this sequence of periods of challenge.  In each, like struggling to get out of the whirlpool at the bottom of the waterfall, one day I would realize I'd finally made it out.

I'd love to think that the last--the longest by far--would be the last, but for those of us with the intention to evolve our souls, I think there must always be lessons.  In The Game Called Life I say that in our lives we have three things to accomplish:

  • Be of service
  • Develop our gifts and talents
  • Learn the spiritual lessons our soul chose.
Quite frankly, if it is OK with the Universe, I'd really like to scratch the last off my list or at the very least allow the spiritual lesson be to learn to enjoy these wondrous moments. That's a lesson I could really get into. I would also consider spending the rest of my life working on the first two, but even as I say that I know that even doing that will bring lessons.  

For today, I am enjoying being in a good place, and I'd really like to do that for a bit longer--maybe even years.  And, if another waterfall/whirlpool awaits, I'll worry about that when it gets here.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

This Could Be Fun

Yesterday afternoon I conducted two research projects for my health coaching class.  Either of them could have been completed in under an hour, but I luxuriated over them for six or seven.  I love to learn!  I just kept jumping from website to website, learning more and more about each of the topics, including one about the heart health of the District of Columbia.  It was something I would never have thought of.  "Golly, gee, I think I'll spend an afternoon that I almost never have free researching the heart health of my city," is something that has never crossed my mind.  AND, it was fascinating.

When I finally looked up, a bit bleary-eyed and starved, I sank back into my chair and laughed out loud.  This was so much fun.  Then it occurred to me that learning has been pretty much under the gun for most of my life.  With so much to complete before the end of the term, I always felt like I was behind from the first day of class in college and graduate school.  When I have taken classes while I was working, the being-behind-as-I-started feeling was notched up a bit, compounded by the hope that I might have five minutes for myself before the class ended.

For the first time, I can really enjoy learning as a quest where the knowledge is a reward in itself. Suddenly, my mind shifted from what I had to do before the class met at noon on Wednesday to what I would like to add to the studies.  I identified books on the shelf of books purchased but not yet read which I wanted to get into.  I also learned that Dr. Andrew Weil has a new healthy eating cookbook, and my experience with his recipes in the past is that they are great. That reminded me that when I started this program, I wanted to have delicious healthy food be an objective. But, I have hardly cooked anything that wasn't required from this class, and, for a foodie, I've found the recipes depressing.

If I haven't finished this research by the end of the class, so what?  I can take all the time I want on this part of my exploration.

In the roughly 28 hours since my discover that I could have fun learning, more and more things have occurred to me that I could have allow to be fun.  I used to relish getting home to run and really enjoyed lifting weights three times a week. In the pressure cooker that has been my life, the things I've loved have been sandwiched into progressively smaller morsels of time. I've felt as if checking something I chose off my list to prove that I would not give up thing I loved was more important than savoring the time I've spent doing them.

I've written a lot in this blog about being present to our lives, and it is a struggle for me.  I think I am turning a corner...far from there, but I always like to say that awareness is 90 percent of the battle. Each time I identify an impediment to being present, I can focus my intention on what I'd like my life to be life.  I can take as much...or as little...time as I want, but if I am going to do something, I am going to throw myself in it completely.

Today I needed to walk to the bank for cash.  This afternoon was lovely in Washington--sunny, bluebird skies, and 60 degrees.  I am a brisk walker, but I really enjoyed the sun on my cheeks and my mobility.  I noticed that a foot, which has been bothering me, was better.  I decided to continue on to the Whole Foods to pick up a few things that I needed.  I enjoyed stopping and pondering some personal philosophy on a lawn sign.  I just enjoyed the beautiful city in which I live.  I was shocked when I got to the store to learn that I'd only walked 10 minutes from the bank, but I'd allowed myself to drop in a time warp where time didn't exist.  I enjoyed myself.

I really want to be of service, but I don't need to make that be hard labor.  In the end, enjoying my life and my service is the point.  As has been said, this isn't a dress rehearsal, so why not have fun with it?

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

1 Fish, 2 Fish, Little Fish, Big Fish

I began writing this blog in October of 2013.  Even on days that I didn't know what it was going to be when I sat down, the words have always come.  At the first of this year, I committed to writing at least 15 minutes each day, and I have reported for duty as promised. The words have been flowing easily every evening...until for the first time last night, the words were not there.

What was the block to my words?  The only other time that I have had complete writer's block was for two weeks prior to writing the first draft of Leading from the Heart.  I had blocked off two months, and then, like now, the words had always been there.  Except they weren't there that day...or the next...or the next.  I prayed. I meditated.  I saw my therapist three times in a week.  I can't say what the block was or what ended it, but suddenly one day, I got up from my meditation, went to the computer, and the words moved through me so fast that I could hardly keep up. They kept coming until the draft was complete.

I said that I would show up every day and write for 15 minutes; I didn't say I would post every day. I wrote...and wrote...and it was all garbage. I spared you. I went to bed disappointed in myself and sad that I may have let down my readers.

Magic worked in my sleep.

Regular readers will recall that I had been in something of a dream desert for the last few years, but since entering my transition and getting a full night's sleep almost every night, the dreams have been back, richly and generously.  Almost every night I have remembered at least one dream; most mornings it has been several.  One morning I couldn't remember until I sat to meditate, and then I started recalling details, which eventually flowed together.  I believe adequate sleep is part of the answer, but I am also confident that the respect that I've been showing the dreams is also a big piece.

Each morning immediately on waking I write whatever I recall, and, as I do, I usually remember more. The volume has been as many as six dreams in a night.  This morning I only recollected two but in great detail.  I wrote three 8-1/2 x 11-inch pages about the two dreams.  Then I go through and note the symbolism of different aspects of the dream.  Finally, I journal what the message was to me and what I plan to do about it.  The Universe should have no doubt that I am listening.

Over several days, I've received messages that change is occurring now or soon.  That shouldn't be a surprise, I am in a conscious period of transition. One of this morning's dreams made clear that I will be going in a totally different direction.  Also not a huge leap since I've felt so burned out from my consulting work within the government.

The other persistent theme, which came in spades this morning after last night's block, was the need for more meditation, usually symbolized in dreams by fish.  In this dream, I was claiming a message and reached over to buy a very small fish--very small.  Get this, I'm trying to get messages, but only putting in a small time for meditation to receive them.

Then I was invited to dinner with someone I met at the message center.  He fed me fish that were many times larger that the very small fish I had purchased.  Finally, he and a wise old woman invited me for dinner again, and this time she fed me fish that were several times larger than the ones he had fed me.

I would have to be really dense not to get the message here.  I need to meditate more.

I am taking a class that demands a lot of time, and I've been trying to get most of the work done in the first 2-1/2 days of the week so that I would have uninterrupted time for the rest of the week. To accomplish that, last night I worked until after midnight.  I think that maybe part of the message here is to start my day by asking what I should do, and that might mean stretching the work over several more days.

If that doesn't work, I'll try something else.  I am certain that after having had writer's block for only the second time in my life last night that I will listen more often and more intently.

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Letting Go of the Reins

A few days ago I wrote about the "ladybug effect" of aligning with our soul's intentions and then allowing ourselves to be supported by the Universe.  (Ladybugs, 1/17/16.)  As I open myself to what the second half of my life will look like, opportunities to explore have just come to me about items on my "Things to Explore List."  It happened again today.

