Counting Our Blessings

On my commute to work this morning I listened to a Dharma Talk by Buddhist teacher and author Sharon Salzberg taken from YouTube.  I do this when I need a sermon on the run to get myself back in alignment before I reach the hospital where I work.

In it she talked about the idea of meditation practice being a vehicle to experiment with choosing a new response to life situations that is different (not better) than whatever our usual habitual or automatic responses may be. Or, to see if our conclusions or interpretations about a life situation are more habitual versus evidence based. 

I found this to be an intriguing idea, especially in light of my historical tendency to get caught in a spider web of negative thinking that I recently described in my last blog post “The Thought factory.”

Because I have this vulnerability of going down the rabbit hole of negativity, for me to start to see my meditation practice as an  experiment would at first require a structured practice.  For when I really get hooked on a thought in meditation, I can sometimes even forget what I intended to do there on the cushion.  Sometimes during meditation the old habit to fixate on the negative--like the one black drop of ink in an otherwise clear beaker--becomes so powerful that I just get pulled away without even noticing it.  Consequently, it would be useful to have a practice to help me move my eyes away from that one drop of ink. Not to dismiss, deny, or change it.   Just to expand my view of all reality to see if there is anything else that might be there too- not instead of, alongside.

One such practice that has helped me, and might you as well, is Counting my Blessings.

I once heard Krista Tippett, host of the NPR radio show “On Being,” say in an interview that there is a necessity for us to “train our eyes” to not just see through the filters of our own experience or particular vantage point, but to see the larger whole, including the blind spots that we usually miss if we are not making an effort to look there.

When we are on automatic pilot, our thought patterns tend to be a few selective neuropathways that are like a wide, over-used hiking path in the woods.  Paths we can walk down blindfolded.  But in doing so, we a.) don’t take a chance by walking down another unknown path (which is what Sharon Salzberg was referring to), b.) continue to reinforce those same thought patterns even more (like now we are pouring concrete on the hiking path to make them fully paved paths in the woods), and c.) we potentially miss beauty and awe that is right in front of our noses (a.k.a. our blessings).

You may be wondering if all this talk about blessings is really a blog about gratitude.  But I’d disagree. I think gratitude and blessings are like kissing cousins, very similar, but still undoubtedly distinct.

The word “blessing” is an interesting word because it is both a noun and a verb—I  love words like that—and it has multiple definitions.  Here, I’m using the word “blessing” as defined as: a favor or gift bestowed by God, thereby bringing happiness (borrowed words). The word “gratitude” on the other hand, is more of a thankfulness or appreciation-very similar but not quite the same as blessing. I feel like blessings are something I am the beneficiary of, and gratitude is something that I self-generate. Blessings feel dynamic with a larger other (god) and gratitude feels grounded in the self.

I recently used this practice of Counting my Blessings a couple of months ago when a colleague where I work lost her 21 year-old niece to a tragic accident.  I don’t know this particular colleague all that well, but the news of her loss left me speechless.  Then, I found my mind shifting to worry about the health and well-being of my own 4 nieces and nephews. Followed by what seemed to be a greater sensitivity to the stories of hardships of all others around me.  Like the patient who had her car repossessed, the kindergarten classmate of my son’s who’s 32 year-old father just inexplicably died last month, and the family member who is having her house foreclosed.

See, this is how my mind can go.  It’s like I put on a pair of sunglasses with a particular tint of negative that causes my perspective to become unbalanced and skewed.

I find meditation helps with this though.  As do spiritual practices that help us to “train our eyes” to see a more balanced perspective of reality; the good, the bad and the ugly, versus just the bad and the ugly. Because the goal is not to be Haley Mills in Disney’s 1960 movie Pollyanna, the goal is to enter reality in its fullness, and there is goodness in reality.  It sounds funny, but sometimes we need a concrete spiritual practice to help us to acknowledge the goodness, to help us see the blessings.

I think of this practice as somewhat like the counting done on each and every episode of Sesame Street by The Count himself. This may be a stretch for some of you, but currently I have a 20 month old baby, and therefore watch a fair amount of PBS Kids Network these days, but some spiritual practices are most helpful when kept simple and uncomplicated.  That way we can pick them up in difficult (or desperate) moments and, in this case, begin to simply count:

1.): One, 23 year-old precocious and funny-as-hell niece,

2.): One, 16 year-old compassionate and creative niece,

3.) One, 22 year-old generous and sensitive nephew,

4.) One, 12 year-old thoughtful and playful nephew,

5.) Two beautiful and loving children,

6.) Seven smart, interesting and loyal girlfriends,

7.) One full-time job,

8.) One committed and love-you-even-at-my-worst husband,

9.) One cozy and safe house,

10.) Two great camping trips this summer,

11.) Two working vehicles,

12.) Two functional legs to carry me around all day,

13.) Two eyes, Two ears, Two hands, and One mouth to soak in the earth through all my senses…

Obviously I could keep going. You could too. And from this practice, an enormous sense of gratitude can flow forth from the recognition of our blessings.  

