Life As Pilgrimage

Not long ago I received a thank you card for the support I had offered someone while they were going through a real transformative period in their life.

At the end of their note, they wrote:

Thank you for all of your help through my journey.  It has been a rough one, but what journey's aren't?

What journey's aren't?

When I read that, I thought: What a great observation.

And it reminded me of an idea I have been playing with for several years now which is: Life as Pilgrimage.

Ever since I read the book Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God, A Guide to Contemplation by James Finley (a clinical psychologist and former Trappist Monk who lived and studied at the same monastery with Thomas Merton), I have always liked the idea of respectfully adapting spiritual practices that might be considered intended for solely the monastics, religious professionals, or the most pious amongst us.

As a spiritual "layperson," I find there can be a lot of benefit from sincerely applying spiritual and religious concepts and rituals to my everyday life in a serious way.

This includes the concept and ritual of "pilgrimage."

The virtual encyclopedia Wikipedia defines pilgrimage as the following:

A pilgrimage is a journey or search of moral or spiritual significance.  Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith, although sometimes it can be a metaphorical journey into someone's own beliefs...A person who makes such a journey is called a pilgrim.

I actually really like this definition.

Which leads me to a question: If you who are reading this blog also identify yourself as a Spiritual Seeker and/or someone who is on a journey of spiritual significance of his or her own, then are you too not a pilgrim just as I?

I know it is hard to not associate the word "pilgrimage" with places like Mecca, Jerusalem, the Ganges, The Vatican, Bodh Gaya, or Santiago de Compostela.

But if a pilgrimage is a journey of spiritual significance that can be both literal and/or metaphorical, then wouldn't it make sense that anyone who's personal journal looks more like a spiritual memoir might actually fit this definition pretty accurately?

And, more importantly, if I frame my life as pilgrimage then what implications does that have for the high points of life, the low points of life, and the very ordinary (which is to say the majority) points in life?

I surely don't have the answer to that question, but I still like asking it anyway and will continue to do so...

I also like to visualize the metaphor of pilgrimage when I go for a hike in the woods alone.  With all of its perfect archetypes like wilderness, getting lost, and returning home again, a hike in the woods is ripe with pilgrim imagery.

I even like to take my hikes on a Sunday sometimes--as opposed to going to church--as a means to embody the sacredness of ideas like Sabbath and connection to divinity.

About a month ago, I went into the woods in just this way, and I took these photos.

Seeing images in my literal path like walking sticks, color-coded sign posts, resting places, paths covered with sheets of treacherous ice, and warning signs of danger, it felt all too real for the ways my real life as pilgrimage has actually taken shape.

And, as with any pilgrim's journey, sometimes the sweetest moment is when we make that toast that we are home once again. Safe and sound.

I hope that you too, fellow pilgrim, can find inspiration and solace on the spiritual path as well.

May it be so.

Poetry 124: Looking For Delight

"In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again."

-Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson

 
Looking For Delight

I look for delight,

and it is there.

 

The heat

of the ceramic

tea cup

in  the palm

of my hand.

The purplish-pink hue

of the sky

on the horizon

at dusk.

 

The velvety, soft texture

of the light blue

blanket that is tightly tucked

beneath my chin.

The arrogant orange and white

tom cat who unapologetically

saunters into my yard

to sleep on my deck chair.

The incredible fragrance

of the towering lilac

in the corner

of my backyard.

The first look

at my son’s unspoiled face

in the morning

before the sleep

has left his eyes.

I look for delight,

and it is there.

I look for delight,

because I need to.

-Me

Kindred Spirits: Anne Lamott

(AKA: "Why I Write This Blog")

I've been reading Anne Lamott's spiritual nonfiction for many years now, and could quite easily quote material from any one of her books that resonates so deeply it is as if somebody were reading my own thoughts- plus she makes me laugh which is always a bonus.

Recently though, I've been reading her 1994 book Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, and I found her chapter called "Writing a Present" spoke to me directly.

You see, as you probably guessed, I'm not "a writer."  I also have no plan, intention, or desire to be "a writer." 

However I've found, I can't not write.

I think there are several reasons for this, but one of them is: I find that writing is one of the ways I can most honestly and authentically connect with others- both intimates and strangers alike.

Reading Bird By Bird, I wondered if Ms. Lamott might feel the same.