One of my items was "architecture/design."  I have no illusions that I will become an architect, but I have been passionate about the appreciation of architecture for most of my life. When I was younger, I liked the regularity and predictability of classical architecture, but certainly over the last two decades what has truly excited me has been modern architecture--20th and 21st Century.

I've made two trips to Spain to metaphorically worship at the fount of 20th Century art and architecture in Barcelona, making a 10-hour side journey to Bilbao to see Frank Gehry's marvelous Guggenheim Museum masterpiece.  The poetry of Frank Lloyd Wright's "Falling Water" mesmerizes me, and when I visited New York City with a friend a couple years ago, Wright's Guggenheim was the only thing on my list of this to see.

Today in a friend's Facebook post about a totally different subject, there was a magnificent building in the background.  I used my snipping tool to send the image to another friend who lives in the city with the question, "What's this?"  I discovered another architect.  I don't have to understand where this part of my exploration will end.  All I have to notice is that my heart races a bit like a young woman in love when I see these buildings.  It was just on my list and, like ladybugs, it came to me so that I could notice what brings me to life.

Literally, almost in parallel, I was listening to a podcast of "People's Pharmacy," a show to which I had listened for decades before moving to Washington. My local station didn't carry it. I just discovered their podcast, and  I've been binge-listening to their programs from the last two months. I was intrigued by an hour-long interview with neurosurgeon Dr. Allan Hamilton, who also trains horses and wrote a book with a similar title to mine--Lead with Your Heart in the Horse Pen and in Your Life.  Well, the title was similar until the Horse Pen part, but many of the topics were similar.

About the time the picture of the new-to-me architect's building was landing in my email inbox, I was listening to Hamilton describe a situation he'd been in with a skittish horse.  He was in the mountains when a storm blew up.  His particular horse was afraid of water.  If you haven't had the privilege of being in the mountains, especially above the tree line, when a storm blows in, it is about the most terrifying thing I can imagine, as lightning flashes all around you.  I can't even imagine being on a skittish horse at such a moment.

Hamilton said that his first instinct was to try to control the horse because of its history, but almost as quickly he was moved to just let go. Hamilton said he tied the reins, laid them down, and let go.  The horse found its way down with no episodes with the horse's fear, and soon they were in the parking lot.

The other half of the ladybugs story is the laying-down-the-reins part.  Putting on the list is the first part. Receiving is the third.  In the middle is putting down the reins.  I haven't exerted a second's time on my "Things to Explore List;" they've just happened, and I've been receptive.

However, in a very different way, I've been trying to make something happen with this blog that doesn't want to happen. When I was writing every day a couple years ago, I had around 700 regular readers all over the globe.  I have no idea how they found me but some of the same ones were there every day.  I was particularly interested in three people in Albania that read almost every day.  I did nothing to stimulate these readers or lead them to the blog.  I metaphorically let go of the reins, and they found me.

Then, as I wrote more rarely, readership dropped off to almost nothing.  Now that I am writing regularly, I wanted more readers again.  It's what we're supposed to want to happen, isn't it?  But, the truth is, I think I write as much to help myself on my journey as I do for others, so why should it matter?  Getting readers had never been an intention for the blog; it was always about sharing my journey and hoping others would benefit from it. If a few people read it, and find it helpful, shouldn't that be enough for me?

I think it should, but I haven't been satisfied.  A friend taught me the rudiments of Twitter, and a couple weeks ago we began tweeting about my posts.  Almost immediately my readership grew to 6-7 times its previous low readership.  Not a bad start, I thought.  What else could I do?

Last week I asked three people who I knew to be regular readers if they would retweet our messages. None of us are really tweeters, but they have been supportive, but an interesting thing has occurred. The number of readers over the last week has dropped...to fewer than before my "efforting," a term sometimes used when we try to make our intentions happen, rather than being receptive to allowing them to occur.  (My apologies to my friends that I've engaged in my efforting.)

Maybe I am only writing this blog for myself and for a handful of readers.  If that is the case, that's fine because I get benefit from writing, and they value reading it.  So, I am taking Hamilton's advice and putting down the reins.  We might also use a phrase I've used in this blog before: "Let go and let God."  But, no more efforting.





Saturday, January 21, 2017

Radical Gratitude

I just spent a lovely, relaxed evening with friends--chili, cornbread, prosecco with a Hallmark movie. Eleven years ago, I didn't know they existed; yet, for most of the intervening years, we've spent holidays as if we were family. In truth, we are family.  Last week I enjoyed leftovers and a movie with a different friend that I didn't know existed 11 years ago.  How interesting to me that people who are so special--and these are certainly not the only ones--weave into our lives effortlessly.

By the grace of God.

A couple days ago, I wrote about the sacred space our group created at our Theology on Tap gathering.  While it was an extraordinary experience, my conversation after our adjournment triggered a memory in me that had lapsed over the years.  After the adjournment, I talked with the Bishop,  and he shared with me the concept of "radical gratitude."  I was puzzled when he first said the term.  I asked about it.

Radical gratitude, he said, is looking at the things we have to be grateful for as a result of things that happened in our lives that we consider to be bad or negative.   Then, being able to be grateful for those things because of the gifts that we received as a result of the "bad" events.  How quickly I resonated with the concept.

Every Intentional Living Intensive that I facilitated was unique.  I was guided what exercises to do with each participant.  Yet, there were several that almost all of my clients participated in.  One was what I called the Extreme Gratitude exercise.  I would start by working with the client to identify a situation that he/she considered "the worst thing that had happened" to them.  Then, we would tease out all the good things that had occurred because of that "bad" situation.

I can recall one man sitting with tears rolling down his cheeks as we identified many wonderful things that had resulted because of his "bad" situation.  How interesting to think that something just a few minutes early we considered personally devastating, and then to discover what a gift it had been. Radical gratitude...what an appropriate term.

In the documentary "Happy!" about which I've written several times this week, the concept that bad things happen to happy people was discussed. They happen, and happy people respond appropriately...and then they bounce back.  I think that a key piece of the bouncing back is recognizing that whatever occurs on our paths is a gift, and each circumstance leads us to people and situations that could not have occurred without it.

Just as my clients discovered their gifts in difficult situations, I, too, have experienced radical gratitude. Had my business not failed in the dot.com bust, forcing me to move to Washington, none of these people who I value would have come into my life.  I would have missed all of the experiences that I've had in the last 11 years.

I am grateful...radically grateful...for the people with whom I spent this lovely evening and for the often uncomfortable circumstances that brought us together.


Friday, January 20, 2017

A Life on Loan

Yesterday I wrote about one part of the documentary "Happy" that stood out to me: that of reprogramming our brains in two weeks by meditating on love and compassion.  As I was practicing a meditation on love this evening, a different interview from the film kept coming back, over and again.  In a way, it brought focus to the transition I am in.

A middle-aged man in the film had been an eager young banker, determined to be the youngest director in his bank in Singapore when he was starting out.  I regret that I didn't catch where he is currently located, but it was clear it was a very undeveloped part of the world.  A friend of his, who volunteered at the "house for the dying," asked the upwardly mobile banker to volunteer there for a day.  He went and transformed in the experience.  He has never left.

He talked about the humble acts he performs to give aid and comfort to those who are in pain and dying--a drink of water, bites of food, aid in walking across the room to a man without a leg or a crutch, and even simply holding a hand.  At one point he almost choked up as he talked about the meaning this work brought to his life.

