Tag: Kevin Anderson

Wednesday’s Whimsies

+ ” . . . . . . I wish we could hit the brakes, but we live in a brakeless era.” – Paul Ford on the AI revolution

I remember years ago there was a movie where Adam Sandler had a remote control that he could press “fast forward” on the parts of his life which were difficult and challenging. It seemed like a great premise/invention, but the whole point of the movie was about just how much poignancy you would miss in your life, if you just tried to fast forward through it all. The point of the movie was to remind us that all parts of life are to be experienced and savored, even the hard parts. Now considering this opposite side of the coin, I see Paul Ford’s point of wishing we could press “STOP” or at least “PAUSE” in what feels like a constant, frenetic jangle of nerves and rapid advancements in these modern times. But we don’t have magical remote controls to control the times of our lives. We don’t have mystical magical wands to control the forces outside of us. We only have Presence. I read a poem the other day by Kevin Anderson that starts with the line, “I choose to live life heavily meditated.” I think that’s a great choice. We’ve all already pressed the Start/Play button on the days which we were born. We don’t have any other buttons to press, so now we must just experience and engage with what we started and hopefully in such a way that if we did actually have RECORD/REWIND buttons, we would be proud of the person we see doing and trying their best, even in the hard times that they wish they could have just fast-forward through, and even in the fleeting times when they were just begging for a pause.

+ “Collecting gathers. Curating edits.” – Jillian Bremer

I’ve always loved collecting. This is evident by the various piles of my favorite things, all around my home (particularly shoes). It strikes me though, that I have reached a stage in my life where curating has never felt more necessary, cleansing and freeing. When we are younger, we are like busy, twitchy little squirrels, running around, gathering, gathering, gathering, frantically trying to gather more and more and more. Sometimes we are so busy gathering that, much like squirrels, we forget what and where and how much that we already have amassed. Then, what sometimes feels like a sudden dawning, we reach this middle age and beyond stage of life, and we take a look at our “stockpiles” – not just of our things and belongings, but our stockpiles and collections of experiences and relationships and knowledge and wisdom and job titles and achievements and obligations and beliefs, etc., and we realize that we don’t need to keep gathering so much. What would be more beneficial for us, is to start whittling down a lot of our piles and our collections, to what is actually personally meaningful and lasting and worthwhile of our space (including our mindspace).

” ‘Finding yourself’ is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you”. ” – Emily McDowell

At our ages, we have already gathered quite a bit of our story, and we will undoubtedly collect more stories along the way (our closing chapters are hopefully long yet to be written), but we are also at the major editing stage of life. We are curating our vast collections down to what we really need to sustain ourselves and to fully appreciate those aspects of life that make it so individually satisfying to our truest, core selves. When we curate, we stop overwhelm. When we curate, we learn what we truly appreciate. When we curate, we understand what deeply moves us the most. When we curate, we excavate down to the core of who we really are “before the world got its hands on us.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday-Funday

i i i i i i

i i i ii

i I i i i

ii i i

i i iii i i i

About a week ago, I was reading magazines by my pool. Ralphie, our swimming-obsessed yellow Labrador was thrilled to have me out there with him. He jumped out of the pool to greet me, and he shook all of the water off of his 100-pound self, which landed all over my magazines. This has happened before. I know the drill, but this time, I had barely even begun to read my magazines. I almost considered it a loss, and tossed them unread, into the recycling bin, but something made me hold on to my Spirituality and Health magazine. I let it dry off, and I am so glad that I did. This weekend, I got to read (albeit on extremely wavy, wrinkly pages) an article by Kevin Anderson, who is a regular contributor to the magazine. And it turns out that this particular article is just what I needed to read, right at this very time in my life. Isn’t that how the Universe works?

Kevin Anderson explains the visual, which I rudimentarily created above. When you are in the middle of a sh*tstorm in your life (for lack of a better term), and everything seems chaotic and overwhelming, it is best to stay in the “I” of the storm. If the above visual represents one of life’s hurricanes which we all go through from time to time, we must be like birds. We must learn to stop fighting against the storm and to stay in the “I” of it, in order to be safe and to be centered. Kevin describes each version of the letter I/i’s this way:

i/i = “The small-i version of us is quite expert at generating fearful, stressed-out, depressing thoughts. The small-i self becomes part of the swirling storm in which we are caught when life feels like too much.”

I = “The large-I version of us is the eye of the storm. That self is capable of observing the storm swirling all about us both in the outer events of life and in our small self’s stressed-out approach to them. The large Self is the only version of us that knows how to return over and over to “I accept that this is here now.” But the large-I does not stop with noticing our judgments that life should be other than it is. It has the wisdom to act on whatever needs to be acted on from a centered, non-reactive place.”

Kevin then goes on to talk about birds who are migrating in the winter and inadvertently get caught up in big storms. Birds are wise and intuitive enough to stay in the eye of a hurricane, versus trying to desperately fly against it, or out of it. Even if the hurricane takes the birds a little off track from where they were originally planning to go, the birds know that they will eventually, safely reach landfall. He suggests that when our fear thoughts are swirling like a storm, we need to think of these thoughts as “a bell calling us to a brief meditation practice. When we notice fearful thoughts, we can breathe as if we have a direct connection to the highest virtues available.”

Just the reminder that the “I” part of us is always with us, and always available to us, in the steady, deepest center of each and every one of us, is such a comfort. The “I” part is the only part of us which is eternal, peaceful, non-judgmental, wise, and clear. The small-i versions of us are ego-based, and they are constantly changing with the winds of our outside circumstances, and the different people and the unique situations in our lives. The small-i versions of us are not eternal. They change with the winds. The bottom line of the article is the reminder to always stay with the “I” when you are feeling off track. Notice your small-i “freak outs” and gently move back to the “I” as often as needed. “I” will never steer you wrong.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Good morning, friends. It’s a lovely sunny Sunday morning here which is so refreshing because we have had quite a bit of rain here lately. It makes me feel peaceful and hopeful. New readers, Sundays are devoted to poetry here at Adulting – Second Half. On Sundays, I either share a poem I have written or I share a poem written by someone else. Please share your poetry with me and other readers, in the Comments section. Today’s poem is from a book of poetry by Kevin Anderson. I love his poetry because it follows the same format of adding to and thus, cleverly changing an original thought or idea, to something more profound. This poem is from the book Now is Where God Lives.

Don’t talk about great souls.

Don’t talk about great souls – become one!

Don’t talk about great souls.

Become one

with all.

Don’t talk about great souls.

Become one

with all

great souls who have embodied the Great Soul.