And, in the End...

...the love you take
Is equal to the love you make.

<sup>In these final hours of 2008, it's good to recall this bit of wisdom from the Beatles. Those with whom we share moments of love and understanding are our profound mirrors and teachers. Of course, they are our friends and family, the long-term reflections of our own human frailty that we find in our lives for some strange reason. Mirrors and teachers are also fleeting strangers, like the people on the train who laughed with me about some such urban craziness. (See my 2/21/08 post.)

Where did we extend our love, forgiveness, and understanding this year? To whom? In what circumstances? How did we stretch our hearts? And what were the rewards? Conversely, where did we withhold or step back from meeting another with compassion? What did that experience give us?

My late friend Randy was fond of saying hearts break, yes, but they break OPEN to get bigger. And as we enter a new year, we can be on the lookout for how best to tend our hearts, meeting ourselves with compassion and care. When we do that, we feel safe to keep ourselves open to life and other people. So along with your resolutions, consider what shape and size you want your heart in 2009. Mine is going to be shapeshifting, but mostly roundish, so that it can roll around and play with others.

Blessings for this passing year and all the riches it has brought.</sup>

We did it!

My close family of friends started a meditation group right after 9/11/01 to allay our fears and practice peace together.  I remember Lou's intention then was to release 'against-ness'.  He wanted to let go of opposition and retaliation on a personal and global level. At last week's meditation, I expressed wonder that we'd been circling together on and off for seven years. Considering the tremendous openings for healing change in the culture, David joked, "We did it!"

And in a way we did.  Along with everyone else who took 9/11 as a call to go deeper to what's important and authentic, reach farther beyond our comfort zones, and connect with others despite differences. According to my teacher Angeles Arrien, when we use our unique gifts and talents, the Earth can heal herself. In other words, the more we humans are in balance, the less harm we do to ourselves, other beings, and our world.  

Each of us can make a unique contribution through work, service, family, relationships, creativity, healing, and spiritual practice. If you don't feel you are already contributing the way you'd like, what is stopping you? These times are calling us out to participate, so consider what you need to feel safe and supported to take baby steps forward. We need you.    

The Pause

A while back I missed my Friday morning routine of house plant watering. So my maidenhair fern, which had grown several lush arms, is now all crispy. So again I cut it back to black stubble and wait for new tender green fuzzy spirals to emerge. I have yet to nurture this plant to fullness, and yet it still comes back, as if it trusts untrustworthy me to return to this practice. 

After beating myself up about it, I see I am consistently inconsistent. I can sustain a yoga routine for a few months, then I miss a class and that's it for three years. Or only remember to take my blood pressure when my doctor's appointment is looming. Anything that is a routine routinely gets interrupted. 

But perhaps this is not a bad thing. In that time out, maybe my energies are needed elsewhere. And coming back to a practice after a break, we may be chagrined, but also refreshed and ready to commit in a way that's more fitting. After all, the point is not to become robotic and perfunctory, but to actively choose to show up.

I'm wondering if it's just me or if it's a universal human thing to break out of rhythm. The pause is a space where integration can happen naturally. My birthday today,Winter Solstice this weekend, and New Year's beyond that all say the same thing: time for another round on the great spiral of life. But they are all pause points too. Time to reflect, revisit our vision, recalibrate our trajectory. A pause to get current.  

In this winter holiday season, I hope you get a chance to slow down enough to pause and choose what's important now.

     

Z is for Zeitgeist

I've always liked the word 'zeitgeist,' meaning the spirit of the times. Some visionaries sense the zeigeist and have their finger on the pulse of what's happening now and what's needed next. Take President-elect Obama, who seems to have ridden the wave just slightly ahead of the crowd. He's not too far ahead, just clearly evoking the visionary leader in each of us that's longing to make a difference. The resonant field now offers us a new way to be as a whole, together.

In the healing arts, there's a certain zeitgeist that's been emerging for a while now. It's about human to human parity as healing partners. My intention as a healing practitioner is to collaborate and create with the inner healer of my client, making space for their own expertise about their own process. We've seen enough harm in the fixer/rescuer healer mode, what herbal medicine woman Susun Weed calls the "heroic" mode. It can be very disempowering to one identified as wounded and in need of rescue, having their own inner resources bypassed. It's just as harmful to those overidentified as the giver, the expert, if they don't see that the healing process is sacred and innate and ongoing. Something to align with and support.

   

So you might feel into what zeitgeist you're noticing in your world - could be in relationships or work or common themes in your community.  Are you aligned with the spirit of the times, holding back or running way ahead?  

Y is for YES

How do we know when we get to YES? People often say, "I just know when it's right." But what tells us this is so? As always, the body is our ally here. What we're looking for is a felt sense in the body - an image, phrase, movement, gesture, sounds, texture, sensation, emotion, any and all of these.

