Brief Advice from Thich Nhat Hanh: The Truth Will Set You Free

At the Portland Center for Spiritual Living today Reverend Larry King taught us that, in Art of Communicating by Thich Nhat Hanh, there are Four Elements of Loving Speech:

1) Tell the Truth.
2) Don't exaggerate.
3) Be Consistent.
4) Use Peaceful Loving Language.

I have been ruminating on the first one all day since the service this morning, especially because of the elaboration Larry provided in a handout he gave us during his talk.  It says the following:

"Tell the Truth. Tell the whole truth as factually as you can. If you're worried that the truth amy be hurtful, take the necessary time to share the information skillfully. Lying or fibbing undermines your credibility, is difficult to maintain and causes relationship stress."

Now, it's not that I am an untruthful person, to be sure.  It's the exact opposite. I'm about as truthful as they come.  More so, I sometimes blurt out the truth accidentally and quickly (not skillfully), when I'm not particular ready to share it.  And I often have a burning passion to share the truth with people, whether it's what I feel to be the truth about something else, or whether it's simply the truth about how I feel...

The reason that the first element of loving speech is weighing on me is because I do occasionally commit what they call a "lie of omission." For an exact definition (courtesy of Google) "Also known as a continuing misrepresentation, a lie by omission occurs when an important fact is left out in order to foster a misconception. Lying by omission includes failures to correct preexisting misconceptions."  I simply choose to stay silent sometimes when my heart screams out at me to say something very true that I'm not sure the other person will either understand, like, or accept. At times this can be extremely damaging to a relationship or interaction. At other times, the relationship and other person go unscathed by this behavior, and it is only me that is hurt by this behavior.

Of course, not all truth is relevant to discuss.  Just because you wore the same socks two days in a row doesn't mean you have to tell everyone you encounter that day, unless of course they are making faces like something stinks and you suspect that they would appreciate an explanation.

But these three simple words "Tell the truth" and the elaboration that followed spoke to my heart today and stuck in my brain. I'm grateful for that experience because I know that it's a call to action.  For one thing, I got an email over a week ago that I never responded to because I didn't know how to go about saying the truth to the other person.  The truth would have been revealing and made me vulnerable. But I couldn't really think of anything else to say instead. As a result, I may have done damage to the connection (by neglecting to even respond at all), making the other person think that I'm just careless, although I've read the email numerous times. And furthermore I may have lost the opportunity to tell the truth to someone more open to it and see what results. So today, after reading the advice of Hanh and King, I responded to the email, opening with an apology for delay and proceeding to the truth of things, truth I'd been carefully avoiding acknowledging both to myself and to this other person.

Those are my shoulder pimples. Truth.

That is just the start of my truth adventure...

 but it is a good step for now.

Remember the wisdom of Stephen Colbert as well.  

truth and 'truthiness' are two different things! 

Don't be afraid to

say what is in your heart. The

truth will set you free.

Self-Talk Heart-World Transformation Fairy Tale

Preface

       The book for the month of March at Portland Center for Spiritual Living is The Art of Communicating by Thich Nhat Hanh.  Sunday March 1st our talk was about listening to yourself. And Sunday March 8th (today) was about listening to others.  Both were presented by Reverend Larry King.  This is good subject matter for March, for me.  Being new to Portland and having just moved into a new home here, I set the intention in February (as hokey as it seems) of spreading love.  I made it a priority to socialize heavily, strengthen newly established connections and make myself purposefully extra available and open to new and spontaneous developments. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I certainly was able to have a lot of fun nights, full of unexpected surprises and often strangely substance-filled conversations with complete strangers. I found so many beautiful new people to invite into my life with such passionate and creative hearts and minds. I'm super grateful to have found a lot more love and light here in Portland than I think I have ever found since moving away from my parent's home.

       However, a lot of this connection had an impulsive element to it, in that I set the intention of spreading love freely, and then did so without thinking at all about which of these new connections might stick or grow.  I was focused on being very present in the moment with other people and on not pushing anything to become anything else (detachment from outcomes, as mentioned in previous posts). But inevitably things do or don't. Stick and grow, that is.  And then, should they do so, there is a next level, which involves caring for those connections and learning to communicate with those new people on a regular basis with love and respect.  And also, as always, there is the practice of healthy communication with yourself. But in this particular circumstance, for me, it is about having a healthy open discussion with myself, and others, about what I really do want or need from new connections.  So it was good to have a service that brought self-communication to the forefront.

       In the book, Hanh refers to speaking as a way of nourishing the planet, either with good or with evil.  The idea is simply that when we speak, it has an immense impact on the world. Whether we complain, explain, preach, teach, tattle, babble, theorize, proselytize, gossip, conceal, confide, repeal, editorialize, memorialize, praise, reject, rephrase, reflect, eulogize, apologize, scold, fabricate, parabolize, it all makes waves.  And the state of the world is an aggregate of our words (and actions, of course) toward ourselves and one another.  And the words of one person can greatly influence the words and actions of another.  So really the ability to communicate is imperatively important on a global level.

       And on a personal level, practicing loving, positive, healthy communication with yourself increases your overall quality of life.  The first thing to notice, if you suspect that your self-talk is less than ideal and may be contributing to some of the ways that you aren't yet where you want to be is that--if we have not consciously adjusted it--we are likely doing what we were brought up to do, when it comes to self-talk.  This primarily has to do with the attitudes and ideas we grew up around, both within our immediate families and within our culture.  If members of your family tend to have always spoken negatively of one another or of themselves, without conscious changes being made, you will probably do so also.  This is not to say that you are not capable of doing otherwise, but habits and behaviors learned in childhood have an incredible influence on our adult lives. And, for me, I wasn't even conscious of my inner dialogue as something that was affecting my outside life until I actually took the time to conceive of that possibility and to be mindful of what was going on in my head. If you have never done so, it is an incredibly enlightening thing to try to be conscious of what you say to yourself in your head and how you say it.