As he continued to talk, he shared what has become his philosophy of life.  "God loans us a life, and at the end of it, we need to give it back...with interest."  The interest, which is due, is what we give to the world in service.  Perhaps only a banker would come up with that metaphor, but it is easily relatable. Most of us have borrowed money for something in our lives--house, car, student loans.  We expect to repay the loans, and we expect to pay interest. However, I've never heard anyone talk in terms of their lives in exactly that way before.

In the nagging at my heart over the last two months, the hunger for meaning feels to me like God whispering to me that I need to be thinking about my interest payment. ("Seeking All Sides of a Challenge, 1/3/17.) I've always been in some kind of service job--making people's lives and work better, but most of the time it has been for middle-class people in relative comfort.

I've been volunteering to fund-raise for United Way, the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC,) and the Red Cross for most of my adult life, where I've talked about those in need. I've also served on several boards of directors of organizations serving people with a range of different kinds of needs, but never really got my hands dirty. Except for an occasional afternoon volunteering at the food bank, my service has been at arm's length. I've never really pushed myself out of my comfort zone to render service directly to people with whom I may be uncomfortable around.

In many of the Hallmark movies that are aimed at my demographic and always end happily, there is often volunteer work at a soup kitchen or tutoring kids.  In these times of personal giving, the potential romantic interest sees the compassionate side of the other person.  I hazard a guess that few people have seen the compassionate side of me, because I don't put it out there very often.  Part of me wonders if my heart might just break if I actually personally interacted with the recipients of my goodwill.

Somehow I don't think that when God asks me for my interest that it will be acceptable to say I talked about the needs but didn't get my hands or my business suit dirty will fill the bill.  During this time of transition, I need to hold the intention that wherever I land at the other end of my becoming, when the time arrives, I will pay my interest in full.

Thursday, January 19, 2017

Breathing in Compassion

Last night I watched the documentary "Happy." It was a marvelous weaving of topics from my Psychology of Happiness certification program and Eric Weiner's book The Geography of Bliss.  The movie left me feeling warm inside.

In the day since I watched it there was one part that touched me deeply enough that they have colored my day today.  I'd like to share it. Featured in the film was a professor, who has done brain scans on meditators--master, such as a Tibetan Buddhist monk, and relative newbies--to see what impact their practice has on their brains.

His research has determined that in as little as two weeks of doing a mindfulness meditation that focuses on love or compassion, newcomers to meditation can reprogram their brains to similar levels as the monk.

For years I did something similar.  Back in the late mid-90s, I had a transformational experience.  It felt like my body dematerialized into love.  To this day, I can close my eyes and breathe in what that experience was like and feel my whole body tingle with the love that connects all of us, as it did in the transcendent experience. I used my memory of that experience as the focus of my mindfulness meditation for years, just breathing the memory in and then breathing it out again.

In no small part due to those meditations, I was totally calm in those years.  Nothing ruffled my feathers.  Nothing. At that time, I had a dance partner who was a very good dancer and fun to dance with. (Those two things don't always go together.)  He had a horrible temper though, and the least little thing would set him into a rage.  I never really knew what that anger was about, but I was sure it had nothing to do with the dance.

One time our dance teacher, who had witnessed several of these explosions followed by my compassionate responses, said to me, "How to you do it?"  All that would come to me was that these meditations had built such a reservoir of love in me that the anger just floated by.

Then, insisting that no one can learn on their own, someone tried to teach me how to meditate, focusing me on the breathing and a mantra in one case.  Another talked through the meditation.  I am not sure exactly when I stopped my love-focused mindfulness meditation, but I am certain that I have not achieved anything close to that level of peace since.  And, I have also not consciously recalled that experience of being love very often since then either.

In recent years the technology of brain-scanning and the exploding field of neuroscience has demonstrated just how "plastic"--neuroscience-speak for we can change fairly quickly--our brains actually are. While watching this documentary, and listening to the scientist describe the impact of mindfulness meditation focusing on love and compassion, the memory of my old style of meditation before I knew how "to do it right" triggered.

I wonder, I thought, after all these years, could I call that back?  Well, my beautifully plastic brain confirmed that I could.  I did my old-style-before-someone-taught-me-to-do-it-right meditation last night, this morning, and again this evening.  I can already tell a profound impact.  I've been totally at ease today, ticking off things on my list that normally might have been agitating.  I was just calm.  I have had the sense that I have been smiling all day.

"Happy" describes a psychological phenomenon called "hedonic adaptation."  As we pursue, and then get, more material satisfaction, recognition, or whatever flips our personal switches, initially we are happier, but quickly we adjust to that level of gratification.  To be happy again, we need to notch it up a level: we continue adapting and needing more and more gratification to produce shorter and shorter periods of happiness.

With today's little experiment, I've been able to be happy all day, even during a rather contentious business meeting, with no external gratification. I came home and cleaned my house--not my favorite thing to do--and I was consciously aware that I was relaxed and happy while I was doing it. I expect that the many years that I did this kind of meditation made it quicker for me to plug into the part of my brain that still remembers it, but the research would indicate that anyone could do it in two weeks. We don't need the hedonic pleasures. Happiness lies within us.  It is there for the cost of just loving.


Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Practicing Civility

One of the reasons that I was attracted to join my current church after decades of attending mostly in Easter, Christmas Eve, and when I was in personal crisis is that it is a think-out-of-the-box old school church.

First, let's talk about the old school part.  We are located across from the White House. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln walked across Lafayette Park to the church to sit and pray in the back pew every afternoon at 4.  Every President since Madison has attended services there. This Friday President-Elect Trump will join a long list of Presidents who attend a prayer service at the church before going to the Capitol for their inauguration.  It is hallowed ground not because it is a church edifice, but because of what has happened there.

Then, let's talk about what I did tonight and attempt to do most months.  I went to Theology on Tap. It is a casual gathering at a local pub.  We have a burger together.  Some have beer and wine. We usually have thought-provoking remarks, and then, most times thoughtful dialogue follows. Topics vary widely from a soup kitchen that trains ex-convicts to be chefs to gays and transexuals in the Bible. (Yes, they are there.)

Tonight's speaker was Right Reverend James Magness, the Bishop Suffragan for the US Armed Forces and Federal Ministries, which includes prisons. (In case you don't know, Bishop Suffragan means that he is the Bishop's helper for when the Bishop can't be everywhere. I had to look it up.)

Although it may seem a funny thing to say, in the casual, relaxed atmosphere, those attending seem to let down their guards and be willing to question.  I've written a lot on being in a place of conscious not-knowing--that quintessential spot where we give up our personal perspective and make ourselves vulnerable to the Truth. I've never heard anyone advocate a position. Respectful listening and questioning characterizes the meetings.  I always value the gatherings.

Bishop Magness'  remarks tonight invited exploration about our roles in helping our society be more civil, and the importance that listening can bring to civil discourse.  In the dialogue portion, participants obviously were searching their souls deeply.  It was clear that no one had answers but as we collectively pondered after our meal, we pulled together pieces that start building an answer, albeit an answer that will likely continue to unfold in each of us in the days and weeks ahead. But, we were clearly on sacred turf in our grappling.

