King of the Elements

Posted on June 3, 2012 by musingsontheway

King of the Elements

June 3, 2012. Blog #18

As I have continued to reflect on “what is here, now?” the theme and sacred question of my sabbatical, I have alternatively noticed outer world and internal world experiences in the moment. It is and has been surprising how these two worlds, realities have been reflections of each other.

Over the course of these past 6-7 weeks, I have noted what draws my attention and is primary in deciding where to go. I keep coming back to the elemental.

When I first travelled to Ireland, I remembered the living mythical landscape, especially the earth, with it’s hollow hills, sacred forests, caves, bog, and grassland of deepest green. It’s cairns, standing stones, ring forts, stone castle and abbeys seemed to exist and persist outside of time. And the waters and holy wells, sacred rivers, and the unimaginable vastness of the western seas were revered as a major participants in the mythohistoric drama of the last 5,000 years or more. The skies are vast and always moving and transforming, the wind, a living presence, is a major factor in tolerance of outdoor activity. The oft hidden sun and the scent of burning turf around each home’s hearth, gave hints of the fire in the Irish mind, though a less visible presence.

As I returned to Ireland, I headed for the mountains of Wicklow the first week. It felt important to get reacquainted with the land, the earth itself. Of course the rain was also a living presence along with wind. I visited earth based Neolithic dolmens, menhirs, and Court tombs, mythic faery sites, ancient, 6th century abbeys, and monasteries and medieval castles of many eras. But gradually, these ceased to hold as much fascination for me. I headed west to the rugged wild Atlantic coast. For many days, the oceanic water was the prevailing element of power, as I traced the shoreline exploring north and west. I spent hours and days, contemplating, sitting, walking, gazing out to the beautiful boundless western ocean. I sought each bed and breakfast with an ocean view. The land remained mysterious and alive, but seemed outmatched by the raging waters dashing upon its eroded rocky shores. The sun was out surprisingly a lot, yet seemed weak and little warming. The chill, even with the sun out, was a demonstration of the power of air, in the form of wind. In Ireland, on the Scottish Hebridean island of Iona, surrounded by the Irish Sea, and in Dighty, beside the entrance to the Scottish highlands were ruled by the wind.

The Ceile de spiritual tradition esteems the elemental nature of things. There is a whole mythology with deep psychic resonance storied around the elements. For Celtic Ceile de, the elements were also used as metaphors for personality aspects. ( e.g. Such a person has a lot of fire and air, little earth and water). Also, there is a vital spiritual connection to the Christ, who is considered the King of the Elements. In the bible, it refers to Christ, as before the beginning, “first born of all creation, without Him was not anything made”. What would it mean spiritually for Christ to be the King of the Elements? I hope to learn more as I continue to read, study, and contemplate the tradition.

I am fascinated and drawn to the powerful confluence of wind and water and it’s meeting with the earth, such was the Celtic part of my journey. If was interesting to note the gradual emergence of my body’s cry for the missing fire, the heat of the sun. So, was I drawn to the far south mediterranean island of Crete, halfway between Europe and Africa. The power of the sun is intense and dangerous here. It also frees my musculoskeletal system to loosen, and my pace to slow. It offers my skin the vitamin D, as well as the shades of ultraviolet radiation. Not a time for humans outside, the flowers, vegetables, and fruits luxuriate in their photosynthesis during the midday sun, explosive growth. The wild geese do not leave for the winter. Siga, siga, say the Cretans, slowly, slowly…..

And again, now the horizonless Libyan Sea stretches east to west and further south than the earth’s curve can reveal, outside my cottage windows. I can watch the wind play with still water or roar across the tossing whitecaps and crash of the surf. The French Impressionist painter, George Seurat would revel in the sun scintillations on the wavelets, a pointillist’s dream. The nationally protected Island of Chrissi stands a hazy gem in the mid distance. The mountains behind the town of Irepetra are the brooding source of heavy clouds and they sculpt the sunsets in their gold and fiery reds and pinks. The moon is nearly full, outshining the stars these last nights.

What do I mean by the elements? As a chemistry premed student, I once knew the periodic table of the elements, with all of its rare earth, halides, noble gases, metals, minerals and crystals. And with the increasing speed of each neutrino collision, new elements were discovered, some that lasted a 10 to the minus 50th of a millisecond. How could these substances be truly elemental if there were new ones being discovered or created every year or decade? And these elements could be radically transformed when reacting with other substances. When I think of elements in this context, I think of the building blocks of matter, each with it’s different number of protons, neutrons, and multileveled + and – charged electron spin patterns etc. Also, what we have come to realize about matter is that it is mostly space, with extremely tiny bodies orbiting each other in relatively vast space. Our bodies, this table, that mountain, ocean, or forest give our eyes the illusion of solidity. Matter, “this is real stuff”, is actually empty space, in which spin tiny subnuclear particles, some still undetectable except by its effects upon other objects in certain extreme artificial situations.

Well, all of that stuff is mind boggling, and difficult to wrap my mind around. It does not easily yield a tangible poetry of creation. So, what of the earlier eras in which the elements referred to the empirical essence of outer reality, “air, water, earth, and fire” (and mystics and alchemists spoke of the 5th element, or quintessence, more on that later)? These, my senses, imagination, and experience celebrate as the poetic core of reality.

Over the next few weeks, I plan to examine my mental, spiritual, emotional, and sensual experience of the elements of air, water, earth and fire as I live with them directly day by day, here on this sun baked, earthy island of wind and wave. Something about this contemplation is calling me, wants to be discovered; I don’t know what it is, and such reflections so often find their metaphor for internal awareness as well.

Please forgive my own play with poetry around this topic :->)

I sing an elemental elegy
to Na, Cl, and H2 O.
Beloved saline universe
my natal home.

Oceans and mountains and forests
the Paps of Fife,
wee hills and valleys
rivers of her creative life

Canyons and caverns of earthsoul
Measureless to man
clay made conscious,
thank you, madame.

Breathless and presence still,
howling gale, Spirit
wind blows where it will
and enlivens the sail.

Spark of genius, madness,
creative image, and
lightning strikes gladness;
kindles the living land.

Photons and Atoms enfleshed
Spirit and soul married
fire and light awakened
her earth flesh unburied.

Spark of solar fire enlivens
matter in her abundance,
the underworld soul incarnates
the clay creatures radiance.

Eternal fire, vital breathe stirs
her to earth’s orchestral dance,
Out of darkness, rebirth occurs
the endless sacred romance.

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Who makes the Rules?

Posted on May 30, 2012 by musingsontheway

May 30, 2010. Blog #16

What are the Rules?

Rule maker, rule breaker,

Who makes the Rules?

The last few days, as I have reached a further stage of relaxation and inner stillness,
secure enough to allow the creative muse to flow, my Type 4 enneagram experiences equanimity and fullness. My mind and heart are full of poetry and ideas. Interestingly, as the enneagram predicts, in low stress, secure situations, my personality, ego patterns tend toward the enneagram type 1. Type 1 is the perfectionist, with the most active inner critic, judging without mercy, striving to perfect the rules. Here, alone, I can detect my inner critic, rule maker, since there is no one to project my less desirable shadow legislator, executive, and judge upon.

As I have enjoyed the sunny climate of southern Crete, I noticed an inner rule arise, “avoid the sun between 11:00-11:30 until 3:00-3:30.”. Of course, this is a wise rule of thumb, protective from painful sunburn. My dermatologist would approve of this limiting my skin’s irradiation. But so easily, unconsciously, I can turn this benign rule into a law. I am no longer free to choose when and where I will swim. Traveling east, following the coast road, I went down numerous rough gravelly tracks to beautiful isolated beaches to investigate the “best”, most ideal beach (met a list of previously unrealized criteria: Warm and sunny, sandy, shallows give way to adequate depths rapidly, rocky outcroppings where snorkeling might find the fish hiding, places of shade, isolated, no or few people, sheltered from heavy wind and surf, and before 11:00 or after 3:30.

As I drove and explored, I found multiple “ideal” beaches, but it was midday, so my inner rule was dominating in the background, providing me with a sense of virtue for my prudent self control, Ughhh! After 3:30, I did find an excellent beach that met the specs :–). But I became aware of how many beaches I had found, in the heat of the day, I could have taken a spontaneous relaxing dip, not long enough to burn. However, my inner critic denied me the freedom to enjoy the fortune of beach wealth when I saw it, rather than defer gratification unnecessarily.

