Category: Equanimity - Wisdom in Waves

A Conversation with Silence

7/19/2018

My dear,

You are safe now. There is nothing to fear. No one to blame. You know what is coming. There are no surprises. Sickness, aging, death. Compassion, beauty, joy.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the story line. Who are the characters? Where does it happen? How and why? Do the details matter that much?

What do you want to remember most? Is it worth the energy to even hold on to these words? Can you let them go, trusting they will return to you in some form: a conversation, a feeling, an image you can’t explain right now but intuitively sense has great meaning?

I have never hidden any part of this Great Mystery from you. You see what you need to see, hear what you need to hear. You aren’t missing out on anything. You are who you are, where you are because it’s where you need to be. There are no accidents.

Trust me on this one. Have I ever disappointed you? Lean into the moment. What would it mean to surrender to the waves?

Would you drown?

Or could you float?

*****

I see you, Mara as doubt in her dreams, as dukkha during the day. She doesn’t need to stay small, sad, scared. She is free, for now. When enough nows add up to eternity, she will be free forever.

Love and Ego at the Center

6/28/2018

What she said, what she did really pissed me off. The precept, ‘knowing that our lives intertwine, I vow to speak only what it true, useful and kind‘ felt like a distant memory. Years of painful conditioning begged for release. I wanted to hurt her.

What I really wanted was for her to be conscious, for intimacy in this relationship to be built on something stronger than the ego.

*****

In The Yoga of Relationship, Phillip Moffitt describes three types of relationships: ego at the center, love and ego at the center, and love at the center. Though the model describes romantic relationships, I see how it applies to all relationships – family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, challenging folks, EVERYONE.

I immediately recognize the first type of relationship with this being. For years, the heart has diligently practiced metta for her. I know she is overwhelmed by insecurity, her actions inspired by the promise of ego belonging. It’s why we collide like asteroids so many times, instead of orbiting each other’s celestial being in awe.

May you feel a sense of belonging without the need to criticize others.

I yearn for the second type of relationship where love is also brought into the center with ego. For years, the heart has also practiced metta for this writer. I want to move beyond sense doors that trigger past hurt – sights and sounds that constrict the heart to hurt more and love less.

May I speak my truth with kindness.

“When love and ego are at the center, you are not abandoning or martyring yourself. Instead, you are giving up certain expectations, which means that your relationship to the energy of love is not dependent on your partner (or other being).”

Can I appreciate this being’s cycle of dependent origination causing her to connect mainly through comparison over compassion? Can I renounce certain expectations, so that my relationship to love is not dependent on her? Can this relationship be built on Metta (lovingkindness), Karuna (compassion), Mudita (joy), Upekkha (equanimity), where the heart is not just a welcome doormat easily stepped on, but a heavenly abode that opens to love’s possibility when feeling resourced and safe?

*****

What she said, what she did still pisses me off. The hurt is less. Wanting her to be more conscious, I turn inward, asking citta (heart-mind) for intimacy in this relationship to be built on something stronger than the ego, for the Brahmaviharas to hold us both.

(May the benefits of this practice be shared by all beings who struggle in relationship, all beings yearning for conscious connection.)

The Peace of Wild Things

1/8/2018

Photo by Liz West

Fools gold or the perfect diamond. The ego swings between deficiency and excess. What is the middle way between these two extremes? How does one uncover the True Nature inherent to all sentient beings?

I find my own life pendulating between both sides. At one end, other mindfulness teachers attract a larger audience while I’m screaming on the inside for attention. My daughter idolizes my husband and looks past me with irritable tolerance. I am not welcome in certain homes and hearts because there is something wrong with me.

At the other end, I am a unique healer who offers compassionate, healing presence, a writer who articulates sincere reflections from the heart better than others. If someone else displays these traits, they are a threat to my very existence.

Over time, even a swinging pendulum will evolve towards a state of equilibrium, a still point. Where is this place of stillness for the ego? What is my name here? Who is writing this blog piece right now?

Mind and heart agree to meet in this moment. Mind agrees to project poignant memories free of a solid self. Heart agrees to the virtues of compassion, patience, trust. Bodhicitta awakens.

No teacher or student, no mother or daughter, no insider or outsider, no healer or patient, no writer or reader.

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
 I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Sometimes in nature or meditation, while writing, parenting, holding space for patients and class participants, or engaging with others, the bobbing ego rests. There is no need to move towards a state of deficiency or excess, but rest in the True Nature pattern intrinsic to the fabric of all life.

May 2018 be the year i come into the peace of wild things, resting in the grace of the world, sensing hearts beating, meeting, blossoming open like lotus flowers still anchored to muddy egos, yearning to be free.

Wildfire

10/11/2017

Hurricanes and earthquakes,
Gunfire and wildfires,
Total devastation
Left in their wake
So much anger, fear, sadness
Where is the elemental balance?