I once experienced that internal YES as one of those wooden ball-on-a-string toys, as if I had one inside my belly. You let the ball drop, swing it upward a little, and try to catch it with the cup in the handle you're holding. The trick is not to try too hard. When the ball lands, when it's caught itself, there's a satisfying CLICK. I experienced that sensation of things falling into their right place at the right time. That YES clicked deep in my belly. I could feel it, even almost hear it. So satisfying, content, fully present. And trusting in something beyond my trying to control the pace of things.

The shift from NO to YES is palpable. I'm paraphrasing my dear friend Howard DePorte*, a gifted mediator who says this about his clients getting to YES:

People know they've gotten to YES when they no longer feel the energy in their brain. Many people come to mediation intent on outsmarting someone, getting the advantage, winning. They sit pitched forward, ready to
do battle.

Through transformational mediation, a shift happens. People become more receptive and drop down into the heart. They often find empathy and connection with their former opponents and identify with them as fellow humans. You can actually see their shoulders relax as they sit back. Internally, they may feel more liquid and experience relief rather than resistance. With greater fluidity things move, like smiles, laughter, even tears. They tend to think better then, more creatively, because they are now thinking with the heart. Ultimately that awareness can drop even lower, from heart to belly, that other place of knowing.

*If you'd like to experience that transformation in a dispute or conflict you are having with others in your life, please contact Howard through www.pointmediation.com

So consider what felt sense let's you know it's a YES. Deciding what to eat for dinner, choosing how to spend your day off, discerning what you need to say to your colleague, making love, making art. The body will speak in different ways at different times, but it surely does speak. How do YOU know when you're at a YES?

X is for X Marks the Spot

X marks the spot. We hold a picture up at eye level on the wall, then adjust it higher or lower. We then move it laterally, until we instinctively know That's it! So we mark it, nail it, hang it. We step back and savor where and how it wanted to be all along. 

We can do right placement with objects, and we can practice it with ourselves. I moved to San Francisco somehow knowing it was the right environment for who I am and who I'm becoming. We are beings existing in space AND time, so right timing is just as important. I wrote about that some weeks back, that timing is often beyond our control. But we can try. I suspect right placement comes first, having some physical place to show up and say I am here. When we place ourselves well in space and time, with intention, life just opens up.

A friend and I are both redecorating rooms in our respective homes. Getting current by recreating our external places to match our insides. Her touchstone is that the parts and the whole should make her heart sing. This phrase and its accompanying emotions and sensations allow her to check in: Does this material's texture do it? What about that color? This style of furniture? This heart singing is an essential quality to creating a home that feels like it's really hers.  

I'm seeking to create and experience a grounded and uplifted feeling in my new healing space. That means putting in a chair rail, with a darker color below and above it all warm light and possibility. Something soft under foot, no clutter, a gauzy curtain to block out the ugly light well. The room's palette comes together, all with the sense of that grounding and uplifting.  

When placing ourselves well, we take time to check in with ourselves to find what is just right. Like Goldilocks, we assess:  too this, too that, just right. We muddle our way through by trial and error.

But how do we know we've gotten to YES?  More on that next week... 

  

W is for Wanting

It would be simple if we could just acknowledge that we want what we want.

Instead we want something and skip to the getting, as if to make the wanting itself go away. But we don't often rest in fulfillment either. We are somehow unsatisfied with the having. So we quickly find more wanting. To break this frenetic cycle, we can bring mindfulness to our wanting.

Say I have a craving for chocolate mint chip ice cream. Instead of rushing out to the corner store, I could pause as I tie my shoes and and say to the part of me that wants ice cream Yes, I know you're here. And then listen.

What do I really want? In that pause between wanting and acting, I might learn that the craving is really a longing to feel full. Hmm, curious. Just in the wondering, I find that there's more to it. Feeling full here means there'd be no space for worry about X. More curious!

So it's not about the ice cream. It's about not wanting to deal with the worry about X. This other part, this worry about X, clearly needs to be given some space of its own. So I could say Yes, here you are to that part worrying about X. I might then learn that it's trying to protect me from something bad happening. And the only way it knows how to do that is worrying. And that it wants this other outcome.

I acknowledge that wanting. Letting all the wanting be here is so powerful. And it calms down the need to take immediate action on any of them.

So acknowledging the wanting in ourselves and in parts of ourselves can open up the way to our deeper wisdom. It doesn't mean that I have to act on anything that the various parts say, unless it's good for our whole being. It is vital to validate that they want what they want, to make space for inclusion.

When a craving, a yen, a desire strikes, take some mindful time to be with it first. Let me know what unfolds.