MASTERY

"Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Quote of the Day...

"What would have to change - no, what would I have to change - in order to feel more engaged, enthusiastic, and fulfilled with my life?" Brendon Burchard

This picture of Washington is a reminder to me of one of my visions - returning to Orcas Island. I believe this inquiry needs to be ongoing, daily. What must I do today to continue to move in the direction of my intentions, dreams and visions? Then? Schedule it. This year I've learned to use the timer on my cell phone, for even very small increments, to make sure I get in the things that make a difference for me - read, write, meditate, move. Those things must happen every day in order for me to do everything else without collapse. How about you? What's your vision, and how are you going about creating it?

Support Life

   
     I posted this photo on Face Book and Twitter yesterday, Veteran's Day. I didn't say anything about that though, I hadn't formulated what I thought about it yet. In fact, I had been taking a little nap in my car. I was feeling depleted, the result of some recent challenges, investigation and cleaning of my internal house. That was the reason I went to the beach in the first place. I needed to rest and be healed by the sea.

    I opened the windows of my car on the still warm day, laid my head on the headrest, closed my eyes, and rested my spirit, nourished by the smell of the sea air and the sounds of November at the beach. The next time I opened my eyes, at four something in the afternoon, there was the image of the sun, lowering in the sky in front of me and shining on the car parked next to me. A few people, maybe half a dozen, wandered the shoreline, or just stood looking out. A couple, like me, sat in their cars.

    That is when I began to think about Veteran's Day. Today I offer this prayer.
 

         May we remember, the loss of all those from every country, throughout time, who have died at the hands of war.

         May we, who have stayed at home, offer gratitude to those who risked their lives, their limbs, their minds, and their hearts on the fields, skies and waters of battle in the attempt to protect the lands and lives of those they loved.

        Most importantly, may we fervently envision and assist in creating an evolution and  future for humanity that does not include killing as an acceptable solution to resolving our conflicts.

       May we learn to nourish and support Life as our planet has done for us throughout our time here.

       May we know our place in the Universe and offer our Love and our Lives in Gratitude.     

How to Inspire

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

               ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY

Why Write?

I write because I love. I write because I don't know how to live without saying out-loud what is true for me at this moment, to clarify. I write because I don't know how to keep it all in without letting some out. I write because this beauty and pathos is so overwhelming -- it is impossible to bear, without exclaiming. I write because I need to. I write because I love words, their sound and ability to turn sound into meaning. I write because language is how we perceive this world and I have an enormous amount of words spewing and spilling about. I write because there is something inside that says, I long to reach you, to tell you how I see it, because if I don't, there is no one else who can. I write because I believe in everyone's story, even my own. I write because history is made up of each of these stories, and I claim my place at the fireside. I write, because it's easier than lugging an 8x10 foot canvas around every minute of the day. I write because it requires no one or nothing else besides me a pen and a page. I write because I have always written - lies, truth, story, memory, impossible dreams, regrets, angers, resentments, sorrows, songs, poems, thank you's, and prayers.

It's a Practice, it's an Art, it's a Commitment.

“Poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment.” Galway Kinnell

It's a practice, it's an art, it's a commitment.

This is Why...

           I rejoice at living in a place where natural beauty is so present. I took this photo this morning at a place that I frequently walk to, not because of the way the sun is beaming down on everything, though lovely, or because of the water that surrounds us here on Cape Cod like God. No. I took the picture because of the chairs. Right? What would this photograph be, without the chairs?

          I've been walking here from my house for sixteen years, but it was only a few months ago that these two chairs appeared one day. This is a remote little neighborhood spot with a small dock just big enough for one or two dingys, a hose to rinse off a boat, and now, these two chairs. 

         Over the years in various places that I've had the good fortune to live, I've observed that, people who live in naturally splendid places often choose not just to treasure, but to add to that beauty. I know that this isn't always true, that humans frequently fail to respect, understand and take good care of this Earth, and I know that we don't all have the same ideas about what adding to nature might look like. But isn't it wonderful when someone offers something so simple, two plastic chairs, giving us a place to pause, and be grateful?