May we pause in prayer
Contemplating the imbalance
Of elements within
So we can hear their cries
To offer what’s needed most
When nothing else makes sense

Hurricanes in Houston, Naples, and Marcos Island. Earthquakes in Mexico. Gunfire in Las Vegas. Wildfires still burning in northern California. Other disasters in the world not mentioned here. Total devastation left in their wake. So many struggling, hungry and homeless. Family and friends of the deceased still grieving.

Where is the elemental balance?

I sit in meditation, breathing in the suffering of the world, breathing out whatever forms of relief I can offer (monetary contributions, a compassionate ear for stories of loss, sitting with my own confusion till I am clear about the meaning of non-harming, trusting I can contribute to peace).

May this post be a wildfire of inspiration. May we offer what’s needed most when nothing else makes sense.

Balance

8/3/2017

Balance, ©

You don't have to be perfect,
just present for the gift of insight
each time you breathe into this moment.
The top ten hits can fade into silence
as you listen for another song-
one you've always known
but conveniently forget
when joy wrestles with sorrow.
The tipping point between peaks
and troughs of experience
was never controlled by others,
but the balance inside your own heart.

Do you ever get tired of listening to your top ten hits, songs you play repeatedly sending the same subliminal message of victimization and entitlement?

He doesn’t care about me. She isn’t trying as hard as I am. My body isn’t supposed to feel this way.

It’s easy to blame someone else for your disappointment, or point the finger within. After all, your life would be perfect if he/she would stop saying this or doing that, if you could whip yourself into the shape of perfection.

What insights do we miss when we are too busy scurrying around like mice to fix someone else or ourselves? What covers do we use to hide vulnerability, to push discomfort down so deep that we are shocked when it resurfaces.

Where did this come from? I don’t recognize it.

And if I do recognize it, why on Earth would I ever want to engage? Isn’t it easier to blame?

The Song of Silence is our greatest ally. It’s where we can press the pause button and quiet the core beliefs. Joy was never wrestling with sorrow. Both were always dancing, taking turns to share the spotlight.

Balance comes when we recognize that the tipping point between peaks and troughs of our experiences was never controlled by others.

You are not the reason for my absolute joy. You are not the reason for my absolute sorrow.

Is it possible that all beings simply mirror your capacity for both ends of the spectrum?

Whether he cares about you or not, whether she is trying as hard as you are or not, whether your body is cooperating or not, your heart alone carries the capacity for equanimity.

This is not an ideal to perfect, but a possibility to practice. In the relative realm, we crash into each other and demand payment for damages incurred. In the absolute realm, we are all jewels in Indra’s net and speak/act accordingly.

You must understand what it means to live between the balance of these two realms, “to let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me.” (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Who is this me? As you practice breathing into each moment, touching each vulnerability and bathing it in the blessing of loving awareness, may you find “an unshakeable freedom of heart”. (heard from Dori Langevin) May you pause long enough for silence to disarm doubt, till the balance inside is the me you recognize.

Where Mud and Lotus Meet

6/29/2017

Pink Water Lily by Case Kassenberg

She releases a nervous sigh. “I hope I remembered to pack everything.”

I’m driving my daughter to her marine science summer camp. The kids have an overnight experience aboard a ship. Her words rattle my own anxiety for her comfort and safety. Instead of adding my own baggage to what she’s already packed, I choose to stay quiet and let the apprehension hang between us. Sometimes space is a good thing.

As the car slows to a crawl and we approach the camp counselors, she’s not the same person she was ten miles and fifteen minutes back. With composure, she announces that she can carry the backpack and two bags on her own. I’m not sure if it’s genuine confidence or embarrassment at having her mom help carry the bags that drives her statement. I choose to carry one bag and give her a quick hug. “Have fun!”

Driving home, I watch thought bubbles threaten to cloud a sunny day. “Should I have let her carry her own bags? Should I have given her a kiss? Maybe she doesn’t need me.” Trying my best not to ruminate so much, I’m home before I know it.

I walk into the bedroom to change into shorts and a sports top. My husband is just finishing a work call in the office. He tells me he has another call in sixteen minutes. Great! Maybe I can get on the elliptical machine (also in the office) before his next call. My elliptical routine runs for twenty minutes, but who’s going to notice four minutes of whirring from a fairly quiet machine?

Ten minutes into my routine, his phone rings. He gives me his best serious look and says I’ll have to get off. Stepping off the pedals, I inquire in my best even tone, “Why didn’t you just ask me to wait?” Inside I’m boiling with rage and burning with hurt. I want to say something else, but once again choose to use breath and space to diffuse a ticking time bomb.

