Becoming a Mystic in Motherhood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Micro Moments of Mysticism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All or nothing spiritual practice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcending Emotions in Meditation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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