And I quote...
...or, is this Meditation On Love ...5?
On being born:
"It is love that brings me here, not karma, not patterns to work out, but love and the fact that I have love to give" - David Spangler, The Call
Whew-boy - did my family ever get this one wrong! But I'm scurrying to catch up now... to self-correct... to live the true thing.
30 May 2010 in Spiritual Practice | Permalink
Meditation on Love ...4
(photo source unknown)
For the Greek, it is avgolemono* - egg-lemon soup exactly the way his Dad made it, which I have to say is the standard by which all avgolemono should be judged. If he's coming down with something, or it was a particularly dank day in his studio by the Bay, or an unfortunate run of life events have been a drag to his spirit, he is guaranteed to arrive home with a fresh organic chicken and a mass of Meyer lemons in his canvas sack. There could be (and has been) another chicken broth soup on the stove when he gets there, but that one will not do. Only the avgolemono will make a difference, and it always does make a difference.
His other go-to is sage tea - not any sage tea; the particular Greek sage tea his mother brewed. Here, the needs that cry for it are vaguer, and it seems to be more about holding the hot cup and breathing in its aromatic vapors than actually downing much of the stuff. This does not in any way diminish its transformative powers.
When I was little, the first food after a stomach bug was a soft-boiled egg over torn pieces of soft white bread in a bowl with salt and pepper on top. My great-grandmother made it for me the first time and it became the standard that put me on the fast-track to 100% better. But by the time I reached grad school that white sandwich bread had fallen off my list of actual food. Then I moved to California where artisan bread is plentiful, so I had not had the cure for decades until - about four years ago - I came down with a miserable four-day stomach virus and sent my husband on an emergency mission to the local 7-11 for the dumbest loaf of white sandwich bread he could find - "Do they still make Wonder Bread? Does it even exist? If so, get that." I have to tell you, I was actually shocked at how thoroughly that little bowl of familiar put me into a beneficial altered state.
I started contemplating such remedies more deeply during a particularly difficult spell this winter, when avgolemono became a weekly staple here at the old homestead. The simplest, most obvious explanation would be to classify them as placebos. "It makes me feel better because I believe it will." Or... "The positive emotions I associate with this food come flooding back and bring me needed comfort." But, based on recent observations, I would have to argue that we're dealing with, at minimum, Placebo-Plus, the plus being - more than memory and belief - an actual living energy field constructed in a relationship of heart and care and intention. And while I'm at this, let me take this thing right over the cliff: recently, I was looking at the pretty canister I keep full of Greek sage tea as part of Just What You Must Do in this home and found myself wondering if this special relationship is why sage plants always explode into ridiculously enormous bushes virtually overnight in our postage stamp garden, while other plants struggle to maintain themselves in its low light and cramped quarters.
As I've pondered this notion of some unseen (by me... so far... but I'm working on this) energetic field created in the giving of certain nourishments, I started to experiment with weaving (or maybe it's really just acknowledging; this is where intention is a key element) my own awareness of energetic fields in the receiving of nourishment. For the last few weeks, as I sit to eat - anything - I pause to love everything about its path to me: the original seed... the hands that planted it, or wind that blew it there... the soil... the rain... the people who tended it... the means by which it traveled to me... the store where we got it, the community that store supports... and more. It only takes a few moments to begin to feel a beautifully complex relationship of mutually-supportive energies among humans and nature infusing whatever is on my plate.
For me, this turns out to be a whole lot more powerful and empowering than the standard practice of asking grace. Most table prayers I have known come down to either "Thank you, God, for this food," or "Please bless this food," but in attuning myself to the energetic matrix that brought the food to me, I am aligning with grace, not just asking it. That energy seems to remain in the room as I eat.
If I maintain this practice over time, will my perception of this energy deepen? Will I notice a difference in nourishment? I'm curious to find out.
* Closest recipe I could find to Dimitri's. But make sure you have a rich chicken stock, and maybe a little more lemon. Include some plain juice on the side to add in later as desired. With shredded tender chicken in the bottom of the bowl when you ladle in the broth. Lots of fresh-cracked pepper.
