On further reflection...

I wrote yesterday's post about the need to create a memory every day at the very end of my day. After I shut down my computer, my head kept spinning in different directions about the topic.  

I've fallen off the daily gratitude journaling in recent weeks (months?) but I had the thought that gratitude journaling has a common purpose.  By taking time to reflect at the end of the day to identify things for which I am grateful, I also allow myself to remember each of those occurrences.  The remembering has the impact of creating a memory.  Actually, it has the impact of creating several memories--exactly however many things about which I journal.  Then I don't have to worry any longer about wasted days.  Abundantly grace-filled days flow naturally, every day.

At the same moment, I recollected that when I was writing posts for this blog daily, I was also creating memories--ones particularly valuable to me.  The purpose of this blog has been to serve as a shared platform for me to wrestle with the questions that I encounter on the path of my intention to live consciously.  

On tests of motivation, I consistently score highest for learning and growing and making a contribution. (I've never understood being motivated about getting stuff.) On the days that I write in this blog, I am learning and growing, and, for those who receive value from the posts, I am making a contribution.  From my perspective, that is the stuff from which real memories are made.  I am receiving a gift of value and giving one.  

Last night I restarted recording gratitude in my journal again.  I was sure to include that I wrote in my blog, and I learned something about myself.  Furthermore, I had an entry for the side of the journal in which I record gifts that I've given.

How little I knew then

It's Earth Day.  I believe the 45th Earth Day to be exact.

For it's first two decades Earth Day was something that happened in the background of my life.  I have always been an outdoors person, so I love nature; I just didn't love it in a proactive way.

On the 20th Earth Day I was home recovering from surgery.  A local television station was reporting on Earth Day activities.  As part of the coverage, commentators reported that residents of the small city in which I lived at the time recycled enough materials for fill the large university stadium seven times. Wow, I thought.  That's a lot of recycling.

Until then, I hadn't recycled.  Since I eat mainly fresh fruits and vegetables and very few packaged or canned goods, I had never thought that I would have much to recycle.  The news story grabbed my attention.  So that day, I dug out the recycling bin.  I thought that even if it took weeks to fill, at least I'd be doing my part.  It seemed like the least I could do.

Much to my surprise, when trash day came the next week, the recycling bin was full.  The next week, full again.  When the third week ended, the bin was full again.  My imagination was captured.  I wondered what else I might do that would help.

My shift to consciousness about sustainability has been a slow one, more characterized by paying attention, mostly to small things.  After recycling, I started reusing paper grocery bags.  I discovered that I could use the same ones over and over and over again.  They just kept on functioning.  Once I was curious so when I got a new bag, I wrote the date on the bottom.  That bag lasted 50 weeks.  Before I was paying attention, I probably would have gone through at least 100 bags in that time.

Then I read how negatively meat production  impacted the environment.  Gradually, I became more conscious of what I ate and how it was produced.  First, meatless Mondays.  Then meatless a lot of other days.  Sometimes months without meat.  I didn't miss it, and I genuinely think I felt better most of the time.

As I read more about sustainability, I learned how living in a multistory building conserved more resources.  I moved to a city, near a Metro line, and I only occasionally drove my car on weekends. Then I got rid of the car.  I walked, took the Metro, or cycled around the city.  I felt better physically, and I felt really good that  I was doing my part.

Over the last 25 years, I've probably learned as much about intentionality from my gradually evolving commitment to sustainability as anything I've done in my life. Now I carry empty plastic bottles home so that I can recycle them. One decision at a time I've chosen to show how much I love our beautiful planet.

Noticing

Since my trip to Greece, which ended in early October, I haven't been eating as healthfully as I'd like.  After eating way too much on Thanksgiving, I knew I had to do something different.  I decided to do a cleanse that I'd read about in The Washington Post.  The eating regimen isn't that differently from how I try to eat most of the time. No dairy, but that's no biggie.  I don't eat much dairy any way.  Most importantly, however, is no sugar.  After just a couple of days of having sugar out of my system, I felt much better, and I know I am much more relaxed.

The interesting thing about this cleanse is not just what I eat or don't eat, but also how I eat.  Specifically, I am not to do anything while I eat except eat. 

I didn't realize until I attempted to comply with this part of the regime how I'd slipped big time into multi-tasking while I eat, and everywhere else. I know that multi-tasking has become a fact of life in this decade, but I am not even aware how or when I slipped into the multi-tasking habit.  Eat my breakfast fruit while doing my makeup in the morning.  Catch up on my email while I eat lunch at my desk.  Watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert while I have dinner. (I watch it the next day, when it airs at a time that allows me to view without literally losing sleep over it.) Snacks are even worse, often they're eaten "mid-flight" while running to my next meeting.  As much as giving up sugar, giving up whatever else I am used to doing while I eat has been harder.

One of the first things that I noticed was that most of the time, I eat about half as much. I eat more slowly.  When I am only concentrating on eating, I actually notice when I am full, probably because I've taken enough time to let the messages reach my brain and register that I'm full. Or maybe the messages have been there, and I haven't been noticing.  And funny as it may seem, I actually feel more full than when I am eating more but not being mindful. 

