My Life | 1eclecticwriter

Posts Tagged ‘My Life’

Mini-mind

January 6, 2018

It’s another one of those evenings when I find myself playing solitaire, alternating with reading. One of those evenings I have identified as better spent writing (and reading) so that when I look back I will feel I’ve been productive rather than mind-numbed, zoned out, and wasting time.

When the book is particularly engaging, I just read. If I’m not reading steadily, why don’t I just put the book away and find another? Old habit, I suspect, and that internal voice lecturing about finishing what has been started. You’d think I’m old enough to disregard the habit and the voice, but apparently not. Hmm, another pattern to review and see why I am still controlled by it.

That is, in fact, what most of my reflection periods seem to be about these days – reviewing the whys and wherefores of any number of habits of behavior or thought, to consciously decide if they are worth maintaining or if it is time to be freed from them. In many cases, the final outcome is not really either option, but rather a choice to maintain the behavior or way of thinking as a tool to be used at times and ignored at others. In essence I transform the unconscious habit into a chosen action for those situations where it will be truly beneficial.

Follow this lovely road to freedom from the tyranny of mental constructs.

This way to freedom from the tyranny of mental constructs.

Tags:My Life, reading, virtues
Posted in humor, Living and Learning | Leave a Comment »

Looking Ahead to Blessings

December 17, 2017

Having stressed repeatedly to different clients the importance of a personal goal, apart from improved health which most of them seek, and having heard my husband reiterate this same objective to his parents as an key contributor to continued energy and engagement despite the various pains and slowly of age, I am guilty of failing to keep my own personal goals updated. The result is that lately I’ve been feeling weighed down by all the “have to’s” of my daily life, and also as though so much of my core energy is being expended on those requirements that I am simply depleted and have “nothing left” to expend on enjoyment.

To some extent, the energy drain is unavoidable – there’s only so much reserve left in this aging body, and so very much that it is being required to get through by way of work, housekeeping, support of mate and extended family, and the myriad chores of daily living. But what I recognize I’ve shorted myself on – and also recognize as a frequently encountered shortcoming in all those people whose work or life roles fall under the heading of care-giving – is making sure our activities that refill the reserves get as much priority as do our daily duties.

So my personal goal that is being re-established as I write, is to assure that I do refill the cup with activities that give me pleasure in and of themselves. My daily spiritual practice is one of those that has not been neglected; it is absolutely necessary (but apparently not sufficient yet) for me to maintain at least a semblance of balance, and a comfortable engagement with my outer life. I’ve cut way back on attention to the broader political and social scene, the hysterical reactivity of which is totally exhausting and debilitating. I continue to distance myself from whatever will trigger the “been there, done that, didn’t think I’d have to do it again in my lifetime” discouragement of seeing so much hard work, and advances toward a kinder and more caring society, erased and replaced with unfettered greed.

My work as a Medicaid-program Care Coordinator is rewarding, and as jobs go, just about ideal. I get to work from home (no daily commute), see my clients in their homes, support people toward improved health and management of their lives, experience directly their appreciation and pleasure as their circumstances improve, and know that I am functioning as part of the solution rather than being part of the problem. My home life is all that anyone could ask for, and more sustaining than I ever imagined I would enjoy. Overall, my health is apparently still fine, with only this irritating decline in energy and will that I need to sort out.

I don’t have the answer(s) yet. Only some hints as to where to look. For the physical depletion, I’ve resumed taking an adrenal supplement recommended to me some years ago, and it does seem to be helping. For the psychological, I’m looking to specific activities that I’ve enjoyed in the past and have not been participating in lately, notable among those being more regular blog posts.

I’m also taking seriously the increasing evidence that substantive ‘screen time’ alters mental functioning. My work requires a good deal of computer data input. Keeping up with news summaries on my phone (we don’t have TV) adds to the screen time. Writing will do so also, but more productively than the hours I have lately been spending in somewhat mindless Solitaire or Scrabble. I am undefeated in Free Cell and win better than 97% of hard level games against the computer in Scrabble. So what. Neither accomplishment is nourishing me. At best they have provided a sort of ‘zone out’ from thought, akin to ‘stopping the mind’ in meditation. I can do better, focusing my attention where the inflow of energy will be beneficial, not merely neutral.

I have yet to understand what those targets of focus will be, other than a continued extending of my attention to spirit. But now, the goats have escaped their fence and need to be corralled, and dinner needs to be put into the oven. I am reassured by the knowledge that when I pose a question in my daily spiritual practice, I will receive needed answers, including on how to refresh my psychological energy. I am so very grateful to have that guarantee in hand!

May these blessings be, for all who seek them.

