What Love Is

14 Feb 2011 1 Comment

by blessingsenterprises in Emotions, Grief, Happiness, healing, Spirituality Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres….And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

~~1 Corinthians 13

 

Today’s post is a direct cut and paste from What Love Is, by Ayya Khema, a Dharma Teacher.  Born in Berlin of Jewish parents in 1923, Ayya Khema escaped Nazi Germany in 1938  to Glasgow. She joined her parents two years later in Shanghai, where the family was put into a Japanese POW camp  in which her father died.  Four years after her camp was liberated, Ayya Khema emigrated to the United States where she married and had two children. While traveling in Asia from 1960 to 1964, she learned meditation and in 1975, began to teach. Three years later she established Wat Buddha Dhamma, a forest monastery in the Theravada tradition near Sydney, Australia. In 1979 she was ordained as a Buddhist nun in Sri Lanka. She is currently the spiritual director of BuddhaHaus in Oy-Mittleberg, Germany, which she established. She has written numerous books in English and German, including Being Nobody, Going Nowhere and When the Iron Eagle Flies.

I’ve thought a lot about “love” lately and what it means to really love and love well.  I wrote some thoughts on this a few months ago in a post entitled Love is Kind.  You can find that here if you are interested.  More and more I realize it is only middle and upper class people who demand to pray or meditate in clean, “spiritual” places.  People have prayed and felt love in concentration camps, mine shafts, wide open prairies, ghettos and slums since the beginning of time.  Love has always been with us and can always be if we choose it.  I find a great deal of inspiration from Jesus, Buddha, Mother Theresa and many other teachers, but honestly at times they seem very removed from my daily life, perhaps “not understanding” what I might be up against.   Reading teachings by Ayya Khema and others who have come through experiences like hers somehow makes distant teachings seem more present, accessible and real.  There is no real new information here…all of the great teachers and sages tell us the same things again and again.  But today, when our country spends millions of dollars on cheap chocolate and Hallmark, I thought I might pass along a wonderful reading on What Love Is.  Enjoy!

~~~~~

MOST PEOPLE are under the impression that they can think out their lives. But that’s a misconception. We are subject to our emotions and think in ways based on our emotions. So it’s extremely important to do something about our emotions. In the same way as the Buddha gave us the Four Supreme Efforts for the mind, he also outlined the Four Emotions for the heart.  The Four Emotions–lovingkindness (metta), compassion (karuna), joy with others (mudita), and equanimity (upekkha)–are called the “divine abodes.” When we have perfected these four, we have heaven on earth, paradise in our own heart.

I think everybody knows that above us is the sky and not heaven. We have heaven and hell within us and can experience this quite easily. So even without having complete concentration in meditation and profound insights, the Four Divine Abodes enable us to live on a level of truth and lovingness, security, and certainty, which gives life a totally different quality. When we are able to arouse love in our hearts without any cause, just because love is the heart’s quality, we feel secure. It is impossible to buy security, even though many people would like to do so. Insurance companies have the largest buildings because people try to buy security. But when we create certainty within, through a loving heart, we feel assured that our reactions and feelings are not going to be detrimental to our own or other people’s happiness. Many fears will vanish.

Metta–the first of the Supreme Emotions–is usually translated as “loving kindness.” But loving-kindness doesn’t have the same impact in English that the word love has, which carries a lot of meaning for us. We have many ideas about love. The most profound thought we have about love, which is propagated in novels, movies, and billboards, is the idea that love exists between two people who are utterly compatible, usually young and pretty, and who for some odd reason have a chemical attraction toward each other-none of which can last. Most people find out during the course of their lifetime that this is a myth, that it doesn’t work that way. Most people then think it’s their own fault or the other person’s fault or the fault of both, and they try a new relationship. After the third, fourth, or fifth try, they might know better; but a lot of people are still trying. That’s usually what’s called love in our society.

In reality, love is a quality of our heart. The heart has no other function. If we were aware that we all contain love within us, and that we can foster and develop it, we would certainly give that far more attention than we do. In all developed societies there are institutions to foster the expansion of the mind, from the age of three until death. But we don’t have any institutions to develop the heart, so we have to do it ourselves. Most people are either waiting for or relating to the one person who makes it possible for them to feel love at last. But that kind of love is beset with fear, and fear is part of hate. What we hate is the idea that this special person may die, walk away, have other feelings and thoughts-in other words, the fear that love may end, because we believe that love is situated strictly in that one person. Since there are six billion people on this planet, this is rather absurd. Yet most people think that our love-ability is dependent upon one person and having that one person near us. That creates the fear of loss, and love beset by fear cannot be pure. We create a dependency upon that person, and on his or her ideas and emotions. There is no freedom in that, no freedom to love.