The first week that I was here, I chose to follow a hidden inner rule that said I should walk, stay close to home as opposed to get a rental car, which might tempt me to drive all over to see the sites, and not allow myself to settle in and do little or nothing and truly rest. When I did contract for a rental car on the 8th day, I had to contend with a subtle guilt and chastening. My inner ascetic, simple living, barefoot hippie self should save money, not drive a car, use fossil fuel, or speed along the road, less aware of the birds and flowers etc.

I discovered a similar rule, that I should cook my meals at home, simplicity and frugality, rather than than go out to eat at local restaurants. Now, my stomach was a little uneasy the first few days and Greek food is known to be oily with the Mediterranean diet ideal, olive oil. But, a small part of me felt smug and righteous at the end of the first week, when I had eaten only once at a restaurant. There goes that inner ascetic guy again.

One day, as I prepared to go for a walk, I took my IPod to listen to some Paul Simon as I walk/danced along. I noted that I was breaking a rule that I had been following for weeks, “I shouldn’t listen to my IPod (which I love to do when I walk); I should listen to the sounds of nature, be more present to what is, in my environment.”. Now, like the above rules, this has value and truth in it, an awareness reminder, but making it into a rule or judgement self limits my own freedom. I act as if I cannot trust myself to make good decisions and avoid temptation etc. Hmmmm.

My inner observer noted another rule, quiet inner opinion, ” If I want to figure things out and write creatively, I have to isolate, limit distractions, including human contact…”

I noted a strong recurrent rule that I should not read exciting, absorbing escape novels that I enjoy, like Clive Cussler on my Kindle, but instead should read poetry and spiritual, existential writings in order to get the fullest and best use of this rare prolonged personal time. It was somehow, as if I had to do penance and self deny in return for the grace of this sabbatical time. With the help of my inner observer, I recognized a potent long term underlying rule that is very pervasive, I should make “good use” of the time, “constructively redeem” the time, whatever that means. I shouldn’t fuck off too much. (Why ever not?)

All of these rules or statements had proved valuable at some point in my life. Deferred gratification, self-denial, ascetism, diligence, hard work, effort fulness were the way to succeed. It worked great in my roles as student, doctor, and family man, but it quietly sabotaged my soul’s inner and outer freedom.

It is not surprising that freedom, release, and spontaneous having fun have been a self denied option that a major part of me longed for. My inner oppressor, my diligent, responsible, “good Gary”, has been rewarded and experienced inner judgement of virtue, while life enhancing, spontaneous, wild and free, creative and alive personae had to stay “seated” :–(. There was always a sense that I should “love my neighbor more than my self, because I was too selfish to start with. Hmmmm, where did that belief come from? And how did it become such a long lasting, one-sided belief system?
Asceticism and selfdenial, rules against freedom were great tools to civilize my personality that wanted to run wild, as a kid. But they really took root and predetermined the shape of growth as I matured.

So, now, what’ s up with all this rule shit? I have always loved the Tracy Chapman song, “Let’s break the rules tonight!”. I love Dirk Pitt, Clive Cussler’s hero, because he is successful rule breaker. James Bond, Butch Cassidy, Calamity Jane, their “devil may care” feisty, wild demeanor has been a shadow ego ideal :~>). Yeah!!!! Even the “govenator-terminator” got a free pass because he seemed so good at making and breaking his own rules. I invite you to see if you have some secret admiration for “wild, bad boys (Mel Gibson?), Mad Max, Lethal weapon, and Braveheart, the bloodiest crucifixion of Jesus on record, also bipolar, antisemitic, and alcoholic, what’s not to like….?? What red blooded American man held JFK’s trysts with Marilyn Monroe against him? And then there are the fundamentalists and televangelists, who declaim fire and brimstone upon the gay, the sexually active, rule breakers, whose shadow is so unconscious that it can take them them over and they are found having adulterous, gay, or prostitutive sexual liaisons, etc.

The beautiful world’s princess, Diana, bore the world’s idealizing projections and suffered with an eating disorder, a profligate prince and lethal paparazzi. We project our ego ideal, who we secretly wish we could be, or could live our idealized life, on people, no matter the gritty realities. In the same way we project our evil twin, our rule breaker onto movie heroes and historical or public figures, so that we don’t have to know about it in ourselves.

And now, many baby boomers and those younger have grown up in the age of the rich, powerful, successful geek who remade the rules for how to be cool.

Who knows what the rules are? And how do we balance which rules to follow and which to break? My inner observer develops ever more awareness of unnecessary rules that could easily be simple guidelines or items to consider rather than life governing laws. I consider the Buddhist rule of “harmlessness” to be a remarkably clear and relatively flexible code, especially when looked at in the past, present, and future, the long term. Certainly, Jesus summing up all the of the commandments and laws of the Torah, fulfilled, not broken, in the commandment/invitation to “love God with whole heart, mind, and spirit, and our neighbor as ourselves.” I notice the commandment includes love of God and self, as Jesus showed us how, as well as his demonstration of love of neighbor. Jesus’ only real rule was the law of love. I can’ t fault that wise guideline very much.

I invite you to ask your self a few questions and then watch and listen for the answers.

What hidden rules do you find yourself governed by? Who are your shadow rule-breaking heroes? Who is, how active is, your inner critic, shadow judge and enforcer?
Does your inner observer allow you to detect inner beliefs and rules, and give you a choice as to whether to follow or discard them? Are there any basic rules of life you hold or want to keep for guidance?

Out beyond beyond the fields of wrong doing and right doing,
there’s a field, I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas and language, even the phrase, each other
doesn’t make sense.

Rumi

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Psyche’s Lockout

Posted on May 29, 2012 by musingsontheway

Blog #15. May 29, 2012

Psyche’s lockout

I had been here in southern Crete by the sea for 8 days, sleeping, hanging out, writing my blog, reading, meditating, taking local walks, swimming a bit each day, and mostly cooking and eating at home. This was relaxing and becoming a pleasant routine. I did not feel very curious about seeing or going anywhere. But a part of me realized that staying here in my little cocoon was not all that I am here for. So, yesterday, I picked up rental car, a little Hyundai, in the morning. Before, I departed for some exploration in the car, I tried to check my email:-). I couldn’t connect to the server, there was not enough signal from the wireless network for the villas, even out on the deck.

The day was beautiful and beckoned to me get out out of the room, in any case. I took a few things down to the car, water bottle, snorkel, water shoes, and towel. On the second trip, I brought some food and my small backpack with compass, cell phone, book to read. I seemed to be delaying leaving. When I went back up to the room for the third time, I did not have the key. I was locked out. After, searching my things and pockets, I checked to see if the proprietor could let me in with her extra key. No one was around. So, smiling to myself, I thought, I guess it’s time to hit the road now.

I drove east along the coast, taking many tiny side roads down to beautiful beaches, checking them out, for future swimming. Since it was near noon, I did not want to swim and expose my fairly pail skin to the fierce midday sun. So, I meandered, stopped at minor roadside attractions, a place for a fish plate lunch and beer along the promenade in Analipsi. I reconnoitered the many small and large popular beaches, found out where the nude beaches are, and the sheltered quiet bays with rocky flanks for good snorkeling. As the afternoon, wore on, I reached the end of the southeast coast road.

Close by was an old monastery, still being used, built into the rocky cliff above the sea. I love to visit monasteries. They tend to be deeply quiet, a walled off life of peace and prayer, and usually beautiful gardens, views, or scenes for divine contemplation. I climbed the steep steps, carved out of the rock, up and up. When, I arrived, all was silent, nothing moved, no sounds disturbed the simmering afternoon sun baked stone work. I found my way into a small rock tunnel, very dimly lit, after the blinding sun outside. It was lovely and cool, with an ancient Byzantine painting of the virgin and child. A large wooden door was locked at the end of the tunnel. But, there was a small 12 inch door at face level, cut in the heavy wood main door. In a small sign, in 4 languages, it said. Open from 3:30-6:30, and no short pants allowed in this holy place. It was 3:10 PM, but I was wearing shorts. I looked through the little square opening into cool garden courtyard. Nothing moved, except for a few birds eying me. I was tempted by my rebel, trickster, dauntless, rule breaker shadow persona, to try to sneak in. But, then I thought about how clear the sign was, that I might genuinely offend some black robe Eastern Orthodox monk, who had committed
his life to shut out the world of skin, and informal, spontaneous play, in favor of strict monastic schedule and prayer routine. Who was I to make his life more difficult. Or, then, isn’t he just being officious and enforcing an ancient rule that no longer had life in it. Who knew? Then, there was potential for the embarrassing consequence of being discovered and escorted curtly or angrily out. Also, there was that huge heavy wooden door, still locked. Could I reach through the opening in the door to unlock it? Various “derring do” fantasies in my head, I retreated down the long rough stairway cut into the mountain. Locked out of the holy place of prayer for being underdressed and too early, what’s that about :-?>;)

As I retraced the road, the sun was lower, after 3:30, so I picked my way down to a small isolated bay beach. No one was there. I snorkeled and lay on the rocks, until the urge to do anything faded away.

