Clearing and Identity

Published on by elizaking Category: Mindfulness, Uncategorized

IMG_1505I spent part of my day yesterday clearing out my desk drawers of accumulated old paid bills and papers from the last couple years. In the beginning, I felt energized and full of resolve, sorting papers into category piles to help me decide what I need to recycle and what I need to keep. Pretty quickly into the sorting, however, I started feeling overwhelmed, discouraged, and indecisive about what should go where (by year, or by another criterion?) and whether to keep an old document ’just in case’.

This time, instead of attempting to push through the feelings and keep going, which is what I would normally do, I paused and just sat with myself. I stayed with the feelings that were coming up, not letting them completely sweep me away but being with them, like a friend patiently wanting to hear more.

Underlying the overwhelm was a feeling of fear that life is unsafe, and that I need to hang onto these pieces of paper that in the future may prove my identity to outside authorities like the IRS or BlueCross. I recognize that some of this fear is valid, we do need to hang onto certain documents to verify our identities in the world.

But I realized, as I got up and made myself a cup of tea for comfort, that this fear of a dissolving identity has deeper roots. I have been writing a scene in my memoir from when I was 11 years old and coming to terms with the reality of my family structure dissolving and reforming. My parents were in the process of separating. I spent my eleventh summer alone with my grandparents, watching the fragility of their increasing age, and their differences and difficulty in relating to each other.

The memory reminded me of the old panic of myself as a child, losing the safety and structure that my family had always provided. I am startled when panic still surfaces at moments like this, moments where I find I’ve tied my identity and sense of safety in the world to something variable and ephemeral, something I have assumed will last forever.

How strange that my feeling of vulnerability is so raw and intense, even after many years. I sat in my glider rocker for a while, rocking myself like a baby until I finished my tea and was ready to keep going with the papers. At the end, I didn’t feel euphoric, in fact I felt disoriented looking at the empty drawer before I put much less back inside. The empty feeling is uncomfortable and yet holds relief, a recognition that with each small gesture like this one, I have now made space for something new to emerge and surface in my life. I do like the budding sensation of momentum, and the sense of opening to possibility.

I would love to hear your stories of supporting yourself through vulnerable moments!

Cheers, Eliza

What Would Your Magic Potion Do?

Published on by elizaking Category: dreams, fable, friendship, Inspiration, magic, Mindfulness, story

As I was walking home a couple weeks ago, a small voice hailed me.
“Want to buy a magic potion?” The speaker was a neighbor from up the street, a four-year old boy with dark straight hair, sitting with his Mom on the front steps of their house.
A box with three small bottles lay across his mother’s lap. She smiled at me and said, “He’s selling homemade magic potions.” She ruffled his hair, adding, “But you don’t really want to drink them of course!”
I nodded, and picked out a bottle and admired the vibrant purple liquid inside. “Tell me what this one does?” I asked the boy.

“That one digs a deep hole in the ground that fills up with purple water,” he explained carefully, then ducked his head and turned back toward his mother.
“Which is the one that makes you fly like a bird?” his Mom prompted.
“This one.” he scooped another bottle from the box with both hands and handed it to me. I put the purple one back and held up the second bottle. This bottle’s contents, a white translucent liquid with small white floating specks, didn’t grab me, much as I liked the idea of flying. I put it back.
“What about the last potion,” I asked, reaching for the third bottle, “What are its magic powers?” The liquid inside was a murky greenish brown.

“That one causes explosions.” the boy said, leaning forward, his eyes on the bottle, “I don’t know why but it makes everything it touches just explode.”
I hastily put that bottle back in the box. He picked it up and shook it gently as if to experiment with exploding something. I noticed a splintery stick of wood left over from a building project lying beside the bottles in the box.
“That’s for sale too,” he told me, “wood is very useful.”
“You need to let her know what they all cost,” his mother said as he picked up the stick of wood and started demonstrating its usefulness by banging it on the stairway’s metal railing. “Remember what I paid you for my potion?”
“A quarter.” he said, turning back to me as he fingered the wood, “You can buy the stick of wood for a quarter too. Soon I’ll have a whole dollar.”
“Are you saving up for something?” I said, searching my pockets for coins.
“Yes. Something special. But I don’t know what it is yet.” He added candidly.