       After all, this self-talk is the primary form of communication we perform on a daily basis. The conversations we have in our brains are far more common than the ones we have with other people.  And the ones we have with other people, the words we choose and our attitudes and perspectives, are pretty much just an off-shooting of our internal conversation.  We could think of ourselves as seeds and our internal words that we give to ourselves as the fertilizer and water and nutrients that we spread on that seed. So then, logically, the words that we give to others end up being the fruit that we give forth to the world. And if we are nice, loving, positive, and respectful in how we talk to ourselves, our words with others will be just as sweet and juicy and our fruit will attract everything around us.  And if we are hateful, negative, critical, and harsh to ourselves, our fruit will be bitter and no one will eat from it. Those that do will spit it out and have a bad taste in their mouths.

       Self-talk is a major component in the reality (the life) we create for ourselves.  And I've noticed that a lot of the people in my life who could clearly benefit from some better self talk, have a tendency to complain of unhappiness and to actually blame that unhappiness on some other outside circumstances.  So that even if you were to say "You would be a lot happier if you weren't so negative all the time." They would often respond with "Actually, I think I would be a lot happier if my car hadn't broken down and if my kids weren't flunking out of school and my wife wasn't always nagging me, and blah blah blah babble babble babble mush mush mush *verbal equivalent of oil spill pollution on a BP level*."  But really, what people need to realize is that outside of certain types of very objectively excruciating circumstances (serious illness, starvation, natural disaster, death of loved ones, etc.) most of life's suffering is entirely self-inflicted and solely related to one's attitude about the (often self-created) circumstances of one's life.

       Thich Nhat Hanh points out that when we claim for ourselves that we are stupid or unlovable, it is a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.  But when we can eradicate it and create something else it is nothing short of a fairy tale.  I will explain...

...

Fairy Tale

...

        Bad self-talk is a grumbling grave-digger standing on top of your heart perpetually digging a grave for your happiness.  And the hole he creates leaves a pretty obvious deficit in your self-worth that is very visible to the people around you.  And even though not everyone consciously understands why it drives them away, we all know on a sub-conscious level that someone with a hole in their heart is not spilling over with love and joy to give to others. And there is nothing worse than investing in a relationship with this type of person because everything you give to it is just going to plummet into the black hole inside their heart-grave never to be seen again and never to be reciprocated.  And so by allowing this process to go on internally you quickly find yourself in a vastly empty barren wasteland of non-love and standing in the middle of it with the grave-digger grumbling "I told you that you weren't and you wouldn't and couldn't. And now there you are and they aren't and you suck. You are pitiful, ugly, stupid, and lame.  You smell and you're boring. You'll never have fame.  You'll be poor, you're unwanted, an old piece of trash. You're no good to look at, you feel like a rash.  There's a grating, obnoxious sound in your voice.  You'll die fully alone. And you don't have a choice."

       The funny thing is that all you really need to do to turn things around is push the grave digger into his own grave when he's not looking, put the top soil back on and plant some pretty flowers over it.  Thich Nhat Hanh calls this process recognizing, refuting, and replacing bad self-talk.  And the great part about it is that the grave digger is not a real person so there is absolutely nothing to worry about in administering to him an immediate, brutal, and fatal punishment.  Use your imagination.  It's ok! He deserves it.  And since you're replacing him with love and light, you can recognize that just because you chopped up your internal grave-digger and put each little bit of him in a different barrel and sent them down ten different rivers in ten different countries, does not make you a raging sociopath.  You're just passionate about making a permanent changes.

      Once you've said good riddens to the grave-digger planted the nice flowers over top of the grave (Daphnes? Azaleas? Yummy!) here's the best part: nobody is keeping closer tabs on your life than you. That means that this total internal 180 should not really bother anyone around you in the least, other than those that felt a morbid sense of comfort from living in a symbiotic environment of self-hatred. But you are not helping them or yourself by nurturing that relationship, so the consequences of your changes should not be met with panic.  Whatever happens because you murdered the grave-digger is for the best.  (A sentence I did not anticipate writing today.) And the cool thing is that once he's gone you can fertilize and feed the soil for a bit. It's probably going to need it. But before long you can invite a sexy landscaping gardener to come in and turn your whole entire heart into a lush paradise all while wearing something incredibly arousing, sipping from some sweet lemonade, and occasionally looking over at you to toss you a playful wink. (Sometimes hard changes are made easier by a vivid imagination.)  You can throw up a hammock and take a cozy nap in it.  You can build a beautiful warm cabin made of ponderosa pinewood with a stone fireplace hearth and a big cloud-nine bed covered in thick red cotton quilts.  You're heart is a safe and sacred space now. It is quiet and serene with playful chirping towhees bouncing from branch to branch in the bushes in the morning.  Fluttering around the feeders, taking patient turns to feed. And it is a magical vacation destination away from the harsh vibes that (unfortunately) are still going to emanate from other people and continue to shake things up in your outside world.  Your paradise will probably need to start as a gated property.  Especially since your previous internal landscape likely attracted you to a harsh neighborhood.  But overtime you'll probably find yourself so happy and content in your paradise that you don't have much desire to leave. Unless, as you discover, it's to venture out into someone else's--after all maybe you have a romantic wooden mountain cabin in Oregon, and they have a seashell encrusted shimmery ten-story castle on the hot sandy beach. That could be a great change of pace.

