U is for Uplifting

Within the voting booth and beyond, we are asked to choose well. The major personal and collective consideration seems to be: do we choose to act with loving intention or to react out of fear and anger? Can we be uplifted and uplifting AND stay grounded and rooted?

Visionary leaders use the power of the word to uplift and inspire people to mindful action. Imagination is so important, to dream what has not yet come into being, and to call it forth with our words and actions over time. Forty years ago the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. articulated a vision of true equality, and with Barack Obama and all of us, King's dream is taking form in an unexpected way. Obama himself has captured the imagination of many, welcoming participation with just three words: Yes, we can.

Uplifting oneself and others is not a Pollyanna, goody two shoes endeavor. Uplifting is sensing the whole, seeing the dangers, and choosing the good anyway. There's courage and rigor in choosing again and again into creative possibility. We can determine much about our lives just by where we place our attention and invest our energy.

So just notice if you spend your time and energy and thoughts on being connected, whole, uplifted or if you let yourself be bound by hopelessness and helplessness. And notice what you would prefer. You have the power to choose. In what way can you uplift yourself and someone else today?

T is for Timing

A single friend is "not looking" for a life partner. He's just living his fascinating life and staying open to finding true love along the way. He's written down every quality he prefers in a companion, so his intention is clear. Yet it's hard for him to trust his Be Happy Now policy, when he's lonely and can see nobody on the horizon. We can all sympathize with the familiar impatience and frustration of wanting, moving toward, but not yet having. 

One friend said with full trust, Oh, it's just Timing. 

Manifesting maven Rick Jarow says, "When one door closes, another opens, but all too often there is a long hallway in between." We are asked to keep the faith, act as if we already are whole because we are, and take baby steps along that long hallway. Manifesting is such a mysterious process with its own time and rhythm. 

To everything - turn, turn, turn

There is a season - turn, turn, turn

And a time for every purpose under heaven.

-lyrics by Pete Seeger, sung by The Byrds

We can be doing everything right on the way to our stated goal: clearing blocks, clarifying intention, taking daily action, receiving support. But when we're attached to a specific outcome, including a specific timetable, then we are veering away from the actual process that is happening right here, right now.

We don't even know if we're going to see the results in this lifetime. Consider Vincent Van Gogh. He only sold one painting, and yet he continues to inspire generations of artists and art lovers. Or anyone else following a life dream. Maybe the end result isn't it after all, but what we discover along the way.

Where in your life is it time to give it up to Timing?

S is for Showing Up

I'm going to help a friend pack up for a move this weekend. This is part of my m.o., showing up at a significant turning point after a long absence. Maybe it's a dramatic gesture to be just as important as the everyday reliable friends. Or it may be the healer in me responding to a cry for help. Whatever the case, I can show up for my friend it that way.

My teacher Angeles Arrien holds that Showing Up is the essential power of the Warrior, the Leader in each of us. I try to gauge how well I show up and make myself available to life. Where is it easy and where is it more of a challenge for me to be present? This year I've learned about what I prioritize based on what's been easy to commit to and where I say YES. Writing, my family, my home, certain deep friends, a new training make me say YES. And I see where it's harder to show up fully in certain aspects of my work practice and exercise routine.

The hardest thing is how often we don't show up for ourselves. Our feelings of abandonment are transformed when we can just be present and meet ourselves consciously. No fixing or healing, just meeting. I've had the great experience of being received by my own compassion in Focusing. I've felt a necessary connection made by hearing my own words and stories read to me. I've known the back and forth of therapeutic touch. My body-mind is beginning to remember how to stay rather than run off. And it feels good.

It's a lifelong process, this business of showing up. What allows you to show up - in your relationships, at work, with your creativity, with yourself?

R is for Receptivity

I was sharing with a friend a short story I'd written. She wondered how I'd come up with one particularly striking image. The truth is stranger than fiction. I pretty much wrote down exactly what I'd seen. This specificity helped ground the scene in a way, which I might never have been able to imagine. Creative people know, and we are all creative people, that a large part of our work is to live with eyes and ears open. Our receptivity and the open space we hold are essential to our capacity to synthesize and create.

When we are too full of distraction, there's nowhere for new energy to come in and stay. We become like an overflowing closet. That's when we need spring cleaning, to clear out the clutter in our minds and our internal creative space to allow the energy to flow again. This could mean literally cleaning up our writing space or art studio, sweeping the dance floor.

Or it could mean properly storing our odd thoughts, idea seeds, scraps of dialogue, or stray images. I use my laptop or my journal. Raymond Carver apparently kept his scraps in his bathrobe pocket. Jotting things down, doing sketches, playing with movement and gesture are ways to give things raw form and reassure them they can have your attention at the right time. It gives you something solid to return to.

Once those are given initial form, there's a clear arena for what wants to emerge. Again, it's listening, watching, being curious about what is going to show up. Why is it that I can trust something will come in my creating life, when the same uncertainty in other aspects of my life just makes me anxious? I think it has to do with practice. Some people, especially meditators, know about the comings and goings of ideas and energy and have a broader perspective of nonattachment.

So notice where you are receptive and where you need to clear out some space for new energy to come in.

Q is for Quality, not Quantity

I splurge in little ways to stay open and abundant. By choosing quality over quantity and taking time to savor, I give myself a greater experience of being alive and connected and present. Sometimes just a taste can open up a world.

Each step of creating an organic heirloom tomato salad can be savored. Selecting the ingredients, I can feel sense the water, earth, and sun dense in the flesh. I can smell the vines, almost feel the pricklies. At the check out counter I chat amiably with the cashier with the faded Maori chin tattoo and am grateful we have money in the bank for this and that she’s here being of kind service. In my kitchen, preparing and arranging the food I lose track of time, move efficiently and with the forehead numbness of pure intuition. In the thrall of everyday creativity.

Eating, slowly taking in this delicious fruit, is a whole mindfulness meditation. I so enjoy the natural sweetness set off by just enough salt. The golden yellow, the green stripes, and the shadowy red fill my eyes. And I laugh with my man at how outrageously good something so simple can be. How lucky we are.

A little luxury is good. Once I paid $3 for one fragrant, softball size peach in Tokyo. Totally worth the memory of peach juice in August running down my face. It didn’t cure my homesickness, but gave me a much-needed connection to the earth there.

Experimenting is good. I brought home the exotic dragonfruit to try, because I’ve never been to the dry tropical places it grows. The magenta fleshed fruit is definitely something to be eaten in appreciative company. I had the pleasure of oohing and ahhing over it with friends who’d come for Sunday brunch.

Receiving is good. The time we went housepainting up the coast, the art teacher had brought one precious truffle from her home in the south of France. Shaved finely over an angel hair pasta appetizer, it was earthy sublime.

Opt for quality over quantity and connect - to the earth and her bounty, to deep nourishment, to each other, and to the seasons. All this lived experience expands out of the relatively brief clock time needed to prepare and eat a side dish together. And that's the key, time shared. I'm convinced it is our most precious resource, how we show up awake and alive to this moment with each other. Here I’m talking about food, but for you it could be something else. Where do you choose quality over quantity?