Travelling at the Speed of Light-Heartedness

In  November 2005 I went to Assisi alone. It was a long awaited pilgrimage. I wanted to connect to the energy of the beloved Saint Francis of Assisi but I also knew, as with all pilgrimages, the very thing you think you are going for is not always the thing you discover where you are there. Here is a repeat of that story. Some stories are worth repeating.

Driving towards Assisi in northern Italy, I noticed something red growing out of a bed of weeds. I grabbed my camera and clicked away. Some time later I scrolled through my camera and realised it was a rose. A double header. One that had already bloomed anda bud with the potential to boom.

The rose is one of those plants that no matter how many weeds are about the place it will always bloom. Did you know the colour Rose is the colour of Unconditional Love? The Channel and well known Teacher Helen Barton, created even a page on her website where people can send pink bubbles to anyone that who might be unwell or needing love. As I looked at the image I took I was reminded of someone very important to me..

Her name was Rosa, Rosa Parks. Recently she died and thousands gathered to farewell this 92 year old civil rights matriarch. A quiet unassuming, modest woman with great courage who lived in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 and who, one December evening, left work and boarded a bus for home. The bus became crowded, and Rosa, a black woman, was ordered to give up her seat to a white passenger. She chose to remain seated and that silent, simple decision eventually led to the disintegration of institutionalised segregation in the South, ushering in a new era of the civil rights movement. Just one individual can change the world, even without uttering one word. It is not the grand and showy actions that necessarily change us and our world. Indeed our very purpose for living could be brought down to one small act like the refusal to stand up at the right time and the courage to know when that right time may be.

And that leads me to this.

Deservability

I know the word ‘deservability’ is not in the Dictionary. I made it up. It is however, a word that fascinates me.

“ She deserves it…”

“I didn’t deserve that.”

“He got what he deserves.”

“I need to prove I really deserve this.”

Sound familiar? Deservabilty comes from our belief that we earn good points and bad points according to how, good, kind, thoughtful, intelligent, wise, appreciative, appropriate, funny, or clever we are. The list goes on of course.

Deservabilty also comes from the belief that if we behave or act in a certain way we can in some way control the events in our lives. Although this is right to a degree it is never really in our control. Jean and Graham work for two different companies. Jean’s friends got together and gave Jean a holiday for her 50th birthday. Jean had been a loyal and devoted worker for 20 years. She has three children but rarely ever took a day off in all that time. Graham was a single dad and had also put in 20 years of loyal service. He did not receive a gift from his work colleagues on his 20th anniversary.  Does one deserve a holiday more than the other? Of course not and yet, we tend to judge ourselves and others when something happens that we feel is  deserved’ or not deserved.

Nothing is deserved or un-deserved in life. To believe this is to be seduced into the illusion that what we see is the whole story. Rather than believing what we think we see how much more powerful  to look for the significance.

To believe in deservability denies the magic and spontaneity that is intrinsic in all of life. Out of chaos comes calm, out of conflict comes connection, out of illness comes healing, out of pain comes wisdom and out of fear comes Love. What happens, happens. The issue in life is not whether we deserve  so called ‘good’ or ‘bad; things. We will always have ups and downs. The real issue is how we address them. What choices can we make that can turn a tragedy into a triumph and therefore create a shift in global consciousness for the highest good of all?

What choice can we make now that inspires us to  stand in our truth, the Truth of our Being, especially when we appear to be surrounded by a field of weeds.

The Wisdom of the Lion. Part 4

What is Wisdom? It is the integration of Knowledge with Experience. Who is the Lion? It is Me. It is You.

Recently I was working with a couple and he was saying that his wife might have stopped loving him. This led us into a conversation about Love. Love is often described as an emotion. Many of us think if we can fall into love then we can fall out of love.

We imagine that Love can be turned off or turned on, increased or decreased depending on the circumstances. That kind of love is Conditional Love. It is love that is based on reason.

I love her because she is so kind and caring.

I love him because he listens to me and makes me laugh.

Nothing wrong with that unless of course she believes something about her husband, and then tells him off for being selfish, cruel or unfair and slams the door and doesn’t come home for a few days. Not so kind after all.