As I drove home, I stopped for a caramel ice cream bar and more water. When I reached my cottage, the proprietor was there and let me in with her key. After showering etc., I went out on the deck to check my email and consider working on my blog. Again, there was insufficient signal to connect with server to the Internet.

Annoyed, I sat and gazed out to sea in the deepening twilight and felt the irritation fall away. I smiled as I recognized psyche’s lock out. In the morning, I was not conscious of it, but my soul was not going to let me linger longer in my room. A sly part of my unconscious locked me out. Then, before my road trip and after, there was insufficient signal to connect to the Internet. The anima mundi (soul of the world) and my own psyche cooperated to guide me away from conventional, habitual actions.

I am deeply grateful for these subtle signals that something wiser than my own cognition is guiding and steering me in ways unknown. My job is to keep the channels open through mindful meditation, to practice awareness and willingness, in response to the small nudges, happenstance, and brick walls that I encounter through the day. One question that I ask myself when something unexpected happens, is “if this were a dream (waking dream), what would be psyche’s message? What is psyche’s intention here? When I think this way, I feel a numinous energetic awareness and smiling love for the Mystery. I am awake to more than the mundane, superficial face of things, and I feel grateful that I, my ego, my thinking mind is not alone on this journey.
More wisdom than mine is Present and active in my behalf.

The Summer Day Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–
The one who has flung herself out of the grass,
The one who is eating sugar from my hand,
Who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–
Who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes,
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
Into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
How to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
Which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what it is you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

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Tracking Moon Shadows

Posted on May 29, 2012 by musingsontheway

May 28, 2012 Blog #14

Tracking Moon Shadows

Last night, Sunday night, the moon was still waxing crescent, not yet half moon. My last full moon on this journey was on Iona, filling the sea with moon paths to follow across the sea to the Isle of Mull. A million wavelets shimmered silver reflecting the moon’s reflection of the sun, mirror upon mirror of spreading lunacy, over the seascape.

It was 4-5 nights ago when the new moon hid from the stars, here on southern Crete. During the day, I happened to notice the waves breaking on under-water rocks out in the bay. Those wave breaks are gone now, as the tides have increased and covered those rocks. The wind has slackened, and trying out my new snorkel around those shallow rocks was a good test for the cheap equipment I have purchased, snorkel, mask, and aqua socks.

The tides are another natural wonder I take for granted. I think that I understand that the moon’s gravity moves the tides on the earth, but what does that really mean? On a science level, I visualize the blue earth with its oceans heaped up, asymmetrically on the side of the moon’s pull. But what kind of power and magnetism can stack and slacken the tides of an ocean, trillion tons of flowing water? And they say that it can influence women’ menstruation, and other animal and human body functions are synchronized to it’s phases. There has always been romance and folklore about the full moon and the new moon. Indigenous people planned their agricultural and personal lives around the flux of the moon. The moon’s silvery light in the darkness, casts upon the earth it’s own mystery and dream like images. Each night, I go outside, and greet the moon, take notice of her changes, and the subtle shift in the atmosphere of them darkness. It comforts me to watch the moon’s phases and seek to attune to its feminine energy on the earth and in myself. Good night moon….

Tonight, I walked into Ierapetra to try out a Greek restaurant in the old town, non tourist sector. Food wasn’t spectacular, whole Bream (fish) fried, but the evocative Greek balalaika music made up for it. Most of the,restaurants along the strip and Castello restaurant where I ate, were empty. The proprietors grow more somber by the day, as they wait and hope for tourists to come. There is so much bad news worldwide about Greece and its economic debacle, can this ancient land, cradle of western thought, survive? What must it be like for these simple people, descendants of an ancient civilization, Minoan, 2000 years before classical Greece arose, the educated, literate, artistic flowering of civilization before Christ, to be the failures of Europe, a risk to the world economy?

Walking home around 10:30, after dinner. (the Greeks eat late, starting around 9:30 PM), there was a bandstand at the harbor, with Greek music group, colored lights, and amplifiers playing music for the substantial local crowd. Much of the music seemed wistful, longing, with an air of reaching for something lost, though, of course, I could not understand the Greek words. But the lights, milling crowd, groups of young women laughing, children playing, dancing, toddling, teasing, and chasing each other, adolescents shyly, hungrily eyeing each other, parents relaxed but watchful. A few men of darker energy lurked in the shadows watching, waiting for their main chance.

I wonder, did the Venetian colonial government of the middle ages encourage such music and spontaneous social gatherings? How abut the Ottoman Turks who ruled this island for 400 years?
, during which, at one point, 40% of the population was Muslim? How did they make festival and music? What about the Romans, the classical Greek culture, the 4000 year old Minoan people?
Did they have parties and list mingle to music outside the palace? The Neolithic, the hunter gatherer, did “Lucy” squat by the fire, sing and make music, an dance to the seasons and the visits of the neighboring tribe? Have we humans, social animals been making music and dancing from the first tribal gatherings? Some scientists, specialists in music and ancient languages have proposed that music existed before human speech?

What was the occasion? What were they celebrating? Was it just Sunday night? Or was it Pentecost Sunday, the fifth Sunday after Easter, when the Christian church celebrates the inspiration of the apostles? Think of the image of tongues of flame descending on the crown chakras of each of the apostles, suddenly giving them courage, wisdom, and words to speak forth to the assemblage in the market place, powerful spiritual truths they had learned from their time with Jesus, who had been crucified. And the reports said everyone heard their words in their own language, merchants and travelers from every nation, hearing these words of inspiration from uneducated fishermen. They were filled with wonder; what manifestation was this?
How do I experience inspiration today? What is “in-spiration” like for you?

I couldn’t understand the lyrics of the Greek music, but the the elders, parents, young men and women, teenagers, children, and toddlers communicated their hopes and joys and timeless community belonging clearly, strolling, laughing, greeting, looking into the mid distance at things only they could see. I sat on a stone bench and bounced and nodded to the rhythm and let the universal language of the music carry and inspire me on this Pentecost Sunday. What a vision of inspiration, tongues of fire! I walked home reflective and inspired.

Love After Love

Derek Walcott

The time will come
When, with elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror,
And each will smile at the other’s welcome.

And say, sit here, Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine, Give bread. Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you

All your life, whom you ignored
For another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

The photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your image from the mirror.
Sit, Feast on you life.

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Nothing to do, nowhere to go

Posted on May 27, 2012 by musingsontheway

May 27, 2012 Blog #13.

(Warning, this is a long one. The large central section is about our brain’s reward, motivation system and how it works in my/our addictions and various compulsive habits.
Feel free to skip to the last few paragraphs after the first couple)

Nothing to do, nowhere to go. (a buddhist saying)

Here in southern Crete, Having time in one place without a list of “to do”s or “to sees”‘ or must do or must see is novel for me. I have always tried to cram in as much activity and accomplish as many tasks as possible, throughout my life. I also always was motivated to avoid the pain of “missing anything”. “Doing” has been an addiction. “Efficiency” has been a major virtue… Whenever I had open time or space, my mind would immediately reach for an item on my “to do” list. If I was getting ready to go somewhere and leave the house, I would always try to do one more thing, if I was ready slightly early, in the name of “efficient use of time”. Similar process led to multitasking. If I had errands to run, If I could plan the route, the required time for travel, and doing the errands, so that if it “worked like clockwork”, I experienced marked “reward center” satisfaction. It became an expectation of myself; I could always experience a little inner sense of reward when I got one more thing done. I even tried to sleep efficiently, go to sleep as quickly as possible and sleep for the minimum requisite hours that I needed to feel and function well. Reviewing the list of accomplishments to check off my multiple lists could provide a feeling of esteem and inner satisfaction, “I’m OK. However, sometimes looking at all my lists could create an edge of anxiety, overwhelm, thinking of all that needed to be done. Diving in to do a task or five could always relieve, defend against almost any anxiety, mitigate almost any pain, loss, or sadness. Opportunities to do this are everywhere, and society tends to reinforce, admire, value doers, productivity beyond most other values. Doing for the sake of doing creates the productivity, runaway juggernaut of performance as a measure of value.