Of course this practice cannot be fabricated in any way to be useful. Authenticity is essential. It is also a must to avoid self-judging or shaming yourself into this practice. As in:  “I want to be more moral, more ethical,” or in my case, less negative, what have you.  As I’ve said before, I do not believe this strategy to be at all helpful for spiritual growth or awakening, and in my experience often actually leads me back to my same problematic habitual thought patterns that I’m working to let go of.

It probably should be noted here too, that the reverse is also true.  If we are to truly follow Sharon Salzberg’s directions to a T and see our meditation practice, on and off the cushion, as an experiment of expanding awareness by putting down our habitual filters, then while we may train our eyes to be more inclusive of the blessings in our world (the good), we also may train our eyes to see more of the injustices in our world (the bad and the ugly).  To choose to no longer turn a blind eye to inequality and wrong-doing in our world.

A recent example of this in the entertainment industry is the actor Bill Cosby. Growing up as a child in the 1980’s I always wanted to be a member of the Cosby family on the popular television sitcom. I loved how the parents, children and grandparents would always play tricks and games on each other and I loved the idea of a big family compared to my small nuclear family.  But then, fast forward 20 years later and we receive the news that over a dozen women have come forward to say that Bill Cosby himself drugged these women and sexually assaulted them.  When we stop just viewing this one actor, this one sitcom, in one narrow viewpoint, we begin to see a fuller, and in this case uglier, perspective.

I’ve said before, spiritual awakening is not for the faint hearted.  Training our eyes to either count our blessings or acknowledge the injustices in our lives and in our world can be very heavy lifting.  Which is why it is essential that we keep engaging in regular practices to build up our muscles so that we don’t get injured.

How do you experiment with broadening your awareness to be more inclusive? On and off the cushion?

The Thought Factory

In the last four years my meditation practice has taught me about the extent to which my mind is like a thought factory.  My mind works day and night to churn out as many thoughts as it possibly can in one day.  It works over-time. It works nights and weekends to think, think, think which has shown me the truth of the quotation by the 14^th Century Persian Mystic and Poet Hafiz: “You yourself are your own obstacle, rise above yourself.”

I imagine this thought factory as a Dr. Seuss-like book similar to The Lorax where inside the factory sits a little funny man, I’ll call him Roy, who just cranks out thought after thought after thought from a whole menu of thought possibilities.  These would be a few of his top-selling hits: worry thoughts, bizarre thoughts, concrete thoughts, tangential thoughts, circumstantial thoughts, and linear thoughts.  

Roy would also offer a whole line of other products from the thought factory that help us accessorize and specialize our thoughts like: 

-Worrying 

-Problem solving

-Obsessing

-Fixating

-Ruminating

-Racing

-Contemplating

-Pondering

-Daydreaming

-Remembering

-Scrutinizing

-Analyzing

-Criticizing

-Judging

-Devaluing

-Idealizing

-Over-generalizing

-Debating

-Considering

-Creating

-Comparing

-Witnessing

-Minimizing

-Catastrophizing,

-Viewing, 

and (the two I get duped into buying more frequently than I’d like to admit)

-Wallowing &  Dwelling.

It’s like Roy never got the memo from Buddhist teacher and author Jack Kornfield where it is written in his book The Wise Heart that “thoughts are often one-sided and untrue. Learn to be mindful of thought instead of being lost in it.” 

For Roy, the goal is just more, more, more because he is a total work-a-holic.  He is like the guy who puts in an 80 hour work week and never takes a vacation, and though he’s ancient, he refuses to retire.  Roy won’t even sit down for a 10 minute coffee break at 9 a.m. because all he does, night and day, day and night, is produce thoughts.

Though, I feel a need to say here, despite my trash-talking of Roy, I do abide by these words by Author, Scientist and Mindfulness teach Jon Kabat-Zinn: “There is nothing wrong with thinking. So much that is beautiful comes out of thinking and out of our emotions. But if our thinking is not balanced with awareness, we can end up deluded, perpetually lost in thought, and out of our minds just when we need them the most.”

Like in the children’s book The Lorax, I believe the lesson is not to eliminate thinking all together. The lesson is to use our limited mental resources more wisely; which was my exact intention when I began a meditation practice.

Four years ago this month I started a practice designed in part to help me balance the art and practice of taking a hold of my mind.  And I must tell you, not surprisingly, Roy is completely bewildered and flustered with this wrench thrown into the once well-oiled wheels of his factory which was my habitual and automatic thought process. 

