Breaking Habits in Meditation

It seems to me that a meditation practice can be a fantastic playground for breaking our own personal habits in a self compassionate way. Rather than taking the heavy-handed approach, which in my experience only works in the short-run and generally leads to a poor sense of self, we use a light but honest touch to steer ourselves in a different direction.

I recently had a difficult experience in meditation that punctuated this lesson for me. I was sitting with a group meditating- this sit was about 40 minutes- and about a third of the way in I began to feel an intense wave of emotion come through me. Now, I say "come through me" because that is how it felt in my body. My chest got tight, my heart began to race, and my whole body felt extremely heavy. And as if that was not enough, emotions of sadness and fear were washing in like tides, in and out over the course of the rest of the meditation.

After it was over, I had the thought: what the hell was that? I discussed my experience with the teacher after class and she gave me some pointers for managing this type of situation in meditation should it present itself again, and at that moment I felt more relaxed about the whole thing.

But when I got home that night the body sensations and emotions knocked again.  My Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction teacher calls these moments "uninvited guests." And the wise instruction is to do as Sufi poet Rumi suggests in his poem "The Guest House."

...Meet them at the door laughing...invite them in.

Oh Rumi but that is so hard! As a more modern 21st century poet Marie Howe said, "presence is painful." I don't want painful. And so I turned away and sought refuge in my two old friends: carbs and bad tv.

It's funny though, my two go-to escape behaviors for difficult emotions didn't do their job as well as they used to this time, and I noticed that right away. I sat cross-legged on my ottoman in my living room in front of my evening soap opera, "Grey's Anatomy," and I still felt. Not so much the body sensations anymore, but the residual yuck of emotional distress was still there. This led to a combination of frustration that my escape behaviors did not work and shame that I engaged in the escape behaviors to begin with. So to sum it up, I made an already bad situation worse.

Or did I? Is there another way to view this scenario?

At my recent meditation retreat the teacher Kate talked at the end of the day about the laws of expansion and contraction. She said in a full day of meditation retreat one may practice expansion, or drawing what you want to you, and when you leave the retreat and re-enter the "real world" with families and jobs and traffic, you may notice contraction, or taking yourself away from what you want.

This instruction made so much sense to me, and it seems this dynamic may be a constant dance that we do as human beings and especially as seekers. Opening to growth or expansion. Followed by moments of shutting down, retreating or contracting.

When I think about my experience of coming face to face with difficult emotions and having the urge to run away, from this perspective of expansion and contraction being a law of the universe, I can actually shift from a self-critical position to a self-compassionate position. With this shift in perspective, or attitude, I can feel my whole body begin to soften and I actually feel lighter inside. As if my whole person let out an enormous exhale with an audible sigh of relief. "Thank god," I say to myself, "this is not another failure for me to chronicle and live through. This is just the nature of things- which means, I am no different from everybody else."

What's more, this new perspective of accepting the law of expansion and contraction highlighted by my recent meditation experience has the potential to help me (and maybe you too) with one of my most ingrained, well-versed habits: perfectionism.

One of my old behavioral patterns is to aim to learn something new very quickly and then do it perfectly every time thereafter. And when (not if) I inevitably don't do it perfect, I attempt to hide from the negative feelings that arise by engaging in distraction like food and tv like I mentioned above, but also sometimes shopping or seeking out reassurance or external validation from others like my husband. Then, I take the next step of sinking into self-loathing and shame about myself due to my poor coping style-which leads to what? More attempts at perfectionism.  Thereby completing the vicious cycle to guarantee I keep going around in circles. Forever stuck on my own wheel of what Buddhists call dukkha or suffering.

This very wheel was turning this morning when I sat down for meditation. I had had a rough night due to the residual emotion from the day before, including some additional feelings like irritability and agitation, which led to a pretty strong aversion to my sitting practice this morning. But I got on the floor anyway, aka "I pushed through," and began to read a piece by Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn to bring my mind into focus.

However, after I read, and his words are always so generous and kind, I surprised myself by breaking my perfectionist cycle and allowed myself not to meditate. I said to myself, "you do not have to do this. This may not be what you need right now."

But then, what would I do with myself?  In the past, if I didn't steam my way through a moment with force and self-aggression, I'd be retreating into my false refuges of carbs, tv, shopping, or seeking reassurance from others. And I didn't want to do that either.

At that moment my mind turned to a writer named James Finley. He had lived at the Abbey of Gethsemani  in Kentucky with Thomas Merton for six years in his youth, and went on to write a book called "Christian Meditation." In this book he wrote in part about how our daily lives, whatever they may be, can be a "monastery without walls" if that is our intention. So my days filled with tasks like driving, showering, feeding the baby, talking with my spouse, sitting with a patient or cooking a meal all could be done as a contemplative practice.

 With that thought, I stood up and walked out of my living room into the kitchen and I began to cook. Keep in mind this was still the before-dawn-hours of the day because that is when I usually meditate. So when my husband got up to take a shower before work he came into the kitchen and looked at me rather quizzically, but simply said: "watcha doin in here?" I merely responded with the obvious," cooking a quiche for dinner tonight." He looked at me cutting onions and slicing mushrooms, and said, "you don't usually do this at 5 in the morning, you ok?"  I said I had had some difficult emotions show up in meditation so I decided to switch gears.

At that moment he asked if there was anything he could do. When he asked that I knew I could gratify my desire for reassurance and external validation right then and there, but I didn't do it. Instead I paused, thought of Buddhist teacher Sylvia Boorstein and said: "I think this one is an inside job" and I kept on cooking. With that one action, I took one step toward breaking my perfectionist habit.

What steps might you be willing to take today toward breaking habits? How might the ebb and flow of expansion and contraction present itself in your life?

Photos from Meditation Retreat

These photos are all from my first Mindfulness Meditation full-day Retreat. The first was a sign in the woods of the campus of the former monastery that I just loved. I wish there were signs like that in the "real world." The second is a shot of the labyrinth we walked silently as a group. The third is a statue of a madonna that was in an area of the campus next to this gorgeous pond where we did walking meditation.

Mommy-Guilt & Meditation

Yesterday I went to my very first all day meditation retreat. It was held on a campus of a former monastery on over 50 acres of New England woods. We lucked out with one of those perfect autumn days where the sky is this gorgeous shade of sea blue, the temperature is a comfortable low 60 degrees, and a soft breeze helps you hear the quiet rainfall of leaves dropping in preparation for winter. This made for a picturesque setting for our outdoors walking meditations.

Suffice it to say, the day was amazing. Something I've had on my wish list for many years. And something I plan to write about more in days to come. But something that presented itself early in the day, before I even got to the retreat, that was tricky to navigate and tolerate was mommy-guilt.

I suppose you could argue I should not have been surprised. Mommy-guilt is a plague as ubiquitous as the common cold in twenty first century working moms' lives. This always lurking, sure to ruin a good time, set of thoughts and feelings that generally confirm your unworthiness as a mother. And, if it truly is analogous to the common cold, then there is no vaccine and no cure. The best you can do is take care of your over-all wellness and boost your immune system.

How do we do this? For me, I choose to nourish and cultivate my whole person. Doing these two things truly does make me a better mother and human being in the long run. If I take time to develop
a deep rich completive life, I am a more balanced, grounded and compassionate human being- which absolutely makes for better parenting. Also, I want to model a spiritual life for my children. I once was told that social modeling (copying what you see others doing) is the number one way kids learn thought and behavior patterns. Well, if that's true I want my son and daughter to grow up to have lives that are meaningful and well rounded including, hopefully, a spiritual life.

But that is all the long view of course...The short view is a kindergarten age boy in his footy pajamas saying to me as I'm getting dressed to go out for a full Saturday of silent meditation after having worked full- time Monday through Friday, "mommy, what time will you be home? After it's dark?" And your heart breaks.

Of course I prepared. I pumped extra breast milk. I planned to do something extra fun Saturday night-a Halloween Parade-and I did more housework during the week so I'd be able to do quality time with my kids on Sunday. You know- overcompensation. But I still had mommy-guilt set in anyway as I pulled out of the driveway in the early morning hours.