Tags:contemplation, goats, life energy', My Life, resolutions
Posted in life wisdom, Living and Learning, the writing experience | 2 Comments »

Hope Less, Be More

November 12, 2017

I’ve been trying to decide if I can write this reflection meaningfully, without first including the whole of Leslie S. King’s latest post, “Give up Hope” on The Inner Adventure. Finally I’m just going to start writing, refer to the lines that are most relevant to me at the moment, and encourage you to read her poem/post in its entirety for the images that may be more salient for you.

I have felt, of late, like the proverbial round peg in a square hole. Inundated with unpleasant, incessant, noisy and noisome news, arrogant attitudes, and pestering financial demands to support every cause that is under attack, every candidate promising to make things different/better for someone, somewhere. Trying vainly to balance quiet reflection and inward focus with the persistent shaming of “we have to resist”, “we have to fight back”, “we cannot afford to be cynical, or tired, or detached” from what is happening in politics and society, on TV and in sports, in all the venues that take place out there in time and space.

How does one not react to outrageous public events? How achieve living fully in the present, when that present is perceived to be so ugly that one’s only wish is to escape it, shut it out, be other-where?

Enter Leslie’s poem, and the line that has echoed in my mind as the key to reestablishing balance, “When you quit hoping the rain will stop, you pull out your umbrella.”

Hope entraps the attention into the time track, pushing us into living for a future that, one hopes, will be different and better than the present one is experiencing. Hope immobilizes. When I hope the weather will be fine tomorrow so I can exercise outdoors, I do not seek means to exercise on this damp and windy day, indoors.

Sitting and reading, instead of exercising, I come across another line, this one in the novel The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny, an extraordinarily skilled writer I’ve only recently discovered. “I just sit where I’m put, composed of stone, and wishful thinking.” Two very different sources giving me the same message – wishing and hoping are not the positives they are so often presented as being.

A pessimist, expecting the worst, does not escape the immobilizing effect of seeming to live in an as yet unrealized future. An optimist can appear by contrast to be in a better space – but that is an illusion. Our minds may expect the best, or the worst, but in either case they are ignoring the present, the only moment where Being exists. In Being is freedom, wisdom, love, infinite capacity for anything and everything to manifest, and also an open umbrella, sheltering and protecting from adversity.

Knowing this Truth does not mean I am able to make it my everyday reality. I get caught, distracted, tugged into the noisy flow of mental concepts, wound tight and held fast by hope, anticipation, expectation – choose a word, they all essentially mean being dissatisfied with the present moment. Moment after moment of dissatisfaction turns into a life of regret, broken only rarely by flashes of contentment. Not how I want to perceive my life, whenever the end of it looms imminent and it becomes time to make final assessments.

The standard advice for countering discontent it to count blessings. Quite a fine thing to do, certainly, but still a mental exercise often accompanied by trips into the past and renewed hopes for the future. Back on the time track, no longer present with the moment that is here, now, pure essence without any overlay of mental constructs.

And they are so subtle, those mental constructs! What can be wrong with aspiring to______? (Fill in the blank with any achievement you choose). How conditioned we are, from earliest childhood, to think in future tense. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” we ask of even the smallest of nursery schoolers. Rarely do we say to them, “Are you enjoying what you are doing in this moment, right now, right here?”

The Brutal Telling also quotes Pascal, “Most unhappiness comes from not being able to sit quietly in a room.” Sitting quietly, mind still or focused closely on what is immediately present, is a surprisingly rare skill, at least in the busy West where “doing” is given so much more respect than “being” (Yes, I hear you singing dear friend, doo be doo be doo). Despite the spread of various forms of meditation and Buddhist practice, despite the growing number of participants practicing contemplation on my spiritual program MasterPath, despite the Quakers who do sit silently in a room seeking “that of God within”, the predominant direction of attention in our culture is outward, looking back to learn lessons, forward to aspire for a better life.

I can’t help but feel that we are, collectively, rushing directly toward unhappiness and away from the only place where lasting joy can be found – right here, right now, in this moment. I know what it is to feel the joy of now, I have learned to expand now into what the clock measures as periods of time, but I recognize how limited my skills are, how much I still have to learn if I wish – and I do wish it – to remain permanently in that joy, permanently in now.

The first new skill clearly involves learning to revel in, instead of fear, the instruction to “abandon hope all ye who enter here”. Abandon hope, not because I am doomed but for the positive goal of knowing my Self as divine in this moment, complete and splendid right here, right now. Safe and sheltered whether I am in glowing sun, or serenely under an open, shining, divine umbrella.

Tags:Buddhism, Leslie S. King, Louise Penny, MasterPath, My Life, Quakers
Posted in life wisdom, Living and Learning | 2 Comments »

Forgiveness?

August 6, 2017

This post may cost me followers, maybe even friends, but nonetheless I feel compelled to speak my mind on the subject of so-called Christian forgiveness.