So much so, that he has had to up his game. Once I developed enough skill to be able to stop a thought mid- track, just like an Amtrak train from New Haven to New York stopping suddenly in Greenwich, Roy pulled out his slick, used-car-salesman-techniques to entice me back into thinking.  He would persuasively say: “That problem is just terrible.  I bet if you just keep thinking about it, you will be able to solve it.” “You could be missing something very important...” “ You might forget that thought if you let it go!” Or, if nothing else works, he might even stroke my ego a bit: “That thought is brilliant! Keep thinking about it. No one on earth has ever had a thought like that.” And so on.

This extra challenge in meditation has led me to need to up my game as well; where sometimes, my usual technique, of labeling a thought as just a thought and coming back to the breath, is not enough. Sometimes Roy can catch me with his savvy ways , and I  find myself consumed and preoccupied, particularly with negativity.  Like a fly in a spider web, I can get all caught up in negativity and have trouble finding my way out.

This obstacle in my meditation practice has brought me back to something I heard about a year ago when I was taking the 8-Week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course.

In MBSR, a course originated at the University of Massachusetts Medical School by Jon Kabat-Zinn, I was taught by my teacher Kate that a part of our brain is actually hard wired fixate on the negative.  Because our brain has evolved over millennia we still have what some refer to as “old brain” or, on the more crass side, “reptilian brain.” In its hay day, this critical part of our brain was constantly scanning our environment for danger, and this was fantastic for the goal of not being eaten by saber toothed tigers, but has been less helpful in our current fight against our more modern 21^st century threats to health and well-being like depression, heart disease and cancer.

Remembering this tidbit from MBSR has helped me to get unstuck from that spider web of negativity.  But not by the usual means of judging or criticizing.  We’ve all heard someone say to us or someone else (or maybe we ourselves have said it) that “that person is too negative.” I’ve come to believe that the technique of blaming/shaming someone into changing just does not have much sustainability.  Maybe you get an immediate change, but for most, if the change has not been organic and voluntary, it won’t last. 

But why does any of this matter? So what if our minds produce hundreds of thoughts a day? So what if Roy can sell me a whole shipment of negative thinking that I binge on for an entire weekend?

To this I would respond, for some, maybe it does not matter at all. Maybe some folks are just not hard-wired to have thoughts precede emotions and actions.  Maybe some folks don’t have trouble turning off their minds to go to sleep.  Or don’t struggle to concentrate when they are going through something difficult.  But sometimes I do.  And I think a lot of other people do too, like most…And learning to hand select our thoughts as we would the clothes in our closets each morning andtraining our still restless and unruly puppy minds, can be a game changer that reflects these words of the Buddha fromThe Dhammapada:

                The thought manifests as the word;

                The words manifests as the deed;

                The deed develops into habit;

                And habit hardens into character;

                So watch the thought and its way with care,

                And let it spring from love

                Born out of concern for all beings…

                As the shadow follows the body,

                As we think, so we become.

So I will continue to encourage the foreman of my thought factory Roy to: take breaks, not come in  to work on the weekends, and take long extended vacations to Bermuda.  And there will be times that he continues to refuse, but because of the miracle of neuroplasticity, I know he can change. We all can.

God Answers

The other day I posted a blog called “Praying for Acceptance” which contemplated, among other things, how god responds to our prayers.

Afterward, I realized I was using the word “Answers” as a verb, when maybe it is a noun and singular, as in: what would be a god answer?

This thought rose up while reading a little more of author and former preacher Barbara Brown Taylor’s book A Geography of Faith: An Altar in the World. This is a book I’ve been slowly piecing my way through over the past few months, and two days ago I experienced a shift in perspective while reading through her chapter “The Practice of Being Present to God: Prayer” when I read this line: “Are you still waiting for God to answer you, or is your life the answer you have been seeking, hiding in plain view?”

That was a big one for me. In fact it stopped me in my tracks, and anything that has the power to actually prompt us to pause in our 24/7 move, move, move, hurry, hurry, hurry lives certainly deserves at least a moment of recognition.  Because Ms. Taylor’s suggestion is far different from what I had been considering just a week ago when I wrote that god may answer my prayers with 3 possible responses: 1.) Yes, 2.) Not right now, or 3.) No, because I have another plan for you.

And it is not just semantics. Ms. Taylor’s offering is actually asking more of me and my relationship with god than just prayer as a conversation. She is suggesting I infuse two areas into my prayer life that I find very hard to call on: trust and faith. She says:

In the same way that I am willing to thank my husband for a gift even before I have opened it--because I know him, because I trust his love for me, because I have faith we will survive even if he has given me a pneumatic nail gun for my birthday--I am willing to thank God for my life even before I know how it turns out. This is brave talk, I know, while I can still pay the bills, walk without assistance, and talk to someone into going to the movie with me. My hope is that if I can practice saying thank you now, when I still approve of most of what is happening to me, then perhaps that practice will have become habit by the time I do not like much of anything that is happening to me. The plan is to replace approval with gratitude. The plan is to take what is as God’s ongoing answer to me.”