I sit down at my computer and send some ecards for upcoming birthdays, wondering if I should wait for him to finish his call and try the elliptical again, or change the scene completely. I choose the latter. Cell phone, head phones, keys, and sunglasses in hand, I leave the house for walking meditation. Space is a good thing.

As Tara Brach’s soothing voice fills the headphones invoking loving presence in the face of difficulty, I notice that I’m caught between noticing thoughts of past miscommunications and power struggles, sensing the feelings in my body (the burning lump in my throat, the heavy eyes with tears), and how my husband and I will reconnect lovingly when all is said and done. It’s so tempting to skip the pages of distress in this story and turn to a happy ending. But I know that’s a spiritual bypass.

I look at the lotus tattoo on my left forearm. It’s pretty – full fuchsia petals sitting on a streak of green lily pad, undisturbed, as if nothing can ruffle its petals. Who wouldn’t want this elegance, this equanimity all the time?

What I can’t see on my forearm is real life – messiness, confusion, tangled relationships, especially with those closest to me. Lotuses don’t just spring from clear pools of ease. They grow from thick mud and muck surrounded by insects, fish. Hardly the vision of beauty!

Now, I’m interested in the place where mud and lotus meet, the interface between difficulty and clarity. I must notice all the crazy thoughts, feel all the challenging emotions, use breath and space within and around the body, and trust the timeline for lotus birth. The process cannot be rushed. Sometimes life will feel sticky and dark. Other times it will feel joyous, ethereal.

May I live at the border, and deepen my understanding of both places.

Tapestry

4/20/2017

Healing Sunshine Tapestry Wall Hanging Sun Moon Celestial 28"X42" by Dan Morris

After the first Dedicated Practitioner’s retreat, I’m deeply humbled by my opinions, especially in the context of ethnic, economic, educational, sexually eclectic, gender, age-related, and able-bodied diversity.

I watched how comparing mind categorized my views as inferior, ignorant, in need of something more than what I had. I felt like an outsider standing in a cold blizzard watching others through a window gathered around a warm fire in intimate conversation. At other times, I labeled my views as superior, so sure of where I stood on solid ground. I wanted to stay with people who promised comfort and connection through common perspectives based on shared experiences.

Post retreat, I realize how my experiences in small and large groups there echo my experiences in everyday life. I tend to size where I stand compared with others. Compassion naturally arises for this comparing mind because I know I am not alone. Others experience this, too.

According to Shakil Choudhury, author of Deep Diversity, “We tend to tilt towards those most like ourselves and away from those we perceive to be different. When we feel included, we tend to soar. When excluded, we tend to underperform, second-guess ourselves, and in extreme cases, get sick.” (pg.25)

I remember when my mindful parenting and yoga mentor, Jackie Long was pregnant with her son. Fumbling with my daughter’s care for the first few years of her life, I desperately wished I could push the rewind button for a second chance at parenting. I yearned to embody Jackie’s maternal wellspring of wisdom and grounded loving presence. Jackie’s words at that time were clear and kind. “You admire me because you are looking in the mirror at yourself, a part you don’t recognize.”

Now, having a better understanding of Right View, I realize that no being is isolated in their magnificence or modesty. We all carry the potential for each extreme. Perhaps the Middle Path begins with awareness of our intentions and how they inform and inspire our actions. I don’t need to emphasize expertise or deny knowledge/intuitive wisdom that can help heal myself and others. When my ego is inflated, I can invite the person with a pin willing to pop me gently. When I’m feeling stupid, I can remember my potential to learn.

We weave stories through one another,
dancing patterns of dread and delight.
No single colored strand is responsible
for holding the whole tapestry together.
Still, when one end of fabric frays
surrounding threads unite to stitch
the frazzled edges with kindness,
till each fiber is strengthened
by the eclectic, elegant design.

We weave stories of expertise and ignorance through one another. Know single being knows it all or can possibly hold the whole tapestry together. But when one person dominates or feels deficient, others surrounding him/her/them can unite to meet this being with kindness, curiosity, and peaceful engagement till all members of the group are strengthened by the eclectic, elegant design.

The tapestry is only as strong as each individual thread. It is also quite fragile, blood-stained with ancestral stories, bright with the healing faith of our collective potential. May we recognize the divinity inside one another. May we honor the sacred within.

(Note: For questions to spark personal reflection regarding racial differences and enhance self-awareness, see Deep Diversity, pg. 44.)

Flurry

11/13/2016

This flurry of snow thoughts
inside my mind-globe is continuous
no room for sunlight, warmth, peace.
I’m stuck inside a pattern I can’t control
unless I see the woman trapped inside
and the one holding the globe--
the choice to shake it up again
or cradle the scene in her hands,
till all the cold flakes have settled
and quiet serenity abounds.