I laughed and gave him two quarters. “Well, I will contribute fifty cents to your dream. I’ll buy one magic purple potion and the stick of wood.”
He took the quarters and began clinking them together in his hand. I gathered my prizes from the box.
“What do you say?” his Mom said, touching his shoulder to get his attention.
“Thank you.” he said automatically, his focus still on the quarters in his hand.

I walked home, considering why I had chosen the deep hole in the ground filled with purple water and not the potion that could make me fly. Partly because of the color, I decided, but I also liked the idea of a magic purple well, like a well of dreams or memories I could draw upon in my writing. I thought about the little boy and imagined how it might feel again to believe one could create a magic potion.

So my question for you is, if you could make a magic potion, what would your potion be like, and what would it do? Feel free to respond, I’m really curious!

Wisdom of Fireflies

Published on by elizaking Category: Uncategorized
Dear Folks,

One fourth of July evening when I was 13, my mother, sister and I sat out on a hillside near our house in Virginia. We pretended we had fabulous balcony seats overlooking a phenomenal light show. In front of us was a small forest of bamboo run wild from lack of knowledge about invasive plants. But on that night it was filled with fireflies shining their patterns of light back and forth to each other and to us. They seemed to love the long bamboo fronds and clustered in dense crowds all along them. The magic of all those blinking lights so close together was spectacular, a real-life light show.

My parents had recently separated and we were feeling the intensity of this seismic family shift.  It was not an easy time for any of us. But that night we sat together in the grass and quietly watched thousands of sparks winking at us, and were filled with a deep sense of well-being. I felt for the first time in several years that everything would be all right, that we would walk through our troubles together, even if in a new configuration. In the distance we could hear the pops and bangs of fireworks and occasional cheers from the people watching them. Somehow this added to my sense of being part of something bigger, a larger whole.

That was one of the first times that I really understood the power of connection and love. I had a recognition that my family was my home community or Sangha, and that we were a part of a larger world community, made up of other people and also of fireflies and bamboo and the grass we were sitting on. 
 
My first introduction to Buddhism was reading and listening to the Dalai Lama who helped me put a context around the wisdom I had received long ago from the fireflies. In an article on ‘Compassion and the Individual’ he writes,

“Ultimately, the reason why love and compassion bring the greatest happiness is simply that our nature cherishes them above all else. The need for love lies at the very foundation of human existence. It results from the profound interdependence we all share with one another. However capable and skillful an individual may be, left alone, he or she will not survive. However vigorous and independent one may feel during the most prosperous periods of life, when one is sick or very young or very old, one must depend on the support of others.”
 
“Inter-dependence, of course, is a fundamental law of nature. Not only higher forms of life but also many of the smallest insects are social beings who, without any religion, law or education, survive by mutual cooperation based on an innate recognition of their interconnectedness. The most subtle level of material phenomena is also governed by interdependence. All phenomena from the planet we inhabit to the oceans, clouds, forests and flowers that surround us, arise in dependence upon subtle patterns of energy. Without their proper interaction, they dissolve and decay.”
 
“It is because our own human existence is so dependent on the help of others that our need for love lies at the very foundation of our existence. Therefore we need a genuine sense of responsibility and a sincere concern for the welfare of others.”

I look forward to reading your experiences of when you first realized the importance of community in your life.  What has community meant to you?

cheers,
Eliza

 

Unexpected Benefits

Published on by elizaking Category: Inspiration, Meditation, Mindfulness, Practice, Uncategorized
“What are the benefits of practicing meditation?” a newcomer asked at a recent Still Water Mindfulness Practice Center orientation to an evening of mindfulness and meditation. Later, I thought of an answering question to understand better where the speaker was coming from, “What are you wanting from the practice. What is it you are longing for?”

