Travelling at the Speed of Light-Heartedness

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.

I’ll let you in on a secret. It’s a bit embarrassing but heh, what the heck.

I love leap years. To be more precise, I love February 29. I don’t recall anything particularly memorable happening on February 29, however since I was a little girl I always marvelled that a leap year means you get one more day.

As a child I remember sitting at my wooden desk, listening to Miss England explaining that this year was a leap year. It was 1960 and it was the first time I had ever heard of such a  thing. I wondered how children could celebrate their birthday if it only happened every four years. I wondered how anyone could commemorate a significant event if it fell on February 29. It consumed me for years.

Someone, perhaps my father told me, after I shared with him my lingering concern over birthdays on February 29, that he imagines people born on February 29 would celebrate their birthday on March 1 on the non leap years. I thought that was grossly unfair and felt dreadful for every person ever born on February 29.

It was around that time, aged 7 that I began to fall in love with astronomy. I loved that the  Earth revolved around the sun creating the seasons, and how it rotated on its axis at the same time. I became a star watcher. Still am. It took me longer to understand why we have one more day every four years. Briefly, leap years are needed to keep our modern day Gregorian calendar in alignment with the Earth’s revolutions around the sun.

It takes the Earth approximately 365.242189 days – or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds – to circle once around the Sun. This is called a tropical year.

However, the Gregorian calendar has only 365 days in a year, so if we didn’t add a leap day on February 29 nearly every four years, we would lose almost six hours off our calendar every year. After only 100 years, our calendar would be off by around 24 days!

One More Day

When my father died I spend most of the first year imagining what I would have done differently had I known he would not be alive the next day. All I’ve come up with is that I would have hugged him longer. I miss hugging him.

The idea of having one more day often brings up thoughts around my own mortality. If I only have one more day to live what would I say, and to whom would I say it? What would I do? Who would I want to share that day with?

Too late for bucket lists. I only have one more day.

The truth is I am more clear about what I wouldn’t do that day than I am about what I would do. Here are a few things I came up with.

I certainly wouldn’t waste a minute complaining about anything.

I wouldn’t worry.

I wouldn’t blame anyone.

I wouldn’t wish a second away.

I wouldn’t censor myself.

I wouldn’t go shopping.

I wouldn’t stay in doors, no matter what the weather.

I wouldn’t touch a computer, ipad, phone.

I wouldn’t talk much.

Mitch Albom writes,

“It’s such a shame to waste time. We always think we have so much of it.” 

Life would certainly take on a different hue if we lived even one day a week as if we don’t know how long we’ve got. But choosing the day, deciding this is it. I’m going to live today as if its my last, is never an easy choice to make. I can’t do it today, I have a dental appointment. Oh and tomorrow, I have to pick up the kids and take them to ballet, violin, soccer and swimming. Maybe next Tuesday. Um, oh hell! Tuesday. Tuesday I have to see my accountant, play bridge, shop and cook dinner for Wednesday ‘s book club.

May be next week.

Life can be so crammed with things to do that only ten minutes after you have rushed past that busker playing the violin outside the train station you think, damn, I meant to stop and listen to him and give him a coin, but I forgot. And you go back the next day and he’s not there.

Busy life= missed opportunities.

And don’t get me wrong, there will always, always be missed opportunities, I have a million of them, but I’m sure, well I’m almost sure, that if we lived just one day a week as if it were our last, there would be more opportunities gathered than lost. And if one day a week seems too hard, then maybe one day a month. My guess is that the more I practice living one delicious, unbeatable, incredible day at a time, I’ll probably get better at it.

“One day spent with someone you love can change everything.”
―Mitch Albom- For One More Day

If I had one more day left I think I would ask my children to tell me about their favourite experience. I think I would ask more question and listen with every cell in my body. I think I would eat some ice cream after sharing a bowl of hot chips. I would laugh and cry and maybe I would plant a tree after reading The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein to my  grandchildren. That book always, always leaves me in tears. Ask my granddaughter she’ll tell you. I literally sob at the end.

I think if I had one more day I would give everything I have loved away to my children and my friends. I would want to see them smile and imagine the pleasure they with receive from that little piece of my life. And I think if I had one more day, just one more earthly spin around its axis, I would quietly close my eyes and breathe, and with every breath I would take in the sweetest memories from every stage in my life, and breath out waves and waves of gratitude that this was my story.

Yup! I think that’s what I’ll do

How can it be already March? So much has happened already this year. I have a new granddaughter for example. This tiny new being weighing less that a bag of potatoes arrived two weeks ago and through her sweet, soft vulnerability has opened our hearts a little wider. When we witness the birth of a baby, we know the true meaning of miracle.

This led me to ponder once again the age old question, who am I?

As a much younger person I experimented with many philosophies and ideas in an attempt to discover who am I. I read everything I could get a hold of by Ken Wilber, Carlos Castaneda, Fritjof Capra, Alan Watts and Russel Peters, Krishnamurti, Bertam Russel and Paramahansa Yogananda to name a few.

I completed diplomas and post graduate diplomas is a wide range of modalities but I still could not answer that question. Who am I?

Over the years I have come to realize the journey towards knowing oneself is often a process of elimination rather than a gathering of information. What works is usually discovered by the realization of what doesn’t work. Our attraction to teachers, books, activities, languages and friends reveals our bent toward particular aspects of ourselves that when acknowledged and accepted can lead us to great insight and self realization. Just as the letting go of teachers, activities and friends can reveal our growth and changes over the years.