I'm sure that I was a rabbit in a past life, because I love eating the crunchy greens.  Most often, dinner is a large salad.  When I am actually paying attention to my eating, I notice that I get tired of chewing about half-way through the salad, and I'm kind of bored with the chewing, too.

Little cues, like being full, tired of chewing, and bored, have just gone flying by without me noticing.  So, now I am noticing. 

Curious about what else I've been missing, I've tried little single-tasking, focusing-on-what-I'm-doing experiments. (I wouldn't want to go full throttle.)  Tonight, I turned off radio, music, TV, and Greek lessons and focused completely on preparing my salad.  While it is not uncommon for me to nibble as I cut and chop ingredients for my salads, since I wasn't multi-tasking, tonight I had to actually stop what I was doing and enjoy the grape tomato that I'd popped in my mouth.  What an experience! 

I could hear and feel my molars breaking the skin of the tomato.  I could feel an explosion of the juices as the tiny fruit sprayed my mouth.  The taste was delicious. I just stood there for 20-30 seconds, leaning against the counter,  totally absorbed into the experience of one solitary grape tomato.  One grape tomato!  Something similar happened when I stopped my preparations to eat one of several pecans that I was chopping for my salad.

The exquisiteness of being totally in the moment with my dinner preparations didn't stop with oral experience.  I noticed cutting a wedge of lemon how I noticed the different textures on my fingers and how my knife moved differently through the skin/rind than through the inner recesses of the fruit and the juice. 

And, all of this in less than the 20 minutes it took to make a salad...just because I was noticing.
I've written a lot in this column about being present.  I've quoted spiritual teacher Carolyn Myss as saying "being present" was the most important spiritual lesson that we have to learn.  I know it is hard, but in such a short time this evening, I really "got" what that means on whole different level.

I will continue my cleanse because I know how much better...how much mellower...I feel when I don't eat sugar, and it seems that the only thing that can keep me away from the white stuff is something like this cleanse or Lent.   Yet, I am certain the spiritual lessons that I have to learn from this focus are to be present, to do one thing at a time, and to truly notice all of the dimensions of experience that can be had from even the simplest of things, like popping a grape tomato or pecan in my mouth while cooking. 

Be still! Know!

When I sat today and listened, I heard: "Be still and know that I am God" from Psalm 46.  I smiled.  How many times have I talked with my intentional living intensive clients about these words. Somewhere in the course of the three-day intensives, my spiritual coaching clients would hear these words, and we would talk.  Usually, we would talk about stilling the noise of the world and taking time in prayer and meditation.  I know I don't spend nearly enough time being still and knowing God in that way.

In Exodus 3:13 Moses asks God in the form of a burning bush who he should tell the Israelites has sent him, God replies in the next verse, "I am who I am."  Depending on where my client went, sometimes we would talk about the reference of "I AM."  I've often pondered God's humor, which I think is significant. How could it not be? Was God trying to tell us that each of us (who I am) is part of God?  If so, was the Psalm reference God saying that we should spend more time knowing our godliness? I don't spend enough time there either.

In the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, God is a verb**.  What if 'God' is a verb?  Not an entity or state, but an action.  What if "God" as "I am" is a verb that says who each of us chooses to be is how others experience God? If God is a verb, how have I been doing on "God-ding" today?  I am afraid that often the answer isn't what I would like it to be.

This morning when I heard "Be still and know that I am God," I instantly plugged in to all of these old conversations and thoughts and pondered for a bit more before asking, "What more am I to know?"  The answer: "Google it!"  God does have a sense of humor. :-)

Obediently, I went to Google and found a description of the Hebrew meaning of the phrase.  The verbs "be still" and "know" are imperative forms that might more appropriately translated "Be still!" and "Know!"* These words were not gentle suggestions: they were orders and strong ones at that.  I was struck speechless.  I am ordered to be still. I am ordered to know the nature of God.  I don't think this order was intended to be an activity that I fit in after work, exercise, dinner, making lunch and coffee for the next day, and watching yesterday's episode of "The Daily Show." 

Whether we may think of God as a field of Love that connects us all, which I do, or we think of God as an old white man with a white beard, or various other possibilities, we are ordered to be still and know God. Maybe it is just knowing the God in each of us. We are ordered to still our minds, let all the clutter from the world around us drop away, and "know! God." I wonder if our world would be as crazy and violent if everyone of us followed our orders to "be still!" and "know!" before we go into the world each day.  "Being still!" and "knowing!" is a priority, not something that we fit in if we are not so tired from all the other stuff that we fall asleep, as happened to me yesterday.

For years, I've taken at least a few minutes almost every morning to meditate, but in truth, more often than not, those few minutes are exhausted by just calming my mind from the rush of starting my day.  If I am to really "be still!" and "know!" then I will need to take more time.  Really?! I already get up at 5:20 more mornings.  I am not sure I can get up earlier.  Or, it seems to me that maybe this is really about focusing my intention on paying attention in a different way.   I expect that if I focused my attention on knowing the God in me, all that other mind chatter would just fall away. Ah! I suspect that is it.


*http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Meditations/Be_Still/be_still.html
**God Is a Verb: Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism by David A. Cooper