The longer I walk this path of active spiritual practice during my time as a working mother of 2, the more I realize the key to not giving up on the whole thing is flexible discipline. It requires acceptance from deep within of the paradox that the more flexible I am in my spiritual practices the better, and the more disciplined I am in my spiritual practices, the better. The trick though, or maybe the miracle, is balancing the two.
I remember the first time this paradox was brought to my attention. It was 2004, and I had just bought my first copy of Jon Kabat Zinn's now famous book on mindfulness Wherever You Go, There You Are. This book is jam packed with 1-2 page chapters on all things useful for getting a beginners understanding of mindfulness. But in the very back of the book, 2 of the last four chapters are titled: Parenting as Practice and Parenting Two. Now when I first read this book I was still 5 years away from having my first child, and honestly these chapters didn't make a whole lot of sense to me then. However, I know a seed was planted at that time, because many years later, I remembered those little chapters tucked away at the back of the book on spiritual practice while in the throes of parenting, and I went back to them.
Those two little chapters were expanded upon in Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting, a book Jon Kabat Zinn wrote with his wife Myla. One story from this book that stays with me is when they are talking about the need to roll from one mindfulness practice to the next within the context of working parenting. As in, right now I am engaging in mindful, contemplative writing while my 17-month old naps, but she may wake up in about 60 seconds, which would then call for me shift into the mindfulness practice of holding-baby-while-walking-up-and-down-my-hallway.
It's hard sometimes though to make the shift. For me it is reminiscent of learning to drive standard. It was 1994. I was sixteen years-old practicing in the parking lot of my high school in a Chevy Astro Van. When I think back on those trial runs I can vividly remember all of the stalling and grinding and huge amounts of frustration when I tried to shift from first to second gear. But as with most things, practice was the primary solution. I think the seamless shift between formal spiritual practice and day to day life as a working parent is probably no different.
There are other obstacles and possible solutions to make this shift less painful though.
A biggie that makes it difficult for me is attachment. Attachment to what I am doing. Attachment to my time. Attachment to my objective. Attachment to space with just my own body. Attachment to things unfolding in my preferred timeframe. I want, what I want, when I want it. The central chorus of the song of Ego, right?
I think that is okay though. I think that is human, how we're made.
So the question is not: how do I get rid of attachment? As if it were something bad or wrong that needed to be thrown out with the trash. The question is: how do I work with this? I know I want to and am committed to regular mindfulness meditation practice, yoga, mindful eating, spiritual reading and writing, and times of noble silence. But all of these practices are being inter-woven into a life also filled with roles and responsibilities of motherhood, marriage and a professional life. So how are we to be disciplined in our practices while allowing for the flexibility of day to day life?
A phrase that helps me is from James Finley's book Christian Meditation, and it is called "a monastery without walls." To give you some context, James Finley introduces himself in the book as a former Trappist monk turned clinical psychologist with 2 daughters who had studied closely with the now very famous Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton. He says in his book about bringing spiritual practices into his life and lifestyle outside of the Kentucky monastery that he had to: "once again discover that secret passageway into the interior landscape of oneness with God that I first learned to enter in the monastery. The unbroken continuity between monastic life and meditation practice led me to realize that meditation is a monastery without walls."
When I first read that phrase I remember thinking "YYYYeeeessss." Those 4 words (a monastery without walls) resonated so deeply with me in a way that I had not yet been able to put words on. It was like taking in a big breath of fresh clean air into my congested lungs. And when I am feeling lost and unbalanced in my life as a spiritual seeker who wears all the different hats of mom, wife, professional, etc, I try to take in another of those deep breaths as a way to remember all of this "stuff" of life is grist for the mill.
Take the last 4 weeks for instance. In the last month I have had the stomach flu go through my house I don't know how many times. My son has gotten sick 3 times. My husband twice. My daughter twice. Me, once. It is no sooner that I have washed all the bedding and scrubbed down all the surfaces of every counter top and door knob, that someone else is throwing up again. When I told my son's pediatrician this fact on Friday, he just calmly smiled (as he always does which is why we love him) and said in the most annoyingly unalarmed way, "yeah, it's going around..." I wanted to punch him, how's that for serene?!
I didn't of course. And the pediatrician's decision not to join my pity party was probably the best thing for me because god knows (literally), pity parties never help me, or anyone else that I can see.
But there are some other things that do help. Another that I like to use is the concept of bells. In mindfulness practice it can be helpful to think of events of the day (including the most mundane) as a bell to remind you to wake up to the moment. So imagine yourself going through your day on autopilot, and all of the sudden a sight, sound, smell, touch, taste catches your attention in such a way that the autopilot switch is shut off, and it's like you are back from that kind of distant place you go to when you are not living your life in full whole hearted mindful attention.
This one I really like because you can do it in kind of a formal way or informal way. For example, when my husband and I took a trip to Rome, Italy we got a hotel room that happened to have a church right next door that had church bells that rang every 30 minutes. So in this case, quite literally, we could have a bell ring to bring us back to the hear and now like clock work. At home, it could be things like each time the hour strikes- 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, wake up. Kind of like a GPS, it can be a time to locate yourself- where am I? What am I doing? Who am I with? What am I thinking? Feeling? Sensing? Am I fully present?
The idea of the mindful bell can be informal too, especially during times that mindful practice is more difficult for you. Like for me, for some reason the transition time between work and home in the evening has always been difficult for me. I think it is a combination of being all filled up with the stories of my patients who I saw that day at the hospital, general fatigue in my body as the day is drawing to a close, and my over-all distaste for driving in thick traffic.
But this one day I'll never forget. It had been a particularly challenging day at work, and I was definitely operating from auto-pilot. I was knee-deep in a nasty combination of misery, irritation and self-pity, and I was sitting in a parking lot of traffic. But then, I turn my head to the left to see the car next to me, and what do I see but a dancing pug (that cute little dog with the smushed up face) in the window of the car next to me. I burst out laughing and smiled to the passenger in the car next to me who was providing this dancing dog show amidst wall to wall traffic. And just like that, the bell rang, auto pilot was turned off, and I was awake again.
I think the trick of flexible discipline in a life-long spiritual journey is to keep these tools like nonattachment, meaningful phrases like "monastery without walls," and formal and informal mindfulness bells in our toolbelt throughout the day so that when we need to shift gears to mindfully-walking-up-and-down-the-hallway-holding-baby, we can do it more effortlessly.
What helps you hold the paradox of flexible discipline?
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