Blue moon, lonely planet

blue moon

With That Moon Language
By Hafiz

Admit something:
Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops.
Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying,
with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?

You’re right, Hafiz. You are right. All these years between you and I, you in Ancient Persia, and I here today in 2012, still it is in every human being this longing to belong. This longing to be loved. And this opportunity to love each other with the “sweet language” of the moon – to say to each other, “I love you!” In some way. Maybe not those exact words. Yes, people today, too, would think you are crazy and call the cops. Or, now a days, stop talking to you by the water cooler at work or on the playground with your children.

How ironic is it that each of us – all of us – long to hear those sweet words, “I love you!” I see you. I cherish you. In this moment. With this look. This willingness to be present with you right here right now…even though there is a deadline to meet, dinner to cook, bills to be paid.

Lately, folks, I am hearing again and again the pangs of people’s hearts about how LONELINESS is an epidemic. And yet, I also hear how we are also reaching out. We are all so TIRED, so very tired, of being numb, of not listening to our hearts, of living isolated, lonely lives disconnected from our own hearts, each other, the Earth, and any sense of the Sacred.

We are saying ENOUGH. We are waking up, world. We are waking up.

So, brave soul, please, keep sharing from your heart, keep connecting, keep reaching out, keep being tender and real and imperfect and “not all together”. Keep saying, “I need you!” Keep offering your own hand — shoot, keep offering one minute of your time where you are truly, truly present to the person before you!

This is how we wake up to the fact that we belong to each other. This is how we heal our world — and our own hearts.

Each time you judge yourself, you break your own heart…

see the goodness that you are

 
“My beloved child, break your heart no longer.
Each time you judge yourself, you break your own heart.
You stop feeding on the love which is the wellspring of your vitality.
The time has come.
Your time.
To celebrate.
And to see the goodness that you are.
You, my child, are divine.
You are pure.
You are sublimely free.
Let no one, no thing, no idea or ideal obstruct you.
If one comes, even in the name of ‘Truth’, forgive it for its unknowing.
Do not fight.
Let go.
You are God in disguise and you are always perfectly safe.
Do not fight the dark. Just turn on the light.
Let go and breathe into the goodness that you are.”

Swami Kripalvanandaji (Bapuji)
as copied from
“Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha”
by Tara Brach

How to heal by doing very little? Just N.A.P.!

I had a hard day.  You all know how it goes – something doesn’t go as planned, people don’t respond the way you’d like, you were just “off” and didn’t come across as confident or maybe even competent, your child threw up or is having a rough day, someone was critical of you even though you were really really trying to help. We’ve all been there. The specifics don’t matter. (No really, they don’t matter. Keep reading!)

Today, I could feel the sting in my heart, the tightness in my throat, the defeat in my slumped shoulders…all before noon.

I started down the path of aversion and separateness: “Well, I’ll never help them again!”  And judgment: “Who do they think they are?!”

I got into the car.  I sat there.  Tears were welling up.  Not the tears of hysteria and wild emotion, but the quiet tears of defeat.

I knew I needed to hear my own voice. I turned on my iphone (god, I love this thing!), went to the voice recorder and clicked “record.”

I sat there, pausing, breathing.  I know that explaining, complaining, and analyzing don’t do jack to heal us.  They aren’t the healing balm to suffering.

And I wanted HEALING BALM. Not some bandaid B.S.  I am over the “treating the symptoms” kind of approach.  I go for true healing.

So I decided to “go back to the basics” of my mindfulness practice:

I just started naming whatever was in my present moment awareness.

Any thought, emotion, memory, sensation…whatever came into my awareness, I named it.
“Anger.”
“Tightness.”
“Heat.”
“Now this layer of defeat.”
“Now breathing.  Now I am exhaling.”
“Crying….; wet…hot…”
“Now tightness in my throat.”
“Thinking.”
“Now thinking of memories from childhood.”
“Now this layer.  Thought.  Trying, trying sooooo hard.  And being misunderstood.  Feeling like crap.”
“Now breathing.”
“Now tightness.”
“Now ‘old belief’ – ‘I try and no one notices.”
“Aloneness.”
“Quiet.”
“Now regret.”
“Compassion.”
“Softening.”

It went on like this for 20 minutes.  Just naming whatever came into my present moment awareness.  No judgment.  No “going into the story.”  No analyzing the sensation, thought, memory, or emotion.  Only right here.  In the now.  Space.  And Breath.

