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The Peace of Wild Things

1/8/2018

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Picture
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.


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Balance

8/3/2017

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Picture
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.

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Where Mud and Lotus Meet

6/29/2017

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Picture
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.

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Tapestry

4/20/2017

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Picture
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.)


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Keepsake

3/3/2016

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Picture
The Stairs at Battery Crosby, San Francisco, CA by atmtx photo

May I meet these waves with oceanic presence,
rubbing the irritations of life against me
to polish the pearl of knowing
that this overwhelm won’t last forever,
that a bead of wisdom is emerging
as a keepsake to remember
it was never about perfection, but presence.


Loved ones, coworkers, and others are bound to irritate us.  Maybe they’ve said the wrong thing.  Maybe they aren’t meeting your expectations.  Your default reaction might be to give them a piece of your mind, to wear self-righteousness with pride and show them how it should be done.  Or you might blame yourself and wish you were spiritually inclined to perfection, inviting everyone into your heart without question like Gandhi or Mother Teresa.

What if there was a middle path, a place where you didn’t need to walk into a bed of poison oak and let too much self-identification with the story line get under your skin?  You also wouldn’t have to run far away to protect yourself or avoid all the
shoulds of the spiritual inner critic.

You should be more understanding.
You should be more kind.


The Middle Way might be a path to the ocean.  You could meet the waves of your experience with loving presence, rubbing the irritations of anxiety, anger, blame and sadness against you to polish the pearl of knowing.  The overwhelming situation (and your reactions to it) don’t need to last forever.  A bead of wisdom could emerge as a keepsake to remember that it was never about perfection, but oceanic presence. 

Each new pearl of wisdom that forms from life’s irritations can give us courage to meet future waves of unpleasant experience that break against the shores of our tender hearts.  We can travel the middle path again and again because we have tasted the freedom it offers first-hand.  The Middle Way is not about changing others or perfecting the self, but noticing how we are overly identifying with a story line or pushing away any discomfort.  May we rest in the space of loving presence between the two extremes.

May we meet our waves with oceanic presence.  When we forget, when we are stuck in a bed of poison oak or find ourselves running far away as we judge our reactions, may the sounds of the ocean call us back to here and now.  May be find our way home.
​
(This blog post is an intuitive inquiry into the nature of The Middle Way.  For more information on this concept, please click
here.)

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    Author

    Kaveri Patel, a woman who is always searching for the wisdom in waves.

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