04 April 2010 in Spiritual Practice | Permalink
Waters of March
I wrote the following to a friend recently:
I believe in paying special attention to synchronicities, agreeing with Jung that these can be messages from the soul. That said, it's been a long time since I've had such a pressing series of symbols come flooding at me.
Part of last week's adventure: A giant money screw-up. A mistake of the snafu order. A computer glitch. An "oops, so sorry" that threw our bank balance almost three thousand dollars into the hole and was a mess to clean up. Don't you just love paying a $35 overdraft fee on a check for under $30... times ten? The good news is we both took it in good-humored stride...once the nausea passed. That was on Monday, or - as the Greek keeps referring to it - the Ides of March.
Then, on Friday, we got a door hanger that said our water had been turned off, except our water was on. Flashback: The Greek used to own this building with a business partner, and the water bill came in her name. When we bought her out thirteen years ago, we made a written request to change the bill over into our name. Nothing happened. We made phone calls. Nothing changed. We sent notes. Nada. Then, last October, we got a notice that said, "Hey, that lady doesn't have anything to do with your address! We're going to turn your water off!" - This led to multiple phone calls and emails and assurances that they had changed it to our name at last, with a confirmation number to prove it. Then the next bill came in December... still in her name. This is when I sent the very serious registered letter, and got a written response from the Regional Director: "Everything good to go now." --- So I call the water office and they say, "We turned off your water because we have no account for that address." - I explained the history, read to them from the Director's letter, and mentioned that actually our water was on, not off. -- So the rep on the phone sets up another new account, gives me a new confirmation number and says, "I'll try to get an immediate turn-on for you, so you have water tonight."
I say, "Well, like I said, we have water right now."
She says, "Well, I still have to order a turn-on."
The Greek comes in the door about two hours later holding a door tag saying they couldn't turn the water on because the meter showed that water was running in the house. I was probably filling the tea kettle at the time. And guess what: Now we had no water!!
Another phone call. They sent someone else back out. But.... weird, non?
Now for some general information about the state of our house: A few weeks ago the shower drain backed up - a first - and was a bear to unstop. The washer-dryer overflowed big time a while back for reasons we still can't figure out (nor could the repair man); then last week, as I started a load, I noted water leaking at the left side of the machine. It's something that comes and goes but keeps me nervous. The refrigerator at the front of the house makes weird sounds. Mr. Can-Fix-Anything says it's the condenser, but hasn't gotten to it. The front toilet has a tendency to keep running when you flush it; this is what we get for going for the Home Depot deal when we redid that bathroom. We really must replace it or its parts. There's more, but it borders on unbelievable.
On Saturday, I did that divination thing where you pull one card from some kind of symbolic deck (Tarot, etc - there are so many different sets) for immediate guidance. I pulled - you've already guessed, right? - WATER. The Water Element: cleansing, communication, emotion, flow...
Water. Water. Water. - And - HELLO! - think about the common language around money: Cash flow. Liquidity. Money laundering. Drowning in debt. Pouring money down the drain. Going under. Keeping my head above water. Staying afloat. The funds dried up. When my ship comes in. Okay, maybe I'm going overboard (!) now. Oh, and let's not forget levy/levee.
And have I mentioned yet that my ankles are swollen?
A few days later, I followed up with this email:
Last night I had a dream that was, absolutely without question, all about FLUSHING.
Then, this morning, I went to FORA-TV to look for something to play while I sorted things here at my desk, and these were the top three talks listed:
Scott Harrison: Water as Luxury; 900 million people lack access to clean H20, half of them are children
Dr.Peter Wothers: Why Humans Need Water
Greg Allgood: Making Water Pure.
Neener-neener, neener-neener (Twilight Zone theme)
And the next afternoon:
Just turned on the radio - first thing I heard: A poet reading her poem about THE RIVER.
Well, I mean, you know, GLUG.
This explains how I ended up drinking all this water and listening to water sounds and meditating on water as element and picturing myself just flowing...
I'll let you know when I catch something...when it all starts making more sense than those confounding and inconstant Jobim lyrics.
And - just for... ducks - I pretty much have to include this one (<--! first link I found) too ... because we can't have Water getting the idea that I don't realize that she is pure feminine. So in honor of the Yin thing that rushes at me and swirls all around...
