Month: February 2017

I may be forever grateful to Alain de Botton who has shown me the value of flirting. ( onbeing.org/programs/alain-de-botton-the-true-hard-work-of-love-and-relationships/ )   He has helped me realize that we have so sexualized flirting that its broader value has been diminished and hidden.

The common narrative is to shame one another for flirting and discourage its practice.   Once again, the fear of sexuality wins out.

Flirting, rather than abusive, can be a very loving thing to  do.   When I flirt with someone, I signal that “I enjoy your presence.”    I am saying that someone has gotten my attention and that I am responding to their attractiveness.   I notice you, you have all my focus, you give me joy.

I think that I do this kind of flirting habitually, with women and men.    I want to cultivate the combination of openness and responsiveness shown in flirting.    I want to be aware of people I meet and I want them to experience that connection with me.   I want to  enjoy them.   I invite the same kind of openness and enjoyment that I express.

I suppose that with women there may be a footnote message that I might consider them as a sexual partner .   Sometimes it might even be true, but that is way down the list.   More likely is the message that I see them in all their attractive radiance.    And I might want to give someone a hug.    That could be either a man or  a woman.

For me, flirting is a form of loving.   It says “I see you” and I have an open heart to you.   Flirting says that we can play and show our playful self without fear.   It says I am not a threat and I want to know more about you.   I am willing to be  vulnerable with you.    At this time and in this space.

 

 

It is a terrible burden I place on someone I decide to love.  It is almost like a default reaction for me, an easy response, almost “natural”.   I know what it is like to have this burden placed on me, so I am familiar with this experience from both sides.

It has happened to me many times.   The person I love is not standing before me but largely exists in my imagination.   There obviously is some reality to the situation, but I can also be swept away by my imagined lover.   This can be both good and bad.

It can be good if it delivers the exhilaration of finding someone who really understands me, someone who is just what I want in another person, someone who is ideal.    In a  word, someone who is perfect.

It can be bad because it sets an expectation, a standard no one can measure up to.   Reality disperses the hologram of a perfect lover, and disappointment descends.   As I come to recognize who they really are, I realize that they are not the perfect one I fell in love with.   It is easy to hold them responsible for not measuring up to my expectations.

I am most familiar with this dynamic as the one who did not measure up to expectations.   I was not the one that someone fell in love with, and it took time for the reality to set in.  I was not perfect.   I was just good enough.   The glass was not full, just half full.

The cultural pressure to fine the ‘perfect one’ as a beloved is so burdensome on us all.   It has failure written all over it.   There is no hope of joy if expectations are set so high.   Loving based on reality, and a first step must be to get rid of all the fantasy, all the cultural images of a perfect relationship.

I am becoming more aware of how this works,  and I try to break the spell of the imagined beloved.   I am attentive that the perfect one exists only in my imagination, and I try to place that expectation and burden on no one and no one individual.  I  make it a daily practice of approaching people with an open heart and the intention to see them as they really are, not as my imagination pictures them.   Seeing them as beautiful humans means they are all at least good enough.   In this case, that says a lot.

Dreaming has become such a well-tuned skill for me that it can be a successful stand-in for my real life.   Every day, I find myself paying attention to the content of my imagination as though that content is reality and not a fabrication of my own mind.

Many times this takes the shape of what I am planning to do or what is going to happen.   It is almost like the fantasy casts a hologram before my internal attention, and that is what I react to.  If I am thinking that I will work in the garden, I see myself working in the garden and have all the feelings of that experience.   For an instance working in the garden is as real as a dream.

I sometimes begin thinking of what I am going to say or write to someone.    The words form in my mind no less convincingly than if I were actually talking or writing.    My feelings are no less powerful than if the person were standing in front of me or I was sitting at my keyboard.

This is my way of seeing reality through my imagination.   I get hung up in my imagination and that is as far as my attention gets.   My thoughts are led and formed by another part of my mind, and I am usually hardly aware of what is happening with the rest of my body.  In fact, my attention on my fantasy can be so intense that I am oblivious to where my body is, or where I am driving the car.   I am lost in my imagination, my fantasy.

I want to develop my awareness in a way that frees me from the life of a dreamer.   It is, in fact, no life at all because I am not connecting with any reality outside the confines of my mind.

It is actually a good first step if I can become aware how much I am attempting to live in my mind.    I become aware, mindful that my imagination is at work.    I am freed from the illusion.   Then I am able to relax, let go of my imagined world, and be fully engaged with the world around or part of my own body.

