Little Zen Teachers

In my 20's I attended an Al-Anon meeting every Friday at 4 p.m. for two years. Like clock work, I would leave work each Friday afternoon and travel to my fellowship of other men and women who were also navigating the tricky domain of a friend or family member's alcoholism. 

Those meetings in that period of my life were invaluable to me. And the lessons learned continue to help me walk through this world with greater compassion, wisdom and ease. 

One such lesson I learned from my time in "the rooms" is this: anyone can be your teacher. Anyone.  

Once I opened myself up to the possibility that each and every person I meet has the potential to teach me something, I swear, teachers were all of the sudden everywhere!

Including in my own home. Including the little guys who still stand below three feet. 

In that spirit, over the past few months I’ve been jotting down moments when my 6 year-old son has taught me little spiritual lessons just through the course of him being himself.

Here are just a few I’d like to share with you...

The Universe Says Yes

It was a hot summer evening and my son and I decided to take a drive to get some frozen yogurt.  On the way, we excitedly discussed what flavors we planned to eat and what toppings we might get.

However, when we pulled into the parking lot, we saw the whole frozen yogurt shop was dark and already closed for the night.

“Bummer,” I said out loud, and let out a sigh of frustration. Then I mused, more to myself than to my son who was sitting in the backseat, “well, sometimes I say yes, but the universe says no...”

But then my son, who so far had said nothing, spoke up:

“Yes, but sometimes we say no, and the universe says yes.  And sometimes, the universe and me say yes, but mom says no.”

In that moment, sitting there in the front seat of our SUV in my “tragedy” of not being able to have what I craved, I truly appreciated my son’s ability to make me smile with wisdom that I did not realize he already possessed.

That moment was far better than coconut frozen yogurt any day.

Letting Go

My son was standing in the doorway of our house with his hands on one wall and his feet pushed up against the other. He was trying to bend his body like a bridge to block my pathway through our small ranch house. 

I stopped in front of him and asked him to move so I could continue on my path of “extremely important” tasks and business that in the moment felt very urgent- I of course cannot remember what any of it was now...

Not remotely responding to my urgency, my son casually looked up at me and said: “what’s the magic word?” 

“Please,” I said rather rushed and curt.

“Nope, try again,” he said totally unaffected by my irritated tone.

“I don’t know, just tell me,” I said getting more frustrated.

But with nonreactive, calm, cool presence my son looked up at me and simply stated, “Mom, the password is ‘let go.”

This stopped me in my tracks as the wiser voice inside of me said,

“Pause. Slow down. Pay attention to what is happening here.”

And with just that one cue, awareness came back to me.

Acts of Kindness

It was a cool day in spring, and my son and I visited the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston with his godmother.

At the park entrance, each child who entered was given a number of pretend coins.  These coins were part of a fundraising effort for donors to see which animals the children would “vote” for at the zoo for more financial funding. Each coin was a “vote” to be dropped into the box of the animal the child liked best.

So, my son and I walked up to the display that held the pictures of the 5 or 6 animals that needed more funding, and we saw that each box had a transparent glass cover so that zoo visitors could see how many “votes” or coins each animal had received thus far.

I stood by quietly as my son took his time standing in front of each box.  He made no rush to put his coins in a box, and I thought he was looking more closely at the photographs of each animal that was posted next to the boxes.

After what seemed to be quite a long time of discernment, especially given that the whole zoo experience still awaited us, he took only one of his coins, and put it into the tiger box which was already nearly filled to the top.  Then, he took all of the rest of his coins, and put them into the animal box that had the least votes.

After doing this act of kindness, he very nonchalantly looked up at me and said, “I wanted to give that guy [he was talking about the animal that neither one of us could even identify] the most because he hasn’t gotten many votes so far.”

In that moment I realized that I had not even considered to “vote” the way my son did- to give the most funding to the most unknown specie that had the least resources.

Acceptance

It was summertime, and my son and I were on a little road trip.

