Watching My Speed

Well hello there.
It's been a few months.
Where have I been? All over. Too run down. Too occupied. Also happily engaged, but overall, too too much, and too fast.

So I am back now. Memoir Mind has a post this week, too, and I am going to work at posting again regularly. So hi. Nice to see you again (or meet you the first time).

This week I've been thinking about transitions and expectations, and about speed and pacing. The image above comes from my annual coaching program, Return, and is an example of the weekly forum where folks can post on their intentions.

For me, I most recently noticed this in my transition from non-exercise to exercise.

Last year I learned to run again, and really (gulp) enjoyed it! Someone I was running with joked that she never thought of me as a runner - I seemed too, well, cerebral for that. I laughed too - though I now understand those two to not be in competition with each other, I was raised with that belief, too. I had intellectual parents and one older brother who thought and talked a lot and didn't exercise; I had another older brother who ran and did triathlons but didn't do a lot of philosophizing.

Where did I fit in?

How to Feel Rich?

 This morning I woke very early, haunted by two things: the dissolve of a local sangha, partially due to financial issues, and the second, waves of jealousy toward some folks I know who just got back from a tropical vacation I could not possibly afford. Both stayed with me deeply enough that I knew I wasn't going to sleep anymore, so I got up.

If I stay in bed too long thinking about those kinds of things, my mind goes into old and intense ruts - fear, paranoia, envy, poverty mind. Poverty mind is the Buddhist understanding that regardless of how much money or how many resources you have, you feel lacking. This isn't about ignorance of one's status or privilege, though that can be a result. It's a deeper issue - Buddhist psychology says it is based in a fundamental lack of self-worth. A wrong view. If we understand that money and privilege and resources have nothing to do with our inherent value, and understand our inherent value to always be worthy, unconditionally, we never feel resource-less, even if we are poor.

That's a pretty big IF for most people, myself included. And when you are struggling financially, as we have been in the last months, those kinds of views can sound absolutist, like the rantings of privileged folks wanting to quiet the lacking masses.

Lately, as part of my Return course, I've been practicing Maitri more, and so I took this struggle to my practice. I began with this wish: "May I feel rich and resourced." It was a spontaneous phrasing, but inside I know "rich" means more than financially salient, it means feeling full and with plenty to spare. The fact is, I AM rich, even with debt, because I live in the richest country in the world and wale to warm water at my command and plenty of food and books. So, on a relative level, I am rich, compared to most of the world, AND have access to amazing teachings and community and teachers. So on both a relative and slightly more absolute scale, I am rich. And resourced, which, for me, is the less charged version of rich. It is easy to see how many resources I have, but also important for me to consider that those are a form of richness. 

Overall, I like to combine words that are easy to believe with ones I have a harder time accepting. They break open each others' meanings and leverage open my mind.

Then I moved on to my best friend, for whom it is easy to wish these things - "May she feel rich and resourced." Note I am NOT wishing she be these things - though there's nothing wrong with that - I am wishing she feel them, and under that is the belief that she fundamentally has the ability to feel them. This, too, can sound tricky, "If she only believed in herself she would have a better life." Once we start thinking such conditional things in loving-kindness practice, we need to do a high horse ego check. This is NOT about me knowing what that looks like for her, nor about her being any different than she is. It is a wish, and implicit under that wish is the unconditional belief that we all already have, if not in financial form, the richness and resources we need.

Then on to those Pema Chodron calls "the neutrals" - in this case, the barista who helped me yesterday whom I see pretty often but whose name I don't know. 

The next person is the hard part. The most obvious candidate for "someone you have a hard time imagining this for" is Donald Trump. He often arises at this point in my practice, whether I am wishing for happiness and the root of happiness, or ease, or wellness, or richness. But of all the ironies! To wish HIM richness and resources?! My first gut reaction is "HELL NO. He has way too many riches and resources!"

Or does he? Part of what makes this a contemplative practice is to contemplate the true meaning behind certain words and beliefs.

I believe when we feel rich and resourced, we don't take from others. We aren't paranoid. We are less reactive. We are generous. Frankly, I don't see him exhibit any of these characteristics. I don't think he feels rich, not in the more ultimate sense, and I don't think he is aware of the resources available to him to help him really be human. 

What if he did? It's easy to again get on my righteous horse and believe all of his politics would agree with mine, etc, etc. Instead, I kept coming back to an unconditional level - if I would be a better person feeling rich and resources, he would, too. If i have room to grow, he does, too. I have to wish it unconditionally or not at all. I can't decide what that would mean for him, or even for me. And I can't do it thinking I am better than he is.

After a few stretches in that direction, opening up my understanding of richness and resources, I could open all the way to all beings. This usually feels lighter for me, with a spontaneous highlight reel of various beings appearing, sometimes comically: may all cats (including ours, who woke me two hours before feeding time, insisting they were starving), all president-elects, All Buddhist teachers who covet other Buddhist teachers, All folks facing the death penalty...all beings already rich or not, really feel and know their richness and resources. Really. No conditions.

