Becoming a Mystic in Motherhood

"Leave room for yourself." I read this recently. It was the advice of a 92 year-old woman to her 50 something year-old mentee.  Both women writers. Both women not your typical soccer moms, whatever that is.  I love the wisdom composed here. 

I think the message we get as mothers is there are only two poles where we can locate ourselves at any given time: good or bad.  As in: am I being a "good" mother or a "bad" mother. Because, it must be one or the other. But whoever came up with that duality was, I swear, not a mother. We are far more complex than that simplistic categorization allows for.  What's more, I resent the inherent set-up here, where we must face off with each other, mother to mother. What side of the line are you on? If I'm on good, you must be on bad. If I'm on bad, you must be on good.  All this judgment. All this criticism of self and other.

But the "leave room for yourself" suggestion feels outside this narrow box constructed above.

Tomorrow I go back to work at the hospital. I've been off work for 9  consecutive days. Spending time with my children. Sleeping. Drinking coffee more slowly. Slowing down to a manageable pace. In fact, I don't think I said "hurry up" to my 5 year-old even once this past week. It was more like, "take your time, we're not in a rush." And that included getting him to the bus stop for 7:45 a.m.  This past week it actually felt like I was doing one full-time job: parenting.  Tomorrow, I go back to doing two full-time jobs: parenting and employment.

When I was on maternity leave I remember watching a YouTube video of Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love.  At that time I was breast feeding 8-10 times a day and was growing desperate to fill my brain with something concrete because it felt like it was getting fudgy.  In the video Ms. Gilbert was talking to an audience about an article she had read by self-help writer Martha Beck.  According to Ms. Gilbert, Ms. Beck broke down modern American women into 4 categories: 1.) those who put their career first and are conflicted about it; 2.) those who put their children first and are conflicted about it; 3.) those who put their career and children first and are really conflicted about it; and lastly: 4.) the mystics.

As I return to work tomorrow after my first stretch of time off since my maternity leave last winter for my now one year-old daughter, I can see quite clearly how squarely I had been sitting in the #3 category.  Trying so hard. Too hard.  Forcing. Pushing. And truly no one (my children nor I) genuinely benefitting from all the efforting (a word I recently learned and am loving!).

I think the only way for me to move from category #3 of Really Conflicted to category #4 of Mystic would be to "leave room for myself." It will not be as much room as I would like.  It never is.  But something.  Each day.  Time I do not ask permission for or offer appreciation for. A time I set aside and use however I see fit that particularly day.  Maybe I choose to go  to sleep early because I am just falling over exhausted.  Maybe I choose to watch back-to-back episodes of Grey's Anatomy.  Maybe I choose to read, pray, write, meditate, do yoga, write an email to a friend. Whatever moves me.  And I will not judge myself as good or bad as a result. I will instead compassionately say to myself: what do you need today?  I will not be compartmentalizing myself into a "good mother" or "bad mother" category.  I will just be taking a moment to remember myself.  Saying: "Oh there you are, you're there."

To all the working mothers out there: this week, let go of the internal conflict, and just allow.  And if you can, leave some room, each day, for yourself.

Micro Moments of Mysticism

I know I should be writing about some variation of the gratitude theme, but that is just not what is inside of me. Not because I'm not filled with gratitude, I am. I have so many blessings in my life that when I sit down to reflect on each, I am easily moved to tears thinking, "how could I be so lucky?"

But gratitude is easy stuff for me, spiritually speaking.  It is why I choose to host the Thanksgiving holiday in my family. Aside from the fact that my husband ended up working 26 straight hours till 10 a.m. Thanksgiving morning which caused some stress for us, I generally just really enjoy all the preparations involved with the holiday. I take off the full week from work so that I can take several days to prepare the house and the food and the decorations. Making my dinner a symbolic gesture of the gratitude I carry with me throughout the year.

But in the past few weeks I've felt in a bit of a spiritual slump. Nothing I can specifically put my finger on per se as the causal factor, more a feeling.  I did have my last Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction class at the beginning of November, and sometimes there can be a feeling of letdown when a transforming experience comes to an end.  My infant daughter also began to wake up more often during the night and began to crawl and try to stand  up during the day, which has added an exhaustion factor which I wrote about in my last post. I'm not convinced though that these are the culprits of my spiritual lull. 

I think there could be a little bit of the proverbial what came first? The chicken or the egg in this situation.  I feel uninspired and fatigued, and therefore I meditate, pray, write, read and go to church less often.  And when I meditate, pray, write, read and go to church less often, I feel uninspired and fatigued.  Which came first though? Does it matter?