We were only a little over an hour into it, and I was already starting to get restless, so I began to fidget.

First I played with my hairclip (while keeping my other hand on the steering wheel), and then I began to play with the radio.

As a turned the radio dial from station to station, all I could find were commercials.

Not getting what I wanted, when I wanted (I guess in this case it was a song that would quell my restlessness), my restlessness  then took a turn into irritation.

“Ugh!” I said aloud. “There is nothing on!”  I was saying this to myself, and did not expect a response from my son in the backseat.

However, my son, who had been calmly playing on his LeapPad in the backseat, looked up and made eye contact with me in the rearview mirror.  He then said, “mom, just deal with it.”

His statement made me pause, smile, and notice my non-acceptance of reality as it was, and how I was clearly making my suffering worse by resisting it further.

I looked back at him in the rearview mirror with appreciation as he turned his attention back to his LeapPad, and returned to his quiet attention.

Human Love & Divine Love

I recently heard a Professor of Persian & Comparative Literature named Fatemeh Keshavarz refer to human love as a metaphor for divine love. This perspective comes from her expertise in the writings of Sufi Mystics like Jalal al-Din Rumi and others. 

She said:

"To me, I think it's a statement by poets like Rumi and others like him that there isn't really a boundary between the two. It's the same thing."

The professor then went on to add  that there is another metaphor that can be helpful to understand how our human love and human relationships can in a way prepare us for our relationship with the divine or god.

Keshavarz said:

 

"There is another medieval Sufi, actually a bit later than Rumi, who says that you can't look at the sun directly, but you can look at its reflection in the water. Now, our humanly experience of love is that reflection in the water of our senses. And it's God's way of teaching us and guiding us from this to the actual looking at the sun when you have gained the ability."

 

This second metaphor of our human relationships being similar to looking at the sun through it's reflection in the water deeply resonates with me.

 

Now, if you had asked me 30 years ago, 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago if I understood what Keshavarz was referring to in her above statement, I probably would have looked like a deer in the headlights because I would not only have no opinion on the subject, but neither would there be an internal response.

 

I have no memory of words like "divinity" or "god" being used in my home or anywhere else really in my childhood- perhaps with the exception of my recitation of the Girl Scout Promise.

 

As I've written before in this blog, you could easily argue my childhood and young adult experiences were remarkably secular. Not atheist. Not agnostic. Secular. God was a non-topic.

 

Interestingly though, as my own spiritual development has over-lapped with the birth of my role as a parent, now, metaphors that compare human love and divine love make perfect sense to me.  Like a truth that I've always known- I just didn't know I knew it.

 

The book shown in the photograph above was part of my journey of knowing.

 

If you haven't read it, please do.  Even if you don't have children yourself, I believe children's literature has messages that are universally appealing, and this is no exception.

 

One of the first things I loved about this book when I found it in a library book sale of used books, was it's dedication at the very beginning:

Isn't that beautiful?

And then of course, the words which follow, line by line, page by page, illustrate divine love as human love, human love as divine love.

They go as follows:

"Mama,' asked Little Bunny, 'if you had a wish,would you wish I never cried?'

'No, Little Bunny,' answered Mama, 'but it does make me sad to see you cry.'

'Would you wish I was brave all the time, and never got scared of anything?'

'No, Little Bunny,' said Mama. 'We all get scared sometimes.'

'What about when I get mad at you?' asked Little Bunny. 'Would you wish I never did that?'

'No, Little Bunny,' said Mama. 'I love  you when you are mad at me, and I love you when you are not.'

'I bet I know what you would wish,' said Little Bunny. 'You would wish I never made any mistakes.'

'No, Little Bunny,' said Mama, 'I love you no matter how many mistakes you make.'

'Even big giant mistakes?'

'Even big giant mistakes.'

'Well,' said Little Bunny, 'you probably would wish I looked different, wouldn't you?'