28 March 2010 in Spiritual Practice | Permalink
How shall my garden grow?
Today is the Vernal Equinox, my personal New Year's Day and my favorite day of the year.
It arrives this year at the end of a week that has not felt very springy. Stuff has been pretty unfun and sometimes daunting for many months now. Nothing hideous-awful, mind you; just a long, steady drip-drip-drip of "not good", oh no, and "harder than seems right" with few signs of impending lift. It's the duration more than the facts that give it all such weight. Well, okay, I'm not much keen on the facts either. As a result, the two human souls under this roof struggle some mornings to do the "'tude adjustment" - as the Greek calls it - to go happily and optimistically into the new day. In short, this is not how I usually greet this - my - auspicious, ready-set-go day.
Normally, I feel like a gardener with spring blossoms to tend. This year, I'm a worm in the dirt hoping to run into some workable seeds.
But let's not call it dirt. Let's call it soil... deep, rich, somewhat sodden and uncomfortable soil. Dark, yes. I can't see an inch in front of me in this place. Still, a place of potential. If I can just feel my way through it. If I can just assume that, whatever this looks like/feels like, it is all somehow good. <-- See? There it is. 'Tude adjustment at work.
Therefore, Resolved On This (Very Particular) New Beginning:
To accept the immediate darkness as a brilliant friend in a weird damn get-up.
To embrace each fear that rises. Instead of fleeing into distraction, to visit the center of it, to sit there for a spell, and listen.
To maintain - at minimum - my so-far snail's pace response to the aforementioned inner call to.... Silence. Love. Silence. Love.
To keep remembering to breathe. To maybe even get good at it.
To discover this year's garden rather than planning it. (Ha! As if this is a choice!)
To celebrate royally at the harvest. And buy a new dress for it. An expensive one. And fabulous, perhaps even ridiculous, shoes for dancing. Shoes suitable for framing. And wear flowers in my hair for the first time ever.
At 7...
My nephew, Noah, turns seven next week. Hence, the following words took on special significance as I was reading last night about the care and feeding of subtle perception in a culture that too often discounts it:
If you know any small children, you will have observed their efforts to adjust to the perceptual consensus. By the age of seven, most kids grasp the difference between "real" and "imaginary" and are busy sorting everything they encounter into these two categories. A friend that other people can't see is an "imaginary friend." An ache in the physical body is real, while an ache in the subtle body is "psychosomatic" (ie, imaginary). When adults agree that a perception is real, they will tell the child the name for it. They may also interpret it by analogy to something already familiar to the child. Without this interpretive help, kids can't make much sense of their subtle perceptions and eventually come to ignore them.
This is not to imply that adults are to blame for the loss of subtle perceptions, for it happens to children even in cultures where adult clairvoyance is widespread and taken for granted. No matter how they are raised, children over six or seven exhibit a strong preference for the physical senses. During the time when we are learning to survive in the physical world, the physical senses must necessarily predominate. The renewed stirring of subtle perception in adolescence contributes to the awkwardness of our teen years. We feel crazy when we sense things that we've never learned the names for.
Think of brain-based cognition as a filing system. New items of information are filed with similar items to facilitate later retrieval. Where no similar items exist, the brain tends to discard the information rather than making a new file.
Okay, first, this is a bit of a bummer because some of my favorite Noah stories are of the times he exhibited a gift for something akin to clairvoyance. I hate to think those are going to trickle off for the next five years or so.
On the upside, I am comforted to know that Noah attends a school that values and actively cultivates imagination. Imagination extends the mental filing system, so fewer things of worth get discarded. This should be a fundamental aspect of every child's education. And of course, there are other sideways measures for keeping the back-burnered pot stirred until it comes forward again.
But what happens at adolescence? What's there to welcome and nourish the return of subtle perception? As it happens, I currently have three women friends whose sons have just hit adolescence and all of them are lamenting the "loss" of their boys. It's that most predictable of shifts: although they were always close before, suddenly these young guys want nothing to do with Mom. In two of these cases, the fathers are swamped by career demands and finding it hard to give their sons the extra Dad time they require now. How much more "conducive" indigenous cultures are for what these boys must crave, when a community of men take responsibility for initiating the boy into manhood... where wise elders can encourage and affirm their re-opening perceptions.