A number of different situations have cropped up for me recently, to bring my attention to the topic of forgiveness, what it entails, and what preconditions may be necessary for it to occur. As background, let me say that I was raised in an ethical Jewish tradition, but outside of a Jewish community, such that my classmates and friends were all Christian. This was back in the days when public school classes began not just with a Pledge of Allegiance, but also with prayers, which the teacher usually closed with “In Jesus’ Name” and I silently said “Cross that last line out, God.”

My maternal grandfather was an immigrant from Russia in the early 1900’s who became one of the founders of the Labor Zionist party in the U.S., friends with Golda Meir and Chaim Weizmann and other early supporters and leaders of what became the Israeli state. He sent my mother to school in what was then still called Palestine, and she was also an active voice for the creation of a Jewish homeland. During my elementary school years, she taught Hebrew in an after school program at a Jewish center, leaving me to come home from school to practice my piano lesson, do housework and prepare supper. My present skill with, and enjoyment of, cooking surely dates back to those meals.

My mother was highly and expressively critical of all religious extremism, Orthodox Jewish as much as Christian or Muslim. She saw the Jewish Orthodox community as actively harming the goals and functioning of secular Israel, as readily as she pointed to the hypocrisy of “Bible thumping Christians” who preached forgiveness but still unforgivingly blamed Jews as “Christ killers.”

From that early conditioning, I moved on to exposure to different Eastern religions, became comfortable with Quaker values and silent worship, and also with Zen Buddhism, finding myself finally, in 1993, a student of MasterPath and happily centered in an unfolding, ever expanding understanding of basic spiritual Truth. As my inner education has proceeded, layer after layer of mental conditioning has been peeled away, sometimes quickly and easily, at other times only after considerable turmoil.

My consideration of the meaning of forgiveness falls in the latter category. I have thought that I’d come to terms with where I stand in relation to “letting go and letting God” as the Quakers express it, but after some months or even years, a situation would crop up to show me I am not yet free of anger and resentment over the way some people have behaved toward me. One friend recently forwarded me one of those picture quotes that make their way around the Internet, this one stating “I’m not Jesus, so I don’t easily forgive, and I don’t have Alzheimer’s, so I don’t forget.” It struck a chord in me, and started me once more into an on-going contemplation of the meaning of forgiveness.

I’m far from conversant with the New Testament, although one cannot live in a nominally Christian country without coming to know bits and pieces of the Bible which get quoted in all sorts of context. I also had an English literature teacher in college who insisted one could not understand most American and European literature without having a familiarity with both Old and New Testament, and who therefore required that we all read substantial chunks of the Bible in order to pass his class. What stays in my memory, in the context of forgiveness, is the blessing (or is it an injunction?) to “go forth and sin no more.” I hear this as specifying that to be forgiven one must change.

“I’ve apologized so you must forgive me” doesn’t cut it. An apology, unaccompanied by meaningful change in conduct, is nothing more than empty words from an arrogant and demanding ego. That is probably why Twelve Step programs include making amends as a crucial step – not just apologizing but doing what one can to set things right – i.e. demonstrating changed behavior. If I am sorry for something I’ve done that hurt another I make certain not to repeat the hurtful behavior. I expect the same from others – and I dismiss as inappropriate, even offensive, those “good Christians” who preach that I “should” forgive just because someone apologizes.

There are profoundly good, caring and sensitive people of all faiths. Most of these, in my experience, have no need to promote themselves by their religious affiliation. Their quiet daily actions speak loudly on their behalf. The more forcefully a person insists that they are acting from Christian, or Muslim, or Zoroastrian or Hindu or any other religious teaching, the more certain I am that the speaker is likely to be disrespectful of others, unforgiving and self-righteous while demanding that their own actions be forgiven “in the name of” whichever form of God they worship.

I suspect this topic of forgiveness remains pertinent to me just now, not only because of a personal, family-related situation, but because of the recent exacerbation of offensive, intolerant, “my way or the highway” conduct by self proclaimed good Christians on the national political scene who mistakenly insist that they are merely returning the nation to its origins. Yes the founders of the United States were almost exclusively Christian men, but they were adamantly opposed to having any form of religion imposed by civil authority. The Puritans fled dictates of the Church of England. William Penn established a Quaker colony. Jewish immigrants created a center in earliest New York city. The Constitution clearly established the separation of church and state, giving everyone the right to worship as he (or she) pleases. Too many current politicians seem to have conveniently forgotten our founders’ emphasis on a secular state. They are instead critical, judgmental, demanding that law follow their particular interpretation of Christian values, and in the process totally betraying those values.