If we see quite clearly that love is a quality that we all have, then we can start developing that ability. Any skill that we have, we have developed through practice. If we’ve learned to type, we’ve had to practice. We can practice love and eventually we’ll have that skill. Love has nothing to do with finding somebody who is worth loving, or checking out people to see whether they are truly lovable. If we investigate ourselves honestly enough, we find that we’re not all that lovable either, so why do we expect somebody else to be totally lovable? It has nothing to do with the qualities of the other person, or whether he or she wants to be loved, is going to love us back, or needs love. Everyone needs love. Because we know our own faults, when somebody loves us we think, Oh, that’s great, this person loves me and doesn’t even know I have all these problems. We’re looking for somebody to love us to support a certain image of ourselves. If we can’t find anybody, we feel bereft. People even get depressed or search for escape routes. These are wrong ways of going at it.

IN THE spiritual path, there’s nothing to get, and everything to get rid of. The  first thing to let go of is trying to “get” love, and instead to give it. That’s the secret of the spiritual path. One has to give oneself wholeheartedly. Whatever we do half heartedly, brings halfhearted results. How can we give ourselves? By not holding back.  By not wanting for ourselves. If we want to be loved, we are looking for a support system. If we want to love, we are looking for spiritual growth.  Disliking others is far too easy. Anybody can do it and justify it because, of course, people are often not very bright and don’t act the way we’d like them to act. Disliking makes grooves in the heart, and it becomes easier and easier to fall into these grooves. We not only dislike others, but also ourselves. If one likes or loves oneself, it’s easier to love others, which is why we always start loving-kindness meditations with the focus on ourselves. That’s not egocentricity. If we don’t like ourselves because we have faults, or have made mistakes, we will transfer that dislike to others and judge them accordingly. We are not here to be judge and jury. First of all, we don’t even have the qualifications. It’s also a very unsatisfactory job, doesn’t pay, and just makes people unhappy.

PEOPLE OFTEN feel that it’s necessary to be that way to protect themselves. But what do we need to protect ourselves from? We have to protect our bodies from injury. Do we have to protect ourselves from love? We are all in this together, living on this planet at the same time, breathing the same air. We all have the same limbs, thoughts, and emotions. The idea that we are separate beings is an illusion. If we practice meditation diligently with perseverance, then one day we’ll get over this illusion of separation. Meditation makes it possible to see the totality of all manifestation. There is one creation and we are all part of it. What can we be afraid of? We are afraid to love ourselves, afraid to love creation, afraid to love others because we know negative things about ourselves. Knowing that we do things wrong, that we have unhappy or unwholesome thoughts, is no reason not to love. A mother who loves her children doesn’t stop loving them when they act silly or unpleasant. Small children have hundreds of unwholesome thoughts a day and give voice to them quite loudly. We have them too, but we do not express them all.

So, if a mother can love a child who is making difficulties for her, why can’t we love ourselves? Loving oneself and knowing oneself are not the same thing. Love is the warmth of the heart, the connectedness, the protection, the caring, the concern, the embrace that comes from acceptance and understanding for oneself. Having practiced that, we are in a much better position to practice love toward others. They are just as unlovable as we are, and they have just as many unwholesome thoughts. But that doesn’t matter. We are not judge and jury. When we realize that we can actually love ourselves, there is a feeling of being at ease. We don’t constantly have to become or pretend, or strive to be somebody. We can just be. It’s nice to just be, and not be “somebody.” Love makes that possible. By the same token, when we relate to other people, we can let them just be and love them. We all have daily opportunities to practice this. It’s a skill, like any other.

….I hope this finds everyone resting in Big Love today!!!! :)

 

Smile at Fear

10 Feb 2011 Leave a Comment

by blessingsenterprises in Emotions, Grief, Happiness, healing, Loss and Letting Go, Peace, prayers, Spirituality Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves – regret for the past and fear of the future…