       But then, over time, you will also find that the memory of the grave digger will become nothing but a distant hazy dream. And you won't be able to fathom how you started with so little and grew such a luscious wonderland with fruit so succulent and ripe.  And with the grave digger so distantly dead and unthreatening, you'll find that maybe you don't need to keep the gates locked all the time, since you kind of feel like if something putrid creeps in, you and your sexy gardener could probably take the right steps to dispose of it.  And some days you find that you feel so confident and good about your internal resources and your cup runneth over so much with the impulse to share that you say "Fuck it. Kegger." and you put on the fancy disco lights and you set up the fire pit and make pizza and invite everybody over to your gorgeous property to dance with the sexy landscaper in the flowers and grass all night.  And you may wake up in the morning with a few broken lamps in the cabin, and a funny looking stain on the rug.  And that's the danger of letting people in.  But like most parties that don't end with police sirens, you find that the memories you made by opening your heart up far outweigh the cost of replacing a few damaged items.  And besides, you know how to do that now and you didn't even own this house but a few months ago! So the chore of a little post-party clean up is really no chore at all for a grateful person like you.

       The biggest thing that can happen when you make this kind of a change is that maybe someday  you invite somebody in and they are beautiful and fantastic and then they say "Hey my place is cool too!" and they show you their magical beachfront castle, which is grand and ornate and fun to hang out in.  And most of all, just so different. One day, you show your companion how you can shake a branch on that one tree outside your cabin and all the petals from the blossoms will rain down on their head and cover them in good smells.  One starry night, your companion asks you to close your eyes and listen to the crackling of the fire and the ocean waves simultaneously on the beach next to the castle and you notice how the salty sea air mixes with the smoke. You dig your toes into the sand with a roasted marshmallow melting in your mouth, those two sensations combined for the first time ever in your life, and you think, "Wow! This is nothing like what I had over at my place."  In a year or a month or a week, you exchange keys and find yourselves perpetually hanging out in one paradise or the other, alternating.  Eventually you both agree that the walk is really far and it would save you both the trouble and you build a magical bridge together with a cool teleportation portal in the middle and each of your fabulous properties on either side.  The teleportation device looks like the queens mirror in Snow White, but the glass is aqueous. The bridge is wooden.  On your side it is covered in moss and has ropes for rails and sways with each step over a splashing rocky river.  When you step through the metallic portal you instantly come out on the other side, where the bridge is now a dock overgrown with coral and seaweed on the sides that takes you to the castle of your companion, who lives on the coast.  This bridge is a WHOLE other experience more magical, mysterious, and intoxicating than even hanging out in your own paradise and throwing parties in it, or visiting another person's for a bit. You are directly connected.  In different worlds, even with different looking sides of the bridge.  But you each hold a key.

       But then one day you wake up, and your whole cabin and garden is covered in a roaring blaze of fire.  The entirety of your heart-world pounds and aches and heats up and hurts.  So you grab your sexy gardener's hand, who is calm and serene still planting in the garden amid the fire. You pull your gardener away from the flames and run to the bridge. You run up to the portal, but it's sealed over completely into solid metal.  You can't walk through and on the other side the bridge just goes out into the dark wilderness.  Screw it, you straight up sprint through the trees and travel all day to the castle on the beach. You run up to it and you bang on the door. You try to use  your key but your companion has changed the lock and is nowhere to be found.  You stop for a minute to try to understand what is happening but you are at a total loss.  It's just simply that some things disappear without a trace when you least expect it.  There is nowhere else within reasonable walking distance to run to in this heart-world of yours, so you have no choice but to go back to where the fire burns.  Your gardener walks with you every step of the way.  Your gardener is never tired, never angry, never sad.  When you get back to your paradise, it is still softly aflame. So you safely hide on the bank of the river under the bridge, holding the gardener's hand, and wait for the fire to burn itself out. You fall asleep on the bank in your gardeners arms. In the morning, you approach your heart-world together and inspect the damage.

       You might speculate as to how it all happened.  You might suspect that your castle companion had a total freak out and maliciously maniacally torched your paradise. Or you might wonder if maybe you foolishly left a candle burning in the night.  And then again, in such a natural environment, forest fires are a fairly recurring thing. So it is possible that it got started on its own.  I don't really know what happened. And neither do you. It was all really sudden. And these things happen sometimes.  So let bygones be bygones and let's look at the situation.  Here you are once again in an empty barren waste land. Everything else has been burnt to the ground. You kick your feet around in the dirt and a shred of white ropy hammock turns up between your toes.  Fuck man.  You look around, the gardener's consoling arm around your shoulder. Remembering suddenly makes you tremble with fear.  This looks just like the barren wasteland you were standing in when the grave-digger's grumbling drove you over the edge with murderous rage.  And even though it has been planted over for years now, you and the gardener stand staring and what you simply know to be the exact spot where he used to dig, and where he is buried. For a brief moment you can almost feel the grave-digger's presence. In a fleeting instant that defies the rules of space-time, he pulls himself out of the grave by his knuckles, it falls deeply open again, and he instantly zooms around behind you without using his feet and pushes you in, laughing and grumbling.


