Taking Pleasure in the Smallest of Things

The unseasonable warmth of a late winter day allowed me to line dry my bed sheets today. Have you ever inhaled the sweet scent of drying laundry? Mmmmm.....like the violets that bloom nearby. Light fragrance, dampness mingling with warm clean mountain air tinged with fir blossom. The air so delicious I had to follow the path out and wander around.

It is in the simple that being fully present returns to me. I have vision boards of grand plans and ideas. The horizons I aim for. But what about the sea beneath my sails in this moment? I walked into the forest with Mo, the Anatolian Shepherd. I noticed a particular patch of forest where many trees fell this last winter. I sat on one log and watched the lazy flight of small gnats bobbing in the stillness. Mo gnawed on something near my feet that I could not see, the entirety fit into his mouth. He put it down to look after something else. At first it appeared to be some type of fungus, but it was too hard from the sound of his teeth clattering. When I bent over it the form became clear. A Western Pond Turtle pulled so deeply inside the shell i could not see any sign of the head. And the shell must be hard, only the barest scratches from a good five minutes of Mo's jaw work.

I picked up the turtle, reluctant to leave this little haven of peace. But I stepped over downed trees and made my way back towards the pond, turtle in hand. The feel of the feet just barely visible is seductive. I love the scales, the half inch long black nails curving from the feet. The scales are cool, smooth, elegant somehow. As I walked the nose became visible. I plopped her down into the edge of the pond and she sank like a stone. Mo scurried around the surface of the water sniffling madly. I don't know why these turtles navigate land so far from water. A mystery to investigate someday.

I am addicted to sitting in the forest. it has become the place where I give myself permission to be free of all concerns. There are days, like today, when I do not want to leave. I cherish these moments of the simple, when the story falls away.

Awareness

There comes a time in every life in which there is nothing that can block out that most primal of forces….…no hurt suffered, no lack, no sorrow….

It beckons, it calls, across all of the pain, hurt, betrayal, pursuits, successes, distractions that life brings along the way. No drug, no addiction, no form of obliteration or obsession can stop that most essential pulse of life…..love.

I may never live in the fullness of it that I most seek. But I can allow love to come through me towards those I come in contact with whether for the short run or the long term.

It feels good to love. The difficult piece is to love without any hope or expectation of return. But the taste of allowing love to come through without any expectation is an addiction in and of itself.

I have felt it, now and then, this sense of love surging fully in my heart. It has nothing to do with what I get. It has everything to do with being present to others in a most vulnerable and authentic way, a way in which another human has the room and space to be true and real about who they are….and the possibility of them living in to the fullest human they can be.

I am no saint. I have my own secret (and not so secret) longings and hopes. I live with disappointments and heartbreak. I have loved and found myself unrequited, at best, and devastated, at worst, when it comes to an intimate other. But in the realm of serving love, for its own highest expression, in this I have had the sweet taste of joy. I have heard others in their authenticity. That I have been entrusted with the deepest vulnerability another has to share is one of the richest forms of love I have ever known.

Love is not about what I get. It is about getting so out of the way that someone else feels they can show up for real about who they are and what is important in their lfie. The thrill of the fullness in my heart when I am trusted in this way is one of my greatest joys of life.

Children

I was out to dinner last night and ran into a woman I have been acquainted with for three years. She has two young children. I asked how they are doing. She told me that she is so busy working that she has not really focused on her children.

It is very difficult for me to hear this response. This woman is enormously talented in so many ways. The hollowness of her response seems to signal to me one of the plagues of our times. How is it that we have forgotten the preciousness of being in relationship with our children?

This time passes so quickly. I work with adults who suffer greatly from the neglect and undeveloped maturation of their relationships with their parents. I doubt there is anything else, in the first world, that creates greater suffering than love lost in these most important relationships.

It is my fervent prayer that we wake, as a society, to truly value in all we say and do, these first relationships.

Losing

What is there to lose, really? I ask this question of myself when it comes to the greatest game of all………life.

I KNOW the end of this game. You do as well.

I’ve seen it too many times now to be in denial around how it all turns out. The point is not about financial success. It is not about the size of my house, my spouse (or lack of one). The point has little to do with my tech savvy or how many gorgeous toys I drive, live with or wear. Having the fullest possible abundance of all of these things (which I am in the fortunate position to be acquainted with) does not alter, in any way, the end of the game.