In psychiatry, when I studied brain chemistry and particularly the chemistry of addiction, I developed a bit of jargon that entered our family lore and vocabulary. My kids, David and Maureen, both knew what a “reward center poof” referred to. I would say getting that task done just gave me a ” reward center poof”. The kids would giggle, but they began to recognize this experience in themselves, when they were complimented by peers, made a basket, finished a project, or won a race. I was speaking about a primary survival network within my brain. There is a neuronal pathway that is mediated by the neuro hormone, Dopamine, in the core of our brain that mediates motivation. Bear with me, now. It begins deep in the midbrain associated with primitive survival specific wiring. For a rat, if it sees some cheese, it is motivated to run over and eat it. A group of cells that produce Dopamine are activated that stimulates an upward, spreading series of neurons in what is called the “median forebrain bundle”, that creates the experience of “ahhh, that feels good; I really like that. I want to do it again.”. It is the primary pathway of behavioral training through stimulus and reward. As a rat, when I see and when I eat the cheese, I experience a burst of Dopamine in my median forebrain bundle, my center of motivation and reward. Using modern functional imaging, we might say that area “lights up”.

Addictions and compulsive activity serve at least two primary purposes. First, participating in the addictive or compulsive activity numb outs, blocks, or defends against unpleasant feelings. If I am busy enough doing things and feeling good about it (dopamine bursts), I can avoid or deny almost any feeling, mood, or distress. Secondly, the addictive or compulsive action creates a short cut, an artificial dopamine burst of pleasure, as if some survival sustaining action had occurred.

In this way, a devoted mother can cook up meth in her house, poisoning her children, prostituting, leaving them alone for long periods or with untrustworthy, dangerous men in order to get her “fix” of meth. She may contract AIDS, Hepatitis C, lose her teeth, and lower her cognitive capacity, and make herself psychotic, all to get that methamphetamine explosion of dopamine in the median forebrain bundle. So also, in less severe ways, children, relationships, sleep, personal needs can all be ignored when on a working jag, feeling continuing rewards for ever increasing accomplishment. I once saw an article in a law magazine entitled, “Work: The Noblest Addiction”. These process addictions are powerful and insidious.

This repetition compulsion resulting from dopamine receptor stimulation is in common with almost all animals with brains. It supports survival, because I get that reward center poof whenever I do something like eat, find shelter, have sex, am positively recognized in a group, get a promotion, a raise in pay, a new house, etc. For humans, this system has become more differentiated, because we are social beings that from birth require love and care taking and adult human attention to survive. So, any action or even the anticipation of action that will assist us in making nurturing connections with other humans will trigger a burst of dopamine release in that pleasure center of good feeling. After a while, we become conditioned, it takes on a life of its own, separate from survival or the original reason it was rewarding, (imprinted especially in our family of origin, schools, peers, media, advertising, political and social propaganda) train our motivation center early, on a mostly unconscious reflexive level.

I am conditioned to see myself as more valuable when I accomplish tasks. Being more valuable results in increased positive attention and nurture, being wanted by the group or important members of the group for my survival. It is so imprinted that even if nobody knows I did the task, I get a reward center poof, because I feel more valuable to my own inner social and interpersonal critic, self evaluator. I feel increased sense of well-being.

Helping other people, whether professionally or in daily life also creates a similar reward center poof for the same reasons. Being useful to others, to the group, means I will be included, wanted, able to make a living, which are critical parts of programming for human survival. Everyone’s motivation is mediated this way. And every addiction is mediated through this mechanism, the reward center gone wrong, misdirected. Whatever occurrence tickles our reward center, we will want to repeat. Now helping others is a good thing, but when it becomes a compulsion,not so much….

Of course, there is also a motivation network that trains us to avoid repeating a painful or anxiety producing experiences by triggering another neuro hormone, norepinephrine, substance P, in brain regions where we experience pain or anxiety etc. Obviously, pain avoidance is a core species protective pattern, which creates aversive or negative reinforcement, negative motivation to assist our survival . In fact, the absence of a certain amount of reward chemical, dopamine and also endorphins deficit creates pain in the relevant brain regions. So withdrawal from something that provides reward center poofs creates activation of psychic pain networks and craving for the object that rewarded us. This of course, is the negative reinforcement pathway in Behavior modification, also the distress of addictive withdrawal. Between these two basic, primitive, hard wired networks, survival is markedly enhanced, and addictions have remarkable power over us.

What this means is that not only substances, alcohol, cocaine, nicotine, opiates, meth etc are addictive and painful to withdraw from, but also behavioral patterns that create dopamine bursts want to be repeated and develop powerful repeated executive functions to support their repetition. In recent decades, this experience has been called “process addiction”. Video games, porn, internet surfing, exercise, eating, sex etc etc can all become “compulsive”, another word to describe the repetition compulsion motivated by the release of dopamine in the median forebrain bundle.

In humans, of course, these neuronal pathways continue up into the cortex, thinking part of the brain, where we can rationalize all sorts of pleasurable dopamine related activity. AA speaks of “stinkin’ thinkin’ that all addictions produce. It’s also why addictions are so much more powerful than our rational(?) mind. These brain systems are among the deepest, most hard wired networks that support species specific survival action. Unfortunately, humans have a great potential for this system to get “hijacked” by chemicals or behaviors that release the dopamine reward center poof.

Sorry for that lengthy aside, but I think it is fascinating and highly useful to understand, since we all are motivated this way. And compulsions of one sort of another are universal to each of us. What is your compulsion? Many such activities are positive, though become negative when over-developed. They are responsible for much of your daily autopilot, the routines that economically run our lives. These routines and compulsions support homeostasis and it is stressful to disturb homeostasis and seek a new normal pattern that may support you as well as me better now, at this time in my life.

Part of the first month of my sabbatical, I chose to leave home and work etc and travel and break with my routines. I realized that I could not make the change, truly rest and reflect, free of my compulsive doing, at home. There are too many triggers and reinforcers at home. (you don’t kick a cocaine habit by hanging around the old neighborhood) I had to withdraw from my usual routines that tend to “run”me. Not surprisingly, my first month was filled with content, learning, accumulating interesting experiences, reading myths and legends which trigger dopamine release for me. But, consciously, I tried to bridge this transition, this withdrawal period, by strengthening my cognitive rationale. Diving down, I tried to discern and keep remembering what the hell I am doing on this sabbatical and why. The process of change requires first awareness of the old behavior that I want to change. Then I reflect empathically with myself to develop compassionate motivation (a kind acceptance and appreciation for the value and the understandable reasons for my old pattern) for that change. This creates a new pattern of dopamine release when working on the change I seek. It involves disrupting the old patterns, and then seeking to practice new ones, trial and error.

The wisdom of AA, 12 step model begins with compassionate recognition that the dopamine system reward center controls me. I am out of control in this area. Standard efforts to change the habit have been prone to repeated failure? The old dopamine releasing behavior was valuable in the beginning and at some level it just continues to work too well. So, I am helpless, on my own, to behave in a new way that is so powerfully opposed by the reward center imprinting. A good question might be, why do I want to change this compulsive doing habit, if it works so well? One reason is that I want to regain my freedom to choose as opposed to being inwardly compelled. Also, life areas (fun, laughter, spiritual connection, more friendship and community) that call to me now are strongly hindered by compulsive doing. I don’t want efficiency to be my false god any more.

The12 step folks use powerful reinforcers for change, social, affiliative support in the group, the opportunity to tell your story to non-judgmental people who empathize and admire your courage and honesty. But, perhaps most powerful of all, is reliance on a “higher power”. Recruiting, surrendering to, and affiliating with the pervasive presence and power of the universe is a potent survival action. One of the mysteries in recovery from addictions is the extra measure of “grace” and surrender, it seems to require for recovery. (Aside, I strongly recommend a wonderful book by Gerald May called “Addiction and Grace”, who was a psychiatrist, MD, and the Spiritual Director of the Shalem Instiute in Washington D.C. for many years.m he has written a number of other books, “Care of the Soul”, “Simply Sane”, and others.)

