Awakening - Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

The seasons have always been a powerful metaphor and a yearly reminder of the cycle of life.

 

So true June... Spring is my favourite time of year. To see the birds return and the trees begin to bud and the tulips and daffodils breaking through the surface of the soil is always a magical time for me.

It is a time when all things seem possible. ;D

 

Oh I really like this one Caroline.

I especially like the last two lines "As a seed buried in the earth cannot imagine itself as an orchid or hyacinth, neither can a heart packed with hurt imagine itself loved or at peace. The courage of the seed is that once cracking, it cracks all the way." In order to feel love and peace we have to open our hearts up completely.

 

Very poignant... certainly leaves one feeling hopeful Lulu. :-*

 

This one opened my eyes. I've been down too much these days. The joy of spring just touched me.

 

April 6 - Questions Put to the Sick - I

~When was the last time you sang?~ - Question put to the sick by a Native American Medicine Man.

I was lying flat on a stretcher in a large hospital room after one of my surgeries. I had just been wheeled in, rejoining four others all mending in the one open room. There was a deep silence as we looked at each other; there was only the slight breathing of machines and the clear drip of fluids and the hum of old radiators. Suddenly, an older man began to laugh, and without a word, our eyes bounced back and forth to each other, and one by one, we joined in what became a cascade of coughing, laughter interspersed with short moans, for with each laugh, our incisions and bedsores poked us sharply. But we laughed and hurt and laughted and hurt, like a flock of broken birds dreaming of their next flight.

That laughter was a raw and primal sort of song, an elemental way of giving voice to our suffering. It was remarkably healing. I learned a great truth from that unexpected chorus. I learned that even when we feel powerless, we can always give voice to our pain and hope, to the slim, ongoing fact of our being alive.

We often underestimate the power of giving voice, but it is real and sustaining. It is the basis of all song. It is why prisoners break into song. It is why the blues are sung, even when no one is listening. It is at the heart of all hymns and mantras.

And it works its healing, not so much by being heard as by the fact that in giving voice to what lives within, even through the softest whisper, we allow the world of spirit to soften our pain. In this way, the smallest moan is in itself a lullaby. In giving voice to what we feel, the darkest cry uttered with honesty can arrive as the holiest of songs.

 

Gosh this one could not be more appropriate for all of us could it? There have been so many times I have come to the forum hurting in my heart or feeling sick and someone with say something that makes me laugh out loud and it's like giving voice to all the pain I'm feeling.

It's amazing how one little thing like a good belly laugh can change your whole day.

 

My Mom had Alzheimers and was in a nursing home. As I arrived there to visit her, I learned she has fallen and an ambulance was called. When we reached the emergency room, Mom started singing. She was an accomplished musician and singer. Because the room had a lot of serious cases there, I tried to hush her. The more I tried to quiet her, the louder she sang. Soon everyone was laughing at both of us. Mom was checked out and she was fine. She continued to sing all the way back to the nursing home while in the ambulance. The driver and medics loved it and joined in. Song and laughter can change the worst of times.

 

What a beautiful experience... thanks for sharing.

 

April 7 - Being Shaped by Others

~The whole world could praise Sung Jung-Tzu and it wouldn't make him exert himself. The whole world could condemn him and it wouldn't make him mope. He drew a clear line between the internal and the external.~ - Chuang Tzu

These words were spoken by Chuang Tzu in the fourth century B.C.E. I read them fifteen years ago and taped them to my closet, so I could be reminded not to let the opinion of others shape me.

I have changed a great deal since then: what I do, where I live, who I am. Many things have come and gone. The closet to which Chuang Tzu's words were taped is holding someone else's clothes. But the words are in my heart, though I still struggle not to be shaped by what others think.

This is at once the clearest of spiritual intents and yet the hardest to stay true to: how to stay open to what others feel and not to what they think. We cannot live without being affected by others, but we are only real when we let truth and love shape us from within. Our want to be liked, our want to avoid conflict, our want to be understood - all these traits tease us away from taking the voice within seriously.

Though the Earth is touched by everything alive, it never stops turning around the fire at its center, and though we are touched by the stories of strangers and the far-off songs of birds lost in wind, we find our way by following the spirit's voice at our center. Too much is lost in waiting for someone else to tell us that what moves us is real.

 

April 8 - Center of the Eye

~In keeping the center of the I empty, the miracle of life can enter and heal.~

It's not by chance that the dark center of the human eye, the pupil, is actually an empty hole through which the world becomes known to us. Likewise, in a spiritual sense, the I is the empty center through which we see everything. It's revealing that such a threshold is called the pupil, for it is only when we are emptied of all noise and dreams of ego that we become truly teachable.