I have had some moments though. You know those moments in which it feels like time is standing still? Where you experience this heightened sense of, well, everything. When you look around you and for just those few seconds everything feels absolutely perfect just as it is.  Not because it is perfect, meaning: neat, tidy, in place. But because you experience this knowing that all is well.  For me, those are experiences of god. Are they the same for you?

I heard a rabbi named Lawrence Kushner speak on my favorite radio show "On Being" (apparently the only consistency in my life at this time...) about his definition of mysticism in terms of the Jewish mystical tradition Kabbalah, and he referred to these micro-moments of connection to god. I think he compared them to bite-size candy. Not a parting of the Red Sea.  Not a resurrection. A moment.  A moment so outwardly ordinary that an onlooker would not even  necessarily be able to notice the slight shift inside of you or me as the warmth washes over.

For me, in the last 2 days, these splendid moments have happened twice. Once while I was washing the wine glasses for my Thanksgiving table, and the second as I was holding my daughter in my arms as she fell off to sleep.  Now, on any other day I could be totally frazzled and overwhelmed with such everyday activities.  Or equally possible I could be completely bored with both, and escaping the minutia of such tasks by spinning off into the past or the future in my mind.  But for me, this is where grace comes in.  Because in each of those moments where I felt held and utterly still, I was making absolutely no effort whatsoever.  I was not trying or forcing, as I do in almost every other area of my life, it just happened. 

And you know what? I'll take it. Especially during these times of spiritual valleys, I will seize any and all experiences that god finds me to say hello, rather than the other way around.  And I will hold those moments in my heart for safe keeping.

All or nothing spiritual practice

Pure exhaustion. That's where I am. Like I could just close my eyes and sleep for 24 hours straight. A combination of difficult patients, a baby who won't sleep, a kindergartener with a lot of emotional needs, a house to clean, and a husband who it seems I just have enough time to say hello to and get the kid update. And that's it. All this has led me to totally fall off the wagon of spiritual practices, including this blog.

This is not to say I don't see how everything I just listed could be viewed as a spiritual practice in itself, it could. And some of the time I do. But I'm talking about the more obvious and direct spiritual practices like prayer, yoga, meditation, going to church, lectio divina, writing. Practices that I both enjoy and find highly effective for keeping me sane and grounded. But when do you just stop everything you are doing and catch up on sleep?

I only ask because I actually fell asleep during a church service two weeks ago. Not on purpose of course. It just happened. One minute I was listening to really beautiful music (because it was music Sunday at my UU church) and the next minute the minister was asking us to rise to recite our benediction.

Snoozing in church, and not over boredom, led me to reevaluate whether I'm trying to do too much? And since the answer to that question is a reverberating "yes," what do I do about it?

Well, I could cut. Cut what I consider to be nonessentials.  But when I look at the list, I notice everything "nonessential" is what nourishes me. Ever the caretaker, I kept the ways I nourish others-whether it be literally with my children or figuratively with my job as a psychotherapist. But why do I put my own nourishment on the chopping block? Because I will tell you, I have no interest in martyrdom.

I think my inclination to turn away from myself in times of stress is a combination of habit perpetuated by two thinking patterns: all or nothing thinking and shoulds.  To be sure, a more balanced approach to stress would be to cut back instead of cut out, and do it with some self-compassion and kindness.

I once heard a definition of stress as described by Richard Lazarus as: "a particular relationship between a person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding his/her well-being." I like this definition of stress because it takes the importance of perception into the equation.  I have a hard time making allowance for perception in regards to stress, at least for myself. The over-achiever that I am, I say to myself "I should be able to do this, that and the other."  Even when my body is literally falling asleep on me.

To state the obvious, this is not a balanced, healthy approach to anything, let alone making time for spiritual practices. In fact, the word "should" does not even belong here, and I would like to substitute "should" with "valid."

A couple months ago I had an experience of losing two people in my life to cancer within a week, and someone said to me afterward: "everything is valid."  She was referring to my response to the deaths, meaning there is no right or wrong in grief. After she said it, it occurred to me that the phrase "everything is valid" was so contradictory to my own judgment of how I perceive experience including things like meditation and yoga. While this individual was suggesting valid, I was perpetrating the shoulds, and that difference stopped me right in my tracks.

