Tag: Pema Chodron

Fleeting

Good morning! Happy First Day of Fall! I had a little gut punch earlier this week. I walked into the Fresh Market and they had their cinnamon brooms up front. Every year since my daughter was probably in middle school, I would buy her one of those brooms for her room because she loves the smell of them. She would hang it on her ceiling fan and I would whack my head on it, more times than I can count, but I loved that the aromatic broom made her happy. I am not sure that her college roommate would love the strong scent of cinnamon as much as she does, but I’ll have to check in, to see if we should keep the tradition alive.

The Fresh Market also had their pumpkins in full display, right at the store’s entrance. Every year since middle school, my daughter had a tradition with a friend to meet at our home to carve pumpkins before Halloween. They always had elaborate and difficult designs in mind, but at the end of all, the girls usually got giggly and settled for simpler, conventional jack-o-lantern faces, along with good conversation and fancy coffees from Starbucks. This friend of my daughter’s wasn’t in her tightest circle. They never had classes together, and her friend was busy with the swim team, while my daughter was entrenched in the tennis team. Still, they always made time to get together to carve pumpkins, every single year.

Both of these young ladies now go to separate colleges far from each other. The carving tradition will no longer be possible to be kept. My daughter and her friend may see each other in passing, during future holiday outings – those occasional times when kids who went to high school together often reconnect. The friendship has changed, as all relationships do. Still, the memories will remain happy ones, for all of us.

I read an article over the weekend by Pema Chödrön, the proflic writer and Buddhist nun. She says this:

“Realizing the fleeting nature of everything and the freshness of every moment is equivalent to realizing that we’re always in a state of transition, an in-between state . . . Like a shooting star, a visual fault, a candle flame, an illusion, a dewdrop, a water bubble, a dream, lightning, a cloud . . . “

Chödrön teaches the importance of understanding that all phenomena is the same in our lives. Everything that we experience has a beginning, and then immediately starts the continuous process of changing, and at a certain point, will inevitably end. The nature of life is its “fleeting quality.” In other words, “change is the only constant.”

I don’t think that it’s in our human nature to gracefully accept life’s fleeting quality. The things which we love, we don’t want to be fleeting. And the things which we hate, we struggle against, and we resist, and then we try to force the fleeting to go faster. We have so much trouble letting go of control, and just being and experiencing. It’s the dual nature of our analytical minds. It’s the underbelly of being able to think and reason.

Right now, I am enjoying a peaceful morning, my dogs at my feet, as I write this post on my beloved blog. It is a still, calm, sun-filled morning here. I smile to myself, remembering the waft of cinnamon sticks, every past autumn day when I would wander into my daughter’s room. I smile at the memory of the crooked smiles of jolly jack-o-lanterns made by two young ladies who enjoyed each other’s company enough to make a point of inventing this tradition of “crafting” together every Halloween. This morning is well on its way of passing. It’s been a good morning. This morning is in the process of phasing into hopefully, an enjoyable, peaceful afternoon, and then at sunset, the day will draw to its inevitable close. This morning, this afternoon, this whole day will transform into a memory, as all things do. And that is the way of the fleeting nature of life and all things in it. But beautifully, the memories stay alive.

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

Thrown Out

I have a couple of friends who are going through a lot of life changes that have been thrust upon them, suddenly, surprisingly and forcefully. By our ages, we’ve all been there – probably more than once. And the last thing that anyone wants to hear during one of these “tossed out of the nest” moments is, “Oh wow, this experience really is a gift. As the Narrator said in Fight Club, “It’s Only After We’ve Lost Everything That We’re Free To Do Anything.”

That is truly the beauty of any moment, when you feel like life as you knew it, is falling away. You are no longer sitting tight in that warm little cocoon of your carefully prepared nest, and instead you are out in wide open space, flapping your wings desperately, not sure what direction to head in, other than not wanting to plunge down to your lowest depths. You are so scared, flapping fiercely in place, that you fail to see the amazing, wide open horizon that is available for you to soar in, and to fly in, in so many possible, exciting directions. In the initial “push out”, you often fail to realize the wide open beauty of the free skies, and you often fail to realize that you are still flying high, with the natural ability of your own strong, capable, experienced wings.

The Universe knows what it is doing. We humans often aren’t good at taking risks, trying to step out of our own little paradigms which we have created as orderly safehouses for ourselves. Much like we mothers innately know that eventually, in order to be good mothers, and in order to fulfill our motherly duties, we have to urge our little hatchlings out of the nest, the Universe does the same for us, on a much larger scale. The Universe understands our potential better than anyone, certainly better than our rational selves.

