2-8-21 We are such amazing creatures. We are capable of fooling ourselves so tremendously, making great mistakes, hurting ourselves, and others, so deeply. And then our better natures take over, and we do wonderful deeds like saying I’m sorry, or reaching out to ask for help, or focusing on our greatness even when it seems like the hardest thing to do. Stew, Ari and I have committed to doing a 64-day practice with the Season for Nonviolence. Now in its 24th year, it commemorates the 64 days between the dates of the assassinations of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Each day there is something to reflect on regarding how I can be peace out in the world more, and what might be blocking that. What I really like about it is the mix of looking at my inner thoughts and beliefs as well as noticing what I am doing (or not) out in the world.

Life is a balance of being and doing. For me, it is of the utmost importance that I make sure all my doing comes from as pure a place of Be-ing as it can. Otherwise, I am doing good badly. Mostly that comes out when I “should” on myself – do something out of guilt or ego or because I couldn’t say “No” at the time, but I didn’t really want to do it. My heart wasn’t in it, and my doing was at my own expense. Sound familiar? That’s not good self-care and not the kind of energy I want to put out into the world when I am actually doing something good.

In today’s Covid world, it might seem difficult to do all we want to do to serve and to share our gifts. I am constantly reminding myself that one of the biggest things I can do right now is to keep a good watch on my inner landscape. It’s easy for me to focus on negatives and then spiral down. I took Gandhi’s quote, “We must be the change we wish to see in the world”, to heart many years ago. How can I expect to look around and see the kind of world I want to live in if I am not doing my part? If I am going to point a finger and blame others, I must include myself – which is good, but I don’t really want to blame, either myself or anyone else. What works for me is to go within and examine my own thoughts, words and deeds. If I am saddened these days for what seems to be a loss of connection between people, I can be the change I wish to see by making damned sure I am connected to my own heart…by making damned sure that when I am with someone else I am absolutely present with them…by making damned sure that when I am on a walk I am present with the moment and the life around me as I pass it be. All that makes a difference, surrounding me in connection and sending it out to the world, too, one precious moment at a time.

For more info on the Season for Nonviolence please go to www.seasonofnonviolence.com.  Today is a good day...and I make it so!

1-28-21 I had a physical injury about a month ago and I’ve been in pain ever since. It’s been hard for me to do all the things that I love to do that bring me joy in the winter, things like cross-country skiing, sledding, and yes, even shoveling. Add to that a few hard weeks of Stew also being in pain from an infected tooth (how dare he be cranky at the same time as me). Add to that, of course, the world is still doing its thing and resilience has sometimes felt like an uphill battle. Well, I must admit there was a lot of whining going on in my head and “poor me-ing.”

We used to threaten our mentor that we would lock him in a closet and make him listen to his own tapes. I took that to heart and listened to some of my own advice. So in my meditation the other day, I put the loving arms of compassion around me. I gave my “poor me self” empathy and reflected back to myself, “Yes it must be difficult for you to not be able to do all the things you want to do.” In that self-love, I felt validated and important. After a little while of basking in that acceptance and bringing myself to everyday wholeness, I was able to focus on the bigger self also within me, the one that remembers its well-being in all moments and knows to look within for everything it needs. If I was to feel better, it was up to me and no one else! I called forth joy…I called forth lightness of being - 2 of my core strengths. Then I went sledding! Attitudinal adjustment. (And then I took care of me and got adjusted, did ice and heat, and applied arnica).

You know what, I’m still in pain, the world hasn’t changed…but my whole world has changed. Taking time out from the clamoring thoughts in my head, spending a few minutes in the silence within, where I always find Love waiting to embrace me, with its peace and wisdom, gives me a truer perspective, one that allows for more space around my thoughts and lets me breathe, step back from what seems so in my face and bring Love into the equation. Ah, today once again feels like a good day...and I made it so!

1-21-21 “If at all possible state each opinion as a fear. (Say what you are afraid of, because we are always more willing to give up fears than cherished opinions, even though inside every opinion that is causing a rift there is fear. It lurks there like white sugar inside commercial granola. So read the labels on your opinions).