When I first started coming to Still Water meditation evenings in Silver Spring, MD, I was already meditating but was longing for a deeper sense of community support around my practice, an affirmation of belonging to a larger whole. I had no idea what that might look like. I definitely did not consider myself an early morning person, and had no interest in the morning meditation groups. But a friend talked me into trying one in Takoma Park. It was a stretch, but I started to go once a week. Things changed when I decided to go to a week-long retreat at Blue Cliff Monastery last summer led by Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk and author, Thich Nhat Hanh.

I started going regularly to three or four morning sits a week as a steady way to “get in shape” for the Blue Cliff retreat. People had told me that participants get up at 5am there every morning, and I didn’t want to be exhausted.
The morning groups i was attending in this area are not as early but at first, I always felt grumpy and sleepy getting up to practice. I learned how to welcome and be with a lot of internal resistance the whole time I was sitting! Over time the resistance began to dissipate so that even after I attended the retreat, I continued to sit regularly in the morning with a group or on my own.

Since then, I notice that while I still have ‘up’ and ‘down’ days, I enjoy watching the quality of the morning light shift as the seasons change. I feel quietly excited to be with my fellow practitioners and more open to their presence. Even when I practice alone now, I feel a deep sense of being connected with my community, not only people who meditate, but also, my larger community. I am recognizing that I have received much of what I was longing for originally, even though it has come in a different form than I imagined.

I invite you to share your insights about your personal benefits and discoveries from mindfulness practice or another practice/activity which has helped you feel part of your larger community. If you are new to your practice, what is it you are longing for as you begin this journey?  If you are a regular practitioner, what would you have liked someone to tell you when you were new? What’s changed in the quality of your life experience?

cheers,
Eliza

Stepping Up

Published on by elizaking Category: Inspiration, Uncategorized

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“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

We’ve all had the experience of getting in the groove with something, exercising, playing an instrument, eating healthily, practicing meditation, and then letting one week slip by without doing that activity. Then without meaning to skip it again, that one week stretches to two weeks, and becomes a month, two, etc.

A friend of mine voiced it well on Facebook. “Why do I always procrastinate on my Chi Gong practice when I know it’s something I want to do?” Someone else commented, “Welcome to the human race.” which made me giggle in resigned recognition.

For me, making time to write a new blog piece has slipped over the last couple months. I couldn’t find a topic to settle on and as days passed, it felt harder to follow up and take that risk of sharing again. I often have trouble discerning whether I really do just need a break from writing and a bit more time for reflection, or if this is part of my tendency to procrastinate.

I notice that when I procrastinate about writing, there may be something I would really like to write about, a real need to create and delve deeper, while at the same time, an old fear of being visible surfaces. I get blocked by self-doubt and a strong sense of unworthiness. Maybe the writers and artists (and others) among you will sigh in recognition.

There is always a challenge for me in being seen even as my creative side longs to be expressed and truly acknowledged. It was a relief to see my friend’s post on Facebook lamenting her procrastination and the subsequent humorous comment. What a timely reminder for me and, perhaps for you, that we are part of the human race and we get to be alive now and present in this moment.

So, in the spirit of letting go of my many missed chances, I am glad to take this opportunity, the wonderful one I have now, to start writing again and sharing with you. I would also love to hear any stories or comments you have about how you work with your own tendencies to procrastinate, and what helps you move past them.

Thank you,
Eliza

Recipe for Friendship

Published on by elizaking Category: friendship, Inspiration, Uncategorized

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One of my most vivid memories of my friend, Dotz, is of her calling my name at the Farmer’s Market on a hot summer day in Takoma Park. Dotz and I had met a few times before that day, once at the local yoga center, and again, unexpectedly, in Connecticut at a weekend poetry workshop where we took a couple of long walks together and discussed the workshop. 

But that bright day at the farmer’s market stays with me. I didn’t recognize the voice calling my name at first and then I saw Dotz, loaded down with bags, smiling at me and waving.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” she said in her cheerful way, putting a couple bags down to give me a hug, “I’m taking a personal growth class in the fall which I think you would like.”
When I expressed interest, she invited me to walk back to her house a few blocks away to show me the brochure. I remember feeling excited that she had thought of me even though we didn’t know each other that well. I had the sense of a door opening between us, that I was being invited to step forward into the new space of a possible friendship. 