So what if I were to let go of the shoulds with my spiritual practices when I'm exhausted after a sleepless night with my daughter or a challenging day with a suicidal patient? What if I were to let go of my all or nothing thinking playing itself out in my spiritual practices where I do meditation, yoga, spiritual reading and writing for 45-60 minutes a day several days a week or I do absolutely nothing at all and veg in front of the tv? What if I were to say to myself, "everything is valid?"

That black and white, either/ or response to stress is one choice. Or, I could compassionately, radically accept that though I am not able to engage in contemplative practice as I used to, either because I'm falling asleep or I'm strapped for time, I do not have to stop everything.
I could surrender to reality with willingness by letting go of how things "should" be and instead embrace reality as it is.

Now, when I'm less fatigued and not counting every precious minute of sleep, I may go back to my old routine because I enjoyed it and it worked for me.  But for now (one of my favorite expressions) I will see what I can do and let go of the rest.

What "should" can you let go of today? Is an all or nothing mindset interfering with your spiritual practice?

Transcending Emotions in Meditation

Have you ever watched one emotion transform into another inside of you? It is a little bit like trying to watch the movement of the sun as it sets at dusk. Or watching the pot of water on your stove turn to steam when it boils. We know intellectually what will happen. We see evidence of the facts of what is happening over the course of minutes. But in the actual moment itself the transformation seems illusive, mysterious and even magical.

We know this because each evening when it is clear, somewhere in the world someone is gazing out at the horizon as the sun goes down, and is saying nearly out loud with a sigh, "wow!" even though the sun does this every single night.

Well, our emotions do too. Multiple times a day actually our emotions will set on the horizon. And I have become more aware of those magical moments through the practice of meditation.

Not because I necessarily try to alter my emotions in any way in meditation. In fact it is the opposite, I try to just observe my feelings and let them be- which is of course very hard, especially with the painful emotions. But I've noticed, some feeling states evolve on their own when you just let them be. And for me, there is a certain relief to that. Just like external nature, just like the water boiling and the sun setting, my internal world will also transform on its own, even if I can't quite see it with my own naked eye.

I remember the first time I noticed this transcendent experience. I was sitting in meditation and a medium-sized wave of sadness came over me. Not totally uncommon, but in this case had to do specifically with missing the dear friends I had just visited. Goodbyes have always been tough for me, and the feelings that tend to accompany them like sadness, but also loss, loneliness and sometimes fear. In the past I have coped with these emerging feelings following a goodbye by distracting myself. Keeping busy. Moving on to the next thing. Which is fine- there is nothing inherently wrong with that approach- sometimes distraction may be exactly what we need to do.  But for me, I realized when I do distract from the painful emotions, I may be missing the opportunity to watch, for example, sadness evolve into a deep feeling of love as it did in meditation after visiting my friends.

I was reminded of this exquisite fruit of meditation recently when I re-listened to a radio interview from my favorite podcast "On Being" with Krista Tippett. She was talking with a woman named Joanna Macy who is, among other things, an environmental activist.

Ms. Macy described how she watches grief transform into love in respect to the catastrophic damage we humans perpetrate against the earth. She suggested that sometimes the grief can be so intense when we watch news about an oil spill or a nuclear explosion that we want to turn our attention away because it is too much, overwhelming. But, if we choose not to turn away, if we stay with the grief, over time, we will notice a transcendence occur where grief will evolve into love. Ms. Macy used the analogy of a parent who chooses to not turn away from their child who has leukemia. Though it would be understandable for the parent to react to their feelings of loss and sadness with avoidance, they don't. Instead, the parent moves toward their child in a loving manner.

I love this idea of transformation as a possibility if you stick with something, and in the case of meditation, you are sticking with yourself. But what I love more is the brief instruction to just be with the difficult emotion. That's it. The rest will take care of itself if "I" don't get in the way. So simple. So elegant. So difficult to practice for a do-er like me.

I will try though. Because the gifts to be received like compassion, love and forgiveness are too great to miss out on.

What about you? Can you try to stay with your difficult emotion long enough today to watch it transform into something else?

Balancing Family & the Spiritual Life

Tonight is my last Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction class. The eight weeks of Monday night meditation learning and practice with the teacher, Kate, and my group of 40 other travelers is coming to a close. And I'm sad.  However, my five year old son is not-so-sad.

This week he asked me while we were driving in the car to daycare, "how many more classes do you have?"  I answered, "just one more," at which time he threw a fist in the air and cheered a long drawn out "Yessss!"  At which point my heart began to ache.

Making choices about how to spend our precious time on earth is always challenging, and working mom's are particularly aware of this. But what do you do when awareness is more like conflictedness?