       That was just your imagination.  It has been years since he has decomposed.  And he has actually fed the flowers that bloomed on top of him because something about a dead grave-digger produces some extra juicy petals on a good heart-garden.  You stare at the grave-site for hours. Maybe days.  But good news.  Nothing happens. He's dead.  He has been dead for many years and zombies are not a thing, even in this magical fairy tale world.  Yes the soil is barren and deserted once again.  But your gardener did not run and has been standing here all while you were waiting for doom. Your gardener is still beside you holding your hand right now and looking as luscious as ever. And looking over at you with soulful compassionate eyes, your gardener says, "Well, we will just have to start over. Huh! Such a funny thing. Never thought it would all burn down.  Life is something else. Come lay down. We'll get you a stand-alone hammock and a nice cool lemonade. This won't take long." Your gardener gives you that playful wink, hooks arms with you. And as you look down at your feet in the scorched earth of your heart-world, a little grape hyacinth shoots up and blossoms between your last two little toes.


     

     

Let's Get Big!

       This week was the last week at Portland Center for Spiritual Living focused on The Art of Uncertainty by Dennis Merritt Jones.  Sharon focused on the idea of 'conscious choices.' She said even the word 'art' refers to a 'a skill we choose to develop, study, and pay attention to.' I have been butting heads a lot with this concept in my personal life, as now more than ever my poetry project is becoming something I have to keep choosing to do, rather than to let it fall by the wayside and become nothing.  When I first conceived of the idea and got a vision in my head about what I wanted to do, it was very exciting and romantic.  It was like "Yes! I wrote this cool poem and it has this goofy made up compound noun in it, and that makes my think of this pretty image... and I have some other poetry TOO so I'll just put it all together and BOOM! I'll have a book." It's quite comical to think that it could have felt that way at some point. But the emphasis I want to make is on how easy it was to get the idea in my head and then pursue it on an almost unconscious level. It just seemed like such an intuitive and straightforward thing that I would try to do this that I started and didn't look back for almost two months straight...

       Now that I have the collection about halfway finished and moving along nicely, I have been really looking into and pursuing the actually bookmaking aspect of it. And that has been a lot more complicated than I initially took into consideration. I mean, for one thing, it took all this time just to look at all the many different publishing options I had and to make a decision about which routes to pursue.  There is still the whole factor of money--a lot goes in before a purchasable book comes out--but I'm hoping that will just kind of work itself out, heh.  And then once I decided I wanted to start with handmade books there were a million other little details to consider. And new obstacles and forks in the road keep bubbling up at any moment, unexpectedly. So now where I am currently at is trying to understand and accept that if this project is something I really want--and if it is going to be what I envision it to be--it is going to be somewhat all-consuming: time-wise, money-wise, resource-wise, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. It is what I want to make and it is what I want to give.  But that means really looking hard at my other ideas for myself and maybe letting some things wait and letting some things get smaller.

       As Sharon puts it, "Sometimes we have to let go of the life we have planned so we can accept the life that is waiting for us." And this is definitely not the first time I have had to do that. And I'm positive it won't be the last.  But it is a matter of changing your vision of your future to fall in line with what is really sticking out to you as 'the right thing' or 'where you need to be right now.'  Sometimes we have a different vision that doesn't actually incorporate a whole lot of what we would consider the truth of ourselves or the truth of the world around us.

       Sharon asks us "How invested are you in your own life?" She observed that sometimes we end up being the spectators to our lives more than just the actors.   I think I spent a very long period of time in that mindset, where I preferred not to act, to make changes, or to confront emotions, but instead to just let things happen to me as they would.  I have been done with that mindset for quite a while, but even now it is good to be reminded not to slip into it. Part of me, when I'm full of fear and doubts about what I'm doing, starts to feel a desire to slip into a passive way of being.  But once you have really ACTED for yourself and done something with your life, if you are conscious of that, you would hopefully just feel heartbroken to slip into the background of it.  It's your life.  You are in the spotlight.  And that spotlight is BIG and BRIGHT and all for you.  Don't waste it. Also, if you've ever acted you know that if you just stand there doing nothing, you're only going to sweat under the hot lights and notice how exposed you are. And you'll probably wet your pants or run away. Is that something you really want? ;-)

       Sharon says (or maybe the book says...) "It's choice not change that determines where you end up." This made me think of river rafting.  I thought of life as this river rapid, full of strong currents that are never going to stop coming, But they are going to shift unpredictably and they are guaranteed to throw you around. But the choices you make in the raft determine whether you have a safe and exciting ride or get thrown off the edge of a waterfall (like in silly movies).  At any rate, you can't really blame the water can you?  For changing or for pushing too hard or for coming at you when you least expect it? It wouldn't do you any good.  The best you can do is get the right tools and skills to know how to adapt and to control your own course.  Sharon says to "make choices out loud." Own them and commit to them sometimes.  You'd be surprised how much putting something out there really pushes you to make it happen and get it right...

       But what if I make a mistake? What if I make a choice OUT LOUD to do something, and it doesn't turn out how I hoped and it turns out that maybe it shouldn't have happened.  Or what if I've hardly made a damn conscious choice in my whole life? Do it now.  If you have done it before, and it got royally fucked up, do it again! "No one's keeping track of you and your standing really. That was yesterday. It's gone. What are you gonna do now?" Did you make a lot of mistakes?  So did Sufjan Stevens in Chicago. Get over it.  He's hugely successful.  Have you never made a choice? So be it. You're capable of starting.  Just choose to start. There, you have one under your belt. Fantastic. Congratulations.

