We CAN Do This!

     Although many of us are careful to make sure our homes and cars are as energy-efficient as possible, we're surprisingly unaware of how much energy we waste through useless & even harmful thinking, emotions & resultant behavior.
    You may quickly say, "Well, that's not me!"
    Okay, what proportion of your time are you peacefully open-minded, curious to explore your surroundings, happily cooperating & playing with others?
    And what proportion of your time do you feel anxious, afraid, angry or sad & alone? 

    Very few enjoy a fairly consistent pleasant, peaceful, kind glow about us. Cynics would quickly judge such people as being high on drugs or having some other problem. However the fact that so many of us waste so much of our precious life energy, not really living but merely surviving lost in a dark mood may be common, but far from desirable & healthy.

     One of the foremost experts in PTSD wrote: “If you feel safe & loved, your brain (is) specialized in exploration, play, & cooperation; if you are frightened & unwanted, it (is) specialized in managing feelings of fear & abandonment." Bessel Van Der Kolk. “The Body Keeps the Score. Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” Penguin Books, 2015. http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=kolk

    More of us have PTSD than we realize. Many more of us are depressed than we realize. Many, many more of us have an inaccurately dismal, dysfunctional self-concept / worldview than we realize. 

    This blog is dedicated to inspire readers to wake up from our current pandemic of dysfunctional cynical helplessness. Despite the world's political pendulum swinging to a cartoon-like extreme position, more & more people are waking up today. We can, and I believe that we will, with wisdom turn our massive ship around before it's too late. 

    “It’s vital that we regain control of the stories we’re telling because they are shaping the future we’re creating. To do that, we have to remember our deepest inspiration, heal our pain & apathy, and connect to each other like never before. If we can do that, we’ve got a shot at solving the big problems we face. And if we can’t? Well, the dustbin of history has swallowed civilizations older and fancier than ours.”
    Jamie Wheal. “Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex, and Death in a World That’s Lost Its Mind.” Harper Wave, 2021.

Laura Marling "When Were You Happy? (And How Long Has That Been)"

 

Transforming from Fear to Love

     The underlying crisis in the world today is an unspoken feeling of being afraid, alone & powerless in a messed-up, meaninglessness world. Individually & culturally, we're naturally averse to complicated unpleasant emotions; reject anything deeply meaningful as if it were taboo; are seriously addicted to distractions; and have very low attention spans. So most of us "keep busy" which somewhat distracts us from this corrosive feeling in our gut. "FOMO" (fear of missing out) is actually a legitimate fear, but most of us MISINTERPRET this as missing out on owning 10,000 square foot mansions, $150,000 cars, trips of a lifetime, etc, etc. These are just bigger, shinier distractions. Only the rich can directly experience the fact that these don't work any better than playing video games, getting drunk or being a workaholic.
     HOWEVER, as in many other serious challenges, the only way to get past our aching dys-ease, is to go through it. And it requires courage, patience & perseverance - stepping up, waking up & growing up.

         “If this world is to be healed through human efforts,
          I am convinced it will be by ordinary people
          whose love for life is even greater than their fear.”                 Joanna Macy

     “... grief, if you are afraid of it and pave it over, clamp down, you shut down. And the kind of apathy and closed down denial or difficulty in looking at what we’re doing to our world stems not from callous indifference or ignorance so much as it stems from fear of pain. ….
     That became perhaps the most pivotal point in the landscape of my life: that dance with despair. To see how we are called to not run from the discomfort, and not run from the grief or the feelings of outrage or even fear. If we can be fearless to be with our pain, it turns. It doesn’t stay. It only doesn’t change if we refuse to look at it.
     When we look at it, when we take it in our hands, when we can just be with it, when we keep breathing, then it turns. It turns to reveal its other face. And the other face of our pain for the world is our love for the world. Our absolutely inseparable connectedness with all life.”
     Joanna Macy, interview by Krista Tippett, On Being podcast:
https://onbeing.org/programs/joanna-macy-a-wild-love-for-the-world

 

Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, 2020

From Alienation to True Intimacy

     "Americans suffer inordinately with what therapists call problems of the self - an inability to self soothe; an inability to sustain a satisfying and cohesive sense of self over time; an inability to warmly love the self; an inability to maintain an ongoing sense of belonging and a deep sense of meaning and purpose in life. … we live cut off from a sense of our true deep mutual belonging & interdependence, and we suffer from a painful sense of separation – a separation from the life of the body; a separation from the hidden depths of life, its mystery and interiority; a separation from the source of our own guidance, wisdom, and compassion; and a separation from the life-giving roots of human community.”
       Stephen Cope. “The Wisdom of Yoga: A Seeker’s Guide to Extraordinary Living.” Bantam Books, 2006.

      “If you pin your hopes on things outside your control, taking upon yourself things which rightfully belong to others, you are liable to stumble, fall, suffer, and blame both gods and men.
      But if you focus your attention only on what is truly your own concern, and leave to others what concerns them, then you will be in charge of your interior life. No one will be able to harm or hinder you. You will blame no one, and have no enemies.”
       Epictetus (55 – 135 AD), Greek Stoic Philosopher

     "... the philosopher and psychologist Eugene Gendlin, creator of a therapeutic approach called ‘Focusing,’ beautifully clarifies the nature and character of what is known through interoception, the viewing & experiencing of the body from the inside. Gendlin developed the widely influential notion of ‘felt sense,’ referring to what the body knows directly of itself, without the mediation of the thinking mind. For Gendlin, the felt sense, the ability to know one’s own interior, somatic experience, is the 'open sesame' of successful psychotherapies.
     Through (body-centered meditation practices), we learn how to extend our awareness into our body and we begin to sense what is there ... we are softening the boundary between our highly intentional, restricted, conscious ego mind and the limitless, unconscious domain of the body. When we do this, our conscious mind begins to tap into and connect with the somatic awareness that is already going on - mostly unbeknownst to us - in our body. In this larger field of consciousness, we are still conscious but in a very different way.
     It is as if we are waking up, within our Soma, and we suddenly find ourselves in a new world. We are uncovering a completely different experience of what our body is. We begin to see that what we formerly took to be our body was just a made-up version with little correspondence to anything real. We find in our body previously unimaginable vistas of spaciousness, experience arising that is ever surprising & fresh, an endless world of possibilities for ourselves and our lives.”
      Reginald A. Ray. "The Awakening Body. Somatic Meditation for Discovering Our Deepest Life." Shambhala, 2016.

       “When we sit in meditation, we can discover a way of being that is very different from our typical interactions with the world. For the period of time that we sit, we agree within ourselves to quiet the familiar internal chatter that goes on most of the time. We sit so that we can discover in ourselves this capability for stillness, for intimacy with our self. We can uncover the heart.
     This process of stilling the mind and opening the heart brings a great feeling of ease that courses through the body, releasing the sensation of holding back, of fragility or tightness, and freeing us to work with the challenges of life. I call that true intimacy. When we can actually feel what we are feeling, experience what we are experiencing, and recognize what we are thinking, then we become intimate with ourselves. This intimacy is a closeness, a quality of interiority, a nearness. To be intimate with yourself is to be so attuned to your own feeling-state and mind-state and perception-state that nothing is hidden, your whole being is available to your life. In this intimacy with self, we begin to recognize the habits of thinking that stop us from living confidently, generously, and vigorously. And we begin to trust ourselves.”
      Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara. “Most Intimate. A Zen Approach to Life’s Challenges.” Shambhala, 2014.

     "In human relationships, as mutual love deepens, there comes a time when the two friends convey their exchanges without words. They can sit in silence sharing an experience or simply enjoying each other's presence without saying anything. Holding hands or a single word from time to time can develop this communication. This kind of relationship points to the level of interior silence ..." Fr. Thomas Keating

"The flute of interior time is played whether we hear it or not,
What we mean by 'love' is its sound coming in.
When love hits the farthest edge of excess, it reaches a wisdom.
And the fragrance of that knowledge!
It penetrates our thick bodies,
It goes through walls —
Its network of notes has a structure as if a million suns were arranged inside.
This tune has truth in it.
Where else have you heard a sound like this?" Kabir

“May I meet this moment fully;
May I meet it as a friend.” Sylvia Boorstein

 

Susan Paterson "Strawberries and Cream" fogforestgallery.ca

Sharing the Heart - a Simple Practice

     Why would Pema Chödrön's heart-centered meditation practice (below) be beneficial?

