The wheel of love

I'm sitting in a classroom, waiting for a meeting to start, and thinking about that old Blood Sweat and Tears song, Spinning Wheel -- which begins, "What goes up, must come down.  Spinning wheel, got to go round..."

I thought of that one often when my girls were growing up -- especially when they hit puberty.  Any time one of them was feeling extremely positive and bouncy, it was inevitable she was heading for a fall and there would be tears before 24 hours were up.

So -- having been so cheery yesterday, it shouldn't have surprised me that my mood shifted back today.
It's just a gentle reminder that all those waves of moodiness happen up on the surface of things; that down below it all there's a strong and steady current of love...

... which needs to be shared -- especially with the folks we find hardest to love.  And with that thought in mind, I want to share this wonderful Ted Talk from Elizabeth Lesser, author of The Seekers Guide and founder of the Omega Institute:

Of colors and sunshine

What's bubbling up for you today?

I am feeling a delicious lightness of being: the sun is out, I have the house to myself (except for the animals; 2 cats and a dog) for the first time in months, and I am still loving playing with this new image process.

I decided to put off my meditation until my husband left on the ferry this morning, and so spent my first hour or so creating this image -- which means, not surprisingly, that it pervaded my thoughts when I sat down to meditate -- a process that (sadly) only lasted ten minutes, as the cat decided he DESPERATELY needed to come in for his morning snack.

But I love the colors in this -- they're absolutely delicious for me -- and I spent what little meditation time I had luxuriating in them, imagining them printed on a soft knit fabric which I could then make into a dress...

So I came back to the computer (once the cat was put out again; he still prefers to sleep on my wrists as I'm typing) and created this alternative version of the image -- thinking, ooh, wouldn't I like to wear this -- and now, stepping back from it a bit, I am reminded of those goddesses that I was doing last winter...

What is it about color that is so extraordinarily satisfying for me?  I can't really answer that question; I only know that it's been true since I was really really young, and seems all the richer now because I am exploring it more consciously instead of just reacting to it.

Perhaps that's the learning here: now that I am immersing myself in a mix of therapy (Internal Family Systems), Buddhism, and Christianity, it feels like I am exploring LOTS of things more consciously; that I'm awake at lots of levels that have been hibernating and dark for a very long time.  I am learning that all the parts of me no longer need to be either/or -- I am either Buddhist or Christian, an artist or a writer, an individualist or at one with all creation -- but rather both/and.  And I have to say -- accepting all those parts of me, consciously respecting and appreciating each for what it has to bring to my awareness and understanding, is both freeing and exhilarating.  Yum!

... which makes me think of the poem I wrote for Logion 69 of the Gospel of Thomas:

Deep in your heart --
below the taste of despair,
the brutal lash of circumstances,
and the ache of defeat --
there lies a fount of blessings.

Let your hunger
draw you inward,
and know this: abundance
beyond your wildest imagination
is waiting for you there.

And how, you ask, will I be spending the REST of my day?  What will I do with all that exhilarating freedom, and the energy it brings? 

The answer is this: I'm going to put on my Putumayo CD of  Cuban music (so energizing!), do some laundry, and clean my daughter's room, then take a break and edit a book of poetry I'm working on, and hopefully spend some time walking on the beach, enjoying the sunlight.  Doesn't that sound like fun?  I wish you sunshine and a wonderful day --

Beyond the wave of judgment

"Alan Wallace, a leading Western teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, puts it like this: "Imagine walking along a sidewalk with your arms full of groceries, and someone roughly bumps into you so that you fall and your groceries are strewn over the ground.  

As you rise up from the puddle of broken eggs and tomato juice, you are ready to shout out, 'You idiot!  What's wrong with you?  Are you blind?'  

But just before you can catch your breath to speak, you see that the person who bumped into you is actually blind.  He, too is sprawled in the spilled groceries, and your anger vanishes in an instant, to be replaced by sympathetic concern: 'Are you hurt?  Can I help you up?'  