It's hard, you know? To know one thing to be true, but to have your feelings betray you. A little ways back I had referred to some books I was reading by author Joan Anderson. She was a woman in her 50's who one day separated from her husband after her children were grown because she felt "unfinished." She described a chronic neglect of herself earlier in her marriage and parenting years that left profound deficits inside of her. She wrote in "A Walk on the Beach" that she had spent years, decades, confusing "serving" others with "loving"others.

I don't want that to be me. And it could in an instant. When we mothers are dutiful, meeting every need of our family's before it is even articulated, we are initially put on a pedestal of sainthood. And it can feel good for a while especially if we ourselves also volunteer some martyrdom to go on top- like a cherry topping off a sundae.

But I can tell you, it doesn't last. It can't. The more you are seen in a one-dimensional mommy way (both by children, spouse and you yourself) you don't ultimate become a hero, you become invisible. Your own desires, interests and dreams get swallowed up. The nuanced four-dimensional woman that was yourself is no longer recognized by others, and sometimes I fear by yourself as well.

So what are we to do? How do we and our families not confuse "serving with loving ?" How do we model a whole self for our sons and daughters, not a fractioned self?

I think walking this difficult path of four dimensional, rather than one dimensional, womanhood requires an ability to tolerate difficult emotions like guilt. It means letting go of our old people-pleasing M. O. in order to grow into the complex individuals that we are. It means pursuing our longer term life goals of equanimity and balance in the context of dealing with short term struggles like temper tantrums and anger outbursts- and the kids may have them too!

The pay-off will be worth it though. It was yesterday. I came home after the  nine hours of Mindfulness Meditation retreat and I felt renewed. I felt more attentive and kind to each of my children and my husband. At the Halloween Parade I took my little baby pumpkin and my big boy Thor to after the retreat I felt alert and awake- like my body, mind and emotions finally all showed up to the same place at the same time.

I told my husband, I felt like I had gone through a detox of the mind, and I know I will do this again. The meditation retreat is likely to be a  practice I do regularly. Whether it be a half a day or at some point, a full nine days. And as my children are a young 5 year-old and not quite 1 year old, mommy guilt will just be a part of that picture for a while.  And that's okay.  As I practiced yesterday at the retreat, I will just notice the guilt, let it go, and come back to my breath, in this present moment.

Perhaps you can do this too.

Yoke: A Triangle of Awareness

I recently heard someone say that they named their depression “Francis.” The person speaking was a Lutheran preacher named Nadia Bolz Weber and she apparently describes how she came to name Francis in her book “Pastrix: the Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint.” Ms. Bolz Weber says her image of Francis is circa early 1990’s Courtney Love in a torn up baby-doll dress with a pale face and smeared lipstick, and like the nightmare roommate who will just not move out.

First off, I found this idea hilarious, and I think a little laughter and humor is sorely missing from my spiritual practice. So, thank you Ms. Bolz Weber for that! But beside the lighter side of things, I have to say, I found the suggestion of naming something inside of you that feels kind of ethereal and even slippery at times, to be quite helpful, and I began to apply it to my triangle of awareness.

I’ve been posting lately about my experiences in my Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction class, and my teacher, Kate, recently talked to us about the three components of awareness which she drew on a large piece of paper as a triangle.  Each corner of the triangle of awareness was labeled including: Body Sensations, Thoughts and Emotions. At first glance of the triangle I thought to myself, “okay, nothing really new here for me.” But then when I moved in deeper, I saw how challenging this awareness-thing really is because what we’re talking about is not holding each area of awareness separately, but rather integrating the three parts in to a greater sum of integration and wholeness, and for me, that’s the challenge.

           Elizabeth Gilbert, author of "Eat, Pray, Love," recently spoke of this intentional effort
           toward integrated cohesion recently on Super Soul Sunday with Oprah Winfrey.
           She described a retreat several years ago in which she stayed on a largely uninhibited island
           and spoke out loud to all her various internal voices. She talked to the voice of shame
           and self loathing and guilt, and asked each one respectfully: how can we all live together
           in this head of mine more peacefully? An important question for us all to ask. Whether on
           the micro level of our own internal world, or on the macro level of world nations.

So where do I begin? Well, even though my ultimate spiritual goal is to live in a cohesive state of awareness, I generally start by compartmentalizing.  I’m actually very, very good at compartmentalizing as I’ve been doing it for most of my life. It probably was a survival technique. And when you practice something over and over again, you get pretty good at it.  But a word of caution, look out of for over-generalizing the usage of your own personal survival techniques, you must be selective.  Here though, I will compartmentalize each corner of my triangle of awareness as a means to understand each part in more detail but knowing in the end I seek for all three to integrate as a whole. I will do this by naming each aspect of awareness, just as Ms. Bolz Weber named her depression Francis.

Over this past summer, in my work as a psychotherapist, I saw a teenage girl who was a triplet, all girls.  This patient described to me how difficult life can be at times as a triplet with identical looking sisters, who’s personalities are all quite different and unique.  In the process of naming now my triangle of awareness, I’m drawing upon my experience with this patient, and imagining the 3 corners of my awareness as all teenage triplets who are my daughters; girls all born at the same time of the same mother, me. But also like my patient, though on a physical level looking exactly alike, each is in fact very distinctive in her own right.

Let’s start with Body Sensations. If body sensations were my teenage daughter I would call her “Wallflower.” She would be the girl who has her bangs hanging long over her eyes, incredible shy in school, often found looking down at her feet.  I would have to work at getting any information out of her about how things were going in school, with friends, etc.

Now Thoughts. Thoughts I would name “Chatty Kathy.” If my thoughts were a girl going through adolescence she would be the one who is talking non-stop.  The one who just rambles on and on. Can go on tangents and not even notice if people are engaged or not in what she is saying. The one who you just want to say to sometimes, “would you please just shut-up,” but in a really nice way of course.

And lastly, Emotions.  My depiction of emotions would be “Goth Girl.” She would be this kind of gloomy, Eeyore-like moody teenager who had a melancholy about her.  When she spoke she might be a little irritable or grumpy.  She’d be smart. Insightful. Observant of others. But mainly a loner.

I now imagine sitting down to a family dinner with these 3 girls, Wallflower, Chatty Kathy, and Goth-girl, my triangle of awareness. These 3 daughters who I am trying desperately to coexist with living in the same house, me.  These 3 girls who can really give me a hard time at times.  I contemplate the family dinner as analogous to the movie "Soul Food” in which all the family members sit down to an abundant spread of comfort foods provided at the home of the Grandmother matriarch each Sunday.  A ritualized coming together regardless of how well everyone in the family is getting along or how good or bad the Monday through Friday week was. In this analogy, I would be the Grandmother matriarch, and the 3 teenager daughters representing my triangle of awareness (body sensations, thoughts and feelings) would be the squabbling family members who reluctantly show up to my table each week.

Kind of like how we show up to our yoga mat.  Consider for a moment, the word “yoga.” As most of you know, the word stems from the word yoke which means union. The purpose of this union is to purposefully bring the parts of yourself including your body, your mind and your emotions all into alignment- everybody being at the same table (or mat) at the same time. Intentionally integrating the various facets of our humanity because so often each individual aspect can feel quite separate as we move through our very busy days of work, parenting and personal growth.

But on the mat, who is to take care of all these moving parts? Who acts as Grandmother matriarch orchestrating the whole thing? The soul of course. My Buddha nature. My true self. Saying compassionately to Wallflower, or my body,:“Try and relax a little. Open up. Life your gaze. Smile.” Saying to Chatty Kathy, or my thoughts: “Okay, I heard what you have to say. Now let’s try and bring our attention back to this moment and give someone else a turn.” And to my Goth-girl, my emotions, while putting an arm around her: “I got you. You’re okay. You’re safe. Don’t push me away. “

Yes, on the yoga mat is where the potential for the sum to be greater than each part truly can be realized. But it must be done with self-compassion.  With kindness. Giving space for the idiosyncrasies and temper tantrums and struggles of each girl so that she will know her experience is valid.  And by demonstrating that validation, in my experience, yoke, or union becomes a reality. 

