How Others Feel

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.  ~Maya Angelou

A part of my mind rejects this idea because I don’t like the discounting of what we say and do, but I know it is true. To a large degree, it is the emotional content of what we say and do that people connect with (or are repelled by), regardless of the intellectual content or even the actions themselves.

It’s usually easy to tell how people feel when we’re in close relationship: spouse, family, friends. But how can we better understand our impact on those who are less transparent to us or less forthcoming with their feedback? Do we need to concern ourselves with that?

I know that at work I am often intensely focused on a task at hand, and when I am interrupted, it takes a while for me to shift my attention to the person who needs it. I’m sure this has sometimes sent a message I didn’t intend. As an introvert, I am slow to warm up to people and need time to process interaction. But I would like to practice being more fully present for others and to smile more!

Time and Magic

     Now Haiku
here and now, sitting,
monkey mind is then and there–
in yesterday’s trees.

…and…

     Presence Limerick
I want to be present right now,
Connect to the flowing of Tao.
But when I sit still
My obstinate will
Appears, rises up, takes a bow.
~Lyn Hopper

Today I have self-quotes, written in response to Mad Kane’s challenge to write a haiku and a limerick about time. That was fun! As are her blogs. Check them out.

One serious thought about time, since we’re on the subject already. I have been practicing mindfulness, especially at my ultra-busy workplace, and I have learned through direct experience that what others say is true–mindfulness does slow time down. I know you’re now thinking, “yeah, right,” because that’s what I have thought every time I have read about this phenomenon.

Time slows down, I tell you! It is magic, really. I know it is a trick of perception, (or maybe the trick is busyness and the rushing of time), but I literally have more time to do the things I need to do somehow. And I’m oh, so much more relaxed about doing them.

Try it, and tell me what you find. Preferably in a haiku or limerick!

Free Time

…the Chinese pictograph for busyness is “heart killing.” ~from Sue Monk Kidd’s Firstlight

Whenever we have a little free time, most of us seek some form of amusement. We pick up a serious book, a novel, or a magazine. If we are in America, we turn on the radio or the television, or we indulge in incessant talk. There is a constant demand to be amused, to be entertained, to be taken away from ourselves….Very few of us ever walk in the fields and the woods, not talking or singing songs, but just walking quietly and observing things about us and within ourselves.  ~J. Krishnamurti

Today I celebrate space, free time. In addition to my work, which includes a lot of travel and a 3-hour commute 3 days a week, I am taking two post-Master’s classes this semester. So it is rare these days to have hours without busyness and obligations, but today I have virtually nothing I have to do. No “heart-killing” for me today.

I find that order, space, and free time are helpful in stimulating my creative impulses. So I will first tidy my office and then surround myself with the tools of creativity: paper and pencil, my favorite books, art supplies, and other familiar playthings. Even the computer is a tool for creative work if I refuse to be seduced by stumbling upon new Web sites, playing computer Scrabble or checking e-mail.

Later, I may “walk in the fields and woods…observing things.”  Or practice yoga and mindfulness meditation. How do you use free time?

P. S. This is a quote that belongs with my previous post on the ineffable creative process:  Art criticism is to the artist as ornithology is to the birds. ~Barnett Newman

Change

Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.  ~Bertolt Brecht

Daffodils are blooming, and my boss is leaving for another state. My mother-in-law is anticipating having to move out of the house in which she grew up because she is no longer able to live alone. It won’t be long before we have a new president.

Change is just change. The attachment we feel to this or that is what causes suffering in the change. We can never know ahead of time what the outcome of change will be. So it seems to me that the right response to change (and certainly the least stressful) is acceptance and curiosity. If we are living in each moment, I believe that will occur naturally.

May I roll with these changes, loving what is. May I respond from a grounded awareness of the present moment, accepting that the next present moment will bring something different.

The Beauty We Love

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened.
Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
~Rumi

What a beautiful last line. It almost makes up for Rumi’s dissing of reading!  And just look at that first line that describes the human condition–not one that’s special (“like every other day”) nor one that is unique to us as individuals (“we wake up”). The question Rumi begs here, of course, is “What is the beauty you love?” This poem is one answer for me.

Only in midlife have I begun to understand that this is the right question, much less to consider the answers to the question. As a child, I don’t remember having dreams about what I would be when I grew up. It didn’t occur to me to aspire to anything in particular, even though I came from a solidly middle-class household that valued education and achievement. Possibly this was true for many girls, whose socially acceptable options typically consisted of teacher, nurse, wife and mother. Most certainly, though, the question in my family would have had more to do with accomplishment as measured by society than with the beauty I loved. 

So…what is the beauty I love? Poetry, words, music, textural arts (fiber, glass, multimedia), laughter, yoga, living spaces with feng shui, human connection, singing. What is the beauty you love?

Resistance

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance. ~Steven Pressfield

So begins the third chapter in Pressfield’s The War of Art. The author goes on to characterize this enemy of art (and of everything that calls forth our higher nature) as invisible, internal, insidious, implacable, impersonal, and infallible.  And that’s only the beginning! ”Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work,” Pressfield continues. “If you take Resistance at its word, you deserve everything you get. Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.” 