It helps me to think of my imagination as being a creation of all those little neurons in my brain.    My neurons make connections and create experiences, either remembered or predicted, and project those on my mental computer screen, my vivid imagination.   My brain is like another sense organ, and can be stimulated just like the other five.   The impulses may be real, but the image they create is not.

If I am not alert, those images in my brain can have all the convincing effect of a real experience.    In reality they are only a new assemblage of my past experiences.    Sometimes useful, but not real.

When I am mindful, when I am aware, I think I am using another part of me.    I don’t know what it is, but it is like looking at my mind’s activity in a mirror or a screen.   I know the dream is only an image, nothing real.

I know that when I am mindful, when I am aware, I am both relaxed and alert, peaceful and vigilant.   I am not lost in my imagination, caught up in my mind.   I am in charge of all my senses and they make me acutely, vibrantly aware of what is happening.   That is no dream.

 

It’s really quite simple.   Breathe.   How many times have I heard someone say, “Take a deep breath”.   Usually that would be at a moment of crisis or critical action.   It would have been a time I needed to summon all my resources to focus on something I needed to do or face up to.

How insightful, sitting there before me all my life.   Could the importance of a breath have been made any more apparent?   Could its power have been made more obvious?

I have finally recognized that breathing means so much more than sucking in air and blowing it out again, although that is a critical part of what needs to be done.   In a very real way, breathing supplies me with oxygen, an important part of the energy I need to stay alive and do things.

However, a “deep” breath does more than give me a good burst of oxygen.   It focuses my mind on what is happening right now.  It puts aside all the distractions clamoring for attention.   My fears are ignored, my anxiety is put on hold, all the activity around me is pushed to the margins.    All my attention is for that instant brought to my deep breath.

First there is a moment of intense relaxation.  Then I am girded, supported, prepared for whatever needs to be done.

How often have I done this simple thing.   Breathe deeply before taking action.  Then I moved on to the next thing and forgot about my breathing.   I had my hand on the door knob to a vast resource, and only made slight use of it.   Breathing is something I do almost constantly, and all I have had to do is pay attention to it.  Not for just a passing moment, but constantly.

This constant awareness is gradually becoming a new habit.   All my mental and physical energy can be gathered together and I become so much more engaged with the present reality.   This can go on, moment after moment after moment.    I know more, I am more aware, I am better prepared to do what needs to be done.

The energy I feel in the moment is so much more powerful.   It fills my whole body, not just my billowing lungs.   I see, I hear, I move, I touch with an intensity I hardly knew in the past.   All this can happen just because I am aware that I am breathing.

Breathing now summons powerful forces that have been lurking inside of me.  My breath becomes more than a gentle breeze coming and going.   It becomes a whirlwind, a hurricane, a tornado of focused energy.

Perhaps it is time for many of us to breathe together.   What an awesome effect that might have.

I have so little notion of where I’ve come from.   I remember my Mom and Dad rather well, but even they are a wispy memory.   I have a sense of their presence, but as time goes on I realize how little I really knew them. Nothing made this more clear than when I found the “secret” photo album my Mom had kept from her early teens until when she married my Dad.   We went over old photos so many times, but she never showed me the photos of the time before marriage.

I knew my two grandmothers for a few years and they died by the time I started school.    Both my grandfathers died in the clutches of alcoholism before I was born.   I only saw one of them, Charles, in a single photo.

There the memory trail ends, almost without a trace.    I have no sense of all those shadowy ancestors from whom I am descended, except that they were all German in their roots, some actually spoke German.

I know they existed because I have a part of them in me.   Part of them still exists.    Every one of them is inside me in the pattern of genes that have shaped this body of mine,   And who knows what else of them lives on in me.   In a very real sense, parts of them live on in me.

I once thought that this kind of inter-connectiveness was a philosophical concept, an idea beyond anything in the world of science or observation.

Now I can see that my connection with everyone that has gone before me, and those who will live in the future is real, observable, not a matter of conjecture.   I can be aware of it in no less confident manner than I can be aware of my hand before my face.

I see that I am linked to all humans by more than culture, activity and intention.   Any aware biologist or physicist can explain how we are all part of one another.  It is an awareness that can also come through meditation.

For so long, my mind has been guided by an attitude of caution and distrust.   This is especially true of how I have seen people.   I have found it easier and not threatening to be curious about other features of the world.   The trees, the mountains, the birds have all been fascinating and I have been much more able to be aware of them with an open mind.   It has been a joy to see them without caution.