So, as I began my sabbatical, I visited sacred places, in Ireland, sacred also for their connection to my ancestors. I increased my spiritual practice of meditation, contemplation, and prayer. I spent a week at the sacred Isle of Iona, then 6 days at the monastery at Dighty, with loved and respected spiritual guides. Then, it was time to get on with it, go someplace (seaside beach and sun) remote from my old work, task oriented patterns and hunker down for a while. Do nothing? Gulp! Not travel around to cool historical or sacred sites, sleep more (not necessarily “efficient” sleep), not even race to the nearest snorkeling beach and fill my time? Not rent a car, but walk everywhere, watch the movement of the clouds, the colors of the day, the shifting shadows, not engage any outer thing, live by moment to moment sense of things?

Now, I return to the beginning of this edition, “nowhere to go, nothing to do”. For this day, this moment, It feels like a window opening, time and space unhurried, unfilled. So many old patterns attack and bark at my heels, trying to get me to run again. Inner voice, “Oh you are not having enough fun, all this time and opportunity to see and do things you might never get another chance to do and see. You don’t want to miss out!!!”

Aren’t I actually engaging in another old pattern of austerity, asceticism, and “virtuous” self denial by not doing fun and interesting things? I know I need and want to play more as part of this new behavior I am seeking.”. How do I know I am not just following another counter compulsion to doing, reactively not doing? My mind doesn’t know and it is playing all kinds of tricks on me to lure me into my familiar homeostatic processes.

I don’t know. So, for me, here is where grace comes in. Learning to listen, primarily through embodied contemplative practice to my soul and spirit as opposed to my mind, emotions, and patterns offers me a mysterious unknowing way forward. It is unknown, chaotic liminal, threshold space. Subtley, in the dark, trial and error, I rely on grace, something other than my own or anyone else’s resources to guide me out of no longer helpful, calcifying compulsions to do, accumulate experience, distract myself from the mission, to live a new way. I don’t really trust my self to choose well unless it comes out of that contemplative space.

I am tempting myself, risking the old patterns. Tomorrow, I will pick up a rental car. I do want to enjoy and have fun at the amazing variety of beautiful beaches that are not within walking distance. I suspect that I will visit a couple of cool, ancient monasteries and ruined Minoan and Roman cities and sites. I hope to keep awake my inner observer and in touch with gracious time and space, attuning as much as possible to divine wisdom as I seek a new balance of pleasure, fun, interest and learning with presence, free of my egoic compulsive doer. I welcome your thoughts and prayers and invite you to consider your own compulsions, however seemingly valuable….

Above all,
Trust in the Slow Work of God

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
To reach the end without delay
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
To something new.
Yet, it is the law of all progress that is made
by passing through some stages of instability
And that may take a veery long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.
Do not try to force them
as though you could be today what time
–that is to say, grace–
and circumstances
Acting on your own good willWill make you to orrow.
Only God could say what this new Spirit
Gradually forming in you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
In suspense and incomplete.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
Our loving vine dresser.

Amen

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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The Inner Observer

Posted on May 24, 2012 by musingsontheway

May 24, 2012 Blog 11. Warning, this blog is lengthy; I got carried away. But, check it out, you may find it interesting, or you can skip to the end after you have read what interests you.

In Glasgow, I came to the end of my planned transition into the “not knowing” , unplanned beginning of new operating procedure, in which I strive to make or adhere to no advance mental planning of what I will do next. In search of spontaneity and what the spirit and soul within and without wants,
I am attempting to make conscious choices from what is here, now. After growing uneasiness about not planning or even having a clear idea of what I wanted,( travel to mystic isles of northern Scotland, to Glastonbury, Avebury, and Cornwall, southwest England, Chartes, the Dordognes or Lourdes, France etc?), for a week, suddenly in Glasgow, my body knew what it wanted. I wanted sun, heat, beach, for a month, didn’t much matter where, as long as it was free of crowds, clamor, or “have tos”.

The night before I flew south, I slept poorly, up at 4:30 AM to catch international flight. The flight was wearing, multi- hour layovers, in London and Athens, I had to go through security 3 times. Something I ate on the Aegean Air flight did not sit well. My first night in hotel near the airport, in Crete, I belched all night, felt slightly nauseated, and no appetite. The next morning, I boarded a bus for the winding trip over the mountains and along the beautiful coastline, through villages, and stops for Cretans going to market along the way.

When I arrived at my cottage, it was lovely, comfortable and adequately furnished. I was exhausted and stomach still upset.

Two of my key selection criteria were, near a swimming beach that I could walk to and WiFi Internet access in the room. Also, I wanted “self catering”‘ with minor cooking facilities in the room and reasonable access to grocery store and local taverna/restaurant. As I settled in, I discovered the beach was pebbly and gray iron shore, with moderate surf crashing onto the rocks. The wifi did not connect in my room. The cooks stove was shoddy, decrepit and something out of the 1940s. The local taverna/restaurant recommended was closed and no longer in existence, rusting sign.

I was angry inside. I obsessed about my mistake in selecting this place. I had failed in my due diligence, locked in for a month, such an important time for rest and invoking the muse, went my self-talk. I ruminated about how I might be able to get out of it, break the lease, argue false advertising, confronting the tough Cretan woman proprietor. I found myself thinking, “how would Pat handle this?” then how would “Pat chastise me for lack of due diligence:~>;;;)?”. I walked over to the beach and tried wading. The water was cool but clean, clear, and gorgeous. I bruised the bottom of my foot beneath the 4th metatarsal head on a ridge of water eroded stone, ouch!

I asked the proprietor about swimming beach and she assured me it was a fine place to swim. The WiFi not working in the room as described, she would look into it. That evening as I seethed and rejected the place internally, I suddenly noted my own negative, reactive thought process. I realized that things always look worse when I am sleep deprived, tired, and unwell. The next morning, after sleeping for 12 hours, I awoke to glistening sunlight on a turquoise sea, the shoddy stove was adequate for making coffee and cooking eggs. The evening before, the proprietress had volunteered to give me a ride into town to pick up main stock of groceries, and waited to bring me back to the cottage. So I had everything I needed. I walked down to a sandy beach about a quarter mile away, gray, but a few people were enjoying it. The WiFi did work from the public area down below, and later I discovered that it connected, barely, from my outside balcony. I wondered at my skewed reactivity.

As I meditated, I recentered on what is here, now, as opposed to what isn’t here, now. For me, an enneagram “type 4”, I am prone to “longing”, seeing what is missing, imperfect, and ceaselessly striving to fill the gap. This is an old, deeply engrained pattern, prone to lead to dissatisfaction and constant and endless work, nothing is ever enough, in this overlearned mind-set. This applies to both inner and outer worlds. I am troubled by the gap, the wounds and broken places within my self and also in the world around me. It looks that way everywhere I turn, because it is how I am looking through my own personal lense. We all have our own spin, or skewed way of looking at things, not as they are, but as we are.

For me, the point is [awareness]. How do I train and cultivate my inner observer? How do I disengage, disidentify from my ego patterns of reactivity? If I am caught in my reactive mode, I am living old patterns, and unconscious to what is really happening in the here and now. I am projecting. I am projecting my wounds onto the world and thinking that it is reality, when I am “asleep”, on autopilot, unaware of reality as it is, separate from my observation of it. In psychiatry we call it owning our own projections, noticing our counter transference. The physicists call it the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which postulates that the act of observing something changes it, so we can never know what something really is apart from our own perceptions of it.

Can I ever really know absolute reality, when all knowledge and information is known through our own limited brain’s perception? Isn’t everything inevitably subjective, since it can only be apprehended through my mind? Is there such a thing as “objective reality”? Is there any way I could know it, know the “truth” through my limited perceptions. And how much reality am I missing or distorting all of the time. There are vast arrays of light wave lengths that I cannot perceive, x-ray, ultraviolet, infrared etc. that I cannot see. Many vibrations of sound that I cannot hear, dog whistle, radio signal, etc. What of the millions of odors that I cannot smell? If I really pay attention, I realize that I am deaf and color blind, in a sense, like the blind men and the elephant, thinking I know what reality, the whole elephant is. And how do I know what I cannot perceive?, know what I don’t know? Perhaps, the nearest I can come to truth is acknowledging that I don’t, can’t know. So much of the violence in the world is done by people who think they KNOW and will fight to the death for their conviction.

I cannot know true reality with my mind and senses. I believe that truth and absolute reality exists in some ultimate way, but I don’t believe that I will ever really know what it is. Like everyone else, I will become unconscious and believe my own view of reality and react to it repeatedly.