Making Meaning

Sometimes when I am struggling to engage in one of my spiritual disciplines like meditation or yoga, or work or parenting (yes, work and parenting are spiritual disciplines too!), I try to find meaning in the practice as a path through the difficulty.

This is certainly not a novel idea. People since the beginning of time have engaged in meaning making to try to make heads or tails of our day to day lives as human beings- including the good, the bad and the ugly. Whether it be a pyramid in Mexico, a piece of stone in England, or a set of scriptures written some two millennia ago about a young Jewish man in the Middle East.

Probably the most well-known more recent example of a meaning-maker would be Dr. Viktor Frankl. He was a Jewish psychiatrist in 20th century Europe who survived the Nazi concentration camps, and then went on to develop a therapy called Logo Therapy based on his experience of using meaning-making as a survival tool for his psyche in the concentration camps and thereafter. He chronicled this experience and the development of Logo Therapy in his now classic book, "Man's Search for Meaning."

Imagining that one could find meaning in Nazi Concentration Camps is a bold and courageous endeavor. Possibly built for those wisest and most evolved among us. So then where do the rest of us start?  I think it can begin in our small personal events and routine activities that present themselves daily.  And the payoff is tremendous because we can go from a world that is black and white to a world infused with meaning that is technicolor.

Now, for those of you who read my previous post on mystery, you may be thinking that what I'm now saying is a contradiction. Because I had suggested there may be times to withhold the inclination toward meaning making in order to be more open to the undefined mystery. But I prefer to think of it as a dialectic, both/and. Just as the bible says in Ecclesiastes, there is a time everything.

Dr. Viktor Frankl tells us the time to discover meaning in life is in 3 ways:
1.) By creating a work or doing a deed.
2.) By experiencing something or encountering someone.
3.) By the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

Weaved into these three ways, I personally find the time for meaning making helpful when I am feeling exhausted and I have the thought: I just can't do this anymore. When my inner resources feel depleted and I'm not sure I can stay the course.

For example when I am driving to work and I see a plane fly overhead, and I find myself wishing I was jet setting to somewhere far away like Thailand. Sometimes in those moments I will turn my mind toward the word "seva" which is a Sanskrit word for selfless service. Now I am certainly not claiming my work at the hospital is "selfless" because I get a paycheck for the work I do. But the work does feel like "service." I do think of my vocation as a spiritual practice of service that happens 5 days a week. For me, imbuing meaning into my work helps me go in Monday through Friday especially when I'm feel burnt out or disillusioned.

Most recently I had shared that I had had two people in my life pass away, and one of those people had been a very challenging relationship for me to navigate. Which in turn made the grief process tricky to navigate as the grief process tends to mirror the relationship in my experience. But what I found to be a turning point in a grief process that seemed to have become stuck at one point was when meaning presented itself. Now I say "presented itself" because it truly felt organic. I did not in this case go searching for meaning. It seemed to just rise up on its own one day when I realized that the complicated feelings I had toward this person and their death were a smaller version of what I am likely to experience when a more significant person in my life dies. It is like I was practicing. Gearing up. And with that realization, a lot of my stuckness with this most recent death dissolved-virtually on its own. It was like a zen koan that just opened up to me all on its own.

Meaning making can also be useful in my meditation practice. Sometimes sitting in meditation can become stale. Like I'm just going through the motions. This feeling can be a real turn off to the practice and can lead to shorter sits. In these times, I may remind myself that for me a regular meditation practice is also an act of devotion to my relationship with god. It is a regular date with god- quality time. This meaning, that is from a genuine place inside of me, helps me to go the distance when I want to give up. In meditation or any other significant event or day to day event in which I want to just call it quits.

In those moments I try to turn my mind, or my attitude, back to meaning, and in so doing Dr. Viktor Frankl assures us we then can survive and thrive.  He also reminds us that "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way...It is this spiritual freedom-which cannot be taken away-that makes life meaningful and purposeful...The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour."

I will observe my own attitude toward life today. I will allow for meaning making to enhance and guide my journey.

Will you?

Body Disconnection

I've said in this blog before I am a neck up person. Meaning, I walk around most hours of the day, most days of the week disconnected from my body and hyper-attentive to every micro movement of my mind. To the point that, if my body and my mind were my two children, Department of Children and Families would be charging me with neglect for how I ignore my body and a child Psychologist would be calling me a Helicopter Parent for how I hover over my mind. Both are undoubtably unbalanced.

This lack of balance became very apparent to me about a year ago after the birth of my daughter.

In November of last year I had had a second C-Section. Because I had been through the surgery 4 years before, I already knew what to expect with recovery, or at least I thought I did. Because this time I had multiple complications after the birth including a need for a blood patch due to a spinal leak from the epidural, magnesium treatment for skyrocketing blood pressure, and to top it off, a sensation in my abdomen like someone was holding a lit match to my skin because a nerve had apparently been severed in the surgery and the sensation of a burning fire in my abdomen would be present until it healed.

Now you would think with all of these various physical issues going on I would use this as an opportunity to connect with my body. Maybe not even because I wanted to, but because there was no other choice. But I didn't. And what's more problematic, at least to me, I didn't even notice I was still operating from my head as the primary control station. Which is not to say that when intense pain was present, like the mother-of-a-headache you get from a spinal leak, I did not get totally preoccupied with the pain. I did. But that is not "connection" to me, that is am overwhelming feeling of engulfment. Connection is relationship. It is a sense of relating in the space between two or more entities by acknowledging what is present with kindness and compassion.  In this case, I was not relating to what was present in my body with kindness and compassion. Like, not at all.

I came to this awareness when in conversation with an old friend after I finally came home from the hospital with my daughter. Not surprisingly, this friend has been practicing connection to her body in the form of yoga, reiki, and massage for many many years, and in that phone call she asked me if I was practicing "loving on my body." She said my body had just gone through such an ordeal, had worked so very hard for me, she wanted to know if I was now expressing my gratitude toward my body in the form of tender self care?

Her question totally stopped me in my tracks. At that moment I was caught up with enormous frustration toward my body. I was frustrated with the the pain. I was frustrated with my body's limitations. I was disgusted with the way my body sagged when I looked down and could not see my legs because my belly got in the way. My thought toward my body was: "would you please hurry up and recover! I've got things to do! A 4 year old and an infant to take care of. Laundry to do. Breastmilk to pump. Crunches to do. I don't have time for this recovery-thing!"

So, compassion? No. Kindness? No. Patience?  No. Tender self care? Absolutely not.

And the thing is, I would not have been that critical and impatient toward anyone else's body- not in a million years. But my own? You betcha.

Yoga teacher and activist Seane Corne said in an interview with Krista Tippett on the radio show "On Being" in July of this year: "Especially in our culture, there's so much denial about our body, because we all get so fixated on the way it looks. If we're not comfortable with the way that it looks, we deny it, shame it, or try to repress it." Which is so unfortunate because, as she goes on to describe, the body has all the potential do its job of walking our head around all day, but also to be a vehicle toward emotional regulation and ultimately for some, a path to god.

After that phone call with my friend I stopped what I was doing and told (not asked) my husband I was going to take a shower- neglecting to shower daily is a very easy thing to get in to when you have an infant. In the shower I began to wash my body slowly with a wash cloth and my Irish spring soap. Nothing fancy. No candles.  No bubble bath. No soft music. Just slow movements tenderly cleansing my arms, then legs, then special care for my belly that still had the visible wound of surgery. I imagined myself as a mother caring for her child. The soft touch and willing manner one uses when caring for a beloved.  And it was nice.

I was reminded of this moment almost a year ago now, when I actively recognized connection to my body, in my more recent experiences of doing the Body Scan. This is a practice I had been introduced to in the past, but never embraced as a practice (not surprisingly) myself. Regular teaching and practice of the Body Scan has been part of my Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction class I'm currently enrolled in. I wrote in this blog about my aversion to this practice as it prompted feelings of vulnerability back in September when the class first started.

