A poem to me on my 39th birthday

(A poem for me, to me, on my 39th birthday, shared as prayer with you)…

Embodied

The other night, I watched a video of me that Brian recently filmed.
It was me leading a meditation.
Half way through, I stopped and paused it.

I sat there, staring

at the still frame shot of me. The incessant self-doubt
that strangled my joy for years was simply

not true. I could no longer deny what I now saw before me.
Here was the evidence.

“I see it,” I whispered in the silence of my heart,
“I see what my mother has seen all these years.

I am exquisite.

I embody the life I have led,
the years and hours of meditation and kindness and metta,
meltdowns and cries, softening and letting go
practiced on my cushion,
on the earth dancing and sweating my chants to the Divine,

in our kitchen cutting grapes for toddlers,
tired, alone, longing, yearning, returning
always

right here
to my life as practice, in the car

handing back snacks to hungry little ones wondering if I’ll rest today,
in our bed nursing a newborn in the early hours before dawn,
making love to Brian when we should be sleeping but

returning Home to our bodies reciting poetry to the Divine,

rising early with my prayer shawl wrapped around my growing belly,
sitting in silence until a baby cries and my feet take me to them,
somehow in the dark, and my arms become their shawl…

again and again,
through the doubt and the worry
the shame and the regret
the wondering and the wounds
the mistakes and the miraculous
the cooing and the sighing
the obsessing and

the letting go,

returning

again and again
to the Divine
within.

I already embody what I longed for,
what I thought was missing,
what I believed I was ‘not yet:’

I am sensual and beautiful.”

The words escaped my heart before they could be squelched
by analysis or habitual practices of learning to not be powerful…
and know it. Spoken into existence, they flew

out into the world and danced,

and then back into me
as prayer, as breath,
to be breathed

and then exhaled
as blessing.

Lisa A. McCrohan, © 2013

Eyes of compassion

Today, is it possible to look at all people with the eyes of compassion?  To practice looking at even those who frustrate you, annoy you, anger you, disgust you with softer eyes?  To see beyond the exterior mask they wear?  Some times it’s helpful to imagine them as a newborn baby and how their mother looked at them for the first time.

Some times we need to imagine our own selves as a newborn in order to see our innate goodness.  Sometimes we need to first see our own selves with the eyes compassion, to see that we are suffering, in some way, when our hearts are closed off.  When we feel connected, safe, resourced, and like we belong, our hearts naturally open, expand, and include.  When we feel disconnected, unsafe, threatened, under resourced, and isolated, we close off, we contract, we judge, and we exclude.

People don’t hurt others when they feel connected, safe, resourced, loved, regarded, and like they belong.

We have all heard: “It takes a village to raise a child.”  What if we looked at all beings as our children?  What if we looked at even those who hurt others as our children, our suffering, disconnected children?  What if, instead of judging, polarizing people into ‘good’ or ‘evil,’ we acknowledge our own grief and suffering inside of us and have the intent to include others in our hearts and prayers who are suffering and act gruffly, annoy us, hurt us?

Such inclusion in our hearts, such eyes of compassion for others does not condone the actions of others.  It does not say, “Do whatever you want to me.”  It does not say, “don’t take responsibility for your actions.”   And actually, when we practice seeing the “other” with eyes of compassion, our ability to have appropriate boundaries and limits expands.  The right action to take arises.  We may decide to end a friendship that is not nourishing, and still have compassion for them.  We may decide to never see a person again, and still not exclude them from our hearts.

It’s a profound practice.  In it, we realize that we hurt our own hearts when we exclude.  We suffer when we close off our hearts.  We flourish, we live with a lighter, more powerful heart when every single person is included in our hearts.

Such inclusion is the ultimate healing balm to grieving hearts.  In time.

So, tomorrow, when we wake up, vow to act with compassion.  And when you don’t, have eyes of compassion for yourself and begin again.  We all have 24 hours to begin again and again and again.  And each time we do, our hearts expand…and heal.

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.

Making miracles of everyday life

Here is the first video by the Barefoot Barn!  It’s about finding a sacred pause in your everyday life…and making miracles out of the ordinary.  Enjoy!  Hope it inspires you!

Thank you to these awesome women who contributed to this first video.  They are all moms, professionals, and incredible women who bring beauty and kindness into this world.

Megan Jones
Meredith Mullins
Samantha Schroeder
Molly Spence
Tracy Sullivan

For everyday wisdom,
visit Meg @
www.istopforsuffering.wordpress.com

For family photography,
visit Tracy @
www.dragonflydreamphotography.com

The courage to heal

A few times a year, our church weaves into the mass a time of “anointing the sick.” Anyone who is hurting, in any way, is invited to come forward. The priest and deacon take their time. They lay their hands on the person’s head and they anoint the person’s forehead with oil. They speak a prayer privately as the congregation sings and “holds the space.”