I readily admit that I shut down as soon as someone says “the Christian thing to do”, when they mean the caring thing, or the thoughtful thing, or the right thing to do is X, Y or Z. I make a sharp distinction between someone explaining a teaching of their religion and then showing how they implement it, and another person who says this or that is a religious requirement that everyone MUST be made to obey, often without manifesting the appropriate associated behavior.

Which brings me back to forgiveness, and my inescapable conclusion that it you want me to forgive you, change your conduct before you approach me, and when you approach me, ASK, don’t demand or otherwise make it my responsibility to bring about a change in our relationship. You caused the rupture, you need to figure out how to repair the wounds. My role is to be open to be approached, and willing to engage in a cooperative effort to heal the relationship.

Not bad advice for the national political scene as well.

Tags:Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Israel, MasterPath, My Life, Palestine, relationships, religion, values
Posted in life wisdom | 5 Comments »

Healing Wounds

July 13, 2017

I just bought some spoons on Ebay. No big deal, you might think. But to me it is a big deal. Not that the spoons were very expensive; they weren’t. Not that I’ve been looking for them for years and finally found them – I identified what I needed and found them in a matter of hours. The big deal is, really, why I didn’t do so years ago.

You see, I’ve done without those spoons for a good ten years now. Each time I wanted to set my table for company, I had to mix flatware patterns – my own Oneida Yankee Clipper and a very different design inherited from my father. Often, I would opt for consistency and use his flatware, always with a “noodge” of anger that I was not setting the table to my personal taste.

You may be wondering why my own set of flatware was missing spoons. Is my answer explicit enough when I say that well in the past I shared my living space with a heroin addict?

I didn’t know the name of my own flatware pattern. I did look on line at one time for current Oneida styles and didn’t see anything resembling my set. But more relevantly, I clearly wasn’t ready to let go of the anger and resentment that flared every time I needed a spoon and had to hunt through the drawer for “my”one remaining spoon to stir my coffee or to serve up my morning yogurt.

I’ve been processing my relationship with anger during morning walks. There are a couple other circumstances that also bring up a bitter resentment, if I let myself think about the ugly behavior of the individuals involved. So mostly I don’t dwell on them. Fortunately – or not – the other two people who can trigger my anger do not have spoons or forks or clothing or any tangible item in my household to bring them to mind. I can successfully not think of them for days or weeks at a time.

My morning walking contemplation has centered around what aspect of my ego is so determined to hang onto anger? And what aspect of my better self is being suppressed by my ego? I don’t have answers I can put into words. I can only look at the answer that emerged as my actions this evening – Google Oneida flatware, patiently go through the 25 pages of options on the Find My Pattern website, give a quiet Eureka! when I came to Yankee Clipper, then Google that pattern and find several lots of spoons for sale quite reasonably on Ebay. They’re ordered and should arrive within a week. No more resentment when I want a spoon in the morning, nor when I next set the table for company. How simple – yet clearly not simple or it wouldn’t have taken me so very many years to do.

Now I need to open my mind and heart, to be shown what similar steps will allow me to let go of the other two nubs of resentment which are much more recent, and do not have tangible “fixes” to implement. Righteous anger has its place. Not all actions can or should be forgiven. Deciding what is and what is not forgivable is a very individual and personal task. Maybe the best one can expect of oneself is to set the irritant (and the person if that is the source of the irritation) aside and move on.

Looking out for the small cottontail rabbit who has been hanging out where I walk, enjoying the play of sun and cloud over the mountains, greeting the neighbors who drive past me in the mornings, being present with the moment are all preferable to dwelling on what an angry voice would say to those who have abused me, should we meet once more. I can’t do anything about them being who and what they are. I can choose what I give my attention and energy to. I’m happy to choose purchasing spoons and savoring my surroundings as I walk.

Note: I wanted to post a picture of my Yankee Clipper spoons but haven’t yet sorted out how to import and store a photo on Chromebook. So much to learn, so little time to learn it.

Tags:ebay, Google, My Life, oneida, relationships
Posted in life wisdom | 2 Comments »

Moving Forward

June 11, 2017

If I were required to give a theme to my present set of priorities, it would be what I’ve taken as the title of this post – moving forward. Not necessarily by conscious choice, and not without some rather bumpy road to traverse. Rather, recognizing that the bumps are jostling my state of equilibrium and pushing it towards a new place, way of perceiving/being.

Not coincidentally, this is my marriage anniversary period, and also the start of a new way, for me, of accessing the “larger world” of technology, Internet, etc. Coming from a weekend MasterPath seminar with my spiritual teacher into a dramatic challenge, on Monday, of the theft of my purse, with driver’s license, credit cards and phone necessitated an immediate implementation of the lessons reinforced on Sunday. Regaining the critical items – driver’s license and phone – by Wednesday, through the attentiveness and caring of three strangers, demonstrated to me how protected I am from any serious harm. Experiencing also the thoughtless and even ugly corporate responses of Walmart, MVD and La Quinta has pointed me toward engagement with “speaking Truth to power” that I have avoided in recent years. Moving forward in this arena means being clear in my intention, such that there is no anger in my communication. I’m not out to force changes that somehow “put things right”, only to point out clearly the values which are being trashed by blind corporate policy. If changes result, find. If they do not, so be it. I’m not attached to the outcome, only to the truth.