I'd like to report that since the time of my Aha in the phone call with my friend following my surgery, and certainly now 5 weeks into my MBSR class, that I now willingly embrace the Body Scan as a practice and means toward loving relationship with my body. Alas, that is not the case. In fact, I continue to have quite the aversion to the Body Scan. Laying still on the floor and painfully slowly bringing my attention to each area of my body with a warm presence remains very difficult for me.

Whether it be the Body Scan or moving through the practice of asana in yoga as Seane Corn suggests, the attention to the body can bring up a whole untapped world of lived experience that resides quietly (and sometimes not so quietly in the case of physical pain) in our bodies. What Ms. Corn says about awareness of the body and yoga is "what we're taught is that there is no separation between the mind and the body, and everything that we're thinking or feeling or experiencing over the course of a lifetime...has an affect on your cellular tissue."  I can totally see that, and that's what makes it so hard.

But, and I think this is a big "but," I am at least now aware. I'm aware of my aversion. I'm aware of my difficulty. I lay my yoga mat on my living room floor. I turn on my Body Scan CD. I pull a soft fleece blanket over me. And I begin again. Bringing my attention to the toes of my left foot to start, and spending the next 30-40 minutes bringing loving awareness to each part of my body.  I keep practicing. So that some day, hopefully sooner rather than later, I could truthfully write that I feel confident and connected in and with my body.

So what about you? What is your connection to your own body? Could you bring kindness and compassion to your self care today?

Letting Go of Hope

I have begun to practice letting go of hope. And this is a good thing. Well, maybe "good" is not the right word. It is a forward step though. I have the habit, I now realize, of hanging on to hope long past the space and time that it is relevant or useful. And I do it in such a way that is a little pretentious- as in "look at me! Look at how optimistic and glass is half full I am."  I think I use hopefulness as a way to solidify an identity that is pleasing and attractive to both myself and others.

I'll tell you, this is not easy to admit. Letting go of the habit of being hopeful feels like I am losing a little bit of me because I have infused it so seamlessly into my personality.

So why do it you ask?  Good question. And my answer is, I have no other choice.

I think releasing my tight grip on hope is difficult in part because it is so counterintuitive. My mind says: hope is a good thing and I should cling to all good things. Kind of like the aversive response most of us have to pain: pain is bad so push it away. It is the same spectrum. At one end is internal wanting and desire with the outward behavior of clinging. At the opposite end of the same spectrum is the internal experience of aversion and disgust which comes out in the world as pushing away. Two opposite ends of the exact same spectrum like east coast, west coast.

But what I'm learning in my Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction class is that sometimes the way through pain is to lean into it, explore it with curiosity, and every so often even embrace it.

For me, surrendering to that pain is what sits on the opposite side of my coin of hopefulness-clinging to hopefulness is my way of avoiding the depth of pain in the form of grief that waits for me on the other side.  And that does not work. In fact, it is a sure fire way to become stuck.

When I was 23 years old my aunt was dying of lung cancer that had swept through her body in 7 months. At the end of her life she was in a coma on intubation in ICU. The doctors told us she was not pain due to the morphine they were giving her, and it was just a matter if time.  But even with all of that information, some of the family clung on to hope.

At first I admired the hopefulness because I judged it as a stamp of high character- or in other words, I judged it good.  But that was until I had a conversation with my cousin, who's mother it was who was dying. My cousin said she was frustrated with the continued hopeful wishes and prayers from family in these last stages of her mother's death.  She said she needed the family to let go of hope so that her grieving process could proceed forward. For my cousin, her anticipatory grief, which you experience in an illness that more slowly claims the life of your loved one, became stagnated by the hopefulness expressed around her dying mother. For her, it was time to let go of hope so she could get on with the process of saying a final goodbye to her mother, and in that goodbye, embracing not hope, but instead surrendering to acceptance.

Now, I think of that experience 14 years ago as I again find myself clinging to hope as a means to avoid grief. I see how this avoidance has become a habit and therefore an obstacle to radical acceptance of a very painful reality in my own life.  And I do feel stuck.

This is frustrating to me because I feel like I am standing on a mountainside with a gorge below, and I can see the space so clearly across the way that leads to the other side of the mountain, opposite to where I am now standing. And on the other side is freedom, liberation from myself. But there is no bridge crossing over the gorge. Or, at least I don't think there is.

Until I remember that the bridge is invisible. Because the bridge is comprised of a tapestry of truths that cannot be seen with the naked eye like faith, trust and love. And so I must just close my eyes and lift my right foot to step off the mountainside knowing that the invisible bridge will hold me until I reach the other side. Until I reach freedom.

Unitarian Universalist Chaplain and writer Kate Braestrup says in her book "Beginner's Grace:" "Faith is, rather, knowing that there is a goodness and rightness in the world that is of God: a righteous, grand, and holy love that I will never wholly grasp but in which I am invited to participate through the giving and receiving of human love."

Those words, "that I will never wholly grasp" are key for me in this process of letting go of hope. Because it is counterintuitive for me. Because in a large way it does still feel just wrong. But Ms. Braestrup is saying, that's actually okay. That is faith.

So I will practice. I will observe my desire for the alternate reality that "should" be or could be if only...and try to ground myself in acceptance of this reality.  And in so doing I will experience the grief and pain that was sitting patiently on the other side of the coin of hope. Waiting for its own turn to be embraced just as willingly as I embraced its cousin, hope, a hundred times over.

What in your life is it time to let go of? What hope are you clinging to as a means of avoiding acceptance of reality as it is in your life?

Spiritual Discomfort Zone

I need a spiritual teacher. I know it. I've known it for some time.

So far in this faith journey I'd say I've had only one traditional teacher and several temps and surrogates. How am I defining these categories of teachers you ask? Well, my only, thus far, teacher experience was with my first Unitarian Universalist minister.  Her name was Reverend BJ.

After attending her church for over a year, I decided to join in Fall of 2008 when I was very pregnant with my first child.  Deciding to join this church, though it went by the name meeting house, was a really big deal for me. I am not a joiner. I like to keep myself close to the exit at all times so I can slip out the back. In fact the owner of the gym I went to for some time would make fun of me because I would never do more than a 6 month membership commitment at one time. He said to me once, when I was renewing for only another 6 months after having done that for a couple of years, that I have commitment issues. Unquestionably. And the thought of any new relationship, whether it be with a new church or a new spiritual teacher, is quite scary to me.

There is a quote by C.S. Lewis that describes this discomfort I have. It goes like this:

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."

I have always liked this quote because it captures the risk associated with both choosing to enter relationships and the risk with choosing not to.  I feel that risk when I consider joining a new church as a member- rather than my current status as a "friend" of the church.  It also feels risky to have a spiritual teacher. However, to continue on the sidelines, as I have been for a few years now, feels risky as well.

Mind you, I'm using the word "risk" as C.S. Lewis did. To acknowledge the potential negative consequence of creating and deepening relationship through intimacy is that you will enter a state of vulnerability to the hurt and loss and grief that accompany the ending of a relationship; as well as "risk" in remaining an island unto yourself. If I chose to keep my spiritual and religious life as a one woman show starring me, I believe I am truly limiting the possibilities for how grand this faith endeavor could be.  Which is not to dramatically imply the mountains would crumble or the seas would dry up if Claire didn't join another church or find and work with a spiritual teacher. Not that kind of risk. A personal one. A commitment to myself to see this thing all the way through. Which means exploring the areas of discomfort. And for me, the discomfort, would be movement toward deeper connections with others.

But here's the paradox, what terrifies me, I crave. And I indulge that craving by reading about others' experiences with religious or spiritual communities and their respective teachers.  That allows me to get a small hit of what I crave and envy in others, all the while continuing to avoid the real deal.

Okay, so that is the cynical version. Or maybe that is still my harsh interior voice describing how things are. Because I think sometimes we read and learn about what scares us, or prompts that discomfort, as a way to more slowly begin to lean into the discomfort before the en vivo exploration itself.

Most recently I've been reading about Vietnamese Buddhist teacher, writer, activist Thich Nhat Hahn. He founded a monastic community in France called Plum Village. The monks and nuns who live there call him Thay, which means teacher.