Back when I had my own business, I would take leadership teams offsite for retreats in which we would follow my simple rules of dialogue to understand the business better.  They would listen, ask thoughtful questions, allow silence to float in to allow time for consideration, and to collectively allow a higher level of Truth emerge.  Let me remind you, we were talking about business and business challenges.  Yet, almost every time, by the first or second break someone would corner me and say something like, "This is really spiritual stuff."  And, it was.

Tonight I had the same feeling that I always did on those retreats.  When we make room for listening, silence, and pondering, we create civility. We are on hallowed ground. It is "spiritual stuff," no matter what the topic. Bishop Magness challenged each of us to extend an effort to bring more civility into our community. How can we bring what our group experienced so naturally tonight and what my leadership teams experienced so naturally in their retreats to our daily lives?

Back in the 90s, there was a joke that the word "ego" was an acronym for Edging God Out.  There was no ego in our pub gathering tonight.  Egos were checked at the door of the retreats.  If we are to really listen and understand others around us, we have to surrender who we have believed ourselves to be and what we have believed about our world in order to find Higher Truth.  In order to find a Third Way where we find civility, we have to let go of our egos, listen, ask questions to understand, and make room for the divine within each of us to lead us to new understanding.

What occurs in those moments of deep connection also becomes hallowed, not because of the set of acts we committed, but because of what happened there...and who we became because of it.


Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Ladybugs

To my way of thinking, one of the great works of early 21st Century philosophy is the 2004 film "Under the Tuscan Sun."  I purchase few movies, but it was one. I watch it a few times every year with pen in hand because there are so many great quotes I want to remember.

A concept that the extraordinary character Katherine shares with Tuscan newcomer Francesca, who is impatient to have things in her life that she doesn't have--a man, children, and a family to cook for. Katherine tells her that when she was a girl she would look for ladybugs everywhere and not be able to find one.  She would fall into the grass in exasperation and fall asleep, awakening to find herself covered with ladybugs.  I have always taken that to mean that whatever we are looking for will find us, if we just stay still.

There were several things that I want to explore in this transition, but just really didn't know how and in one case even where to start.

One was health coaching and the last week or two of December my email box was full to overflowing with information about several health-coaching programs, free webinars to introduce programs and the like.  I don't recall ever getting such a plethora of announcements about the topic. Of course, those who have been following this blog know that I am enrolled in one of them, exploring a topic of lifelong interest.  Just like ladybugs, I put health coaching on my list, and the resource were there.

I have followed the field of positive psychology since Professor Martin Seligman, Ph.D., rocked the American Psychological Association (APA) in the late 1990s.  Prior to that time, psychologists were only concerned about how we were broken and dysfunctional rather than how we could be happier and more satisfied with our lives. The psychology of happiness was my research topic for my Coach Certification training program a few years ago.  Last summer I completed a Psychology of Happiness certification. I have several related books on this shelf of unread books, but I wanted to go deeper. Over the weekend, a colleague, who knew nothing of my interest, emailed me information about a documentary on happiness, and today another sent me a page of links about the second wave of positive psychology.  When I laid back and didn't focus, like ladybugs, sources of exploration just literally landed on my desk.

Since seeing the picture of the dead three-year-old Syrian immigrant boy on a beach about 18 months ago, my heart has ached silently for so many like him.  There are 21 million refugees in the world today; half of them are children. I've gone to the website of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees.  I've given what little I can afford to organizations doing good work. Yet, I have felt so distant from the agony of these people ripped from their homes, but I didn't really see myself traveling halfway around the world to work in a camp. There must be something more I could do; figuring out how has been on my list of things to explore.

Just like ladybugs, resources have fallen on my path.  My book club is reading City of Thorns this month, a book about life in a refugee camp in Kenya, housing refugees primarily from Somalia. Built as a temporary camp for 90,000 refugees 20 years ago, half a million people now call it home and no end for the need is in sight.

Yesterday, I received a draft of a plan for our church to be more actively engaged in responding to the crisis.  There are 12 months of activities planned.  More than that, attending tonight's dialogue about the crisis were people who have been or are actively engaged in this work in our community.

I was introduced to the concept of design-thinking four or five years ago in a creativity and innovation class I took. I read Tom and David Kelly's book Creative Confidence.  They are arguably the fathers of design-thinking. Last year I got a certification in Human-Centered Design.  Every time I've gotten near the topic, it flipped my switches.  It is on my list.  A few days ago I turned on a "Hidden Brain" podcast to entertain me while I was walking.  The topic: design-thinking.

With the exception of putting a few words on a list, entitled, "Things to Explore," I have not had to take a bit of initiative on any of these topics.  It has all just fallen to me.

An important lesson about intention lies in Katherine's ladybug wisdom.  Not unlike the joke, "Be careful what you wish for," we need only to have an intentional thought, and the reality can manifest right before our eyes.  We all have stories.  I think that the other side of this coin, however, is that we can't make things happen.  It's the Don't Push the River thing again (1/13/17.)

Why do some things happen so easily then, and we just can't seem to make others happen at all?  I think it has to do with aligning with the pureness of our intentions for our lives when we came into human form.  If our intention serves our souls, we will be covered with proverbial ladybugs, and they will come to us in ways we could not have imagined.

Monday, January 16, 2017

Big Chunks and Little Ones

Last week when I was re-reading The Game Called Life, I paid particular attention when "guardian angel" Helen helped Lizzie figure out how she could manage resolving many broken commitments. "Take on the big chunks first, and then work in the smaller tasks around the edges as you have time," was the gist.

I do have several big projects that require a lot of time, and I've been being frustrated that I can't get to my sorting project.  Last night I had enough time when getting ready to go dancing to try on several dance outfits that I really like but haven't worn for a while.  With each, I figured out why I hadn't worn them for a while.  While I like them, for one reason or another, each just didn't look good on me any more...if it ever did.  I quickly accumulated quite a stack.

Today, I finished a course assignment 10 minutes before a conference call.  After a quick bio break, I took eight minutes and was able to sort through one whole shelf of books.  I am still not sure that I want to keep all the books that made the first cut, but I was able to par two of one of my favorite books down to the marked copy and five organizational behavior textbooks down to two. I have a stack of books a foot high that are going. When I have more clarity about the future, I can decide whether keeping any makes sense, but this winnowing is progress.

Before going to the grocery this evening, I took a minute at the pantry to throw out more gifts that have been sitting there for years. I also started reading labels more carefully and found some ingredients that don't fit with the health coach role. And, I started eating out of my freezer.

Years ago I recall coaching a man who had purchased a piece of land many years earlier to build his dream home, but because of children in college and related expenses, he lived on the property in an old, beat-up mobile home that he hated.  Working together, we identified a list of things that he could do to make progress toward the new home that didn't cost much money, but they would allow him to make progress.  Finally, when the daughters graduated, he was in a position to frame in the dream home and begin doing finish work on the weekends.  I could see a real shift in his self-image as soon as he saw that his living situation was a vehicle instead of a rut that he might never escape.

Although I live a pretty busy life, every day I fritter away a few minutes here and a few minutes there because these little bits of time between activities don't seem sufficient to accomplish anything meaningful.  Today I was reminded that if we stay with our intentions, we can really do a lot in little bits around the "big chunks" in our lives.  Eventually, all the little pieces add up and take us where we want to go.

Sunday, January 15, 2017

This or That?