       Keep going, make more conscious choices, every second. And build something. Create something.  Give something a name.   Have a kid. Fly a kite. Confront your boss and get a promotion. Buy a house. Be independent. Ask someone out.  Kiss them! Invite more people to be around you more.  Pay attention to them and ask them questions. Find out, so that their experience is a part of your experience.  Learn things. READ READ READ! Study.  Develop an art, even an unconventional one, even an art where you are the ONLY person who would label it that without poking fun.  Be brave. Be loud. Be yourself, but make yourself BIG. Bigger than you ever thought you could be.  Your kite won't fly, your boss says no, your crush tells you to get bent, who cares? Tomorrow is another day.  And trying to get big, couldn't possibly make you smaller than you already are now. I promise it. Open up your life and let it get bigger. It's really cool. I asssure you.

       Just please do it in a conscious way. This doesn't mean dancing into moving traffic or approaching dangerous strangers with track marks and inviting them to a party at your house because you're "Really BIG now."  That is one way to get big, but it could put you in an early grave. And each new day is a chance to get even bigger. So why cut it short by being stupid?  You don't have to. Just think things through and make intentional decisions about how you want your life to be bigger. And then do something about it and it will be.

       Making conscious choices improves your life.  When you recognize the uncertainty of everything, but you don't let it cripple you, instead you let it become a beautiful crazy dance you're doing, and that is when you really feel courageous and incredible. Courageous and incredible enough to dance at bus stops and really not care who is watching. Every single day, even.  Seriously.  As Sharon put it, "To me it's like everyday is Christmas and I'm the present."  Open yourself up.  See what's inside!  Give yourself to someone.  Don't be afraid. Tomorrow is another day, and  you'll be all wrapped up again in the morning and they'll be something else totally new to take out.  But a present that can't be opened... people kind of lose interest.  Nobody really wants it.  They can't get to the good stuff.  You can't get to your OWN good stuff.  Why would YOU want to be such a thing?  Ignore everyone else for a second.  Before you even think about the goodies inside you have for other people, think of giving yourself something special.  And remember, "certainty and uncertainty are made up things. They are human created concepts, neither of which are really real." Life is not uncertain or certain. It just is.  If there is no uncertainty, and no certainty either, what is there to fear? And you are neither special or unspecial. You just are.  And when you can't be unspecial, but there's no pressure to be special either, what is there to hide?

       My favorite part of the service this Sunday was at the very end and it was a direct quote from The Art of Uncertainty (which I haven't read by the way but I now feel like I have).  I will finish with it because I couldn't say anything quite so poetic on the topic even if I tried.

"May you always approach the edge 

of your uncertainty and lean over,

knowing you were meant to soar."

       Well, you heard the man. Go ahead! Get along little birdy! Look down! Look over the edge. Whoo! Wtf? That shit is crazy.  I know man... I know... it's cool though right?  Good.  Love you.

Changing Forms, More Things to Enjoy

       The service at PCSL this past Sunday was called "This Too Shall Pass" and continues the focus on The Art of Uncertainty by Dennis Merritt Jones. Since I enjoyed reflecting on last week's service so much. I think I'll do it again this week. :-) And as I did with Sharon, I will quote Larry profusely throughout my reflection, possibly quoting him quoting Jones, unknowingly. I guess the only way to find out is to read the book....

       Larry opened his talk to sharing with us his first experience of being in love.  It was the summer of his first year in college and even though they connected deeply and spent a very powerful summer together, by August his love had to return to college. They shared new heights of happiness and engagement of one another, beyond what friendship brings. And then after a brief summer, just like that he was gone... As Larry talked about the pain he experienced, it quickly brought to mind my own first experience of being in love and having that person disappear from my life.  Like Larry, my first experience of being in love was in college.  And I cherish it fully these days. There is nothing quite like having grown to love a person, the beauty and creativity you see in their mind and heart, the qualities of their voice and expressions, the way that they engage you in conversation.  The way that their presence pulls on you, grasping you, tugging gently at your hips or yanking you by the ankles and making you dance toward them. Equally fulfilling, perchance you get to see them loving you back and embracing your qualities. The relationship becomes a celebration of your mutual support and shared energy each day.  It's all about the heavy magnetism of two kindred souls being drawn together and saying "this I can get with."  It's unlike any other experience in its distinct imprint on your personal universe.  It builds something up inside you that makes you always look forward to moments as simple as eye contact or a smile with that person. And add to that a deep romantic attraction and, most importantly, the unfamiliarity of that experience to a young person with a sensitive body and soul.  A vortex of feeling awaits...

       Unlike, Larry, I made the choice myself to detach from this person. However, making that choice was not without severe, heartrending, pain.  I remember the conversation that led to us going our separate ways, and I remember closing the door behind him and involuntarily, in the most cinematic of ways, having my back fall against the door, sinking to the ground, clutching my stomach, and bursting into tears. The pain was unreal, unforgettable, and instantaneous. I've thankfully not experienced anything like it since.  I think that getting suddenly pushed off a building might be the only thing comparable.  Because I have never been quite so attached as that since, nothing has ever been the same. But at the time there was a sharp sense of loss deep in my stomach and a feeling like my lungs had collapsed and something about my very essence had been torn from some strange region between my heart and my throat...