'No, Little Bunny,' said Mama. 'I wouldn't wish you to look any different than you do.'

Little Bunny was quiet for a moment. 'Mama, if you could make one wish about me, what would it be?'

'I would wish for you to be yourself,' said Mama, 'because I love you just the way you are."

Perhaps today we can all look out for those reflections of divine love in the waters of our relationships that we encounter in our day to day lives.  I will.

 

 

Kindred Spirits: Louisa May Alcott

“I had an early run in the woods before the dew was off the grass. The moss was like velvet, and as I ran under the arches of yellow and red leaves I sang for joy, my heart was so bright and the world so beautiful.  I stopped at the end of the walk and saw the sunshine out over the wide ‘Virginia Meadows.’

It seemed like going through a dark life or grave into heaven beyond.  A very strange and solemn feeling came over me as I stood there, with no sound but the rustle of the pines, no one near me, and the sun so glorious, as for me alone. It seemed as if I felt God as I never did before, and I prayed in my heart that I might keep that  happy sense of nearness all my life.”

-Louisa May Alcott, 1845, author of Little Women.

The Mystery of our Minds

The more I learn about our brains and neurobiology, in my oh-so-lay-woman-way, the more I become convinced of two truths:

1.)  The human anatomy, and specifically the brain, is truly miraculous and worthy of nothing less than awe. And,
2.) We know as much about our neurobiological inner space as physicists know about outer space; which is to say, a teeny, tiny, speck of infinity. These frontiers are brand new.

I contemplate these truths in my very ordinary day-to-day life.

For example, before my husband leaves for work each morning at 6 a.m., he walks down the hall to our 6 year-old son's bedroom and gives him a kiss goodbye on the forehead.  Our son is sound asleep at the time, and never even stirs.

This morning, after doing his ritual goodbye kiss as usual, my husband asked me, "do you think he knows that I do that every morning?"

"Yes," I definitively answered. 

I added, "before I was a parent, I would have said 'no,' but now, since having multiple experiences of the children surprising me with their responses to the very subtle shifts, movements, moments that  they notice (consciously and unconsciously), I've become a believer in the mystery of the mind. 

Last Sunday I took my father-in-law for a walk in the New England woods.  My father-in-law was diagnosed this year with Alzheimer's Disease.  It is in the early stages, and he seems to be responding well to medication at this time- which is all the good news. 

But the bad news, at this stage anyway, is he no longer seems able to accrue new memories in his conscious mind.  Whether a pleasant, unpleasant or neutral experiences, the moments just do not seem to lodge into the ridges of his brain in a place where he can retrieve them when he wants to. 

Like in the "old days" when we would print out photographs of an experience we wanted to remember and put  them in a photo album, my father-in-law is not able to put anymore pictures into his album.  That function of his brain has seemed to have stopped working.

I was thinking about this new reality for him, and for our family, as we were hiking along, looking at the beautiful red, orange and yellow fall foliage.  I watched my father-in-law smiling and laughing as my son, who had joined us too, was chasing the leaves as they fell from the trees and was trying to catch them before they hit the ground, and I had the thought of the old saying, if a tree falls in the woods, and no one is there, does it make a sound?

My father-in-law was clearly experiencing joy in that moment,  and another truth I believe is the experience of joy does all kinds of good things for our brains in ways far beyond my abilities to comprehend.  But, I also wondered, was this moment being recorded into a memory for my father-in-law, somewhere no longer retrievable to him?  Is the memory now there, even if he cannot recall it?

Or, is this where collective memory comes into play? 

Mindfulness and meditation teach us, among other things, that we are interconnected.  We are not separate.  Therefore, in the very hardcore world of biological realities like Alzheimer's Disease, is there possibility for our memories (the good, the bad, and the ugly) to be held in collective consciousness, or in this case, the family albums of myself and my son?

