Casi Cielo Salon

Casi Cielo Salon: 40 Days of Wholy Inspiration, March 8 - April 24, 2011

""What are ten or fifteen years?" asked the Mother Superior serenely. "Think of eternity."

I made no answer. I knew that eternity is each minute that passes." - Nikos Kazantzakis

Here, now, what if you as you are-were-am perfect, whole--right now, here?

Casi cielo means "almost heaven" in Spanish. We're always (seemingly) falling short of that bar, huh? Rustling underfoot is an unquestioned assumption that goes something like this: "Somewhere, sometime in the future--of course--we'll be fine when and if ___ (fill in the blank with infinite items or just one) happens or is attained or is accomplished or is grasped or is purified or is....."

What if we were to perceive and witness reality as it is? Perceive who we are; who we are, really?

Join me for 40 day Lenten (oh, there's an ulterior motive) Salon from Mardi Gras to Easter 2011 (Sundays excluded) where we delve into the sheer rapture of streaming our attention to the here and now, and then writing and sharing our observations in an intimate, online gathering space.  And, a haiku will do--no pressure, this is for the delight of it.

The focus is on current inspiration--not memory or memoir writing. If you have a flashback in the present, so be it.

The best time of my life (thus far...) was a period in 2006 where I kept a journal for forty days and wrote  in the present tense and of the present moment. It was subtitled "40 days of Ordinary Rapture."

I was 'stuck' in the further suburbs of San Jose, CA without a functioning car. Although I had a roof over my head, I was having trouble putting food on the table. I was whining to a local friend, "I am getting tired of tea and toast everyday."

She put me to a challenge. What if every time I ate a piece of bread to view it with fresh eyes and senses as if, "You have never tasted a morsel of bread before that moment."

So the journal became a way to record my daily ritual of tea and toast at dawn and tea and toast in the twilight. I was also "playing" with Jesus' intent of forty days of fasting in the desert, and this sentence: "Man does not eat by bread alone, but by every word from the mouth of God."

There are no adventures of ice-climbing across New Zealand or marrying a rock star in that journal.  Yet I saw magnolia trees in my neighborhood for the first time. Before I just drove by them on the way to something else without a second glance.

The scent of roses blooming was richer, and one day I understood their voice. I strolled to the local park and felt the glee of children at play. As I walked everything shimmered as if in an enchanted fairy tale; and yet, nothing changed externally.

Soon, I could afford more than Earl Gray with bergamot and sourdough. I enjoyed white peaches that dripped with sensuousness from the farmer's market. I fell in love.

There was none of my typical ennui. A subtle and sublime joy suffused my daily life, just as it was. I suppose one can call it mindfulness, but it was more like Wholeness.

I don't care if you write your diary, your screenplay, spiritual autolysis or your business plan (alright, maybe not the business plan unless it's spontaneous and morphing each day). Express what you care.

There will also be "clearing" exercises to flash flood out the logjams of reinforced conditioning around whatever the heck you believe is holding you back, creatively and livingly. 

The Intensive Casi Ceilo Salon runs for 40 days (Lent doesn't count Sundays) from March 8 through April 24, 2011. (It'll also be a continuing gathering space for living and sharing our art with each other for those that wish to partake.)

Shared writing among participants will be private, and sent via email to a private blog (no technical knowledge of blogging necessary). If you have more questions, check out the Frequently Asked Questions, or leave a comment and I'll answer.

Free to all Encanto subscribers. (Subscribe to Encanto at $25/month.)

The fee is $40 for access to the private Salon during the 40 day Casi Ceilo Intensive. Note the inspiration prompts related to guidance, inspiration, living in the moment, awareness, awakening, clearing blocks, creativity, etc. are globally public, and your support helps me provide an open, freely available option.

Register for Casi Cielo below:

"Every moment is fresh and unconditioned--until we believe otherwise." - Adyashanti

DETAILS, AGAIN?

WHAT: Facilitated Intensive Salon of peers interested in living in present awareness, ordinary rapture and sharing their writing based on daily happenings and musing. Loose and structured. Loose in that you decide on your topics of rapture and length and style of writing--erotica or renku or brochure or video game or watercolor sketch....; structured in that there are optional daily prompts (excepting Sundays) and I'll nudge you to submit something in writing if we don't hear from you in a while (i.e. no spectators.)

WHEN: Seven weeks March 8-April 24th.

HOW MUCH: $40 covers all daily prompts, feedback, facilitated online group (private just like most writing circles are) for seven weeks. Register above by clicking on the big yellow BUY NOW button.

whether it begins and ends at all - deepak chopra

The evening before Easter I happened to pick up a copy of Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, by Deepak Chopra. I'd never really glanced at this book before. The final chapters are intriguing as they are squarely considering time-bound awareness, timeless awareness, the present moment, death and life.