Being without my phone for most of a week was enlightening. I was made tangibly aware of the extent to which I have come to rely on it for access to news, as well as for the distracting pastime of playing various solitaire game. I already knew that I needed better access to email and various internet sites – including this one – and that I would have to get some sort of replacement for the recently deceased laptop I had been using. Without really any research, I went to Best Buy and came out with a Chromebook. It fits my financial limitations, and seems to actually fit my needs well, if I can just figure out how it works! Being old school and accustomed to printed materials, I feel the lack of a manual to teach me how to use such a different device. It helps that I’ve decided it’s about half way between a smart phone and a laptop. At least I have a frame of reference for thinking my way through accomplishing necessary functions. I have not yet figured out how to print a web page, if that is even possible? Yes, I know I can access manual sections on line, and will have to do so for the time being. And I can also use my husband’s computer (when he’s not busy on it) to find and print the manual. So why do those options feel unsatisfactory? Obviously, because they represent yet another way in which I am being pushed to move forward, away from familiar methods of doing things and onward into the new world order.

Caring without being attached, trusting without fear of being misled, speaking out without anger or other negative emotions, communicating clearly but without engagement with results… all avenues for moving forward into yet another new way of being, implementing yet another level of the fascinating path of spiritual evolution.

Thanks be.

Tags:life learning, MasterPath, My Life, technology
Posted in life wisdom, Living and Learning, technology | 1 Comment »

Taking it Easy

May 27, 2017

I’m starting on a ten-day vacation, after a seemingly unending, difficult, bleak and cold eight months that challenged my ability to continue manifesting my values. As recently as five days ago we still needed a fire in the wood stove at night. If I follow the political news, I am kept in a permanent state of aggravation, as much with those who espouse my own values as with those who do not. One side offends my concepts of what is simple decency, the other comes off as stridently demanding and belittling of everyone who does not follow a path of virulent resistance. While I agree that one cannot compromise with destructive energies and must stand firmly against them, I do not agree that the best way to resist is to refuse to be educated on the steps that negative other is taking. Not participating in a bipartisan committee, for example, makes absolutely no sense to me. Forcing government to a halt hurts everyone and, based on past experience, builds resentment against the entity that causes the work stoppage.

Yes I am appalled that a candidate can slug a reporter who asked a legitimate question, and still be elected. But I am equally appalled that an organization which bills itself as supportive of democratic action would try to shame someone into providing it with financial support, as though shaming is not also an assault.

So for my vacation I am not only taking time off from work. I will be taking time off from reading news headlines, and from the swamp that our national political life has become. Balancing home chores with days of travel, seeing some of the extraordinary beauty of the Southwest where I’m happy to live, and balancing that with a visit to the unique artificiality of the city which stole its name from the one near my home. Las Vegas has appropriate meaning in New Mexico, surrounded as it is by rolling prairie. The Meadows doesn’t describe the desert from which gambling has pulled a neon mecca for greed.

Achieving, maintaining, exhibiting, respecting balance in all aspects of living is what has been most challenging for me this past winter season. I’ve seen myself pushed to choosing an extreme action, without realizing until it has happened what concepts caused that intolerance. I’m prepared to stand by the choices my actions manifested, although I am also aware that no choice of how to live is irrevocable.

Having a fair amount of time for “being” rather than “doing” in this short vacation period assures me of the opportunity to examine the effects of some choices and alter them or not, as a calmer and more balanced perspective dictates.

I do wonder why it’s so challenging to retain a sense of balance, to look before leaping, and to act rather than react?

laidback Undoubtedly Mr. Patience Kat has the answer.

Tags:My Life
Posted in life wisdom, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Out of the Depths

April 22, 2017

I’ve come to realize there’s a subtle dynamic at work behind my long absences from posting. I first thought it was just a function of the many other demands on my time: an often 50 hour a week job, keeping house in a still new marriage, guaranteeing my own needed “down” time, assuring enough together time with my husband, and looking after our growing collection of animals. I’d thought I was, as I put it once, “too busy living to reflect on that living.” That may be true, but it is now apparent to me that it is not the whole truth. And in this age of alternate facts, blatant lies, and outright perjury, it is vital to me to be unflinchingly and unfailingly truthful.

I follow, very much enjoy, and not coincidentally frequently agree with, the blog Musings From a Tangled Mind. But I cannot conceive of myself ever following that pattern, with daily posts (sometimes twice daily) about anything and everything that arises in the tangle. I have the thoughts, I just can’t imagine myself sharing them.