I saw my father-in-law yesterday at my son's football game.  It had been 3 days since our near picture-perfect New England fall walk in the woods.  I know now not to say things like "do you remember?" to my father-in-law, I just follow his lead.  It seemed apparent that he had no conscious recollection of our day together, and so I did not refer to it or bring it up because lately he gets quite upset by moments of awareness that his memory is not what it used to be.

But I was left wondering, in all the mystery of the mind that is currently unknowable to us, is there any trace of our walk in the woods stored somewhere inside him? In his brain? In his body? In his cells?  Or, is it enough, that I carry the memory? And my son too.

I don't know the answers to any of these questions. As  I said, to me, it is a mystery.

Here's what I do know though.  The joy we all experienced in the moment, looking at the canopy of oaks, maples, birches, and pines, was why there are books titled The Miracle of Mindfulness that generations upon generations of people will read.

Letting Go of the Weather

“You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.”
-Pema Chodron

My 6 year-old son and I both made a commitment last night to try to have a better week this week than we did last.  Since it was Sunday night, we tried to set ourselves up for success by doing things like setting out our clothes for the next day.

Along with the concrete stuff, I also tried to hold close to my heart these words above by Pema Chodron.  I was recently supervising a student in my work at the hospital, and she reminded me of this wonderful quote.

A good reminder I think.  On the easy-going and smooth weeks, and the tough ones too, it is difficult but critical to be mindful that I not cling to whatever "weather" happens to be crossing my path. Just notice it, and let go. 

Why We Need the Wisdom of World Religions

As a self-identified Unitarian Universalist I am often found reading up on the spiritual practices of the world religions.  I find religious customs, stories, symbols, and rituals completely fascinating, and have often thought how unfortunate it is that religions have, in many cases, lost sight of what makes them fundamentally necessary for human existence, a sane existence anyway, and that is to be a route and sanctuary through suffering.

 

If you yourself are not of the Unitarian Universalist (or UU) faith, this might be a foreign spiritual development topic to consider. But in the UU faith there are 6 "Sources" for the religion that are listed as the following:

• Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
• Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
• Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
• Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
• Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit;
• Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

Therefore, in the UU faith, it is not uncommon, for instance, to listen to the story behind Yom Kippur during the Jewish Holy Days like I did last month in church on Sunday.  (And as an aside, along with now having more guidance for how I may engage in atonement, I also know the history of the word "scapegoat" as well...)

 

Unfortunately, this UU tradition of drawing on the wisdom and best practices of  others has led some to think “Oh, you are a Unitarian Universalist. That means you don’t believe in anything.”  This is a huge pet peeve of mine.  As someone who takes her own spiritual and religious theology quite seriously, this bothers me deeply.

But ignorance aside, I’ll admit there can be a tricky line to walk when considering that two of the 7 Principles that guide the UU faith are:

Principle 4: A free and responsible search for truth and meaning and

Principle 7: Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

In this respect, it is sensible to have concern for potential misuse or superficial use of ancient sacred practices.

 

I frequently hear about and think about spiritual materialism which I interpret as picking and choosing spiritual and religious practices as if at a buffet table.  As an object to be had or discarded based on preference, mood or will, thereby losing its very integrity.

 

This is dangerous, and worthy of active vigilance to mindfully beware of.  A watered down religious tradition is as worrisome to me as a dogmatic fundamentalism in any faith.

 

Yet, I have to admit, I feel so much richer when I hear the story of liberation that is the Jewish Holiday Passover.  Or, when I read Christian author Anne Lamott's take on the resurrection of Jesus. Or, when I stay up late on the night of the Winter Solstice in December to bow down to the coming of more light. Yet, I am neither Jewish, Christian, nor Pagan.

 

As someone who grew up in the secular world without the strong presence of religious customs, stories, symbols, and rituals, I can tell you, for me anyway, it made the passageways through suffering more difficult to navigate.  And I don't think I'm alone in the respect. 

