Zen Pizza

Why I Don't Worship or Believe in (a) God

2011-08-29T13:21:00.000-07:00

I was raised Christian. It took years to figure out my relationship with the God that had been taught to me. Over the years, I examined the reasons I was told to believe. There are many things I could say about why I now don't worship, believe, or even have interest in God, but this quote pretty much sums up the basics.

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones." –Marcus Aurelius

Frustration with Passive Aggressive or Aggressive Behavior - Self-talk for Hard Times

2011-08-25T15:23:00.000-07:00

Passive aggressive, and even directly aggressive, behavior is very difficult to deal with.

For me, the real challenge comes when it's someone who is ostensibly my friend or family.

I couldn't figure out why a stranger being a jerk only bothers me during the actual behavior, but a friend, family, or someone who I looked up to, being a jerk really pushes my buttons and the pain lasts for a long time.

1. People who say they are friends or family acting selfishly or in hurtful ways starts the downward emotional spiral. What really solidifies my angst is when I try to address the issue of how their behavior makes me feel, and they either deny they did anything, ignore me, blame me for their behavior, or bring up something else that pisses them off more. It's the not being able to address the issue that bothers me more than the actual behavior. When a stranger does this kind of thing, I just go "bah," whatever - I don't feel the need to address the issue. When a friend spits a hurtful remark at me, tells me to go away aggressively, or gives me an indirect insult, I feel trapped and aggravated. I need to address it, but I can't. Also, I invested caring and love into this relationship, and I have given a lot, and to find out that the relationship is really just about them feeling good, and doing whatever they want to me, and my feelings don't matter, it pushes me into grrr mode.

2. Once I commit to something, I fall easily into a full emotional commitment. Relationships, but also jobs, clubs, groups, etc. That also means I will forgive bad behavior for a long time until it reaches a boiling point, because I have an idyllic view of how the relationship is supposed to be and hold steadfast to that until my bubble is burst. I don't commit easily. So when I do, it must be great, right? I must have decided to commit because it's great, right? So when it goes sour, it tweaks the image I have of it, and I want so much for it to be what I thought I was getting into.

3. Because of my upbringing, I didn't learn how to deal with the pain of emotional neglect and rejection. I had to piece together a mishmash of coping mechanisms. When a stranger doesn't care about me, I'm OK with that because I know how to handle that. But when I feel that a friend or family member (or someone who I look up to) is rejecting me or neglecting me, it throws me back to the many times I had to deal with this kind of pain as a child without help or support. I know what my inner child is doing is not good for me. But she takes over and wants so much to learn how to deal with the pain and have someone who will listen and accept her. When the very person who she had assumed would be there, turns out, yet again, to be the person who brings pain instead of love, boom! back in time.

So, what do all of these have in common?

Attachment issues.

I am a nearly 40 year old woman who has attachment issues.

Sounds sad, huh? But as much as it might be sad, it's incredibly common. In fact, in Buddhism, attachment is the ultimate cause of our emotional suffering.

If any of us suffer emotionally, it's because we have attachment issues.

Reading this article today, help me put together the common denominator in all the places I feel hurt, sad, disappointed, embarrassed, afraid, and other painful feelings - needing to detach.

How do we deal with people who are passive-aggressive, aggressive, blaming, hurtful, crazy-making? Examine our attachments. Detach.

Detachment (or non-attachment) is not: pushing away, neglect, ignoring someone, not talking to them, blaming them, not caring about them, or denying love.

It is a way of relating to the world that allows the world to be what it is, and not being attached to wanting to make it reflect the ideal version we have in our head. Detachment (or non-attachment) is another dimension to acceptance.

I put this together for myself, to have something I can go to when my child doesn't know how to deal with intense emotions. When she wants to change something, fix something, or bend over backwards to keep someone from being upset, I can go to this and remember - oh ya. Perhaps it can help someone else, too. And together, we can heal our attachment issues.

Self talk and mindfulness for hard times:

How old am I right now? (eg. I feel like I'm 17.)
Is there an event in my past that is triggering this feeling?
What exactly am I feeling right now?
What does this feeling create in my body?
Wait to act on these feelings and spend this moment just feeling them and fully understanding and loving myself first.

Do I need to detach?

Am I addicted to wanting the person to like me?
Does it seem like the other person is emotionally unavailable to me?
Do they seem coercive, threatening, or intimidating to me?
Do they seem to be trying to punish or abuse me?
Do I feel I'm not making progress or feeling reinforced in our interactions?
Do I feel smothered?
Do I feel like the other person needs me to survive?
Do I feel like I need the other person to survive?
Does the other person's actions and what they say impact the feelings I have about myself?
Do I feel a chronic need to fix, rescue, or enable this person?
Do I feel obliged and loyal to the point of never being able to leave?
Does the other person seem chronically helpless, lost, or out of control?
Is the other person self-destructive or suicidal and I feel guilty my actions might make them hurt themselves?
Does the other person have an addiction that I feel I must fix?
Do I feel manipulated or conned?
Do I feel chronically guilty?
Do I fantasize that the other person will come around or change to be what I want?
Do I feel like our relationship is a competition for control?
Do past hurts get brought up again and again, and not forgiven even after having a heart to heart about it?
Do I feel ignored?

Letting go of painful attachment:

I am not responsible for other people's emotions.
I am not responsible for other people's actions.
I do not need to fix anyone.
I do not need to fix a relationship.
Only they can change how they react to me.
Show up, pay attention, be honest, then let them be who they are.
Create a safe space between myself and those who trigger pain in me.
I am free to feel my own feelings without having others approve or acknowledge them.
They will be OK without my emotional involvement.
I am not shunning or abandoning another by making space and allowing them to be who they are.
Their anger, frustration, and all other feelings are theirs to own.
I can empathize with one's pain without sharing it or being responsible for it.
It is OK to create space if I feel uncomfortable, scared, hurt, or otherwise out of sync with another, without having to announce that space, apologize, or tell the other person to back off.
If a person is in my face, and is relentless, I have the right to say "back off," but not to punish, only to create space for myself.
I am not responsible for another adult's emotional tantrum, even if it's a mini tantrum (Passive aggressive).
I am not responsible for taking care of someone who is chronically helpless, a victim, or incompetent.
Unless it's a true emergency (which is extremely rare), I do not have to react immediately, and can take my time to assess whether I want to become involved or not.
I am not responsible for another person's reaction to me saying, "No," including if they decide to have a tantrum or manipulate with fear, obligation, or guilt.
What beliefs do I have about why I can't let go of my image of the relationshp? How can I replace those beliefs with healthy, strong ones?
If I still feel guilt about detaching, why do I feel guilt? Who is speaking in my head making me feel guilty? Who am I trying to make happy by feeling guilty? Whose rules am I trying to abide by? Do I feel OK according to my own integrity?
If not, is there anything I can to do make amends without having to involve the other person?
If not, can I make amends to forgive myself, without the need to get forgiveness from someone else?
If I am OK with my own rules of integrity, can I make a new statement about what I did, how they acted/reacted, or how I feel that creates a healthy detachment?

The Bible and Science

2011-06-03T14:13:00.000-07:00

I received a response on Facebook about my last post. Basically, arguing that there are passages in the Bible that show how much the people of that time knew about science, and that it was because God told them about it. Therefore, I'm assuming that to mean, that the stories in the Bible are facts for scientific discussion. This is my response.

Here is one collection of examples of where the bible is plain wrong about science, or contradicts what we currently know according to visible evidence. This is not the only list like this of its kind.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. That doesn't mean it's a reliable source for me to know what time it is.

The Bible is not to be generally discounted, but science relies on empirical evidence, not someone's stories about what is true or not. Many experiments and challenges have been made to evolution, and that's where it holds water. The challenges to the bible are unanswered other than more "it's in the Bible." That's not science. Again, not to be discounted, but it's not the scientific method.

The people who lived long ago were right about a lot of things. The people who made Stonehenge, before there was written language, probably used ball bearing technology to erect the 40 ton stones, and it wasn't until DaVinci's time that it was used again. That doesn't mean that the people of Stonehenge's time understood gravity, astronomy, chemistry, or even basic biology. We don't know what they knew, but even if we had written language from their time, we can't base today's understanding on their understanding unless we can reproduce their findings.

It's impossible to reproduce the findings that the people in the Bible have asserted - the existence of God, how plants and animals came to be, etc. They are stories that have no meaning or proof in today's science, but were probably very meaningful at their time. Until the stories of creation in the Bible are scientifically challenged and then proven to be the most likely scenario based on those results, it is not science. It not science any more than I can assert that a giant turtle rules the galaxy and kills people at will because he is actually a carnivorous turtle and is hungry and expect it to be taken seriously. Science takes what we see today, in our world that we live in right now, and uses that information to make an assessment of what is the best explanation. Belief takes stories, either of our own making or that have been handed down or read in a book, and then looks around to see proof.

I came to my belief in reincarnation by reading, listening to stories, and my own internal ideas. No empirical evidence at all. It's how anyone comes to believe in God, how anyone comes to believe in the afterlife or the beforelife, how anyone comes to believe that the world is here for humans' benefit. These things are told to us, so we believe. Or its something we've developed over time because it makes sense to us or we like them. Depending on where we grow up, we were taught to believe different things. And depending on whether we embrace science and spirituality together, but different, or whether we try to make science or spirituality the only thing that matters, will also affect what we believe.

Long ago, the church used to own science. When true scientists challenged the belief that the earth is flat, or that the earth revolved around the sun, they were rejected and even put to death, because belief resists change. Science encourages change, and it lends itself to being upgraded.

I determine the difference between science and belief like this - If an alien came down from another planet and looked at our claims to what we know, science would be the things that we can reproduce without language or words, and show them how it works. Beliefs are the things that we would have to explain with stories. It's impossible to explain creationism without language. Science, doesn't need language, it's simply there. For us to be truly human, we need both, although they are very different from one another.

Science vs. Faith

2011-06-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

Some say that it takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in creationism. I suppose for some, that might be true. But not for me. I use no faith to come to my understanding of how our world works and do not "believe" in evolution. It happens to be the best explanation out there given the evidence, but I'm willing to change my opinion at any time given new information. It's the same approach I give to understanding history. I don't have "faith" that things happened. I have evidence, and I change my view of history as I receive new evidence, knowing full well that most likely, whatever it is that I understand about what happened in the past is from snippets of evidence. That's not belief. Belief requires no evidence other than simply believing. For example, I believe in reincarnation - but there's no reproducible evidence for it or against it, and it can never really be known if it's true (until our species evolves enough that we can have a shared experience of the afterlife).

Some creationists are very offended when their belief that man was plunked here on Earth by the hand of God is labeled "anti-intellectual." Calling it judgmental. There are people who judge creationists for other reasons, and but calling a story believed first and then using evidence to prove it as "anti-intellectual" isn't a judgment. For example, saying that believing in reincarnation is anti-intellectual, I am being told that I derive my opinions from belief, not my intellect, which is absolutely true. It's not a judgment, so much as discriminating understanding of how one comes to a conclusion.

It is possible to reconcile evolution and religious texts, even with an orthodox reading of them. I know enough people who do to know it's possible. One thing that I believe (and it is not scientifically proven, however I see lots of compassionate people believe this, too) is that science and religion are two sides of the same coin, coming at trying to understand our existence from two different approaches. Neither is better, but they are indeed different. I think teaching our kids this distinction is very good for them, because it allows them to be able to have their own personal beliefs (and not be threatened by others) while also being able to look objectively at the world and let the world (that many believe God created) teach us about who we are and where we can go. Without science/intellect we are lost in a bubble of inbred stories, and without belief/faith we are lost in a void of loneliness and separation from our humanity.

We need science and faith. And they are not the same. We need both scientists and spiritualists. And they are not the same. To me, the most amazing people, and the ones who are able to see what others cannot, are those who have both within them, who can separate, yet reconcile the two sides of the coin. Alan Watts, good example. Albert Einstein, another one. Pema Chodron, another one. Deepak Chopra, yet another.

It's those who divide themselves into one or the other, and then fight each other, who will always be fighting, and never growing or learning. And if there is a God, I'm sure that would make him very sad indeed.

Reducing Fatigue by Sleeping Less, Not More

2011-04-25T11:43:00.000-07:00

I have had a lifetime of experiencing sleepiness and general fatigue. I don't know if it could be officially labeled chronic fatigue, but it has been there forever. Generally, I need 9 or more hours a sleep a night, and still often felt fatigued throughout the day. Waking up is hard for me. As a kid I slept more than the other kids. In college, I couldn't do the all-nighters that my friends could. As an adult, I sleep as much as my kids do.

Some days, I am tired when I wake up, and stay tired the rest of the day.

After giving up caffeine, alcohol, and high fructose corn syrup, which all helped for a while, I still struggle with fatigue. High fats and high carbs probably also contribute. Although I don't think I generally eat enough fat or carbs to warrant the amount of fatigue I experience.

For a while, I shifted my sleeping schedule, thinking that if I slept in, and stayed up late, I would be on more on target with what my body wants to do. Still, I slept 9-10 hours a night (or wanted to) and felt groggy throughout the day.

So, I decided to just accept it. I sleep a lot.

But boy, sleeping a lot, and being tired a lot, means not getting a while heck of a lot done. I would find that the glorious days I wasn't tired, I'd try to cram all the things I didn't do during all those days I was tired. Again, accepted myself and this was how I worked. Although I have to admit, every once in a while, would be annoyed with myself for being so tired.

Then, I read about the Sleepless Elite. These are people who only need a few hours of sleep a night, and have a ton of energy. A friend of mine in college was this way. I was secretly jealous of him.

It got me curious, and I started looking into different sleep patterns and research (mainly trying to see if long sleeping and furiously vivid and emotional dreams meant that I had a brain tumor or if I should expect an impending heart attack. Despite my earnest attempt to find this connection, none could be found, even on the internet.)

Through this research, though, I discovered something better - polyphasic sleep. The theory goes, that REM is really the only kind of sleep we need. Normally, a sleep cycle takes about 90 minutes to get into and through a REM state. If we can train our bodies to go right into REM sleep, we'd only need 15-20 minutes of sleep 6 times a day. This is the most extreme version of polyphasic sleep, called the Uberman's Sleep Schedule.

Polyphasic sleep was not something I could try, seeing that I have kids and responsibilities and all, and apparently I'm not the only one. People indicated that finding times to take regular naps in a typical American life, is next to impossible. In addition, making the transition to an Uberman's sleep schedule is taxing on the body. What about considering a milder form of plyphasic sleep, sleeping 3-7 hours a night, and adding naps? If Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson could do it, so could I!

Apparently, a lot of people have successfully adopted a biphasic or triphasic sleep pattern, reducing their sleep needs by 1-3 hours a night. There is even a Google group dedicated to talking about sleep patterns.

After much research, I decided to try the "easy" biphasic sleep pattern - 7 hours a night, and one 30 min. nap. That would reduce my sleeping by about 2 hours. And what's the worst thing that could happen? I'd be sleepy? Well, I was already sleepy.

I've been sleeping this way for about three weeks now. I sleep from about midnight to 7, and then generally stay in bed for another 30 minutes to an hour, but I'm not sleeping. Meditating, thinking about my dreams, generally getting mentally ready for the day. But some days, I do wake up at 7 or soon after. Then, in the afternoon, I take a 30 min nap, whether I'm tired or not.

Overall, I'm less sleepy and fatigued during the day. And I am awake and out of bed a solid hour longer than before. I'm also learning, slowly, how to wake up with the alarm by the daily naps I take, so it's easier to get up in the morning, too.

I'm slowly going to work my way to being in bed only 7 hours. Now that I have the nap as part of my daily routine, I know that if I wake up and I'm tired, that I can take a nap later, and it's easier to get going.

I like this new schedule better. In general, my dreams are less intense, I have less insomnia during the night, and I'm not as tired during the day. It's not an enormous difference, but a noticeable one. And, even though I'm sleeping less, I'm not any more tired than before.

So what have I been doing with that extra hour or two? I've been able to find time to meditate. I couldn't find time before, and didn't want to, because I was too fatigued. Now, I get a nap and a meditation in most days - and a workout, several days a week, too. So far, this schedule is working out great for me, and I'm slowly starting to feel like I'm no longer a "long sleeper."

How to Be Happy in Life - Finding My Truth

2011-04-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

I've been struggling with being happy.

Kind of an existential thing. What am I here for, who am I, what do I want to do with the 2nd half of my life? Questions to myself of what kind of imprint I want to put into this world.

A little over a year ago, I had a very clear idea of this. I had a purpose, was overall quite happy. Driven, one could say. Then, the rug was pulled out from under me, as life does to us sometimes, and everything I thought I was doing right came into question.

I felt lost. I had lost myself in my purpose, or something like that. Or maybe, everything was just fine, but with such an unexpected life change, I have to start from scratch?

Nevertheless, I'm formulating a kind of life vision for what my truth is, and where my happiness comes from. I'm finding it to be a bit different criteria than I had before. So maybe it's good that life tossed me around a bit. It forced me to reset.

So, this is what I have so far, in putting my truth together of what makes me feel like I'm moving toward a full happy, satisfied, and whole existence. This is the first time I've attempted to write this down. Let's see where it goes.

Tools and Techniques for my Happiness and Personal Truth

- Spend time with happy people, who don't need to put me down, put others down, or create drama to relieve their pain. Surround myself with people who are at least one step ahead of me in the happiness department.

- Remove toxic people from my everyday life. (More on toxic people here.)

- Do hard things. Not arbitrarily hard things. Not make things that can be done easily into something complicated. Do things that are inherently harder than what I'm used to, that challenge me, that test my strength.

- Spend time with myself as an accepting friend - think/write about what I like, what I want, what I feel, how I do things. This involves meditation and spending time alone, and being OK with being alone, and being OK with who I am like I would be with a friend.

- Forgive myself for my mistakes. I've berated myself enough for what I've done.

- Let other people be responsible for their own feelings and actions. For me, this is an important one. It might sound strange, but I feel guilt when other people aren't happy or if they tell me their stories of woe. I feel the need to help fix their problems, or do something to make them feel happy. I'm thinking this has something to do with my childhood, but barring a blog-counseling session, let's just say it's a habit I picked up somewhere. Anyway, by allowing people their pain and fear and all the other emotions that make me uncomfortable, I will have less emotional work to do in general. My own emotions are enough work! This letting go of responsibility of other people's emotions also leads to less judgment, which leads to less angst, and more compassion. It's strange to realize that letting go of wanting to help people out of their emotions and letting them just have them even if they hurt gives me more compassion.

- Fully go through my grief. I have lost some important things, things most other people have, things I was promised and was not given. And I have missed out on opportunities that will never come around again. These missed opportunities and unpleasant losses hang with me, and a large part of this is because I have not allowed myself to grieve. Instead, I tried to be "strong" and to say it's no big deal, whatever. By not allowing myself to admit that these missing things hurt me, and I am struggling because of them, they sat and festered. I'm slowly unraveling some of the long-term pain I've been holding of what I've lost or missed, and each time I go a step further through grief, I feel happier and more whole.

- Sleep less. But better. I've change my sleeping habits. More on sleeping in a later post. But basically, I sleep less, and better, and I dream less intensely, too.

Some things I tried to do but only made me unhappy:

- Tried to not obsess. Doesn't work. I just get more disappointed with myself for not being strong enough. Instead, I've changed to accepting this obsessing business as part of who I am, and like a friend, comforting myself and listening gently through it all.