Hugh Prather (who you may remember from the 1970’s great little book, Notes to Myself) was really big on attitudinal healing.  And that’s really what I am always espousing in these posts. He advocated that in order to know wholeness and peace we had to be willing to let go of that which is obstructing it, which for him was a focusing on our conflicted minds (which I would further define as fear stemming from all my self-limiting, self-doubting, I’m not enough, I’m not OK thoughts). For years, I was a person who always wanted to be in control because I was always right and everyone else obviously wasn’t. However, being in control and being right didn’t necessarily bring me any peace. In fact, that core belief brought me considerable unhappiness. It eventually led me down the first steps on a spiritual path of inward reflection on what that meant. It wasn’t until I was willing to be totally honest with myself, as well as faced the fears that were actually behind my need to be right, that I was able to begin letting go of control. I used Hugh Prather’s “I’d rather be happy than right” for many years to help me transform those thoughts and behavior in a way that worked positively for  me and would also bring peace into my life .

So, here we are 10 months into Covid and family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers are deeply divided on what is right and what is wrong to do. Having a belief system around all this, staying in peace, and keeping respectful had certainly been working me out. I remember about 3 months into it I was talking to a friend over Zoom. It was our first conversation to try and heal our rift from opposing belief systems and it was my first personal contact with the argument that being in favor of masks, social distancing and everything that went along with that had nothing to do with fear. Since then I freely admit I have had a continuous struggle to do as my hero, MLK, Jr. advocates – you don’t have to love the belief system, or the action, but do love the person. Gandhi, another of my heroes, taught me to live the examined life so as to align my thoughts, my words and my deeds in common purpose.  Wow that’s a biggie! And so I vow to continue to deeply and honestly examine and question my thoughts, and to live according to my principles no matter how difficult that might be or how much fear it might bring to light for me. That being said, I offer the above Hugh Prather statement in the hopes of living in a world where people recognize their fears and are able to live in joy anyway. As we remember that there is Life within us, always sourcing us from Love, always connected to the universal intelligence around us whose job it is to re-create us in very moment in harmony and well-being (when we don’t interfere with it; when we trust and believe in it!), we are more able to live not guided by our fears but by our strengths. So, I hope you will join me and be inspired to, as the bumper sticker says, “Question Reality”…all reality, even when it’s inconvenient and uncomfortable. Today is a good day...and I make it so!

1-14-21 The picture was taken the other day…a wintertime walk in one of my favorite marshes. “They”, in their wisdom, have cut down all the beautiful willows along the stream. Perhaps you’re thinking it still looks beautiful; to me everything seems barren and sad because I am seeing with the eyes of memory. It’s all perspective isn’t it? But I also have other memories in my head of this place.  It’s one of my joyspots and I love it because of the multitude of birds I usually see, from the majestic bald eagle and great blue heron, to the mid-size hawk or beautiful merganser, to the small and entertaining chickadees. And so even as I see snow and ice and bare willows all around me, I am hearing birdsong, feeling the heat of summer and remembering the icy cold water of my stream plunge. Every present moment carries with it echoes of the past. I had a choice on that day’s walk whether to dwell in bad memories or good ones, and which ones to choose to bring along with me on the walk.

In fact, I always have a choice in what I bring along with me in any given moment, as do we all. Our lives are steeped in memories of things that happened to us, that we label either good or bad. I can’t change the past…or can I? I used to define my present based on my childhood and live as a victim to my self-limiting moods, thoughts, feelings and habits that ensued from that, none of which served me. When I chose to stop defining myself according to those memories, I changed my present and somehow my past did change. This is a big thing I’m talking about, and it took dedicated years of focusing on self-love rather than self-hatred until things turned around (isn’t it weird how difficult it can be to focus on self-love? But that’s for another day). And for some of you the wounds go very deep. Please know that I’m not minimizing anything that might have happened to you or telling you not to hold other people accountable for their actions. What I am saying is that, for me, the past changed as I started telling myself a different story and I released the claws of old memory choices.  Once I stopped carrying them around and telling myself I was a shit because of it, that I was undeserving and not enough because of it, I was free to create new memories of myself from the bigness of me. That picture of myself was always there within me alongside the other snapshot, just a matter of choice and perspective. Which do you choose? Today is a good day...and I make it so!