Serendipitously, when I was writing about my prayer life a week ago, it was in the context of asking for help with acceptance. It would seem Ms. Taylor’s proposal of seeing my own life as god’s answer hits the nail on the head for this one. Maybe I got my answer after all…

How do you view god’s answer?

"In this, there is that" Part II

Almost a year ago now I was introduced to this phrase “In this, there is that.” It was a line written in a book called One Buddha is Not Enough, and it has really impacted me in a profound way. It has been one of those experiences where for most of my life I didn’t notice something much at all, and now I see it everywhere. 

It is like after buying my metallic shade Rav 4 Toyota, I now see this particular SUV on nearly every drive I take. Or when I was first introduced to the Bowenian concept of interpersonal Triangulation in graduate school, I suddenly saw triangles in all my relationships. It’s like that.  And now, “In this, there is that” has become a type of mantra for me, which I truly do notice all the time, including, as with most things, in nature.

The first observation of this mantra came with the ‘ol acorn and the oak tree.  Do you know this one? I have always been drawn to this metaphor from nature which is of course the idea that within every small acorn seed is the possibility of a large oak tree. This metaphor has been used in literature for the imagery of how a character can develop into their full true self. I’ve also seen it used in Western Buddhist writing to depict the belief that all human beings have a Buddha nature within just waiting to be woken up to.  Just the other day though, the acorn to oak metaphor showed up in my life in the form of my friend.

I have a dear friend, who is also my son’s godmother, and she has recently transformed from acorn to oak because she saw a small seed of an idea all the way through to fruition.  It started well over a year ago when my friend had a fresh idea for a partnership between her non-profit organization and a large cooperate organization of the likes of which had not been tried before. And just yesterday the partnership was solidified in the form of a contractual agreement. I felt so proud of her, and who knows, what I’m calling an oak tree may just be the initial sapling for something larger. You just never know.

Sometimes though, nature has taught me the lesson “in this, there is that,” through pain and discomfort.  For example, two nights ago a terrible, hot, July thunderstorm swept through New England with high winds that left damage of tree limbs down and flooding. However, within minutes of the storm ending, I looked up to the sky to see a magnificent double rainbow shining down.

I think this dialectic can be more challenging than the acorn to oak because it encompasses the paradoxical reality that pain could be in the same box as beauty.  For those of us control freaks who like to engage our black and white thinking patterns in compulsive compartmentalizing behavior, this is a tough one to swallow because we don’t want to put the ugly and horrific sides of humanity in the same box as our highest prized virtue.

For instance, we don’t want to keep a masterpiece of art like the song “Strange Fruit” by jazz singer and songwriter Billie Holiday eternally in the same box as racial lynching.  Or to have Psychiatrist Victor Frankel’s historic book and corresponding psychotherapy Man’s Search for Meaning permanently alongside the Holocaust and Concentration Camps. Or more personally, to have the post-partum depression I experienced 6 years ago always associated with the spiritual awakening that immediately followed, and the alcoholic in my life being forever tied to all that has been helpful to me in AL-ANON.

It kind of kills me a little bit that to look at something awe inspiring, I have to be reminded of something awful, and I don’t think I’m alone here. that in life.  I’d much rather look at what is beautiful and avoid all of the ugly.  The problem is, to do that is to not acknowledge the confusing contradictory reality that some of the beauty in this earthly life is not only tied to the ugly, but born of the ugly. “In this, there is that.”

Please do not misunderstand me, I am in agreement with Unitarian Universalist author and minister Kate Braestrup, who much more eloquently wrote about this same topic in her book Here if You Need Me, that to acknowledge the dynamic relationship between pain and beauty is not the same as the trite saying: “everything happens for a reason.”  I, like Ms. Braestrup, do not believe that.

In her book she described how she received unexpected abundant love from her community following the loss of her first husband, who was the father of her 4 children, in a tragic car accident.  However, to recognize that there is a potential underbelly of grace during painful circumstances is not the same thing as approving of the tragedy with a knowing nod toward fate or destiny.

Terrible events do not become un-terrible just because the human soul and psyche has an awesome ability to transcend and transform- just because, for some, a phoenix does rise from the ashes. The ashes still remain.

This is why it is imperative to be mindful of how we talk about these dualities so as not to invalidate the real pain of ourselves and other.  So that when we talk about the emotional and physical pain that we experience in life, we are not suggesting approval in any way.  We are however, allowing for recognition of the fact that pain, like summer thunder storms, are sometimes, not one-sided (or maybe even two, or three-sided). “In this, there is that.”