- Made a checklist of what I could do better. Again, didn't work. I did do some things better for a short while, and it felt good to make the list itself, but then I ended up just being who I am and disappointing myself yet again that I couldn't change enough for my own satisfaction. (Interestingly, letting go of the "do better" list, I'm making more changes.)

- Distract myself. Distraction works as a great tool in the immediate, when things are spiraling out of control. I distract myself when I need to keep from doing something hurtful to myself or others, or when my emotions are so hard and I feel trapped in the moment, like when I'm scared. But as a base-line approach, it masks the problem. Eventually, I have to deal with whatever happened or whatever emotion is there, and find some way to comfort myself, find solace, or resolve the emotion. Distraction is a great tool for the toolbox, but it doesn't work to deal with overall happiness.

That's what I got so far. I'm hoping through all this, I'll find a nice place to bob around for the next 40 years, with only a few blips here and there to deal with inevitable life stressors. If I can do that, and continue to do hard things, I'm thinking my life will be pretty awesome, and I'll do lots of great things along the way.

Identifying and Dealing with Toxic People

2011-04-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

I didn't really understand the concept of toxic people. It used to make me upset that people would look at other people and call them toxic. Everyone is trying their best and using what tools that have at the moment. I used to think that toxicity was a way to not be responsible for our own behavior and attitudes.

Then, well, I met a toxic person. I mean a really toxic person. Actually, looking back, now that I understand better what they are, I can see that I have had my fair share of toxic relationships, but had no idea what they were, and chalked it up to misunderstandings or my not being able to express myself clearly.

So I met a toxic person, and I was forced to deal with this person for a long time before the toxins became too strong and I had to extract myself from the relationship. I was becoming toxic myself. I was also becoming the shell of who I once was. I felt old, and worn out. I had to leave the relationship to heal and regain my strength.

But I want to be careful here. Although I believe there are toxic people, I do not believe they are "bad" people or that they are purposefully trying to do other people harm.

In every relationship, even with toxic people, we are responsible for 50% of the relationship. Now that I've had this experience, and I can look back and see what happened in some of my previous relationships, I can identify both the things toxic people do, and how I let them do it to me.

Toxic people aren't toxic to everyone. They need people to let them inject their toxins in order for them to do their (unintentional) damage. I can't change the toxic people in the world, but I can immunize myself, and take care of myself. One way to do that is to know what a toxic person is and how they make me feel, so as soon as I identify this kind of relationship, I can back away emotionally before anyone gets hurt. So far, so good.

Identifying Toxic People

There are several key elements to identifying when people are toxic to us. The first list is a series of behaviors that toxic people tend to exhibit. The second list is how we let these behaviors hurt us. The third is a list of tools I've found to be helpful in dealing with toxic relationships we find ourselves in.

What Toxic People Do

- Make drama. Life has natural drama, and dealing with that is hard. Sometimes we have to talk about things we don't want to, or do things we don't like. Toxic people make drama where there is no drama, and make the natural occurring drama worse.

- Use passive aggressive communication. We all do this once in a while. Toxic people do it often enough that it's part of their normal communication, especially when they are upset. Toxic people rarely speak directly about what is annoying them. With one exception...

- Lash out. When they aren't using passive aggressive remarks, they are lashing out. Lashing out can be yelling, cursing, raging, making fun of people, complaining, listing off your faults, even throwing or hitting things and making threats.

- Play victim. When they cannot get their way, instead of asking questions and finding out what is going on, toxic people play victim. They play the role so convincingly, it takes a person with a strong sense of self not to really wonder if they were indeed a really bad person. Again, we all see ourselves as victims from time to time. A toxic person uses this as a regular tool in their toolbox, and in conjunction with other actions on this list.

- Hot and cold. Sometimes you're on their good side, other times on their bad side. You never know. You have to tip toe around them and test the water each time to have a conversation with them. Their list of who they like and who they don't like is constantly changing.

- Play people against each other. Because they cannot simply ask for what they want, they use other people's wants and desires to get what they want. If that means playing them against each other, so be it. They take people aside, tell them what's wrong, split up friendships, and challenge your loyalty. They will often pick one person out as the scapegoat, and direct all ire at that person to distract you, especially if you are starting to question them about their behavior.

- No apologies. And if they do, you often wonder if they really apologized or not. "I'm sorry if you feel that way. I'm sorry that my personality bothers you. I'm sorry if you're an idiot."

- Refusal of responsibility. They slip and slide around answering questions that require them to be responsible (unless they have an answer that makes them look good, then they'll take great responsibility). If they are on the hook for something and they don't do it, they will not own up to it and instead find a way to weasel out of it.

- Blame. There is always someone to blame, and a toxic person always knows who it is. (And it's not them, or their friends, by the way.) Sometimes, it's clear who is at fault and whose responsibility it is to fix something. But a toxic person blames as a matter of course. Even when it's not important, there is always something or someone to blame. "Why is there so much traffic? Which idiot had an accident and is messing up my commute?" "Who stole my pen? I'm sure it was Joe, he's always stealing pens." "If you hadn't asked about the weather, it wouldn't be raining right now." If they blame people for little things, it's not a surprise what they do when big things happen.

- Prefer to work alone. Toxic people don't like how other people do things (except for their favorites, of course), and so really prefer to do it all themselves. They don't like anyone looking at what they are doing, or asking them for a report, or sharing. These are the kids who want the sandbox to themselves, and put a "members only" sign up, and they get to decide who is a member - for everything.

- Never, ever give up. Resilience and tenacity are a good trait in most people. By itself, and in conjunction with positive relationship traits like teamwork and work ethic, being willing to go the distance can be all the difference in a project. But with toxic people, they never give up on being right, being the winner, and never ever give up a position or ownership of a project. Unless it's a threat (fine! you want me to quit?) or it's been ripped from their cold, dead hands (I can't believe they forced me out and stole my project from me!), no matter how much people are saying what they are doing is hurting the group, other people, the project, or themselves, they don't give up. Again, they don't like to share, and they blame others, so why would they ever give anything up unless they were forced to?

What We Do to Allow Toxic People to be Toxic

- We give them the benefit of the doubt for too long. Once is a mistake, twice is bad luck, and three times is a pattern of behavior. Yet, those of us who want to keep the peace, we tend to overlook these "mistakes" until it's way too late. This is especially true if we are on their "good" list. We look at people's behavior, they look at people through the lenses of their approval, so we give them the benefit of the doubt even when we aren't being given the same courtesy. It's good to give people the benefit of the doubt, but also to remember moderation in all things.

- We are afraid to stand up to them. Toxic people are often the life of the party, but that also means they are vocal, unpredictable, and not easily embarrassed. If we stand up to them, we better be ready for a fight. Most of us don't want a fight, so we back down, and try to smooth things out. Switching from standing up for ourselves, instead of standing up to them, allows us to keep our boundaries while also not making it about the other person changing. We might still have to deal with a fight, but it's only one-way, while we simply state what we want and believe without fighting back.

- We get caught up in their story. Most people don't make up stories to protect themselves, so we assume that people aren't going to do that. So we believe their stories. Why wouldn't we? Without a healthy sense of doubt and willingness to ask for clarification and open communication, we are putting out a welcome mat for toxic people. They like people who don't challenge them, or ask them to be up front with what they are doing. They are also usually very strong story tellers, so it's easy to believe what they say about other people. If they expect you to believe them, and don't leave room for you to form your own opinion when we are on their good list, imagine what they will do when things aren't going well.

- We don't look at their history. They are more than willing to tell us their side of the story, which is always a good side, of course. They are victims, they had hard times, they were treated badly. Their history of who they've worked with, how they left the groups they worked with, and how much bad feeling was left after they left is something to pay attention to. Also, find out what the other side said. Not everyone is toxic if they had a rough history. But this is a strong indicator. Who are they working with now, who are their friends, how do they talk about their friends? Do they tell you about their ex-friends repeatedly? Do they look for sympathy about their family to everyone? Do they have any stories of people who they do treat well, and who treat them well, and people they've worked with who like them and where they have been successful? These are important questions to ask - when working with someone, forming a friendship, or dating. It's not conclusive to know their history, but if we don't ask, and take their side of the story without question, we are setting ourselves up to be in a potentially toxic relationship.

- We make assumptions about their intentions. When we assume their values are the same as ours, or that we have the same goals, we might be good in the beginning when things are pretty casual. But as time goes on, if we go along assuming we have the same goals and it becomes apparent that we don't, it's up to us to clarify that, even if it risks them not liking us anymore. Also, if it's a person who we never really liked, and we are always at odds, this assumption of common goals can make things worse, as a toxic person will assign another person's intentions as part of their discrediting scheme.

What Can We Do to Handle Toxic Relationships?

Toxic people are not fun to be around, but I'm learning, we don't have to be helpless.

- Remember that their toxicity is not about us. It might look and sound like it's about us, but it's not. We're just lucky enough to be their current target. Or, we let them push our buttons. But they will be who they are with or without us. (Look back on your toxic relationships. Did this person change and suddenly become a non-toxic person after you were no longer in the picture?)

- Let them be toxic. We aren't responsible for their actions or emotions. We are only responsible for ours. If they are toxic, it reflects badly on them, not us. If we let their actions get to us, that's where our work begins.

- Recognize when we have become toxic, too. It's easy to pick up toxic "fleas." The behaviors of a toxic person are human. It's the frequency and regularity of the behaviors that make it toxic. If we didn't use passive aggressive very often behavior before, but we find ourselves using it more and more, we've allowed ourselves to start mirroring the very thing we don't like.

- Remember who we are and what we believe. They might be spiraling out of control, but we don't have to.

- Remember they are people, too. They might be hurting us, but they are people who are probably hurting more inside. We may never be able to be good friends, but we won't take it personally and be able to forgive them if we can see how they are hurting themselves as much as everyone else.

- Protect and regenerate ourselves. Emotionally and physically. Take care of our bodies, exercise, engage in hobbies, talk to people about topics other than the toxic person's encroachment on our lives, keep a clear and consistent gauge of our boundaries.

- Be willing to walk away. Know when enough is enough. Avoid threats of walking away, but simply know in our own minds what we can handle and what we can't. If we can't handle it, it doesn't mean we're not strong, even if they throw insults our way as we walk out the door. In fact, walking away can be one of the strongest things we can do.

- Learn to recognize and deal with emotional blackmail.

Toxic behavior is so frustrating, but when we learn to recognize it early, when we know how we invite it in, and when we know how to better deal with it, we aren't trapped anymore. We can change the world we live in by reducing the number of toxic relationships we have, and by not letting toxic people turn us into toxic people, too. All in all, this makes our lives easier, and the world a better place.

Namaste.

Enthusiastic, But Also Nervous

2011-04-21T14:00:00.000-07:00

I just found out that I will be Area Governor for our local Toastmasters district. Toastmasters is a non-profit organization where we practice communication and leadership skills. The meetings focus around public speaking, but there are many other aspects to the training, including project management and group leadership.

I'm looking forward to being an Area Governor, but I'm also nervous. It's something I've never done before. It requires a higher level of responsibility than being a president of a club. And I'll suddenly be working with a lot of people who I've never met.

On the other hand, I know enough people who have served as Area Governor, that I have mentors. There are also several other responsible people working with me, so I won't be doing this alone, or working against the grain.

Having a strong team of experienced and knowledgeable people is something I value in general, but I'm seeing that the higher up we go in responsibility and authority, how essential it is to seek out people who are smarter than we are, and who we can get help and advice from. This is not only true in an organization, but also in our personal lives. I'm experiencing that truth there as well, but that's for another post.

When we dare to grow, push ourselves out of our comfort zone, and do something brave, surrounding ourselves with people who can help makes it far easier to weather the challenges. Being brave alone is doable, but it's so, so much harder to push through without a support crew, especially in the long term.

This past year, I've questioned my strength, questioned whether I'm as brave as I thought I was, and questioned whether I had it in me to do things that are important. Accepting this position is a chance for me to explore this about myself again, to remind myself how strong, brave, and capable I am, while at the same time, doing something I enjoy.

I enjoy working with people to attain a common goal, I enjoy communicating, and I enjoy seeing people succeed. I also enjoy project management, getting things organized, and increasing efficiency. So, this role as the Area Governor should be a good positive challenge. It will also be a good chance to practice mindfulness, compassion, and acceptance.

Guilt and the Ringing Doorbell

2011-04-20T10:46:00.000-07:00

When the doorbell rings, and it's not a neighbor or Fed Ex, I dread it.

The reason for this dread, is that I know what's coming - a guilt trip.

Whether it's someone selling magazines, an evangelist, or someone wanting to tell me about their political candidate of choice, I'm going to be faced with an indirect, and sometimes direct, accusation that I'm being "bad" for not doing what they want me to do. Guilt.

Today, the doorbell rang, and I went to "guilt management" mode. I reminded myself there is a note on the door that clearly says to respect us and not knock on our door (except for fed ex and friends). I reminded myself that I am an easy guilt target, and that I have the right to say "no" if I do not want to do what the person is asking of me. And I also have to remind myself that it does not matter of the person on the other side of the screen has a good opinion of me. I psych myself up like this, but it's still hard.

So the doorbell rang, and I opened our little window, to see who it was, and I didn't recognize her, but she didn't look to be selling anything or handing out propaganda. She could be a neighbor who I haven't met yet, or someone looking for help. So I opened the door. She said, "I painted the numbers on the curb, would you please give a donation?"

Now, a week ago, someone came over and asked me for a donation before they painted the curb. I said, "We're not interested in having our curb painted. Thanks." Then, we got a note a few days later informing us that our curb was going to painted (like it or not) and to "please consider" giving a donation.

So when she came to the door today, I said, "No thank you, we don't want our curb painted."

She replied, "I already did it."

I replied, "We didn't ask for it."

She said, with a sigh, "If you change your mind, here's my information where you can make donation."

I replied, "Thank you."

So far so good, not a ton of guilt... a little, but I didn't feel bad about saying "no". Her little bits of sighing and pushing me to give her a donation didn't push any buttons.

Then, as she walked away, she said, "I painted everyone's curb." Now, the words, not so bad in a blog, but the intonation was, "and you're stingy and heartless to not give me something for it."

That's when the pang of guilt hit. Also, a pang of anger. Flash! Guilt and anger. (Why is passive/aggressiveness so good at tapping into both of those feelings?) I felt guilty not because I was being stingy but because I made her feel bad, I made her mad. I felt guilty because she was scolding me. I felt angry because it was an obvious ploy for money, using my personal feelings as a weapon against me.

Guilt is a tool of the vast majority of people who ring my doorbell and want me to give them money. If I feel guilty enough, I'll pay them to go away and make them stop throwing guilt at me (and hence, making me feel better).
They put me in a position where if I do what I want to do, I have to let them down. If I do what they want me to do, I let myself down. Either way, I lose.

So it's up to me to decide what I want, what I believe is right, and what is good for me, and then support myself, and allow the person who knocked on my door their own feelings even if those feelings are negative towards me.

After she left, I felt guilty for a short while, then I was annoyed with her, and finally I was happy I said "no". She did paint my curb, she did do something nice for me, but she did it without my permission, then expecting me to pay her money. Essentially, she expected me to make good on a contract that I never signed.

It is hard for me to stand my ground when I feel guilt vibes coming from the other person. The feeling of guilt is strong and human nature is to make it go away. And the easiest way to make it go away is to simply do what the person is asking. But although that may result in short-term guilt reduction, it all too often then results in long-term resentment, anger, and guilt turned towards the self.

Guilt used as a weapon is heartless and destructive. Sometimes, we need to feel guilt because it points us in the right direction, but sometimes, our guilt monitors go on overdrive. Being in the moment, knowing ourselves, and reminding ourselves to not get wrapped up in trying to "feel better", is the only way to know if the guilt we feel is a guiding light, or a decoy.

May we all be able to acknowledge and accept our feelings in the moment and to be able to make mindful decisions for ourselves in the long-run, without hurting others. Also, may we allow others to feel their own feelings, and not get caught up in trying to appease others for the sake of running away from how we feel, or trying to fix the other person so we can feel better.

The Pencil Sharpener and the Trash

2011-04-07T09:49:00.000-07:00

This morning, I went to empty out the over-full electric pencil sharpener. There was so many pencil shavings in it, it had solidified in several places. I had to empty it in stages, putting my finger in to the mass, and coaxing it out slowly. Then, I had to bang it forcefully against the trash can to get the shavings out of the grinding mechanism.

I was pretty proud of myself for getting it all emptied out without cursing or getting frustrated that it was so difficult. In that state of pride, I went to put the cover back on, piece the top together with the latch, and stuck a pencil in the sharpener.

Nothing. It didn't work. I think I broke it.

So I look at it closer, and I notice a gap between the bottom of the cover, and base of the sharpener. There's also a little button that needs to get pushed to complete the electrical connection to the device. It was missing a piece. The piece that fit under the cover, and pressed the button.

I didn't see a piece fall out, I didn't see any other bits. But it was obviously missing. There was a quarter inch gap, and the sharpener wouldn't work without that piece. So I went back to the trash where I dumped the shavings, and went through the trash bit by bit. Ew.

Still, I managed to not curse, not get mad. Just go through the trash, just go through the trash. It had to be there somewhere and cursing or getting mad wasn't going to make it easier, I told myself. I remembered the monks who use cleaning toilets and scrubbing floors as practice. Just go through the trash.

After going through a bit of the pile, I reached last night's meal of burritos, refried beans, and salsa. It couldn't have fallen this far, could it? But it wasn't anywhere else. Plus, I didn't even know what I was looking for, since I didn't remember seeing the piece fall off. I imagined what the piece must look like, and kept digging around. In the muck. In the goo. Ew.

But after much digging, and several mantras later, there was no denying it. The piece just wasn't there. Or, I simply wasn't seeing it. I started berating myself - how could I have been so dumb to drop that in the trash? Why couldn't I find it? Now it's broken, and I'll have to buy a new one. One more chore to do! My husband is going to be annoyed, and think I'm an idiot. My kids will be disappointed. All I wanted to do was clean out the pencil sharpener, and look what happened.

I was deflated.

As I was looking at the machine, mad at myself, kicking myself for adding more to my to do list, and going through all the things that were wrong with this particular situation - about a pencil sharpener! - I saw the solution.
Not sure how it happened upon me, but it did. I had put the cover on upside down.

I flipped it over, and it fit perfectly. There was no missing piece.

Let us reduce our suffering by having the awareness to see problems from multiple directions, and letting ourselves have patience before assigning blame, projecting into future problems, and worrying what others might think.

Are We Really All that Accepting?

2011-04-01T14:31:00.000-07:00

"I love/like you despite all of your flaws."

That sounds like a nice thing to say, so accepting, but it's not. It's a condescending, hurtful, and ego-centric thing to say. It is another way of saying, "You are flawed, and I'm such a good person, that I will put up with your crap and love/like you anyway. You aren't all that likable, but I'm going above and beyond what is required to like you."

Acceptance is often misinterpreted as being OK with the things that are wrong with people. Interpreting acceptance this way allows us to keep from looking at ourselves, and allows us to justify hurtful treatment of others, while keeping ourselves on a pedestal of righteousness.

But when we really accept people, we don't see them as flawed in the first place. We don't see them as inferior to us. When we accept someone, we don't have to be "a big person" for in order to accept them. Acceptance means that there are no flawed people.