It’s a time of bodies being blessed. It’s a time of remembering – the fragility of the body, the tenacity of hope, and the need for community. It’s a time of having the courage to step forward, announcing with their silent but visual presence that one wants to be healed…and surrendering.

This past Sunday, we had the anointing of the sick.

I sat there watching as folks from the pews got up and stepped forward. I wanted to go up. I wanted, wanted, wanted to. But I didn’t.

I never do. I never stand up and walk to the front of the church.  And I’m sad about that.

No, I don’t have cancer or a tumor; I don’t struggle with addiction; I don’t have a mental illness.  But I do desire what so many of us do — to be held and healed, to have our brokenness acknowledged and seen. Whatever that brokenness is that we all have.

You don’t have to believe that there is healing (which is different from “cure”) going on with the “laying on of hands.” Healing happens in having the courage to acknowledge and say, “I feel broken”  and we welcome that brokenness with the tenderness of a mother comforting a hurting child.

Healing happens when we have the courage to be vulnerable and share our brokenness with another person.

Healing happens when we finally proclaim and ask for what we have longed for – maybe for decades.  Healing happens when we finally say “YES” to that longing – yes to its presence (and residence) within us, yes to the Divine forces that have so desired to hold that longing with us and soothe it.

Healing happens when we ask for what we need and fold into the arms that can and want to hold us.

Maybe me not getting up in front of the congregation this past Sunday was then a prompt to now go before my husband and my mom, two of the most beautiful, loving people in my life and say, “Hold me, please.  Just because.”  I’ve been too strong lately.  Too “independent.”  Too “do it on my own.”  I need to acknowledge that I feel broken at times and be ok with being vulnerable and broken before another.  And allow them to hold me.

Like so many of us, I often do a lot of the “holding.”  I’ve been great at that my whole life.  I do it for a profession.  But I can easily get caught up in being the one “listening” and “about the other person.”  I, too, need to have the courage to ask for someone to do the holding.  And I am blessed to have a mom and a husband that are awesome at that.  And long to do just that – hold me.

how the fear of death dissolves

sunrise

This is a tender post.  Over the last few years, I’ve started to reconcile my fear of others dear to me dying.  I used to be terrified of my parents dying.  My dad remembers when I was in middle school and we were traveling with my soccer team to a tournament in North Carolina.  My dad was getting dressed and I saw gray hair on his chest (he was all of 40 or so!).  “Dad!” I cried with tears streaming down my face, “You are dying!”

Ever since I can remember, I had been scared of my parents dying.  Past life stuff, stuff from this life…doesn’t matter the source, really.  All I know is that the fear of them dying kept me frozen.  It kept me from living.  It made me hold back.  In most of my relationships.

That fear is losing its grip on me. Little by little.  And oddly enough, this comes at a time when my parents are aging.  Dad retires this month.

I have always believed in a Divine presence. I’ve never needed to “know” what “comes after death” in this lifetime.  I do not think ANY one religion has the monopoly on truth when it comes to “the after-life.”  I have always just known that whatever happens, it has to be lovely.  And gentle.  It’s home.

But we can know something and still not be “healed.”  Information — in the form of a thought, knowledge, or even a cognitive belief — informs.  It doesn’t heal.

Healing happens in our bodies.  It is here, in our cells, in our tissues, in our nervous systems, in our BODIES that we hold all our memories, experiences, interactions.  It is in our bodies that we hold the fears (and joys) that arise out of those experiences.  So,  it is IN THE BODY where we “go” to heal these tender wounds.

How?

Noticing what arises when we become fearful.  Noticing the sensations that arise.  Breathing.  Allowing.  Holding each image that arises with gentleness, as though we were holding a small child.  Giving it all a lot of spaciousness.  Connecting to our hearts.  Allowing the body to do what it needs to do.

Mindfulness.  Radical acceptance.  Spaciousness. Gentleness.

Doing very little.

These are healing balm. This is how any fear dissolves.

It’s not through analyzing our fears or dissecting them. It’s feeling them in our bodies.  And letting the body’s innate wisdom to do what it needs to do.

Our mainstream culture fears death.  We are “sold” every day on ways to preserve and hang on to youth.  But this keeps us in denial that we will all meet death.  You, me, those dear to us.   We will all meet death.

Instead of being frozen with fear, I find that I am thawing out.  I am beginning to LIVE this one precious, wild life, with total clarity that death will meet me some day.

And I hope that my last breath is the same as this one I take right now: full of gratitude and true contentment.  I hope that I have lived a life of being ALIVE and tender.  I hope I have followed the delights of my heart with no regrets…surrendering and “birthing” into Home.