It’s not just a generational issue, although I’m aware that the age groups beginning, some 20 years younger than I, do have a different ethic around filtering – or rather not filtering – their thoughts. There’s another more subtle dynamic at work that has become clear to me as I live with and beside my husband, and observe both of us in social settings or on the phone. He talks easily, especially in groups of his country mates, and I sit silently except when I have something to offer that puts a different slant on the discussion. He chats freely by phone with friends across the globe, whereas I prefer to text hellos to those not near at hand.

A couple evenings ago I spent over an hour on the phone with an acquaintance, answering her questions about my employer and the way my job is done, to help her decide if she wanted to apply for a similar position in her corner of our large state. My husband was amazed that I was on the phone for so long, commenting that there is only one person, a special quasi-daughter, with whom he has known me to talk on the phone at length. “You must have really wanted her to join the company” was his observation. I do think she’d enjoy the work, but I also want her to have a realistic picture of what it entails.

Back to my point – I have only just begun to peel off layers in order to get to the nub (in the onion, the sweetest part) of why I fall into long blogging silences. Outermost layer is the obvious outer, daily life demands on my time. Next down is what I perceive to be a reluctance to air matters I’ve not thought/felt my way through completely. Below that is recognition of a personal style of reticence somewhat at odds with the “spill your guts and let it all hang out” expectations of social media.

But there are more layers, and I’m aware I have not yet identified them all.

I used to write – usually letters to one special friend – in order to clarify my mind on a topic, or to help me sort out my feelings. What would stay roiled internally could be perceived clearly in the act of explicating it to someone else. Not infrequently those essays were adapted into blog posts as well. I’ve not written, not needed to write, such clarifying documents since having the benefit of a caring and able listening partner in the house with me.

I also used to write to create a sense of connection with others – reaching out from my quiet sideline position to drop comments into the broader stream of national conversation. Now my job puts me into close, often highly personal, interaction with a wide range of other types of people, plus I’m still learning the ways of a spouse from a radically different cultural background. I have all the “connection” anyone could want, and then some.

But I do miss my exchanges with those distant readers who had become friends through our process of commenting on, and knowing something about each other’s lives through, our posts.

Back to the onion… Letters to clarify thinking or feelings meant using writing as a means to better understand my mental and emotional states of being. As I have proceeded deeper into my spiritual life, it has become less salient to me to give attention to those states. I do need to recognize their antics in order to let them go, but I don’t need to dwell on them, seeking understanding. Staying focused on a more purely spiritual state of being allows me to function effectively in my daily life without wasted energy. Insights arise, are recognized and usually shared with my spouse, and then let go rather than enlarged upon in a blog post.

So what has now changed? Perhaps a sort of “coming out the other side” of introspection, to feel at least occasionally like sharing the insights for no other purpose than just to put them “out there”. They may not be profound, nor necessarily of broad interest, certainly they won’t be “well thought out and reasoned”, but I suspect it is nonetheless important to share them. Because whatever arises from Soul and spirit to make its way through our mental and emotional barriers has a deeper meaning for someone, somewhere.

I seem to have a knack, dealing with my clients at work, for reframing or restating their issues in a way that helps them see themselves or their problems differently and more productively or positively. It seems to me to be time to use that same skill in this blog, reframing my occasional insights to have broader-than-just-my-life potential. I’m not sure how it will go – but rely on my readers to let me know. Thank you in advance for your comments.

And to start the new process… I just encouraged my husband to choose a topic for his “argumentative essay” assignment in his English Composition 2 class, that is unique to his experience rather than one – like climate change – that has been widely discussed and reviewed. My reasons included that his proposed Africa-based topic would be more familiar to him and more easily argued, as well as having more accessible and concrete data points to use in constructing his argument. But I also admit to a mischievous interest in helping him demonstrate to his “new diploma clutched tightly in her hand” young teacher that there remains much in this world that she does not know. There is more to skilled writing than following a standard format, and there is vastly more to teaching than setting rigid standards and marking down for every small deviation from manuscript formatting.

Writing, whether an English class essay or a blog post, is communication and its import lies in communicating content: ideas, perspectives, insights, analyses or persuasive arguments.

So does that mean my long silences have indicated that I have nothing to communicate? No, I don’t think so. That I have not been willing to make the effort? Perhaps. That I’ve been resisting fulfilling my role as a channel for spirit? Probably.

If my resistence is the true core of the onion, I know just what to do now. Admit my stubbornness, give over the resistance and just get one with what’s expected from me. So be it. Amen. Baraka Bashad.

May these blessings be.