True love and acceptance is impossible if we think of ourselves, or someone else as flawed. Any "love" towards a person we think is flawed is a weapon of hurt. No matter how much we try to hide our true judgments with love or acceptance, our deep feeling that they are flawed will come through in insidious ways, and cause hurt.

It's hard to love unconditionally. It's hard to keep from letting what people do and say change whether we "love" them or "like" them. But if we do change how we feel, it's not because they are bad people, or flawed, but because something in us expects them to be a certain way in order for us to be able to access the feelings we consider to be "love." Their actions aren't the problem. By saying we love someone despite their actions or despite who they are, we are putting the blame on them, and not recognizing our own responsibility for the changes that happen in us when people do things we don't like.

Let us say this message of unconditional love:

"I love/like you no matter what.

If you do something and it hurts, I will act in a way that responds to that hurt, and I take that responsibility. It doesn't change the way I feel about you or myself. No matter what anyone does or says, they are not more or less deserving of love. But I reserve the right to honor myself, and stay away from actions which hurt me, or people who I am unable to keep from hurting because of my own weaknesses. There are no flawed people, including me and you.

May I love/like unconditionally, and may I love/like responsibly."

What it Means to Say, "I Love You"

2011-03-28T17:05:00.000-07:00

“Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.” - Anon

After an hour of arguing, accusations, and passive aggressive attacks, the last thing one expects to hear are the words, "I love you." But this very thing happened to a friend of mine, Joanna when talking to her cousin-in-law. Their family's relationship had been strained for months, due to financial and personal issues, and after one particularly stressful call, where Joanna was feeling angry and hurt, out of the blue, like a parting shot as she was about to hang up the phone, he said, "I love you." This was the first time she'd heard him say these words, or anything remotely close to them, since they were just cousins, and cousins-in-law at that. And that was the last she heard from him for several years afterward, because he had decided to cut her family out of his life. It left her unsettled. But she wasn't sure why.

Joanna's example is just one of the ways 'I love you' can be used to manipulate or to try to fix major relationship issues without actually being vulnerable or connecting. It happens everyday, in ongoing relationships between friends, and family, where 'I love you's are being said that don't mean love at all.

"I love you" is not "I'm sorry."
"I love you" is not "Forgive me."
"I love you" is not "Let me abuse you."
"I love you" is not "Please love me back."
"I love you" is not "I can treat you however I want to."
"I love you" is not "Now say you love me, too."
"I love you" is not "I love you now, but I can withdraw that love any time."
"I love you" is not "We are enmeshed, I own/control/think for you."
"I love you" is not "I depend on you emotionally to feel like a whole person."
"I love you" is not "I'm scared you don't love me, so I hope this keeps you around."
"I love you" is not "Let me in past your emotional boundaries."
"I love you" is not "I don't know how to really love you, so I'll use words instead of real love."
"I love you" is not "I am clearly dominant over you, and it makes me feel good."
"I love you" is not "See, I'm a better person than you."

I love you does not mean any of these things. When they are used to say these things, they hurt, they do not bring connection. They confuse, and create guilt, obligation, and even fear.

There is no blame or finger pointing here, but instead, knowing that just because someone says, "I love you," doesn't mean we are contracted to do something, implied or otherwise. It's OK to ask, "Why did you say that?" or "What do you mean by that?" It's OK not to say, "I love you," back. It's OK not to get entangled in guilt or obligation to do something different just because they said they love us.

It's easy to let, "I love you," infiltrate our emotional boundaries. But we don't have to. We can't stop the errant 'I love you's but we do have control of how easily the words jump over our fence.

I believe, that when we do really feel love, and we say "I love you," it feels good to say, no matter how they respond to us. And, more importantly, it feels good even if we do not say it. Sometimes, all we need to do to show how we feel is share a smile and treat people with respect. That can say, "I love you," more than words.

Let us be mindful of our right speech, that when we say, 'I love you," to someone, it's because it's better than not saying it.

Namaste

March Is "Stop Your Drama" Month

2011-03-04T16:18:00.000-08:00

You know them - the people who create drama when none is there and the people who make a mountain out of a molehill. These people enjoy creating drama. For whatever reason, they feel compelled to make a big deal about everything from the way someone looked at them, to the guy who honked at them on the freeway, to the weather.

We all make drama from time to time. Sometimes we need to create drama to emphasize how important something is. Or perhaps we make drama because we need to vent. Other times, though we make drama to get sympathy, to get revenge, or simply because we have no other tools to deal with what we see as a difficult situation.

Let's stop all this drama, and work together to find peace.

Does that mean giving up and ignoring everything bad that happens to us, or saying, "It's fine no matter what anyone does?" Does it mean to let everyone walk all over us? No, it means to stop our drama so that we can make thoughtful decisions and we give other people room to make thoughtful decisions, too.

There are actually two kinds of drama. Marlene Chism, of Stop Workplace Drama, explains the difference.

"The important distinction is “the” drama versus “your” drama. The drama happens. The drama is the circumstance…the obstacle we have been talking about. Your drama is how you experience and deal with the obstacle. Do you feel capable to navigate around the obstacle, or do you freak out?"

Drama happens. It's part of life. Anything that happens that we don't have control over, anything that keeps us from our goals, anything we find challenging, that's "the" drama. "Your" drama is when a person brings in their own personal baggage into a situation and escalates the problem or creates new problems. Most of the time, "your" drama is thinly veiled emotional baggage.

"The" drama we're all faced with. Watch a person deal with the drama of the world to see who they are. "Our" drama is what we bring into the world ourselves by choice. When a person brings in their own drama, it makes it even harder to deal with the drama that already exists. In essence, they make their own drama the primary target of effort.

"Stop Your Drama" month isn't about fixing other people. It's about making a choice for ourselves to not put our drama on everyone else's plate. Finding ways to deal with difficult situations that help everyone and dealing with our own emotions in a healthy way is a positive alternative to handing a piece of our drama to anyone who will listen.

Passive aggressive behavior, aggression, blaming, complaining without a plan to make things better, bringing up concerns without a purpose, undermining other people's efforts, making jokes at other people's expense, throwing someone under the bus, and spreading rumors are examples of how we create drama.

Stopping our drama means focusing on our goals, connection and support of others, and maintaining our personal integrity. If we all did that, it wouldn't take the challenges away, and it wouldn't be ignoring what's going on. If we all left our drama out of it, it would make the challenges we do face a lot easier to deal with for everyone.

Why People Don't Like Each Other - Letting Go of Us/Them

2011-02-15T11:42:00.000-08:00

It's logical to think that when someone treats us badly, we like them less.

But that's not true. It's actually the other way around.

When we treat others badly, we like them less.

It can take a long time for someone treating us badly for us to finally get the message that our love and affection is better spent elsewhere. Why would we put up with years of abuse, or let a "friend" bully us, or keep going back to partners who talk down to us if people treating us badly makes us like them less?

Whereas, when we treat others badly, we are less likely to want to be around them, to like them, or to give them future affection or love. When we treat others badly, we significantly increase the chance that we will spend our affection elsewhere.

Why is this? It stems from cognitive dissonance. Deep down, we all want to think of ourselves as good people. We wouldn't hurt anyone, or do anything bad. Well, unless, the other person deserved it. In order to maintain that we are good people, when we hurt someone or treat another person badly, we have to create a story in our mind that the other person deserved it. It was something bad about the other person that makes us treat them badly. It's their fault we behave the way we do, so we like them less.

With this understanding, we can see that treating people well isn't effective at getting them to like us better. Treating people well helps us like others more. Treating other people well cultivates a continuation of being compassionate to others and of continuing to treat them well - no matter how they treat us.

That's the key to this meditation - if we treat other people with respect, integrity, and compassion, we will like other people more, be happier, and even like ourselves more. When we like other people more, and we treat others well, we will feel more loved, and feel like we have more friends in the world. The concrete number of people who we can count as friends makes little difference. Our feeling of support and love comes from the feeling of how often we treat people well (not how often they treat us well). Think about this again. Our feeling of love and support doesn't come from how others treat us, but from how we treat others, and why we treat others that way.

If we understand this, when other people treat us badly, we will see not that this other person is a bad person or anything is wrong with them, but that they are simply treating us badly. It's when we treat others badly that we think they are bad people. If we want to get out of the "us/them" paradigm, the key is simply to treat others well. Treating others well isn't for them, but for us. How much they like us won't stem a whole lot from what we do. They will base their feelings for us much more on how they treat us.

So it's fruitless to treat others well to try and manipulate people into liking us. That not only doesn't work, but it sets up the scene to feel unappreciated and used. Instead, what works better is setting our boundaries and not allowing others to treat us badly. If they continue to treat us badly even after setting our boundaries, then it's not about us. If they treat us better after we set our boundaries, then we've made a potential friend based not on us trying to appease them or do what we think they want to make them happy, but based on two people who are treating each other well because they like themselves.

This teaching made an impact on me, because it allows me to continue to treat people well for my own reasons, rather than trying to be a peace maker or trying to "get" people to like or appreciate me. I treat people well for me, because I like other people, because I like me, because it's who I am, and because it's good for me and then, consequently, others. All of us are are responsible for our own feelings and behaviors. And if someone treats me badly, and they don't like me, I understand now that it's not me they don't like, but their own cognitive dissonance, and stories they create in their head. I do it, too. It's human. It's not personal. And that makes people's difficult behavior a lot easier to deal with emotionally.

The Challenge of Taming the Mind

2011-02-03T10:33:00.000-08:00

One of the daily challenges of Zen for me is not allowing my ego mind to take over. It's constantly pushing at me - think this, think that, this is VERY important. I give in often.

When I don't give in, I feel like I'm fighting myself. Even when I let the thoughts flow in then out, labeling them and letting them go, and being mindful of my attachment to them, it feels like a battle I wage where I am on the defensive.

These thoughts are always there. Always. Even when I am sleeping, in my nightly vivid dreams, my thoughts are a wild animal who has hurt itself and is thrashing and screaming to get away from the pain.

No matter how calm and gentle and compassionate we are to a wild animal in pain, it thrashes, and it can hurt us.

That's how I feel with my mind. Some days, the animal of thoughts is calmer, not so insistent, distracted or numbed by something, and the thoughts don't come as often. But other days, the pain is very real, and my head seems so small a place for them to be contained, pushing against the sides.

I breathe, I practice mindfulness, I meditate (as best I can with three kids and constant distractions), and yet, the wild animal is still in pain.

These thoughts aren't anything unusual. "I can't believe that happened," "What am I going to do about X," "I hurt so and so, how can I fix it?" "So and so is hurting me, how can I make them stop?" Things pop up from my past, dreams for the future, all of it is just normal stuff. Nothing above and beyond what I imagine any other engaged human being would think about.

Yet, they are constant. That's the tough part. I gently move them over in my mind to breathe and there they are again. And back again. And back again. I would really rather think about something else, thank you.

But, what is that "else" I want to think about? Is there anything else that I can think about that won't be painful? Even things that seem pleasant to think about are matched with the pain of knowing that pleasant thing will soon end. The pleasant things are fantasies, not reality.

One of my skills is to look at a problem in its entirety and then find the most satisfactory solution. I am also skilled at taking one idea and connecting it to another, finding parallels, metaphors, and how one thing affects another. That skill is also a curse, because thoughts and mindfulness is one thing that I can't really understand or see from far enough away to get a grasp on what the problem even is. I grasp and try to explain it, solve it, get more information about it. It doesn't work. The more I try to figure it out, the harder a problem it becomes.

Why can I not tame my mind? I think, it's because, I'm trying to tame my mind.

These past couple of days have been emotionally draining for me. Nothing specific is going on in my life to cause it. In fact, my internal struggle is probably because nothing is happening to distract me so my emotions are bubbling up and the wild animal is asking for attention. My emotions have been rolling around in my body, tensing my muscles, squeezing my brain. What do I do? What do I do? I vacillate between being emotionally paralyzed and wanting to let it all out, just to take a break, for a moment, from the wild animal jumping inside my head.

This morning, I was drawn to my horoscope, which some would say is pointless. Although many of my horoscopes are surprisingly accurate, today's wasn't. Pretty pointless. But for some reason, I wanted to read my husband's. His, too, was pointless.

On the same page, however, was an invitation to ask a question and get three answers from the tarot.

This is a random event. I know it. It's like the lottery. But I did it anyway. This is what happened.

I asked: Why can I not tame my mind?

It answered:

The Empress
You are reinventing yourself to create a better fit with your chosen profession.

Four of Cups
Celebrate friendships and close companions.

The Hierophant
The abundance you enjoy allows you the freedom to be yourself.

All three of these responses were dead on. The very three things my mind has been throwing at me have been - "where do I go now in my professional life and should I reinvent myself to do something else?", "I want to let go of the relationships that have been toxic to me, and focus my attention on the loving relationships," and "I am so lucky to be able to have what I have, why can I not enjoy it and just be OK with the opportunities I have?"

It was so dead on, I was inspired to write this post. It's no wonder my mind is shouting at me right now. I'm in the middle of change. Of something happening. Of life renewing. I'm at the doorway to the future. There's a lot of adjusting going on.

In fact, it's always this way. I'm always at this place, so it makes sense, that any given day, there's a chance the wild animal will start to resist the change, cry out for relief, and push me into my old ways. That's how it is. That's just how it is.

Realizing this doesn't tame my mind, but instead, sets it free. When those thoughts come, they aren't me, they are the ego trying to hold on to the past, trying to hold on to the old ways, trying to resist.

Taming the mind - is it possible? Perhaps so. But perhaps the only way to do it, is by not trying to tame it at all. Maybe that's what the dharma teachers mean when they tout the importance of being in the now, and mindfulness.

Emotional Blackmail - Difficult People

2011-02-01T10:58:00.000-08:00

In a previous post, I was struggling with dealing with passive aggressive people. I've since learned a lot about this, through websites, books, and talking with friends.

Passive aggressive people usually use other tools, too, which are just as hurtful and difficult to navigate: blaming, accusations, martyrdom, labeling, enemy/good guy storytelling (and usually it's them or someone who they are currently putting on a pedestal who is the "good guy"), threats, bringing in other people to gang up on the target, discounting people's value, punishing, expecting mind reading, and many other behaviors that are anything than healthy.

It's no wonder that P/A's are so hard to deal with. They aren't fighting fair.

They also pick their targets carefully. They may not realize they do this, but they manipulate situations and people so that they can craft a reality that does not involve them having to look at themselves, take responsibility, or change. To do this, there are targets who they can make the "other" and there are "friends" who agree with them.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, and if you've been the target of these kinds of bully behaviors, I recommend a book called Emotional Blackmail by Susan Forward. She goes one by one through the different kinds of emotional blackmail, why people use these tactics, what it looks like when they do, how we let them do it to us, and how it gets to the point of making us crazy. Then, she gives us concrete tools on how to deal with people who try to use emotional blackmail on us.

We cannot change people. But we teach them how to treat us by allowing behavior. Emotional blackmail is not fair, and it's not right. We know it, but few of us understand how to recognize it and then how to stand up to it. Most of us use tools that only make it worse - begging, arguing, explaining, staying silent, waiting for things to cool off, trying to give them what they want, or pretending like everything is OK. None of these things work.

Many of us will use emotional blackmail ourselves. Not because we're bad people, but because we are backed in a corner, and what they are doing to us works, so why wouldn't it work back at them? Fight fire with fire. There are no alternatives left.

But when we do use emotional blackmail ourselves, we know it is not who we are, and it goes against our own integrity. There's got to be a better way, but without having seen it in action, having experienced it, or having any clue what other ways there are, how can we do anything different?

I am seeing there are other ways, but it takes being brave, changing my own internal habits and thoughts, and instead of trying to fix the other person, to hold on to who I am, my own integrity, create and defend boundaries, and not be dependent on the other person's approval and love to define my success and self-worth. It's a tough road to take, but it's the only way to stop spinning when dealing with people who do everything they can to keep the spinning going.

Confused Buddhist

2010-10-02T17:06:00.000-07:00

One of the practices of Zen is to be mindful of our emotions. Not to hold on to them, but not deny them either.

What do I do if I can't even tell what emotion it is I'm feeling through all the confusion?

There are no words to describe what's going on in my body right now in reaction to an emotionally disturbing event. It's a weird mix of fear, disappointment, insecurity, pain, freedom, relief, disbelief, grief, compassion, hope, and defensiveness.

As I try to be mindful, and just let the feelings be, I don't have any clue what to do with them. They hover there, can't sit still, hopping all over the place.

I would levitate on my pillow if they moved underneath me.

I don't want to them to go away necessarily, but I do have the desire to understand them. Perhaps, this is a positive experience for me to practice not having to even understand the emotions, simply to let them be.

I've never had this experience before. Usually when I feel an emotion, it's clearly one or two things, easy to identify, easy to park on an imaginary platform 5 feet away and meditate on. Maybe this huge mess of emotions is a sign of growth, and an opportunity to have compassion for myself and what I feel. Perhaps it's a sign that I am no longer using self-created mind tricks to divide up my emotions into little categories so I can control them, that my practice of being in the in between places has an effect.

Or maybe this way of looking at my confusion is just another way to convince myself that right now is OK. Maybe right now I'm not OK, and that's simply how it is. Until I'm OK again, I need to be, and let myself be uneasy and emotional, so I can have compassion for others when it's their turn to experience something like this.

Why the Bible (or any other mystical text) Is Like Harry Potter

2010-09-27T08:52:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine explained why the Bible is like Harry Potter. I think this can extend out to anything we read, even nonfiction.

"Actually, the parts that can be "proven by recorded history" argument turns out to be bullshit.

The fact that a book can have some historically accurate facts means nothing in terms of proving it's true. For example, let's look at Harry Potter.

A thousand years from now, historians could discover that people really did have cars and radios. They could discover that Britian really had a Prime Minister. They could discover that people really did use the telephone. In fact, the year that Order of the Phoenix would have occurred in, Rowling incorporated the true detail that there was a really bad drought in Britian that summer.

None of these things can establish that Harry Potter is true. This could also be dome with ANY piece of fiction.

The bible is no different from any other piece I'm fiction in this regard. " - Mike Feigen

Will Harry Potter be the deemed penned by the Hand of God two thousand years from now, and J.K. Rowling a prophet?

Anxiety Is Not an Enemy

2010-09-10T11:54:00.000-07:00

Anxiety is overwhelming and sometimes even painful. It drowns out everything else, making it hard to think, make decisions, and love.

We want it to go away, to leave us alone, to find that magic button that will turn it off. When I am in the throes of a confusing, painful, and seemingly hopeless situation, I want to crawl out of my skin and leave behind all of the physical and mental anguish that I'm feeling.

But I'm starting to learn that anxiety is not just an annoying thing our bodies and minds do to us because we're weak, or because something is wrong with us. I'm starting to see it as a friend, telling me when I'm going astray from who I am, what I believe in, and my integrity.

If I'm feeling anxious about something, maybe it is something I wasn't supposed to be involved in or in control of in the first place.

A true friend will tell us when we're going down the wrong path. Anxiety is trying to tell us something. Sometimes it's telling us that we are taking the wrong approach, sometimes it's telling us that we're befriending the wrong people, or have the wrong job, or say "yes" when we should say "no" and vice versa. And sometimes it's telling us when a situation is beyond what we can make better.

Sometimes it's telling us when it's time to let go, and let it all fall apart, and see what happens.

My anxiety is not comfortable, but that's OK because it's telling me to investigate my expectations, my situation, and the variables in another way. The choices I'm making are not the right ones.