It's a tall order for most American Dads - to create the sacred space these adolescent boys require in order to grow into whole-seeing men. Why, this gap alone probably goes a long way toward explaining what ails... gee, where to start... every place where not-exactly-grown men and "power" (what passes for it) meet.
Oh for the want of more subtle awareness... and fewer lost boys... and girls.
13 March 2010 in Spiritual Practice | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
or, Paging Dr. Jung...
...wherein I assign myself to consider every quote in Richard Kehl's Breathing Together, Quotations on the Mystery of Love, and select the ten most resonant for me. My keepers:
Barbara Walters: You've been married 42 years. What makes your marriage work? Robert Mitchum: Lack of imagination, I suppose.
(Because when someone asks you a foolish question about love, it's best to swat it away...but to do it with style and humor (sigh). Well-played Mr. Mitchum.)
Perhaps that is what love is - the momentary or prolonged refusal to think of another person in terms of power. - Phyllis Rose
If you haven't had at least a slight poetic crack in the heart, you have been cheated by nature. - Phyllis Battelle
I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people, that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other. - Rainer Maria Rilke
Love doesn't just sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. - Ursula Le Guin
Love, my dear Gigi, is a thing of beauty like a work of art. And like a work of art, it is created by artists. The greater the artist, the greater the art. - Alan Jay Lerner
Love is a triumph of imagination over intelligence. - H. L. Mencken
(Except he was being snide. I mean it.)
The Koran wisely advises: You will be called upon to account for all the permitted pleasures in life you did not enjoy while on earth.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees. - Pablo Neruda
When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You know your name is safe in their mouth. - Billy, age 4
"Perfect love means to love the one through whom one became unhappy." - Soren Kierkegaard
I was raised by three parents: father, mother, maternal grandmother. I used to describe Nana as my third parent, but over the years I have come to realize that in certain essential ways she was often the first. In the relentless emotional shipwreck loop that we called "family", I got to be the designated bad kid. Now, if I handed you a list of my horrid behaviors, you would toss it aside with a dismissive snort, "What? That's all you've got?!" Nonetheless, it was the prevailing wind and I believed what they told me. Blessedly, Nana did not. I cannot count the number of times she comforted me with the same simple guidance. "Oh, when they get like that, you just come and be with me. We're more alike, you and me. (Golden healing balm, that.) Once she had pasted me back together with my self, she would always, always end with, "you just need to love and forgive them." I can still feel her rocking me in her lap, saying the words into the back of my ear, her hands closed around mine in front of me. I can see her watch, her rings, her manicure; I can feel her warm hands squeezing mine rhythmically. Lord, it's all so vivid.
While her prescription may have been a bit of an over-quick jump for a wounded kid, it was also absolutely true. This repeated wisdom from the person who loved me more than anyone else became the single most enduring lesson of my childhood. This bit of background helps explain why the following story captured my attention.
John Lattin, author of The Harvard Psychedelic Club, How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America, breaks the news that it was Andrew Weil, then a college kid, who got Tim Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) busted from Harvard:
Leary and Alpert had promised Harvard that their research experiments with psilocybin would not involved any undergraduate students. But Alpert, who was a gay man living in the closet at the time, could not resist the temptation to bring a few attractive undergraduates into the project - not that anything sexual transpired, but there was a different sort of bond in sharing the experience brought on by the drug. One of the students Alpert brought in was Ronnie Winston, whose father was Harry Winston, the jeweler. Ronnie's good friend was Andy Weil, who became jealous when he was not allowed into this secret club of psilocybin... He had been writing for the Harvard Crimson and proposed to do an article about the strange research protocol they had and how they were using undergrads even though they said they weren't. Meanwhile, the Harvard administration, which had begun to think of Leary and Alpert as loose canons and was actually looking for a way to oust them, enlisted Weil as a kind of spy. But none of the undergrads would go on record or testify. So Weil went to Harry Winston and said, "Your son is taking this dangerous drug at Harvard, and if he doesn't admit it (to the administration), we're going to put his name in the paper." When the eventual story ran, it was picked up immediately by the New York Times and the Boston papers, and Leary and Alpert were fired -- but also thrust into the national spotlight as the spokesmen for the just-burgeoning psychedelic revolution that was about to sweep the country.