How I play it is the point. What do I bring to the game? In the end…how do those around me experience me? How am I remembered?

Have I dared to love......have I allowed myself to lose everything that I have thought had value and meaning, whether hypothetically or for real? Have I let that which does not end to be what grows and thrives in me? What kind of legacy have I left for my children, grandchildren and all who come after me?

Self Worth

Is it actually possible to measure my own self worth and the value of what lights me up inside without putting a price tag on it? This is a very real question. It is possible to measure my self worth by standards other than what kind of financial compensation it might bring to me?

It is a very difficult thing to admit that in a consumer society, a society in which I must have money in order to maintain the lifestyle I have adopted as one I agree to, that there must be economic value associated to what lights me up. Otherwise I may not eat. Or pay my electric bill. Or have internet service or connection to others by phone.

It is a very humbling thing to live with the experiences I now have of offering great meaning to the lives of those much younger than I am because of my age and experience….wanted and needed support and wisdom….actually invaluable…..and yet what I offer is not something it feels right to ask for a monetary exchange…it is what might happen quite naturally in a society gives meaning to the elder….

I know that true presence can not be bought. Nor can wisdom, awareness, or consciousness. It is something to be shared freely, mentored over time, out of love for those who are seeking. But I witness all the time the ways in which we have commodified even this ‘skill set’. We have figured out how to credential and monetize eldership.

Living authentically both within and outside of a consumer society is a sacred meditation. I have no answers.

Heartbreak

Heartbreak

Totally sucks. Who wants it? Not me. You probably don’t want it either.

But it came to me, twice, in a short period of time. I did not think I could or would survive. Let alone thrive. I lost some things very precious that I had no idea lived in me. Hope, faith, trust, belief in love.

It has been no picnic sitting with this meditation for much of the last three years. I mean, when you know that it is possible to be so hurt, so destroyed…and yet want to love again….how to move forward is the question.

The short and simple answer is self love. The reality of moving fully in to all this means has been the invitation of a lifetime. It has asked nothing less than full authenticity in me. It is thankfully beautiful, at times, and at other times piercingly raw, to witness myself as a middle aged woman leaning deeply in to showing up in life as a real human being in spite of all the tattered edges and flaws. To live as the Little Prince said, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye,” is the journey.

Heartbreak is the opportunity to find out how my heart sees things. Surrendering bitterness, anger, hurt, fear….to learn how to love in such a way that loss is not possible. This is now my quest.

If I really do love….it is not possible to lose. Martin Prechtel has spoken about the difference between seduction and love. Love seeks to offer to the other what it is they need. Seduction asks for what I want. If I am loving, I can not lose. I can not have my heart broken. I can have my myths and illusions shattered. I can have my dreams quenched in the face of reality. But if I am loving then it is love that loves through me….and my job is to get out of the way….to surrender my attachment to outcome….and to anything I imagine that love will give to me….that I do not already give to myself.

Life is all about the small things.

I watched Tibetan Monks creating a remarkable sand painting. The actual act of using a file and carefully depositing the varied colors of sand to create an ornate madala is a long steady monotonous repetitive act. The glamour of the final art feels totally unrelated to the mundane actions used to create it. That chants are sung the entire time is where the beauty emerges. The sand, the patterns, the song, all of it moves as if through those who wield the files and then embodies the utmost refinement of human action. The monks themselves become invisible conduits of this beauty. Once this art is complete a ceremonial sweeping away of a months work is carried out with more chanting. The sand is then carried in a special vessel and slowly poured into the river, accompanied by more chanting.

Looking for meaning in life....of a life....seeking to assign value, worth....we arrive, we live, we die. Will I be a conduit for sweet chanting, a vessel to allow beauty to emerge....will I live with non attachment to the fact that when I die my art work, the art work of who I am, will be swept away and carried downstream and vanish in time?

Will I sing my heart out in love of this very precious gift of time....laying down patterns that please, singing in a voice that brings solace, joy, comfort and love to those who hear, who chance to pass by,  or know me the entire time I am here, as I busy myself with my small file and little piles of sand? To live with the utter nothingness of meaning in balance with the fact that I matter....I bow to this meditation....