People have been another matter.   I’ve been curious about them, but they have been more of a challenge.   People have been a difficult study, and it has taken a special effort to become aware of them and what they are up to.   I’ve not been able to just be aware of them without analyzing them, figuring them out.

Much of this has changed.    I am still wary, cautious and distrustful with some people.   I suppose that is all part of my discriminating mind that I allow some latitude.    But most of the time I have an open mind with people.   I am much more relaxed and more aware.

I speak of this as having an open heart, and what I imply is that my mind is open to be aware of them as they actually are.   I find people much more interesting, I am more curious, and I smile a lot more.

I now know a little about why music has such a deep effect on me.   This is something my mind could have never grasped had I not first experienced it.   Like right now, the penetrating energetic sound of a violin and orchestra (Mendelssohn)  is flowing through my ears and vibrating throughout my body.   Thursday evening I listened to a work by Dvorak, and the feeling of excited, exuberant peace filled me and felt as though it were bursting thru my skin.

This is only happening because I am learning the way of deep awareness.  I am learning to hear with more than my ears.   When I let go of my mental constraints, the path to my heart, my inner being, my whole physical and unseen self is opened.

I think this true of all my senses, but today I am aware of the effect of sound.  My inner self is especially impressed and influenced by the sound of music, no matter how primitive.   When allowed, the vibrations of sound, especially music, resonate and reinforce whatever intentions or dispositions I have internally.   The sound of music encourages me to focus and allow my awareness, my consciousness to travel deep inside me.   For this to happen, my mind, my guardian at the gate, must move aside and allow the passage.

This can be the healing power of music, when music amplifies my body powers of healing.   It can simply be the way to a deep feeling of peace.   The energy that falls on my ears is sent into my inner self, and my whole self is filled with this energy.   Some of this is simply a physical response if I am humming or singing.   My enhanced breathing sends more oxygen to my whole body and all my cells are energized.   My arousal centers are stirred, my whole body becomes awake.

I think musical sound has more than this simple physical effect.  I think the vibrations and waves on the fields around me, when allowed, resonate with the fields of my inner being.    The resulting harmony aligns my whole being with the universe to which I have thus become attuned.    I am more “in tune” with the energy in the fields around me, and that gives me a feeling of great peace.    I experience what it means to be one with the web of life, the web of reality.

Regretfully, I have heard considerable criticism for my humming.   I now think that my humming is a way of aligning myself with the universe, and I want to encourage it, but be discrete.   I want to cast aside the nagging, judging, mind constraints.   But mostly do it when I am alone.

I now understand why my bell is so effective in helping me move so easily to a place of awareness.   The familiar sound of my bell easily travels to that place of inner awareness and energy.   It knows the way very well.   It enthusiastically leads the way to that place, my controlling mind steps aside and my other senses seem to follow the sound of the bell.

I welcome and embrace the power of music.   No matter if it is a sound of sorrow or joy, I know it is a harbinger of peace and healing.

 

 

I love to enter a world where thinking ends.   It is like going into a world of sensory deprivation, except it is my thinking sense that is left outside.   “Wait here”.    “Be still.”  “I’ll be right back.”

My thinking sense is impatient and jealous of its usual role in my world.   It is not always so willing to be left on the shore while I wade into the depth of no-thinking.    It calls out, reminds me it is there, wants me to return.   I simply smile and wade in deeper into my mindless world.

My other senses, however, are thrilled to be in this place.    For them it is a time to accompany me into a timeless world without space.    My body expands with excitement and energy as my other senses swim unrestrained through this mysterious place of nothingness.

This is a place where the darkness has a captivating brilliance.   It is truly a place I can see beyond the glow of the flickering candle just beyond my eyelids.   My sight comes alive without seeing.

This is a place where the rapturous melody of no-sound fills my head and descends through my whole body.    It is the no-sound that waited for me when my bell summoned me to this place where my hearing could come fully alive and alert.

This is a place where all that I feel in my skin is the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of my breath.  All my skin is alive and alert, but feels nothing.    I am warm and relaxed beneath the fleece cloak wrapped around me, but I am not sure that the cloak is really there.   My mind would figure that out, and it is not here.

This is a place where I love to be.  I look forward to the times that I can enter it and leave all else behind.   Strangely, it is a world that gives me a better understanding of what I left behind.    I am better prepared to see all that is beautiful and awe-inspiring.  I better understand and become more aware of everything I put aside to enter it.   It is a world that helps me know better what it is that needs to be done.