 

I was recently re-reading one of my favorite books When the Heart Waits.  This is one of Sue Monk Kidd's earlier spiritual memoirs that had a profound impact on me.  In the book, among other topics, the author stresses the need and importance for customs, stories, symbols, and rituals for the care of the soul.  And wouldn't you know, world religions are jammed packed with all of the above.  World religions are actually over-flowing with best practices for the artful work that is necessary to "compose a life-" to borrow a book title from Mary Catherine Bateson- and navigate the trickiest part of "composing a life:" the management and integration of painful events and the inevitable suffering that ensues.

 

I've come to believe that without the wisdom of the ages, human beings are remarkably ill-equipped to sort through the emotionally painful events of our human existence.  Without coaching and training, we are just plain not good at it. 

 

Ask anyone who feels stuck in his or her life what was the cause of their pain, and I swear nine times out of ten you will hear some version of only 4 possible scenarios:

A. The individual transgressed his or her own values;

B. The individual witnessed someone else transgressing his or her own values;

C. The individual was the victim of someone transgressing his or her values; Or,

D. The individual was the perpetrator of transgressing someone else's values.

In other words, an individual's soul is unable to rest comfortably inside this human life because it is unable to make sense of some transgression.  And no amount of cognitive thinking will help them.  No amount working. No amount of tv watching.  No amount of weight loss or drinking.

 

This is where the wisdom of world religions can help us, can save us.  Thankfully, we actually don't need to reinvent the wheel here.

 

We do need spiritual direction though.  For two reasons. 

 

One, because the millennia of religious material is too vast, a guide just seems to be a must. 

 

And two, I do believe we must always remain cognizant of the possible vulnerability to covet and then take something that is not ours.  As long as human beings remain imperfect, which is to say human, we will always be susceptible to spiritual and religious envy and jealousy.

 

So we proceed mindfully. Cautiously. Aware of the risks, but willing to consider that we may not know everything about everything, and someone else out there might have had a pretty good idea somewhere along the way in the last few thousands years about how to more creatively move through pain and suffering.

 

What do you think though? What have you learned from the world religions about the art of being human? Is it ethical to borrow that wisdom from others?

 

 

Occupational Hazards & Spiritual Practices

Well, it has been almost 2 weeks since I last wrote in this blog, and that is certainly a sign of the times.

As many of you know, I have 2 jobs: one as mother to 2 young children and the other as full-time psychotherapist at a hospital along with a very small start-up private practice.  This puts me in a category with millions of other working parents who I know can relate to the potential risk in both jobs for burn-out.

Burn-out is an occupational hazard for both parents and psychotherapists, which for me is both! 

Burn-out can look a little different on each individual. For me though it includes 2 primary ingredients: abandonment of my spiritual practices and disciplines and body aches and pains. 

What I've come to believe though, is that my two signs of burn-out are actually one and the same. I think my neglect of my spiritual practices and disciplines is what largely contributes to my body "keeping the score" to borrow a phrase from the modern-day famous Dutch psychiatrist Bessel Van de Kolk, MD. 

Without meditation, yoga, physical activity in nature, spiritual writing and reading, and church to process through and digest the information and experiences I have taken in through my use of self as a parent and psychotherapist, my body begins to carry the weight and burden of all of my encounters.

I once heard an interview given by playwright and activist Eve Ensler who discussed this very thing. 

You might remember her from her play The Vagina Monologues which came out in the 90's, and then led to a movement called V-Day in which people all over the world speak out against domestic violence and sexual violence against women every year on Valentines Day, February 14th.

More recently though, she wrote a book called In the Body of the World.  This book is a memoir in part about her experience surviving uterine cancer.  When discussing this book in the interview, the playwright said she was not surprised when she received the cancer diagnosis.  Despite her well-known work as a activist to promote a woman's right to the safety and security of her own body, she admitted to a long-time personal disconnect from her own body.  In part due to her own history of sexual trauma, but also due to listening to what she described as "thousands" of stories about the trauma of others.