The initial “push out” from our various “nests” throughout our lifetime (starting when we leave the safety of our own mothers’ wombs), feels like a gut punch. Every. Single. Time. It’s at these times when our inner child starts screaming, “This is not fair!” And our inner child is right, life isn’t fair. But what our inner child forgets is that we are equipped to deal with the unfairness of it all. We are equipped with the ability to take really lousy situations and alchemize them into some of the most vital moments that have defined us, in our own lifetimes. We are filled with the strength to carry on, and to become versions of ourselves whom we love and whom we trust and whom we admire, like we never have before. And with each push-out of the various nests of our lives, we become better equipped with the confidence and the strength, to soar to authentic heights higher than we have ever before imagined. And in doing this for ourselves, we inspire other little birds who have just been pushed out of their nests, to see and to experience the divinity of soaring.

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

Weightless

Yesterday, I spent a little bit too much time ruminating in my fear and my worries and my disappointments. It didn’t help that I had woken up in the morning to a terrible dream in which I had been told by a doctor that I had throat cancer. I spazzed out on that one. Interestingly, about half of the hundreds of dream interpretation websites which I looked at, said that this was actually an excellent dream that foretold fortune and happiness and lovely surprises. Nice. Let me tell you, Dreams, “There are much kinder ways to tell me that good things lie ahead.”

Also, yesterday morning, my son texted a picture from his first medical school class. It was occurring on Zoom, in his teensy little apartment bedroom, for eight hours straight. Sigh. Thanks again, Coronavirus. So awful to see you again!

The great mask debate is in full force (and obviously on national display) here again in Florida, and my daughter starts her senior year of high school tomorrow. The ugly vibes are swirling on the news, and in social media, and in the neighborhood and like everyone else, I am so, so, so tired of it all. I had tricked myself, earlier this summer, that with the vaccinations, Covid was practically a thing of the past, and instead it has come back with an ugly vengeance. Some of my closest friends, despite being vaccinated, are in quarantine, healing from Covid infections. Luckily they have seemingly mild cases, so far.

So those three paragraphs above, show you where my mindset (and heartsick) was yesterday, and even into last night, as I crawled into bed. I don’t like that mindset. I don’t like negativity. It doesn’t feel good. As I was waiting to go to sleep, and I was thinking that I really didn’t care to have anymore scary dreams, I went to my phone and I looked up “the most comforting, reassuring thought in the world.”

Over a decade ago, when my family and I were the poster kids for the Great Recession, and we were watching our savings go down the drain like rushing water, this Bible verse helped me to get through those tough times (Matthew 6: 28-30):

28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

This verse made a lot of sense to me and it became my daily mantra. And thankfully, we made it through the Great Recession just fine. Last night, though, I wanted a new, fresh mantra. My current worries and stresses are more about the health of my family, and of my friends, and of our world, and maybe even my own mental health. My worries are more about the overall health and well-being of everyone I love, including our Mother Earth. So, when I searched up “the most comforting, reassuring thought in the world” last night, the search wasn’t as satisfactory as I wanted it to be. It turns out that there are about 18 million comforting thoughts to pick from.

My love language is the written word. I love to read. I love to write. I love comforting thoughts. My search had me strumming through hundreds and hundreds of uplifting verses and quotes, many that I had already seen, and had already read before, many, many times. So many of these quotes talked about the fruitlessness of worrying. Duh. But that’s not particularly comforting when you are stuck in the worry cycle, which has taken up a life of its own, in your head. It’s hard to find the “off button” for the Worry Cycle, at that point. So reading about how taxing worrying and anxiety is, to your body and to your spirit, is honestly, at times, just more upsetting and worrying, than anything close to being reassuring and comforting.

I was frustrated that there was not one simple consensus as to what is the “the most comforting, reassuring thought in the world”. So, I figured that I might as well take a few screenshots of quotes that at least, resonated with me. This quote was very similar to my favorite Bible verse:

“Don’t try to force anything. Let life be a deep Let-Go. God opens millions of flowers every day without forcing their buds.” – Osho

This one has always made sense to me:

“You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.” – Pema Chodron

And as I was beating myself up angrily for being such a Wanda Worrier/Debbie Downer/Negative Nancy, this one really struck home:

“I just give myself permission to suck. I find this hugely liberating.” – John Green