I’m glad to add this book to my list of favorite books on writing and the creative process. I believe Resistance has a lot to do with why I blog. It is oh-so-much-easier than writing poetry. And even now, I want to get up and pour a glass of wine or pet the cat, instead of finishing this post, taking my clothes out of the dryer, and then walking on the treadmill.

The only cure, of course, is that old Nike slogan, “Just Do It.” The work itself is all that saves us from evil Resistance. But knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to get to work.

What’s your experience with that grumpy old bear, Resistance?

Driving

Car Crash

Yours will happen some dark night
On the long road from a family visit–
Perhaps when the planets next align
As they did last night: Mercury, Venus,
Mars, moon, Saturn, Jupiter–
Or when the sun is bright,
And you admire someone’s azaleas
Or catch a colorful line of wash
Blowing in the breeze.
Suddenly, you’re in a ditch,
Images swirling at the backs of your eyes.

I will be coming home from work
Scribbling fast to trap some phrase
About to slip through the sieve of memory:
Writing “fiddleheads of fern,”
Or today, “The Car Crash,”
When I looked up to face
Head-on, lights and sirens blaring,
A prophetic ambulance.
They will find me grinning by the side of the road,
A pencil clutched in my hand.

It is an understatement to say I do a lot more driving than I did before I changed jobs 18 months ago. Theoretically, I telework two days a week, but no week is the same. Today, for example, I drove 240 miles to present a 2.5-hour workshop.

In July 2006, I bought a new car for the new job, and five weeks later, hit a deer with it. More accurately, the deer slammed into me. I now have over 41,000 miles on this car, and I estimate that I have spent $4500 on gasoline in the last year and a half just to get to and from my office three days a week (not to mention traveling around the state).

The poem is not new, but I think of it sometimes on my travels. Mostly, I can ignore how vulnerable I am on the freeway around Atlanta and the highways of rural Georgia. (As Wally says, “Isn’t it terrible what we can get used to?”) Occasionally, the full impact of my lifestyle flashes clearly in my mind, and I have a strong desire to stop the madness–not to mention the violence I am doing to the planet.

For now, I will continue to do what I have to do in order to do work I love. And now is all we have, after all.

Ego

We’re swallowed up only when we are willing for it to happen.  ~Nathalie Sarraute

A number of forces combined yesterday to overwhelm my best intentions. As my last few posts have attested, I have been immersed over the past few days in the work of Eckhart Tolle on the power of living in the present. Yesterday, it felt as though my ego, or will, was so threatened by the prospect of  annihilation (through living in the now, surrender to what is) that it reared up and demanded my attention. It is a greedy beast! 

Though I tried to be the “watcher” in the throes of this experience, as Tolle recommends, I was unsuccessful at taming the unruly will.  My mindfulness muscles are not yet strong enough, perhaps. Today I hope to practice that mindful presence and surrender as I go about my day.

Do you have a practice that helps keep you mindful, that connects you with all that is, or that helps you avoid being “swallowed up?”

Grace

The winds of grace are blowing all the time; you have only to raise your sail.  ~Sri Ramakrishna

I have always loved this quote, pointing as it does to the sea we swim in, but of which we are usually oblivious. After listening to The Power of Now, I am interpreting “raising one’s sail” as being present–without resistance–in order to experience unity with all that is, enlightenment, or “the winds of grace.” Tolle says that surrender, acceptance of what is, doesn’t mean we have to give up doing, but gives us clarity about what needs to be done, and I have found this to be true.

It is so refreshing to hear that direct perception, (consciousness, feeling) is as critical as thinking in our mind-dominated Western world. I’m the first to disagree with (uh-oh, mind identification!) those who would dismiss reason in the affairs of the world, but I do know that my mind will not get me to a state of grace, enlightenment, unity. Judging, thinking that we are separate from all that is (ego-identification) is destructive for us and for our planet. Tolle cautions that once we take a position, we have identified with an impermanent form, have created a resistance to what is that blocks our natural flow of energy.

So raising one’s sail to the winds of grace occurs through experiencing the now with full consciousness, Eckhart might say. Have you had such moments of spiritual connectedness? 

Now

When you have a disease, do not try to cure it–find your center and you will be healed.  ~Tao proverb

I can now highly recommend Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. I have listened to about 3/4 of the audiobook, and now I am planning to buy the print edition.  Read it and learn why humankind is insane, and why we must individually and collectively save ourselves by learning to be present in the now. Instead of talking about how when we come to die, we need to have lived, Tolle talks about the importance of having already “died” (as an ego, a form), so that we understand that there is no death.

It is the wisdom of the ages, if only we could hear and practice it. There is no present or future, only now. It doesn’t mean we cease to plan or set goals, it just means we fully experience the present as it occurs, without mental reference to past or future.  We step out of time and do not resist what is.