~~~Fulton Oursler

Because we are afraid, we develop all kinds of habits which over time lead to addictions.  Human beings are funny like that–We look for strength in the things that weaken us…

~~Pema Chodron,  Dharma Teacher

I took this picture over Labor Day weekend while hiking the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) in New Mexico.  For those of you with eyes over 40, that is a cow patty with flowers growing out of it. Lovely, isn’t it? :)

You have to understand the enormity of the canyon and the area in which we were hiking to fully appreciate this image–ginormous doesn’t begin to capture it.  The CDT runs from Mexico to Canada, it’s hundreds of miles long.  We were in the Rio Chamas Wilderness section, just a few miles from the CDT trail head in New Mexico.  There are countless acres and square miles in which this flower could have planted itself, but it chose to land in cow poo and stay there, to use the inherent qualities of the excrement for fertilizer and grow just a bit taller and stronger than the surrounding flowers.  Let us take some instruction from this brave little wildflower– it was not afraid to get down in the muck and take root in order to grow and thrive in an otherwise harsh desert environment.

This is the area in which we were hiking…gorgeous, yes.  But fully sunny, hot and dry during the day, chilly at night.  Deep in canyons surrounded by mountains in the Chamas River Wilderness Area, about an hour outside of Santa Fe, 13 miles back on a red dirt road then walking toward Ojitos Canyon on the CDT…Desolate but full of Life, a blank slate on which nature and Life can assert itself to grow and thrive.

So that little flower could have inserted herself anywhere.  But Life doesn’t necessarily choose what is easy, Life chooses what is Life-Giving.  And let’s face it: sometimes Life acknowledges that shit makes great fertilizer.  But the truth is that as humans, we fear the pain, the stink, the stickiness, appearances of “how this will look,”  so we go for what seems easy in the moment, rather than what might actually feed us and give us more life.  But choosing the easier, softer way may not always be life-affirming; if we are not discerning, it can also lead to addictions and much more pain.  Fear can make us choose things  which in the moment seem easier–it seems easier in the moment to avoid tears and pain.  But in doing so, we often strengthen habits which just lead to more pain and fear and so on and on the cycle goes.  The biggest obstacle to true healing is our fear, because what usually happens in the middle of big healing experiences is that our fear arises and we shut down or check out.  Yet we can also use that same fear to move us forward or feed us, to strengthen us and lead us to seeking out a new way of being.  Discernment is the key here.   (I  wrote a more in-depth post on this concept called Spiritual Fruits or Just Nuts? You can read that here if you are interested. )

There is something really powerful and encouraging about knowing that since the beginning of time, humans have felt fear and elation, grief and joy, happiness and sadness, compassion and rage, resentment and forgiveness, hope and despair.  The list of feelings and their opposites could go on and on, but the truth is we are not so different than our ancestors.  All of the Religions of the Book and all of the sacred scriptures of each religion address this…each time the Angel of God comes to a prophet or recipient of Divine Love or Intervention, the first thing the Angel says is, “Be not afraid.”  Not, “Hey Joe, it’s your lucky day!”  But, “Fear not!”  Fear is natural and human, but so is love.  So is compassion.  So is forgiveness and grace.  It’s all true at once, and so we have to choose.  We have to choose to heal.  We have to choose to love.  We have to choose to move forward in our fear, which of course  is the hardest time to choose something.  But it can be done and you don’t have to do it alone.