Like the center of the eye, both the Buddhist and Zen traditions speak of an unbreakable emptiness at the heart of all seeing from which all living things emerge. The Hindu Upanishads tell us that in the center of the seed of the great nyagrodha tree there is nothing, and out of that nothing the great tree grows. We are then reminded that in our time on Earth we grow like this tree - out of that nothing. As the essence of the tree is the empty center of its seed, so the essence of our life is the intangible presence at the center of our soul.

Therefore, our chief work as human beings rests in the sincere effort to allow that central presence to in-form us. Thus, all forms of prayer and meditation are aimed at keeping the center of the I empty, so the miracle of life in its grace and immensity can enter and heal us.

 

I'm not sure I understand this one very well. Is it simply saying we need to keep our minds open in order to learn new things in life?

 

For me I believe it is talking about our inner-self or our soul. I like this line: "for it is only when we are emptied of all noise and dreams of ego that we become truly teachable."

What it is saying to me is to clear your mind (noise) and your ego (hurts, doubts, negative thoughts, anger) and let your soul be empty of these things so that the other stuff, the beauty of life, that you need to heal your soul can enter as referred to in this line: "so the miracle of life in its grace and immensity can enter and heal us."

 

I like that one line you quote too, Caroline. The rest though seems like an author who is short a chapter.

 

Thanks Caroline. Usually I can understand what's trying to be conveyed pretty well but for some reason this one kind of threw me for a loop. It makes sense to me now though the way you explained your interpretation of it. :-*

 

Emptiness sounds so wonderful to me. There's always crap going on in my head, in my life, although much less now than there used to be. Emptiness is letting go, free of earthly cares.

 

April 9 - Living and Watching

~How many ways can a statue dream of living? Every time I reach for you, we begin. We begin.~

The line between living and watching is very thin. A moment's rest or pause for reflection can spread into a thickness of hesitation, and the next thing we know, reaching for or saying something or picking up the phone or stopping in unannounced is difficult, as if there is suddenly some huge wall to climb just to be heard.

This is how we isolate ourselves, digging moments of healthy solitude into holes in the yard, and, of course, the dirt we dig and pile up becomes a small mountain that separates us from everyone we love. We all know how not phoning that friend because we were busy, if allowed to go too far, turns into a vastness that seems impossible to cross. The truth is that the phone is the same six inches from our hands as it has always been. The challenge is to remember this when everything seems so far away.

To feel isolated is part of the human journey. But when we obey the feelings of hesitation and separation more powerfully than those of love, we start to experience numbness and depression. This is when we start to live like statues, believing that all we can do is watch.

Hard as it feels, it is just at this moment that we must break back into living by reaching for anything, no matter how small or close. If it is fall, rub a leaf across your face. If winter, break a piece of ice. If spring, touch a small flower.

 

Oh my gosh, this one is so true about how I've been living lately. Sort of isolated and cutting myself off and I never used to be like that. It gets so easy to stop visiting or phoning people when you're sick so often....it just becomes the norm after a while.

I don't want to live my life observing and being depressed. I want to get back in the game and feel like I'm part of the world again and I'm really trying but some days it's so hard to do.

 

April 10 - At Home in Our Skin

~The spiritual life is about becoming more at home in your own skin.~ - Parker J. Palmer

Anything that removes what grows between our hearts and the day is spiritual. It might be the look of a loved one stirring their coffee as morning light surprises their groggy eyes. It might be the realization while watcing a robin build its nest that you are only a temporary being in this world. It might be a fall on ice that reminds you of the humility of your limitations.

As Parker Palmer suggests, the aim of all spiritual paths, no matter their origin or the rigors of their practice, is to help us live more fully in the lives we are given. In this way, whatever comes from a moment's grace that joins us to our lives and to each other - this is spiritual. For example, I was having coffee the other day in a cafe and suddenly, from the rain of noise around me, there arose a word of truth in the exposed voice of a stranger whose face I couldn't even see.

I don't know her context or her story or whom whe was revealing herself to. I didn't even turn around to see her face, because in that moment, there was a perfect beauty in our staying anonymous. I only felt, simply and deeply, that without her ever knowing, her moment of pointed and unexpected truth made me more at home in my own skin.

The life of spirit is everywhere: in dust waiting for light, in music waiting to be heard, in the sensations of the day waiting to be felt. Being spiritual is much more useful and immediate than the books about books would have us think.

 

live more fully in the lives we are given

well said