Easier said than done, right? Where I continue to struggle to hold this dialectic in my own life is with my children. Sure it’s easy to think of the acorn to oak metaphor with all of my oh-so-important seeds of wisdom that I am implanting in them so that they can mature into confident and loving members of society.  But what about the thunderstorms to rainbows? Practicing acceptance of the pain my son and daughter will endure, while protecting them against it, is one of the toughest aspects of parenthood. And I gotta say, as far as my children are concerned, the fact that a few rainbows will follow some of this pain is just not a consolation. 

This is admittedly a blind-spot of mine, and by no means the only one. So for this, and other areas of life where I resist the natural laws of the universe as it concerns all that is precious to me, I will continue to chant my mantra: “In this, there is that.”

And when I need to, I will also turn to poetry- the natural language of the soul.

On Children
by  Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Where do you see examples of this duality in nature or your own life?

Praying for Acceptance

You know how there are some people who, when faced with adversity that is beyond their control, are super classy and elegant? They seem to just seamlessly move through the whole experience without a spot on them, and you think to yourself, how do they do it?

Well, I have a theory about those people because though I am not one of them, I’ve been watching them.  Not in a stalker kind of way, but more like a groupie.  I totally want to join their clique and be like them. It’s like junior high school all over again…but that is for another time. 

My theory is that these people whom I so admire do 3 steps really well when faced with a difficult situation that they cannot fix or change, and they do it in this order:

Step 1.) Surrender

Step 2.) Align with god 

(the universe, reality, the divine, mother earth, what have you)

Step 3.) Walk willingly.

Now, if you are familiar with twelve step programs and philosophy, you could argue that all I’ve done is outlined Steps 1, 3, and 12, and I’d have to agree with you.  But I say, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?  If you are not familiar with the 12 Steps, the three I’m talking about are:

Step One: We admitted we were powerless over [insert behavior here]- that our lives had become unmanageable.

Step Three: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Step Twelve: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to [insert to whom], and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Although, I must footnote here, my third step, “walk willingly,” is actually a phrase I heard from an interview with an American Catholic Nun named Simone Campbell who is an author and Executive Director of NETWORK. I interpret this phrase as the decision to no longer drag my feet as I accept god’s will in my life.

It can be so challenging for me to accept what I do not like or believe to be fair or just. And unfortunately, this struggle with acceptance can lead me to continue to try to problem-solve my way out of the difficulty despite substantial evidence that I am dealing with something beyond my control.  There is nothing to “do” with this problem anymore, which leaves me with the ever-so-unsatisfying choice of “being” with the problem. (Yuck!) Or worse, considering the possibility of shifting my paradigm so greatly so as not to even view the situation as a “problem” anymore but rather something else entirely. (Impossible!)

I once read a quote in a blog by Tara Brach, a Buddhist teacher and author wholiterally wrote the book on Radical Acceptance, that said: “Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable.” Ms. Brach attributed these words to a Jesuit Priest named Anthony de Mello whom she described a modern day mystic.  I would think you’d have to be a mystic to be able to get to that deep level of trust and faith with god- which I’m sure is crucial for the 3 step practice I outlined above.

Mysticism fascinates me because whether it be in Judaism, Christianity or Islam, all faiths share the universal intimacy and privacy of the one on one relationship with god at its center in mysticism. Rather than focusing on the do’s and don’ts, the dogma or icon, it is the unconditionally loving grace of god that is foremost.

But how? How do we walk in the footsteps of mystics in order to “cooperate with the inevitable?”

I think one way might be to turn to prayer.

Author Anne Lamott wrote a book in 2012 called Help, Thanks,Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. I enjoyed this book, and all her others, but I got stuck on the “Help” prayer. 

“Help” certainly seems to be the prayer that would be the most appropriate and useful in my efforts to adapt myself to the laws of the universe (since the other way around doesn’t seem to be working). But the book left me contemplating the following: if I can only have 3 “essential” prayers for god, then can god only have 3 “essential” responses for me? And if so, what might they be to “Help?”

Then I remembered an interview I once saw between Oprah Winfrey and actress Kari Washington (the star of the television show Scandal) in which Ms. Washington said she subscribed to the belief that god only responds in 3 ways to our prayers:

1.)    Yes.

2.)    Not right now.

3.)    No, because I have another plan for you.

Well, if that is true, then I am back to square one again because now I’ve got to go back to Step One: Surrender.

So now I need a new prayer to help me accept the answers to my other prayers.  For this I turn to my own scrapbook of prayers (which is poetry, song lyrics and actually prayers) I’ve put together over the years. Here are a few:

“Serenity Prayer” by Reinhold Niebuhr

God 

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Prayer by Thomas Merton

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."

“Radiance Sutras,” Translated by Lorin Roche in Tara Brach’s True Refuge

There is a place in the heart where everything meets.

Go there if you want to find me.

Mind, senses, soul, eternity, all are here.

Are you there?

Enter the bowl of vastness that is the heart.

Give yourself to it with total abandon…

Once you know the way

the nature of attention with call you

to return, again and again,

and be saturated with knowing,

“I belong here, I am at home here.”

“Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace,” Saint Francis Prayer

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.

O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.

“Amazing Grace”, partial lyrics by John Newton 

'Twas grace that taught

my heart to fear

and grace that fear relieved

how precious did

that grace appear

the hour i first believed

through many dangers

toils and snares

i have already come

'twas grace that brought me

safely thus far

and grace will lead me home

Prayer by Sylvia Boorstein

Sweetheart,

I can see that you are in pain.

Relax.

Take a breath.

Notice what is happening.

We’ll get through this together.

I can’t think of any better way to end this blog entry than Ms. Boorstein’s words, so I’ll say it one more time, “We’ll get through this together.” Amen and may it be so.

What prayers do you turn to when problem solving no longer exists and radical acceptance of the inevitable is the wisest course of action to take now?

Cultivating Resiliency

As a psychotherapist by vocation, I give a lot of thought to the idea of resiliency.  I think about what protective factors have contributed to one person being able to tolerate the intolerable and the other person being destroyed by it.

Two women whom I admire greatly whose lives reflect this critical aspect of resiliency are the recently late author, poet, performer, and activist Dr. Maya Angelou and jazz singer and song writer Billie Holiday.

Dr. Angelou was born Marguerite (my great-grandmother’s first name too) Annie Johnson in 1928 and lived to the ripe ol’ age of 86. Ms. Holiday was born 13 years earlier in 1915 as Eleanora Fagan, but died at the young age of 44 due to consequences of many years of drug and alcohol abuse.  Ms. Holiday was actually handcuffed to her hospital bed at the time of her death due to legal charges.  Though both amazing women, the ending of each of their lives was drastically different, one ceremonious and honorable, the other tragic and sad.

However, the start of each woman’s life did have several similarities.  Both women were African American and lived during a time of potent and blatant racism in the United States and abroad.  Both were born to young mothers who were ill-equipped to care for young children.  Both women suffered sexual trauma as young girls, Dr. Angelou was 8 years-old and Ms. Holiday was 11.  Despite these challenges however, both women led extraordinary and creative lives full of numerous accomplishments that continued well after their lives ended.

They actually briefly met each other in the year 1957.  Dr. Angelou described this meeting in her autobiography The Heart of a Woman, which is the 4^th book in her six-part memoir, and Ms. Holiday died not long after this meeting.

I find it meaningful to consider the role of resiliency in each of these women’s lives because it strikes me as such a predictable indicator for quality of life, which for me is an aspect of the spiritual life.

There are many definitions of resiliency, this is the one that I like the most:  Resilience is the ability to work with adversity in such a way that one comes through it unharmed or even better for the experience.

A few years ago I was giving a lot of attention and intention to the cultivation of resiliency.  I was going through some difficult things in my personal life, and it seemed like a helpful strategy to engage in practices that might give me a thicker skin to help me maneuver through the challenges at the time.  I even went online and googled “How do I become more resilient?” And I found the list outlined below.  It was written in the context of a sermon by a Unitarian Universalist Minister Barbara Myers.

She said resilient people practice the following:

1. Suffering from loss or illness will happen in life; it is inevitable. Resilient people are able to manage strong feelings and impulses such losses engender.

2. Resilient people have empathy for others.

3. Resilient people cultivate relationships that create love and trust, provide role models, and offer encouragement and reassurance.

4. Resilient people can communicate their needs effectively.

5. Resilient people can ask for help; they can refrain from gossip, or harmful statements about others; they can listen to what others are saying to them.

6. Resilient people have developed self-discipline.

7. Resilient people have the capacity to make develop goals and realistic plans and take steps to carry them out.

8. Resilient people have problem solving skills.

9. Resilient people live an authentic life.

10. Resilient people believe in what they do for a living, and do it with joy. They don't say they believe one thing and do something entirely different every day at work.

11.  Resilient people have developed the art of setting boundaries.

12. Resilient people  know how to say "No" when they realize it would be unwise to do something that is asked of them.

13. Resilient people learn how to avoid repeating behavior that has negative outcomes. Some people call this "rewriting negative scripts."

14.  Resilient people maintain a hopeful outlook; In any situation, they see the glass half full.

15. Resilient people have the ability to make positive meanings out of experiences.

16. Resilient people avoid seeing crises as insurmountable problems - change how they interpret them, looking for opportunities for self-discovery.

17. Resilient people have flexibility.

18. Resilient people accept that change is a part of living; They have an uncanny ability to improvise.

19. Resilient people can admit to having vulnerability; It is important to have a humble attitude toward life.

20. Resilient people have learned how to harness the saving grace of humor which can provide escape, relaxation, a change in perspective, and detachment from problems.

21. Resilient people have a positive view of themselves and confidence in their strengths, abilities, talent and creativity.