Tags:balance, communication, generational differences, lessons, My Life, personal style, spiritual development, writing challenges
Posted in life wisdom, the writing experience | 2 Comments »

Patience and Attention

January 31, 2017

The two new members of our family are Akirri, a now-four-month old Akita/German shepherd cross puppy and Miss Kitty, also about four months old and now to have her name enhanced to Miss Patience Kitty.

As the picture posted a few days ago clearly shows, she’s a fraction of Akirri’s size, but in little over a week she’s established ground rules for their interactions and is “on top” of the relationship.

Akirri, which means Christmas in my husband’s tribal language of Ngie, is smart and learning to sit, and stay down (not jump up on me with muddy paws) but has not yet made much progress with ‘come’. Particularly not when the chickens are clustered to be fed and it’s such fun to run through them and watch them scatter.

Miss Kitty, on the other hand has already successfully trained me to have her breakfast tin of food open and ready for her no later than 7:30 AM, and her evening dry ration on her plate by 5:30. Her added name of Patience does NOT come from her attitude toward being fed. Rather, it’s a reflection of the way in which she tolerates being turned into a play toy by Akirri, emerging often from the encounters wet from doggy kisses, and looking slightly chewed over. When she’s had enough, she freezes in one place, hunkered down beneath Akirri and no longer fun to play with. Indeed, it’s as though she’s recognized that being boring is a sure way to cause Akirri to turn elsewhere for amusement. Looked at from a slightly different point of view, Miss Patience Kitty clearly knows and implements the basic lesson of disciplining – ignore the misbehavior and reward the good behavior and you’ll fairly quickly have a well behaved… animal or… child… or person?

I’ve been considering whether there isn’t a parallel to be drawn between the training going on just outside my front door (on the enclosed porch and the larger yard and pastures), and what might be effective on the political scene. Not that unconstitutional edicts can be ignored exactly, but they can simply not be followed, as has already happened with the scientists who will not be gagged, thet acting attorney general who determined to follow the Constitution, and the federal judges who have countermanded the recent “barred from entry” immigration edict.

Patience Kitty has other means to dominate Akirri. She easily achieves heights that put her out of Akirri’s reach. And she’s able to fit into or thorough small places where Akirri cannot follow. When she’s ‘had enough’ she slips through a narrow opening into a large enclosed area under the porch, and clearly enjoys taunting Akirri from her impenetrable safety zone.

So far, neither of the two has used her “weapons of war” – sharp doggy teeth and strong jaws, or equally sharp and lightening quick claws. Hopefully, they’ve already formed enough of a bond that this ‘nuclear option’ will not be called upon.

A line in a book I just finished (Deborah Crombie’s “A Finer End”) resonated with my concerns for “the times we are facing”. The story is set against the sense of ancient powers that pervade Glastonbury England, and how that elemental energy can interact with human failings to produce violence. An historian and expert on paganism, Goddess worship, and their integration into very early Christianity was asked in the narrative, why anyone would want to upset the balance of the powers of light and darkness. The line that caught me was her answer, “I am a Jew my dear. During the war I lost every member of my family to the camps. If you ask me what I believe, I can tell you that those atrocities were an incontrovertible example of the power of chaos, magnifying and abetting a very human evil.”

Akirri charging at the chickens generates chaos. Their fluttering panic encourages her to charge and charge again. Patience Kitty sheltering in place quickly stops Akirri’s rough-housing.

Strident panic, and flurries of media attention, in response to every new use/misuse of power would seem, similarly, to lend authority to their author. Calm counter measures akin to sheltering in place – standing witness, standing up for truth and our constitutional values, walking out of a hearing to prevent it going forward, would seem to be appropriate responses well worth pursuing.

My spiritual teacher tells us that “attention is food”. Give your attention to what you want to manifest in your life, and take your attention away from what you want to diminish and disappear. Our present national fearless (fearful? fearsome?) leader has made it plain how essential attention is to him. He must have his daily, even hourly doses of it.

So, in addition to taking steps to de-fund what we do not support (and pay for what we want – money=attention=food) should we not also be insisting that the news media, which most immediately direct our attention, give that attention to the actions, events, people and values we consider important? They contributed largely to the present chaos, giving undue attention to every showy bit of bluster in the name of reaching a wider audience and hence making more money. They surely have a responsibility now to introduce some balance, to try to undo some of the damage they were active participants in creating.

I can only imagine the tantrums that would be thrown if, for merely a day, there were a total media black-out on everything originating in the new presidential regime. I would love to imagine the tantrums being thrown because the press (and the social media) did indeed have the patience and courage to impose such a blackout!

Trump et al are doing their best to muzzle all opposition. How would they behave if given a taste of their own medicine? I’d love to find out.