In "Writing a Present" she writes:

There was a part of me that believed that my journal could be a gift for others, for single mothers. I couldn't find any books about single parenting when Sam was first born that were funny and sick and therefore true. 

There were some great books on child rearing, but none that made me laugh, and none that went into the dark side, the Seventh-Seal-with-milky-bras part.  They were all so nicey-nice and rational and suggested that surely if you did this or that, the colicky little darling would come around, pull himself or herself together, get a grip.  And this simply wasn't true. 

Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world's worst roommate, like having Janis Joplin with a bad hangover and PMS come stay with you...

I would have felt so relieved if there had been a book written by another mother who admitted that she sometimes wanted to grab her infant by the ankles and swing him over her head like a bolo.  So I went ahead and started writing one myself, as a present, as a kind of road map for other mothers.

Even though I do get a kick out of seeing the list of some of the countries around the globe where people have viewed this blog (e.g. Angola, Italy, Indonesia, Germany, Russia, UAE, Brazil, the Philippines, Ireland, Lebanon, Australia, Venezuela, China, and Sweden, among many others).

At the end of the day, I don't know who reads this blog (for all I know it is just some troll or business person who travels a lot), and I am completely fine with that.

I just like the idea of releasing a set of ideas or meditations out into that universe so that someone, somewhere (in the present or future) who is contemplating some of the same existential awakenings that I am, can have a virtual bookmark to call upon, and maybe, just maybe, they might not feel so alone in their journey.

I also like the idea of having a spiritual memoir of sorts available for my children when the grow up if, when, they might need it- especially if I am not around in person to share these stories myself.

Toward the end of the same chapter, "Writing a Present," Ms. Lamott quotes the prolific writer Toni Morrison who said, "The function of freedom is to free someone else." Ms. Lamott then adds:

If you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else.

May it be so. For you, and for me.

Moving Out of Our Spiritual Comfort Zone

In 2003, Jon Kabat-Zinn, creator of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) wrote an article for Yoga International called "Mindful Yoga: Movement & Meditation."

He began this piece with the following observation about his very early work as a yoga instructor:

For a number of years in the late 1970s, Larry Rosenberg and I taught back-to-back classes in a church in Harvard Square. He would teach vipassana meditation (a Buddhist practice of mindfulness) from six to eight p.m. on Thursday evenings, and I followed with mindful hatha yoga from eight to ten. These were big classes–upwards of 50 to 100 people–and the idea was that everyone would take both.

But Larry and I were always bemused by the fact that most of the people in the meditation class didn’t want to do the hatha yoga, and most of the “yogis” didn’t come for the meditation class.

For the purposes of transparency, I must confess that when I first read this article in 2016 as part of the assigned reading for a MBSR teaching training course, I had to laugh out loud because I am totally one of those people who puts her meditation in the meditation box and yoga (asana) in the yoga box. 

As a life-long compartmentalizer, I know all too well how I put my various spiritual practices neatly in to their respective boxes: yoga is for the body, meditation is for the mind, church is for the soul. 

Yes, I love my boxes.  Preferably with a bright pink bow on top.

For this reason, I remember clearly when these nice neat boxes began to unpack.

I was first introduced to the idea of yoga as a "moving meditation" practice when I did my first Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course in 2014, but the idea of fluid lines between these practices did not really hit home until my first 5-day Silent Mindfulness Meditation Retreat when, 2-3 days in, I realized that my sitting meditation practice was feeling more like a body practice as opposed to a mind practice.

Though probably logical for some, for me these were actually really big shifts in my thinking about both yoga and meditation.

You see, I had been holding onto these rather naïve, though unconscious, manufactured rules and ideas about what spiritual need could be met by what spiritual practice, and this narrow belief was greatly limiting and restricting the spiritual intentions I would set or aspire to when I began each respective practice.

Ironically, having said that, lately, my main spiritual practice has looked more like this:

than like this:

And it does not feel like "just" yoga.

I suppose if I shared this story with Mr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, he would not be at all surprised as he goes on in the same Yoga International article that in those same two classes, he and his colleague:

Saw the hatha and meditation as different but complementary doors into what is ultimately the same room–namely learning how to live wisely. Only the view from the doorways was different. We had a definite sense that the meditators would have benefited from paying more attention to their bodies (they tended to dismiss the body as a low-level preoccupation). And the hatha yogis, we felt, would have benefited from dropping into stillness for longer stretches of time and observing the arising and passing away from moment to moment of mind/body experience in one sitting posture–interspersed with periods of walking meditation.