Humans have always divided off into groups or tribes and have always liked to talk about how civilized we are and how that group over there is so wrong or bad…you can see it now between Christians and Muslims, Muslims and Jews, Republicans and Democrats and on and on.  But the real enemy, if there is an enemy at all, is our fear.  Our fear of change, our fear of loss, our fear of success, our fear of failure, our fear of abandonment, our fear of getting what we want or not getting what we want, fear of really living, fear of what “they” will think, fear of how it will look if we ask for help or tell the truth of our lives, and on and on it goes.  But if we get down to the basics of life, a Muslim parent in Afghanistan wants the same health and safety for his children that an American Baptist parent wants for his kids.  We all want to be loved, to be nourished and to have happiness and freedom from want or suffering.  We all want to be free of the things that bind us, we all want to feel safe and happy and know those whom we love are  safe and happy as well.

There is always something in the press about 9/11 and our fear based reactions to that date, to that event.  What people fail to remember is that Iran was the first country to send condolences to the United States after the Twin Towers fell.  Yes, Iran.  Not Great Britain or Israel, but Iran.  They were the first country to hold a prayer gathering and other Muslim countries quickly followed suit, because in that moment we were not enemies without official relations, we were all just human beings, all feeling the horror of the enormity of that loss.  Human compassion was able to override fear and mistrust and bring forth compassion and prayer.  Mistrust reigns again, but in the deepest moments of need, compassion can always take root.  Like that flower, Life can always find a way to grow through the pain, through the fear, through what looks like shit, and come out smelling like a rose on the other side.  Life just does that, because Life is rooted in Love, in our Oneness, in our connection.

The danger comes when we decide to root into our fears and just create more fertilizer in our life without ever really planting good seeds of compassion, growth, love or humility.  The seeds we plant will always grow–of this there is no doubt.  And poo makes great fertilizer regardless of the seeds, but as any gardener knows, too much fertilizer can also kill the plant.  So when in fear, I have some choices…Will I ask for help?  Will I be discerning about which seeds I am sowing?  Resentment seeds seem to germinate faster than seeds of compassion, but both need fertilizer to grow.  So which seeds am I planting today, which seeds am I feeding? What do I want this garden of my life to look like in a few months?  Because have no doubt–the seeds you plant today will be harvested tomorrow. You can call it karma or what comes around goes around, you can call it fair or unfair, you can call it what you want and what you call it won’t change what it is:  your responsibility.  It us up to each of us to choose which seeds we will nurture and feed, because we all carry the seeds of hate and love, fear and faith, hope and despair within us.  We can choose.  I can choose.  You can choose.  It is not always easy, but it is always possible.  This does not mean shutting off feelings, but really honoring them, inviting them in like a wise guest and accepting the gifts they offer us.  It means we can choose which seeds we will cultivate over time, what we will feed, what we will harvest in the future.  If you plant apple seeds you are not going to get pear trees, that’s just a fact.

The Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron speaks of smiling at our fear and of embracing it, and speaks of the Buddhist saying,

Place your fearful mind in the cradle of loving-kindness…

It is a beautiful image of holding our own pain and fear with the same gentle loving-kindness we would extend to a beloved child.  Fear is not the enemy.  The “other” is not the enemy.  What we truly wrestle with is our own inner demons, our own fears, our own sense of inadequacy.  Our fear of not having enough makes us cheat or lie, steal or withhold, go too far or not far enough, hold back or shut down, hurt ourselves and others.  Interestingly, the definition of a fully enlightened being is one who is fearless because they are intimate with their fear.  Not that they don’t have fear, but that they have smiled at it, befriended it, invited it in like a wise teacher and discussed its gifts over a cup of tea.  The enlightened ones are fearless because they know the nature of fear and no longer fear their fear, not because they have managed to shut it down or off permanently.  This I like very much, this I find tremendously encouraging.

So today, like that little flower, we can choose to plant seeds of growth and abundance, of rooting down into the people, places and things which help us grow, regardless of how it might look from the outside.  Today we can choose to plant seeds of compassion and love, of forgiveness and loving-kindness and just stay with it, even if it feels or smells like shit in the moment.  Today we can smile at fear.