Tags:adages, balance, Cameroon, communication, Deborah Crombie, MasterPath, media blackout, My Life, Ngie, parental conditioning
Posted in Living and Learning | Leave a Comment »

A Way Forward

January 27, 2017

One of my followers, and fellow bloggers, recently inquired after my well-being, not having seen a post from me in quite some time. I appreciate the concern – am in general okay – but recognize that in subtle ways I have not been myself, or at least not the self who reflects and blogs.

Now that I’m coming out of the blank space, I can see that it was:
1) real (not an alternate fact),
2) somewhat akin to depression,
3) also at least partially rooted in a doctor-ordered change in thyroid treatment,
4) definitely influenced by political ugliness in both the U.S. and Cameroon,
5) full of flashbacks, or recognition of old patterns and feelings that no longer have a place in my current life, and
6) clearly an opportunity to process and release residual mental patterns that do me no good.

I know that some of the threads I pulled from the tangle included a deep anger that our society still values a sorry excuse for a man over an intelligent and accomplished woman – an anger that eased on January 21st.

Another thread was a profound fatigue, best reflected in one of the signs carried on January 21st by an older woman. “I can’t believe I’m still protesting this shit.” Really, do I have to do this all again, fifty years later?

Yet another thread was a vivid remembrance of my college years, in the infamous sixties, marching in protest against the war in Vietnam and in support of civil rights, dating an African fellow student and later marrying a Black American, living integration on a day to day basis at a time when that marriage was still considered illegal in several southern states. Today we have an Oscar nominee in a new movie about the legal case that ended miscegenation laws, but also an upsurge in attacks on mixed race couples and their children, legitimized by the new administration’s ugly rhetoric.

Yet another thread from the past woven into the present was my own feeling of limitation in what I could say or do to protest domination by values with which I profoundly disagreed. In my youth, that limitation resided in the fact that my father was an officer in the nation’s diplomatic corps and I was made to understand that my conduct could not undermine his position and responsibilities. He had written reports in the mid-1950s, warning of the quagmire into which the U.S. would fall if it followed the course of action then being dictated in southeast Asia. He was ignored, and then told to stick to economic reporting. He was back Stateside, and assigned to an academic setting, when I attended the very first march on Washington to protest the start of the Vietnam War. He warned me to be very careful where I went and what I said, just starting out on my working life, in order not to prematurely curtail my options – and also in order not to bring more censure down on him.

I was not then, and am still not now, a demonstrator in the public crowd sense. I tend rather to make my statement of values in the choices of how I live my daily life. I’ve become comfortable having friends from a variety of backgrounds, working in a helping profession (Care Coordinator for an MCO with Medicaid recipients as my caseload), married now to a Cameroonian studying here, and living in a “rural frontier” community in a state known for its multicultural heritage (Hispanic, Native America, Anglo and with a small but historically significant black population) that has also welcomed many Vietnamese and, lately, Tibetan and Middle Eastern immigrants.

I began to come out of my blank space when I read that my college Swarthmore, in Pennsylvania, has declared itself a sanctuary school. Santa Fe (NM), near my home, has declared itself committed to remaining a sanctuary city. I wear a safety pin on my outer garments ever since I learned of the act as a symbol that others, of whatever type, are safe with me. It seems that I’ve needed time to find my way into the acts that allow me to express my resistance to the present state of the nation. Because I am under constraints now, as I was all those decades ago. Again now, as then, people whom I care about can be harmed if I become too outspoken.

Am I truly having to go through this yet again? How could the nation have regressed so far, so fast?

I have not been writing, and therefore not posting, while I work through my response to what seems to be the undoing of everything I have cared about and supported my entire, many decades long, adult life. Living my values in my small corner of the state is necessary, but has not felt sufficient. I’m signing petitions, but ignoring the constant demand for cash contributions to fund more protests, because I don’t have the cash to donate (if I did, I wouldn’t still be working full time at long past retirement age). I’ve been seeking what would feel like an appropriate expression of my objections to the so-called swamp which, instead of being drained, has been broadened and deepened to cover the entire nation with greed and egotism and petulant childish tantrums and threats to our most fundamental Constitutional freedoms.

Today, when I heard that federal funds will be cut off to any entity that resists the government’s attack on immigrants, I remembered another piece of my past – tax resistance. As a Quaker, I refused to pay for war when I was young. Might I now refuse to pay for a wall, and a registry, and an immigration ban? Might I give my tax money directly to Santa Fe schools that will need it, instead of to the Federal government to spend on taking this country backward a century or more?

I don’t know how this idea will unfold, but it is clear to me that identifying a form of protest congruent with my life experience has been necessary to bring me the rest of the way out of my funk. Now let’s see if it also ends my silence.

Tags:Cameroon, freedom of speech, generational differences, lessons, My Life, New Mexico, Swarthmore College, Vietnam
Posted in Living and Learning | 5 Comments »

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