Our situation is like that.  When we clearly realize that the source of disharmony and misery in the world is ignorance, we can open the door of wisdom and compassion."  -- Kornfield, The Wise Heart

If we could but see through our own filters -- the rage, the sense of betrayal, the frustration, the sadness, the grief -- all that keeps us caught in ourselves -- we might detect the divine oneness that lies buried within each human heart.  Who would you treat differently today, if you could just see beyond the wave of judgment; see through to their Buddha-nature?

On maintaining a sense of balance

This series of images has been an interesting adventure: I get caught up in the shapes and colors, and layer in what seems to work with what's already there, and I don't give much thought to what the image might be attempting to communicate.  "Emergence" is the word we'd use for it at Antioch, but today I'm a little stymied. 

Here's Seattle, all sunny and bright, viewed from across the water through a veil of what looks a bit like Spanish Moss, and somewhere underneath there's some sort of implosion happening...

Maybe this has to do with the sense of impending doom -- Seattle sits on a major faultline, so of course after the Earthquake in Japan we're all feeling a bit anxious.  There's all the strange weather patterns we've been seeing lately.  There's the ongoing awareness of the terrorist threat (whenever you're in the ferry line, the police are going up and down the rows of cars with bomb-sniffing dogs).  And there's the economy, which continues to drag people under: all these things have been subjects of recent conversations, though I don't tend to bring them up myself.

But this image could also be about reaction formation -- a concept I learned about yesterday.  The Wiki tells us that reaction formation is a defensive process (defense mechanism) in which anxiety-producing or unacceptable emotions and impulses are mastered by exaggeration (hypertrophy) of the directly opposing tendency.  So if you're angry, or sad, or frightened, you might be smiling a lot and talking about how pleased you are with everything: a sunny facade, hiding volcanic undercurrents of anger, sadness, or fear -- hmm.  That does sound like a good description of this image; I think of that old saying, "fiddling while Rome burns."

There's a certain wisdom in staying calm in a crisis, of course.  And we are taught to keep those big emotions under wraps as much as possible so as not to disturb those around us.  So how can we walk that delicate shoreline between being aware of our emotions and potential faultlines while at the same time continuing to function?

I think this is another reminder of the blessings inherent in maintaining a regular meditation practice -- and, in particular, of the gifts of Centering Prayer.  Centering Prayer is a constant act of releasing whatever is rising to consciousness: we release the worries, the distractions, the challenges and the constant nattering of the ego and return to the center, the source, the Divine Within.  Practicing that for 20 minutes or so, every day, can make it easier to stay calm and centered during the rest of the day, whatever subterranean pressures may be building.  It's really, I think, a matter of balance.

"The goal in Centering Prayer," says Cynthia Bourgeault in her book, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening,  "is not to stop the thoughts, but simply to develop a detached attitude toward them."  I can't -- and probably shouldn't -- lose sight of the challenges I face at the various levels of my life.  But with the help of Centering Prayer I can also stay in touch with the deeper reality that lies at the root of my being.  With the help of Centering Prayer, I can learn to strike a social balance: to stay connected with and attuned to the value and concerns of those around me without losing my own objectivity.

... At least -- that's the hope!  Judging from what this image seems to reveal, I would guess it's a bit more challenging lately to retain the sunny facade...

All of which brings to mind this wonderful classic poem by Rudyard Kipling:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

Behind the caricature

I am reading this morning about innate value, and inherent goodness, and thinking about all the ways our self-images become caricatures of the true self we really are...

Which, of course, is ably aided by those around us -- I'm thinking of my husband (bless his dear sweet honest soul) who, when I made a face at him yesterday, was reminded of (and went and found and presented to me) a birthday card he had apparently purchased but never given me (my birthday is some 9 months behind us). 

The card features a seal's head, resting on an ever-widening neck made of many folds of fat, and the message inside is "I love every wrinkle." Oy.  SO not flattering!

Yet this is the same husband who tells me fairly often that he thinks I'm aging beautifully.  Sometimes the disconnect is a little challenging -- it helps me understand some of my daughter's ex-boyfriend's complaints about the strange (to him) combination of brutal honesty and praise that characterizes many of our family's interactions.  To him the praise felt fake (it wasn't) and the honesty WAY too brutal (yeah, sometimes it can be).  

