Tao Te Ching, verse 8

Have you ever really contemplated water or meditated on its nature? Is it possible to be as wonderful as water? Welcome to my Tuesday evening, here’s what we’re thinking about tonight:

8

The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.
Thus it is like the Tao.

In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don’t try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.

When you are content to be simply yourself
and don’t compare or compete,
everybody will respect you.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

Keeping the faith…it’s here somewhere

Last night I wrote a post about faith and willingness. This morning I feel like I need to follow that up and explain a little about how faith works in my life.

I am not one of those people who goes through life with rock solid faith. Faith for me is a process that must be worked at constantly. Because of the way it works in my life, I have always been curious about those people who seem to be able to exercise their faith unwaveringly in the darkest moments. I am not sure if those people actually have the same kinds of struggles and doubts that I and many other people seem to experience. If they do, they sure aren’t telling anyone.

There’s no right or wrong way to have faith. And maybe the difference between me and people whose faith seems so readily available to them is one of organization. Maybe it’s like the person with the neat and tidy desk who, when asked for something, finds it effortlessly in their beautiful and pristine workspace. My faith is under one of the many piles of very important stuff on my spiritual desk. It’s there and I can find it, it’s just gonna take me a minute…and it might have a coffee cup ring on it

Those who know me know I aspire to be a spiritual guru of sorts. Not because I think I have all the answers. Each person has the answers to their own questions, I just want to help people look. Kinda like when you lose your car keys. I want to be the person who reminds you to look in the pocket of the pants you wore yesterday, not the one who points out that if you had a better system and were more organized you wouldn’t have these issues. I’m not sure where in the world of spiritual gurus there is room for one such as me, but I hope to find my place.

Perhaps someday I will be one of those people who never seems to struggle and can use my spiritual tools proactively to create a beautiful stress-free life for myself and my family. Until then, I’ll be writing about my miracles as I recognize them, often in retrospect, and looking for my faith…the way I look for my glasses when I am already wearing them.

 

 

How to be grateful

Times are tough in the world right now. There are a lot of people suffering all over the planet in a variety of different ways. How does one maintain a sense of gratitude while surrounded by so much unhappiness?

Gratitude–an ingredient necessary for living a truly happy life and yet elusive at the very times it is most needed. Gratitude is one of those things that requires focus and intent, it does not appear to come naturally to most people. It has to be worked at. Difficult at times, yes. Impossible, no.

Gratitude is one of my most powerful spiritual tools. When things do not feel good, it is time to start counting blessings. And yet, for many people, those are the times when the blessings are hard to count…because they become obscured, by life.

Being grateful for seemingly negative things can transform those very things into positives. Challenges become blessings. There is more than one way to look at every single thing that happens to us. Sometimes we desire something so much and then when we get it we find that it does not bring the pleasure we expected of it. Conversely, there are times when things happen which seem negative that turn out to be for the best. Accepting all of what life offers with an open and grateful heart brings what the Bible calls the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding.

I have experienced peace in some of the most difficult moments of my life. Those are moments of pure grace. Gratitude is the path to that place of peace. Anyone can find it.

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at will change.” ~Wayne Dyer

Being grateful is not about a perfect life. It is an appreciation for life itself in all its messed up glory.

Sometimes when I’m in pain I give thanks for the painful body part. If my hand hurts, I can still be grateful to have a hand.

In any given moment grace abounds. It’s there for anyone who wishes to see it. There is beauty all around us all the time. All we have to do is stop for a moment and take it all in. It is the gift from the universe to us.

How does one create a more grateful outlook? Here are a few ideas:

• Keep a gratitude journal–Writing down lists of things to be grateful for is a powerful practice that keeps one’s focus on the positive in life rather than the negative.
• Say thank you–Make a point to thank people for kindnesses large and small. Doing this makes it easier to notice when someone has been kind to you.
• Transform complaints into blessings–If your job is frustrating, be thankful you have a job to be frustrated with; if your feet hurt, be glad you have feet. And so on.
• Meditate–Focus on the words thank you, use them as a mantra. You’ll be surprised at the result of this practice.