     The gut twisting and throat tearing of that cold winter day in 2010 in Chicago for me was the pain of "attachment to outcomes." Larry once witnessed a very young girl being rejected by her crush. He could see how "The pain was real for her." And he explained the nature of the pain she was feeling and the pain he felt when his first love went back to college.  He talked about how we often spend a lot of time "wishing that something could be what it's not or wishing it could never end."  "When things are going well we want to make it permanent." Not just in love, in our jobs, in our financial lives, in our friendships and social sphere. I can't help but think of how I feel in Portland right now.  I am so enamored with so many facets of my life that I do in a way hope that nothing will change. But luckily, I am present.  Unlike in college, when I was so head over heels upside down in love.  Each experience and memory I have taken from my time with that person, retrospectively speaking, is glowing and warm in isolation to all others. But in my early years of adulthood, because of my immaturity and controlling nature, I was always looking ever forward to the next time, from the moment each time together had ended.  So I got deeply attached to my experience of a particular person, and I would say honestly that I even closed myself off to other experiences that I could have been having as a result of that attachment. I was no longer present in other areas of my life that he was not involved in.  I became so attached to the form that was choosing to receive my love and I focused it so outwardly that I think I lost much of myself in it--which is dangerous for relationships because it is hard to continue loving someone once there is no longer a whole and balanced person still there to love...

       Even more so, when I lost that relationship, did I become limited in my ability to form new attachments and share new intimacies.  It was as if just the simple fact of having been loved by that person at that time in my life was not a great enough gift.  I somehow had developed such a narrow perspective on my future that it had all but dissipated completely without him in it.  But why was I thinking this way? After all, I saw him as smart, vibrant, funny, lively, beautiful, and kind.  To have such a person choose to share love with me ought to be viewed as a precious gem of experience and ought to feed your sense of wholeness and worth. But I could not take that and move forward with it. I felt I had lost something irreplaceable and I not only feared new connections in my life because of the outcome, I also withheld myself from giving to them fully. And it was the fullness of giving in the previous experience that had for no short amount of time allowed me to cultivate a fulfilling sense of love and intimacy in my life.

      What I gained from the experience, I never lose, I just carry it with me to a new place, or a new person--a new form.  As Larry puts it, we ought to be thinking that "The feeling of knowing that I'm loved...that sense of intimacy is mine." Even if I end up taking it to a new relationship with a new person, I get to keep that always.  And that is what I can take away from the experience.  And maybe that seems strange to some people. How can you just replace another person? Well, you can't. But at the same time, you cannot control other human beings. And you cannot guarantee the outcomes of your relationships.  So why not celebrate the shape that they take, for the time that they exist, and then bring that healthy presence of self into the next phase... And I don't know if you've looked around lately, but there are a lot of cool people out there if you become receptive to new relationships, whether creative, professional, spiritual, romantic or plain ol' friendly fun.

      When things are going really well and we feel like we are thriving and being rewarded for our endeavors, we may become anxious to "lock it down." But that is not the way life works. Larry moved the discussion of attachment to form into a discussion of good phases and bad phases of life.   And as Larry said, "A good period of time in my life is just a time, a phase, it is not me." If you are really wanting to embrace the fullness of life experience and the magic of the world we live in, you need to acknowledge that your life will not always be easy and rewarding and fluffy and happy in the conventional sense. You will experience very real losses. We all do. You will experience failure and frustration.  But these experiences should be met with the same vibrancy and optimism we take to our successes and gains.  "You are the sum of what you have taken from your experiences. And at any place, at any time in your life, you are capable of being whole."  Love the things that enter your life beyond your control.  You never know what they could produce. And opening yourself up to experience, both good and bad, sweet and painful, is the most nourishing way to live life.

      So we can love a person the best we can and that will always be a good thing. But if we get attached to a particular relationship and person, and that person leaves us or changes the form of the relationship we may feel heartache. As Larry put it "Shift happens." The goal is to "be attached to the feelings [an experience] brings but not to its outside form...detach from the form of it and just revel in the experience of it." And of course, you must be in the moment to experience the moment.  "Attachment to locking down form" in life only leads to disappointment and heartache.  That heartache comes from a desire to keep the form of our love or our relationship exactly the same--which is an aspect of it we cannot control. If instead we are open to change--whether it be a breakup or just a renegotiation of boundaries--and we choose to adapt and continue to love others as much as we can because it feels good, we have a much better chance of avoiding heartache and actually attracting more love than ever before...

      Larry once saw a little girl in public doing that happy but painful sounding squeal thing that little girls do sometimes. He appreciated her life and energy. He also happen to notice that in that moment, her father was not appreciating her. Rather, he was talking on his cell phone, probably arguing with a coworker about something job related. And it occurred to Larry that at that particular moment, the father was missing out on his beautiful daughter's powerful expression of self.  Now, of course, all of us miss being present for rewarding parts of our lives on a day to day basis. And this certainly doesn't make the man a bad person, or even a bad father.  But his daughter will grow fast. She will only be a child for a short time. Then she'll be a teenager. Then an adult. And then she might walk down the aisle. He will blink and before long his baby will be all grown up.  Now her father might feel at some point while he watches her grow up that he missed some special part of it by accident. But dwelling on that only causes him to lose out on current moments because the relationship is there and re-connection with his little girl is always possible. She's just in a different form. Just because he can't go back in time to when she was a squealing eight year old and get off the phone to stand witness, doesn't mean he can't look in her beautiful adult eyes and see that same vibrant energy that has always been there.  Even if you miss one part, it doesn't mean you have lost the relationship. And dwelling on loss impacts your opportunities to receive in the present.