A few weeks ago I wrote in this blog about a book I am piecing through called "One Buddha is not Enough" which towards the end has a chapter about Thich Nhat Hahn's medical treatment at a Boston hospital for a lung infection.  I found this chapter fascinating because, among other things, it described how several of the monks and nuns brought the monastic community life of walking meditation, mindful tea drinking, mindful chores and cleaning, and listening up for nuggets of wisdom and guidance from their teacher literally into the hospital room that Thich Nhat Hahn stayed in while receiving medical tests. I found this both remarkable and inspiring.

To me, it demonstrates two things. One, the portability of what can be gained from a spiritual teacher and religious community. It is not limited to the 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. service in the white building with the steeple on Sundays. And two, I think it is genuine love, not obligation or righteousness or religious or moral law, which ultimately creates a religious community (comprised of numerous individual relationships) that is sustaining over time.

These were important "connections" for me to make, and reading about this teacher and this community has been a gentle reminder to me that I have some pretty specific spiritual needs and spiritual tasks before me.

I have come to think about the concept of spiritual stages, that are nonlinear, as each owning its specific spiritual task for development and maturation. For me, I think I've had two stages thus far (and maybe I'll write about them at another time), and now I'm in a third. This stage I'm sure is about me risking vulnerability to move in to spaces of deeper more intimate connection and relationship with others- specifically with a church or sangha and a spiritual teacher. I need to move this faith journey out of my own living room. And I'm scared to do it.

But I will. I know I will. And it will be hard.

Kate, my Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction teacher told us this week that there are 3 choices available to us as ways to respond to the kind of interior discomfort I am describing. They are:

A. Distract from the discomfort. Busy yourself with food, work, television, gossip, etc.
B. Manipulate the moment by trying to shift yourself from discomfort to comfort. E.g. If the conversation is too difficult change the topic to something else.
Or C. Explore the discomfort through mindfulness practice.

Now in my line or work as a psychotherapist, I would add a fourth option for discomfort that I see a lot of, and that is to stay miserable by wallowing in the discomfort. And believe you me, unfortunately I am equally capable of a good wallow.

But I don't want to do that anymore, god knows I don't (literally, god knows). However to not engage in a very familiar, very automatic behavior anymore, I also know I will have to do something different.

Which brings me back full circle to my first statement. It's time for me to step off my own spiritual island, population of one, which kind of feels like walking the plank. It's time to join others in a religious community guided by a spiritual teacher.

So for the next few months (few years) I will move toward my discomfort. I will explore the discomfort that shows up by taking on the spiritual task of connection and relationship.

And what about you? What discomfort are you willing to explore? What spiritual task is calling you?

Kindred Spirits: A Hawk

There is a hawk (2 actually) who lives on, or should I say above, the hospital grounds where I work. 

I took this picture recently when I had my close encounter.

Don't Forget the Color Purple

I stopped on the side of the road to take this picture.

Reminded me of this famous quote from Alice Walker's 1982 book The Color Purple:

 I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.

Embracing Mystery

I hold little space for mystery. I've come to this awareness. If I can't explain something, I will often dismiss it.  I'll say to myself: “I just don't have all the information. Once I have all the facts, I'll unquestionably be able to solve this problem.”  Except when I can't.  And then I am left feeling unresolved and unfinished, and that is so incredibly hard for me.  I am a person who likes to see something through, beginning to end, and then tie it up in a nice neat bow.

I think mystery and I got off to a rough start though.  Early on in my life I knew someone who would use the concept of mystery as an excuse to not hold them self accountable for their behavior.  This person would not reciprocate initiating phone calls and emails as I would in the relationship. In my frustration, I would again make contact by phone or email, and that person's response would always the same: "that is so strange because I was just about to contact you." They might even add something about a dream they had had recently in which we were together.  Then they might push it over the top and describe the dream using an eerie tone that would suggest I was to be in equal awe at how the universe was working in such “mysterious” ways.  I would just roll my eyes.

I’m sure that early experience left a bad taste in my mouth as far a mystery is concerned. Which is unfortunate, because I know the pho-new-age-mumbo-jumbo is by no means the whole mystery story.

I was recently discussing this with a colleague. She is someone who holds a lot of space for mystery. I was telling her about a couple of recent experiences I had had. The first was a very close encounter with a hawk. The second was a situation of crossing paths with a particular individual at Target after many years. My colleague had several larger meanings attached to my two stories, and I noticed as she spoke my body began to tense up as my resistance to mystery arose to the surface.

It seems to me there is a spectrum for belief and disbelief in mystery. I think folks on one end of the spectrum use language like explanation, theory, formula. Folks on the other end of the spectrum say things like "god works in mysterious ways" and "everything happens or a reason." What's interesting though, is that on both ends of the spectrum there is a rigid concreteness to things. A 1 + 1 = 2 if you will. There is a sense of order and control; two very appealing qualities for human beings- me being no exception.

At the far end of the belief spectrum, I have a coworker who says she would never give a knife or shoes as a gift to a friend. The knife would lead to the friend "cutting off" the friendship. The shoes would lead to the friend “walking out” of the relationship.  I have a family member who saw a grey heron on the same day her loved one died, and she now believes each heron she sees is her same deceased relative coming to visit her.  And I have a friend who tells me frequent stories of sounds that go on in her house at night including lights going on and off by themselves. She believes these are ghosts.

All of these individuals describe these examples as mystery.  And I generally don't agree, but I listen, respectfully.

On the other hand though, at the other end of the disbelief spectrum, there are those who boil life down to pure biological cause and effect.  Sheer fact.  Can I see it? Can I smell it? Can I touch it? Can I hear it? Can I taste it? Which for me, is limited as well.  It does not fully capture the whole of what I experience in this life. 

Take for example a springtime flower like the lilac in my backyard. One could easily walk up to my lilac bush and begin to talk about its Latin name (Syringa) and how photosynthesis operates (which is truly incredible in my humble opinion), and then just leave the lilac experience at that. But that would be incomplete, wouldn't it? To walk up to a lilac bush and not take in its intoxicating fragrance is akin to going to Orlando, Florida and skipping Disney World. The smell of a lilac is like no other, and to lean in to the flower and breathe it in is just heaven on earth- even for those of us who do not believe in heaven.

And it doesn't end there, because let's not forget the color purple. I am smitten for flowers that are the color purple.  In fact the line written in Alice Walker’s book "The Color Purple" felt like it was written just for me. She wrote, "I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it." I remember in the first Unitarian Universalist church service I ever attended the minister quoted that very same line of Ms. Walker's, and I audibly sighed and thought to myself, "I'm home." Because to me, I've learned that is my experience of mystery. The aroma of a lilac and the magnificent hues of the color purple in nature. To go no further than that. No meaning or symbolism. No botanical  explanation for how color  is formed in a flower petal. Just awe. And not because we can't make meaning or explain how things work. And not because there is not value in doing so at times. But embracing mystery, for me, would be choosing to enter that brief moment of wonder as you inhale the scent of the lilac, and just leaving it there. No symbolism. No definition. Just, "Ahhhhhh..."

So maybe there is another way to approach mystery? Something that falls in between the two extreme ends of the spectrum? Or, to borrow from Buddhist philosophy, A Middle Way.

Vietnamese Buddhist teacher, poet, writer, activist Thich Nhat Hahn suggests a meditation on flowers that helps us with this. He says to imagine or hold a flower such as an orchid.  He then tells us to consider all of the elements that make up this flower, such as: seed, dirt, minerals, rain, and sun.  He then says to consider such aspects as the energy of the gardener who is tending to the flower and the process of growth and evolution itself.  Thich Nhat Hahn reminds us that there is so much more than meets the eye in the formation of the flower, and yet, what meets the eye is such extraordinary beauty. So much beauty in fact, that we put it in the center of tables, in the center of our rooms, to admire fondly- standing as silent witnesses to mystery.