If you would like to watch Ani Pema Chodron talk about Smiling at Fear, you can see a snippet of that video below.

Wishing everyone peace and blessings and the peace and joy that comes from knowing we are all One, even in our fears.  Have a great day.

The Practice of Loving-Kindness

02 Aug 2010 1 Comment

by blessingsenterprises in prayers, Spirituality Tags: , , , , , , , ,

A few people have asked me lately about metta, also known in some circles as maitri.   Metta is a practice of loving kindness toward self and others.  There are volumes written about metta, it is a basic Buddhist practice in all traditions.  Pema Chodron is a well known teacher of this practice and has written many books on the subject.

The basic practice is to first practice loving kindness toward the self, to truly make friends with yourself.   When you find peace within, you can more readily practice it toward others.  The Judeo-Christian version of this is “to love your neighbor as yourself.”   It is truly a practice to be gentle and kind with yourself,  practicing this with a boundless, open heart.   It requires finding the balance between healthy and unhealthy cravings, understanding healthy desires and boundaries,  then putting them into practice with self and others.

A strong suggestion~~don’t start this with someone with whom you have a lot of negative energy or anger.  Don’t start with someone who hurt you.  Start with yourself and if that is just too hard, take gentle note of that.  Then visualize those you find it easy to love and let your body and mind relax into that.  Imagine them with you, feel the love, feel the smile, feel the way you expand and open in that love.  Include yourself in the way that feels, and invite the fear and anxiety into that circle of love.

If you have a tradition that is helpful to you, imagine that…if it is Christian, then see the love in the eyes of Jesus, feel Him look at you and melt away the fear.  If it is another tradition or there is an icon or certain image that speaks to you, allow it to fill you and feed you.  Hold yourself as gently and patiently as you would a small, frightened child.  Be kind to yourself.  Allow this to take as long as it takes, even if it takes years or lifetimes.  I cannot think of a kinder, more gentle prayer practice in any tradition than this practice.  It truly is about being the body of Christ, or getting in touch with your Buddha nature.  It is about practicing peace and allowing that to radiate out into your life, into the lives of those whom you love.

So many people have asked me about this lately I wanted to at least post the basic metta practice chant.  The practice is simple, although not always easy ;)      Give yourself some time to practice this, don’t expect yourself to master this in the immediate western way.  Simply allow the practice to transform you.  It might be helpful to find a teacher, or listen to Pema Chodron, to find a local dharma center or practice group, or even read more about this if you find it resonates with you.  If you google “metta chant,” you will find a number of audio files, youtube videos, etc.    Feel free to contact me directly or post a question or comment if you want more info.

Metta Chant

May I be free from anger and hatred.

May I be free from greed and selfishness.

May I be free from fears and anxiety.

May I be free from all pain and suffering.

May I be free from ignorance and delusion.

May I be free from all negative states of mind.

May I be happy and peaceful.

May I be liberated from bondages.

May I experience peace and tranquility within.

May those whom I love, those whom I like, those who have angered or done harm to me be free from anger and hatred.

May those whom I love, those whom I like, those who have angered or done harm to me be free from greed and selfishness.

May those whom I love, those whom I like, those who have angered or done harm to me be free from fears and anxiety.

May those whom I love, those whom I like, those who have angered or done harm to me be free from all pain and suffering.

May those whom I love, those whom I like, those who have angered or done harm to me be free from ignorance and delusion.

May those whom I love, those whom I like, those who have angered or done harm to me be free from all negative states of mind.

May those whom I love, those whom I like, those who have angered or done harm to me be happy and peaceful.

May those whom I love, those whom I like, those who have angered or done harm to me be liberated from bondages.

May those whom I love, those whom I like, those who have angered or done harm to me experience peace and tranquility within.

May all beings be free from anger and hatred.

May all beings be free from greed and selfishness.

May all beings be free from fears and anxiety.

May all beings be free from all pain and suffering.