22. Resilient people have positive self-esteem.

23. Resilient people take care of their bodies.

24. Resilient people engage in activities that they enjoy and find relaxing. They exercise regularly. Taking care of oneself helps to keep one's mind and body primed to deal with situations that require resilience.

25. Resilient people have an active spiritual life.

26. Resilient people engage in a spiritual practice that has meaning for them: Maybe it is meditation, journaling, prayer, or ritual.

I have to tell you I love this list and have read it many times.  And finding it within a UU minister’s sermon was just a serendipitous bonus because I identify with this faith but had not even typed in “UU” as part of my internet search; it seems the virtual universe still provided me with a UU perspective on this spiritual topic.

To consider again the lives of Dr. Angelou and Ms. Holiday against this list of resiliency practices, it is not hard to see why biographies and narratives about each woman describe Dr. Angelou as joyful, hopeful and proud versus Ms. Holiday who is depicted as depressed, cynical and self-destructive.

I suppose from a Buddhist standpoint you might look at each woman’s resiliency from a karmic perspective, which quite simply is cause and effect.

Jack Kornfield says in his book A Path with Heart  “the law of karma describes the way that cause and effect govern the patterns that repeat themselves throughout all life. Karma means that nothing arises by itself. Thus our life is a series of interrelated patterns. The Buddhists say that understanding this is enough to live wisely in the world.”

If you think about the resiliency of Dr. Angelou and Ms. Holiday (or yours or mine) from this very simple but elegant perspective of cause and effect, you can’t help but say “of course.”

Of course Dr. Angelou found it healing to live with her grandmother for many years after being raped.  During that time she described being safe and  unconditionally loved.  Though she suffered from Selective Mutism (choosing not to speak) following the sexual trauma and separation from her mother, Dr. Angelou’s grandmother and teacher (who was the first to introduce her to poetry, Shakespeare and literature) met her just where she was with radical acceptance. I believe these relationships and experiences helped shape Dr. Angelou into an individual who believed she was what Social Researcher and Author Brene Brown calls “worthy of love and belonging,” which is a critical element to resiliency.

Ms. Holiday on the other hand had no such experience. After being sexually assaulted, possibly not for the first time, at age 11, Ms. Holiday was separated from all family and put in a Catholic Reform School for girls. This was her second time being placed in this reform school. When released, still at age 11 and being placed with extended family, she began to run errands for a brothel.  If we follow the universal laws of cause and effect, it is not surprising then to learn that by the time Ms. Holiday was not quite 14, she herself was prostituting her body in the same brothel where her mother was doing the same.  It seems Ms. Holiday was never able to escape the pattern of abuse and neglect, including of self.  Resiliency was not taught, modeled or cultivated in Ms. Holiday’s life, and therefore “of course” she did not bloom into a resilient person in later life. Cause and effect.

What makes me hopeful in reflecting on resiliency, karma, and these two magnificent women, is that biology and sociology are not luck or destiny.  Each of us is dealt a hand of cards, but we can be skillful later in life as adults as to how we play them.  We know now that neuroplasticity allows us to mold and shape our brains over the course of our lifetime. We know now that we can change our harmful behavior and distorted thought patterns at any time in our lives.  In other words, we can become more resilient people at any stage of the game. Let me hear an “Amen” to that!

So today, tomorrow, and the next day, I will keep leaning in towards Ms. Myers’ list of practices of the highly resilient.  How about you? How do you cultivate resiliency? 

Living Our Values

Though I admit I'm biased, I must say there is a lot I like and respect about Unitarian Universalism. Lately though, what I've been reflecting on most is the  slogan: "living our values."

My son recently graduated from Kindergarten. And in his classroom, right next to the noble placing of the American flag, was a poster of The Golden Rule.  Do you remember this one? It goes like this: "Treat others the way you wish to be treated." 

Most us know some version of this ethic of reciprocity because it is ancient and found in all the world's major religions, philosophies and cultures. Long before it was named "The Golden Rule" in 17th century Europe, peoples in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Roman Empire, among others, had some version of this virtuous way of being and living. 

To name a few:

Confucianism: Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself.

Judaism: What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. 

Christianity: Love your neighbor as you love yourself. 

Hinduism: One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one's own self. 

Islam: As you would have people do to you, do to them, and what you dislike to be done to you, don't do to them.

Usually this one is a no-brainer for me because it is congruent with my values. But every so often, following The Golden Rule in my interactions with others is easier said than done. 

For example, when someone, consciously or unconsciously,  repeatedly treats me or others poorly. During moments like these it becomes increasingly difficult to stay the course with The Golden Rule.  In fact, it is surprisingly easy to dessert my own values in a moment of righteous indignation.  Because, though it is paradoxically also referred to the ethic of reciprocity, some of us can be selective about when and with whom to live our values through The Golden Rule. That way, when the other person or group is not reciprocating, it can feel oh-so-easy to say "well, if s/he is going to be cruel or mean, then s/he doesn't deserve my kindness or decency." Meritocracy trumps ethics in this case, and we tend to feel pretty righteous about it. 