However, if I practice awareness, mindfulness, contemplative, non-dual consciousness, I will draw closer, catch glimpses of the Real. Through spiritual practice throughout the ages, sages and holy ones have sought this holy grail, the truth, the real. The spiritual path is opening to and practicing awareness of a vast and unknowable domain of reality. It is a way of being present and open, watching and witnessing with ever greater freedom from the constraints and distortions of my mental, emotional, and sensory apparatus. As Ekhardt Tolle says, our mental apparatus is designed to label, separate, and categorize things. We grow up to learn something is this, and not that, and it is necessary to do so to function in our egoic world, to manipulate objects for our material survival in this flesh perceived life.

In meditation, contemplation, and moments of presence, of beauty, creativity, ecstasy, I become aware of the reality of oneness, of connectedness more fundamental than the mental labeling, categorization, and separateness. I am seeking to develop this capacity for realizing my basic connectedness by first becoming a good inner observer to my mental routines and default programs in daily life. Then, I am able to breathe and become aware of a deeper reality below and underlying my daily mental perceptions and reactions. It is interesting that mindfulness is now mainstream in psychology and medical healing. It is even entering Corporate America and the business community through workshops and employee relations training, etc.

Contemplative prayer from the western Christian monastic tradition, and Yoga and mindfulness practice from Buddhism in the east, each have sought to cultivate this garden of awareness.
In my understanding, God is the ground, essence, ultimate original and continually present and unfolding Being that pervades and underlies all. He/she(?) is awareness, the ultimate Truth of all possible created and uncreated realities, visible, invisible, manifest and unmanifest, The One.
Therefore as I practice mindfulness and try to live in awareness, I draw near to and sense the unitive presence, the non-dual level of being. Aside from the philosophical aspects of these musings, I experience a sense of peace, serenity, belonging and sense of being held, embraced and filled with the spirit of the divine. In the divine, all conflict and reactive dualities are reconciled.
Also, I am better able to recognize “my own shit”, and own it, not project it onto others.

Jesus said, “before Abraham, I am.” Paul says, ” In him we live, and move, and have our being”. Jesus said “I and the father are one.” John wrote ” In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life and the life was the life of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not over come it.”

Buddha practiced pure awareness until he realized a state of oneness, non-duality, enlightenment, that is called “Buddha nature”. Zen students aspire to experience “suchness”, pure awareness. The Hindus know that the “atman is Brahman” and the ultimate truth is “neti neti”, not this, not that.
For 3 thousand years, the Jews have chanted, “Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One”.
“Allah” means “the one”, and in the Muslims call to prayer, they chant, “there is no God but Allah”.
The Christians have continued to struggle with the trinity, the Three in One and Jesus, the Christ, the God-Man perfect realization of oneness with God. Perhaps spirituality is only about my efforts to experience my relatedness to the One, through every possible avenue, nature, my neighbor, my loved ones, my enemies, my body, the cosmos, a child, the entire web of life.

Bottom line, it’s all about the One, and how we can approach, experience, taste, relate to this all pervasive, reconciling reality that upholds the universe. I believe they should teach mindfulness and/or contemplative prayer in Kindergarten. If we want love and peace, no more war, put it in the drinking water…..:~>;;;)

For Presence

Awaken to the mystery of being here and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to follow its path.
Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.
May anxiety never linger about you.
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.
Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.
Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.

From: To Bless the space Between Us, John O’Donahue, page 42,

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Seeking, waiting for the muse

Posted on May 24, 2012 by musingsontheway

May 24, 2012 Blog 12

Part of the reason, for taking the radical step of closing my practice and taking a full year’s sabbatical has been chronic neck and back pain that has defied eclectic, diligent, and multiple therapies, ergonomics, exercises etc etc over 5-6 years. And I have had an inner conviction ( could be wrong:-) that it could be healed, if I could find the underlying imbalance, misalignment, from a whole person standpoint and practice thinking, living, moving, walking, sitting, standing, sleeping, eating, breathing, relating etc. differently. I have acted on the belief that I might heal through some kind of change in my ego holding pattern, the way I hold myself and my reality throughout the day, in response to my inner and outer life. If it doesn’t heal me, it sure keeps life interesting and alive.

40 years of study, clinical and intuitive care of whole persons and my own illness has caused me to believe that for every psychosomatic illness that may be caused my mind-body-spirit imbalance, there is a real somatic component, degenerative discs, herniation, and old injuries. And I have been convinced that my pain syndrome is a result of overdevelopment in one area of life and underdevelopment in another area of mind-body-spirit. In some way, it is related to excess effort full striving in one area of my life to the exclusion of less developed aspects. ( like running long distance with one leg longer than the other, your spine will talk to you)

Early useful, but ultimately unhealthful learnings, such as “always work before you play” and “the work is never done”. Pleasure and having fun are frivolous and a distraction. Your body is meant to be a vehicle to accomplish what is needed, take care of it (regular oil change and lube jobs). On this earth we are supposed to suffer. It is virtuous to suffer doing good things. Pain is a result of our faults, so expect it. We cannot grow or really understand the truth of life without suffering our own pain. All of these and other old adages buried in my psyche, some generational, and some from childhood, amount to a new beatitude, “blessed are those who suffer pain stoically, for they shall be admired and comforted…rewarded? This one is not in the bible, it feels like legacy of previous suffering Irish Catholics on my mom’s side and Calvinists on my dad’s. Messages like, “ah well, it’s just the way of things…..”, or “you don’t think about it, you just do what you have to do…. “etc served my mom and dad’s generation fairly well (actually I am not so sure how well it served them).

These deeply held beliefs helped create my reality, the way I operate in the world and they can create imbalance and illness in any of us. Of course, symptoms and syndromes are complex, usually with multiple contributing factors, genetics, injury or trauma, diet, exercise, posture, losses, personal habits, as well as bio-psychosocial environment. I would add spiritual to that integration of the whole person. I believe there is partial truth that we create our own reality, as we think and believe, so we become. Of course, reality is also what happens when we are making other plans (thank you, John Lennon) And try to argue with any Viet Nam vet against the truth that “shit happens”. “Don’t mean shit”, no purpose or explanation, grand plan, or will of God. In the face of unbearable trauma, grief, horror,and survivors guilt there is no purpose in it. It would be too painful to believe otherwise. Yet, living with the belief in meaninglessness and random chance, a cold empty, hostile universe does not create a healthy balanced life, open to joy and mystery and yes, redemptive suffering….. (whoops, is that one a wisdom saying or just more legacy of Irish Catholic justification of being miserable, turn it into a virtue?)

So, if I have created or contributed to the creation of my pain syndrome, and I become aware of the imbalance, false belief or distorted mind/body set, I may be able to heal, uncreate it, by changing how I do, think, believe. I believe our health is much more in the “how” than the “what” we think, say, do. The rest is genetics, history, shit happens, things I cannot change. It may be grandiose to think I can change even the how I think, say, do things. But it seems worth a try. When it comes to change, as Eckhardt Tolle (and I suspect other sages) have said, if things are out of balance or causing distress, I have 3 choices. I can change the situation, I can leave it, or I can radically accept it. The fourth choice is I can continue to complain and whine and resist “what is”, which creates more suffering and is useless. I want to ask myself what is the wisest, most compassionate choice. And if trying one choice doesn’t work, I am free to try another. (aside, does God change, can He/she change his/her mind, is God growing and learning, trying new things as eons pass? That is a topic for another time).

I used to try to be utterly reliable, still a bit calcified at times. But I am learning that it is not only ok to change my mind, it is inevitable and necessary if I am paying attention to what is, with integrity. The only constant is change. Jesus said “heaven and earth may pass away but my words will never pass away.” One of Buddha’s fourfold truths, I believe, is the reality of constant change, transitory; everything is passing away. As long as I cling to things out of fear and attachment, I will remain on the wheel of samsara, suffering. So, how to break the habit of clinging, attachment, and holding on out of fear and the false belief that I am able to control what happens. Tsk, tsk, that eez thee qvestion of the day…. Please tell me if you figure it out. It’s a pain in the neck…..

One factor that has seemed out of balance for me is structured, planned, responsible work, versus spontaneous, creative, flow. I do experience these qualities in psychotherapy with patients, but I have not left room and/or energy enough in my own life. I sense, I hope, I suspect there may be another gift within me waiting, possibly clamoring in my body to be born. As I enter into “eldering”‘ I seek to be “generative” for the community in which I live, to distill some wisdom, nugget, or experience into something creative and new, original from my one life to contribute, bring forth.
If there is truth in the adage, “Don’t die with your song still in you”, let it out. If I don’t sing out that song, give that ungiven gift, it may twist me in knots, make me wish I were dead for stifling it.