I think the first time I was ever aware of my encounter with mystery actually in the moment it was happening was immediately after the birth of my daughter. She was a perfectly healthy baby girl at birth despite her early arrival, but I had had a rough go. One medical issue, of many actually, was sky rocketing blood pressure that was treated with a 24 hour course of IV magnesium treatment to prevent seizure and stroke. During that time my team of doctors recommended I let me daughter stay in the hospital nursery so that I could focus on resting. But I decided to have her come in every couple of hours to lay on my chest, skin to skin, and continue to try nursing. Of course during the 24 hour treatment my blood pressure continued to be monitored, and it was usually one of the Resident doctors who would give me updates.

About 12-15 hours into the treatment one of the hospital Residents came in to check on me. After asking me how I was holding up with the treatment, she told me a pattern she had been observing on the blood pressure monitors. She said each time my daughter was brought in to me from the nursery and laid on my bear chest to nurse, my blood pressure would come down on its own. And when my daughter would leave again, my blood pressure would go back up. Now when I say "come down," it is not to say my blood pressure was not still high. But given that my starting place was a peak of 185/115, any down at all was exactly what I needed, and it was my daughter's mere presence, in part, that was healing my body.

The Resident's response after telling me her scientific observation was: "wouldn't that be an interesting study?!" And I responded, "yes it would," and I meant it. I think scientific studies like those on increasing wisdom by measuring gray matter in the brain in people who meditate, or studies looking at hope in relationship to cancer survival, as they did in the book "The Anatomy of Hope," is absolutely fascinating.  One of the most famous examples of this type of investigations for me is The Butterfly Effect.

For those of you who don't know, a man named Edward Lorenz worked on something called Chaos Theory and coined the term "the butterfly effect" to help explain what I'm sure is a very complicated scientific formula to us laymen. Wikipedia, the queen site for laymen, says this theory "is the sensitive dependency on initial conditions in which a small change at one place in a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large changes in a later state." And to demonstrate this, the example is given of the energy created from a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa impacting the conditions necessary for a hurricane to form halfway across the world. Now that is cool right? Completely amazing. As Albert Einstein would say, the "optical delusion" that we human beings carry around with us of separateness is just plain scientifically wrong.

And yet, to take this a step further, I think the people who develop scientific theories like Chaos Theory, or propose studies like my Resident doctor at the hospital suggested, miss out a little too; just as the It's-all-part-of-the-plan-people do.  I think there is something in between scientific explanation and a trite "everything happens for a reason." Something that is only contained in the very moment you are in. In my case, the actual moment of my skin to skin contact with my daughter when I was receiving the magnesium treatment. A moment that you dissolve into.  Neither clinging nor pushing away. Mindfulness.

Sometimes we just have to stand back and say quietly to ourselves, "wow!"  Something takes our breath away directly in front of us, and we just let ourselves be swept away by awe. No drawing meaning or looking for symbolism. No quantifying and theorizing the explanation. As my new Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction teacher Kate says, just "bare, raw experience."

I think sometimes we are drawn to this “bare, raw experience” of mystery without even knowing it. Even in the words we use. Have you noticed how drawn people are nowadays to words that are ancient, or sound foreign? Words that we are told originate from languages that are “holy.” Sanskrit words. Greek words. Latin words. Hebrew words. Native words. Sometimes we don’t even need or ask for the definition to the word which has been given to us. I listen to Gregorian Chanting (Latin), Yogic Chanting (Sanskrit), and Native Flute Music (which sometimes has accompanying singing originating from the languages of one Native American tribe or another). By encountering mystery in this way, through music with words which I do not understand, it forces my thinking mind to take a pause.  In that way I can enter into a sacred space which is less defined.

I had recently shared in this blog that two people in my life recently died. One had her funeral on Friday and my close encounter with the hawk I had told my colleague about happened less than two hours beforehand. In this experience I stood within 5 feet of this majestic feathered creature as it devoured a dinner of fresh squirrel on the grounds of the hospital where I work. Now I could tell you that this hawk was embodying its predator-nature just as, unfortunately, the person who recently died whose funeral I was attending that evening.  I could tell you that less than two months before this event I had cancelled my first ever scheduled close-encounter-hawk-experience just because money had gotten tight at that time, and it was to take place at my local nature center as a birthday present to me. And both statements would be true.

But instead, in that moment, which lasted about 20 minutes, I just stood beside the hawk and decided to try to let all of the words to the stories about the experience go, and just be there. And when I did, I began to tear up. I was moved by pure being.

For me, the hawk encounter brought me back to embracing mystery through the practice of basic mindfulness.  Choosing not to swing the pendulum toward one end of the fact-versus-meaning spectrum or the other. Choosing not to call a close encounter with a hawk a simple coincidence nor a sign of something distilled with meaning.  Maybe god wants us to simply notice. Notice when one thing closely follows another, but not draw any meaning or conclusion to it. Just let it lie.  Would that not truly be the definition of mystery?  To allow ourselves to tolerate bewilderment and awe and wonder.  To not try to always create boxes and formulas to categorize and compartmentalize- whether that be in the scientific method or the astrological signs. To just allow.

I recently received one of my favorite catalogs in the mail that reminded me of a mindfulness practice that helps us with just such a thing. The catalog was the Kripalu Yoga Center Winter Program catalog. I have never actually been to one of their programs but I like to look at the catalog. It is like a R&R Retreat in my mind. I also like the couple of articles  that they sprinkle in there. This one had an article by Stephen Cope. I have written about him before in this blog with reference to his book "Yoga and the Quest for the True Self." In the article he wrote about a suggested Kripalu technique for intentionally entering the moment with a nonjudgmental stance. The acronym is BRFWA. It stands for breathe, relax, feel, watch, allow. He suggests this practice, in this order, to help us practice being present , moment by moment.

Wouldn't this BRFWA practice help us to embrace mystery? It is like taking your hands off the steering wheel and saying I will notice and participate in whatever is presented to me. I will not try to name it or control it or understand it. I will just let it drop in and watch it fade out.  And afterward, I will practice gratitude for whatever showed up that day.

Having said all of this, I certainly do not want to diminish the contributions of folks like Thomas Moore, Joseph Campbell and Marion Woodman who help us to understand symbolism and guide us through the process of meaning-making which is absolutely essential  for human beings, especially in the process of loss and grief.  And we also need people like Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan to help us contextualize our meaning-making within our own historical reality of life, as we know it and see it, in this cosmos. 

So maybe we need a fusion of the two? Not because one is true and the other is not, but purely because a full rich life is infused with symbolic meaning and concrete explanation.  Maybe that fusion is mindful awareness- the synthesis that creates a sum greater than its parts, a middle path. 

I will try to hold this synthesis; though it is difficult in my oh-so-automatic-nature to want a clear-cut black and white answer to things.  But maybe, I will set the intention to do so.  And when  I am camping in the marshes of the shoreline, and I view the splendid beauty of a tall white egret, I will allow my heart to swell with love because I associate the egret with my love for my husband and children.  And at the same time, I will try to not to get caught in the why and how of the timing of the experience, nor dismiss it away as purely the migrating patterns and ecosystem of New England shorelines. I will just stop in my tracks. Breathe. Relax. Watch. Feel. Allow.  I will open to mystery, I will embrace it.  And later, in my private moments, I will reflect on the experience.  With the help of the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mary Oliver and  Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, and possibly my own. Thinkers and poets and writers who for millennia have contemplated the synthesis of the natural and divine worlds as one.

Going forward I want to allow more space for mystery in this way.  I will embrace it today.

How about you?

Assessing relationship with god

Sometimes I imagine taking one of those women's magazine-style relationship quizzes, like you see in Cosmo, about my relationship with god. Instead of figuring out what kind of lover I am or whether my guy is a keeper, I'd take that self evaluation to assess the state of a different union, mine with god.

Now I must tell you, even to write such a statement, relationship with god, still looks so foreign and frankly a little bit koo-koo to me. My overly intellectualized, secular-upbringing voice inside my head wants to regain control by shouting, "what on earth are you talking about? You sound ridiculous!"  But I try to quiet that voice. Not with criticism or harshness. With a soft, kind reassuring voice that says, "ok, I heard you." And then just keep moving forward. Even if it is with trepidation and uncertainty on this whole god journey.