Or he has had a difficult day just wants to come home and put his feet up but she has also had a challenging day and all she wants is to tells him in every detail how awful some people are, and  how angry and hurt she is and, and, and…. until he jumps up, yells at her to give him a break and can’t she just be quiet for a while and slams the door on his way to sit in the car for an hour or two. Not so funny after all.

So when love is based on reason it becomes conditional and when those conditions change so too can the love we once felt so strongly. When love depends on a belief it becomes limited and therefore conditional. We think we know someone until something happens and we realize what we believe is just not true.

“You shouldn’t have to even ask me that.”  It becomes a problem when we believe that love automatically give a lover the ability to intuit what the other person wants or needs.

“I never imagined he would talk to me like that.”  It becomes a problem when we believe that people in love always speak and behave kindly and respectfully to each.

“You will go to hell if you don’t follow God’s rules.” When we are taught to believe something out of fear the fullness of Love is always limited.

Some of us may say, “So what. I know what I believe and I don’t care if it’s conditional.” However, judgment based on a belief, on a thought, or on the appearance of an event limits the quality of Love.

Emotional Love, when it happens feels lovely, but it is transient and temporary and can change with the passing of time. Conditional love often feels wonderful whilst it is happening, because it fulfils us in ways we are not fulfilling ourselves. When we ‘fall in love with someone’ we see them through those proverbial rose coloured glasses. We love the way they see our beauty and our strengths and melt at the way they look into our eyes and hold our body (no matter the size or shape) close and tenderly. Whether is it a physical attraction, their intellectual acumen, or bright bubbly personality the one irrevocable thing conditional love forgets is that, everything changes.

Unconditional Love exists in each of us. It is Love without reason. Love that comes from our soul and spirit and cannot be extinguished when something unforeseen or bad happens. When we experience Unconditional Love it is like we are bathed in warm light that enters every cell in our body and imbues us with a sense of well-being and peace. More than that it fills us with grace. Unconditional Love is the essential nature of each of us but it needs to be practiced to be present at all times. We can so easily relax into reason and condition ourselves to believe something that limits love.

So how do we practice Unconditional Love?

For me it begins by recognizing where in my body is Love. I go to the area of the heart, not the physical heart but the spiritual heart often called the heart chakrah, and that’s where I begin to connect to that eternal flame that radiates through me and around me and permeates everything I say and do. Unconditional Love is not an emotion at all.

It is a State of Being.

And when I fall into that State of Love and I am with another who also connects to that State of Love we fall into Love together. We don’t fall into love with each other we fall into the vast ocean of Love together. It is in that State of Being where all thought ceases and we become One.

We can reach this place by repeating a mantra that obliterates all thought and takes us into the eternal well of Love, deeper and deeper until we let go of the I Am and becmoe One with All That Is.

We can reach this place through doing or listening or chanting ourselves into a place of no thought.

We can reach this place through music or prayer or doing something we love so much that we transcend time and space.

We can reach this place by being present, in the moment, breathing in and out, in and out and melting into the heart. Dissolving with every breath into Love. I am Love. I am Love. I am Love. I am Love. I am Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love

My teacher, John the Beloved taught me,

“Your world has two choices:

To Love the Self Unconditionally and in so doing, become an extension of everyone and everything else. Or-

To fear the self as being inadequate or inappropriate, and experience disconnection and fear of being open to others.” ( Quote John the beloved, 22/2/2001)

False modesty, confusion, anxiety, hesitancy, fear of failure or success all comes from the ego and the ego interrupts our intention to connect with Unconditional Love. Sometimes my clients tell me they are trying. Trying to do better. Trying to stop something. Trying to overcome. And I always say the same thing, if you are trying, you are not here. You are somewhere over there. Stop trying. Be here. Be in the present.

When we are in a State of Love, we are bathed in the sunshine that streams through our hearts. We can continue to live our lives, acknowledging what happens is neither good nor bad but is what it is. We can dissolve relationships and create relationships and maintain relationships without choking on the emotional consequences of our choices.