A number of years ago home chef and writer Julie Powell embarked on a mission that may be the secret dream of many serious hobby cooks.  She committed to cooking her way through every recipe in Julia Child's masterpiece, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, during the course of a single year and blogging about it each day.  She accomplished this while holding down a day job. She did it, and I continue to be amazed.

When I heard about the project, I was instantly envious, and almost as quickly, I called back any jealousy.  I have neither the budget nor enough friends to help me eat my way through all that food, and quite honestly, I am not sure I'd like to eat some of it. Think eel or three different liver dishes for starters. But what fun to pick and choose and make all the ones I'd like to eat.

I've written many times in this blog about my passion for cooking, and just over the last few months (maybe since I started sorting) it has occurred to me that while I like to cook, what I love is baking. Since I have both a gluten intolerance and very high quality standards, making baked items that measure up on both those qualifications has been a 20-year challenge for me.  I get my feelings hurt when I am asked to bring a salad or vegetables to a potluck instead of one of my from-the-oven masterpieces.  (Well, I think they are masterpieces, but usually there are a few versions before perfection.)

Recently, on a tip from a coworker, I discovered "The Great American Baking Show."  By the time I found the show, contestants were entering quarter-finals.  I binge-watched earlier episodes to catch up.  As I watched the series, it occurred to me that I make recipes.  I do alter them, sometimes almost beyond the imagination of the original. I do have to play with the options for substituting gluten-free ingredients. What occurred to me as I watched these "home bakers" is what they have that I don't: a mastery of the techniques that are involved.  As the champion was named on Thursday, I remembered the Julie and Julia project, and I wanted to jump into an apron and start a parallel project trying recipes that would help me learn the techniques of baking.

My invigorated desire to master the techniques of baking is occurring at the time I have three "conflicting" projects going on in my life.  First, I am sorting things that no longer fit with my life.  I now enter my third week of that project, and all I've thrown away are unsolicited make-up gifts and shopping bags. (I have almost put the online version of The Game Called Life to bed, but it has bounced back in review.) If this is really a priority, it seems I should have accomplished more by now. In this sorting project I am supposed to discover where I can work with passion in my encore career.

Second, I have my perpetual "get sugar out of my diet" project, which is more closely aligned with the third project.  Finally, this week I embarked on the addition of a health coaching certificate to my other coaching certifications.  Of course, we started with nutrition, which confirmed getting sugar, as well as refined ingredients that make baked goods, well, baked goods, out of my diet is a priority.

Is it this or that? Am I going to be a baker and go on a whirlwind of learning baking techniques or am I going to be a health coach who shuns the stuff of baked goods?  Oh, do I really have to decide?

I find that the Universe is quite generous in providing us with support to learn spiritual lessons when we are ready to learn them.  The Buddhist "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear" thing comes to mind.  In Rabbi Kula's Yearnings, which I used to escort me into my meditation retreat the first week of January, he explains the importance of getting away from dualities: trying to figure out which thing is true, when in likelihood, there is some truth in both.  My next read was actually a reread of Caroline Myss's The Anatomy of the Spirit.  She makes a similar case with different language.

Last week I heard an NPR interview with a psychologist who talked about our tendency as humans to classify decisions into either/or.  Our basic survival is based on determining, "Is this a fight or flight situation?"  Over many years of working with executives and executive teams, I have found that as soon as they get two options, they want to decide which is the best.  When I ask them about other options, they often come up with several and often better ones than those they started to choose between.

Faced with the conundrum, "Am I going to be a baker and go on a whirlwind of learning baking techniques or am I going to be a health coach who shuns the stuff of baked goods?" I think the answer is "yes."  I am going to try to take the advice of the spiritual teachers and avoid the tendency to force a decision between two options and stay with the ambiguity.  God is, after all, in some way referred to as mystery in most religions.  I'm going to hang with God in the mystery for a bit longer.

My real challenge will be how to stay true to all of my intentions while I linger in the ambiguity.  At the core of our intentions are the ones in our hearts--the things that flip our switches and bring us to life.  To eliminate either my passion for healthy food or the parallel one for baking would be untrue to my heart.  To neglect the cleaning out process would fall short of my intention for this transition period.

I am still wrestling with how to be true to myself in the sugar challenge, since I know enough about baking techniques to know that at least a small amount of sugar is essential to the chemistry of baking.  No sugar, no rising. My experimentation with natural sweeteners has been disappointing at best. Maybe the real challenge here is to grow in consciousness about sugar so that I am in control of how I handle it rather than letting it control me.  Now that is a real mystery to me.

Life is full of "this or that?" puzzles. For those reading this in the U.S. right now, you are aware that there has been a growing political divide in this country for 20 years. The truth is perceived as "my view, beliefs, or side," and the non-truth is "the other's view, beliefs, or side." Staying open and conscious through the dichotomies of life provides the intention muscle and spiritual discipline to grow beyond a simple choice and into a Higher Truth in which there is almost always veracity in both.




Saturday, January 14, 2017

Defending My Life

While walking this evening, I was listening to an interview with Betty Fussell on a podcast.  The 90-year-old food writer and historian has just released yet one more book, this a memoir.  With her long and storied career, how did she decide what to include, the interviewer asked.  Oh, that was the hard part, Fussell responded.  She proceeded to describe the process of selection that she had used.

As I thought about Fussell choosing the stories that she would use to represent her long life, something she said recalled to me the 1991 Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep movie, "Defending Your Life."  In it, Brooks character was recently deceased, and the course of the movie was comprised of his defense of his colorful life.

With the interview by then continuing with almost no attention on my part, I thought about how I would defend my life in the final "judgment day."  What stories would I choose to represent the person I have been?  Even as I was forming my thought, I knew that in my sorting process, I am in the fortunate position of being able to choose the course that the rest of my life will take and the stories I will write with my actions and inactions.

Well, of course, as a person who has made living my intentions the focus of many years of my adult life, I should have known that I could always do that, and..., I guess I have.  Yet, for some reason, it seemed as if someone had placed a canvas in front of me and opened a new Word document, and said, "Create your life."  And, so by creating my life, I will be preparing to defend it.

Then, in every sorting decision, the real question is: "How do you want to be remembered as a result of this decision?"  Now it's not as if I have been doing anything untoward with my life, but the truth is that my heart hasn't been in much of my life for a very long time.  And, that is what I believe I will have a hard time defending.  In my heart, I know that our hearts are our guides, and if I am to defend my life by that standard, then it is time that I let my heart drive my life.  That is something I can defend.


Friday, January 13, 2017

When is Perseverance Pushing the River?

In the 1970s Barry Stevens authored a book, entitled Don't Push the River.  I read it 25 years ago, when it has a mind resurgence in popularity during the heydey of the 1990s human potential movement.  Quite frankly, I struggled with the book, but the title has persisted as a concept.  If things are supposed to happen, they will; and if they aren't, don't waste your energy trying to push something that doesn't want to happen. In the 90s, when everything seemed to happen easily, maybe the concept was just a sign of the times.

My life has been a challenge for much of this century, and at this New Year, I was shocked to realize how many years have passed since initiating the Millennium.  Many have been the times that I've grappled with whether I was pushing the river, in everything from physical challenges to work situations.

I grew up in the heartland where perseverance and determination were not only virtues, but often survival tactics for our hard winters and summer storms and tornados.  With that said, when I moved to Oregon, I noticed a lot of people who had moved from the Dakotas and Minnesota after a couple of exceptionally challenging weather years.  I render no judgment: they had just decided they could no longer persevere.  (My own move was inspired by wanderlust and the sense of adventure, offered to a flat-lander by the mountains and wild rivers.)