It's tricky sometimes, because we want to find the answer and make sure everything will be alright. That search can easily manifest itself in destructive or isolating behavior. Sometimes there is no answer, no magic button. By accepting that things will not always be alright, and accepting that sometimes the choices are bad, worse, and worst, we know we still have a choice, and we still can use our body and mind's signals to take a step back and look at all the variables. It's tricky because we want easy. Easy isn't always best.

The best course of action will always make us stronger, and be good for everyone else, too. That's the solution we should look for, what will make us stronger, not what seems like the easiest. If a choice does not make us stronger, we need to keep searching.

Anxiety says, "You are hyper-focused on the wrong thing. Back up, look at it from a different angle. Let go, and see the path you couldn't see before." But it only tells us this if we listen carefully, and don't get lost in the message we think we're hearing of "It's time to freak out." That's not anxiety talking, that's our habitual response to the anxiety, where we stick our fingers in our ears, singing, "la la la I'm not listening. Just go away."

I'm embracing my anxiety. It has served me well in these past few months, making my life harder and harder each time I made the wrong choice until finally, I realized, I was not where I belonged, I was going down the wrong path for the growth I need, and the people around me need, right now. Everything that happens has a positive, even if we can't see it. How can we find the positive in anxiety? By listening and and saying, "Ah you there anxiety, good friend, what can I learn from you today? How can you make me stronger?"

Should a Zen Buddhist Have Passion?

2009-12-17T09:56:00.000-08:00

How does a Buddhist talk and present their point of view? When I was younger, I met a person who said she was Buddhist, but she was so hyper and enthusiastic, and even opinionated! I couldn't imagine how that could be Zen or any kind of Buddhist.

But now that I've studied Buddhism for a while, I see that it's all just carrying water and chopping wood. If that's the case, then what does being Zen look like?

Right speech - that's part of the eightfold path. But what is right speech in one culture versus another? What is right speech on the internet and in public conversation? What is right speech when someone is hitting you and everyone around you with a stick?

I recently had a very strong reaction in one of my blog posts on my other blog, JustEnough, and one of my comments basically replied with, "That's not very zen or compassionate of you to say this."

It really got me thinking. Well, first it was a clear sign that I'm not a perfect Buddhist. And perhaps, it's a great lesson that I will never be a perfect Buddhist, nor should I try to attain that.

But it also got me thinking about how I approach logic and arguments, and how I deal with the group of people I represent being hit with the same verbal stick over and over again. Does my response lead to the least amount of suffering? What is the correct Zen response? Is letting someone push me and everyone in the group I'm in, without response, the path to less suffering? Would having a soft, calm, approach work in this case? Is it possible to have passion and still be soft and effective at getting them to stop swinging?

On the one hand, personal attacks towards me, don't bother me much. But attacks on groups of people, especially the groups of people who I feel are "underdogs," is like sticking a hot poker under my fingernails. I cannot help but respond to help give strength to the less powerful group - especially if they are made weak because of the pressure being put on by the stronger group.

But, does this just perpetrate the "us vs. them" situation that has already been established by the stronger group? The “us vs. them” mentality is a strong one in our culture, not just among homeschoolers. My intention with the response on my blog was not to create an “us vs. them”, nor was my mind there when I wrote it. In fact, I can understand all too well the place where Kristen and Allison are, because I was there once. And perhaps, I’m on the other side of where they are? But, I am indeed passionate about this topic, and sometimes, after being hit with the same stick in the same place over and over again, it’s hard to have perfect compassion without lacing it with frustration.

While I have compassion for those who are anti-homeschooling or think that they understand homeschoolers when they in fact do not at all, I also have a strong response to irony and large elephants in the room, which will probably be with me until I die, no matter how Zen I get.

So, that leaves the question - fight for what I believe in while pointing out flaws in logic and presentation, all while allowing others to be who they are and speak their minds (i.e. have a debate) - or let the world happen as it will while I sit in zazen? I do go back and forth about that a lot, and swing towards both extremes from time to time, ever searching for the elusive middle way.

Habits and Vegetarianism

2009-11-24T14:54:00.000-08:00

Meat: On the opposite end of the spectrum is my habit of NOT eating meat. I'm grossed out by meat and I disagree with the way meat is generally obtained and prepared in our country. Yet, my body is starting to disagree with my choice of not eating meat. I've had headaches and other symptoms that people warned me would happen if I went vegetarian. I didn't think it would happen to me. Unfortunately, looks like I'm missing something in my diet, and it's probably meat that provides it.

I don't think I need a lot of meat in my diet to satisfy whatever deficiency my body has, but my habit is to not eat it, so I struggle with how and when to "force" myself to change my habit. And I have all these other feelings about meat that make it a hard decision to put meat in front of me at a meal. It's almost like a zen koan - meat is your life and your death. What do you do?

Being mindful and accepting of the current situation is the only way to go at this point. I don't know what the solution is for this one, but I'm making tacos tonight, and tonight, I won't pick out the meat. Or at least, that's what my plan is. Let's find out what happens when habit wants to kick in at dinner time.

Addictions, Habits, and Red Wine

2009-11-24T14:28:00.000-08:00

Red Wine: This is my current habit/addiction. During my withdrawal from Diet Coke, red wine became my drink of choice for dinner. It's a habit that's been slowly gaining solidity for a few years, but made worse because of not having Diet Coke. I also have developed a bit of a resistance to the alcohol portion of wine. I used to have a natural, built in, self-limitation of how much to drink because I would be affected by the alcohol in the wine fairly quickly. But without that natural barrier, I can drink more. The more I drink, the more I get in the habit of drinking without thinking about the negatives of having that habit.

So, I've asked myself, am I an alcoholic? What is an alcoholic? I think that we are super sensitive to alcoholism in the United States. In other countries, things have to get pretty damn bad before one is considered an alcoholic. But here in the states, if we have the slightest problem with the habit of drinking, we are redirected to a local AA meeting.

So I ask myself, if I were in France, would I be an alcoholic? No, I don't think so. Drinking wine at every meal, especially dinner, is culturally acceptable.

But what got me really thinking about "alcoholism" and addiction was the fact that I was starting to feel about red wine like I did with Diet Coke. I asked myself, "Is being addicted, or habitually trained, to red wine any different than Diet Coke?" I am far less attached to red wine as I ever was to Diet Coke. And probably, the effect on my body is not nearly as bad as with Diet Coke. But it does bother me that I'm mindlessly putting a glass of wine in front me without honestly considering the ramifications, simply because my mind and body say, "It's time for dinner and wine!"

I'm not willing at this point to take red wine completely out of my diet. And I don't think I need to. But I've cut back and forced myself to accept that I want wine, and then not have it, for several meals a week. Each night I decide not to have wine with dinner, it brings up those same "habit" demons that tell me that I "have" to have a glass of wine with dinner because, well, that's what the habit is. The mind and body are very, very attached to habits. Every night that I choose not to have wine, it's the habit which calls to me, not the wine itself.

So, is there something special about having an addiction to red wine that is different than being addicted to Diet Coke or any other food or drink? It feels the same. It has played out in a similar fashion. They both have chemicals that cling to my body and change my brain chemistry. Yet, culturally they are different. To my body, and my brain, they seem to be the same. Either way, it's habit, attachment, and addiction, and my body's and brain's attempt to keep them alive.

Habits and Diet Coke

2009-11-24T14:25:00.000-08:00

Diet Coke: I quit drinking Diet Coke in August. Psychologically, it was much harder than coming off of Celexa. In fact, drinking Cola of some kind had been a life-long habit turned addiction. I didn't have any physical reactions of withdrawal, but I had many psychological reactions. My brain did everything it could to convince me that I needed to have a Diet Coke. Perhaps I was physically addicted, too, but the withdrawal manifested itself in mental arguments with myself. Every single meal of lunch or dinner was agony for me. When I sat down to eat, I wanted to put a Diet Coke down in front of me like I wanted to breathe air after being underwater. It tore me apart to drink water. Food tasted terrible, first of all. But worst of all, no other drink would satisfy me. Water, tea, seltzer water, juice, I tried everything. During the first month of withdrawal, no drink satisfied me. Except one. Which I'll talk about later.

Now, three months later, I'm fully weened from Diet Coke, or any soda of any kind. I have absolutely no taste for it, and now I love seltzer water with my meals. And interestingly, my body feels different without the chemicals of Diet Coke. I'm sleeping better, have less intense dreams, I don't feel as much anxiety, don't feel tired during the day, and many other feelings that I just can't explain. I feel cleaner.

I have tried going off of Diet Coke many, many times. But it's everywhere. What finally made me quit was when I started to have an allergic reaction to it. Every time I drank Diet Coke, my face would get very greasy, and no matter how much I washed my face, I would break out with huge boils on my skin, and I couldn't get rid of the shine. Within a half hour after drinking Diet Coke, this would happen. The negative feeling of the reaction to Diet Coke was finally bad enough to counteract the positive feeling of feeding my habit. Sometimes, I think it's the only way we can break addictions. The bad has to get bad enough that we're willing to fight our brains and bodies' call for its "drugs" in order to avoid the bad that we know will happen if we succumb.

Addiction and Celexa

2009-11-24T14:22:00.000-08:00

2009 has been a year of facing my attachments, my habits, and even, my addictions. This is the first of four posts about my experiences facing the choice between being mindful and mindless.

Celexa: Although I was forcing myself to take it everyday, I guess one would say that I was actually addicted to Celexa. I didn't wake up in the morning feeling like I needed it to cope. But when I decided to stop taking it, my body revolted. I was physically addicted to it. And perhaps, even psychologically addicted to it, since I never seemed to have a problem remembering to take it, right on time everyday. A habit turned addiction, perhaps. And, honestly, it was an addiction I had no idea I had. I was surprised by how hard my body fought to try to convince me to take more medicine.

I made the choice to be mindful, but it was not an easy one. I had many more addictions to deal with before I could completely let go of the potential need to take Celexa again one day.

Mindfulness in the 21st Century

2009-10-06T12:20:00.000-07:00

Modern zen proverb: When walking, walk. When eating, eat. When Facebooking, Facebook.

Giving Up Diet Coke and Other Attachments

2009-08-16T16:46:00.000-07:00

I cannot remember a time in my life that I didn't drink Diet Coke or some other diet soda on a regular basis. That's over 35 years of almost daily soda drinking.

It's time to ditch diet soda. But I am so addicted, and so incredibly set in my habit, that making the decision is not enough. I've tried it before, and it's not enough. It's never been enough just to say that I want to stop. Even to tell others, taper slowly, keep it out of the house, drink water, none of it works. Why does nothing work?

I need a 12 step program specifically for not drinking soda. Soda is everywhere, and here's the rub - it takes good. I want it, even though with every sip I take, I know is bad, bad, bad for me.

In fact, I am so used to the taste of diet soda, with all of its many variants of sugar replacements, that food doesn't taste good without it. And drinking water with food makes it taste even worse.

I'm a soda addict, and I have nowhere to go for support, no way to keep myself from talking myself into "one" cup, and no way to keep that feeling of disappointment, sadness, and even anger when I expect to be able to drink a diet coke, and I can't.

I'm at a loss and feeling very attached, which no amount of sitting or meditating seems to break.

Celexa Withdrawal Symptoms and Getting Through

2009-05-14T17:27:00.000-07:00

Have you heard of Celexa? It's an SSRI, a drug often used for depression, anxiety, and panic disorder.

About a year ago, I had a series of scary panic attacks and I was prescribed Celexa. I took 10mg of Celexa for almost a year, and it worked. It took away the panic attacks, the anxiety, and the fear. It also took away my passion, my joy, and my enthusiasm. I became a calm, steady, detached shell of myself. I could have kept going like that and been fine, because well, life was pretty easy. I didn't get angry anymore, didn't get frustrated, and did what needed to be done without complaint.

But I decided I wanted my passion back and I wanted to start caring again. I also felt like I was disappearing. I was ready to find out what would happen if I started feeling real, solid, heartfelt emotions again.

Almost two weeks ago, I went to see my doc for an annual. He said, "Stop taking Celexa whenever you want, it's only 10mg." So I did. Almost overnight my sex drive was back, I was enthusiastic, and ALIVE!

But, it was like I was on speed. And I have been experiencing profound dizziness, aches in my legs, annoyingly vivid dreams, and trouble sleeping. The past two days, I've also had tingling in my hands (which almost always comes with tingling in my brain), and I get sooooo incredibly frustrated/intense/overwhelmed, I'm induced to crying. No particular reason, just need to release from this intensity!

I did a little research, and found out that these are withdrawal symptoms. It doesn't make the symptoms go away to know this. It does, however, make me understand what's going on, and that they will eventually subside.

In a way, these symptoms are a chance for me to practice zen and mindfulness.

Crying helps temporarily. And it feels good. It's amazing to feel my body just NEED to cry without having some kind of specific reason or emotion to go with it. It's like jumping up and down or hitting a pillow. It's a way to release the tension that's constantly building up.

I had gained quite a bit of weight on Celexa, and I was sleeping all the time. I can already feel that weight starting to shed, and I'm sleeping normal hours again, except waking up several times a night from aches and vivid dreams.

One of the weirdest side effects I'm getting is that I feel like I'm having every emotion at the same time. Happy, sad, mad, calm, attentive, bored, enthusiastic, frustrated. It's like a flood gate was opened, and all of the things I wasn't feeling on Celexa are coming in at one time.

In a way, it's a time for me to learn, so when all of this withdrawal is over, I can remember that so much of emotion is physical and chemical. Since none of my emotions are being caused by anything but chemicals, I can't blame it on anything. I really hope I can remember this when I'm no longer beholden by the chemistry in my brain, and see my emotions not as my enemy (like I did before I took Celexa), but as a physical symptom.

Or maybe, this is all the withdrawal symptoms talking :)

One positive symptom, although painful at times because the feeling is so intense, is a renewed energy for writing. Almost an obsession. Writing has taken on a similar function as crying—it's a way for me to get some release. This year on Celexa stalled my desire to write to almost nothing. I would write things, but I didn't really care about them. There was no passion. My muse was taking a vacation.

Now, I again have motivation to write and exercise. Maybe it's the feeling that I'm on speed that's causing this, but man, I'm so glad to have my creativity back. Whether or not it's temporary, I'm going to focus on that part of the withdrawal as much as I can, rather than focusing on the spinning, insomnia, and freaky dreams. (And actually, my freaky dreams have lent to some very interesting story ideas!)

I'm trying to focus on what's good, and to keep reminding myself that these withdrawal symptoms will eventually go away. Sometimes, I feel like I'm at the end of my rope, and I just can't take it anymore. Crying, exercising, writing, and sharing my story with others will get me through.

I've had lots of thoughts during this year, and I continue to wonder about the long-term effects it will have on my zen practice. There is a lesson in here somewhere. Perhaps several. Can I have the egolessness enough to see them?

In case you'd like to know, these are the common side effects of Celexa withdrawal. I put a star next to the ones that people seem to complain about the most on the websites that I visited during my research.

Anxiety *
Dizziness *
Fatigue *
Headache *
Insomnia *
Tremors
Visual hallucinations
Diarrhea
Nausea *
Vomiting
Restlessness *
Blurred vision
Muscle and joint pain *
Jolting electric "zaps” *
Tingling sensations *
Fever
Abdominal discomfort
Flu symptoms and general malaise *
Anorexia
Agitation *
Vertigo *
Gait disturbances
Sweating
Irritability *
Aggression
Nightmares and/or vivid dreams *
Confusion
Memory and concentration difficulties
Chills and hot flashes
Crying spells *
Suicidal thoughts
Lethargy
Weakness

These are the suggestions for getting through the withdrawal symptoms. Although it's highly recommended to taper off the medication slowly as a way to prevent withdrawal, it still seems that many people have some symptoms, even with the taper.

Drink lots of water
Exercise (swimming, running, walking, biking, etc.)
Yoga/Pilates
Meditation
Talking to a counselor/therapist or friend a LOT during this time
Eat regularly and healthy
Avoid alcohol
Dramamine (mixed results)

These are some things that worked for me, but nobody else had mentioned them in my research

Crying and enjoying it
Ibuprophen for the headaches and muscle aches
Tylenol Simply Sleep (ask your doctor first!!)
Mindfulness and "watching" all the symptoms like a movie
Finding the good that is coming with the withdrawal
Writing, writing, writing
Playing games (video, board, card, etc.)
Doing things I love
And when the anxiety/restlessness/intensity rears its head - remember it's not ME, it's the chemistry in my brain that's doing this.

If you are reading this and are currently going through Celexa withdrawal, you are not alone.

Namaste

Buddhism and Psychology

2009-01-29T16:06:00.000-08:00

Buddhism is often considered to be a philosophy more than a religion. But perhaps, it's also closer to a psychological theory than even a philosophy. Much of the Buddhist writings talk about what suffering is, what creates suffering, and how the human mind makes suffering worse. Mindfulness and meditation are ways of softening and training the mind to accept and understand.

Sounds a lot like therapy to me.

When I came across The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology by Jack Komfield, I was immediately intrigued. I downloaded a sample chapter to my Kindle, and was hooked immediately.

22 out of 26 people who reviewed it gave it a five star rating, so I bought it right then and there, downloaded it to my Kindle, and I have been reading it, ahem, religiously.

I like how Komfield interweaves Western psychology and Eastern Buddhism into each other. He compares and contrasts, and suggests alternative ways to approach psychology in a gentle, non-attached way, to awaken our Buddha nature.

Reframing our ideas of psychology and therapy as a way to "fix" things, it can be a practice, and a way to open up to life, and wake up to life. "You are perfect the way you are. And...there is still room for improvement!" is a quote that Komfield uses to explain the general approach to Buddhist psychology.

I'm very picky when it comes to writing style and "voice", and I like Komfield's quite a bit. It's easy to read, unassuming, and non-academic.

There are some parts at the end of the book, however, that get a little preachy for me. But by then, I was so in love with the rest of it, I was able to skim over those parts and let go that they bothered me.

I thought I'd share my experience with you. If you are interested in Buddhism and psychology, this is a great book to get the best of both worlds.

A Zen Joke

2009-01-23T11:46:00.001-08:00

Comedy central had this joke today:

A man was sprawled across three entire seats in a theater. When the usher came by and noticed this, he whispered to the man, "Sorry sir, but you're only allowed one seat."

The man groaned but didn't budge. The usher became impatient.

"Sir," the usher said, "if you don't get up from there, I'm going to have to call the manager."

Again, the man just groaned, which infuriated the usher who turned and marched briskly back up the aisle in search of his manager. In a few moments, both the usher and the manager returned and stood over the man. Together the two of them tried repeatedly to move him, but with no success. Finally, they summoned the police. The cop surveyed the situation briefly.

"All right, buddy. What's your name?"

"Sam," the man moaned.

"Where ya from, Sam?" the cop asked.

"The balcony."

This is funny, but it's also a moment of zen. Things aren't always what they seem, and we have a choice to approach each situation with loving-kindness, rather than anger or frustration. But then, if the usher had been in a zen frame of mind, this joke wouldn't be funny.

How To Hug a Porcupine - Loving Kindness

2008-11-12T13:31:00.000-08:00

I've talked about passive-aggressive people before. Sending them loving-kindness has helped a lot in my recovery in dealing with people who hurt others in indirect ways in order to make themselves feel better and control their world. By sending them loving-kindness, I take myself out of their grip, wish them peace, and then move forward. Well, usually.