These are some of the things I do in my own life to keep a positive attitude and an open, grateful heart. That is not to say my attitude is always positive, I react to things just like anyone. But what I do have is the tools to recognize the hidden blessings in life’s apparent difficulties. As a result I am able to live a happy life no matter what is going on around me.

And for that I am extremely grateful.

 

 

Learning the lessons

Now that I seem to be leaving this dark period of intense stress and uncertainty, I have this void in my life where all the worry was taking up space in my heart.  I think the way to fill that void is by figuring out what some of the lessons are.

It’s amazing to have lived as many years as I have lived and have only been learning the big lessons for about 6 years.

One of the biggest lessons I have learned in the past few years is to love as unconditionally as possible and strive to give everyone the benefit of every doubt.  It’s really nothing more than the golden rule.  I treat people as I want to be treated.  I love them, forgive them when they make mistakes, give them space and privacy if they want it and try not to interfere with anyone’s free will.

Part of learning how to love has involved hard lessons in expressing love.  I think sometimes people don’t know what to do with me and all my affirmations and quotes and going on about love all the time.  It’s not that easy to explain to those who haven’t been through what I have been through.  Part of it is just me, I’ve always had a sense of urgency about life that makes me come across as intense, which I am.  But the other part is that I have many years of non-expression to make up for.  Not because I think I was doing anything wrong all those years, I was certainly doing the best I could with what I had to work with, but as one who now understands the power of love, I want to put as much of it into the world as I can before I move on to the next assignment.

Because I grew up in a world of criticism and detachment, I didn’t really learn how to connect with people on a heart level.  It has caused all manner of difficulty in my relationships.  Once I realized that negative criticism is not a proper way to communicate with anyone, all my relationships improved.  I’m not here to judge anyone.  I’m here to affirm all the goodness I see and accept the rest as part of the deal.  Not judge it as negative, just accept it for what it is, something that doesn’t feel good to me.  Right and wrong are not clear distinctions.  There is so much unknown at any given time that the best we can do is know that we don’t know what anyone is dealing with and give them the compassion we would want for ourselves when we are carrying invisible burdens in our hearts.

One of the things I have learned to do is tell people how I feel about them.  Because I feel really happy about most people most of the time.  I think people are beautiful and complicated.  And I want them to know I appreciate them.  There is no way to describe the joy this has brought to my life.  From waiting in line at the post office to nearly every phone conversation I have.  When you look for the beauty in people, you will find it.

I think most people are longing to be seen.  I think everyone has beauty they keep hidden because this is a harsh world and not everyone can be trusted with our hearts.  When we encounter someone unconditionally accepting and loving, the natural inclination is to open like a flower.  One of the greatest privileges of my life is to watch people blossom before my eyes because they know that I see what is true in them.  I think I have always had this gift but I have only been able to appreciate it since learning to be present and aware.

There have been people in my life, especially in the past 5 or 6 years, who have no idea how wonderful they are.  When I show them they are amazed.  Some of them couldn’t handle it.  One in particular I can think of decided some things about himself that are not the truth of who he is and what I saw didn’t match how he saw himself.   So instead of bringing comfort, it brought him confusion and misery.  Sometimes being in the gaze of loving eyes is uncomfortable.  I get that.  I’ve experienced it myself and it can be overwhelming.

It gives me joy when people awaken to their own beauty and greatness because of something I have said to them.  And I am humbled when people express amazement at my ability to do that.  That is a question I have been asked so many times in the past few years.  How I see the good through all of the other stuff.  It takes practice, but it’s so worth it.

The most profound lesson I learned in the art of transformative thinking was from Thich Nhat Hanh.  I was fresh out of 20 years of Christianity and things were in chaos all around me.  My marriage was over, I was in the middle of law school and pretty sure I should have gotten a PhD in history instead, and for the first time in my life I was spending enough time alone to see myself clearly.  There was a lot of garbage in there.  I read in one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s books that everything is in a constant state of transformation.  Today’s garbage is tomorrow’s flower.  We take the garbage, make compost of it, and grow a beautiful flower.  That idea touched me so profoundly that it changed my life and I became determined to make beauty out of everything that life presents.  Between that and learning the most simple meditation on earth, also from Thich Nhat Hanh, my life has been transformed into one of eternal hope rather than despair.