So what might that relationship quiz look like? For me it would be a lightweight, sort of humorous assessment of how things are going in the relationship-with-god-department.

Questions #1 Have you learned to trust god?

Circle the Answer that Best fits:

Yes, No, Maybe.

Question#2 How often do you spend quality time with god?

Circle the Answer that Best fits:

Several times a day.
Once a day.
Once a week.
Once a month.
Once a year.

For some people I would imagine the suggestion of light humor when considering god might be objectionable, and maybe even disrespectful. If your representation of god is that of something serious, fearful or shameful, I could very much understand why this suggestion might be pretty far in left field.

But for me, as my relationship with god has unfolded over these last several years, and continues to do so, I have resonated with writers like Anne Lamott who, in one of her books, described god as like a best girlfriend who would kick you under the table if you were about to put your foot in your mouth at a social gathering. To me, that is funny, but also an accurate analogy for relationship with god.

I was recently at dinner with a friend who grew up Catholic, including several years of parochial school. I told her that from a perspective of best practices in religions, I love the idea of being able to just sit in a church whenever I wanted to pray or to go once a day or once a week and talk to my spiritual advisor. I was of course alluding to my interpretation of the phrase "go to church and pray about it" and confession in Catholicism.  But my friend, who loves me dearly, looked at me like I had 3 heads. She said, when she was instructed and forced (her word) to do both of those religious practices (for her they were not spiritual) including in her elementary school, it was neither light nor humorous, and not helpful or nurturing for her either. It was not felt as an accepting, loving, forgiving experience. It was meant to be shameful, fear provoking, with a sense of "do it or else!..." And what came after those three dots was anyone's guess, but there was no doubt it would be bad.  That depiction and description of god is just not true for me.

Another catholic friend, or friend raised catholic, (yeah I have a lot of them) said to me, "Claire, what would happen if you didn't go to church one day?"  And my answer was, "nothing." She was utterly perplexed by this. Now I say "nothing," which is not to say that I would of course miss opportunities for community, spiritual learning and growth, etc. But as far as my relationship with god, I'd still say, "nothing." We are good whether I go to church on a Sunday morning or sleep in as long as my kids and husband would let me.

Which has led me to think and read about the idea of attachment theory in psychological development in terms of relationship with god. Attachment Theory was developed by a couple of important people in the field of psychology named John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. It is a theory about how children develop styles of attachment to their caregivers, and that style or working model can become a blueprint of sorts for future relationships in adulthood. In attachment theory there are 4 styles of attachment:

Secure
Anxious-preoccupied
Dismissive-avoidant
Fearful-avoidant.

I have heard some slight variations to these names, but there seems to be general agreement about what each relationship pattern looks like.

This is of course not rocket science. Most of us at some point or another have taken some time to look at our own patterns in relationships and considered how our childhood relationship experiences are possibly replicating themselves in the present. We may have asked ourselves one or more of these questions in the context of our relationships:
How do I respond to authority?
Do I fear abandonment?
Can I accept constructive criticism?
Am I treated with dignity and respect?
Do I create relationships with people who are able to meet my needs?
Can I say no?
Can I tolerate someone not liking me or being angry with me?

And if we notice a particular problematic pattern or dynamic to our relationships, we work on it. We change it. Not to say it's easy, but it is do-able.

But what about with god?  For some people, like my friend who went to parochial school, a particular attachment style was both modeled socially and dictated to her. Some might call it anxious-preoccupied, others might call it fearful-avoidant. But, it was certainly not meant to be secure, which, put simply, is an unconditionally loving relationship.

Depak Chopra wrote a book called "How To Know God" and in it he talks about this very issue.  He says: "...Your own spiritual life is based on habitual or even unconscious reflex...On the material plane, the brain is our only way of registering reality, and spirit must be filtered through biology."  Mr. Chopra then lists what he calls "The Seven Stages of God."

1.) Fight or flight
2.) Reactive
3.) Restful awareness
4.) Intuitive
5.) Creative
6.) Visionary
7.) Sacred.

I find all of this fascinating. How all of these social, psychological and historical factors can come together to contribute to this very complex and multilayer relationship with god. And how the style or pattern of relationship with god may or may not evolve and change over the course of our lives.

So what does this all mean? For me, at the end of my relationship quiz, I would describe my relationship with god as a secure attachment and somewhere between #3 Restful Awareness and #7 Sacred on Mr. Chopra's Stages of God. It is one of my handful of relationships that I actually feel radically genuine and unconditionally accepted. And it is my wish that others, including my husband and children, feel the same.

But let me ask you, what is the status of your relationship with god?

Morning of my walk to the river with my daughter.

Lessons in death

Today I learned someone died. She was someone I have known for almost five years. She died less than 2 months after being diagnosed with cancer. She was 64 years old.

A week ago I learned someone else died. She was someone I have known all my 37 years. She died less than 6 months after being diagnosed with cancer. She was 89 years old.

At the end of one life, she appeared to be filled with regret, bitterness and misery. At the end of the other life, she appeared to be filled with a sense of satisfaction, completion and fulfillment.

Tonight, before bed, as I sit with a variety of emotions and body sensations running through me (over me), I wonder about each life.

Years ago in ALANON I was taught every life is a teacher, and no one, including the alcoholic, dies in vain. That particular point always stuck with me- probably because it was one of the hardest for me to learn.

Pema Chodron, the Buddhist teacher and nun, tells a story with a similar message. In fact, you can actually watch her tell the story herself if you look her up on YouTube. In the video she tells of a community that had a member who was extremely difficult to live with. Someone who just tried everyone's patience to the core. One day that difficult person left the community (I forget the reason why) and the community rejoiced to be free of this person who was such a thorn in their side. But the head teacher of this community sought out this difficult person to bring them back to the community because this person was the learning opportunity for spiritual growth on virtues such as patience and being nonreactive while experiencing painful feelings like anger & fear.  Virtues all members of the community  needed to learn.

Tonight I will draw from both of my educations, and put together a list of what I have learned from both women's lives. This list is in no particular order and is a combination of both lives combined together.

Let go of the small stuff.
Accept the imperfections of others.
Be bold.
Laugh.
Be mindful.
Don't kick those who are already down and most vulnerable.
Know that sometimes your best will not be enough.
Look for places that the universe is supporting you.
Be courteous & generous.
Be adventurous.
Remember love is abundant.
At some point in your life, live in a place that is overwhelmingly beautiful.
Experience awe toward our natural world.
Don't react based on fear.
Don't wait until your retirement to follow your heart's longing.
Apologize when you are wrong.
Love your loved ones.
Don't be afraid to object even if it makes you unpopular.
Know what you are good at.
Know what you are not good at.
Don't ask permission to take the leap you need to.
Partner up with someone who will be in your corner when you leap.
Travel.
Camp.
Be kind.
Try to trust others.
Respect your elders.
As a woman, don't be afraid to be seen as smart and competent.
Share your knowledge generously.
Give others the benefit of the doubt.
Be curious.
Don't be limited by the isms & small minded prejudices of family and society.
Be compassionate.
Try not to personalize.
Wait a day before you send an angry email.
When you lay your head on your pillow each night, feel good about the choices you made that day.

I invite you to consider what lessons you have learned from the lives of those who have died in your life. The lives you admired & the lives which were at times painful to watch. Both have value. Both teach us how to live our own lives more whole-heartedly.

Finding Refuge

When I have the blues I have the urge to escape. To turn away from my down-in-the-dumps feeling and dissolve myself into food, work or a movie until I can't feel or see myself anymore.

This is unquestionably a learned behavior. I was given food (specifically Chinese takeout) when upset as a teenager. Workaholism was modeled before me in 60-70 hour work weeks. And the whole family got in the ritual of renting 5 or 6 movies from BlockBuster on Friday nights to help us cope with a long and difficult week of work and school.