But sometimes, it feels like I'm hugging a porcupine.

The problem with hugging a porcupine, is that giving love to him hurts. My initial reaction is to run away or fight. When being threatened by quills, it's hard to be loving.

Perhaps, being poked a little is a short-term price we can pay for long term benefit. Think of how much a porcupine can hurt me I'd get if I fought it. And how much pain I'd feel if I try to push the porcupine away as it moves around me. This produces far more pain and suffering than if I welcome the porcupine, love it, and let it be as prickly as it wants to be. By loving it, it only hurts me a little, and then I'm able to forgive and move on.

By hugging a porcupine, I define how much hurt I receive. I'm showing it I'm not afraid. And when I'm done hugging it, I have less fear of it attacking me. There is no desire to fight it. No desire to run away from the quills.

I'll never be able to get rid of the quills on a passive aggressive personality. And I will never be able to keep them out of my life entirely. But perhaps by deciding on a different approach, and a different perspective, I can make my life easier, and even possibly reduce the porcupine's suffering by not letting their ways take control of me too.

I can't change them. Perhaps one day, I will no longer be angered by them, or feel manipulated, my Buddha nature will shine, and I'll only feel loving kindness towards them and wish them less suffering.

Zen Practice and Medication

2008-08-20T12:24:00.000-07:00

The practice of Zazen and Zen Buddhism shouldn't "take a break" while we're sick, or having a rough time, or even when we're having a great time. Its very nature exists all the time. Yet, I've been grappling with it for the past couple of months due to some medication that I've been prescribed.

The medication has changed me. And it makes me wonder what the whole point of zazen and meditation is when we can simply take a pill, and well, we're different. What is this "me" that has changed? And if I'm so easily chemically manipulated, what's the point of making effort be awake?

Another side effect of the medication is that it sometimes makes it very hard to concentrate, and sometimes I get dizzy and disoriented. It almost feels like being drunk or high.

One of the tenets of zen buddhism is to avoid substances like alcohol and drugs, which alter our perceptions. Yet, I have to take these drugs, prescribed by a doctor, which do that very thing. How can I think clearly and be present when I've been altered?

I've been grappling with this, like a zen koan. There is no answer. The question itself has been my meditation practice for the past month. When I'm driving or walking or simply sitting, I breathe, and go around and around without end on this question - does taking personality altering medication effect my zen practice?

My zafu pillow is lonely. My yoga mat is starting to gather dust. My bed pillow is getting a permanent dent in the middle. Pre and post sleep are my meditation times, when my body is too tired to move, yet my mind is spinning and floating in a semi-awake haze. I breathe, and relax, and let the medication do its work.

There is something to be learned from this, but I don't know what. I continue to breathe and bring myself as much as I can to the present moment. And when it's all over, perhaps, I'll be able to see the path I have tread, and understand then where I my experiences were leading me.

How Many Days Do You Have Left to Live?

2008-08-04T11:54:00.001-07:00

If you found out that you only had a week to live, how would you live it? What if you found out that you had 100 days?

This question brings up the zen question of death and life. How can we live our life so we aren't afraid of death? Isn't part of being afraid of death is that we feel like we don't have enough time here, to do whatever it is that we feel we need to be doing? If we lived a full, and present, life, would death be so scary?

Maria contemplates the raw truth of how many days she can realistically expect to live. Having a solid number gives her perspective on how impermanent life is. And instead of brooding on it, she uses that information to inspire her to live a more present life.

It makes me wonder, why we are so resistant to allowing ourselves to live life in the moment? Why is it so compelling to spend so much time in the past, future.. simply escaping?

Patience and Practice

2008-07-09T16:48:00.000-07:00

Where does patience come from? Does it come from a practice and what we choose to do? Does it come from a perspective on how important we consider everyday events? Does it come from the managing the ego and attachment, not always needing things to be the way we expect? Does it come from defeat and realizing that our energy is wasted when we get impatient?

People tell me that they don't have patience. What does that mean? Are you patient?

I'm patient when I'm on the freeway, unless I am late for something. I'm patient with my kids, unless I am trying to focus on something. I'm patient with my friends, unless they push my buttons. I'm patient with my cat, except at 4am when she is meowing in my ear.

ZenHabits has a post on how to become patient. He lists many tools for fending off frustration. Does the practice of counting, breathing, and other stress-relievers actually increase our patience? Or do they distract us? After time, do we start to become naturally more patient because we see how we don't have to be impatient for things to happen?

When we sit in Zazen, we are practicing patience, in many forms. Zen, in general, is a practice in patience. Yet, patience has this mysterious quality that you can't put your finger on, or fix. Perhaps, part of being patient is accepting that, sometimes, we're not.

Monkeys and Coconuts: Zen Buddhist Non-Attachment

2008-05-04T08:34:00.001-07:00

(Note: This was a 7 minute speech I gave to my Toastmasters club, from the advanced manual "Speaking to Inform", speech number 5, "The Abstract Idea". It turned out to be so well received, I decided to post it to ZenPizza.")

Monkeys and Coconuts

Monkeys can help us find peace.

Madame Toastmaster, and Fellow Toastmasters,

Buddhism, and in particular Zen Buddhism, is known as a religion of peace. Many don't consider it a religion at all, but rather a philosophy.

The philosophy of Zen Buddhism is, at its essence, a search for the reduction of suffering. If one is able to completely remove suffering, he has attained Nirvana, or Enlightenment.

One of the traveling companions on the path to enlightenment is non-attachment. This is what we'll be talking about today.

Image this morning, you walked out of your house, and your car was not in the driveway. Imagine another scenario where someone you know, or someone on TV, insulted something you liked, such as a sports team or a political party. Now imagine an argument or discussion you had, and you couldn't stop thinking about it for days afterwards.

In all of these scenarios, we're suffering. According to Zen Buddhism, the reason we are suffering is attachment.

In the first case, we are attached to things, in the second, we are attached to feelings, and the third, our opinions and wanting to be right.

The more we are attached, the more we suffer.

There is a Zen story that perfectly illustrates this point.

In SouthEast Asia, hunters have an ingenious way of trapping monkeys. They take a coconut, and carve a hole in the top, and take out the insides of the coconut. Then, they place a tasty, sweet morsel, such as a piece of fruit, inside the coconut. They take this coconut, and put it up in a tree in such a way that it cannot be dislodged. A monkey comes along, sees the tasty morsel, and reaches its hand in through the small hole. When he grabs the food, his hand turns into a fist, and he can't get his hand out of the coconut. The monkey is not willing to let go of the sweet thing, and the hunter catches him.

We are the monkeys, holding on to our stuff, our feelings, our opinions, and we can't let go of them. Even when we are stuck, and we have our fist lodged in a coconut, and we can SEE how much it's hurting us, we can't let go.

The solution to this problem, according to Zen Buddhism, is non-attachment.

How do we achieve non-attachment? The way a Zen Buddhist practices this is to meditate. It's why they meditate so much!

First, meditation brings us into the now. Now is the only time. Now is when things happen. The past and future are only constructs of our mind. When we are in the now, we can't have attachments. Attachments are in the past and the future. In the now, the past and future do not matter. When we are attached to the past, we feel guilt and sorrow, when we are attached to the future, we feel worry and fear. Being in the now keeps us from being attached to the past and future.

Secondly, Zen Buddhists believe that nothing in the universe is intrinsically "good" and "bad". Good and bad are judgements that the human mind places on things. By being in the now, we can remove our judgements of things. When we have no judgements, we have no attachments.

The Buddha said, "Never have anything to do with likes and dislikes. The absence of what one likes is painful, as is the presence of what one dislikes. Therefore, don't take a liking to anything."

So what does this mean? Is the Buddha teaching us to walk around as zen zombies, uncaring and indifferent to everything?

Ajahn Sumedho, author of "Teaching of a Buddhist Monk", shares a story about non-attachment and enjoying life.

(Note: I summarized his story for the speech. This is my summary, not a direct quote.)

There is a fire burning in front of us. It's beautiful. With red, yellow, white. And it's warm. We like it, so we reach out to hold it. And what happens? It burns us. We pull our hands away, because when we reached out to hold it, it burned us. Does this mean we hate the fire and want to put it out? No. Instead, we learned to sit back and enjoy its warmth from a distance, and enjoy its colors in front of us. We can appreciate and love the fire without holding on to it.

That is the Zen concept of non-attachement, and how we can live in our world, appreciate and love everything, yet not be attached to it all.

Now, becoming enlightened is a difficult task. Very few people have ever achieved that. And the odds of any of us in this room reaching true enlightenment is pretty low. However, maybe Buddha has a good point.

Maybe the road to peace is as simple as sitting still, letting go, being in the now, breathing....and thinking about fire, monkeys, and coconuts.

Forgiving in Advance

2008-04-25T09:09:00.000-07:00

For years, I held on to anger, frustration, and bitterness. I could not forgive people who, in my perception, wronged me. And in parallel, I could not forgive my own mistakes and imperfections.

Zen study, as well as life experience, have helped me grow into a more forgiving person. I can see now how things that happened many years ago can trap me in the past, if I don't forgive. Forgiving is for myself, not for the other person, although it can repair relationships. Forgiving is not giving in, it is being strong. The weaker response is to hold on to grudges.

It's helped me in my parenting, and I hope my hubby would say, it's helped me in my marriage. Things I used to hold on to, and would create accumulated pain, don't effect me as much. I'm living much more in the moment. When problems arise, I can, although imperfectly, see how unfair it is to tie things in the far past into the now. Children who are growing and changing at lightening speeds make holding grudges nearly impossible. How silly it is to chastise a ten year old for how he behaved when he was five.

It's a window that gets smaller and smaller, as I learn to forgive things more quickly. The more practice I have in forgiving, the easier it comes.

What if, I could forgive at the very moment of a wrong-doing? What if I could forgive my children and my hubby at the moment that they do something I deem is painful, frustrating, or just plain wrong? Can I make the window that small?

And, is it possible, to go even farther, and to forgive before the wrong-doing even occurs? Is it possible to forgive in advance?

How freeing that would be, to forgive everyone in advance, so when things happen, I've already let go of the baggage that increases pain and suffering.

That will be my zen focus for this weekend: forgiving all the past, forgiving in the present, and forgiving in advance.

Making Room for Little Deaths

2008-04-02T13:26:00.000-07:00

On Easter Sunday, I went to church. Sounds pretty banal, except, that I'm not religious, nor do I celebrate Easter. At least, not in the conventional sense. I celebrate it because it's a convenient opportunity to be together with the people I love, enjoying life, and sharing experiences. Not in many years have I ever wanted to go to church on Easter morning.

This year, I had an overwhelming urge to go to church and hear about Easter. The church I go to doesn't have bibles, and many of the people in the congregation don't even believe in God. Yet, up there in front of us, was a reverend, who spoke to us about the bible, about religion, and about Easter. My daughter came with me, too. And because of her, not only did I go to church, but I sat in the front row.

There's something really satisfying about sitting in front of someone who is talking to a group, but it feels like that person is talking to me, alone. On Easter Sunday, the reverend talked about the resurrection, and little deaths.

Every moment of our lives, we are experiencing little deaths. I have to admit, when I first heard him use this expression, I initially thought of "la petite mort," which, in French, would be a far cry from anything a reverend would talk about in church, let alone on Easter. What he was referring to, however, was the concept that whenever we experience a revelation, deal with a crisis, or have any kind of experience that impacts our psyche, we leave behind the old version of ourselves, and re-emerge as someone slightly, or significantly, different. We've experienced a little death.

In Zen Buddhism, we study and think about death a lot. Not in a morbid way, but in a "what are we so afraid of?" kind of way. The reason we shouldn't be afraid, is because we are always dying. And we are always being reborn. Each moment we leave behind, is the death of that moment, of that person we were a moment ago. As we approach each new moment, we are being reborn again, and we are brand new person. If we look at our bodies, our cells are constantly dying and being replaced by other cells. The body that we had 10 years ago cannot be found anywhere in the body that we have today. One could say that the person we were 10 years ago is physically dead, and we have been reborn.

This can happen to our psyche, or soul, or whatever word we want to use for it. Some would call it growing. What we do when we grow, is that we transform, and we become a slightly different and new person than we were before. The reverend at my church called these "little deaths". And to him, that is what the Resurrection symbolizes - the opportunities we have in our daily lives to die and be reborn into a new plane of understanding and living.

I suppose, this is another way to say, "put the past behind us." It's not just that, though. It's also accepting the reality of having to actually go through the "little death" to get through to the other side, and be reborn. If we continually try to keep the little deaths away, we can't become the new person that this experience can create in us.

The reverend gave an example of two women who had lost their husbands around the same time many years ago, at another church where he used to work. One woman was the model of control. People were in awe of how well she was able to keep it together, and go about her life without much disruption. The second woman, she lost it. She cried all the time, and her life fell apart. It was the most difficult time in her life.

A year later, the first woman cracked, and had to be admitted to a psychiatric ward. The second, got through her pain, and emerged through to the other side a different person. She had accepted her little death, and had been reborn. The first woman fought her little death, and ended up in living purgatory.

I wonder if this is what the original writers of the bible had in mind when they wrote about Jesus' resurrection. Was it an allegory for how when we accept the worst, and live through the pain of being metaphorically crucified, we then can come out from behind the stone and walk away into another plane of existence? Is purgatory really a metaphor to the place we put ourselves in our lives when we hold on the person we used to be even in the face of obvious change and life challenges?

Pema Chodron wrote a book called When Things Fall Apart. Many times in that book she says, in several different ways, "Just let things fall apart." We're so afraid of letting things fall apart. What's going to happen if they do? We might have to face our little death, again. And again. But maybe that's not so much of a bad thing? Maybe it's only through making room for those little deaths that we can truly live? Because what is life, when we spend all of our time running away and hiding?

Zen Podcasts

2008-01-30T14:38:00.000-08:00

I found a great series of Zen podcasts. It's from the San Francisco Zen Center. The public lectures are also available in iTunes for free. I listened to one yesterday about emotions, judgment and perception by Edward Brown. I fell in love with his voice, which was so calming and gentle. So opposite of the the constant child-chatter and media-chatter that goes on around me all day, everyday.

Oh, and he also had some great observations about emotions and judgment, and what it means to be "zen". What does it look like to be "zen". I don't know. After his lecture, I still don't know. But I feel better about knowing, because that's the point.

Criticism and Correction

2008-01-20T21:01:00.000-08:00

"First, do no harm," is a Zen mantra. That includes "right speech", where we refrain from speaking unless it adds positively to a conversation or to the world.

What about criticism and correction? Does it have any place in "right speech"?

I was thinking about this yesterday as I started reading Dave Carnegie's How to Make Friends and Influence People. I picked up the book at the library last week while doing some research on passive-aggressive behavior. I've heard quite a bit about the book (mostly in the form of jokes about the title), and was curious.

So I started reading it last night, and the first precept is "Don't criticize, condemn or complain."

It sounded very Zen.

His reasons were logical; people don't react well to criticism, people don't change their behavior after being criticized (except to avoid criticism later), and people trust us less when we criticize often. Makes sense.

But is it practical? Can we go through life without criticizing or correcting, especially as parents? Is there another way to express our desires without that?

Passive-aggressives are very good at finding fault in others, while hiding from their own faults. Is finding fault in others universally problematic?

Do you know anyone who criticizes, yet is still well-liked and makes friends easily? A friend of mine once said, "It's not the people who like the things we do who are our friends, but the people who hate the same things we do."

Dale Carnegie uses Abraham Lincoln as his running example of a man who chose not to criticize. Can we all be like Abraham Lincoln? Or would Lincoln crash and burn in today's world of critical media and our society's lust for drama?

Dealing With Passive-aggressive People

2008-01-14T16:08:00.000-08:00

I admit that I have a hard time dealing with passive-aggressive people. Passive-aggressive people (P/A for short) use passive means to display aggressive behavior. They use every means possible to look like the good guy, and the other person like the bad guy.

Passive-aggressive people are untouchable. They never apologize, they don't take responsibility for their behavior, they complain that other people don't live up to their expectations, and they avoid facing hard truths, especially when it means they have to look at themselves. Oh, and when they hurt others, they turn it around so it's always the other person's fault and they deserved it.

We all show p/a behaviors from time to time. Nobody's perfect. But people who live their life this way are so tiring to be around. I am able to "feel" people's emotions and attitudes pretty clearly. P/a people "feel" different than they are acting. They act so strong and confident, when inside they are so incredibly fearful. I don't know which version of them to respond to. The surface acting or the true person who is hiding.

Most people who are p/a, I have to distance myself from them and basically ignore. I can't get involved with those kinds of people. But there are people in my life who are like this and I am not able to walk away from due to circumstances. I'm sure a lot of people have this same experience, with p/a people in their families or at work.

P/a people have friends and loved-ones who don't seem to be bothered by their behavior. How do they deal with it? How can anyone be close to someone like that? I'm baffled.

So, I'm going along, trying to learn how to deal with the people in my life who act passively and yet are aggressive underneath.

Perhaps the first thing I need to do is let go of any desire to get their approval. It's not going to happen. They complain about everyone (except those who they are in complete awe of or who they seek their approval), so I'm going to be one of those people they complain about.

Perhaps I also need to let go of the idea that having any kind of "real" relationship with them is necessary. I'm naturally a "connect with the universe" kind of person. But they are sending a clear message to the universe, "Do not try to connect with me unless I invite you in." Perhaps if I let go of my attachment to being "real" about things, I can deal better with them.

Perhaps I also need to let the universe, or karma, take care of it. There are a lot of things I can change, but p/a behavior is not one of those things. I need to let these people make their own choices, absent of my judgment of them, and then let the universe and karma take care of it. In the big scheme of things, it doesn't matter if that one person is p/a.

Lastly, focusing on my own behavior is key. P/a behavior is a way to control a situation or person. Instead of trying to defend myself from their p/a attacks or clarify my position, I can simply do what needs to be done, focus on keeping my own integrity intact, and move on. I have no power to change the other person. I can only affect my own behavior. And when I focus on my own behavior, I can't be controlled.

I think it p/a behavior boils down to a fear of intimacy. And since I'm naturally an intimate person (perhaps to a fault), if a person acts the act of what intimacy looks like, but who is actually creating as much distance as possible, it makes me agitated.

It's my choice whether to allow them to continue agitating me, or to let it go. I will practice letting go, and see if I can make it a habit, or at least be conscious that I have a choice.

Do you know any passive-aggressive people? How do you handle them?

Why Is Soda So Difficult?

2008-01-11T22:36:00.000-08:00

I love food. But making lasting changes in my eating habits is so darn hard.

Going veggie was a slow process. I'm still going through it, as I still crave bacon and hamburgers sometimes.

I also have to really have conviction in why I'm giving up something before I can. I have to literally feel the physical effects of changing my diet for it to stick. Giving up caffeine, isn't working because I haven't noticed a difference. I still feel the same. So, giving up my diet coke is all conjecture of what it might potentially perhaps makes me healthier. I don't feel healthier, I don't feel less tired. And I really enjoy having soda with my meals.

I was able to give up meat because not only do I feel incredibly guilty after eating it, but I also feel kind of crappy. Fish doesn't make me feel either guilty or crappy, so I like eating it instead.

I was able to give up Mcdonalds because it really made me feel like crap. (I do get sucked into eating french fries though once in a while.)