For me, the lines I had unknowingly drawn between mind, body  and spirit had manifested themselves in extremely concrete (and rigid) ways.

Yet, interestingly, and for sure not by a conscious decision, I found myself dropping to my knees and bowing my forehead to the floor for anywhere from 5 - 15 minutes- as if that is what I needed most right now.

It is amazing how easy it is to say that: "change is the only constant" and "we need to push ourselves in order to grow," but when the rubber meets the road, how willing am I really to change up (or shake up) my daily practices?

It reminds me of this model I was once given to consider how I relate to my spiritual practices:

I really like this model, and find it so helpful that I share it with patients I work with too because I think it can be applied to many aspects of our lives.

But in terms of the spiritual life, I can see how sometimes I try to keep myself safe and sound in that inner circle--the Comfort Zone--which on a day-to-day basis looks like me doing the same 'ol, same 'ol spiritual practices day in and day out.

For this reason, this time, when I noticed this rather organic change--which has extended for several weeks now--I decided to ask myself two questions:

1.) What spiritual need am I trying to address by making this shift in posture? And,
2.) What is my intention when I move my body into this new posture?

Yoga postures, or asana, is not new to me as a whole.  In fact, I began yoga a good 10 years before I began a sitting meditation practice.

However, in 2016 I hit a brick wall in my yoga practice (that I actually wrote about here in this blog) when I  realized that my yoga had distorted itself into an effort to indulge my many negative body image beliefs that I was still clinging to from my early teens.

As a woman about to turn 40 at the time, this realization was incredibly disappointing, and sadly, my practice of asana still has not been the same since.

So imagine my surprise when, in lieu of sitting my butt on my cushion, I instead shifted into what some call puppy pose or melting heart pose.

The thing is though,  it felt different than the yoga I was used to.

First of all, the posture felt more like a prayer than a movement of the body because I felt a spiritual need to embody my statement of surrender to god.

This realization led me to do a little Google Search of the magazine Yoga Journal to see if I could find some larger context for these shifts and transformations I was experiencing in my practice, and this led me to Shiva Rea.

Shiva Rea is a internationally known western yoga teacher who has written about her understanding of a pranam or prostration in yoga.

In 2016, in a Yoga Journal article titled: "Welcome Summer with Shiva Rea's Solstice Prostration Practice," Shiva Rea writes:

A prostration, also known as a pranam (to nam, or bow, to the life force, prana), is known in Sanskrit as a Dandavat...

A pranam brings about a natural letting go that anyone can experience, from the beginner to the most practiced yogi.  It represents the power of renewal that is inherent in life, a humble strength hat we can give to the earth while receiving from a deeper ground of energy that is greater than one's individual self...

This embodied ritual movement instinctually transforms us, releasing tensions and awakening us.

Reading this article was so helpful to contextualize recent events in my life and how they had been impacting my spiritual practices (and vice versa).

I understood that it had been a recent series of humbling events that had (again) reminded me of the fact that I do not have control over my small universe. 

(It's like I have to just repeat it over and over like a mantra...)

As is common with these moments of humility, it was a perfect storm when all at the same time I very suddenly lost my childcare, my 4 year-old got pneumonia, and my employer decreased my paid time off benefits.

(If you are a working parent, you can appreciate the gravity of this situation: Meltdown City.)

During this time, sitting in a cross legged position on my meditation cushion just did not feel right.

Yoga as prayer is  a concept I was first introduced to in the work of another internationally recognized Western yoga instructor Seane Corn,

but I had never really experienced it myself- possibly because of all of those negative body image barriers that I just mentioned.

Yet, I still really liked the idea of taking a spiritual practice out of it's usual box, and trying it on in a different way, and I remembered Seane Corn's phrase "Body Prayer" one morning as I knelt down onto the floor, placing my forehead to the blanket I had placed underneath my head.

I realized then, "Body Prayer" was the best description of what I was doing. It was both my need and my intention.

And it was liberating.