Life as Art

                                                                               photo - Jenna Bauer

Here is a statement I love from a painter I know. It was written as the statement for a show she had in 2013. You can visit her website at www.JennaBauer.com

"Life must be a form of art,
and neither life nor art is ever at rest.

Even in the greatest stillness there is  molecular hum
that completes life. The gesture of the arc in my work 
is representative of this fact.

Every second of each moment is an important instance of 
expression whether or not it may eventually manifest
in a physical or non-physical form.

Consider every moment along the path of physical or non-
physical manifestation as the work of art. What happens 
while a work of art is approaching conception, creation
and completion is inherently part of the work.

I acknowledge the connections between my work and myself
and myself and the world as a singular being's effort of
expression and purpose.

My practice depend on close attention  to these details and 
the totality of work I do and make. Every effort is vital. 
No moment is inconsequential."

Doesn't that just say it all? Thanks Jenna.

Sustainable Truths

I recently heard someone use a phrase that I'd first heard years ago in a course that I took through Landmark Education. The phrase, "Life is a Conversation,"  made a lot of sense to me at the time. The concept, that all of our sensorial perceptions and experiences are translated into words that we use to describe, evaluate and make sense of things, creating internal stories that we carry around as our experience of reality, was pretty flashy -- something glittering, easy to reach for.

When I heard it again though, I realized that I don't actually believe that anymore. Today I believe that a more accurate statement is that life appears to us as the conversations we're carrying around in our heads, but that isn't what life actually is. There's an important distinction between an insight, a momentary flash of understanding of a concept like life is a conversation, and a deeper, ongoing engagement, practice and contemplation of something, beyond the weekend workshop into daily living.

Thankfully over the years I've had the grace to have had teachers and teachings that have given me tools, like meditation, that have enabled me to practice being present in my body and the moment. The result has been a continual skin shedding -- peeling away layers of dead stuff to the raw new life beneath. I've also been blessed with various communities  for ongoing and intimate observation, feedback, and company on the path of self-inquiry.

So, what then, do I believe life is? I think it's an important question to ask from time to time. Exactly what the hell is going on here? Not that any of has the keys to the palace on that one, but it seems important to at least wonder, deeply. One thing I know for starters, is that life is not limited to my own or anyone else's personal experience of it. Another thing that seems true to me about life is that there is no such thing as "my" life. I exist within life, life is having me, expressing itself through me as a part of itself.

So the big question for me then is, if Life is generous enough to give me all this, then what am I offering back to Life? That's the one that life lets me consider, every day.




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IMMERSION

Each morning as I begin to write, the first moments are like my first steps into water. Whether it's the ocean,  a swimming pool, even a shower,  hot or cold, quickly or slowly, sooner or later, it's going to lead to a full body immersion and it's going to change me.

It is a rare day when I don't get into water somehow, but on those days, I feel different all day, not fully clean or awake. There are other things -- meditating, chanting, hatha yoga, painting, walking,  that can wake me up to life. The important thing isn't how, it's that. That I do.

Close eyes. Focus on sound, sensation, breath. Observe thinking, go behind, to awareness of awareness. 

Ah. There you are. Hello.

Poetic Slam

In the early hours before dawn the unconscious comes through unpatterned, unwalled pathways like a speeding bullet.

You can speak through the dog's mouth, listen to the child's breath, know the rustle of a mountain tick, a hare's hide. Healthy is the appetite of the unfettered mind.

The poetic slam is not the closing of a door, but the sound of the mind banging loudly against formerly held assumptions, lies, deceptions and those who wield power, while searching new territory.

"The clearest way into the Universe, is through a forest wilderness." John Muir

Raven #7      Artist: Lynne Huras

Community

6/1/14

What I know now, after years of continued reading, observing and practicing, is that I have nothing new to say about being on a conscious journey. Mystics, saints and seekers have said the same thing for as long as we have recorded history -- that we are a part of the one continuous fabric of creation, and various different practices – yoga, meditation, prayer, chanting, contemplation, silence, for example can lead us to the experience of that.  The classic plea of the seeker to the master, “Make me one with everything”, is impossible, because we already are, it isn’t something anyone else can make happen to us.