I think the recent lessons have been to remember that if I stay true to love, the only force in the world that is real, nothing can ever really hurt me again.  If love is the motivation for all my actions, I will be at peace.  If I am not at peace then I know that I need to  adjust my perspective and find the love.  That’s all there is.  Life is not nearly as complicated as we try to make it.

“Like a lotus flower that grows out of the mud and blossoms above the muddy water surface, we can rise above our defilements and sufferings of life.”

Impermanence is a beautiful thing.

Old journals

Wow.

I’m going through boxes, throwing things away and I found the  journal I was writing in when I met the opera singer who broke my heart.  The reason I feel like I should share this is that there are always signs pointing to things that seem to come as a surprise.  Nothing ever really comes out of left field.  The power of denial is amazing.  Here are some of the first things I wrote about this guy, before meeting him in person:

12/2/2005–I’ve been e-mailing this guy named ____.  He seems nice enough.  He doesn’t really have the most secure work habits though and I guess that is a bit of a red flag. Ya think?

That guy ____ wrote back to me.  I think he may be too cynical for me. Oy.

12/9/2005–I don’t think _____ is lying about things because if he were going to bother to lie, wouldn’t he try to make it at least sound impressive?

What’s the worst that could happen?  I could sleep with him and then find out he’s a loser/asshole/jerk and have my heart broken in the process.   I guess the best case scenario is that we could become really good and close friends and stay that way for a long time.  What if he is supposed to be the love of my life?  Wouldn’t that be a trip? It turned out to be a little of both.

12/22/2005–I need to slow this thing down, it’s going too fast.  I have other things I need to do, I have to finish what I started (law school). Hello, do you even hear yourself?

Four days after the 12/22 entry saying I needed to slow it down, I met him in person and our first date lasted 3 days.  And thus began the most intense roller coaster ride of my life that went on for the next 3 1/2 years, at which point he not only broke my heart, he shattered it, and my entire world came crashing down with it.  Looking back, it was one of the biggest favors anyone has ever done for me.  Not because I think badly of him, I don’t, and it’s not that I’m glad he’s out of my life.  To this day I think he is one of the most beautiful souls I have ever met.  I will always have a soft place in my heart for him.  He’s a good person who sometimes wreaks havoc in people’s lives.  I wasn’t the only one it happened to and I really shouldn’t have been surprised, he tried to warn me.

So now I know that I needed to be that devastated so I could find my way to where I am now, which is a much better place in so many ways than I have ever been.  If I hadn’t needed that exact experience, somehow I would have avoided getting involved with him.  His actions forced me to take a hard look at myself and when I did, what I saw was not pretty.  From there I have been able to make changes and for the first time in my life I feel like I am living an authentic life and that I am no longer hiding the real me from the world.  For better or worse, this is it.  This is who I am.  Parts of me have remained constant, like my desire to do good in the world, but some of the darker, more manipulative parts were brought into the light, where they disappeared.

It seems weird to be thankful for something that caused me that much pain, but I have long thought that painful experiences should not be wasted.  Good can come of anything if we are willing to look at things from a different perspective.  My entire life has been preparing me to be the person I am now and while I am far from perfect, when I look at myself now, I see radiant beauty.

Though I have no reason to think he reads any of my blogs, on the off chance he does read this one, I have one thing to say: Thank you.

Gratitude —->grace

I’m going to keep this short because I’ve been writing a lot lately.

Ever since I asked for help from the angels last week, I have been at peace in a situation where many people, including me, would normally panic.

Each day I try to give thanks for all the blessings in my life and not let others’ definition of success rule my heart and mind.  The trials I have been through do not define me.  How I respond to them does.  If I am gentle with the world, the world will be gentle with me.

I want to report that miraculously this morning I was given one-third of my rent for next month.   I am that much closer to having everything covered.  I am so grateful for this blessing that I had to share it here because it is not right to share my worries without sharing the miracles that are also a big part of my life.

Sure, I could worry about where the other two-thirds of the money is going to come from, but why would I when things always seem to materialize in time?