So, the bottom line for me here, now, is how to find my creative muse, how to create enough space and time and unpatterned energy to allow something creative and new to arise. Something has to die to make room and fuel for something to be born; it is the cycle of life. This travel and writing this blog is a way I am seeking to invoke, call forth the creative muse of writing. What is here, now? And write what comes up from inner and outer encounters. In honor of the Celtic imagination and mythos, the poem below is a great one. Enjoy.

The Song of Wandering Angus,

William B. Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand
And hooked a berry to a thread
And when white moths were on the wing
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in the stream
And caught a silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor
And someone called my name:
It had become a glittering girl
With apple blossoms in her hair,
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wanting
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and time are done
The silver apples of the moon
The golden apples of the sun.

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Even the broken belong?

Posted on May 23, 2012 by musingsontheway

May 23rd (I think). Blog #9

There were so many big and little losses as I closed down my life and medical/psychiatric practice preparing to depart for sabbatical. In fact that letting go was part of the purpose of this leave taking.
In many cases, they were expected, some not so much….

So, I began to take note when my trusty REI water bottle was lost on the bus on the first day, on the way from the airport to my hotel in Dublin. Not hard to replace with a serviceable alternative of the disposable plastic bottle that is filling up and choking ever enlarging parts of our ocean and landfills.
Yes, I was jet lagged and getting used to carrying all my stuff on a bus that first day, but I try to contemplate the little happenings that occur, asking, “what is psyche or spirit saying?”. If the world is as mysterious and alive as it seems to me, every serendipitous event is an opportunity to wonder and see how I participated or in some way, caused that event. What is the message in it? It’s not that I necessarily expect to find “an answer”‘ but there is something going on, “something afoot in the universe”, that bears paying attention and asking questions, especially the ones without answers or the ones to which we have to find our own answers.

Later, when crossing by ferry, from west of Ireland to the Gaelic island of Arronmore, out on deck, I was paying for my ticket, and the wind took an extra 10 euro note and blew it into the sea. It felt like some kind of offering to the goddess of the ocean. I didn’t ponder it much, other than to take note, as somehow it felt right, as if it were a part of the passage fare, in this realm steeped in faery queens and ancient Celtic sense of the feminine aliveness in the terrain, landscape and seascape of fair Eire.

On another occasion, during a marathon series of rental car, taxi, train, ferry, bus, train, and taxi from Dublin to Belfast, to Cairnryan, to Glasgow, I lost a 3 month supply of a needed medication. Over the following weeks, it required a lot of time, money, resources, anxious attention, and support from multiple people in US and in Scotland to replace. After calling my pharmacy at home and Pat kindly picking it up and mailing it, the British customs held on to it for indeterminate reasons and amount of time, that ended up being an extra 10 days beyond the 6 days transit of priority mail. Thus, it was received in Kippen after I left and arrived there on the evening before I left the country for Crete. The dear folks at The monastery at Dighty, Kippen got to the post office and ovnighted it to my hotel, arriving the morning of my departure from the country. What was that about? Humbly needing to live with total uncertainty and helplessness with unreadable bureaucracy, a painful opportunity to receive help from a lot of people with a personal matter? Sigh, go figure.

On the 3rd evening that I was at the wee monastery at Dighty (pronounced “digty”), I was reviewing and deleting duplicate photos of lesser quality on my digital camera. There were over 500 pictures, from home and family events and the entire first month of my sabbatical, all of Ireland. They disappeared from the camera, digitally deleted and unrecoverable. That was painful. And, yes, what was that about? What was psyche doing here, as I did it unconsciously to myself? Perhaps, I was to focused on my egoic collection of cool pictures to show someday, maybe in some kind of program about sabbatical etc? Maybe, I was objectifying my experience by focusing too much on capturing an event or scene rather than fully experiencing it, with beginners mind, in the moment, viscerally, body and soul as well as mind? I can imagine all kinds of lessons that my soul, with the aid of the trickster and the fool, is providing. I know and confess that I have judged others who descend on some amazing site with cameras whirring and snapping before they have seen and encountered the wonder of it. I have judged people who walk along a beautiful path, talking on cell phone and totally unaware of their surroundings. As I judged, so will I be judged. As My ego smugly compares myself’s “genuine encounter” with the world around me, I discover that I too am missing it a lot of the time, living within my head, my labeling, my lists, my plans, and with spiritual gluttony, adding to my ego’s CV of cool and “special” experiences, places, etc.

In each case, psyche, soul, God, the universe gives me an opportunity to feel the loss, notice my attachment to it, let it go, and choose my response along with whatever prayers or cursing that may emerge in the moment of shock and frustration, and tendency to want to accuse and kick myself for being imperfect, again….. “Just breathe….” and notice, another opportunity for awareness.

I have loved and been moved by the ballad below since I first heard it. It continues to give me frissons without stopping whenever I encounter it again. I encourage you to read it through carefully, let it in.

Anthem

Leonard Cohen

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what
has passed away
Or what is yet to be
Ah, the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again,
Bought and sold again,
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.

We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed,
the marriage spent,
Yeah, the widowhood
of every government–
signs for all to see.

I can’t run no more
With that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
a thundercloud
And they’re going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still can ring.

You can add up the parts
but you won’t have the sum.
You can strike a march,
There is no drum.
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
forget your perfect offering
there’s a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.

Ring the bells that still can ring
forget your perfect offering
There’s a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.

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The inner journey is hard work

Posted on May 23, 2012 by musingsontheway

May 18, 2012. Blog #8

It’s been 2 weeks since I last focused on technology and blogging.

When I last wrote, I had just arrived on the sacred isle of Iona. As I was checking in at the St Columba hotel, a man and his wife who were also checking in, asked me in a friendly manner, “Are you UCC, they are the only ones who come here, aren’t they? I was disconcerted by this exclusive expectation, was I out of place, the only one not UCC? I asked him what UCC was. “Oh, it’s the United Church of Christ, they all come here”. I said, no, I am not entirely comfortable with this denominationalism; I don’t think that is what Jesus had in mind when he told us to follow him. His wife said, “that’s true, but we go for the community”. I agreed that that is needed for us humans, we all seem to need spiritual and social community. With my ecumenical, interfaith approach, it can be hard to find community.

During the course of the week, I enjoyed the silence and beautiful wild island of Iona, here in the Inner Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland. Praying and worshiping with the small local Iona community of a few hundred residents in the ancient Abbey founded by St. Columba in the 6th century revealed a clear ecumenical focus, open to all faiths and spiritual seekers. This island has been bathed in prayer and monastic contemplation for 1400 years, a continuing magnet for spiritual pilgrims to this day. It was easy to dwell in contemplation and conscious awareness of the divine, bursting forth everywhere, looking out onto the sea and many rugged islands from the window of my room, walking the paths and beaches, or finding a wind sheltered tuft of dry turf on upland crags called “dun”s on which to recline, breathe the fresh sea air and gaze at the ever mutating chaos of clouds. At night, the waxing and full moon shown with silvery brilliance over the isle of Mull, to the east. With no cities and few villages, there was no light pollution, so the stars and constellations were especially vivid. I did find remaining in silence among the various friendly pilgrims and vacationers to be taxing.

The small island, 3 1/2 miles long and 1 1/2 miles wide is filled with walking trails, low mountains, vast green sheep filled uplands, and surrounded by sandy beaches or cliffs of granite. Collecting shells and variegated stones smoothed by the sea is irresistible. The sky is constantly changing with cold north wind bringing in ever new layers and dramatic cloud formations and rainbows. The only sounds are the wind, the surf, and the bleating sheep. It was new lambing season. Everywhere there were tiny new lambs shyly gamboling across the turf and greenish bog, ewes standing guard. Wonderful contemplative walks and outdoor beach time, clear blue and gray moving skies, little rain and lots of sun, old Celtic stone circles on hilltops. At the end of the day there were 2 pubs on the island for a wee draught of locally made single malt scotch or Scottish Tenants beer, listening to the Gaelic speech or thick Hebridean accents, in luminous long twilight.

At the end of a week, I took the ferry, bus, ferry, bus, train to Glasgow. The next morning, I took the taxi, train, and bus to Kippen, a small village not far from Stirling, Scotland, where the intact fortress of Stirling castle hovers on a crag overhead. Here also is where the Wallace memorial, soaring tower that looks like Mordor from the Lord of the Rings. William Wallace was “Braveheart”, Mel Gibson played the role. This is William Wallace country where historic battles were fought that changed Scottish history.