"Einstein himself experienced episodes of complete liberation from space-time boundaries: "At such moments one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet gazing in amazement at the cold and yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable. Life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor eternity, only Being." - Ageless Body, Timeless Mind by Deepak Chopra

In honor of the symbol of springtime and resurrection, therefore, a story (I'll also include more of the book in a forthcoming Google document) for your meditative Sunday.

""I'm very afraid of death," an Indian disciple once confessed to his guru. "It's haunted me since I was a child. Why was I born? What will happen to me when I die?"

The guru considered the matter thoughfully and said, "Why do you think you were born?"

"I don't understand your question," the disciple stammered.

"Why do you think you were born?" the guru repeated. "Isn't it just something your parents told you that you took for granted? Did you actually have the experience of being born, of coming into existence from a state of nonexistence, or didn't it happen that one day in childhood you asked where you came from, and your parents told you that you were born? Because you accepted their answer, the idea of death frightens you. But rest assured, you cannot have birth without death. They are two poles of the same concept. Perhaps you have always been alive and always will be. But in accepting your parents' system of belief, you entered into an agreement to fear death, because you think it is an ending. Perhaps there is no ending--that is the possibility worth exploring."

Naturally the disciple was shocked, because, like the rest of us, he didn't see death as a belief he had agreed to. What the guru was pointing out is that birth and death are space-time events but existence isn't. If we look inside us, we find a faint but certain memory that we have always been around. To put it another way, no one remembers not existing." - Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, by Deepak Chopra

And a related video describing "the unborn nature" that is exquisitely present in the present moment (via Adyashanti):

 

". . . the post-Einstein universe has no beginning and end, no edges in time and space. To join this larger reality, each of us must redefine where our own life begins and ends--or whether it begins and ends at all." - Ageless Body, Timeless Mind

As you look about you today, or hear about you today, or think about you today, or taste about you today.... consider where precisely you the subject ends and the other object begins, and vice versa. Is it that discrete, really? Where does the sky begin and where does it end? Consider many other boundaries of beginning and ending and starting and stopping and solid and hollow... is there really a hard-stop distinction of dark and dawn? Is it perhaps a singular fluid contiguous happening? Happening--has anything happened? Is anything arising? Where? Allow yourself more questions that arise. Contemplate them in lyrics, or imagery, or allow the series of your questions with or without  answers to comprise a poem, or....

ART CREDITS Crystal Pyramid and Turquoise Floating I by Marlene Tseng Yu.

games to go beyond arguments with the present moment: "You're not supposed to look like this!"

Been noticing the sole common thread to times when I feel less than rapturous (and rapture is a simpler, sublime peaceful thing than one would suspect--not a bowl you over bliss high) is when I am under the delusion that I ought to be in charge of "my" world, and I'm confounded as to why it is not bending to my demands and  expectations.

Basically, it's an argument with the present moment: "You're not supposed to look like this!"

This conception that I am in charge (and would know best how to veer the totality) and that I'm losing my grip on how it's supposedly suppose to unfold like I insist can easily sends me into a spiral of anxiety, flight-or-fight fear, rage, anger, blame, self-pity and/or sorrow. Yet when I do not entertain that fallacy and I don't argue--voila! All is Well (and it doesn't need me to announce that, it's more like, "Duh, of course").

On the regular Crossroads Dispatches blog next week, I'll be hosting an interactive* exchange. I'm going to challenge folks that wish to play to choose one of two transpersonal games:

1. If you tend to lean lately toward the yang, for a 24-hour period commit to not making things happen proactively, and see what comes your way naturally or drops into your lap without "even trying".
2. If you tend to lean lately toward the yin, for a 24-hour period commit to saying "Yes" to every invitation and offer that come your way. Dare to interpret this broadly, for instance, if you see a flyer for a class, consider that your "invitation."

Why don't you try out the game sometime this weekend for your Self?

* It'll be interactive mainly as Life itself is; and also the comments section, people may post questions that occur during game play, as well as results and outcomes of their 24-hour play date.

ART CREDITS: Dice, by Andrew McLaren

Is this going to be good? Is this going to be perfect? - steven pressfield

In an interview with Steven Pressfield (author of The Legend of Bagger Vance and The War of Art) he shares advice he gave to a writer when he became stuck about 1/4 way through his screenplay:

"One of the first things I told him to do was to banish the self-censor. I could tell he was frozen, worrying, "Is this going to be good? Is this going to be perfect? So I told him, "Take the next five days and write for two hours everyday. I don’t care what else is in your life--banish it. When you write for those two hours, start on minute one and don’t think for one second all the way through until minute 120. Just write, don’t self censor. Don’t do anything." That really seemed to get him moving and gave him permission to not be paralyzed with seeking perfection."