Now, don't get me wrong. I see nothing wrong with good food (including greasy Chinese every once in a while), a strong work ethic, and getting lost in the storyline of a great film that allows you to suspend reality. What I personally struggle with though is not reflexively escaping any and every moment that is uncomfortable, and using food, work, movies (preferably bad romantic comedies) as a means to that end.

I remember once going to a talk at a local Buddhist organization when I was craving a spiritual community but was between churches at the time, and I heard the speaker share on the idea of "refuge." In the context of the talk the speaker was asking the group to consider the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha as the "three jewels" to take refuge in. I haven't been back to that organization in some time and I don't consider myself a Buddhist, but the idea behind that word "refuge" penetrated deeply inside me that day, and it has stayed with me since.

Buddhist teacher and psychologist Tara Brach, who I've referred to a few times in this blog, wrote a whole book on this topic called "True Refuge." She says "the yearning for such refuge is universal. It is what lies beneath all our wants and fears." The same fears I aim to escape with my food and work and movies, among other things. Ms. Brach, I would guess, would refer to my escapist tool box as "false refuges" because she believes "while they may provide a temporary sense of comfort or security, they create more suffering in the long run."

I tried to avoid my escapist urges this very morning. Mornings have always been difficult for me.  Not sure exactly why, but I seem to have this restless, agitated energy inside me several days out of the week in the early morning. Some days I barely notice it. Other days it feels like quite a burden. This morning was probably somewhere in-between. And food and vegetating in front of the t.v. were both options because the leftover Chinese was in the refrigerator, and it was just me and the baby up in the house, so the remote could have been all mine. But instead, I made a different choice. In the early morning hours I bundled up my daughter and walked her and I down to the river nearby our house.

It was one of those perfect New England early autumn mornings. Clear radiant blue sky. Sun streaming through the maple leaves that have already begun to turn red and orange and yellow- and if you are lucky, all three in one. The neighborhood was quiet save for a few dog walkers and a handful of folks who walk to the local Catholic Church for the early, early Sunday mass.

By the time we got to the river our noses were running a little and our finger tips were chilly, but otherwise we felt warm inside our too heavy coats.  And the walk had been worth it. Standing next to the river, holding my daughter, I felt like I could breathe again. It was like I had not been able to get enough oxygen into the deepest parts of my insides until I reached the river which was surrounded by beautiful woods and moss and wild flowers. But once there, I could feel my chest expanding as I filled up again with life.

I think Ms. Brach would say I took refuge this morning in "presence" which she defines as "the felt sense of wakefulness, openness, and tenderness that arises when we are fully here and now with our experience...It is immediate and embodied, perceived through our senses." Yes. And I would add, that by choosing to take refuge in presence, which for me more often than not is also nature, rather than choosing false refuge in my escapist trap doors, I was able to transcend that restless agitation I had begun my day with. Because when I returned home an hour later, I felt different. Better. Renewed. And I know for certain, that would not have been the case had I not stepped out, rather than crumpled in.

I want to continue to try to do this. I want to continue to seek refuge in times if trouble and uncertainty in a sustainable sanctuary, not a deliciously gratifying mirage. It is difficult though, even when the pay off is well worth it.

So I ask you, what false refuges would you be willing to give up as you too seek true refuge? What might be a first step toward such an endeavor?

Feeling god's presence

For some time now I have thought of the sun as a metaphor for god's presence. Some days she is brilliantly sunny in the sky and I absolutely cannot miss her. Some days she peaks out, then hides behind a cloud or two, and then peaks out again. As if to say, "now you can see me, now you can't, now you can, now you can't." It can feel like a game to see if I can hold god's presence in my mind and heart even when she's not visibly there in front of me.

But then there are the days, like today and yesterday and the day before that, when I don't get to actually see the sun at all. Three days of total cloud coverage and on and off rain. Three days of darkness. I have more trouble on these days. I have more trouble accessing my metaphoric god because I can't see her with my own eyes. I am relying on memory and faith to hold me over until the next moment, whenever that may be, that I may get a fresh dose of god's presence in that oh-so preferable concrete way again.

I was reminded of this struggle yesterday morning with something my five year-old said. He was sitting in the living room in his pj's watching cartoons before leaving for daycare. He was all wrapped up head to toe in a queen sized fleece blanket. Every stitch of him was covered in the warm blanket. But even though this was true, he looked at me and said sadly, "I don't FEEL covered though."  And isn't that just the truth?

Sometimes we KNOW we are covered or held or protected, but we don't FEEL it. I guess that is where faith comes in. But man is that hard sometimes, to be faithful. To look up at the sky and see all those clouds and not just KNOW that beyond those clouds is a gorgeous blue sky atmosphere with a bold yellow sun just sitting in the middle of it, but to FEEL it too.

When I just can't feel god's presence I say out loud: "god, where are you?"  It is usually in this soft almost little girl voice that is reminiscent of times when I was lost as a child at a fair or mall. One time, when I was ten years old I got lost at Disney World! Yes, Orlando, Magic Kingdom, Disney World.

When I was a child, and to a lesser extent now, I did not like roller coasters. Not at all. So when it came time to go on Space Mountain at Disney World I said, "no way."  But my parents and sister did want to go on this ride. The compromise came when the folks who worked at Space Mountain said there was a place for me to sit at the end of the ride to wait for my family.  And so I did. I sat and I waited. And waited. And waited.

Now, I was ten, and if you remember ten, you still don't really have an accurate sense of time passing yet (this was of course before a ten year old would have her own iPhone). So what was unknown to me was that I had waited for over 3 hours. Sitting on a bench in the darkness of Space Mountain watching family after family exit the ride and thinking, "man that must have been a long line!" I was not afraid though. I both knew and felt my parents' presence. I held faith and felt held. For 3 hours I sat. No book. No music. No technology device. No distress. No worry. Not happy per se, after all I did want to get to my rides too. But content just the same to sit and wait my turn.

Today, 27 years later, I marvel at that little girl. Of course the parent in me now says: "what the hell were my parents thinking leaving me alone in Disney World!" But setting that aside for the moment, I  actually was okay. Technically speaking, I was lost.  Yet, I wasn't because I didn't feel lost. Just as my son said, the facts are important and may tell us something about our experience, but equally important, and particularly in the realm of god and faith, is not just the facts but holding a feeling or presence of being held by our parents or god or perhaps both.

Now I must say here, as a college educated psychotherapist and as a parent there is a part of me, a big part of me, that wants to explain-away this Disney world story with facts about attachment theory and the kidnapping of children. But, just for this one moment, if I were to put those 2 other hats that I wear gently to the side for a minute, I would be forced to stay with the fact that it is equally true that I was held and taken care of.  I was in fact not afraid until a Disney World employee said to me in so many words: "Little girl, you are lost. We must go in search of your parents." It was said as an absolute statement, as truth. And I, as a 10 year old, accepted it as truth. At which point panic set in. A feeling I had not experienced until that very moment when someone told me the facts of my  experience, not the other way around. At that point I was brought back to the concreteness of the world and I thought, just as I do now with god, "mom-dad, where are you?"

Contemplating god's presence reminds me of Emerson's writing about what he called "The Over-Soul."

Sometime in my late 20's I began to read the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I don't even remember how I initially got turned on to him because it was before I began to go to Unitarian Universalists Churches (where you also tend to get a lot of Emerson, which I must say, I love), but I remember one of the first things I read was about The Over-Soul.

Now, I must say here that Emerson's writing can be thick. And reading it, I often feel thick, and you may too. But that is okay.  We are not aiming for perfection or an "A" in our spiritual seeking. I try to keep that in mind.  I just try to read and muddle and muse.  Take the bits and pieces that resonate in any which way and leave the rest for another read somewhere down the line. Having said that, here goes Emerson:

"The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul, within which every man's [and woman's] particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart."

"That common heart..." Beautiful.

Emerson writes much more about the Over-soul which maybe we'll discuss at another time. But for now, let's try to notice, and remember to notice, moments of god's presence where we are "contained." Not just when it's easy though when the sun is full and shining bright in the sky. On the endlessly cloudy days too. When our sun that is our lifeline is not visible to the eye. That is the challenge.