Outside of Kippen is Dighty, the small cottage like monastery of the Ceile de. I stayed with the sisters in the guesthouse for 6 days, practicing the prayer, contemplation, and chanting of Celtic Christian prayers and meditation.

The day after I arrived, I was invited to join with a small local branch of the Scottish Ceile de for a full day of teaching by Fionn, of a specific series of Celtic mythic legends of Cuchulain. In this ancient story, it was instructive how Cuchulain, child of both Celtic god and human, the ultimate unbeatable warrior, representing all of the elements of the Celtic ideal hero, admired by every woman etc. who never lost a battle or a hunt, failed three times when invited to enter the faery, “other world” where his outer world powers were of no use to him. At the end, he died foolishly when he refused a humble invitation from a humble maid, who turned out to be the “Morrigan”, the celtic goddess of war, death, and decay. One of her totem guises is the carrion crow who picks the eyes and entrails from the fallen warriors on the field of battle. Beware, the unknown visitor. Before his final battle, he sees the aged “woman at the ford” (in the river), washing the blood stains from his shroud. Fionn explicated the psychospiritual messages of the tale. One valuable “take home” message for me is the hubris, how foolish we who believe we are successful and whom the outer world admires and rewards, with overtly or secretly proud egos (I am somebody special) can fail to risk the necessary surrender to the tasks of the inner journey of psyche, soul, and spirit. We may refuse the divine invitation or the subtle call of our soul, or we may resist, overlook, miss the portals to the inner encounter that is essential for fulfillment of our individuation.

After the day’s teaching, we celebrated together the feast of Beltane, originally celebrated on May 11th. This is the day that gradually was transformed into May Day, with spring fertility frolics, bonfires all night, on every hillside, and dances around the Maypole. In our contemplative celebration, we sang and chanted paeons to the sacred marriage of heaven and earth, masculine and feminine, and emergence of the new life, the budding grain, flowering apple tree, lambs in the meadow, and the divine child, the Christ within each of us. Each of us took twigs from a Rowan tree collected by Fionn, on Iona, and fashioned them into a cross, bound together by red wool yarn.
We used these crude crosses, with their conjoined vertical and horizontal as reminders in our Run and contemplations of our own seeking to embody this sacred marriage of heaven and earth in all we think, say, and do.

Sister Ita and Fionn’s hospitality and kindness were extraordinary, and I felt the rhythm of their contemplative life grow inside me. However, the early morning contemplative prayer, called Run, at 7:00 AM, noon ritual, 5:00 PM and 9:00 PM, each 45 minutes to and hour was wearing:-). The life of a monk, with scheduled meals, rituals, prayer, chores, and silent inner contemplation is a lot of work! I felt my fatigue at the end of these 2 weeks on Iona and at Dighty. Also, the chill wind continued with unseasonably low temperatures, many trees still unleafed on May 16th.

I have just departed from Dighty, the monastery outside Kippen and returned to Glasgow. Up until yesterday, I had not figured out where I was going next. I was drawn to northern Scotland, Findhorn, Pluscarden Abbey, Isle of Skye, Lewis Island in the outer Hebrides where a giant stone circle the size of Stonehenge is rarely visited. Also, trips to England’s lake country, the Cotswalds, Wales, or especially Cornwall in the SW of England drew me. But the cost of living is high and it is cold. It was surprising how I had to wait for the inner impulse to head for sun and beach.

Two people that I spoke to mentioned Ibiza, Spain, for a sunny Mediterranean island. But checking into it, I found beautiful beaches and water, but overrun with tourists and hotels. Greek Islands have always held a dreamlike quality to me. I had visited Crete when I was 20 years old, recovering from dysentery contracted in Egypt. It had been remote, slow paced, and salutary. So, here in Glasgow, taking care of some practical tasks, I used my IPad to research options extensively the past 2-3 days.

Tomorrow, Saturday, I take the train to Edinburgh, overnight, and catch flight to London Heathrowe, Athens, and Herakalion, Crete on Sunday. I will overnight in hotel on the beach there and take a bus the next day to small village of Ierepetra, on the SE coast. I have leased a small cottage a kilometer outside the village, by the beach for 4 weeks. It overlooks the Libyan Sea, facing Africa.
Still I am following my nose, not knowing what I will find there or what comes after. It’s been unnerving these past weeks not knowing what I wanted to do, where I was going, until yesterday morning. A renewed vision has emerged, grateful for the inner journey and the outer landscape of beauty and pilgrimage, and anticipating a place to stop and be with myself, without need to move
on, to slow my pace to the rhythms of tropical sun.

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What I hear in the silence

Posted on May 5, 2012 by musingsontheway

May 5, Blog #7

I have arrived at a thin” place, here in Iona, a small island off the coast of Scotland, in the Inner Hebrides. In the late 500s, AD, saint Columba founded a monastery here which has been a center of learning and literacy and prayer for 1500 years. It is thought that the Book of Kells was created here in the 10th century and transported to Dublin to protect it from the frequent Viking raids. A “thin place” is one in which the spiritual world and the world of conventional reality are very near to each other, the veil is vey thin. It is isolated and very quiet, a good place to listen and reflect. Only 186 people live here year round. All I can hear is the corncrakes and the wheatears, two birds native to this island, and the sound of the ocean.

I have embarked upon this sabbatical because I needed a time to get reacquainted with myself and what is true. As Greta Garbo said, ” I vahnt to be aloone”. I have been doing the same basic things as a physician and family man for so long, with all my strength, that I seemed to have misplaced the ability to hear what/who/where/how to change to what is calling me now. I have a highly developed capacity to focus on what needs to be done. I am a master at screening out “distracting” inner and outer information in order to accomplish tasks. I am gifted in empathizing, intuiting, feeling with other suffering people. I find it difficult to make decisions with integrity about who I am becoming and what is true for me now, as I enter a new stage of life, eldering. I believe each of us is called to be generative, to share our gift, our wisdom with the next generation.

There is so much written and discussed about midlife transition and such resistance in our society to aging, that I have no clear model for how to discover how “to be” as opposed “to do” when the “puer”, young man’s hero’s journey no longer applies. My body does not allow me to continue my old ways of achieving, striving, going all out. It worked so well for the past 35-40 years….

Also, I am confused about God. My passion is to know and experience God as fully as possible in this human journey and to be a portal to the divine. For a long time I was attuned to the God of scripture, to the male, patriarchal God of the Christian churches. I studied and memorized scripture, taught Bible studies, led small groups, was chairman of parish education at the Lutheran church. It was a rich and edifying time as I raised a family.

However, along the way, I came to realize that the inerrancy of scripture was interpreted through humans who had their own biases and politics. At one point, justification from the pulpit of violence and militarism was so egregious that I felt physically nauseated and spiritually violated. I lost faith in the pastor, the human institutions that were supposed to be the “authority” to convey the Truth. Suddenly, in 2004, Pontius Pilate’s question “what is truth” became a critical issue for me. Who to trust?

What is this denominational business about anyway, but human division and strife? Is this what Jesus was about? The recurring question about “the lost” people of other faith traditions, or no faith arose to haunt me. Surely, the God who yearned for and celebrated the prodigal son, who searched for the one lost sheep, that not one should be lost, who told the story of the Good Samaritan, the woman at the well, etc and sent Paul to the “Gentiles” would not damn every Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jew, Zoroastrian, etc., and atheist. They were all His creation. And each of them had some wisdom, like the blind man and the elephant. They each searched for ultimate truth. His spark of life was in all of them. Fundamentalist Christians avowed they had the whole literal truth about God’s infinite mystery. And they tried to take power politics to legislate morality, while supporting war, capital punishment, and ignoring the plight of the poor, social justice, and the suffering ecosystem of the earth.

How to understand Jesus clear statement “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except by me”? Could it be that the presence of God, the “I AM”, is the way, truth, and life that Jesus spoke of; that Yahweh, Who spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, “I AM WHO I AM” means the “I AM ” the “presence”, absolute Being, is the way, truth, and life? Jesus always spoke in parables. Taking this statement literally disenfranchises half of his beloved human creation.

Then, I began to see that “made in God’s image” must include women. I learned the history of human religion moved from matriarchy to patriarchy, from earth, body, feminine reverence to rejection of earth, body, feminine, the material world as sinful and inferior. This either/or dichotomy, some of God’s creation was good and some bad made no sense. If God is all, everything belongs and nothing is rejected. More on this later.

There are two ways to live your life
One as though nothing is a miracle,
The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

-Albert Einstein

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