Weil feels terrible about what he did and has apologized repeatedly for it to both Leary and Ram Dass. He has talked at length about his failings then, but let's face it, he was young and Leary and Ram Dass were breaking their agreement and being somewhat irresponsible, so it's not like there was nothing to expose. The problem was the way he did it. The thing is when you talk to Ram Dass about it, even after all these years, you can still feel him tighten and he says some really nasty things about Weil, before "I know I should forgive him, but there's just something about what he did - going to Ronnie's father..." He's still angry about it!
How does this happen? How is it that a famous spiritual teacher cannot forgive something - a fairly understandable something - that happened 47 years ago... something for which the "perpetrator" has repeatedly apologized?
How is it that my small-town hairdresser grandmother understood and practiced a spiritual discipline that eludes the great Ram Dass?
Believe me, it is a discipline. This thing my grandmother initiated in me is not some make-nice, let's-all-get-along, la-la thing. There are people in life who treat us badly, that we can't and shouldn't be around. Even if we can "take it", there's nothing loving about giving someone a place to behave badly. In such a case, loving can mean separation, all the while forgiving. Now multiply that by hundreds, even thousands of possible human energy configurations. This love and forgiveness business can be complex and demanding. It requires reckoning, acknowledgment, conscious reweaving of subtle energies, the artistry of an alchemist...
"Alchemy is the art of taking what exists - whatever presents itself - and transmuting the harmful into the helpful, the useless into the valuable." - Catherine MacCoun, On Becoming An Alchemist
... transmuting what looks ugly into something beautiful. Ultimately, forgiveness of others may be a necessary practice for that most difficult thing we all must come to eventually: self-love and self-forgiveness. In the end, this is the heart of healing most of what ails us.
So what sense can be made of how often we find the love that is forgiveness missing from the very places we would most expect it?
Is this a failing ...or might it actually be a calling?
In the spirit of optimism, I have been toying with this notion of calling; as in, it calls us to notice the missing ingredient in much of what passes for spiritual practice: the Feminine.
Ram Dass (of whom I am a huge fan) has a riff on one of his lecture tapes that goes something like this:
"When I first started meditating, I thought the whole idea was to evolve to some higher state ...to go high... It took me a long time to realize it's about becoming free."
Gong higher, becoming free - these are masculine concepts.
I would ask from my own experience, "Or is it about becoming whole?"... about remembering, realigning with the wholeness that is the Truth, as in It Is All One. The truest thing in the universe is this Oneness.
Wholeness...Oneness... these are feminine in nature, as is the art of making whole...
... the way love "connects" things that formerly "appeared" separate
... the way forgiveness takes what got broken and re-weaves it into a different wholeness
Conscious love and forgiveness seem to me to be tuning forks that allow us to activate, participate in, and vibrate to some small portion of the ultimate truth of Oneness.
If we were more comfortable with and respectful of HER - the powers that are feminine in nature - might we become more adept at both?
28 February 2010 in Spiritual Practice | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
I've had love on the brain lately, intensely so. The trick, of course, is to bring it into the body, but this turns out to be more difficult - and I'm guessing a whole lot more rare - than one would hope.
This ongoing period of contemplation was forced on me by a series of inner promptings over months and months and months (I'm slow) - at first like passing strands of smoke, then whispers... once a "voice" at the back of my neck... then drumbeats... eventually shouting.
Without enumerating, I take the collective message to be this: Love. Silence. Love. Silence. Love. Silence. Go deeper into these. Become these.
(Well, okee-dokee then. Sure. I'll get right on it. Comin' right up.)
During this period of so many message meteors landing in my very personal terrain, I kept remembering two stories.