But then, some kind of Divine Intervention happened. Without searching for it, I somehow ended up reading a scientific article that talked about comforting music. My guardian angel must have been saying to me, “Girl, you don’t need any more words. You need to get out of that silly little pissy-missy mind of yours, if you want to have a good night’s sleep, and a hope for a more positive tomorrow.” The article that I miraculously landed on, said that this ONE song, created by professional sound therapists, has proven to reduce anxiety by 65%, and shows a 35% reduction in any one person’s typical physiological resting rate. This song is wordless. I played the song as I was trying to fall asleep. And I slept so soundly. My husband didn’t know that we were both being “treated” by this song last night, because he was already asleep when I played it, but this morning, the first thing that he remarked to me was how well he had slept last night. The lesson I gleaned from this experience was that we shouldn’t get so stuck in trying to control the ways in which we are going to be comforted, or fixed, or reassured, or loved to sleep. When we do the “deep Let-Go”, the Universe gives us exactly what we need. I slept incredibly well last night. I don’t recall any negative dreams. I feel comforted. I feel reassured this morning. It turns out that last night, for me, Marconi Union’s “Weightless” was “the most comforting, reassuring thought in the world,” and it is not even a thought. It doesn’t even have words. Last night’s comfort came from pure sound. Be open to every amazing resource available to us, friends. Keep the faith. We are loved. We are protected. All is well.

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

Balancing Act

“Anxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state. It’s the kind of place we usually want to avoid. The challenge is to stay in the middle rather than buy into struggle and complaint. The challenge is to let it soften us rather than make us more rigid and afraid. Becoming intimate with the queasy feeling of being in the middle of nowhere only makes our hearts more tender. When we are brave enough to stay in the middle, compassion arises spontaneously. By not knowing, not hoping to know, and not acting like we know what’s happening, we begin to access our inner strength.”
– Pema Chodron

The above quote arrived in my in-box this morning. It is the Daily Peace Quote. Yesterday, when thinking about things which I wanted to write about in my blog, I jotted these three words down: stabilizing, equilibrium, balance. The Daily Peace Quote goes along with those three words quite nicely. Something/Someone is trying to get the message across, I think.

This is some of the definition of equilbrium – a state of rest or balance due to the equal action of opposing forces. equal balance between any powers, influences, etc.; equality of effect. mental or emotional balance; equanimity.

We all know what it takes to get to our own mental and emotional and physical equilibrium. It’s not rocket science. Sleep, good nutrition, removing toxic people, places and things and habits from our daily lives, exercise, nature, breath work, spending time with people and pets and activities that bring us joy, prayer, meditation, gratitude, are all things that help to bring us back to our beautiful heart centers. Where are you out of balance right now, in your own life? What can you do to bring that area of your own life, back to center? We are right in the middle of what has turned out to be an unprecedented and difficult year. This is the perfect time to look at our own personal scale of equilibrium, and see if it is tipped too far, in any one direction. Then we can carefully and purposefully, place our intentions and actions, on the opposite side of the scale, to get our beings back into a peaceful, centered space.

Euripides quote: The best and safest thing is to keep a balance...
Quotes about Balance and moderation (25 quotes)

You Are The Sky

Fortune for the day – “All things grow with time except grief.” – Jewish Proverb

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Today, I woke up feeling really good. After a few nights of really good sleep, my energy is starting to come back. My daughter and I sang along to songs today, on the way to school, and we laughed at each other’s goofy renditions of the songs. It feels good to feel good. Yet, honestly, it’s hard to feel good on a consistent basis in this very fast-paced world, a world that offers up a constant onslaught of information (real or fake or misinterpreted or emotionally charged or all of the above, or who really knows?) coming at us, at every level. We learn about the hardships and tragedies of everyone we care about, at the flick of the open button on Facebook or our text chats or emails. We feel the anger and divisiveness and righteousness, rolling out at us like a raging fire, from our TV screens or our computer screens, when we watch the news channels’ reactions and Twitter feeds, about last night’s state of the union speech. It’s hard for anyone to stay above the crazy storm of emotionality that fills our world these days, and that storm is hard on all of us – physically, mentally and spiritually. The growing, ferocious storm sucks us in, and it drains us of our vitality and of our strength.

For today, I think that I am going to very deliberately handle anything that pulls up an emotional charge for me, in a very conscious, considered manner. I will let myself briefly feel that feeling that got churned up inside of me, and then I will put the situation into my prayer box with a knowingness that it’s all going to be okay. It always is. It’s all going to be okay. I believe, with my whole heart, that Forces bigger than me have this whole Life thing all figured out, and I must walk the talk of my faith. I will let that faith tinge every reaction which I have, to any bit of the storm onslaught that comes my way. My compassion for myself and for others will be filled with a confident faith. My awe for the beauty of the natural world will be filled with a confident faith. My desire for those whom I love and care about to have peace and healing, will be filled with a confident faith. My guilt-free laughter will roar with a confident faith. My gratitude for another day of miraculous life will be filled with a confident faith. I will go to sleep easily and soundly tonight, because I will have let myself feel good all day long. These good feelings will allow me to fall asleep soundly, because like a squirrel collecting his nuts, I will have created a pile of well-being for myself, all coming from the Source inside of me and surrounding me – my over-spilling, confident faith.