This poem was written before November 8, 2016, before Donald Trump’s acceptance speech after winning the 2016 Presidential election. It still gives me some a sense of peace and hope. Though there is so much uncertainty filling our collective hearts, and we are experiencing a whole range of emotions from anger, fear, disappointment, hurt, and doubt, we don’t have to stay stuck inside a pattern we can’t control.

At my Mom’s yoga group, we sat in a circle sharing our reactions. It felt like our cozy lives were being shaken again and again, so much that I was quivering from a flurry of snow thoughts and a contracted belly of fear. I felt a little bit of warmth and grounding as we sang “This Land is Your Land” to all the illegal immigrants, LGTBQ community, Muslims, Jewish people, women, children, and men everywhere without exception.

Through the power of song, words, and prayer, I don’t have to be a woman trapped inside this mind-globe of post-election confusion. I can also be the one holding the globe, cradling the scene in her hands till quiet serenity abounds. This quiet serenity cannot come from hate or division, but only from acts of kindness and compassion seeking to unite gender, racial, ethnic, sexual, and class diversities.

I still don’t know exactly how the recent Bodhisattva vow I took to be mindful of wise speech each day will help to heal the hurt in every heart I meet. Do I need to do more, say more, be more?

Driving to work Wednesday morning, I found myself sending metta to both Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, to all beings everywhere who want to be happy, well, safe, and loved exactly as they are. Friday morning as I was driving to work, I heard the following metta prayer waiting to be spoken for myself and all beings everywhere:

May we make space for all that is moving through us.
May we be kind.

In the words of Diane Ackerman from her poem “School Prayer”:

I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.

Billions of beings, one Earth, one home. May we all be kind.

Planting a Seed

10/16/2016

The Seed by Michelle Janean Pier

What does it mean to practice present moment compassion? It's a question I have been contemplating lately.

When a family member, friend, or patient comes to me with a story of suffering, I look into my cloudy crystal ball mind and agonize for a clear image of their future. What can this fortune teller say or do that will mitigate their suffering?

But present moment compassion does not work this way. When I am attached to a fixed outcome for them, I completely miss what is right in front of me. I cannot offer an open, spacious listening presence that allows healing seeds to be planted in the present moment. I'm too busy envisioning a perfectly manicured, comfortable and safe future garden haven for them because I have said and done the right things now.

That's one hell of an ego trip. Though I care deeply and want the best possible outcome for them, do I even have that kind of power?

What if we plant this future garden together? What if their words of suffering are watered by our collective tears? What if I am the silent space surrounding their stories, sensing when and where certain nutrients, sunlight, and rain are needed? What if we recognize and allow life to be here just as it is, patient for the seeds of longing to grow in their own way, in their own time?

May this contemplation nurture healing presence in myself, in all beings everywhere without exception.

The Whole Story

9/29/2016

It’s hard to appreciate the whole story when you’re fixated on a page, a paragraph, a few lines that keep repeating themselves like flashing neon lights inside a dark mind. It feels like someone has ripped out all the other pages from the book. You frantically search for them, hoping this isn’t the way the story ends, that something will change soon, and fast.

“He doesn’t get me. She isn’t listening to me. It’s all their fault. It’s my fault. And there isn’t enough time to fix this.”

You might have a different set of repeating aversive thoughts, depending on the day, your experience, and energy level.

“My body isn’t behaving like it should. The car won’t start. It’s not supposed to rain today.” And so on.

What if there’s more to the story? What would happen if you kept reading? What would happen if you turned the page? What if there were also moments of connection – joy, gratitude, kindness, compassion, patience, forgiveness? Would it be worth the wait?

Thanks to some wise mothers from MBSM Moms, I’m learning that my story does not have to end on a tragic note. I can keep reading. I can turn the page. I can even pencil in simple words to bring more equanimity to my character.

I can use concise, clear, and compassionate communication with my tween daughter to covey my care for us both.

“I see you. I hear that you are feeling (fill in the emotion of the moment). And I need for you to treat me with kindness.”

These words are like magic. Though they make logical sense, they aren’t always intuitive when you’re tired, irritable, hurt, or in a hurry. They say, “I see you as a valid, vulnerable being who experiences difficult emotions living this human incarnation. And I don’t want to be treated like trash.” These words aren’t rocket science, but a real help when you are at a loss for comforting words because you are looking for a sharp comeback that aims to draw blood.

I know that I will continue to ride the highs and lows of life: basking in the warmth of sweet connections with others, shivering uncontrollably in the gray apocalyptic pictures my thoughts paint after moments of disconnection from those I love most. During those love moments, may I pause long enough to allow joy to fill me completely. After moments of disconnection, may I pause long enough to allow the following mantra to fill me completely with compassion:

It’s like this right now.
It’s OK.
It’s not my fault.

May the repetition of these words create space for body and breath, for self-compassion to be a salve soothing wounds, for this lotus heart to blossom open when it’s ready to give and receive love again.