May all beings be free from ignorance and delusion.

May all beings be free from all negative states of mind.

May all beings be happy and peaceful.

May all beings be liberated from bondages.

May all beings experience peace and tranquility within.

Peace and blessings,

T

Forgiveness, Metta & Priorities

29 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment

by blessingsenterprises in Emotions, Grief, Loss and Letting Go, prayers, Spirituality Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Good morning, Happy Thursday! :)

I’ve had several conversations today about priorities, forgiveness and how making forgiveness a priority  is such an integral part of the journey and a good life.  Forgiveness comes from words meaning “allow,” and literally means “for giving.”   Everyone I’ve talked to today is having such a rough time, and there is a lot of emotion swirling around.  All of this got me thinking about feelings and what we do with them, and about for-giving.

I think when we forgive we give up the sense of being a victim so we can set ourselves and another person free.  Really what we are giving up is the sense that we have a right to punish someone for harming us.  But I think at a deeper level, we mostly give the freedom to ourselves.  If I hold onto old hurts, the truth is that I’m the one hurting myself over time, not the original person I charge with the harm.   So when forgiveness becomes a priority for me, I find that I feel a deeper sense of freedom in general.

Buddhists speak at length about the roots of suffering and happiness, and in cases of cruelty or harm, aspire for the wrongdoer,

May you experience happiness and the roots of happiness.  May you be free from suffering and the roots of suffering.

There is understanding and acknowledgment that harm has been caused, intentionally or not, but that holding onto it only creates more suffering.  There is acknowledgment that pain and betrayal, harm and hurt are not just personal, but also universal.   I’ve probably hurt others too, so maybe it’s best that we all experience happiness and the roots of happiness.  In cases of extreme cruelty or harm, the kindest thing that can be done for all is to be free of the roots of suffering and instead tend to the roots of happiness.

Christian scriptures tell us, “if you don’t forgive, you won’t be forgiven.”  Theologians and scholars tell us this does not mean God won’t forgive us, but the truth is that unforgiving people tend to be somewhat vengeful people, vengeful people tend to harm other people, and so round and round it goes.   So if I refuse to forgive you, it probably signifies a deeper wound or hurt  in me and if I can’t forgive myself for mistakes, I probably will find it hard to forgive others.  Holding onto that kind of hurt and resentment often results in depression, rage, or a soul-sucking detachment which separates us from God.  Therefore we don’t feel the love and mercy of the Divine because we don’t let it in.  It’s always there, but if I don’t let it in then I can’t experience it.

So I was thinking about all of that this morning…thinking about priorities, and thinking about the folks I know who make letting go and forgivness a priority–the truth is that they are the happiest folks I know, in spite of a lot of past pain. I’m feeling very pensive today, very aware, almost too present, if that’s possible.   It’s the anniversary of my grandmother’s death, as I wrote about in the previous post.  I have a full day and tonight I will go to my parental units, about 3 hours south of here, and spend a day or two.   My own mom is sick and declining  steadily.  It’s hard to watch, and I find myself sometimes having to stay present to it, finding the balance between knowing what that means clinically, as well as my own feelings about it.

I was thinking about my mother’s grief about the death of her own mother, and how that no doubt is especially poignant in this time of her own decline.   Chances are that my mother will have had more time with her mom than I will have, probably about 15 years longer than I will.  Nine years after the death of my grandmother, when we all still laugh about and grieve this powerhouse of a woman,  I think about all she had to endure and forgive.  She seemed to make forgiveness a priority and she had a lot of things she needed to forgive, from what I know about her life story.  But rather than use those things as excuses to put up walls or shut down, she instead used them as a means of prayer, of letting go, of moving on.  Not in denial, but in a choice of how she wanted to live.  God knows that wasn’t perfect or constant.  In spite of my memories of her as how Heaven would smell, she was quite human and had her own issues.  But she kept pluggin along at it— she made it a priority.