So going forward, on a concrete level, moving outside of my Spiritual Comfort Zone means I might intentionally try to:

-Get needs of the soul or spirit met from yoga rather than church,
-Quiet the mind through asana instead of meditation, or
-Embody my body in a church service rather than yoga.

Though I still always want to respect and honor when and how I can get overwhelmed because it is still not easy for me to draw outside of the lines, I'd like to aspire for more of this in the future.

Perhaps you might too.

May it be.

Poetry 123: Next Time

Next Time

I’ve been discussing
this with god
already:
Next time
I’d like to be
an elephant.

 

Or maybe an orca,
a wolf,
or a canadian goose.

 

You see, these
are all animals
who travel in packs.

These are all animals

who don’t kill
or disown
their own kind.

 

I know
according to the sages
I’m supposed to be
incredible grateful
for this human
incarnation.

 

And I am.

For parts.

 

Like the other day

when my four year-old
called the freshly fallen
snow that was stuck
to the trees around us:
snow flowers.

That was precious-

I’m grateful for that.

 

I’m  grateful for her,
my son and
my husband.

 

Yet, sometimes,

when the betrayal sears
my heart in two
and the hypocrisy
burns like hot iron on
my skin,
it feels like
the excruciating pain
of this human incarnation
can be too much to bear.

 

In those moments,
I feel like Miss Alice
in her Wonderland,
where up is down,
and cats are smiling,
and my very own GPS
says:
I don’t know where
the fuck you are.

 

So yes, if I may be so bold,
next time, please,
an elephant,
an orca,
a wolf,
or a goose.

 

I’ve been a tulip
in a rose garden
for far too long.

 

Next time,
let me
be.

-Me

Poetry 122: Woken Up By Evil

Woken Up By Evil

I want to understand
Arendt's banality of evil,
though my husband cannot,
for the life of him,
comprehend why.

I lay each night in bed,
fingers interlocked
with yours-
close enough to feel your breath
on my face,
and all the while,
with my eyes squeezed shut,
I (impossibly) try to hold
these two opposing truths
at once.

My nightmares
act as part horror show,
part container
for the other reality
of what sheer viciousness
man can do to man
(and woman and child).

Vivid pictures,
exquisite detail
of the graphic violence
motivated by the Big Three
of humanity's shadow:
hatred, greed
and ignorance.

Waking up in a panic.
Heart racing, disoriented,
drenched in sweat
that drips down the middle
of my back.

I am gripped by terror-

feeling his tight 

fist clenched around my 

pounding heart.

I wince-
my tense body
shaking in speechless disgust.
I cry, always
without a single
tear.

This evil
that I stare down
wakes me up
every time.

I suppose,
it's supposed to.

-Me

Poetry 121: Learning To Fly

Learning To Fly

One by one the members
of my tribe
left the nest.

Left alone,
before I knew how to fly,
my body adapted.

And I flew.

Yet,
without technique,
without the inertia of a crew,
fatigue quickly
set in.

Missing links
exposed themselves
between the wax and feathers.

Trust, faith and forgiveness,
the three elements of intimacy,
atrophied
under the blanket of dormancy.

It felt like starting from scratch.

Can you really teach
an old dog new tricks?

I love you.
I'll let you love me.
It all felt so hard-
still does sometimes.

Now, a new chief,
a new tribe,
a new nest.

An opportunity to practice
the ancient wisdom of
the scales
I never learned.

Truth, faith and forgiveness-
a sacred eclipsing is
taking shape
across the golden sky.

Gratitude runneth over;
it always does when
the sweetness of honey
fills the empty
spaces inside.

-Me

To Be Spiritual Is To Be Progressive

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be "spiritual," and it seems to me that to be spiritual is to be progressive.

I just finished reading Brene Brown's newest book Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone, and she uses the following definition of spirituality:

Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion.

I like this definition a lot.

Not because I think it is absolutely "right" or "true," I actually don't think that really exists for such huge words like "spirituality" (or god for that matter).

No, I like it because it seems to simply name or label what most of us experience in a "spiritual moment" which is that there is "something" occurring that is beyond the parameters of I, me and mine.

Perhaps that "something" is a something we can observe directly with our 5 human senses, or perhaps not.

Perhaps that "something" is a something we can describe with words and language, or perhaps not.

Perhaps that "something" is a something that we fully understand and could explain or maybe even teach to another, or perhaps not.