Relationships change over time. Sometimes they burn out. Sometimes they reach a point where the purpose for that relationship has been completed. And sometimes the energy that brought people together has been lost and with it the intention. However, if we can develop a practice where we are in a State of Love with everyone and everything, we can experience a Love that is not personal. It becomes a Love that infuses our personal lives but is not lost when life presents us with personal challenges.

The Wisdom of the Lion Part 2.   

“There is a great deal of pushing in our world. Most of it comes from greed, fear or anger.

Lions only push their children to keep them safe. If they eat when it is not the right time we push them away to save them being hurt by other adult Lions who know the order. We teach them the way of the Lion so that they can fend for themselves.”

There are places in the human world where pushing is seen as normal. People push into parking spaces, push into queues, push in front of cars and push people out of the way when they want to go faster than the crowd.

Countries where employees carry the weight of their employers heavy expectations. Employers push their staff to produce more. Stay later. Arrive earlier. Teachers push their students to get the highest grades.

Wives and husbands push each other to talk more, talk less, buy this, sell that, go here, stay there, be more attentive, less outgoing, more understanding, thinner, stronger, kinder…. It goes on and on.

Parents push their children to succeed, to excel, to work hard, and to be who they think they should or could or ought to be. Some push their children to win academic competitions, win scholarships, play sport that is not their child’s passion, dance well, sing beautifully, play the piano, violin, saxiphone, read and write beyond their years. As a parent of 5 I too have had my pushy moments. I remember I dearly wanted one of our children to attend a Rudolph Steiner school thinking this would suit him perfectly. We drew mandalas and used Steiner crayons and I enrolled him into the school. He was asked to come to an open day and he was not so interested but I pushed him trying to convince him it would be wonderful. Two weeks later I received a phone call informing me that our child would not be suitable for the school. “And why is that? “ I asked in a rather shocked and insulted voice. “Because, when we asked each children why they wanted to come to our school your child gave an answer that showed us this was probably not the right school for him.”

Incredulous and at a loss to even imagine what he could have said and preparing my speech to chide this child for a lost opportunity I asked what in the world did he say.The woman on the phone took a deep breath and said, “He said, he did not want to come to this school but his mother did!”

Sometimes it takes at eleven-year-old child to remind us that we are pushing too hard. I thought I was being encouraging but indeed there is a thin line between pushing and encouraging.

What is the difference?

As verbs the difference between encourage and push is that encourage is to mentally support; to motivate, give courage, hope or spirit while push is (intransitive) to apply a force to (an object or a person) such that it moves away from the person or thing applying the force. As a child at school I was fascinated by the definition of work. It applies to pushing too.

Work done is defined as product of the force and the distance over which the force is applied. Work is done when a force is applied to an object and the object is moved through a distance. For example, when you lift a load you are applying a force over a distance so you are doing work. However, no matter how much force you apply to something that is not movable, no amount of effort will result in work. When we push people in directions that they resist and refuse, according to physics we have actually done no work at all regardless of how much effort we have put into the situation. Pushing is futile.

We live in a performance driven society where what we do, is often more highly regarded than who we are. We have over-looked the importance of allowing our children to be who they are. We need to look and listen to our children and those people in our lives to understand their gifts and talents, their passions and their choices.

We need to teach our children the true meaning of being warm-hearted.  Our two-year-old grand daughter, catches our thrown kisses and puts them in her heart. Her mother, our daughter, bought a book called, “In my Heart”, by Jo Witek, and it brought both our grand children a deeper understanding of the emotions–happiness, sadness, bravery, anger, shyness and much more. The Dalai Lama says, “Warm-heartedness reinforces our self-confidence – giving us not a blind confidence, but a sense of confidence based on reason. When you have that you can act transparently, with nothing to hide!”

If there was one thing I would wish for every child it would this.  Someone they trust to sit with them just before they go to sleep and to share together 3 things for which they are thankful today, and three people they are thankful to have in their life. Of course it doesn’t have to be three things or three people. It can be simply one thing or one person,  but how important it is to have the opportunity to share something that touches the heart.

When I was studying Gestalt Therapy in San Diego many yeas ago with my teachers Erv and Miriam Polster we had one whole day devoted to the value of Kindness in therapy. I know of primary school that teaches kindness as a subject. Yes, we do have schools that are now teaching Mindfulness and that is wonderful however, surely Kindness is as essential to a a well lifed life as Mindfulness.