So why was that a problem for him -- and why is it sometimes a problem for me, too?  I think it's because we have that internal caricature of ourselves, which is rather painfully 2-dimensional.  We tend, I think, to be both unaware of our innate goodness and reluctant to look at our shadows, so the picture we carry of ourselves is rather flat, and not particularly robust -- which means that when people try to round it out a bit we feel uncomfortably stretched...

For me this has been one of the blessings of establishing a regular meditation practice.  When you spend time everyday watching your mind and releasing its incessant activity, you get a much better, much more rounded, more three-dimensional, more accurate picture of your strengths and weaknesses.  Which doesn't mean you're totally conscious, but it does at least mean that the observations of others don't come as a total surprise.

That internal caricature we carry can be quite a work of art -- but it is, nonetheless, a caricature.  Even if we can't quite bear to peel it away, meditation at least reminds us that there is a rich, full-bodied being that lies beneath.

Stepping back onto the path

Now that Lent has passed, I've decided it's time to shift focus back to Buddhism for a bit.  It's partly, I think, a resistance to (or distaste for) the high drama of Holy Week.

Not that I don't find meaning and symbolism there, but Christianity for me is no longer about the death and resurrection of Jesus; it's about the steadiness of his teachings; that consistent message that the Kingdom of Heaven is here, and now.  So a shift to Buddhism is a way of getting back to that central message, a way of stepping back onto the path that feels most central for me.

So I'm re-reading -- at least, until something convinces me otherwise -- Jack Kornfield's classic, The Wise Heart.  And already, just a few pages in, I am feeling calmer, more centered -- and hearing echoes of Desmond Tutu's Made for Goodness.  Kornfield is telling the story of the giant clay buddha statue -- ancient and revered -- that cracked to reveal "one of the largest and most luminous gold images of Buddha ever created in Southeast Asia.... this shining work of art had been covered in plaster and clay to protect it during times of conflict and unrest.  In much the same way, each of us has encountered threatening situations that lead us to cover our innate nobility.  


Just as the people of Sukotai had forgotten about the golden Buddha, we too have forgotten our essential nature.  Much of the time we operate from the protective layer.  The primary aim of Buddhist psychology is to help us see beneath this armoring and bring out our original goodness, called our Buddha nature."

That's the path, I think -- at least the one that lures me today: I want it to lead me to my original goodness, my Buddha nature: the me I was born to be, so that I can also see and honor the you that you were born to be.

And as I look at this image I created yesterday, I'm amused to see that blush of gold at the end of this long walkway -- must be that golden Buddha nature!  It looks a bit far away at the moment, but I suspect the path is shorter than it looks; it's all a matter of perspective.  However far away it is -- I'm looking forward to the journey.

In the garden

I think you can tell I created this yesterday, not this morning; it has a definite feel of vigil about it -- either that vigil in the garden on the night of Maundy Thursday, or just that sense of waiting from yesterday...

It would be easy, I think, to sit on that bench and stare pensively at that rock, waiting for something, some truth, to emerge, or for the tree to burst into bloom. But when I look at it, I keep hearing that old Baptist song:


I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.

Refrain: And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

He speaks, and the sound of His voice,
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing,
And the melody that He gave to me
Within my heart is ringing... (refrain)

Yeah -- it's hokey, I know...  But now that I look at the words (and hear my grandmother singing), I think of my neighbors, who have just enlarged their garden, and set up a table and chair in the corner.  "It's wonderful," she told me last night -- "I can just sit there and watch the sun move over the plants, read my gardening books..."  Lovely, peaceful -- such a simple thing, and yet it brings such pleasure.  And isn't that often the way?  However low we may be feeling, a taste of sunshine, birdsong, and flowers can definitely brighten your day.  Simple gifts...

I hope you find (despite the gray and rain which have surfaced again this morning here) some simple gifts of your own today -- and I wish you a Happy Easter!