Today I have been thinking about that a lot and all of my own feelings about my mom, our relationship and what I would like for this remaining time we have to be like.  The truth is that my experience is up to me, and so I’m working on making this time as peaceful and fluid as it can be– that’s my priority today.  I’m borrowing prayers today, and sending out a few of my own…I’ve gotten a lot of calls this morning from people going through a hard time….lost jobs, sick friends, sick moms, hurt feelings on lots of sides in lots of relationships, and I’m observing all of this with keen interest and curiosity.

Given all of that, I had a chat with myself this morning about priorities and what is important to me.  Today my priority is loving-kindness to myself and others, and as of this writing at 830, I hope I’ve done OK with that so far. But we’ll see. I don’t have enough coffee in me yet to do much damage.

But given all of that, I am making metta my priority today.  I’ve been practicing metta meditations for years.  There is a reason they call it a practice.  Metta basically means loving kindness.  If you’d like to learn more about all of this, you can read about it here.

This is part of the instructions from the Buddha to his followers about this practice…

Let none deceive another,
Or despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill-will
Wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings:
Radiating kindness over the entire world
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will…

Today I am thinking about all of these things, and the relationships in my life.  There are so many, and they are so good, and I am so grateful.  Today I aspire we all experience happiness and the roots of happiness.  May you be free from suffering and the roots of suffering.  May you live in peace,  love and experience giggles, joy and metta as priorities.

Have a great day!

Peace and blessings :)



Morning Prayers & Ponderings…

27 Jul 2010 2 Comments

by blessingsenterprises in Emotions, ponderings, prayers, Spirituality Tags: , , , , , ,

I’m catching up on some reading and prayer this morning. Prayer literally means “to beg.”  There is a lot of begging going on these days around me, a lot of people are having a hard time.  So, as is my daily practice, I am settling in soon to pray, to meditate and to be more in touch with the Divine presence I believe is always whispering sweetly around me.  But, as the Maharishi said, “the winds of God’s grace are always blowing, but it is up to us to raise our sails.”

This morning I was catching up on 4011 emails and came across this nifty prayer from another blog and would like to borrow it.  But, like most things I read or am inspired by, it wandered me down a path of thinking my own convoluted, not-quite-fully-caffeinated-yet thoughts.  I mean, can you really borrow a prayer??  Can you borrow the earnest entreaties of another, can you take the intentions and hopes of another and mix them in your own internal soup and make it your own?

I would like to think so….I’d like to think on those days when it is hard or scary or sad, on the days when I am so tired or overwhelmed, on the days when it’s too much to do anything but just trust it’s all gonna be ok…those are the days we probably need to borrow a prayer the most.  Today I’m feeling good, great in fact, so I’m simply being the conduit for the prayers of others and trusting that like all good things, they move into the collective to water the fertile soil of our souls.

Pema Chodron describes being overwhelmed as “horrified anxiety.”  That’s probably the best definition I have ever heard.  There is a lot of that going around lately…just about everyone walking in my door is in a state of flux, transition, overwhelm or grief.  There seems to be something powerful moving in the collective as the old washes away and the new rolls in…like all tides, it brings things with it and this is no different.  Whatever is happening in the collective these days is deep and it’s hard on folks.   If you are having a rough time, know you are not alone…

We are all having interesting ups and downs with the change.  The water element is still pretty out of whack and there is a lot of transition for people.   For those who aren’t into the elements, the bottom line is that water is the element of emotions, and so when it is out of balance then the emotional state of humans also tends to be out of balance.   In these times, I find it helpful to remember that Divine Peace and Love dwell in and around all of us, and that we can trust the process of life… that we can move through life knowing we are safe, Divinely inspired, protected and guided, that we are safe and all is well.  In the words of St. Julian of Norwich, “and all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well…”

So in this time when there is a lot of prayer borrowing going on, I’m going to pass on some of my own favorites, as well as borrow from others who are in the habit of sending out prayers.

The wonderful folks  at The Virtual Abbey listed this prayer on July 25, evidently taken from A New Zealand Prayerbook, and I love it.  So I’m taking it directly from her blog…

God, come to my assistance.