I am fortunate to have not had any sort of sexual trauma in my own life, but I was certainly able to relate to Ms. Ensler's description of the potential long-term effects of what we call in the psychological world as "use of self" which is part of the therapeutic process of helping another.  If unchecked, this can manifest into burn-out, or worse, vicarious traumatization where the clinician herself begins to have her own symptoms of a trauma she herself did not directly experience.  Not good. Not good at all.

When discussing this body-disconnect, by no means specific to her or I, in another online magazine called Guernica, Ms. Ensler said this in December, 2013:

"What this whole world has been about up to now is separations. We’re all in our silos. Women’s bodies are seen the same way as the earth—as something we need to tame, something we need to control, something we need to use, dominate. But we don’t see them as something as connected to us. I don’t know why it took cancer to fully break through my own numbness and denial, but it did and it brought me back into my body. I am not anti-intellectual by any means, but I think we’ve worshipped the brain at the expense of the heart and the body and the spirit. As a result, a terrible separation and split has happened. Our work now is to embody intelligence. To make us whole and the world whole."

After listening to her interview, which was some time ago now, and reading other articles about this idea, I have begun to imagine these stories I hear as swirling balls of energy that I have to carefully handle alongside the patient I am working with.  Gently, we must hold and guide this energy so that it does not convert into something destructive, and personally, I must be vigilant to not allow this ball of energy to take up residence inside of me.  This seems to require a regular "detox" of sorts in the form of all of my spiritual practices and disciplines, but particularly the body-based activities like yoga.

But here is where the paradox presents itself: what is the very thing I have little to no interest to do once signs of burn-out are already present (e.g. headaches, hives, jaw clenching), but it is one of the very practices that would be exactly what the doctor ordered? Yoga.

Seane Corn, the well-known Yoga Instructor and founder of the non-profit Off the Mat Yoga, has also discussed the necessity of a practice that helps an individual process through all of the emotional residue that can transform into disease if not addressed.  She said in a radio interview:

"Your body remembers everything and even though we have as human beings a gorgeous ability to reconcile or to reason, our bodies don’t have that same ability to heal unless we’re moving through experiences in our life…If we’re holding on to hate, blame, shame, anger, rage, sadness, or grief, something like that, those emotions can be as toxic on our physical body as poor diet or as inertia and they manifest as tension, stress, and anxiety. So our physical body is actually masking the emotional resonance that lies beneath it."

This is the dilemma.  And I think it is equally true in parenting. 

We recently had a run of two different strands of viruses go through our family, and after several days of sleepless nights, taking temperatures, and visiting the doctor's office, the very spiritual practices that would have been unquestionably helpful, I could not bring myself to even consider.  All of the sudden any moment of downtime (a.k.a. the children were napping or sleeping) I found myself binge-watching old seasons of Grey's Anatomy on Netflix, and just disconnecting to all things fundamental in myself- including my own body.

So how does one get back on the horse? How does a slide of couple days not turn into a couple weeks, not turn into a couple of months? How do I begin again?

My old way would be to push myself.  To use relatively harsh language, sometimes of a shaming nature, to "get my act together." Yes, not very compassionate.  And honestly, not very helpful in the long-run.

I recently read an article in the June, 2015 issue of Mindful called "Does Why You Meditate Matter" by Shauna Shapiro that suggested returning to your intention. 

I like this idea. Rather than pushing and shaming and, as I'd say to my patients, "shoulding" yourself (as in: I should do this), reminding yourself of why we are coming to the cushion to begin with from that deeper, wiser place inside, which for me is to reside with god.  To sit together for a while.  Just us two.  This converts into a greater ability to do all of my vocations- be they work, parenting, or the one we all share, being my true authentic self.

So for today, I will try to come back to my intention.  And whatever happens, happens.  I will try to use my intention as a tool to gently, compassionately come back to my spiritual practices and disciplines which I know serve me well.

How about you? What strategies do you use for managing burn-out? What spiritual practices help you with the occupational hazards you encounter?