Though as the seconds turn to minutes turn to hours, it starts to not to feel as good. And that is the exact moment that we call a particularly hot tempered friend who we then can tell our story to, and we know they will take "our side" and tell us how right we were- which is to say, how right we were to indulge our anger. 

But who am I? These are my difficulties living my values in a very blessed life that is without the direct impact of the horrors and atrocities of our shared human history of slavery, genocide, civil war, human trafficking, sexual violence, and the oppressive governments that restrict basic freedoms and human rights. Folks who have been victimized by these types of trauma could arguably have every reason to withhold their decency from those who have perpetrated the aggression and violence against them. 

But, miraculously, some don't. Or if they do, and they are anything like me, invariably, following these moments of ethical desertion they feel  depleted and disheartened. For me it is not because I am comparing my missed opportunities for compassionate action to those mountains above next to my mere molehills. Rather because, even though the short term rush of "I'm right!" can feel powerful and even good in the moment, it never feels good in the long term. Regret that I did not hold true to my Self (capital S) in the face of my self (lower case) does not make for a good night's rest.  Because when I choose to not live my values it becomes an abandonment of Self.  If I abandon my core essence or soul when the moment of crisis calls, it will never end well- no matter what behavior I am trying to rationalize or  justify in the angry or hurtful moment. 

Sometimes though, I can tell myself that I am living my values because I am standing tall and strong with integrity by outwardly not behaving defensively or in a hurtful manner to the other who is attacking or on the offensive, but really inside I am still clinging to my righteous stance by internally gnawing on all kinds of quiet judgments against them.  And I can tell you, the latter is just as unhelpful as the former. Sure, outwardly I might maintain my relationships and avoid burning bridges. But inwardly this is a sure fire way to build up layers upon layers of bitterness and resentment. Not exactly the way to serenity or enlightenment. 

But I don't think I'm alone here. How many of you have ever been in a yoga class or a church sermon and been challenged by the teacher or preacher to treat your exhusband or exwife with the same decency that one shows common strangers or fellow students and congregants? When you are pushed to maintain the same basic kindness for the jerk who just grabbed the parking spot you were about to pull into at the grocery store; the same one who even gave you the middle finger while they were doing it?  

 

I have a theory that  times such as these are the very reason the Dalai Lama says repeatedly "Kindness is my religion."  It's not because kindness is a soft or weak response to adversity.  As a refugee himself from Tibet, I think he might say that kindness, the very basis of The Golden Rule, is our greatest challenge or spiritual task, as individuals and as a human species.  One that has both personal and collective consequences if we cannot prioritize and master this task in the near future. 

This is why we need to take the path of the warrior. Read any book by American Buddhist nun and author Pema Chodron and you will learn a little bit about an idea in Tibetan Buddhism that refers to this kind of Golden-Rule-compassionate-mind-nonviolent-training as that of a "warrior."  I love this use of the word "warrior" because it reminds me of all the groups throughout history who have reclaimed, and thereby defused, words that had been previously meant to harm. 

Sometimes I can get down on myself when I am challenged by my urges to take the easier path of judgment and attacking rather than American poet Robert Frost's "road less traveled by." But then I remember the modern day all-star team of warriors like the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Mahatma Gandhi, Rigoberta Menchu, Jean Vanier, Thich Nhat Hanh, Cesar Chavez, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, and Dr. Martin Luther King.  I remind myself that this compassionate warrior training stuff is hard core- by no means for the faint hearted or, to reclaim another word, "sissies." Being responsive rather than reactive in the face of "the enemy" (whoever or whatever that may be) requires some very heavy lifting which means daily weight and strength training is absolutely essential. 

I sometimes imagine it as the dramatic Navy Seals training as depicted in the Oh-So-Hollywood style of Demi Moore in the movie "G.I. Jane." To be sure the analogy of a buff body is totally concrete, but when I am standing strong in the asana Warrior II pose during my yoga practice I develop a body memory, a cellular memory, of the kind of compassionate warrior training that I want to nurture and cultivate so that when the time comes to practice The Golden Rule in one of those grocery-store-parking-lot-type moments, I am ready. 

Because let's face it, it can be hard out there. The reality is there are a number of people who are unkind and a handful who are downright cruel. And though we are told everything we need to know in life we learned in kindergarten, including The Golden Rule, I find if we don't use it, we lose it. So to maintain a nonviolent warrior stance in all of  our activities requires daily compassionate mind training which for me includes one or more of the following practices: prayer, yoga, meditation, spiritual reading, soulful music, sermons, dharma talks, surrounding myself with inspiring men, women and children, and play. 

And so I wonder, how do you hold fast to live your values in the face of aggression? How do you maintain a nonviolent stance?