Do I spend more time playing with my kids or building a career to financially support my kids? Do I nurture my spiritual life on a Sunday morning or clean the bathrooms? Do I spend money and time on a class to cultivate my contemplative life or do I spend my time and money on guitar lessons for my son?

Of course I'm saying either/or and it is not about either/or, it is about balance. But in the process of balancing the needs of my whole person (which includes being a mother, wife, psychotherapist, spiritual seeker, friend, aunt, daughter, sister, concerned citizen) I inevitably will be making choices everyday that leave one thing in and another out.  If I do this today, then I'm not doing that.

When my son was just born I read a book called "Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting." It was co- written by Mindfulness Expert Jon Kabat-Zinn and his wife Myla. I read it in a moment in time when I was coming to some reality acceptance as a working mom that I will be literally unable to do everything I would like to or that I need to, and unquestionably, everything will not be done perfectly. For veteran working moms out there, you will know I am stating the obvious. But for me, as a recovering perfectionist, this realization actually came down early in my parenting life as one of the harder lessons to learn. And unfortunately, it has also been a lesson that I've had to relearn several times over because as I've said before, my acceptance curve is apparently very slow and not limited to the work-parenting life balance because I equally struggle with the family-spiritual life balance too.

Recently, I read an article written just after the publication of that very book in which Mr. And Mrs. Kabat-Zinn share more nuggets of wisdom about this whole balancing act of mindful parenting that they went through in much more detail in their book. In the article Mr. Kabat-Zinn said: "I believe that spiritual practice is about life, not about retreat from life...The real meditative practice is to open up to the full range of what happens in life. And parenting is a fantastic arena for doing that kind of spiritual training."

Later in the article, Jon Kabat-Zinn goes further to suggest we embrace parenting moments as opportunities for mindful practice. He says "to look at your children as live-in Zen masters who can put their finger on places where you're resistant, or thinking narrowly, in ways no one else can. You can either lose your mind and your authenticity in the process of reacting to all that stuff, or you can use it as the perfect opportunity to grow..."  I couldn't agree more.

But for me, getting those moments (whether they be a day, an hour, a moment, an afternoon) to get a mindful meditation booster shot without the kiddos around is what helps me through those advanced placement parenting moments. Can't it be both? A time for spiritual practice in the context of parenting moments like getting a shoe onto a toddler's foot and a time for complete solitude on top of a local mountaintop quietly gazing out at the foliage?

As I said, I don't think it is either/or, it is both/and. I can choose to engage in my day to day parenting as a spiritual practice, and I can engage in the very sanghas and retreats and morning meditation practices that make the former possible.  So in the end, maybe I don't do everything in one day? So maybe I don't do everything perfectly? Parenting or spiritual practice. What I will aim for is an intention to have an over-all balance. I won't win every game, but I will shoot for a winning season.

The Kabat-Zinn's end this article with a list of 12 tips for Mindful Parenting that are all in their book. I will leave you with #8:

"Learn to live with tension without losing your own balance. Practice moving into any moment, however difficult, without trying to change anything and without having to have a particular outcome occur. See what is 'workable' if you are willing to trust your intuition and best instincts."

I hope these words are helpful to all of you out there who also identify as seekers who try to embody your spiritual life in both your work and parenting. If you do, I'd love to hear from you.

Emerging Equanimity

They say practices like meditation, yoga and prayer, when practiced regularly, can lead to greater feelings of trust, compassion, forgiveness, and kindness. Hearing this good news has always been a motivating factor to help me keep on keeping on in this spiritual journey- especially in moments of disillusionment or frustration. But I can honestly say, I hadn't yet experienced these delicious fruits of my labor in any sort of really noticeable way yet...Until recently, in the form of an emerging equanimity.

Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield said in his blog on September 23, 2014 that "Equanimity combines an understanding mind together with a compassionate heart."  He then describes a meditation practice that brings the intention of equanimity to the forefront of consciousness.

I think of equanimity as an attitude I try to cultivate and hold toward my day to day living that is responsive, not reactive. It is a way of attending to each situation in front of me with a sense of ease and confidence that everything will be okay even if I know not how.   Jack Kornfield equates equanimity as an internal "balance" in this same blog post. He says "we can feel this possibility of balance in our hearts in the midst of life when we recognize that life is not in our control."

This sense of balance Mr. Kornfield describes is what I've seen lately as a growing seed inside of me.

Take yesterday morning for example.