Most people find loving-kindness practice to be more powerful when done on the spot, and/or applied to a current struggle (like this, as an antidote to a feeling you are trying to work with). I have suggested to the Return participants to use it with their intentions for the year in mind - "May all beings feel free, May all beings feel rested," etc. 

Make it your own. Let it stretch you. Compassion takes work, like any muscles we are trying to build. 

Looking Back (Week 3/3)

I am posting my own responses to looking back over the last year in this blog weekly for three weeks. These are unedited writings done in class, offered here for my students and readers. This is week three out of three. The door is closing soon on Return: Setting New Year's Intentions That Stick, so sign up now if you are interested!

Note the photo above showing the conversation between my dominant and non-dominant hand. This is an especially powerful way to have an exchange with yourself about tender or complex topics.


(dominant hand)
Each time I write this prompt I think it will be dead for me, having done it three times already. I've explored my word in retrospect, looking at my intention word for 2016: connect. I've discovered lightly neglected feelings, and looked at all the interlocking growth and happenings. So what could possibly be left?

(non-dominant hand)
All the tiny specifics details and the endless moments of inspiration and desperation are left.

Looking Back Over the Year, Post 1/3

This is the first in a series of three year's end blog posts, in which I "practice what I preach" - going back over the year in a tender, curious way, exploring with forms like six word stories/memoirs, looking for key words in retrospect, getting a felt sense of the year that is ending.

Look for the next two in the next two weeks.

If these practices pique your interest, consider taking Return: Setting New Year's Intentions That Work class with me.

As is always the case in classes, where I wrote these, these pieces are written spontaneously and without editing. So please keep that in mind as you read.

I don’t know; that is okay

The same memoir, six different titles

Life and memoir in constant revision

Finding where I am triggered; everywhere

Family cabin finally sold; golden relief

So. I guess I really can!

Letting go of what seems known

Facing whiteness in my sangha, myself

Too much travel, even with cancellations

My body loves exercise - who knew?

Accountability in body, food, finances, love

Graduating from program no one knows

Signing up impulsively; sitting around forever

A reckoning, maybe, this year – that could be my looking back word for the year – my intention was to connect, and in order to do that, I had to reckon. Both in the simplest cowboy sense of familiarity (“I reckon!”) and in the intense, super powerful, coming home to roost sense.

Or value could be my looking back word: Value wound up being so much a part of this year: connecting with my values, and with what I value, connecting my values with what I do, enacting values, valuing my time, body, money, and more.

The more accurate word though I think is potency - discovering how rich I am, how much not just power, but effect I have on people. Owning that, noting that, gauging that: me and my sharpness, my softness, my every way I manifestness: like a potion that can poison or empower.

Potency yes more so than value is my looking back word. It feels linked to me also to the wrong kinds of richness: too many books, too much travel, too much fat intake, which makes my IBS flare up. Not just what I give out, but also what I take in, needs moderation, titrating.

“Do more dharma,” one student said.

 Teaching a week intensive is intense

 Collaborating again brings up unhealed wounds

 What other tools for trauma needed?

 Compassionate exchange: my perfect practice form

 Combining all I teach into one

 Herspiral Arts: Nurture Your Creative Nature

 Dedicating the merit to all beings

 Where there is a will, loss

So many things feel incomplete, not neat and tidy at this years’ end. And yet, why pretend otherwise? My own memoir and many others are in messy but forward progress. The deep need to coach one-on-one and grow my week-to-week online offerings have allowed my wisdom to specialize, to connect between things I’ve never connected to each other before.

So much inspiration and possibility ahead

Traveling less I am at home

You Fucked Up? Be kind, then, re-commit.

The more work I do with folks one-on-one and in small groups around accountability - not to mention working with myself - the more I've found this distillates slogan to be the core needed approach.

Didn't work out when you said you would? Be kind, re-commit. Haven't been meditating as often as you'd like? Be kind. Re-commit. Spent the afternoon on Facebook instead of cleaning the house? Be kind then re-commit.

If you are nice with yourself but don't recommit, you won't have accountability. If you punish yourself, then re-commit, you won't want to do it (damned if you do or don't). So both parts are needed.

This is actually a macroscopic version of what we do in meditation. In meditation, if your attention has drifted off the breath and onto a passing thought, for instance, how you decide to come back is crucial. Are you cruel to yourself, beating yourself up for making a simple mistake? Getting distracted? Are you a jerk because you can't believe you did it again? Do you have the view that when you aren't following your breath, you aren't meditating?

The view can be like this: the whole thing is meditation.
The attitude can be like this: its human to get off the track.
Your approach can be like this: Ok, that happened, now let's do it again.

It's simple, but not easy.

That's where support comes in.