     Yale professor Laurie Santos, interviewed by Christiane Amanpour, provides one perspective: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/laurie-santos-on-the-mental-health-crisis-among-students/
     "... we now have two decades of scientific work that is identified, exactly these behaviors that seem make us happier. And that the crux of it is that those behaviors aren’t often the things that we expect, they’re often the things that we’re putting off to do other things, thinking that those things are going to make us happy. 
     ... one of the most unexpected areas I find is the power of social connection, just literally spending time with other people and trying to connect with them. I mean, we all know social contact is important but we forget that loneliness (one of the opposites of social contact) can be as bad for us as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
     We forget also that social contact can come from just simple connections with people we don’t know very well, you know, a chat with a barista at a coffee shop. Those simply kinds of things can boost our mood much more than we expect. And this is the kind of thing I worry about a lot on college campuses because loneliness is also one of these negative mental health statistics that’s increasing on college campuses today.  
     Right now, nationally, about two-thirds of students say that they’re very lonely most of the time. ... And I see why that is ... they sit in a dining hall with these big headphones on, surf scrolling & texting each other but not making contact in real life with actual humans. And so, I think that’s one of the big hints, we just need to take time to chat with people. 
     And I think we see a pattern in technology. The ATM started this revolution of folks kind of getting out of human interactions. We save a lot of time that way, it’s true, and time is very important for well-being also. But all those little mini social interactions that we have waiting in a bank line, or waiting to grab our coffee, or even chatting with the telephone operator when we’re trying to order a taxi, those simple interactions are going away.  
     And the research shows that loneliness is going up. And there’s potentially an important balance here where we do want to save some time, but we also want to make sure that we’re having these social connections in real life. They contribute to our happiness much more than we think.
     ... the problem when we design technology is that we have these mistaken notions about the kinds of things that are going to make us happy. ... we don’t realize that we need the social connection.
     There’s some lovely work by the psychologist, Liz Dunn, who is a professor at the University of British Columbia. And she has this study where she looks at whether or not just having your phone out affects smiling.
     She does this in a waiting room where strangers are waiting together. And what she finds its kind of amazing. She finds that people smile 30 percent less when their phones are around, even if they’re not really doing anything on them.  
     And so, if you multiply that by say, everyone walking around in London and the U.K. on the streets, all that decrease in smiling is probably really affecting the connection that we feel with other people. It’s probably affecting the ease with which we start a conversation with somebody new.
     These phones that we have in six billion pockets around the world are distracting us from the real life connection that we need with other humans."
 

      "Sharing the heart is a simple practice that can be used at any time and in every situation. It enlarges our view and helps us remember our interconnection.

     The essence of this practice is that when we encounter pain in our life we breathe into our heart with the recognition that others also feel this. It’s a way of acknowledging when we are closing down and of training to open up. 
     When we encounter any pleasure or tenderness in our life, we cherish that and rejoice. Then we make the wish that others could also experience this delight or this relief.
     In a nutshell, when life is pleasant, think of others. When life is a burden, think of others.
     If this is the only training we ever remember to do, it will benefit us tremendously and everyone else as well. It’s a way of bringing whatever we encounter onto the path of awakening compassion."
                                                                                                                            Pema Chödrön

An Open Heart-Mind for An Unknowable Event

            All shall be well,  
            and all shall be well,  
            and all manner of things shall be well.             Julian of Norwich (1342 – 1416) English Christian mystic


     “In the final stages [of dying], one is simultaneously immersed in the demands of care and faced with the enormity of what’s happening. At this time, it’s easy to feel isolated – a hallmark of illness whether for the patient or for caregivers. Again, it may be helpful to remember that the personal and universal are interwoven, that we are engaged in the universal ritual of moving toward death, that we are not alone even though what we are experiencing feels totally unique and personal. 
     Sometimes I wondered how it was possible to feel, even in the midst of difficult circumstances, that at some level all was well. The emphasis here is on the word level. The wisdom traditions speak about the relative and absolute levels of reality. Relative reality is the world as we know it – whereas absolute reality is unconditioned, beyond duality, free. We can have glimpses of that level even in the presence of death.