This quote has come to mind a lot recently: “God sometimes does try to the uttermost those whom he wishes to bless.” ~Mohandas Gandhi

I believe that we are blessed to the extent that we allow grace to reign in our lives.  If we insist on having what the world [of advertising] says we should have, we may indeed have all those things through hard work and effort, but if we are willing to take a step closer to the edge and let go of the need to meet society’s arbitrary standards, we open ourselves to the possibility of receiving in the most miraculous ways.  Miracles only happen where they are needed.  We can rely on our own power or we can rely on that which makes the sun rise each morning and the stars appear at night.

I’m an example that shaky faith is better than none at all.

Giving thanks for all the beauty and goodness that surrounds me and wishing grace and miracles for those who need them.

 

Hopeful

I hope people understand why I write the way I do.  Having never been told otherwise, writing a blog feels like having a conversation with the whole world.  Most of my writing comes from that place inside that wants to let people know that I understand and I feel compassion for us all.  That’s the biggest reason I share things that to me feel very personal.

Things have been happening that are not comfortable.  But I realized today that I am facing my fears head on and once I work through this period of my life, I’m going to emerge a lighter, happier person.  The one thing I will say about experiencing misfortune is that once you let go of the things that you thought were stable and necessary, including belief systems, life becomes very simple, very quickly.  And for myself I can say that most of the time I feel peaceful.  I share some of my angst here, but I am largely calm and happy.

The way I stay peaceful is by daily reflecting on the blessings in my life.  There is so much good and so much beauty around for people who are able to stay present.  I would like to see mindfulness taught to school children.  The world would be a much better place.

I like to make lists.  But for some reason during times of stress, I forget to do it.  I decided tonight that I am going to make a list of the things I like best about myself and at least one other person.  There have been some really wonderful people in my life.  And even though things feel a little lonely at times, I know these people are a phone call away and there are a lot of them.  I need to remember that when I start feeling isolated.

I wish for all people to be gentle and compassionate toward themselves.  Start there and it will radiate outward.

I’m feeling hopeful tonight.

Grateful 4

A couple of things have been popping into my mind recently whenever I ask myself what I am most grateful for.  Water and my body.

I frequently give thanks for water because I think about water quite a bit actually.  It might have to do with the fact that I am a Scorpio, a water sign, not sure.  Water is something I recognize as the most delicate giver of life and yet one of the most powerful forces known to man.  If water can’t overwhelm an object in its path, it is content to wear away at it slowly and patiently.  Water is absolutely amazing to me.  That’s why I think about it so often.

It baffles me why we as a species living on this planet would have such little regard for the enormous blessing that water is.  We are wasteful of it, we pollute all our waterways and we take for granted that the universe is going to provide an endless supply of clean water.  What if that is wrong thinking?  What if the supply of clean, safe drinking water–something Americans take very much for granted–were to decrease significantly in highly developed societies?  It’s difficult to predict the panic that would ensue, but I suspect it would be pretty intense.

Recently I read Masaru Emoto’s book The Hidden Messages in Water.  It was such a good reminder how much water can be our friend.  The beautiful crystals that formed after receiving loving intentions were inspiring.  Life could be so much more wonderful if we humans were to treat water with the respect it deserves.  Water is the biggest blessing of life, it is life.

World Water Day was this week.  What a great time to give thanks for the blessing of clean water.

The other thing I have been really grateful for lately is my body.  I was thinking earlier about how so many people, especially women, dislike their bodies or parts of their bodies.  What a shame that is.  Our bodies serve us faithfully, often in spite of how we treat them.  To have a body where all the major parts are in working order and doesn’t hurt all the time is a huge gift.

Again with the socio-political perspective, but as a society we are getting pretty fat.  It’s scary to see what some people put in their bodies.  I don’t eat healthfully 100% of the time, but I do put forth the effort most of the time and I do okay.

I’m at an age where I have gained enough wisdom to finally learn how to listen to my body.  If I do something it doesn’t like, it tells me.  If I’m paying attention, I can use that information to avoid certain behaviors in the future.  It’s pretty simple, I like to feel good so I listen to my body and take care of it.

I wish for all people to feel happy about their bodies, even if it struggles or has challenges or parts that aren’t perfect.  Our bodies are amazing, beautifully functioning systems as long as we continue to maintain them.  I want to be good to mine because it rewards me by feeling good.

Today seemed like a good time to have a little gratitude for some things that make my life happier.

Happy is awesome.

Cheryl