Gradually, I noticed this:

life returning
a sense of resiliency
an okayness within me
no desire to change what was
letting go of blame, hurt
opening
expansiveness
a sense of connection

Gradually, there was less gripping.  My heart felt restored.  My body — calm.  My emotions — soft, even.

I thought of Lao Tzu’s words: “Can you wait until the mud settles and the waters become clear?”

The water was becoming clear.  Settled and clear.

NAME.
ALLOW.
PRESENCE.

That’s all I did.  I took a “N.A.P.”

This is what heals. This naming “what is.” This spacious allowing. This kind presence. Too often we get caught up in the weeds of our emotions and thoughts, when, really, all we have to do to become untangled from them is to look up and breathe in the expansiveness of the sky.  We get caught up in the waves of our thoughts and emotions instead of allowing them to just rise and and fall on their own…instead of remembering WE ARE THE OCEAN.

REMEMBER WE ARE THE OCEAN, as Tara Brach says.

Bitterness.  Confusion.  Gone.

In their place:  a gentle, compassionate, spaciousness for holding the deeper hurt within me – holding and regarding what longed to be seen within me.

But had I not just “allowed” and softened and breathed and named whatever it was that came into my awareness and held it all with gentle, gentle presence…but instead got caught up in the “weeds” of judgment, blaming, separating, I’d still be feeling like crap.  Maybe I would’ve called a friend and they would’ve been like, “Oh that bites, Lisa.  Wow.  They don’t know what a good thing they got!  You are an incredible………….” And I would’ve felt “better.”  For a moment.

But what was needing my attention most WEREN’T the particulars (the waves, the weeds) of what happened.  It wasn’t OTHER people’s reactions or behaviors that needed my attention.  IT WAS ME. The parts of me in need of some healing balm.

So I found myself THANKING these experiences of today – and all the people.  They woke me up to tend to ME.  I found myself BOWING to life and the SIMPLICITY and the ease to which we can suffer less.  Just a bit of spaciousness, naming, allowing, and gentleness.

Doing very little.  And yet healing a lot.

I didn’t change my experiences (or the people around me!). I changed how I related to them. And THAT cultivates peace. THAT is what, as the Tibetans say, brings on the lion’s roar: the capacity of heart to be with whatever arises.

I did call a friend. Well, she happened to call me. And I sat there telling her NOT about the particulars of the day but rather this process and the clearing and the CALM within me now. She gets it. We said very little. Still tender, I went home, lighter, softer, whole.

Taking flight

“You, bird, will live in the trees and fly through the air, reaching the realm of the clouds, touching the clear skies of the heavens, and you will not fear falling.”
Poetic Translation of Popol Vuh (Mayan Creation Myth)

We found this little robin’s nest and eggshell right outside our back door.  We’ve so loved it that it’s been on our “nature table” all spring and summer (aka the center of our kitchen table).

For me, this summer has felt like spring.  Not outside, that’s for sure.  But rather inside my heart space.

Spring.  The season of new possibilities.  Birth.  Life outside the nest.

I am “outside the nest” now more than a few years ago when I was busy birthing babies.  I am still drawn back to my usual “earth element” of hearth and home, barefoot in the grass and connecting to the earth.  But right now, I find myself being called to taking flight.

To sweep down and “touch” a story in my heart without getting pulled into it.  To fly alongside the flow of my thoughts, like a bird flying alongside a river, without getting tossed into the waters of deeply entrenched patterns of thinking.    To explore the landscapes of possible paths before me, before our family, without committing to one and  writing it in stone.

This is refreshing.

The air element encourages me to stay light.  It gives me permission to change directions, taking on a new perspective very easily, moving through an array of emotions swiftly and effortlessly, and dabbling in new ways of thinking, being, relating and doing – like I’m trying on new new clothes and styles.  It encourages me to see the big picture and take in the whole landscape rather than getting lost in the weeds.

I hear thoughts such as “Oh this is easy!”  And “Try a new way.  Here’s one!”  And “Choose what is fun to do.”  And…”No biggie.” And “I don’t need to get mired in this.”

I feel things like “soft” and “free” and “unbridled” and “light” and “quiet “  – the kind of quiet you hear standing on top of a mountain.

And like a bird, I don’t fear falling.  The graces of gravity, the winds, the hand of the Divine lift me into the spaciousness of the heavens where I can soar, listening only to the wind, my breath, and my Heart.

I have no idea where these winds will take me.  But I am enjoying the flight.