That was in 2003. Over the years our friendship has gone through a testing and deepening process as friendships must, as we’ve helped each other navigate through our lives.
We did take that personal growth class together, and then afterward, started doing a weekly phone check-in session with each other that continued for six years. In order to do this and be friends in daily life, we worked out rules of confidentiality and clear boundaries.  So besides helping each other through tricky experiences of depression, insomnia, a relationship breakup and a big move, we also did things like watching a tv series together, going appliance shopping, and cooking dinner at each other’s houses.

For both of us, our friendship has taught us to trust and believe in ourselves and celebrate our places in the world. Dotz says, ”Seeing and holding our friend’s strengths with more clarity than she could see them, allowed each of us to believe that those strengths were real and then gradually we began to “have” them and claim them for our own. A deep sense of lovingkindness and caring became a natural outgrowth and grew into a sense of interbeing and interconnectedness that we could trust as one little piece of what we sense and appreciate exists with all beings.”

We found that being able to explore and now even celebrate our differences and be accepted completely by the other person has given us each a taste of unconditional love. There is a sense of balance and wholeness in recognizing that we are our own best friend first, and that the other person is not there to do our work for us or to complete us.  I am very grateful to have this and other supportive friendships in my life.

So I invite you to take a moment now to call to mind someone in your life, a friend, family member or even a beloved pet, who has touched and supported you in your life. Feel the warmth of their presence around you now, as you breathe in and out, and allow yourself to bask in that warmth.  If you have any comments or friendship experiences you’d like to share, please do.

cheers,
Eliza

Seeing Birds

Published on by elizaking Category: Inspiration, Uncategorized

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“Close both eyes to see with the other eye.”
—Rumi 

The anniversary birthday of my sister’s partner Nathaniel, an avid birder who died in an accident six and half years ago, occurred a few weeks ago in early January.
In celebration of Nathaniel’s memory and his joy in birding and in life, friends and family take this time to go bird watching and send emails to us all naming and counting the birds they see.

I have not participated before because of my limited eyesight, I am legally blind and mostly see a shadowy blur (if anything) when trying to spot birds. But I grew up with the names of birds, the colors of birds, and the calls of birds around us being identified enthusiastically and constantly by my ornithologist father.
So this year, when a wise friend suggested we try going to a nearby nature center which has a glass-walled room looking out on several bird feeders in a wood, I was delighted to try a creative way of joining the celebration and seeing more of the birds than I usually do.

As we sat gazing out at the trees and the leafy ground, the first animal my friend and I saw was a fat squirrel who parked himself under the feeder trees and gathered seeds from the ground the entire afternoon.

Then, once we were sitting quietly, the birds started coming, black-capped chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, tufted titmice, and slate-colored juncos, all zooming in to peck seeds from the feeders and then away again.
A gang of purple finches swarmed and took over the feeder for awhile, keeping other birds off till they were done, except for a persistent downy woodpecker who ignored them but kept peeking at us around the feeder and trunks of trees. A fast fiery cardinal flashed to the ground beside the window beside us for a full moment as I stared at him. It was my first time seeing one, what a vibrant set of colors to wear all the time!
Little Carolina wrens and white-throated sparrows darted and pecked along the ground next to a pair of waddling mourning doves. At the end of the afternoon a red-bellied woodpecker arrived, whose head was actually red not his belly, one of those funny naming anomalies in the bird world. I started recognizing the colors and behaviors that signal specific species and began to identify birds as they returned to feed.
It was strange and wonderful for me to understand finally the draw of an activity that I’ve had described to me my entire life and never understood well. I have seen birds before mostly in abbreviated flashes of color, but that afternoon I was with them, immersed in the way they danced with the world around them.

The afternoon felt like a reaffirmation of Nathaniel’s life. The aliveness of the birds reminded me of the way he inspired and brought together the people around him. Because of this, emails from friends and family from all over the world, watching and counting birds were especially meaningful to me this year.

I am grateful to Nathaniel for giving me a belated insight into my father’s love of watching birds, like a reverse birthday gift!