Lord, make haste to help me.

Lord, it is night.

The night is for stillness.

Let us be still in the presence of God.

It is night after a long day.

What has been done has been done

what has not been done has not been done;

let it be.

The night is dark.

Let our fears of the darkness

of the world and of our own lives

rest in you.

The night is quiet.

Let the quietness of your peace

enfold us, all dear to us, and all who have no peace.

The night heralds the dawn.

Let us look expectantly to a new day,

new joys, new possibilities.

In your name we pray.

Thanks be to God.

I can’t say it any better than that.  So today, let us look expectantly to this new day, to new joys and to new possibilities.  If you need a prayer, feel free to borrow one.  If you have a prayer, feel free to share it…no prayer is ever held for long and certainly never goes to waste.

I’m off to raise my sails.  Have a great day.

Peace and blessings,

T :)

Merton & the Path

21 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment

by blessingsenterprises in Loss and Letting Go, Spirituality Tags: , , , , ,

This morning I am thinking about Thomas Merton.

For the uninitiated,  Thomas Merton was one of the great mystics of our time.  A Trappist monk and  a prolific writer, in his later years he connected with Buddhist teachers and declared them brothers in contemplation.   His autobiography, Seven Storey Mountain,  is a road map, his own experience with starting off as an atheist and becoming a monk.   Merton spent 13 years of silent meditation at the Abbey of Gethsemani, praying for God’s will.  He came out and wrote this:

My God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.   I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do i really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please You.  And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it at the time.  Therefore I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone….

That prayer is found in his book Thoughts in Solitude.

Today I am contemplating Merton.  I have been thinking a lot about him and this path of late…watching myself and others on it, sometimes feeling my own sense of inadequacy, elation, giggles or frustration, my own attachment to outcomes, my own humanness coming in many disguises.

It’s funny– I don’t think most of us have an emotion that has a shelf life of more than about 20 minutes.  Even in the depths of grief or loss, of joy or elation, you cannot hold onto that for more than a few hours…things are always changing.  You can choose to stay angry or as a victim, and that can become habitual as well.  But mostly emotions  ebb and flow, like waves coming and going, rising and falling on the shores of our souls.

Our thoughts and emotional states come and go like clouds in the sky.  And when we recognize this and let them float on by, without getting caught in the stickiness of trying to hold onto a cloud, it all seems to flow pretty well…  Yet when we are experiencing one we label as “negative, ” aka “uncomfortable,” we want that one to end.  I have had long periods of meditation where there is a sense of One, of elation, of the bliss of knowing there is no separation.   It is a practice not to cling to any of it, to let them all come and go, like clouds moving across the blue sky.

This morning I felt my frustration rise over what now seems fairly trivial, at least my part of it.  But it rose nonetheless.  I felt my chest tighten, my breath grow more shallow,  felt myself try to get back to my practice of openness…to breathe it away…ventilate it, give it some space and air, let it pass gently.  If that same person had called to tell me we just won the lotto, those same places in me would have expanded instead of contracted.   Most spiritual traditions teach that the more we hold onto anything, the more it holds onto us.   So this morning, I am letting go, letting my heart space expand and fill with the Light and air that is always available to me.

Separation is illusion.  Divine peace dwell in and around all of us, and we can all trust the process of life.  But isn’t it funny that we only want to trust the things we label as “good?”  So much of our experience is based in the stories we tell ourselves about life and our experiences.   Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional, and I think a lot of the suffering in the world is the result of the stories we tell ourselves about the pain, about clinging, grasping and being afraid to let go.

So this morning, I think of Merton.  Because if Thomas Merton– mystic, teacher, writer and fellow traveler on the path– doesn’t know God’s will after 13 years of silent meditation in a monastery, then I probably won’t figure it out today either.  But I’ll keep on the path, and keep asking, keep showing up, keep contemplating.   On that note, I’m going to meditate, letting myself become one of the clouds in this ever moving sky.

I’m curious– what do you do to stay on the path and let it all pass through?

Have a great day.  :)

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