If kindness was a daily practice in school and in the home, we would have no difficulty knowing the difference between encouraging and pushing our children. Even when we want the best for our children we would recognize our wish for them may not be their wish for themselves.

There is so much to learn about kindness. Sometimes we need to develop our awareness in order to understand what is needed, so we know the right questions to ask.  This is kindness.  Sometime we have to give consequences for our children’s unacceptable behavior, and that is kindness too. Kindness is knowing what to say and knowing when to say nothing. Kindness is the art of giving anonymously.  I know a religious leader whose ability to raise money for charity is exceptional and everyone who knows him knows this about him. I also know a woman who lives a very quiet humble life and has for years offered her garage to be a collection point for used clothes. People come and go all day giving and taking as needed. She makes sure no one is embarrassed. No one knows whether they are giving or taking. Her kindness is  anonymous, quiet and humble.

Kindness is also about altruism and the notions of goodness and empathy. Altruism is not only reserved for humans, animals and insects also exhibit altruism. Some animals will call the alarm when they know there is danger at the risk of their own lives. We have seen impalas, grazing with zebras and will alert the zebras if there is a lion near by.

In California, animal behaviourist Paul Sherman did thousands of hours of field work with Belding’s ground squirrels. When something dangerous comes into their vicinity such as a hawk or another terrestrial predator some of the ground squirrels, stand up on their hind legs and give a piercing call. The other ground squirrels run for safety. They go down into their burrows and they get out of the way. The alarm caller will eventually do that but it pays the costs by making itself the most obvious thing out in the environment and some get taken by predator, in order to save all the other ground squirrels.

When a child shows courage, warmth, empathy and kindness it is our responsibility to acknowledge them and encourage them to be the best of human-kind. After all surly that is the goal. Each soul is born with a gift, a talent and blessing and whether it is to teach or be taught, to heal or be healed, to see or to be shown , we are all here for ourselves and for others. No exception.

Until next time.

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Why Do We Get Sick?

We have all been there. Everything appears to be going well and then we wake up with a headache or sore throat, flu or back-ache. We discover we have a pain in the neck, aching shoulders, tightness in the chest, upset stomach, or very sore feet. Sometimes we are born with problems and sometimes we develop physical, emotional or mental symptoms that make us aware that something is not working.

What is Awareness? It is a particular understanding that orientates, amplifies and rewards experience. There are 4 main levels of awareness, sensations feelings, philosophical positions and purposes.

I have asked myself why don’t we live in a state of health and vitality from the moment we are born and die a peaceful, conscious death when the time is right? This article begins in a very simplistic way to answer that question.

Since I was a very young child I’ve had allergies. Stone fruit gave me hives, pineapple made me breathless, milk curdled in my tummy and by the time I was four I often had bronchitis. By the age of six I was told to do 500 skips with a skipping rope for pulling Lillian Sandlands hair and that turned in to my first asthma attack.

I’ve done a great deal of work around this asthma situation. And there have been times in my life when I believed I had fully grown out of it. But occasionally it rears its head again and I am strongly encouraged to look deeper and deeper within myself to understand the significance of what is going on, again. There are times when the understanding dawns on me quite quickly and I confess I can be a lazy spiritual searcher so when I get a sudden ah-ha moment I’m delighted and relieved, even if the realization is a cringe-worthy. But there are times I don’t understand immediately and I get impatient and try to make up reasons just to get an answer. Never a good thing to do.

Having just returned from three incredible weeks on Safari in Africa I had so many encounters with animals and sat silently watching and listening and talking to them from within myself. During a few meditations however, I had a visitation from a huge male Lion. He came up to me and spoke. He told me four things. This first is to be as patient as a Lion.

I watched many lions in those three weeks and the one thing that stands out is how long and still they can sit. They waste not an once of energy. The Lion reminded me that the key to being patient is to listen and be silent. Both words are an anagram of the other.