As far as I can tell, I started the process of putting The Game Called Life on Amazon in November of 2013, just days after a government shutdown had provided me with time to contemplate what was important.  Apparently, getting that book to a wider market was part of the answer.  Once we returned to work, the long hours started up again. Occasionally, I worked on formatting, cover design, etc., on a holiday or a weekend, but I am not a detail person, and taking on such tedious tasks when exhausted by my day job was off-putting.  A year later--November 2014--I had a proof.  I sat down one afternoon and hand-marked the edits, entered them into the online text, and then reviewed.  The review revealed more typos which I marked again.  (Long silence follows here until this week.)

I reported earlier this week that it had only taken me 20 minutes to make the changes that had been waiting for attention for 26 months.  Today I jumped in for what I expected would be a few minutes, polishing the final steps in no time.  There is an expression that if you want to make God laugh, tell God your plans. I felt God was laughing at me today. I struggled for hours. Shortly after 5 p.m., my head hung between my hands, and I wondered out loud if the Universe was attempting to tell me to give up.  I thought the message was so important, and I had committed to carry it through. How could iI be asked to quit before it was finished?

Much to my surprise, when I called for help, I actually got a real person who spoke very good English fairly promptly.  "No," she said, "you can't do either of the things you are trying to do to your cover." (Paraphrased.)  Well, no wonder I hadn't been able to do them. I heaved a sigh that connoted both exasperation and relief.  I could give up.

Within another 10 minutes, my submission was complete and has been submitted for review.  Since there is nothing immoral or illegal in it, I am not too concerned.  There is another hoop to get through to get it ready for kindle, but I can't start that until the paper version approval has arrived.

Perseverance has paid off. This time. Yet I do believe there are times when I am being sent a message to just "Give it up already."  That Midwestern upbringing just won't let me let go.  I am not sure how we know.  Last week I wrote about how to tell if our guidance was real or not, and I think the perseverance-versus-the-pushing-the-river conundrum may be another form of guidance confusion.

How do we know?  These efforts in our life don't come with superscripts that say, "Give it up!" or "Hang in there!  Just persevere and this will be rewarded."  There may a way to know when we are in the middle of it.  If so, recognizing the message when I am consumed by the effort is something I have yet to master.  I do know that this evening, I feel light, and my heart feels full. I am not sure, but I am guessing that I wouldn't be feeling that way if I had decided to give it up.


Thursday, January 12, 2017

Just Keep Showing Up

I wrote yesterday's post--90% is just showing up"--immediately before going to bed, as I often do. You might say I slept on it.  In this morning's meditation, it came that there is no where that "just showing up" is more important than prayer and meditation.

Spiritual teacher Caroline Myss has spoken about our "prayer bank accounts."  My understanding of this concept is that we show up every day (preferably at the same time) to either pray or meditate, or some combination.  We show up even when we have nothing to pray for or about.  We just do it. Day in, day out. The term "practice" is often applied to our spiritual development because like a sport or a musical instrument that we are learning, we do it every day to get better at it.  We develop spiritual "muscle" that we can call on when we least expect it.

Myss says that if we make these daily deposits to our "bank accounts," then some day, when we really need to pray for or about something, we have a relationship with whatever we call the listener on the other end of the line when we commune in that way.  We don't need the kind of small talk that we usually use to get to know someone; we already have an intimate relationship.  We can go deep...fast.

In my meditation this morning what kept coming up was that I haven't been so good in recent years about that regular practice.  As I sat, I pictured myself in a workshop years ago when we stopped and meditated.  Afterward, the leader said that she'd been doing that for years, and she'd never seen anyone settle into their meditation as quickly as I did. At the time, I'd been writing Leading from the Heart, and I began each day by meditating at least an hour a day and sometimes up to three.  I'd meditate until I was inspired to write; then I'd get up and let the words flow through me. The point is that the practice I'd been building paid off in the workshop.

In recent years, there have been many days when I neither prayed nor meditated.  Other days I fell asleep as I tried to meditate.  Some days my prayers were one-liners: "Please guide my work today to the Higher Good."  My prayer muscles have gone soft.  But every day this year--all 12 of them, and twice a day since my retreat started. I've taken time to sit with God.

In the beginning I was very fidgety.  Sometimes I'd think I had been sitting a while, only to open my eyes and discover that only three or four minutes had passed.  I started setting the timer on my iPhone for 20 minutes.  When I would think I'd been at the practice forever and the timer hadn't gone off, I'd look to see if I'd forgotten to start it.  I had.

This week, I've noticed that the flow is much easier.  I actually pray and meditate for the full 20 minutes, and the timer goes off before I look.  Yeah!  I notice the breathing is more natural, and I easily get insights like the one today about just showing up for spiritual practice. Floating in gently like a feather, totally without the labor I experienced even two weeks ago. I believe Myss would say that I am making deposits to my prayer bank account.

I fully understand that it is the beginning of a new year, and many people start new things as resolutions.  I haven't been one of them.  I have usually taken some time at the New Year to reflect and assess how I'm doing at moving toward my intentions.  Then, I've made the effort to course correct.  I'd like to think that is what I am doing now.  I've shown up to write this blog every day.  I've exercised at least 15 minutes, and today, thanks to a social event away from the Metro, I hoofed 75 minutes on a springlike January day in Washington.  And, I've shown up for spiritual practice every day. Each of these things are getting easier each day that I do them.

When I am back to work, I understand that it will be harder, but now that I think about it, I am sure that these three practices are more important than anything else I could do for myself. Maybe that's been part of my problem in the past: I have thought that showing up for others was more important than showing up for things I do for myself. (That sounds like another post.) Not something I've been good about in the past, but it is a new year, and each is a new day in which I can just keep showing up.

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

90% is Just Showing Up

A friend came over for dinner this evening.  One of our favorite restaurateurs has opened a new place in my neighborhood.  We walked down for a glass of wine to check the place out before coming back to "play in the kitchen": we both enjoy cooking.

To mark a landmark birthday for me a few years ago, the two of us took a meandering trip around Tuscany.  It was probably my best trip ever, although I have to say that I did grow weary of tourist-laden "hill towns" after a couple of them.  One day as we were driving in the countryside, we saw a sign for a town we hadn't heard of and which didn't show up on our map.  We decided to check it out. It wasn't without tourists but more like dozens instead of thousands, and there were actually unique shops and restaurants.  We found a little side street and wandered into the best dining experience of my life.

As a cook, when I have a great dish in a restaurant, I immediately make notes so I can try to reproduce it when I return.  I believe our wild boar with chocolate, pine nuts, and aromatic spices and tagliatelle in white truffle sauce was the best mean I've ever had.  (So good that I didn't even note the dessert, which is usually the focus of my attention.)  I still have my hand-scribbled notes attempting to capture its essence for later experimentation.

There are cooks who could just walk into the kitchen with those ingredients and start creating.  I am not one of them.  I am good at following recipes, and I am better than average at taking a recipe and modifying it until it hardly resembles the original.  But, I do need something with which to start. After years of searching, I finally found an adaptable recipe, and we played with it.  We smelled lots of aromatic spices--mace, allspice, clove, nutmeg--to try to figure out which had probably been in the Italian version.  We aren't there yet, but we are moving in the right direction.