I am also very grateful for the eyesight I do have which allows me to see and appreciate this fragile and beautiful world.

So I encourage you to pause a moment, and let yourself open to what is happening around you now, taking the world in with each breath and all of your senses. If you’d like to share your thoughts, please do!

Coming Home to Ourselves

Published on by elizaking Category: Inspiration, Uncategorized
“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”

–Edith Sitwell

Dear Folks,


I was walking down a neighborhood street this week and suddenly realized I had no idea where I was. The snow made everything look different. I didn’t know whether I should keep going on or turn back. 
I couldn’t even remember where I had been a few minutes before because I had been on autopilot.

I stopped and looked up and down the street, not recognizing anything, feeling panic and a sense of unreality, was I dreaming this or was I really lost in my own neighborhood? Maybe if I just kept walking I’d recognize where I was.

Then I came to a jog in the sidewalk that I definitely knew was unfamiliar and I realized that I had missed a turn somewhere. I turned back and within a few blocks realized exactly where I was and went to greet the people who were waiting for me with a deep sense of gratitude and relief. It felt wonderful to be seen and welcomed by my little community.

After talking about this with several people, I have been interested to find that others are having a similar sense of discombobulation, almost like a sense of vertigo, surface in their lives during this time as well. 

I talked to a wise friend about how to work with this and her response really resonated with me.
“Keep it simple,” she said, “Just keep finding ways to come home to yourself.”

We all have ways to come home to ourselves: checking in with how we feel, counting to ten before we say something, following our breath as it moves in and out of our bodies, taking soothing baths, etc. 
I would love to hear any stories you may have about what happens when you get discombobulated and/or how you have learned to come home to yourself.

Cheers,
Eliza

Follow Your Rhythm

Published on by elizaking Category: Inspiration, Uncategorized
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“As you begin to realize that every different type of music, everybody’s individual music, has its own rhythm, life, language and heritage, you realize how life changes, and you learn how to be more open and adaptive to what is around us.”
—Yo-Yo Ma

“One-two-three, One-two-three, One-two-three…” Does that sound familiar? Yesterday my music teacher helped me find my way into a rhythm with which I was having trouble.

She asked me to clap the rhythm out with her, tapping my foot on the first beat of each triplet.
As we clapped, the rhythm began to settle more easily into my body. I realized that I had been trying to use my head and think my way into learning something that needs to be experienced in the body.I had to let go my need to control and filter how I was taking in the information, and just let my body be in charge. The process felt important because it gave me a first-hand experience of my (and perhaps most of our culture’s) default pattern of taking in information with our minds.  We often don’t recognize when we need to let our body’s wisdom show us our way forward. It also reminded me that I need quiet time after I learn to digest new information fully.

What helps you to take in new information as you go about your day? How do you creatively balance your thinking time with your need to experience life in a kinesthetic way or just to relax? Please share a comment with us all.
cheers,
Eliza

flower“To reteach a thing its loveliness is the nature of metta. Through lovingkindness, everyone & everything can flower again from within.”
― Sharon Salzberg

Dear Folks,

The Fall 2013 online Stress Cleanse is in its last days and as always, I learn so much from our participants!

One woman writes,
“There was something that you said in the 60-minute meditation that I found really quite compelling.  I quoted you to half the world, but now I can only paraphrase – it was the idea of being kind to oneself and going gently through life.  It really struck me.  A shift in perspective makes all those sharp small things that one confronts brush by one safely or become near misses rather than slowly eroding one’s sense of well-being and comfort.”

What I learned again from this comment is how great an impact even a small choice of words has on someone.  That what we all say and do matters, including me.

Please be good to yourself today and this week, whatever that means for you:).  As you know already, that kindness will spill over into the world around you easily once you are full.

I have been reminded over and over lately that I need to remember to drink from my own mug first before I can genuinely serve others. I guess we are all passengers in an airplane learning how to put our own life vests on first before we help the person next to us!

What are some not-so-small instances of kindness you have noticed in the past few weeks?  Kindness accumulates in us so we’d all be grateful to have you share!

cheers,

Eliza