The Miracle in the Now

The miracle is finding the peace and beauty in the ordinariness of our everyday lives. Seeing it all as SACRED. A gift. May we all experience several miracles today!!

(Coming soon…a video series on finding the sacred in everyday life!)

Three ways to mother ourselves

hold a dear one

We all have them. Parts of ourselves that we try to avoid looking at. Parts we deny are there. Parts we get furious with for being “weak” and “wanting attention.”

The angry, guilty, ashamed, resentful, judgmental, rage-full, needy parts.  How about the “no way in the world will I tell anyone about this” part?

We tend to try and push these parts to the side or get ride of them.  Other times, we get consumed by them.  Most often, we judge them – and ourselves.

We could all use a dose of gentleness and kindness.  The energy of trying to keep at bay those parts of ourselves is like trying to hold down a beach ball under water.

It’s exhausting and takes a lot of focus and energy. What inevitably happens? Yep – we lose touch on the ball and it shoots right up.

There’s another way.

Three Tips to Mother Yourself

1. Allow those painful parts to be seen. Without reacting to them, pushing them away, getting lost in their “story.” Just let them be.  Say to them, “I see you,” with kindness and regard.

2. Breathe. Take a sacred time-out, and just feel yourself being breathed.  For just a moment or two.  This creates a sense of spaciousness as you continue to say “I see you” to that part and give it kindness.

3. As our beloved Thich Nhat Hanh says, treat them as a ‘dear one,’ as a mother holding and tending to and embracing her little one.   Yes, that’s right.  The parts you have been trying to push down for years, maybe decades, you embrace them and hold them like a mother holding her child.  And notice how you soften. Notice how these “dreaded” and feared parts of yourself lose some of their power as you hold them with kindness and in spaciousness.

And you don’t have to DO anything, mama!, to make those ashamed or painful parts go away or stop. You just hold them as if you were holding a little one in those beautiful arms of yours. This is RADICAL ACCEPTANCE. And a sense of lightness arises.

“Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance…When we practice Radical Acceptance, we begin with the fears and wounds of our own life and discover that our heart of compassion widens endlessly. In holding ourselves with compassion we become free to love this living world. This is the blessing of Radical Acceptance; As we free ourselves from the suffering of ‘something is wrong with me,’ we trust and express the fullness of who we are.” – Tara Brach

Blessings of Delight,
Lisa

** If this post resonated with you, check out the Barefoot Barn’s website. Join the growing Barefoot Barn community of soulful folks on Facebook.

How about a little tenderness?

Little C as a newborn after a bath

One of my teachers shared this video.  Oh my goodness.  Please, view it right now. Then come back and read this post.

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2012/04/skip-your-morning-meditation-watch-this-instead

I was moved to tears watching this hospital worker bathe this newborn.  I was struck by the woman’s tenderness and total presence as she bathed a child who is not her own.  Time stood still as she slowly led this newborn into an experience of the holy – an opportunity to remember “Home” out of the womb.  Her safe and loving hands caressed this child in wholeness.  A sacred, intimate dance in the water.  A sensual experience.

Tenderness.  Leads.  Us.  Home.

Watch how the newborn settles.  Just watch his or her eyes as the worker brings the child into the water.  They communicate “ahhhhh, I am home.”   See how his or her body completely relaxes.  See how the worker’s hands lovingly massage the child’s head, back and hips.

I showed this to Brian last night.  We sat in silence for awhile — how you do when you’ve just seen God incarnate.  And you realize you’ve just been asleep but now you are awake and SEEING how EVERYthing is drenched in the Divine and is holy.

Witnessing this newborn’s first bath cuts through the veils of illusion that keep me from remembering that each of us was such a newborn.  Each of us – no matter what we’ve done in life – has that pure and holy newborn in us.  The sacred pulse of the Divine.  We are breathing miracles, vessels of Divine Light.  Holders of the holy.

Our flesh is a miracle.  Our bodies are holy.  I do believe that our human journey is about casting off the veils of illusion in our minds so our hearts can lead us where they know to go:  Home.

Every human being deserves such loving touch, tenderness, and attention. A reminder of how the Divine holds us.  A reminder of Home.

Who do we hold with such tenderness?  Who do we need to hold like this?

Who holds us with such tenderness?  Who do we need to ask to hold us like this?

When we tenderly regard and hold others, we bring heaven to earth.  And all of us soften, open, connect…and settle.

If just one day this week all of us held someone with such regard and tenderness, our planet would feel a gigantic shift.

Truly we all walking on holy ground.  We should all have enough sense to take off our shoes and kiss the ground – and each other.