I had promised to write for at least 15 minutes a day, but by the time we dined, watched a movie and my friend left, I was tired...and uninspired.  Since my TV sabbatical last week, I haven't watched much, so I caught a favorite show on demand.  I was still not feeling it.

I sat and prayed and meditated.  I shared my intention to keep my commitment and to write something every day.  By the time 18 minutes of meditation had passed, what was clearly on my mind was the phrase "90 percent is just showing up," inspired by Woody Allen's "80 percent of life is just showing up."  Apparently, my guides think that showing up is more important than Allen did.

As I pondered the phrase, I realized that there are a lot of things in life that we commit to do, but when the time comes, we try to weasel out of our promises.  We avoid. We put it off. We just don't show up. Keeping our commitments is foundational to integrity.  A missed commitment creates a "pinprick in our integrity."  The next day another pinprick. Next week another.  Pretty soon, we have a "hole in our integrity the size of the one in the Titanic," as Lizzie in The Game Called Life  said.

Today, I showed up to keep my commitment to write...and to protect my integrity.

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Recalibrating

I grew up in a household where healthy eating was paramount.  My grandfather kept 1/3 of an acre in organic garden before organic gardening even had a name.  My grandmother was always into vitamins and supplements, but when my father had a health crisis when I was 10, she went into overdrive researching how to restore his health. There's been a lot of research on creating health in the last two decades, but not so much when I was a kid. Unfortunately, no amount of healthy eating was going to undo a cigarette-smoking habit that started at 7 and persisted through countless health crises before claiming my father's life.

Along the way, however, Grandma infected me with the understanding that we can be in control of our health outcomes.  Since I was 10, I've been aware that what I ate made a difference.  Not unlike many young adults, I didn't always eat the way I should, but I knew the difference.  By the time I was 25, my failure to eat the way I knew I should resulted in me packing an unnecessary 15 pounds. I was pre-diabetic.

A doctor sat me down and had a long talk with me about my intentions.  He made it very clear that if I kept my weight in the normal- to slightly-below normal range, I would probably never develop diabetes.  But, with that formidable disease on both sides of my family, he said, I was almost destined to develop it if I continued to carry that extra weight.  That may have been my first real conversation with anyone about my intentions and the impact of making choices in alignment with them. To this day, whenever I put on a few pounds, I hear his words and take them off.

Back then we weren't talking about exercise so much, but my grandparents were farm people and moved a lot.  Granddad covered miles hunting and fishing, and lamented at 94 that he couldn't jump creeks like he used to. (Really!  We had that conversation.) They were very active.  Three of my four grandparents lived into their 90s.  My maternal grandfather/organic gardener died just short of 100. My paternal great-grandmother lived to 106.  My parents, who didn't make healthy lifestyle choice, both died in their 60s.

During my Midwestern trip last fall, I visited with two aunts--87 and 89--and the mother of a friend who is 94.  All are in amazing shape and truly inspirations.  Healthy lifestyle choices really make a difference.  But that is no surprise to me.

I've been coaching for 25 years, and a number of my Intentional Living Intensive executive and professional clients were totally inflexible and had trouble taking the long walks that were part of the three-day process. I asked clients to stop caffeine and alcohol a week before they came, but a few didn't think that was important.  Several went into serious withdrawal from caffeine; one complained of headaches for the first two days. Most of my clients were around 50, and I'd seen first hand the impact of their choices. About 20 years ago, before it even had a name, I declared that my encore career would be as a health and mobility coaching for older adults, many of whom lose their ability to move because they don't.

It is not uncommon for coaches to have a number of topic-specific credentials.  I have a dozen or so, among them social and emotional intelligence, influence styles, human-centered design, and 360 feedback for government executives.  As I have contemplated this season of reassessment, I've made a list of things to explore--seriously explore, not just think about.  Among them was health and wellness coaching.

Tomorrow I start a four-month program to get my certificate as a health coach for adults and seniors, euphemistically called "prime time coaching."  I spent several hours today doing readings and viewing background videos online.  This material feels like "home" to me.  I guess it should, I've been thinking about it for most of my life.

While most people who know me think I look and certainly act much younger than my years, and I have really made healthy eating  a major intention in my life, I have rounded the corners.  (Geez, that sweet tooth gets me every time.)  Nothing in this material has been anything I haven't known for decades, but having it presented in an organized fashion, I was reminded I could do better.

Since the New Year, I have kept my commitment for at least 15 minutes of exercise a day and most days worked up a minor sweat.  In fact, once I got moving most days I've gone at least 25 minutes and was up to 47 once. This evening I visited the gym in my building.  (With a gym at work and one in my apartment building, I really have had no excuse for not exercising.)  I've lived here for over three years, and I think this was the second visit. Not like running 7 miles a day and lifting weights three times a week, but developing, or redeveloping, a habit.  Baby steps.

Most important, between getting my exercise groove back and focusing on health issues, I have been recalibrating around my intentions to create a healthy life. No earthquakes here.  Just consciously pulling myself from good to better.

At the same time, I believe that my sorting project is spiritual recalibration.  Not unlike my physical recalibration, I think I've done pretty well in staying the course with my spiritual intentions, but I could do better.  Focusing my attention on my intentions will help me be very clear about what I am creating in my life and in the world.  The reason that started the process a month ago now seems less important than that I am doing a body, mind, and spirit recalibration, and that has got to be a good thing.

Monday, January 9, 2017

What To Do with That Busy Brain

I continue to be soulful in my consideration of my uncontrollable desire to get on the Greyhound bus and ride across the northern US in the middle of January.

I've share my spiritual journey with a friend for decades, and we've been through the ups and downs of the mystery together. Today I was having the "how do you know?" conversation that I wrote about in yesterday's post.  "I want to follow my guidance, but how do I know that it is real?" I repeated.

In yesterday's post I mentioned that sometimes guidance comes out of my own mouth in conversation with someone else.  As I shared my dilemma, my friend respectfully held space until the words came out of my mouth, "You know, my busy little brain makes things up to keep me from doing things I am afraid of."  It occurred to me as I talked that I have embarked on this monumental cleaning out project of getting rid of things that I don't want to be part of my next nine years.

As I look at boxes, piles, and bookshelves brimming over, I am certain that I could really benefit from cleaning out.  There are some things that clearly are part of my future and other things that definitely are not.  But, what about the sea of things in the middle?  If I don't know what my future is--what I want, how can I know what to do with this vast expanse in the middle?

Now, talk about doing something that scares me: that is it.  Why am I scared?  I don't think that I would be throwing out anything that couldn't be replaced.  Then, what is it?  I am certain that the answer lies in committing to my future.  What will it be?  Some people at my age are winding down and would say, "Why bother?"  But I have exceptionally good longevity genes.  I will most likely live another lifetime for most people.  It does matter.  I want this bonus life to matter.

If you'll excuse the word, this is "huge."

As I pondered my trip, it occurred to me that this whole Greyhound trip thing may be the invention of my tricky little mind to help me avoid making a commitment about my bonus life.  Oh, my, I thought. That rang truer than I could have imagined.

This evening I've psychically been weighing, sometimes even holding out my two hands, palms upward, as if the mass of thoughts could be measured.  Divine guidance? Trick of my mind? Divine guidance? Trick of my mind? Oh, dear.