One was a brunch get-together with a girlfriend at my friend Sandro's bistro. It was a sunny morning and we were seated, warm and cozy, at a small table in the front window. My friend had recently pulled up stakes and moved 2000 miles to San Francisco. By pulled up stakes, I mean this: sold most of what she owned, walked away from a 30-year business with her name on it, in order to be closer to the hub of a spiritual group she had joined some years before. The friends she left behind would often refer to the group as a "cult" when she was out of earshot, but I never got that sense of it. It was certainly no more a cult than the Catholic Church is that for a house full of nuns. Still, I didn't know much, except that there was some kind of main teacher - a woman as I recall; they all practiced a form of meditation; and some lived in communities, sharing houses. Frankly, the group didn't interest me. What interested me was my friend's journey, which is how - sitting there in that bright, welcoming window - I came to ask, "What is the hunger? What is it you desire through this discipline."
Our food had just arrived. As with everything Sandro served, it was beautiful to behold. I was still appreciating her bowl of polenta and my fruit salad when she replied without pause, "I don't want to come back."
"Say again?"
"I don't want to come back. I don't want to be born again."
Boom. My head was up and looking into her face.
I have many friends who believe in reincarnation, who practice meditation in pursuit of everything from greater daily calm to full-bore enlightenment and I have heard them discuss their desires for spiritual growth in myriad ways, but no one had ever said it like this. Life: I want out of it. Let me out! Please don't make me do this again. Worse was how she looked in saying it: like the saddest, sorriest sack of gray surrounded by a golden morning radiance that could not penetrate. Oil. Water. She had not made a poor choice of words, she had said exactly what she wanted and her entire body and aura vibrated to the absolute truth of her inability to love her life.
It was one of those moments when I start wondering about my face. How much is showing right now? Because suddenly I could feel the enormity of my old friend's lifelong depression in ways that I had missed before. While my love and concern deepened considerably from that transaction and the exchange that followed, it is also true that our shared universe shifted on its axis. I never looked at her the same way again, never saw in her behavior the same things.
More, the conversation has continued to haunt me, causing me to wonder how much human striving is more about "away from misery" than "toward love." More "let me out" than "let me in." Which always brings me to this: "Surely the love path is more... conducive... to progress than the other." And yet...
The other story is one an ally of mine tells. Decades ago, she was lying on a massage table, resting alone after some kind of treatment, when she heard a voice - "You asked for this!" - then felt a bolt of overwhelming energy permeate her entire body, causing her to lurch and the room to rattle - objects actually fell to the floor. "Somehow, I knew," she said, "that what I was feeling was Divine Love, but it was not anything like what we humans call love - and I was so frightened that I shut it down. I regretted it immediately, of course. But it was too late. Still, those fleeting seconds altered my life's course."
So it is that my current bumpety-bump efforts (trust me: jalopy with bad tires on rocky road is an apt metaphor) to tap some deeper essence of love, these two stories refine my focus:
Please let this teach me how to love this gift of life I have been given in proper measure
Let my heart open to love that transcends human emotion.
I recently heard someone describe contemplation as "like sitting in a pitch black space, turning a little velvet ring box over and over in your hands, until suddenly your fingernail catches in the groove that flips it open and you come to discover the sparkling gem inside." For me, this call to a deeper awareness of love is purely contemplation right now
...not running from the dark
...rolling it around
...noting what bubbles up
...being quiet with it
...waiting for the thing that has called me to reveal itself
In the process, if someone were to ask, "What is it you desire through this discipline?", I would tell them, "Not knowledge, but embodiment. Please let me experience the living vibration of Divine Love for the part of me that It is."
Not so much to ask, eh?
Happy New Year, Everyone -- known, unknown, already born, soon-to-arrive, animal, plant, mineral, other dimensional... I'm talking to all of ya's
Let's do the work toward making it so. See it, be/live it, re-cognize it toward being, and/or just let Louis be a guide.
Pops... reveals that the beaming visage of "Reverend Satchelmouth" was not a mark of racial subservience, but a clear symbol of Louis's refusal to let anything cloud the joy he derived from blowing his horn. "Faced with the terrible realities of the time and place into which he had been born," explains Teachout, "he didn't repine, but returned love for hatred and sought salvation in work."
31 December 2009 in Spiritual Practice | Permalink | TrackBack (0)