The day started early (like 3:30 a.m. early) because my daughter has been having so much trouble sleeping. A combination of teething and not liking the transition from the cozy curved shape of the bassinet to the flatness of her crib mattress. So I've been noticeably (to myself but to others too I'm sure) more irritable. Because the baby was up, I had to forego my morning meditation and yoga practice. Sometimes she will sit on the floor next to me and just watch me move from one yoga posture to another, but not yesterday. She was so tired and cranky herself, that a good snuggle was all she wanted.

When my husband got up a couple hours later he then told me our dog, who's an elderly yellow lab, had stained our gorgeous down pillows with blood because one of his many warts had opened up before he had laid down on the pillows which had fallen to the floor in the night.

With all of this commotion going on--still before the sunrise--my 5 year old son woke up early and wanted to be held. At which time the dog was barking to go out and have his breakfast, the cats were meowing for there breakfast, and my one-cup-of-
coffee-a-day-rule was quickly not seeming to be enough.

But...here comes the but...I didn't lose it. I didn't freak out. I don't mean out loud, I have never really been a person with outbursts. However, I am definitely capable of a good in-burst. It didn't happen though. I felt emotions. Frustration. Irritation. Disappointment. But the feelings weren't overwhelming. And I didn't hang on to them either. When the moment passed, it passed. Throughout the rest of the day I felt physically tired at times from lack of sleep, but I wasn't re-hashing the morning's events in my mind as had been my habit in the past. In other words, I was able to recalibrate to my center fairly easily because I never really tipped the scales of emotions to begin with. Which, to me, is the definition of equanimity.

I worry sometimes though about being able to hold onto equanimity. Like if I don't pay really close attention, equanimity will just slip through my hands. Therefore I must cling super tight to it.

Okay, are you laughing at me?! I am laughing at me. Clinging to equanimity is like holding on to a horse for dear life while riding so you don't fall off. I should know, I had a bad fall from a horse when I was 12 years old. The rigidness of the body that happens when you cling actually makes it more likely you will fall off- you know the ol' self fulfilling prophecy. So, the lesson here is no clinging to equanimity out of fear.

Then what do I turn to? Faith and trust.

Faith and trust are the seeds of equanimity that are always inside of me, always were in me, and will always be in me- no matter what. But if I want more than just seeds, if I want to grow an elegant peony, then I must water the seeds of equanimity. I must fertilize them and put them out in the sunshine by practicing meditation, prayer and yoga. I must cut back the weeds that may interfere with the growth of the flower- weeds like fear and worry.

A couple months ago I posted about a book called "First Light" by Sue Monk Kidd. It is a collection of her early spiritual writing. In it she tells the story of seeds that were thousands of years old found in the pyramids of Egypt. She writes that these ancient seeds sprouted after being planted. Ms. Kidd then concluded "seeds, I learned, no matter how old, are alive. Dormant but still alive. When the right conditions come along-the right amount of warmth or soil or moisture- they wake up and bloom."

I love that metaphor for emerging equanimity.  It helps me stay in faith and trust rather than fear and worry. That will allow me to let nature take care of the rest and equanimity will slowly blossom on its own.

What seeds are you nurturing inside of you today? What conditions or spiritual practices would help your seeds grow?

More Notes from a Meditation Retreat

One week ago my Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction teacher Kate started our full day meditation retreat by sharing aloud the following nuggets of wisdom to help us through our day of contemplative silence. I found them to be very helpful- during the retreat and over the course of the week as well doing day to day things like driving in thick traffic, chasing after a now crawling baby, and taking care of a sick cat. Perhaps you may find them helpful too.

Don't' believe everything you think.

A kind heart is the antidote to an unkind mind.

If we treated our friends the way we sometimes treat ourselves, we wouldn't have any friends.

Qualities of being--like kindness and happiness--can be cultivated.

What we practice, we will get better at. What we get better at, will become habit.

Ask yourself: am I watering the seeds of suffering by resisting this moment?

And, last but not least:

When the moment is over, it's over. Let it go.

The teacher also read poetry intermittently over the course of the retreat during transition periods between meditation practices. Two of the poems I've included below.

"Allow"
By Danna Faulds

There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado. Dam a
stream and it will create a new channel.  Resist, and the tide
will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry
you to higher ground. The only
safety lies in letting it all in-
the wild and the weak; fears,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes.

This next one is an oldie but a goodie. It is a poem I read to my patients when we are talking about emotions. But I have to say, I loved switching back into the listener role when the retreat teacher read it aloud to us. I was able to internalize the meaning of the words in a deeper way.

"The Guest House"
By Jelalludin Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Have a peaceful week everyone. You are in my thoughts.