My big cleaning out project for today has been getting the Amazon/kindle version of The Game Called Life, a considerable stack of paper, off my desk. As I started the finishing up project, I discovered that I had gotten it 95% done in November of 2014.  It took me less than 20 minutes to correct the handful of typos.  I've been waiting 26 months because I was too busy to make 20 minutes-worth of corrections!

The down side of the 26-month delay is that I had marked my proof copy very deliberately for something other than typos, and it had been so long, I couldn't remember what the markings meant.  I am sure that it never occurred to me when I edited it that I wouldn't pick it up again until 2017.  The more of the markings that I found, the more concerned I became about putting the book "out there" without giving attention to whatever these markings were.

I read through whole pages with the markings.  I could find nothing wrong.  What was it that I was missing?  Finally, I relented.  I would sit and read the book, again, for maybe the 20th time.  Maybe then it would be clear to me.  This book is life-changing, at least for me.  About 30 pages in, I figured the mystery markings out: they were talking points for lectures and interviews, which inevitably follow a book release.

Mystery solved.  I could have stopped, but each time I've read the book, I've learned things that I had long-since forgotten.  So, I kept reading.

About two-thirds of the way through the book, I stumbled onto a process for getting clarity.  I tried it. In an instant, even before I could articulate the full question, the answer was there.  This time, I was told, it didn't matter what I did as much as why I did it.  Consequently, I will muster up my courage, stay home and sort, and in that vast middle, I hope to find my future.

Sunday, January 8, 2017

How Do I Know?

A young man sits talking with his pastor before his marriage.  "How do you know?" he inquires. Like many people about to marry, they want to make sure this is the right one because the decision will inevitably change their lives in some, probably many, ways.  The pastor gives him some signs, but mostly says, "You just know."

Not unlike the young man about to marry, over the years many of my friends and clients have asked me about the guidance I receive.  "How do you know?" some ask.  "How do you get it?" others want to know.

Yesterday in a meandering conversation with a former Intentional Living Intensive client, now friend, we wandered into the topic.  This time it was me attempting to establish parameters for myself.  My most important guidance, or what I assume to be my most important, has usually been boldly clear to me, and many times it has been the response to a simple question. Often a booming voice spoke to me in a bold but loving way.

When I knew that it was time for me to leave Eugene, Oregon, 22 years ago, I stated simply, "I want a more friendly environment in which to live.  I asked, "Where would you have me go?" Instantly, I received the names of three cities "you should explore." Over the next 18 hours, I received six "signs" about the Research Triangle Area of North Carolina.  The last was a banner headline of my Oregon newspaper, which read: "Raleigh/Durham named best place to live."

Almost a decade after settling into my home in Durham, N.C., I found myself writing the words, "You are to move to Washington, D.C." while I was journaling.  I tried to ignore them. I liked living in N.C.  I had never considered living in Washington, what to me seemed like a "big city."  I had usually lived in smaller cities and just didn't have a clue how to move into a city that I didn't know, without a job, and knowing almost no one. The prospect was overwhelming.

Other times I've gotten repeated guidance that I wasn't excited about receiving, and it has persisted. Over a couple of years, I had frequently gotten guidance to take a month-long pilgrimage to a place where English wasn't the dominant language, make no plans, take very little cash and no credit cards. I would be guided I was told. I wasn't ready. Finally, on a flight between two islands in Greece at the end of a physically exhausting conference, the bold voice was there again, this time tinged with more than a little impatience.

The message was the same except for a couple details to take the wiggle room out for me.  "You are to return to Greece within three months for a pilgrimage.  You are to make no plans, take very little cash and no credit cards." The open-endedness of previous guidance was erased by very specific place and time frames.  I did receive two very small details over the intervening three months, but mostly I went with little more than initially directed.  It was a wonderful, growthful, and insightful exploration.  I will never be the same.

Insights haven't always been of the life-changing kinds, like moving across the country or going to an expensive tourist country with no credit cards and very little cash. On one of my open-ended vacations a few years later, as the day was growing toward an end, I said to my travel partner, "I wonder where we should stop." Within 1/4 of a mile, a large billboard stated simply in foot-high letters, "This is your place."  It was.

Although it has been a long time since I had one, I used to occasionally, I have what I call a "cosmic marquee."  Like a theatre marquee, a message for me is highlighted by flashing lights around it.  The "cosmic marquee" seems to be reserved for really big messages.

Whether big or small, much of my guidance has been very specific.  However, other times, it has been subtler.  When I find myself  having the same conversation with several clients in the same day or two, I believe that to probably be a sign that I should give the topic some inner reflection.  When I have done so, it has usually ended up being dead-on for me.

Other times, words just come out of my mouth as if I didn't know the source but was keenly aware it was my mouth that was moving.  In the years just after my first two books came out, I did a lot of keynoting, and because I was being paid very well, I always dutifully wrote my speeches in advance. But once I started speaking, other words came out.  At some point, I started a file called, "Speeches I never gave."  I've also found myself asking coaching clients questions that meant nothing to me, but were spot-on for the recipient.

Yesterday's conversation went in a different way, though.  We talked about the even subtler forms of guidance.  A hunch.  An explained desire to do something I've never done. My intuition? Maybe my insatiable quest for adventure?

Recently, I've had the urge to get on a Greyhound bus and travel across the northern part of the US...in January.  Really?!  Our wind-chill factor in Washington today is 2 degrees Fahrenheit, and I don't even want to go near a window much less travel across the breadth of the country in places that often get much colder than this. This isn't a lingering desire I've suppressed that is emerging from the depths of my psyche. Although I've often jumped on a bus for travel in Europe, I've never even considered going anywhere on a bus in this country.

Is that guidance, I wondered to my client/friend?  I do know that timing is critically important when following guidance.  Not unlike the Butterfly Effect, which describes the flapping of the wings of a butterfly in New Mexico causing a hurricane in China, there are a lot of moving parts in God's world. God knows the plan, but the rest of us don't get the site map.

Let's say I am supposed to bump into someone at a truck stop near Fargo, North Dakota, on January 25. I have to take the bus because if I was driving, it is a place I wouldn't stop. The encounter may be brief, maybe totally unmemorable. In the course of a casual conversation, say with a waitress while ordering lunch, I say something that makes her understand an aspect of her life differently.  We don't talk about going back to college or moving to Arizona, but there is something that is said that makes her connect to doing those things. As a result of those bold moves, she makes a discovery in her research that alters the course of humankind.

If I didn't leave until weather is more pleasant in spring, I don't make that connection, which means that a conversation we may have had never happens.  Following guidance isn't like using God as your personal travel agent.  It is very precisely about allowing God to change the world through you.

Think about Moses saying to God that he doesn't want to go that way because there's no way to get around the sea.  How could he have known?  He just followed his guidance.

So, back to the question, "How do you know?"  As I sit in my apartment contemplating whether I want to walk half a block in this weather to get to a car to go to a dance tonight, I ponder, "Do I really want to get on a bus and travel across the northern US?"  It is a question heavy on my heart.  My intention is to make the world a better place, and if this is guidance, I would do almost anything to do my part.  Yet, what if this isn't guidance, and traveling on a bus in January is really a fool's errand I'd rather avoid?  How do I know?

I will meditate on this more...and ask simple questions.  In the end, I will trust that with my intentions clear, I will know in my heart what I am to do.