I started this blog on August 12, 2007, by speculating that mindfulness was the key to “God, the universe and everything.” Now I am convinced of that. It is no coincidence that mindfulness is the largest tag on my tag cloud!

Mindfulness may be the antithesis of thinking, however; it is awareness of being in the body, of the emotions as manifestations of thought. Transformation is through the body, not away from it, says Tolle. Going within and focusing on the inner energy field of your body helps you stay grounded, still and rooted.

The Art Spirit

The brush stroke at the moment of contact carries inevitably the exact state of being of the artist at that exact moment into the work, and there it is, to be seen and read by those who can read such signs, and to be read later by the artist himself, with perhaps some surprise, as a revelation of himself.  ~Robert Henri

I can hardly believe I omitted one of my favorite books on creativity in a previous post: Robert Henri’s The Art Spirit. And now, looking for it on my bookshelf, I believe I must have lent it to someone who has not returned it. As I can’t imagine being long without it, I’ll have to order another copy!

I’m listening to Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now on my commute. Too soon to tell what I think of it, but so far I haven’t heard anything I disagree with. He invites us to imagine a world without people. Would you ask a tree or a bird what time it is? If you did and they were to answer, they would say, “It is now, of course.” I believe being here now is what enables us to channel creativity, to achieve “the brush stroke of the moment.” If we are not fully present, that stroke does NOT carry us into the work.

May I pause in the next busy days to be here in my life. May I listen for the winds of creativity blowing through my spirit.

Change of Habit

“Yep, son, we have met the enemy, and he is us.”  ~Pogo

I have just returned from three days at the Okefenokee Swamp, home of the beloved Pogo. Alligators basked in their muddy depressions on the peat “blow-ups”, great egrets and white ibises sailed over the cypress trees, and a tannin-colored wake followed our tour boat on Billy’s Lake. The Swamp is a National Wildlife Refuge now, but a logging company stripped most of the oldest cypress growth in the early 1900s.

Yet life abounds in this swamp, and I was reminded of the restorative properties of being outdoors. So why did I spend so many hours indoors in our cabin–knitting, playing Rummikub, and sitting with friends? Because part of my objective was rest and change of habit, taking a break from the usual. That I did. Now I want to find the entire run of “Pogo” and read it as an adult!

New Ideas

I can’t understand why people are frightened by new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.  ~John Cage

Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems that we created with our current patterns of thought.  ~Einstein

Sam and I watched Michael Moore’s “Sicko” last night. After he has shamed us in the U.S. for our refusal to offer universal health care, and shown us the secure (and healthier) people in Britain, France, and Canada, Moore asks, “Who are we?” Good question.

We need some new ideas. But beyond that, we need to reconnect to the values of democracy, and yes, true Christianity (not the mockery some have made it, in which doublespeak is rampant). Jesus was all about giving to those less fortunate and not amassing wealth. What has happened to the concept of raising all boats, of pulling together for the common good?

I am sick at heart from the cynicism, the greed, and the lack of real statesmanship that I see in the political arena at all levels. Selfishness and ambition has replaced leadership and public service it seems. And our system is constructed to support that. What decent person with genuine concern for all seeks public office anymore? I believe a will to power should disqualify a candidate! How do we reverse this tide?

Home

Our stories tell us who we are.  ~Donald Davis

I’ve been around this world in more ways than one.
But when I’m with you, it’s like I’m right where I come from. 
~Iris DeMent

What would it be like to reclaim home? I couldn’t wait to get away, I never go back anymore, and yet most of my dreams are still set there.  

The truth is, I have been returning in subtle ways for a while now: I bought a painting of the marsh; wrote poems about my grandmother (and the marsh); hung the amazing charcoal drawing that Christy did at eight years old, partly because it reminds me of the bank of the creek where I grew up.

I find home in my husband, am “at home” with my friends, have stories beyond my childhood home that tell me who I am. But a huge part of me was shaped by the place I grew up. I may finally understand this poem I wrote in 1991.

Marsh

Morning shone on the coverlet
The near corner, fluttering
An entrance–or an exit.

Noon bared the muddy theater.
The brazen crane strutted,
As if on his last promenade.

Green-yellow, faded now
The marsh hens trip like debutantes in the fringe
But fear a miring in the middle.

Come night, great equalizer
Bring easy honesty
When entrances and exits are the same.

(originally published in Georgia Journal, Summer 1991)

Lightness

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.  ~Gelett Burgess

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.  ~Rabindranathe Tagore

Life is too important to be taken seriously.  ~Oscar Wilde

Three ways of saying, “Lighten up!”  Tagore’s words also point to the ephemeral nature of life. If we don’t laugh now, then when?

Sure, there’s plenty to be distressed about. But satire can help us bear (and hopefully change) those things:

(Imagine a “Daily Show with Jon Stewart” clip here. Every time I try to bring one in from YouTube it disappears. If you can help, I’d love to hear from you!)

There is also much about life that is fun, light, playful. May I notice those things more readily, laugh more easily, and make play at least as important as work in my life.