When we get sick we cannot rush good health, we cannot force vitality, we cannot hurry awareness. We need to be patient, and in the silence of our inner being we are being encouraged to listen to the answer to this question, “What is the significance of this experience for me right now.”

How many of us get sick and simply press-on? Forcing ourselves to do what we normally do regardless of what our body is feeling. I know people who complain their cold has lasted two weeks, their pain continues to worsen, their blood levels are not improving. Our body has one way to grab our attention when its is struggling and that is through discomfort.  The greatest show of self respect is to be silent and listen everyday for a period of time. That means turning off the phone, closing a door, getting ready to spend some precious time with yourself and giving yourself permission to become aware of what is going on within.

Some people are actually addicted to pain. Sounds crazy doesn’t it but here’s how that happens. I know. I’ve unconsciously been caught up in this addiction myself.

We get busy. Our schedules are often full. We have meetings to attend, people to see, family to feed and things we want to spend time doing. We have friends who call, and some of us fit in the gym, a run, and drinks after work. One hundred phone calls later and a ton of other people’s expectation on top, leaves us robotic, mechanical and distracted. This kind of busyness carried us through a whole day, a week, a year and regrettably even a life time of not being present. Not living consciously in the moment. So the one and only thing that can pierce through this chaos of living like that is pain. Pain instantly brings us into the present and all the other stuff temporarily does not seem so urgent. The pain has brought us back into our bodies.  Our bodies don’t like being ignored. Why should they? They are carrying us through life the best way they can and yet we are often too distracted by the small stuff to listen. But what a way to get present!

There are also four gifts sickness and pain can offer us. The throb in your shoulders could be giving you a hint that something in your life is ready to be released. But it could also be telling you there is something in your life that needs to be redeemed. In other words, our body will never casually give us pain, it is committed to giving us the best life possible and perhaps we have overlooked something we once learned and the pain is inviting us to re-look, re-think, re-assess something that is now timely for to nourish your well being. I have some dead friends with cancer and we often talk about the difference between being healed and being cured. Healing is a journey of listening within and putting the awareness gained into action. Sometimes it means letting go of thoughts and opinions that no longer serve us. Sometimes it means surrendering to the moment and being open to going with the flow of our body’s great wisdom.  But to know we have to learn to stop, be silent and listen.

And that’s the tricky thing. How do we do that when so much and so many are vying for our attention? How do we do that when sitting in silence can often feel like a total waste of time especially when our heads wont stop talking? How do we do that when our own expectations of ourselves and those of others keep us awake at night worrying. How do we do that when we drift into fear of the future or regrets from the past?

We have to practice and sometimes even fake it till we make it. We have to sit and practice being silent. And if sitting inside is too hard then we need to find somewhere outside. We need to stop, look and listen. Look at a leaf. Pick up a feather. Look up at the sky or across the sea. Hold a hand full of sand, or seeds or dirt and be with yourself for those moments. Find a way to leave the physical world and go within and ask the one question that will eventually be answered. What is the significance of this situation?

At 2.30 am last Saturday morning I was rushed by ambulance to North Shore Hospital with a severe asthma attack. It was the worst one I’ve ever had so clearly I have not been listening attentively to myself lately. I just couldn’t breathe. I know that the lungs are connected to grief just as every organ and body part is connected to an emotion so I know there is something here about grief. I asked the question and in a state of trying to breathe I was told, “catch your breath first, let’s talk a bit later.” Always a good idea to attend to the physical issue first and then take some time to go within when the crisis has died down.

So today’s the first day I can talk without puffing and I asked again. And I heard. “Reestablish some discipline in your life and start writing and teaching again.”

Since selling our family home, waiting over three years for our new one to be finished and having a house full of workers for the 9 months I’ve lived here, I have neglected that which I most love. Writing and teaching.

I’m listening.

PS.

So what are the other three things the Lion told me? Stay tuned. In the next three blogs I will be sharing the Wisdom of the Lion with you. Oh and by the way, my fathers name was, Lionel. I can’t help thinking it might have been my dad, who passed over 4 1/2 years ago, who spoke to me in Africa as a Lion. His Hebrew name was Arieh, which also means Lion. He was in every way as wise and as patient as a Lion and those Lions eyes, looked so familiar.