As much as I love it, it is still a bit of an alien world for me.   My exit from it is often abrupt and rushed as I re-engage my mind and return to the familiar.

I long for the days when the boundary between the two worlds fades away, when the two worlds combine.    I want my mind to be trained to be helpful and not a distraction from true awareness.    Then my every-day world will be awash with the awareness that is native to my true home.

There is such a thin wall that separates us from one another.    Yet it is formidable enough to create wholly separate universes.   It is a barrier I have sadly given the power to counter the natural pull that  otherwise would draw me together to others.   The natural pull between two entities is fundamental, but I go to such great lengths to resist it.

It is a mystery to me why beings with such great  powers of awareness would create a culture that insists on separating us.   I am a student of years of being taught to fear the unusual and unfamiliar, the other.  I have learned well how to use my primitive reptilian brain to guide me through halls of constraining fear and separateness.   It is easy for me to stay inside of my individual and isolating bubble.  It is safe, but it is also painful because it is against my true nature.   I want a different kind of comfort.

I know that a thin wall shields me from being openly transparent and revealing.   It is a wall that also obscures others behind an opaque boundary that is hard to penetrate.

The actual distance between me and others can be so slight, but we avoid possible contact by touch or meeting eyes.   We can sit together in a great room and together thrill to the musical world of someone like Dvorak.   Then together we exit our seats, all the while never touching one another or meeting eyes, each of us behind our thin wall.

I had such a moment this week when, during a concert, I gently placed my hands on the shoulders of an older woman and squeezed through the doorway that she and her companions were blocking.   I broke the cultural rules by touching her.   She was both startled and apologetic.  I had no regrets and feel we communicated in a respectful and meaningful way, with a high degree of awareness.

I think it is a cautious, anxious criticism to say that someone “has no boundaries”.   I think we have too many boundaries.   The boundaries keep us apart and unaware, and that includes the boundaries we place for touch.   Someone apologizes because they softly bump me as they pass.  I’m not sure that I share the same regret about contact.

Rather than hear someone apologize for touching me as they pass, I would prefer to hear them acknowledge “I’m walking behind you,” or “I bumped your leg.”   No regrets from either of us.  We each become more aware.

I am making it more of a habit to touch someone when I am greeting them.  I greet them with more than a “keep away” handshake.   Instead I touch their arm, their back.    Sometimes I hug them.    I prefer a lingering hug that allows us to take the time to be deeply aware of one another.   Maybe time enough to take a full breath, or maybe even two.

Some walls that separate us may serve some good purpose, but  I think they are all much thicker than is helpful.    I want less boundaries, less structured contact, and more awareness.

 

 

 

I continue to puzzle over what I mean when I talk about having an open heart.   It is an expression that resonates so well with me, but I am at a loss to define it.   It seems to fit so many situations and yet I often think about  what it likely means to me and to others.

I first noticed how well it fit when I began to become more aware of everything around me.    It applied to how I walked through my garden and absorbed my flowers.  It seemed part of my new alert  way of driving along a road that now seemed to be more “there”.   Having an open heart was part of my being among the members of my beloved sangha.    I could feel every one of them sitting around me.

I noticed people getting on the bus in a new way.   They were no longer part of the ambiance but each one became a front and center person.   Each one seemed to step into my personal bubble.   For a moment, they were all I saw and I could feel a little of what it meant to be them.

I often listen to people in a different way, including my two adult sons.   What they say seems more neutral and doesn’t beg for a response from me.   I just listen.    There are some politicians I find it difficult to listen to with an open heart, and I guess that is just how things are.

For the most part, I am able to see and hear people without wanting them to be different.   I want to be with them at that moment, but not want to grasp, control or shape them.   It is a very open feeling of awareness and appreciation without wanting to possess.

For me, this open heartedness has a huge amount of freedom.   I feel much more able to be transparent and even spontaneous.   Everything I feel, I seem to feel in a deeper way.   Feelings resonate through my whole body.   I more often give myself permission to just be myself, which is approximately what I am offering to whomever I am with.

Sometimes my open heart gets me in situations that appear ambiguous to others.   Sometimes I may have been a little too transparent, or too engaging or too enthusiastic.   These are times I have perhaps been more vulnerable than I want to be.   Feelings are much less disguised.   Also, I think I have given genuine messages of interest and attention that are unwelcome.

It is confusing, to me and sometimes to others.   Having an open heart is something like being in love, and for that I offer no apology.   My flowers seem to understand that.   I’m still trying to figure out how it applies to people.