       The real question is whether or not you feel capable of detaching from the forms of good in your life and just embracing the experience of it.  According to Henry Ford, "Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right." My current poetry project has had me at times totally torn up over the outcomes.  Will it turn out the way I intended? Will it be beautiful enough or perfect enough in its form?  Will anyone love or receive my art?  Will it make any money or push me toward a more prosperous and fulfilling place in life? Will I be competent enough to organize such a large endeavor and share it in a more powerful way than I previously thought myself capable of?

       Not knowing how to do something but having the will, knowing you will find a way, is a dive into uncertainty and it requires detachment from the outcome.  It will bring extraordinary growth no matter what happens.  And if you happen to find a way to accomplish something, to be successful in however you choose to define that for yourself, than all the better. But if you only did things you already knew you could do, years could pass and you would never feel different, new, daring, and strong. "Center in on the feelings and experience, rather than the form or the outcome."  And the growth that comes from embracing uncertainty and detaching from outcomes will make you feel as if you no longer have to worry about the past or the future.  They are not the moments that make the greatest difference to you right now.

"If we really dwell on our enjoyment of life, life will bring us more things to enjoy." --Larry

       

Uncertainty, The Doorway, and A Prolific Chance

       The service at Portland Center for Spiritual Living last Sunday was entitled "The Edge of Uncertainty" and based around a book I have never read called The Art of Uncertainty by Dennis Merritt Jones. Uncertainty! The unknowingness of life. The unknowable unknown. The uncertain. Certain coming from certus, meaning sure. Without sureness. To be on the edge of a place without sureness. That, my friends, is the focus! Seeing what we cannot see.

       There was a talk given by Reverend Sharon Foley, in which she excerpted from the book and incorporated Jones's ideas into an interpretation of her own life and of life in general. Rev. Foley is a soulful, intelligent, healthy, and vibrant woman with a talent for being openly generous with her musings on the very essence of life itself.  In short, she is a role model for me!

       

Rev. summarized the concepts of the book as being the following:

1. Life is a mystery
2. Control is an Illusion
3. What matters is how we choose to deal with that

       It was hard to parse out which ideas in the talk were coming straight from Sharon's own mind and which were summarizing the ideas of Jones. So I will just say from here forward that if I quote or give reference to an idea and I do not specify who it came from then it is either from Foley or from Jones. And if I specify that Foley said it, she may have been quoting Jones and I just didn't notice at the time. Whoops. That was me bad.

       Either way what I am doing is ruminating.  Just like after a cow eats  the grass but doesn't chew it all the way, then goes and sits down somewhere----where it comes back up mixed with his own stuff and he chews it again.  :-P Mleck! A bit graphic, but a good analogy for what Reverend Foley may have done with Jones' book  to prepare her talk. And what I am doing now with her talk after having listened to it. :-)

       Sharon observed that a mystery novel keeps you involved and moving through it  for the very reason that is does not give you the answers you are seeking. She called this "living in the awe of the sweetness of the mystery itself." I find that entire phrase strikingly resonant and wise in all its facets. And I like the idea of adopting it as an intention of being.  I have for a bit of time now completely let go of many different intentions that I had originally put on my life. I recognized that many of the ways in which I wanted to control my own life were out of fear and not out of a true desire to be a certain way. 

       For example, I did not in my heart have a true desire to just simply have a job with a good income and a fancy title. But I felt fear that if I did not acquire something along those lines quickly that I would feel like nothing--that I would not respect or appreciate myself as a person and neither would anyone else I cared for or admired. Reading that fear in text, it looks as if it may startle a person, perhaps because that person has felt the very same fear (or an easily relatable one) but they abhor so deeply the idea of feeling unlovable for such a reason that they might read about my fear and reject it, denying it fervently. I would understand such a reaction. I am having it now. And I was having it every time I experienced such a fear in my life, day after day, for years on end.  And that is why releasing such a fear, into the world, like a flock of black birds startled from my heart, releasing the desire to control the outcome of my life, has been so incredibly liberating and uplifting.

       A way to practice living in the awe of the sweetness of the mystery of life (again Sharon's magical words, not mine) would be to continually ask yourself questions about your future throughout the day and respond to those questions by saying "I don't know" and then meditating on how that feels and what that does to your conception of your life. When will I be able to afford to buy a house? I don't know... When will I finally find a person to share my life with that I can love and support unconditionally? I don't know...  When will my car be done getting fixed at the shop? I don't know... What should I do with my free time? I don't know... When will my sick loved one finally pass on to the other side? I don't know... What will I do once they are gone? I don't know. What do I do now...

       It is not about the things you do not have the answers to.  You may truly not know the answer to a lot of the questions that you ask yourself. But what does that process make you think of and what are you feeling more sure of? And if you can't control most things, but you can control yourself and your life, which is yours and yours alone, what will you do with it, right here and now?  And if you have certain aspirations like owning a house or having a fulfilling career or finding a wife, do you truly deeply feel that if those things do not come into your grasp someday, you will have been empty handed all along in your search for them? And do you really feel that you will be a failure if you end up living your life differently from how you originally aspired toward living?  Do you feel that if you do not prove somehow in your outside world that you can have the exact things that you believe that you want you are not full and whole?  Would you want a friend or a loved one to ever feel that way about themselves?

       From my perspective, the way to live in uncertainty is by knowing your own potential to love yourself fully and completely and passing that love forward out into the world without plan or desire for specific outcomes. As long as you are always able to do for yourself and others, whatever other aspirations you have or desires you move toward, whatever unexpected suffering, tragedy, or pain stops you in your tracks. Whatever uncertainty may come in and shift the ground you walk on. Your balance,  your stability, your doorway to stand in is your love...