I don't know if I'll ever be able to give up diet coke completely. I need more of an incentive to stop. And I need a habit to replace it with, and water just doesn't do it when it comes to enjoying a meal.

Speaking of food, there's a new fast food joint in New York that is trying to emulate McDonald's. It's called ZenBurger (do you think they got the idea from my blog title?)

What do you think? Is the whole concept flawed? Are "zen" and "fast food" two incompatible concepts?

Ok, A Little Bit of Caffeine

2008-01-04T21:28:00.000-08:00

Diet coke is a really hard habit to kick. I don't want soda. I know that I don't want soda. But when I'm out getting a bite, I'm so used to having soda with my food, it's hard to choose something else.

Today, I chose decaf coffee. It was easier to do today because it was so cold, I didn't want to drink a cold soda.

But yesterday, I had a diet coke. I only drank half of it. But the issue is that I couldn't bring myself to order anything else. It's as if my tongue has been permanently impressed with taste of diet coke with food.

So decaf coffee it is. When the weather gets warmer, hopefully I'll have been out of the diet coke habit long enough to be comfortable with drinking cold water instead.

No More Caffeine for Me

2008-01-02T20:37:00.001-08:00

For Xmas, hubby got me a zazen pillow and a zabuton. It's portable!

I've also given myself the gift of not drinking caffeine. Well, at least drastically reducing it.

Last year I went vegetarian. What I call Buddhist veggie - I don't make meat for myself, but if I'm served meat, I won't refuse it. I do eat fish though. I'm not sure whether that classifies me as cheating or not.

Why did I go veggie? I just couldn't get it out of my head that I was eating something that used to breathe. Well, it wasn't until after I was done eating that I would think about that. But it was getting to the point where the regret hurt. So, going veggie was kind of selfish (so I wouldn't hurt), in a "do no harm" kind of way.

So the caffeine thing... I got really sick over the holiday. We all came down with the stomach flu, and for three days, I couldn't eat, and certainly not drink anything with caffeine. I've been wanting to ditch caffeine for a while, so I saw this as a good opportunity to try and create a new habit. More tea, more water, replacing decaf coffee for soda, and if I have to drink soda, to drink caff free diet coke.

I am more successful if I make changes one step at a time. I can't do the cold-turkey way of changing. As with the veggie thing that evolved slowly, so will the caffeine reduction.

I'm hoping it will help with my sleep. But even if it doesn't, it certainly will be healthier for me.

Are you veggie? Or caffeine free? Why did you decide to do it? And how did you make the change?

New Year's Eve Is So Zen

2007-12-28T22:08:00.000-08:00

New year's eve is coming. It's my favorite holiday of the year. It's not a big commercial holiday and it's something we can all celebrate together regardless of religion or culture or political view. It's a time to appreciate our lives, and to think positively towards our future. It has no history attached to it, because each year is its own unique focus on the present. We are encouraged to kiss each other, smile and cheer. We can celebrate without any rituals or fanfare or drama, or we can celebrate with parties and fun times.

2008 is going to be a good year. I can feel it. Many smiles to be had. Many successes to be shared.

This is my favorite time of year, because of New Year's. Because this time, more than ever, we are reminded to simply love and appreciate life.

Not Sitting, Too Much Babbling

2007-12-12T22:53:00.000-08:00

I've missed three weeks of sitting. Perhaps not coincidentally, I've spent the last three weeks not writing much. I've also spent way too much time babbling.

I say babbling because I'm finding it harder to let there be silence, so I fill it with just saying anything. When I'm sitting often, I get used to the silence. It doesn't bug me as much.

It's been cold. Getting out at 7am hasn't exactly been an exciting prospect. I do miss sitting though. I miss the half hour of silence. I also like my sleep and my warm bed. It's a tough call to decide which is better for my overall well being.

What Is Regret?

2007-12-06T09:58:00.000-08:00

I read a comment today on a blog: We only regret things that didn't turn out as expected.

Living in the Moment - or Not

2007-11-27T21:17:00.000-08:00

Mike over at Thoughts on Spirituality, Liturgy and Religion posted a cute cartoon about living in the moment. It gave me a good giggle.

WWaJD? (What Would a Jedi Do?)

2007-11-26T16:38:00.000-08:00

My son, who is 9, is a Star Wars fan. We watch the movies often.

As we were watching The Empire Strikes Back, I was taken aback by the similarities between Jedi-ism and Buddhism.

So I decided to go through the day thinking "What would a Jedi do?". The answers amazed me. How would a Jedi do laundry? Talk to children? Cook a meal? Have a phone conversation? I'm sure they wouldn't bitch and moan. And I'm sure they wouldn't get too upset when things don't go the way they are supposed to. What does a Jedi do when he's sick? I bet he rests.

For some reason, that's much more concrete in my mind than "What would a Buddhist do?" I need to see more movies with Buddhists as the protagonist, I guess.

American Zen

2007-11-25T11:58:00.000-08:00

Punk rocker Zen priest, Brad Warner, does things differently. Back to basics - just sit. Stripped down to its basic elements, that's the kind of Buddhism that speaks to me. I suppose, it's the same with almost all religions.

And, I like his book titles: Sit Down and Shut Up and Hardcore Zen.

Not Made in China and Vegetarian Thanksgiving

2007-11-24T17:21:00.000-08:00

This Thanksgiving I agonized a bit over whether or not to eat turkey. I don't choose to eat meat when it means that animal had to die to feed me.

However, when I'm served meat, I'll eat it. The meat has already been slaughtered. Refusing meat that has been offered to me in good faith doesn't save the animal or show my appreciation for the effort my host went through to feed me.

But Thanksgiving wasn't as straight forward. I had the choice not to eat the turkey, because it wasn't been served to me. We were the hosts. Yet, my choice not to eat it wouldn't save the turkey. In fact, much of the turkey meat will be thrown out because we had way too much. And I like the taste of turkey.

So I had turkey. And I enjoyed it. It wasn't an easy decision. But once I made the decision, I went with it and didn't look back. It was also a relief not to have to explain why I don't eat meat and when.

The next thing I struggle with is "Made in China". Most of the toys the kids want were made in china. (Except the #1 one thing on my son's list. It was made in Italy. Yay!) But when everything is made in China...and we're on a budget...it sure is hard to shop for presents without buying into China's cheap crap industry.

What can I do to keep from buying from China? Is buying from China as bad as its made out to be? I'm so confused! I want to do the "right" thing. The thing that harms the world the least.

Thrown for a Loop on Thanskgiving

2007-11-22T20:04:00.000-08:00

Generally, I don't get stressed during the holidays. I enjoy them. And see them as a chance to see people I love to be around. I also like giving and receiving gifts. Particularly with the kids.

This year, Thanksgiving threw me for a loop, bringing stress in its wake.

My husband's grandmother passed away suddenly.

And. She lives in Japan. Which means, my husband is taking off on an impromptu trip to Japan in three days.

This was incredibly stressful for us all today, to enjoy Thanksgiving while having this in the background.

Things that made this stressful:

1) We thought at first that he was going to have to leave tomorrow, the day after Thanksgiving, in order to make the funeral on time. Fortunately, the funeral isn't until Tuesday, so he has some time.
2) We thought the ticket was going to cost us $1000. And since it wasn't really an option not to go, that would mean a big bye bye to Xmas this year. Fortunately, it worked out that we had enough frequent flier miles for my husband to travel under $100.
3) My husband just returned from a week-long trip to England. That just sucks, and nothing we can do about that. This year will end up being a total of about 5 weeks of us being separated.
4) I will have to give up NaNo. When he as away on his London trip, I got so far behind, I was certain that I wouldn't finish. Somehow, after he returned, I managed to get some momentum, and realized that if I diligently wrote everyday while hubby watched the kids, I'd finish. I would need every day left in the month to do it (and get all my other writing done as well). With hubby being gone another 5 days this month, it will be impossible. I have to wave the white flag. Strangely, I feel relieved.

There are other issues like not having a suit for the funeral, and having to go out in Black Friday craziness to get one, not sure how his work will handle this sudden disappearance, and working around some scheduling conflicts.

But in this all, I have to say, that my hubby was incredible. He managed to cook Thanksgiving dinner. (He cooks, I clean.) Deal with his family crisis, and not lose it. Not even once. I was in awe.

Frankly, he kept me together. I said to him early in the day, "It'll all work out." He proved it.

Everything balances out in the end. It'll be OK. It always is.

Sitting and Sleeping - Zazen Meditation at 7am

2007-11-21T22:45:00.000-08:00

I've been diligently attending my 7am Tuesday Zazen sitting and walking meditation.

Oh, how hard it is to get up that early. To shower, eat and be there by 7. In order to sit. And do nothing.

I love doing nothing. It's one of my favorite things to do. I think that's why I enjoy driving so much. I can do nothing, and it's expected. I don't feel the least bit guilty about not doing dishes.

Doing nothing at 7am. That's rough. When I get to the yoga studio, I'm still asleep.

Surprisingly, I don't feel like I'm going to fall asleep during Zazen. I'm OK all the way through, go through my normal Zazen mantras, counting, breathing, etc. Then I come home. Where the couch calls me. And I succumb to the Siren's call.

It's not like there's a better time to meditate. If I don't do it at 7, it won't get done. And, isn't part of the whole purpose of practice, making a decision to be dedicated and doing it even when I don't feel like it?

Maybe, maybe not. But I keep going. And keep sitting.

Still Sitting

2007-11-05T20:27:00.001-08:00

Oh, and I'm still sitting. Just on Tuesdays. 7am is just so early in the morning. I can't do it twice a week. Once a week sitting, and a couple times a month going to church - this is turning out to be a good gentle way to remind me of how much I enjoy spiritual practice and thought. And to remember to not get caught up in all the crap of everyday life. It's all just stuff. Don't sweat the small stuff and it's all small stuff.

I also enjoy having a place where I can actually talk about religion and spirituality and not feel like I'm putting a big target on my forehead. My neighbor also invited me to join her in the next week or two at her weekly spirituality group. She's in a similar place as me - leaning towards the zen of things, yet still very Western and not dogmatic about anything, even zen. So I might join her, if it's not too much time away from the family.

Sitting, thinking, talking, being together. It's all good.

Unitarian Universalist Church

2007-11-05T20:21:00.000-08:00

I am so surprised with myself. I'm enjoying this church experience. The UU church has pretty much everything I believe to be good about going to church, without all the dogma. I'm so impressed.

I took my kids to church this Sunday. It was my second time there. The sermon was about "too much of a good thing", and covered all of the "virtues" and how even too much virtue can turn deadly. Even moderation. All things in moderation, even moderation. I was impressed with the thoughtfulness of the sermon, as well as the many places from which the reverend pulled his material; the bible, history, Buddhism, current events, Judiasm, philosophy, and personal anecdotes. I think my hubby might even have liked to have been there.

Anyone been to a UU church? What's your take on it?

Sitting Together in Silence

2007-10-17T10:49:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, I had my first collective meditative experience.

I'd been considering joining a meditation group for a while. Things kept getting in the way. I figured, when the time was right, the universe would send me an opportunity - so long as I kept my mind open to the possibilities.

In the pursuit of a local yoga class that started early enough in the morning that I could go and come back before my husband left for work, I stumbled upon a zen meditation session. It was being offered during the exact time frame that I hoped to find a yoga class.

So I did the zen meditation instead of yoga. I was cold, it was dark still and it had been many months since I had sat for more than 5 minutes in a row. I fidgeted, and I had an itchy nose.

But I sat. And sat and sat. For 30 min. Then we did a 5 min. walking meditation. And then chanted the heart sutra.

I didn't feel miraculously better afterwards. Or like I was suddenly transplanted to another plan of calmness. But it felt... right. Like I belonged there. I immediately got along with everyone. And I can see how doing this on a regular basis will be good practice for me. It will reinforce my habit for mindfulness and peace. And give me a place to practice my sitting where I don't have to wrench time from my family.

I think the hardest part of being patient is letting go of the value of time. There is only now. I'm just starting to really understand what that means, after years of believing it and saying it and trying to live it. It's a lesson I'm learning slowly. But I am learning. I don't know if I'll ever stop learning.

Excitement Vs. Happiness

2007-10-07T10:23:00.000-07:00

Speaking of Zen Buddhism... I'm reading a book called The Joy of Living by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. In it, Yongey Mingyur describes the basic tenet of Zen Buddhism through the parallels it has to quantum physics.

I love this approach. It's part of what I love about Zen. I've made the connection between science (in particular quantum science) and Zen before in my own mind. But thought that my inexperience in both realms didn't give me any credibility to talk about it.

It was a joy to see someone "official" talk about many things that I'd been thinking. It kind of reminds me of some of Deepak Chopra's writing.

Anyway, on a completely different tangent, Mingyur takes some time to talk about happiness and Western culture. This ties into a post I wrote a while ago about excitement. Here's a snippet of what he said:

The more widely I traveled, the clearer it became to me that people living in societies characterized by technological and material achievements were just as likely to feel pain, anxiety, loneliness, isolation, and despair as people who lived in comparatively less-developed areas. ...I began to see that when the pace of external of material progress exceeded the development of inner knowledge, people seemed to suffer deep emotional conflicts without any internal method of dealing with them. An abundance of material items provides such a variety of external distractions that peolpe lose the connection ito their inner lives.

Just think, for example, about the number of people who desperately look for a sense of excitement by going to a new restaurant, starting a new relationship, or moving to a different job. For a while the newness does seem to provide some sense of stimulation. But eventually th excitement dies down; the new sensations, new friends, or new responsibilities become commonplace. whatever happiness they originally felt dissolves.

... The trouble with all these solutions is that they are, by nature, temporary. All phenomena are the results of the coming together of causes and conditions, and therefore inevitably undergo some type of change. When the underlying causes that produced and perpetuated an experience of happiness change, most people end up blaming either external conditions (other people, a place, the weather, etc.) or themselves ("I should have said something nicer or smarter," "I should have gone somewhere else"). However, because it reflects a loss of confidence in oneself, or in the things we're taught to believe should bring us happiness, blame only makes the search of happiness more difficult."

The more problematic is that most people don't have a very clear idea of what happiness is, and consequently find themselves creating conditions that lead them back to the dissatisfaction they so desperately seek to eliminate.

One Man's Blasphemy Is Another Man's Sacred

2007-10-07T09:58:00.000-07:00

John at MindOnFire talks about blasphemy. What is it really?

His observation of what is Buddhist blasphemy is something that attracted me to Buddhism in the first place - although I had no idea that was the case until he put it so succinctly. In Buddhism, to assume we know the truth, and that we are 'right', and to follow blindly one teaching.. all that.. is a form of blasphemy. It goes against the philosophy of what Buddhism is.

For this, I was Buddhist before I ever heard about it. I'm not Buddhist. Buddhism describes really well who I already am. Zen in particular hits the mark for me.

So, am I being blasphemous if I don't do things à la Buddhism, or am I just being me?

What is blasphemy really, and is it really bad?

A Good Marriage and Soul Mates

2007-09-05T20:56:00.000-07:00

What determines whether two people can create a good, long-lasting marriage? Is there such thing as a soul mate?

I've been thinking about this a lot the last couple of years. My husband and I have been married 11 years, and together for 14. Our relationship is better now than it's ever been. And each year it gets better.

What's interesting, is that if I were the person I am today when I met my husband 15 years ago, I don't think there is any chance we would have hooked up. And vice versa. We were in the right place, at the right time when we met. And as we spent time together, we changed. And now, we are different people. We are the people who we need now.

If the two of us were single today, and we met today, we'd totally hit it off. We'd be perfect for each other. That's been true almost since the beginning. And although we've changed, we've never lost the overall feeling like we're a good match.

We've been through rough times. We've seen the worst of each other. And we got through it. A lot of it was sheer determination. Part of it might also have been, at some moments, lack of any compelling reason not to at least try. Part of it was life circumstance kept us together. Part of it was the ability to see each other's true self while really upset with each other.

But ultimately, what it boils down to, I think, is that we both just wanted it to work.

When two people come together and both people want to have a good relationship with the other, that's the magic formula. Once one or the other looses this desire to figure out how to do that, then all the other variables fall by the wayside.

It's not common interests or similar perspectives or being together a long time. All these things can be there, and yet a relationship fails.

There's no way we can make another person want to be with us. All we can do when we are in a relationship is decide whether we want to make our relationship good. And work towards that. And when the other person does too, then it works out.

That's what keeps my husband I together, ultimately. We both want to keep our relationship good. We do it in our own way, for our own reasons. But as the years move on, we keep wanting that. We keep striving for that goodness that we so often find in each other.

Oh, and it doesn't hurt that he's totally hot :)

What do you think? What keeps people together for a long time? Is there such thing as a soul mate? If so, why is it that so many people find their soul mate among the billions of people that live on this planet? Why do some people who search so long, never find someone who they could live with?

Which Direction to Go?

2007-09-03T10:34:00.000-07:00

This morning, I feel a bit like I'm flailing. Do you ever have on of those days where you know you have a lot to do, and you even want to do all those things, but getting started on any one task is impossible?

The usual things that I enjoy don't sound appealing to me. I don't want to start anything new because I have so much to do already. I like the things I have on my list, but today, for some reason, I'm just not there in my head to do them.

What do you do to get out of funks like this?

Alone and Together

2007-09-02T11:47:00.000-07:00

My husband and I have an integrated relationship. We influence each other heavily when we are together a lot. When we are apart, we revert back to another state of who we are without each other.

I suppose that I'm a different person with everyone. Every individual I mean brings out a different part of me. The people who bring out the parts of me I like, I tend to hang around with more. The people who push my buttons or bring out a side of me that I don't like, I tend to avoid.

I probably shouldn't avoid them, since the fact that some people bring out an angry, or frustrated or insincere side of me is a sign that I need to work on something. Or perhaps, it's a sign of my deep judgements and expectations. Instead, I take the easy way out and shy away from those people.

My husband brings out parts of me that rarely get to see the light of day. Parts of me that I would love to show, but can't without putting too much of myself out there for criticism. My hubby gives me a safe place to be me in a way that I can't be me anywhere else.

Generally, I don't believe that other people make us happy. We make ourselves happy. So I like to think that I make myself happy by making the choice of being with my hubby and keeping our relationship strong. I haven't met anyone like him. I'm very glad that ended up with each other 15 years ago.

I miss him. It will be two weeks before I see him again. Until then, I'm on my own. Focusing on my relationship with myself and with my kids. It sure will be nice to have him around again though.

Work and Regret

2007-08-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

Have you heard the saying, "Nobody says on their death bed, 'I wish I spent more time at work?'"

Last night, I was talking to my dad, who just recently had back surgery. My dad has a second family, with three kids whose ages are about the same as mine. All under 9. (I am 35.) We were talking about how he is going to change how he works and where his priorities lie. He was talking about schedules and sleeping more and other things. Then he told me, that before his back surgery, he went to work at around 7:30 and comes home at 6:30. That's how it's been the entire time since he married my step-mom.

That's an 11 hour work day.

Everyday. And pretty much every weekend is spent catching up on stuff that he didn't get done during the week.

He's always worked like this. When I was little, like his current kids are, he owned a business. His hours were the same. He's lived his whole adult life working 11 hour days, and working weekends.

He loves work. That's obvious. And he loves his kids. That's obvious too. But when a dad isn't around very often because he's working so much, what happens to all that love? It goes to work. The absolute best way he can tell his kids that he loves them is to work a normal 8 hour day and make family come first. Not working weekends, and being home when they are. That means more than anything.