However, when I read the words of people recounting an experience of something that pierced them right through all the forgetfulness to the core of their remembering, I am grateful; I remember again myself. And that is, I believe, the reason I continue to write. We are not meant to do this alone, it is in community, that we experience the joy of the simple and mesmerizing truth of our limitless connectedness to Everything. The trick, the challenge these days, with the vastness of the internet, is how best to actually connect out there. It's like reaching into the sky, into outer space, for a hand to hold. Well, here's mine…..

From Myth to Magic

 The main mentor for the Re-Organizational Healing work that I do with health and wellness practice members in my office, is Dr. Donald Epstein. In his book Healing Myths, Healing Magic he takes thirty-one ideas about health and healing common to our culture and breaks them down into the categories of Social, Bio-Medical, Religious and New Age. He then follows each of what he calls the "Myths" with a "Healing Magic" statement. I have found through a workshop that I lead in my office on this book that many of his statements cause us to stop and examine the "myths", with a new, often very beneficial lens. 

Here's an example:

                                                               New Age

"Myth: I am responsible for creating my reality. 

MAGIC: I am not responsible for creating my external reality. I am responsible for my internal state of mind, emotion, and vibration. I am responsible for focusing my attention on my inner environment in relationship to my life circumstances. It is my gift to become aware of the state of tension, pain, or ease in my bodymind, and to accept my experiences - pleasant or unpleasant - with non-judgement and love."

What are your thoughts? I'd love to hear from you. 

You can also contact me through my website harmonychiroyoga.com 

HONESTY

     I went to a meeting this morning where honesty was the topic. A never ending contemplation, that one. Afterwards I ate brunch at a neighborhood restaurant. Upscale, French, when I eat there alone I am, like today, the only solitary diner there. I don't mind at all. Dining alone is a personal vacation for me - allowing me time to sit, think, observe, read, write.

     A pause in the background jazz while the musicians take a break reveals the underlying sounds inherent to a place like this - laughter from every direction, the clicking of silver on china, the hum of a dishwasher just for glasses in the bar, snippets of  light conversation, a scooper plunging into the ice machine the tinkling of cubes entering glasses, the rhythmic shooshing of martinis and ice in a shaker, the general hum of people content with their food, their friends and their lives, every table full of these people. Or so it would seem.

     The man whose back is directly in front of me sits on top of a green sweater, its long sleeves hanging off the sides of the chair onto the floor and then curling up like puppets about to speak to one another. He is large, and like his sleeves, overflows from his tight cotton t-shirt, his belt and his bluejeans into the space all around him. A woman within my line of vision at another table sits with her three companions, silent, unsmiling, her eyes often clouding over with disassociation. She is isolating, separating in the midst of the hurdy-gurdy here. Yet she is not at all alone; I see her so clearly.

     I am thinking of Philip Seymour Hoffman. Actor extraordinaire, found dead one week ago today, a needle in his arm, bags of heroin scattered around his New York city apartment. A tragedy, for him, his children, all of us who will no longer be receiving the gift of his brilliant, empathic work. Why, how, do we continue existing, some of us, when others don't? What allows our light to remain at least somewhat intact, unextinguished by the hazards, the brutality in the world we live in, the world we have created? If, like the woman above, the capacity to disengage, to mute, to dim, exists within us without outside assistance, or when that fails, we have created infinite avenues for smaller doses of invisibility, why then the need for extreme measures? How does the need for darkness become so great, the mechanism for inner regulation so overloaded,  that one destroys the machine altogether? What tips the scale?

     The musicians have come back to their places, the music resumes, I return to my goat cheese asparagus crepe and my St. Germaine martini. I do not choose heroin today.

The Sublime and the Abyss

"You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If however you want to look at the stars, you find that darkness is necessary." Annie Dillard

Everything leads to this. This is how it works, how it is - the paradox of the absolutely sublime and the completely absurd, sitting within us, next to one another, like poorly placed guests at a dinner party - slightly startled, certainly dismayed, but putting up a good front as they try to make the best of it, and often do.