       Sharon goes on to say that we don't always have to have a definite plan or an attachment to the outcome of something.  She says, "Don't be fearful of the future. Be curious." And yet, we all experience fear as an inevitable part of our lives. Sharon says, "I can feel the fear and do it anyway."  She refers to this as living with the fear as opposed to living in the fear. Not being afraid to say "I don't know," or "I'm not sure." Not stopping yourself from trying to do something because a fear exists in you.  Fear can exist in you without stopping you. In the same way that anger, loneliness, sadness, and all the seemingly paralytic emotions can.

       Once Sharon moves us through these basic ideas about uncertainty, that is when she gets really engrossing.  She says that "The closest to being in control we will ever be is in that moment that we realize we are not."  This is a very powerful statement.  And if I really process it I can feel something deep inside resisting, pushing and fighting back against its very message. I cannot help but want to disagree with that.  And yet, everything I have been experiencing has reinforced this idea as true. I have never felt more powerful than when I let go and release my conceptions about other people and how they should fit into my life. Than when I stop forcing myself to do one thing or another because I think it is what I should be doing and instead start living each day open to the possibility of something I didn't expect. Than when I accept certain things about my present life, set the intention to change them, and then detach from the results of that process--knowing that by turning myself and moving in a better direction, I have already moved forward and whether or not my outside world changes, I have improved myself in a way that is not quantifiable by moving forward in each new moment with an intention, regardless of what may change in the end. 

        To be perfectly honest, that is how I lost weight and got healthier.  I did not do it by telling myself that I would not be happy unless I lost a certain amount of weight. I envisioned a healthy weight for myself and thought that moving closer to that weight would be a positive experience. I did not tell myself that I must absolutely exercise this amount of time each week in this way. I did not judge my body, but simply celebrated any little changes that came and seemed healthy and positive. I did not tell myself I had to eat a certain kind of food or a certain amount of calories.  I gave in to the uncertainty of how much healthier I would become and gave myself over gratefully to the process of learning to become more healthy. And though failure was a possibility, once I forgave myself for that possibility, it never came. And once I reached a weight I wanted to stay, my diet and exercise changed again gradually. And I came to rest in a place of making new decisions each day with a new level of mindfulness. And I make all my decisions related to nutrition and activity as an act of self love. I do not let feelings of guilt or shame or thoughts of criticism enter into my relationship with my food or my physical activity anymore.  And I am happy with how I look and how I feel.

"I feel a lot more like I will than I ever did before." --Sharon

       Turning yourself over the process and possibility of growth and of positive change, and detachment from the ultimate outcome, is a constant challenge.  But it is the best practice I believe we can do for living. Since life will always be uncertain. Always uncertain.

Pamela Joan Dillon  

1988 - ?

"There is an art to living gracefully in uncertainty...Releasing the need 

for control of the outside world."

...

 "It might be that the only thing we have a chance to control is our next thought."

If we really acknowledge 
that freedom of thought, own it,

and breath slowly in it, it is 

a singular and endlessly prolific chance...

The chance to have power over 

my next thought, gives me 

more opportunity, more possibility, 

more immediate wealth and fulfillment 

than anything the outside world could possibly bestow...

Epiphanies about Being in My Home and Being in Public

I was standing outside smoking a cigarette. I'm smoking again recently, even though I don't really want to be a smoker.

But I was on the sidewalk and a man came by walking two dogs. Lately when I smoke I am very conscious of whether or not it is (or may potentially be) bothering someone around me, even strangers. I often hold my exhale until after a stranger passes by. So I put my cigarette behind me and I stepped off the sidewalk to make room for him and his dogs to pass. I felt embarrassed and in the way. I smiled anyway and observed his presence with caring and attentiveness.

He responded with a smile and a hello. And then he said, "How are you today?" And I said "Good. Thank you." And then he passed on to the other side of the sidewalk with his little companions and disappeared....

At that moment, I realized that I was in my yoga pants, a tshirt, and my new favorite slippers, which are dark brown and a bit furry. My hair was still wet from showering...  I noticed that I'm in a "home" level of arrangement because I wasn't thinking of my going out to have a cigarette on the sidewalk as a public experience. This could have contributed to my embarrassment in that moment and vulnerability.

His friendliness spoke to me about how, really, at that moment, the sidewalk was both his public space and my home.  It is an extension of my home territory. And that is how I felt about being out there.  His kindness and forgiveness--because in my mind I felt the need to be forgiven for smoking at that instant--sent acknowledgment of the space toward me. A recognition of its constitution both to me and to him in this happening.  And I felt comforted, to think and to understand. Not because it was important or profound, but because processing relieved my guilt and embarrassment and allowed me to return to just being. In my home and in public at the same time.

Oat and Oak as my Personal Blog

In taking my poetry off of this blog, I hope that I haven't disappointed anyone.

Through the posting process here, I've developed a greater sense of respect and appreciation of my work. And that led me to new steps toward publication and completion of a project. For that reason, I'm extremely grateful to have started it all right in this very place...

I moved away from this blog when I moved forward, but I didn't delete it.  I just took a break from it. And in my reflections I've realized that it's ready to be something new instead.  A personal blog.

Not about poetry, per say. Or creativity, per say. But instead just whatever spills out of my heart and onto a page at any given moment, that I'm comfortable with making public.

So that's what this will be for now. And I hope that it will still be read and catch someone's interest. Even though it won't be in verse. It will usually not have a rhyme scheme, I don't think. And it won't come out in concise and fully concentrated single ideas, but, rather, a stream... how we all live in the space in our minds.