When I'm on my deathbed, I will not regret the road not taken. If there is something I'm going to regret, then I want to change it now. Regret changes nothing.

"The only thing we leave behind when we die is our relationships." I've finally really learned that. After many years of pushing away friendship and love. And by being somewhat frantic when in communication with people, afraid that they might leave at any moment.

My issues and my dad's issues are different. But at the end of the day, the question is, are we living our lives in a way that we don't leave behind regret? And if we aren't, why not?

Seeking Excitement Does Not Create Happiness

2007-08-09T13:54:00.000-07:00

This article about excitement made something go "click" in my brain.

Personal Loneliness

2007-08-07T17:17:00.000-07:00

Is there a difference between "aloneness" and "loneliness"? Leo Buscaglia thinks so. He says that when we think of being lonely, we think of being alone. So we search for ways to avoid being alone, in order to fix our feeling of loneliness.

This doesn't work. If the thought of being alone makes us scared, being with others isn't going to make that fear go away. It's not going to solve our loneliness.

"One can be alone and never feel loneliness, and conversely, one can feel lonely even when he is among people."

"Modern man is so much a part of a crowd that he's suffering a personal loneliness."

Basically, we don't know how to enjoy the company of ourselves. We don't have time to reflect, think, dream, breathe. And when we do, we don't know what to do with it. We're so accustomed to not having a relationship with ourselves, that we don't know what to do when we have ourselves for company.

And when we have this personal loneliness, having people around won't solve it. Instead, we'll be lonely among friends.

My question to you is this: Is part of spiritual maturation learning how to be alone and not be lonely? Is being in a good relationship with ourselves the solution to creating strong relationships with others? And becoming a person who doesn't need relationships, but who enjoys them and welcomes them readily into his life?

Life-Long Learning

2007-08-03T13:39:00.001-07:00

Or, the beginner's mind.

One of the problems I have with many experts is the unwavering position they take without being open to other possible ideas. Very few experts are willing to say that their way may not be the best way. Perhaps it's a demand in our society that if an expert does admit they could be wrong, we don't trust them. And in order to get people to trust them, experts have to be diligent and steadfast.

But is there a way to be an expert and still see things from a novice's point of view?

Tobeme asks this question and gives us a really good explanation of the importance of empathy when we become experts.

Teachers and mentors who are experts in their fields, yet hold the same wonder and acceptance of new ideas as their own students - those are the best teachers. These are the people we can identify with and trust, because they understand where we are. They haven't forgotten what it's like to be a novice.

Atheism and Religion Are Not the Only Choices

2007-07-26T18:58:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting article about being in the middle - believing, even Christian, yet not rigorously religious.

When the lines divide sides that are so far apart, where do people who are in the middle fit in?

Laughing From the Belly

2007-07-25T16:46:00.001-07:00

When was the last time you belly laughed? I mean fully free, unrestrained laughter? The kind of laughter that makes other people laugh even when they have no idea what you're laughing about?

This kind of laughter is the soul smiling. I am lucky to be "a laugher". Sometimes, it makes people uncomfortable. Especially when I'm in a group of women. I love being around my girlfriends, but women can be very judgemental. Especially in groups. Especially if someone seems to be truly happy.

I laugh from my belly. It feels good. It may be in appropriate or loud or even obnoxious. I can't care. I can't restrain it. Restraining the laugh of my soul is like keeping myself down, hidden.

I love to laugh. I invite you to laugh with me. And to hell with people who want us to keep it down and be a little more socialized.

Prickles and Goo

2007-07-16T22:51:00.000-07:00

Alan Watts is my new favorite philosopher. Enjoy!

8 Things, Slacker!

2007-07-11T09:34:00.000-07:00

I've been slacking here, haven't I? I've been posting at my other two blogs. But I was tagged to do an 8 things meme here, so here it goes. Thanks, John, for motivating me to write something.

The guideline for this meme is "list 8 things about yourself, with each being more revealing than the one before." Eek!

1) Have you seen my pic? Well, believe it or not, I used to have hair down to my waist. I used to perm it, wear pigtails, and tweak it out. Finally, after I had my son, I chopped it off. I LOVE my hair short. And I believe that having my hair short not only fits me better, but it has changed me. I have very few regrets in life. But not cutting my hair off earlier is possibly one of them.

2) I have two full-length novels sitting on my hard drive that taunt me everyday - "Let us out!"

3) I am not a "kid" person. Before I met my hubby, I was sure I'd never have them. Even when I was preggers w/my first, I doubted that I would be a good mom. But, something about my hubby and my kids and our family just clicked. And it's the most rewarding thing I've ever done. I enjoy it more than anything else I've done. I'm still not a "kid" person. Being around children is neutral for me. But there are many children in my life who I love, who aren't my own. I like/love people on an individual basis, not based on their category (ie. age, race, gender, etc.)

4) That said, I generally am better friends with men than with women. I have a few good women friends, but my very close friends in life have almost been exclusively male. It's caused me some trouble. But they have also been friendships that have created/are creating the best memories of my life.

5) I'm a Toastmaster.

6) I have a loud voice. It comes in handy as a toastmaster. And as a mom.

7) I'm not particularly interested in traditional beauty or Hollywood. But something about Keanu, man, he's just the best eye candy. I also love his stoicism and seriousness that only thinly veils his need to break out and be crazy. I don't want to ever meet him, because the idea I have in my head of who he is would be shattered. Johnny Depp is a far second. Johnny is the opposite - so crazy and flaky and enjoying life in a way that only thinly veils his serious side underneath. I don't know if Keanu and Johnny are friends in RL, but I imagine in my little story in my head that they are. See, I could dream about them for days, and be happy. The rest of Hollywood - eh, take it or leave it. I see people all the time around town - well, hubby sees them. I never know who people are. I have probably talked to them and not even known it.

8) And the most revealing thing about me? That's tough... because I have some stuff that would make your eyes pop out! But of course, I don't want to give away my super secrets to the world! So something interesting, but not one of my skeletons...

I can't send an email without re-reading it and editing it 1 - 3 times. (I've read and edited this post 4 times.) Can you say OCD?

Ok, now I'm supposed to tag someone, but, haven't you all been tagged? If you haven't, send me a comment, and I'll tag you.

Are We Ready?

2007-06-29T18:03:00.001-07:00

Is the human race ready for the things that we know how to do?

Religion Is Not Science...Who-da Thunk?

2007-06-26T22:43:00.001-07:00

Here's a discussion on Slashdot on how Intelligent Design is not science.

Why does it have to be an either/or thing between science and religion? At what point will we be able to see just how much they are related to one another?

Sometimes, I wonder, if humanity is hard wired to find ways to argue with one another.

How Can You Hate God....

2007-05-30T12:55:00.000-07:00

if you don't believe in him?

Barefoot Bum, brings up a good point. Atheists have been accused of hating God. But, how is that possible? If atheists don't believe in God, how can they hate him? It's like saying people who don't believe in the tooth fairy hate her.

If I found out right now, some definite way, that the Christian God exists as they believe he does, I might be put in the position to hate him. But, since I'm pretty much convinced he doesn't exist, or that at least, he doesn't exist in any way we can possibly conceive, I have no opinion at all. I can't have an opinion about something that I don't think exists.

I suppose, however, one can have an opinion about people who believe something exists. My opinion on that? People who believe in God have a different viewpoint. And so long as they don't try to have me hanged (literally or figuratively) or change the laws so I am forced to say I believe in him, I don't care what they believe. If believing in God makes them happy and have a meaningful life, more power to them.

So, hate God? Not possible for me as a non-believer. Hate between people with different beliefs - totally possible. And not at all reserved to just one POV. If we're gonna point fingers out, we gotta point fingers inward too. We're all human.

2007-04-28T23:52:00.000-07:00

Last week I read two books. (I had lots of time to read since Lappy was in the shop for the week.)

The first book was The Book of Secrets by Deepak Chopra. When I started it, I thought, "Well, it's the same stuff I've read with all the other Deepak books." It came highly recommended though from a friend who like similar books as I do, so I kept going. I'm glad I did. I wrote a lot of notes. This isn't a pop-culture book for sure, but it's certainly interesting food for thought. I like how he mixes the meta physical, the spiritual and real science together. Deepak is one smart guy, however you slice it.

The second book was Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. This book shocked the heck out of me. So much of our day to day interactions and processes stem from our unconscious mind. If it didn't, we wouldn't be able to function with all the information we're bombarded with. Also, much of what we do is based on snap decisions that we have no control over. He gives a ton of examples of experiments, studies, life experience and situations that use the unconscious mind to make decisions we aren't even aware that we're making.

I got a couple more books from the library tonight. And Monday is the Library book sale! Woot! 25-50 cents a book. I love the library book sale. Ten dollars gets me a huge stack of books. And gives a little donation to the library. How can it get better than that?

Where Do You Stand on Spirituality?

2007-04-28T15:40:00.000-07:00

I was having a great conversation today with someone about being comfortable in our skin and what "loving ourselves" really means. He was telling me about how for him, this mean enjoying "just existing". Not a judgement on our being, or how we are dressed, or whatever - but being comfortable with a certain lightness of being.

I was nodding and smiling - he was helping me greatly because I really admire this man for his ability to communicate so clearly, with obvious emotion, but it never was extreme. He is one of those people with passion, yet calmness.

But then he stopped and said, "Ah, well, I'm getting into the spiritual here and I don't know what you think but.... where do you stand anyway on spirituality?

I stammered a few meaningless sounds, and then said, "I don't know. I guess, I lean towards Zen Buddhism, but...I think all religions have similar themes, and, well, I'm not religious."

I was annoyed at myself for not having an answer. I mean, I often have my nose buried in a Zen book of some kind, and I write and read about spirituality. I'm also secure in how I feel about most spiritual and religious things. If he had asked me about something specific, I would have an answer.

But when asked where I stood in the big picture, I couldn't really answer.

I'm not still "searching" because I am not looking for something missing - I feel pretty darn whole on the spiritual front - yet open to new ideas. But I don't have a place to say "this is where I stand".

In fact, I think I stand out in the middle of nowhere and mostly alone.

It doesn't usually bother me. Even when I'm around really religious people, of whatever religion, I'm pretty accepting that's what they believe, and I'm OK with that (so long as they are Ok with me not being one of them).

But in this point blank fashion, without context, I couldn't answer.

I can see why people gravitate towards religion, even if they aren't gung-ho - just to have a group to identify with.

Funny enough, I'm actually pretty darn happy that I am not identified with a group. I don't like people assuming things about me because of a word that I throw out. Even Zen Buddhist gives people a certain idea. So I use it sparingly, and with my usual qualifiers.

What about you? Do you know this feeling I'm talking about - like I belong nowhere, yet I belong everywhere? It's all the same. But giving it a name, is impossible?

Subtle Living

2007-04-18T19:57:00.000-07:00

Take a moment to think of the people you know who live with passion, enthusiasm, purpose, never afraid of anything. Then think of the people you know who live a very subtle, non-reactive, accepting life.

Now, think - is there anyone you know who is both?

I think that's what I want to achieve - a marriage between having a pure passion for living, and knowing solidly why I'm here, filled with purpose and meaning, while at the same time, living subtly, accepting the universe as it is and relaxing about things that I have no control over (or, really anything else for that matter).

Is that possible?

To Be Happy

2007-04-13T10:59:00.000-07:00

Are you happy?

If not, why not?

I used to be "faux" happy. Pretending that everything was just dandy and that part of what made me happy was being miserable.

But, I was wrong. I was miserable being miserable. I made myself unhappy by the choices that I made, my expectations of the world around me and with my inner dialog. But mostly, I made myself unhappy because I thought that in order to be happy, someone or something else had to give it to me.

I figured out that only I can give myself the gift of happiness. Even after I figured it out, it took me years to actually live my life that way.

Now, I'm happy. That's not to say that my life is without drama, or pain, or unhappy moments. But overall, I like my life, because I've made choices to create the life I want. And I have decided to look at the world in a way that jives with who I am, while giving the world permission to be the way it wants to be.

Tobeme at the Naked Soul talks about happiness. In fact, this blog talks about a lot of interesting "quality of life" topics. I added it to my blog roll. Take a gander.

What Would You Do In God's Position?

2007-04-05T13:10:00.000-07:00

John over at MindOnFire asks what we would do if we were God's successor. Here was my answer:

Assuming that “God” is a being that has control over what humans do, how we perceive things and what happens to us, this is what I’d do:

Nothing. There is nothing that I could do that would, without a shadow of a doubt, make the human race “better”. According to the Bible, Jesus came to us before. Did it make things “better” in the long run? If God saves some people, smites others, then fixes things, will it really make a difference? I would be in 24/7 micromanagement hell, and it still wouldn’t guarantee to fix things. Plus, who’s to say that my idea of what is “fixed” would be good for us as a race? Maybe, God knows that in order for any species to get through to the next plane of existence, certain things have to happen - like hitting bottom before being able to make a huge leap in self-discovery. So, no, I wouldn’t do anything.

Now, if I were a God that actually wasn’t a God, but just another being in the universe that wanted to help humans along because I was far more advanced, and I’m feeling a little sorry for the whole human race, this is what I’d do:

Put a satellite or two around the planet. Satellites that are clearly alien, but are seemingly benign.

The reason is this: If we discovered once and for all that we aren’t the only beings in the universe, it would change religion significantly, and make us less earth-centric. Secondly, if there was an “other” out there that was just as smart (well, smarter) than us, then we’d have to come together to figure out what to do. We would no longer have the luxury of fighting amongst ourselves. Part of what makes the human race so concerned about each other and religion and all that *today*, is that the only real threat to our own existence is ourselves.

If we were faced with the distinct possibility that there might be another threat, or at least, that our existence relied heavily on our dealing with an entirely different species who worked on a completely different level than us, we would be forced to change - one way or another.

Although, that tactic, I just realized, might create an upsurge in Scientology. :)

Basically, humans create their own reality. A God who has any understanding of human nature would see that whatever he brings to our world, we’ll turn it into what we want it to be. If Jesus returned and made himself as plain as day, he’d probably be arrested or killed, not followed. And if he was followed, we’d twist his words once again and do what we would anyway. We don’t want to change, except when we are ready for it.

So, if I were God, I wouldn’t change the world. I’d use the power to take a little tour of the universe and see what other critters are up to out there. Oh, and I’d take a peek into the quantum world and get those pesky answers concerning the time-space continuum.

Keeping Things Simple

2007-04-03T20:25:00.000-07:00

Miko over at Mind on Fire asks some "spiritual spring cleaning" questions.

One of which was, "What can we simplify?"

I love this question. In my life, I practice simplicity for a while, then life sweeps me up, when I'm not paying attention. Suddenly my desk is full, my house is full, my life is full. And it's time to simplify again.

Spring isn't necessarily a time to simplify, but life does happen in waves. Every so often, that wave comes crashing down and I remember - oh ya, simplicity. And I go through all the crap on my desk, delete a bunch of emails I know I'll never get to, clean out my mind of the worries and endless story lines that rev up my emotions but don't solve anything.

Miko reminded me of that. So here I go. Mindwipe - ON! Back to basics. Time to renew again and push forward, into a new, clean physical and mental space.

Religion for Parents

2007-03-26T19:00:00.000-07:00

In an article in Newsweek this week, Lisa Miller writes "he grew up in a nonobservant home and, like many people, became interested in religion when he had children." She is talking about a Rabbi who made a list of the top fifty most influential Jews.

Is this true? Many people who never thought about religion before having children, suddenly take an interest?

I thought about my own situation, and I wouldn't say that having kids has increased my interest in religion. It has, however, increased my interest in how people obtain and pass down religious beliefs - and how that translates to how we educate our children.

There is something about having children that makes us realize our own mortality. Or, by having children, we come face to face with the reality that they are living, breathing beings who we are responsible for. Perhaps these two elements of awareness do bring about a certain need for religion - to have a way to put a name on the pure connectedness we feel with our children.

I have always been interested in religion, but it wasn't until I was a parent that I recognized what I was really looking for was a way to feel connected to the universe. My children give me that. They are about as close as any of us can get to again being one with the innocence of the universe, without dying ourselves.

Maybe that's why holding an infant in our arms is so breathtaking - they have just come from the infinite nothing that is "before" life. Holding a baby is very close to touching the universe, and the source of all that is living.

The Burden of Guilt

2007-03-25T22:02:00.000-07:00

I'm a guilt-ful person, and it drags me down. I read a quote today that put it into perspective for me:

Carrying guilt around in our minds is like hiking up a mountain and picking up every rock we stub our toe upon and throwing it in our backpack.

And that's exactly what I do. Throw rocks of guilt on my own back to carry around with me.

My coping mechanism is to not think about the things that make me regret. But, what I want to learn to do, is to look back at those things I did and not be attached to them. Not to have a visceral reaction; not have the instinct to immediately run away.

The blog I got this quote from suggests meditation. What do you think? Does meditation or prayer help one become accepting, and let go of guilt? Anything you have done in your life, or a perspective you've taken to put the rocks back down, instead of bearing their weight?

Meditation with Buddhism

2007-03-20T13:33:00.000-07:00

First, Buddhism without meditation, now, meditation without Buddhism.

Funny enough, I find myself nodding my head to both, and identifying with both.

How is that possible? I've been doing some research into quantum physics. Deepak Chopra talks about it in several of his books. And at first, it seems totally unrelated to religion, philosophy and the human condition. But if an atom can exist in two places at once, or if it can be in two parallel universes at once, and that became our understanding of reality, how much easier it would be for us to accept that our own reality can exist right along side someone else's reality even though it seems to be in a totally different plane of existence.

Would We Even Know if Jesus Came Back?

2007-03-19T13:23:00.000-07:00

Jesus was a great guy. No matter what we believe in, or don't, the stuff Jesus said (or reported to say if you don't believe) was just plain awesome. His main message was one of love, acceptance and seeing that we're all made of the same stuff.

I wonder though, if he was on earth today, would anybody notice? There seem to be a lot of people spreading similar messages, a lot of people trying to bring peace to the world, yet, what does it amount to?

When religions fight over who is right, and who is reading the correct book in the correct way, and what should be taught in our schools, and all the other stuff - I wonder, if Jesus was standing right in front of us and said, "This is not at all what I taught," would we even notice?

What if, perhaps, Jesus is in all of us? And that his teachings are staring us right in the eyes from our neighbors, friends, and perceived enemies? Perhaps, it doesn't matter what name we give him - Jesus, Buddha, Joe, Jose, Miranda, George - it's all the same - we can choose to be taught peace, love and acceptance by everyone, or we can choose to wave-off the universal message that the world gives us everyday about the way to acceptance and love.

Because, if we choose to allow everyone to teach us the path to peace, if Jesus did appear in front of us, we could learn from him.

Zen Buddhism Without Meditation?

2007-03-15T14:43:00.000-07:00

At the Tricycle's blog today, there is a post about how most Buddhists don't meditate. I always knew that western style Buddhism was differently practiced than any other culture's interpretation of Buddhism. It makes sense: westerners have incorporated Buddhism into our culture as best as we could, as we do/did any other religion/philosophy/practice.

But I was surprised to read that making meditation of the central tenets of Buddhism practice is a very western thing - not an eastern one.

I guess, I still have a whole heck of a lot to learn.