By a Process of Elimination:

I am not my thoughts. I certainly have them but they are not who I am. Especially as they can frequently change leaving me dangling somewhere between a past thought and a new idea.

I am not my emotions. Again I can have as many as I wish, however if times of sadness were to define who I am I would very quickly lose all hope of being anything but miserable.

I am not my intellect as that too has oscillated between moments of brilliance to times of confusion and cognitive numbness.

I am not what anyone else may think of me.

So what’s left?

There have been times when my life flowed with effortless ease, and during those times a thought would flash through my mind that now I know who I am, but of course as soon as the thought came, I realized it was only a thought and something would soon occur that would prove me wrong.

It is often when life takes a turn, when that which we took for granted is suddenly gone, when we are faced with a threat, a challenge, an unexpected trial that we realize we are not who we thought we were. And ironically these are the times we really do come face to face with who we are and what we are capable of or not.  And this does not come from books, or teachers, of even friends. It comes from something within. It comes from the essence, the spark, the inner wisdom within each one of us.   This indivisible seed of wisdom can be hidden by our beliefs, our attitudes our fears and our judgments however it is there. Always there. and always available to each one of us if we simply stop and ask.

As hard as life’s challenges are, and we all know them, it is only through these ‘gifts’ do we discover who we really are. It is only when we are faced with the unthinkable, unimaginable, and occasionally unfathomable challenges, do we see who we are and who we are not more clearly.

When we bought our new home off the plan in August 2012 never did I imagine that we would find ourselves in a situation where the builders extend the completion date month after month after month with no end in sight.  I had no idea that this waiting would turn my life upside down and reveal parts of myself that I don’t always like, but have to accept, in order to understand who I am, in order to choose to respond differently.

I remember leaving Australia forty years ago without a clue how I was going to survive in a country where I knew no one and not a word of the language spoken and losing my watch one Friday morning and collapsing into tears of irrational yet terror struck fear that as all the shops would be closed in about an hour and I would not know when to eat or sleep or wake up. I remember sobbing all the way back to my tiny room and finding the watch under the bed and realizing this was a turning point in my life and I needed to take stock and take steps towards creating a new life, right now. That day I learned, yet again, a little more about who I am and who I am not.

What is the benefit knowing who we are? To live in authenticity. To accept ourselves unconditionally. To be the best we can in every situation. To live in harmlessness. For only when we know ourselves, accept ourselves and appreciate the spark of immeasurable wisdom within ourselves, can our inner peace begin to illuminate the world in which we live.

It is so easy to lose ourselves when we are bombarded with the thoughts, opinions and attitudes of everyone around us. Is it so easy to forget who we really are and get carried away by the things we see and hear through the media. It is so easy to find ourselves responding with emotion and  self righteousness when we challenged by those we choose not to respect. Its all too easy to loose connection with the essence of who we are, the loving, caring, compassionate, understanding parts of us, when it appears the world is being split into pieces.

 And yet this is the perfect time to take stock and pull ourselves together and ask the age old question, Who Am I?  And I don’t mean what is our role or our function in life. I don’t mean who are you the daughter, the brother, the teacher, the fighter. I mean who are you at the deepest part of you. What do you love? What makes you cry? What sends shivers through your body? What would you do if nothing stood in your way?

This is the perfect time to courageously speak up, but with love not anger. To bring the very meaning of courage, that which comes from the heart, into the world. This is the perfect time to stand beside that person you chose not to respect and ask, “What do you hope for? What do you want? What do you need? I want to understand. I want to understand you.”

 This is the perfect time to share with others your hopes and dreams. What is your dream for yourself? For your children? For the world?

In times of separation, war, distress and pain we often forget to dream. We forget to fantasize and to use our imagination. There is no better time than now to reconnect to the heart of who we are. To feel your heart beating and to listen to the words you heart is trying to tell you. The more we connect to our heart the greater chance we have of making our dreams come true. Simple? Actually yes it is.

Let’s look at a spiritual truth.

It is not humanly possible to threaten, insult, injure, maim or kill another human being, and still be connected to your heart. No matter how much you believe in your cause, how much you are protecting, defending or shielding the ones you love, as long as you react in violence, you are not heart centered.

The hundredth monkey effect can change all this in a flash. That’s why I love this story

 The 100^th Monkey

A story about social change.

By Ken Keyes Jr.

The Japanese monkey, Macaca Fuscata, had been observed in the wild for a period of over 30 years.

In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkey liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant. An 18-month-old female named Imo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers too.

This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the scientists. Between 1952 and 1958 all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement. Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.

Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes — the exact number is not known. Let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were 99 monkeys on Koshima Island who had learned to wash their sweet potatoes. Let’s further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned to wash potatoes.

THEN IT HAPPENED! 

By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough!

But notice: A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that the habit of washing sweet potatoes then jumped over the sea…Colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes.

Thus, when a certain critical number achieves an awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind.

Although the exact number may vary, this Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the conscious property of these people.

But there is a point at which if only one more person tunes-in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone!

From the book “The Hundredth Monkey” by Ken Keyes, Jr. The book is not copyrighted and the material may be reproduced in whole or in part.  

Now is the time to connect to the  heart of who you are. Ask yourself every day the question, Who Am I? And listen.

And if enough people connect to their hearts we will reach the tipping point together.