Khandro Rinpoche’s most valuable reminders for me were:

          “Be easy with yourself”,

          “The best practice is calm abiding”,

          “Go beyond hope and fear.”


       Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle. “Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows. A Couple’s Journey through Alzheimer’s.” Penguin, NY, 2008.

 

Photo: David A. Lovas

Do You Feel Right?

     Perhaps we have two basic modes of being in this world. In one, our natural state, we are unconditional love. In the other, self-concern dominates. 

     Certain people, animals, places, events easily open our hearts, so that we, as individuals, essentially disappear, transforming into loving energy, freely, selflessly flowing into, nurturing our loved one. This is where empathy, respect, forgiveness, gratitude and joy also happen.
     Other people, animals, places, events easily trigger self-concern. When "me, myself & I" dominates, our hearts are closed unless there's something in it for me. Then a bit of "conditional love" sneaks out - but it's essentially a business transaction. Fear rules here: "taking care of #1", "greed is good", "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth", cynicism, restlessness, revenge, depression, anxiety, loneliness, paranoia.

     It can take a lifetime to realize that "taking care of #1" can't ever truly satisfy. As we mature, we gradually realize that we only feel right when we are being egoless unconditional love. Our true nature is unconditional, transcending words & concepts.

 

A Full Range of Awakenings are Available

     “In place of the word enlightenment, which is laden with so many ideas and misunderstandings, I have used the terms inner freedom and liberation to clearly express the full range of awakenings available to us through Buddhist practice. I want the stories and awakenings of students and practitioners to help us trust our own profound capacity for kindness and wisdom. I want us to discover the power of the heart to hold all things – sorrow, loneliness, shame, desire, regret, frustration, happiness, and peace – and to find a deep trust that wherever we are and whatever we face, we can be free in their midst.”

        Kornfield J. “The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology.” Bantam Books, NY, 2008. 

 

BenoitD   www.dpreview.com

NO, it's NOT "all about sex" NOR "money" NOR "power" NOR "politics" etc

     Most of us have HORRIBLE communications skills! Most of us are SCARED SHITLESS about connecting meaningfully with another human being! One has to be BRAVE to be honest. One has to be MATURE to communicate in an honest, mature manner. Most of us are IMMATURE!
     We all do try our best to CONNECT with each other, with our "BEST shot" - we might (mistakenly) guess that we're being romantic, sexy, wealthy, powerful, intellectual, politically savvy, jocks, in with the in crowd, masters of trivia (VERY popular), etc, etc, etc ...
     But you know what? We're just anxious & trying our awkward best to connect meaningfully - one equal to another equal - nothing more, nothing less!
     It's the old "tower of Babel" shtick isn't it? EVERYONE speaking a different damned language - at the level of the EGO - we are each unique individuals.
     YET, each one of us is already connected PROFOUNDLY at the deepest level - THAT needs to be understood.

Arundhati   www.dpreview.com

Fear and the Illusion of Separateness

     “Fear is the primary mechanism sustaining the concept of the ‘other’ and reinforcing . . . loneliness and distance in our lives. [Through fear] we identify with a fragment of reality rather than with the whole. Metta [loving-kindness] overcomes the illusion of separateness... (and thereby) ... overcomes all of the states that accompany this fundamental error of separateness — [including] fear, alienation, loneliness, and despair . . . ”            Sharon Salzberg

         Phelan JP.  Practicing with Fear. Mindfulness - published online 06 September 2012.