Regardless, spiritual moments grant us the opportunity to see beyond the limited geography of the "I, me, mine" that organizes the vast majority of our waking lives.

Enter the word: progressive.

The online Merriam Webster Dictionary identifies the word "progressive" as one of those words that can have several different meanings, however, the following definition is the best fit for what I am investigating in the context of spirituality:

Making use of or interested in new ideas, findings, or opportunities; moving forward or onward: Advancing.

I like this definition too.  Because it captures the essence of what some might describe as the virtue of an unfolding human evolution or the awakening of consciousness that has no known endpoint,

This, to me, is inherently spiritual.

Though I would not describe myself as a Humanist, I think the world and history of math and science has much to teach us about the relationship between the spiritual and the progressive.

Listen to an interview with a modern day mathematician, scientist or physicist who has "discovered" a new formula, algorithm, star, or theory of the universe,  and you will often hear them say that they do not believe that they in fact "discovered" anything. 

They will say that the formula, the algorithm, the star, or that theory of the universe was always there- we humans, just did not yet have the ability and/or understanding to put a name to it yet.

I love this idea.

That there are evidenced-based people out there who go about their lives with a faith that deeper connections are already in existence whether we can see them or not- whether we acknowledge them or not.

It reminds me of a quote by 20th century writer Mary McCarthy from an article of hers in The New Yorker in 1958:

There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing. A truth is something that everybody can be shown to know, and to have known, as people say, all along.


In 2016, Hollywood touched on this same theme in a film called Hidden Figures.

This movie is based on the true story of three 20th century African American women who made significant contributions for NASA while simultaneously breaking through both sexist and
racist policies and procedures that had kept women and people of color excluded from this area of science, math, physics, and space exploration, and in the film there is theme that is both explicit and implicit about seeing beyond what is there.

To me, spirituality and progress are absolutely about seeing beyond what is there.

This theme is first stated explicitly when the head of The Space Task Group at NASA, played by actor Kevin Costner, says to his staff of geniuses:

I need a mathematician who can see beyond the numbers, at math that doesn't exist.

I really like this line in the movie because it captures so beautifully that faith in deeper connections that already exist that I was just talking about.

But this faith can be seen as quite radical at times, and even heretical.

Think about Galileo.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), the famous Italian mathematician, astronomer and physicist who chose to defend the Copernican system of Heliocentrism (the theory that the earth and planets revolve around the sun, and not the other way around) during the time of the Roman Inquisition.

This brave decision of course led this man to be put under house arrest for the rest of his life because
the Catholic Church interpreted Galileo's scientific work as a threat to the authority of the church and the bible, which at the time was thought to be the authority on everything within the cosmos.

To me, this decision to pursue a life dedicated to greater understanding about the interconnections of the universe (both the visible and the hidden) is the essence of what it means to be spiritual and progressive.

Which has led me to wonder, why would anyone resist spirituality and progress?

To date, I have come up with 4 possible reasons:

1.) Fear of becoming obsolete (e.g. the Arab Spring, the French Revolution, Shareholders in the Harvey Weinstein Corporation),
2.) Fear of changing values and priorities (e.g. Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring, Climate Change),
3.) Fear of losing power and/or status (e.g. Women's Suffrage Movement, Civil Rights Movement, Marriage Equality), and/or
4.) Fear of scarcity and unwillingness to share resources (e.g. Occupy Wall Street).

Fear.  That is the common denominator.  And we know that fear is a very powerful motivator.

Nonetheless, to be spiritual is to be progressive, and for me, this reality fills me with hope for the future of my children, and my children's children.

I'll close with a small excerpt from Chapter 71 of the 6th century BCE text, the Tao Te Ching:

Knowing that you do not know is the best. Not knowing that you do not know is an illness. 

Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion.
Read more at https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/find-your-next-read/extracts/2017/sep/braving-the-wilderness-brene-brown/#XV0f510DBYLL8UYH.99

Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion.
Read more at https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/find-your-next-read/extracts/2017/sep/braving-the-wilderness-brene-brown/#XV0f510DBYLL8UYH.99

Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion.
Read more at https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/find-your-next-read/extracts/2017/sep/braving-the-wilderness-brene-brown/#XV0f510DBYLL8UYH.99