I sit maybe once a week, and I don't think that makes or break my Buddhist-ness. But it's interesting to know I'm not the only one in the world who practices Buddhism without being married to daily sitting.

I suppose, in some ways, it's like Christians who don't generally pray?

A couple more great quotes

2007-03-11T09:38:00.000-07:00

Very fitting for this blog, and the other blog I write, Just Enough.

If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much. - Donald H. Rumsfeld

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular. - Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

Law of Karma or Law of Cause and Effect

2007-03-09T08:43:00.000-08:00

The Law of Karma is The Deepak Chopra's third spiritual law of success.

I like this one. It's usually at the top of my stack as a reminder that I am the one who ultimately decides how my life is gonna go.

Everything that I have now in this life is the result of choices I have made. I have the choice of how to react to things. The saying goes, it's not what happens to us, but how we react to those things that defines who we are.

I used to think that intention was more important than what people actually did. So, if someone hurt someone, but their intention was to help, then it was the intention that counted more. But I'm starting to think I had it all wrong. That in fact, it's what we do that defines us and changes us, and makes our life go one way or the other. Intention lays the groundwork in our minds of what we are going to do, but what good are they if we don't actually do anything? What we do, or what we don't do, tells the world, and ourselves, what we really believe and what's really important to us.

So, each moment is a choice. It was a choice that I posted this blog entry instead of cleaning my desk, or replying to a difficult email that I've been avoiding. Mindfulness, as Deepak says, is the awareness of the choices I make in each moment, and taking responsibility for them.

Ideas, Wine and Reality

2007-03-08T09:27:00.000-08:00

Two quotes that I found today:

"Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine." - Fran Lebowitz

Ok, so what does it mean that I talk about all three? But this quote did make me chuckle, because well, these are all the things I like to talk about with friends. (Although not all of my friends like to HEAR me talk about all of these things. :)

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick

I really like this one. I like it a LOT. To me, this is what it means to be a realist. My friends often tell me I'm being too optimistic or pessimistic by being what I consider to be realistic.

I submitted a short story to a writing contest a few months ago. It was a good story. It definitely has a chance to win. (optimistic?) But the reality is that there are probably at least 500 other stories in the competition. And I know for sure that there are a handful of really good story contenders in that group. So, the reality is that my odds of winning are fairly small. My friend said, "You have to believe in yourself! You can't be so pessimistic." I told her that I'm not being pessimistic, but realistic. Once my story is in the mail, it doesn't matter what I believe to be true, reality is reality. And like the quote says, the reality of the competition doesn't go away if I stop believing I'll win, or that I'll lose. It's not up to me.

The things I can effect, I do. The things I can't change, and that have nothing to do with me, aren't affected by what I believe. That's the reality.

Who Makes Sense?

2007-03-07T12:26:00.000-08:00

We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us. - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

I like this quote so much, I added it to my email sig today.

Guilt That We're Not Doing

2007-03-03T07:50:00.000-08:00

Guilt. Oh, there's so much of it to go around - especially in religion. I ask, if we feel guilty about what we aren't doing, can we ever do enough not to feel guilty anymore?

If "not doing" has such a power over us that it makes us feel bad about ourselves, how much "doing" do we need to do to make up for that power? I say, no matter how much we do, if "not doing" has that much power over us, we will never be free.

This guilt of "not doing" can drive us to fill our days with as much as we can possibly cram in. The fear of guilt can make us crazy.

Instead of "doing" to get rid of guilt, we need to get rid of the power that "should" has over us.

In the words of Deepak Chopra, create intention, but hold no attachments to the results.

That may seem counter intuitive. I mean, if we "don't care" whether things get done or not, they won't ever get done, right?

However, it actually works the other way. The more we care about whether things get done, the harder it is to do them, and when they don't get done, we feel terrible. Then, we get used to feeling so terrible when things don't get done, that we get preemptive guilt before we even have a chance to do what we need to do. Then, we start to feel guilt as soon as we decide to do something, because we've been there so many times, it's a habit, and instead of only feeling guilt when we don't do something, we feel guilt until we get it done.

However, if we have the intention, yet don't get caught up in the emotions of disappointment, we have a much higher chance of doing what we really need to do. If we don't have an attachment to the results of an intention, we can make space for things to turn out differently than we expected, and maybe, just maybe, things will actually be better than we anticipated. When we are free of guilt, we are also free to let the world work with us to decide which things we really need, and which things are really good for the universe, and which things are actually selfish, destructive or meaningless.

That's not to say that intention without attachment will get everything that we need done, done. We can never do that. No matter how hard we try, we can never get everything done. But intention without attachment gives us the freedom to let go and move one when we make a mistake. It gives us the power to make change, and the power to love ourselves and keep going when things go in an unexpected direction. This point of view gives us energy to do more. Guilt makes us tired, and then we're even less likely to get done what really needs to be done.

Guilt was a major part of my life for so long. It's really hard to love oneself when we are full of guilt. It's also hard to love and be accepting of others when we are so hard on ourselves. I'm finally learning that. Intention without attachment is exactly what I needed to learn (and to continue learning). And that's what successful people do. I can see it now, all over the place, where I never saw it before, and always wondered, "How do they do it?"

Now I know.

If It Works for Me, Shouldn't It Work for Everyone?

2007-02-28T14:16:00.000-08:00

Thank you Lyman Reed for your post about spiritual atheism.

I think he makes a good point about the danger of organized religion becoming more about the beliefs, and the religion, than the individual. Evangelism stems from the idea that, "if it works for me, shouldn't it work for everyone. And, why doesn't everyone see what is so obvious to me...what saved me?"

I've had this viewpoint with non-religious topics. I eventually realized, that even though I wasn't talking about God, or Heaven, or whatever, I was essentially taking the same view that bothered me so much about door-to-door religious salespeople. And what bothered me about organized religion, and parents raising their children in a religion without giving room to question, and so many other things about religions that have names attached to them.

The viewpoint of "making everyone see what is so clear to me" is human nature. Why, then, is religious pandering any more annoying than say, cultural, materialistic or stylistic evangelism? It's all the same. Once I figured that out, it was like a weight lifted from me. I no longer felt the weight of others trying to change me, and I no longer felt the need to change anyone else.

Be open about my passions, yes. But at the same time, be inspired by the passions of others - even if they aren't the same.

I suppose, it's not universal, and there are lines I draw in the sand of how close I'll let someone else's enthusiasm for something affect me (and vice versa). But now I get it, since I've been there, and I can identify with the feelings that flood our systems when converting others to our way of thinking. I suppose, in the end, empathy is the way to enlightenment.

Listening to Our Dreams

2007-02-27T21:17:00.000-08:00

I'm a dreamer. I find my dreams reflect what's going on in my life, both practically and emotionally.

I dream about the things I did, the things I want to do, and the things I'm afraid to do. I dream about the things I've felt, the things I want to feel, and the things I'm afraid to feel.

I remember at least one dream every morning. Sometimes, I remember many. When my sleep is not solid, I remember dozens. I have recurring dreams, and dreams that stay with me all day after I wake up.

I listen to my dreams. I think it tells me about who I am. But the trick is not to get caught up in them. It's easy to do, much like it's easy to get caught up in my self-talk.

I used to have insomnia. I'd fall asleep fine at first. Then I'd wake up at 3 or 4 and wouldn't be able to go back to sleep for up to two hours. When morning finally came, I was exhausted.

Sometimes, my dreams wake me up in the middle of the night, and they have hijacked all rational thought. I'm convinced an alien is in the house, or my children are going to sleepwalk into the street.

One day, when I was awake in the middle of the night, I realized it was the perfect time to meditate. I didn't have anything at all to distract me. It was quiet. I had all the time in the world. I was going to be awake and potentially freaked out, I might as well take advantage to alone time.

Since I made that decision, I haven't had any insomnia. Not even once.

I would count my breaths, or chant a mantra in my head, with the acceptance of sleep or staying awake. Either way was fine. I am rarely awake more than twenty minutes or so.

I realized that my dreams were making my inner dialog run unrestrained, and it was my thoughts - my fears - that were keeping me awake. And my biggest fear was that I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. Once I took away that expectation - that worry - sleep came much easier. And in the meantime, I got to have some precious quiet alone time that I hardly find time for.

My dreams used to haunt me. Meditation by counting breaths has made a difference in teaching me to disattach from my dreams, while at the same time being fully aware and accepting of their content.

Dreams have a lot to say about who I am, and where my life currently is. Being able to step away and look at them with a bit of distance is a great way to listen to them. And make sense of them. And it's a great way to get back to sleep in the middle of the night.

The Law of Giving

2007-02-26T14:34:00.000-08:00

Deepak Chopra's second spiritual law is the Law of Giving. In order to get what you want, help others get what they want.

It's an interesting twist on the concept of karma. I have found this to be true in my life, and I naturally help others get what they want. But, I also think it's important to be available to help others figure out what it is they even want in the first place. Sometimes, we think we want something, but it's not at all what we thought it would be. The "if only"s take over, and we can't appreciate what we have now.

Part of being a good friend, a supportive person and a strong family member is to help others get what they want and need. When we do that for others, they will have a much stronger desire to help us when we need it, and, to feel like they've been understood.

The trick, I think, is doing this without being "addicted" to it. Getting caught up in the idea that all meaning comes from helping others and sacrificing our own happiness for that. It has to be in balance.

Law of Potentiality

2007-02-25T13:46:00.000-08:00

Deepak Chopra's book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success is probably the most famous of all of his many books. I have the seven laws written on 3X5 cards on my desk, and every few days I go through them and think about how or if the laws can help me be more connected and accepting.

The first law is the Law of Potentiality. This law, to me, reminds me why meditation and prayer are so important in my life. Meditation, for me, is practice with allowing my emotions and thoughts without letting them blind me to the infinite possibilities out there.

One of the parts of this law is silence, and space between thoughts. This is difficult to me, since I feel like my head is always full of something going on, even if it's thinking about what I have going on during the day. Counting my breath in meditation, and yoga asanas, brings relative silence to my life and reminds me how connected I am with the universe.

Out of all the laws, this one is the most ephemeral to me. It's also the hardest to practice in my life as a full-time mom to little ones. And when I do practice meditation, its effects are the most subtle and internal.

I think he does a better job explaining the other laws, or maybe this one is just the hardest for me to understand. The other six laws are really potent in my life. When I first read them, it was like dumping a bucket of cold spiritually over my head, and it woke me up.

I'll discuss the next law tomorrow.

Toastmasters

2007-02-24T16:04:00.000-08:00

I went to a Toastmasters meeting today. I have wanted to go to one for a long time, but was a little intimidated. And I didn't have a clear reason to go other than curiosity.

Well, now that I've been doing some public speaking and I'm working on a book (isn't everyone?), I figured that now's a good time to check into it and see if it could help me with my public presence.

I am a rather quiet person in general. But get me in front of a group, or in a situation where I get to make some kind of schpeal, and I'm OFF. blah, blah, blahdiddy blah blah. You can't shut me up. I'll even jump on the table if I gain enough momentum.

Funny enough, I'm hoping Toastmasters will help teach me to SLOW DOWN a little more when I'm talking. And from the speeches I heard today, and talking to the people at the group, I think it just might.

I only get 3 minutes to talk, I'm not supposed to repeat myself, avoid filler words, and leave space between my words and thoughts. So many concepts that I always knew would help me speak, but this practice might help me integrate it all.

I'll be attending again next week. When I sign up, I'll get a package with all the Toastmaster information.

This venture, on the surface, seems somewhat opposite from my spiritual quest - I've spent a lot of time working on my insides, and being in the moment, being quiet while being alone, and when I'm with people, allowing the situation to unfold without feeling the need to control it or direct it. And now, I'm stepping out and placing myself in the middle of this group whose purpose is to practice being "on", and directing the group, at least for the duration of my speech.

But ultimately, these two practices - meditation/spirituality and public speaking - are the same thing. Both focus on being in the now, acceptance, being unattached to the results and helping others. Perhaps it's because I'm learning to put myself into the now and accept things as they are with less expectations that I'm ready to try Toastmasters. I don't think I would have been ready a couple of years ago.

Who knew that I could grow so much in my 30's? I thought that teens and twenties were the time for growing, but I'm finding, that it's always the time. Being awake means non-stop growing.

I LOVE that. And for that reason alone, even if I didn't count all the other benefits, I think Toastmasters will be a good experience for me.

I'm ready. For whatever happens.

Love Is My Religion

2007-02-23T08:56:00.000-08:00

Ziggy Marley and his brother David's video Love Is My Religion is on the album that won best Reggae album at the Grammy's. Hollywood has always been far more secular than the general population. But this song... this is kind of the stuff that influences people. Spirituality without religion isn't a new concept, but for our youth, and our country's Hollywood dependent culture, it is.

After watching the video, I wonder, is the concept of love "better" when it's through an organized religion? Is it something different when it's felt, and practiced, by someone who isn't saved? If love is what God is made of, does he really care whether we belong to a religious group or not, so long as we are loving? And what's worse then, in God's proverbial eyes - one who is not religious, but loves deeply the people and world around him, or one who "believes" but doesn't love anything but himself and his God?

If there is indeed some kind of judgement after I die, I'm confident that if God is good, he won't tie salvation to whether I believed in him. If there is a God, who judges, and he judges based on faith, then that kind of shallow God is not an entity I'd want to serve anyway.

Love, that's what it's all about. Whatever it takes to arrive at universal love, and deep caring for the suffering and happiness of the people around us, is fine by me. But as soon as some kind of black and white rules area slapped down on how we are supposed to arrive at love, and if we don't use THAT ONE path to arrive at love it's as if we don't love at all, it's like we're closing our eyes, and loving only the things that we think are good. What's the point of that kind of love?

Just as in life, black and white is easier to manage, easier to judge. But the truth is, life, and death, and I'm guessing the afterlife if there is any, is grey. Grey, grey and more grey. There is no black and white, except for what we want there to be, and expect there to be.

Even in love. It's all grey. I just love as much as I can, with all my heart. Ziggy Marley had it right - love is the best.

Should I Go to Church?

2007-02-22T08:09:00.000-08:00

What's the meaning of life? Individual life, and collective life?

Spiritual exploration and practice is ultimately the search or acceptance of this meaning.

It seems to me that organized religion can bring meaning to an otherwise meaningless life. But what if one has a really clear view of their meaning? Or at least, is comfortable with where they are, and their addition to the world? Can organized religion add anything?

I've been pondering this. My meditation practice, up until now, has been solo. I've thought about going to the Universal Unitarian church near our house, but it's more of a curiosity, not compelling. I've also thought about driving downtown and sitting with the Buddhists at the temple. But I'd have to do that solo (ie without the children), and if I'm gonna do something solo, that something is either writing or exercise. If I take time to do something else solo, I'm dipping in that writing/exercise time that is already difficult to find.

So, should I go to the Universal Unitarian church and see? Or, if I'm pretty happy with my individual practice, and I"m happy gaining insight and support from my individual friends who I chat with about religion, would going to an organized worship give me anything I don't have?

Science and Spirituality Are the Same

2007-02-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar argues that science and spirituality are after the same goal - understanding - coming from different angles.

Science and spirituality are like two ways of looking at the creation. Science regards life as matter and spirituality regards matter as life. Spirituality elevates matter to the level of life, level of divinity and adds a sense of honour. While science brings us material and physical comfort, spirituality gives comfort to our souls. Science cultivates logic and spirituality develops intuition, another faculty of enquiry. Ancient rishis recognised this interplay between science and spirituality and said true fulfilment in life can come only through gyana (spirituality) and vigyana (science).

I like this approach, and agree. Science and spirituality are not inherently at odds. They are only at odds if one is not able to shed old beliefs and use new information to guide one's soul. God, in whatever form we believe he/it exists, gave us science as a way to understand the universe. And science paired with spirituality brings us even closer to whatever/whoever it is that creates us, or we are created from.

The source of conflict comes from humans, not from God, or the universe.

Shankar's argument reminds me so much of The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God by Carl Sagan, with a little bit of Life After Death: The Burden of Proof by Deepak Chopra thrown in too.

Hinduism and other eastern religions are not perfect. None are. But if we could combine atheism and western religions with some of the open-ended Asian religious perspectives, we sure would have a well-rounded, worldly religion.

Perhaps, that's what's happening when it seems that there is a recent increase in atheism; we are beginning to be ready to move on to a new level of religion and spirituality, that accepts science and what we see the universe/God giving us right here, right now, instead of determining today's perception by what our ancestors believed to be true about science.

In any case, it's an interesting read, and I like it. I like the idea of being OK with science, and OK with spirituality at the same time. Why does the argument seem to be about which one is right? Perhaps, they both are.

Spirituality and Religion via Deepak Chopra

2007-02-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

When asked the difference between religion and spirituality, Deepak Chopra says this:

(Spirituality) sees beyond direct cause-and-effect relationships into a larger understanding of the whole web of life and our role in it. And it really has nothing to do with religion, although I do believe that religions were founded on spiritual experience. And then what happens is when you believe somebody else's spiritual experience, then you become religious without having any experience of your own necessarily.

You can find the rest of the interview here.

Although, some of what Deepak says about acquiring wealth and whatnot seems somewhat superficial, I do like his seven spiritual laws, and his take on intention without attachment to the outcome.

Cosmic Religion of the Future

2007-02-19T08:00:00.000-08:00

Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: it transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural & spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. - Albert Einstein

I love it. Mix in science and western philosophy, toss out the idea of a "right way" to be, and you got the makings of a really interesting new "religion". "Religion", of course, would have to take on a new meaning, or a new word would have to be created. But the idea that this could exist, on the grand scale, makes me kind giddy.

What would happen, if it became illegal to teach religion to children until they were at least 15, and then to allow them to make a choice? What it became illegal to indoctrinate children in any way, in any form, and let them grow up in an open ended world?

Spirituality Exists Everywhere

2007-02-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

Anyone can be spiritual. Anyone can choose not to be. It doesn't matter if one is religious or not, believes in God or not, believes in anything really.

I suppose, some of this interpretation depends on one's definition of 'spiritual'. My definition, is to be connected to the universe and everything in it. There's a lot to to with that, but that's essentially it.

The Barefoot Bum talks about atheist spirituality here.

Bliss At the Expense of Awareness?

2007-02-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

My fellow e-list friend says this:

I'd rather be pissed off with my eyes wide open than to be blissed out with my eyes glazed over.

So what do you think? If you had to choose angry awareness or blissful obliviousness, which would it be?

Atheist Jewish Zen Buddhist

2007-02-16T08:00:00.000-08:00

There is a blog called Atheist Jewish Zen Buddhist. I wanted to link there because the name just plain rocks.

I also like his style. Go go Intergalactic Hussy!

Religion of Simplicity

2007-02-15T08:00:00.000-08:00

ScottFree2b talks here about deeper religion and spirituality stemming from more and more simplicity, not complexity. Going deep and defining our own connection with God.

He quotes The Gift of Change: Spiritual Guidance for Living Your Best Life by Marianne Williamson, which is now on my Amazon Wishlist.

I love the idea of simplicity. Perhaps that's why I am so attracted to Buddhism. But even Buddhism seems "heavy" sometimes, with the eightfold path, and the chanting and various other things.

The basic message tho, that everything is *now*, is as simple as it gets. And that's the ONE message that hits me hardest, and wakes me up. All the other things, are complexities on this. Now is the only time we have. So whatever we're gonna do, however we're gonna live, has to happen now.

I love that. It's so simple. And so true.