The search for perfection occludes seeing the perfection that is already present. It's the mind's parlor trick to distance ours self from the infinite indivisible.... to separate ourselves from the whole (as if that were possible, but it can feel as if we have succeeded in our secession from the Union....)

The search for enlightenment occludes seeing enlightenment is here.

We spend so much of our energy seeking our image of perfection and our image of wholeness. What if instead of chasing after an image of perfection or attempting to fix our image of brokenness and other imaginary pursuits, we just allow what's unfolding its expression?

Screw "perfection."  Accept whatever happens, however you are as perfect and immaculate and whole as is now--not sometime in the future when you have purified something or other. 

I met an independent filmmaker on the bus back from UCLA's symposium on transmedia and Hollywood. He told me he gets so absorbed in his work, that his grandmother chides him, "You're frozen in time." She insists he is not living in the present. So he bristles at commands or demands to "be present." I looked at him quizzically, "What makes you think you aren't present when you are writing, or directing, or editing. Sure, you are present... you're doing that thing you do in the present." Actually anything that is that self-absorbing is pretty much losing yourself to your Self in the present. In the midst of being absorbed in a first take of a film, it's pretty difficult to be caught up in the regrets of the past or the anticipated hopes for a future.

So, again, I say screw "perfect". You are perfect just as you are. The Interpreter, the Censor, may have other opinions as it's pretty miffed it's not the Author of the whole she-bang, and keeps marking up the margins of the Book with annotation that say stuff like, "This sucks" or "I was stupid here" or "Gee, that was wrong." Sure, It's always going to be blathering a running commentary as if it were Judge and Jury of the world... so what? Ignore yourself.

So I shall grant you permission to forego delusions of perfectionism.... and just do it.  Plus I give you permission to NOT do it (sometimes that is truest inclination and urge too, and it's just fine to Be... yep, you're granted permission to goof off and enjoy the process of Being too).

"The Infinite doesn't judge, it simply expresses." - Almine

p.s. Steve's new book, Do the Work, is available for free for the Kindle until May 20, 2011.

ART CREDITS: Burma Cyclone in the Art of War series by Kelly Anne Thomas'  Picasso Dreams blog

this moment is Spirit having this experience. - Adyashanti

"This moment is Spirit having this experience." - Adyashanti

Although this Intensive is not faith-based (do you need to believe in or trust anything to simply be, be simply... to be present in this moment?), I wanted to mention something I was recently reacquainted with:

"The Spiritual Exercies of St. Ignatius of Loyola are a month-long program of meditations, prayers, considerations, and contemplative practices that help Catholic faith become more fully alive in the everyday life of contemporary people."

Now, this was interesting since this Intensive is slightly longer than a month, and also since I wondered if everyone wrote their own program of short, daily, contemplative practices that they might use down the road, or tomorrow, to notice being fully alive in everyday life....

Your exercise could be silly or sublime. For instance, here's silly from Keri Smith's book, This is Not a Book: "This is a RANDOM ADVENTURE. 1. Go outside. 2. Walk until you see something red. 3. Take ten steps. 4. Look down at your feet and describe what you see in detail."

Can you imagine one contemplative exercise or prompt that you'd like to try out? Write it out for yourself (this one I could easily see being expressed as a music composition).

Here's one contemplative exercise/prompt with music from a short clip from Jed McKenna's book (as read by YouTuber AhabCapn). One of my favorite parts: "We spend our lives burrowing down into our own graves like that's a clever place to hide from death. This is about climbing out of our graves, and living our lives, and discovering who and where we are, and what we are a part of."

 

the unleashed mind... inspiration... creative eccentric... a cognitive disinhibition practice

In a May 2011 Scientific American article on the topic of why creative people are eccentric, the notion of "cognitive disinhibition" was introduced as being vital to creativity and aha! moments. The article titled, The Unleashed Mind, goes on to state typically humans are designed to filter out incoming stimulus that is not directly relevant to an immediate concern. As stated,

"Cognitive disinhibition is the failure to ignore information that is irrelevant to current goals or to survival."

It's not said outright, yet the researchers imply that  to allow non-goal stimuli through is something that runs in the family.

In my own experience, it wasn't genetic (I was the black sheep in that regard) although I found cognitive disinhibition could be learned, by simply allowing the present moment without (or at least as minimal as possible) an agenda, and when I drifted out of consciousness, just bringing my attention to the present moment and not worrying that I 'messed' up the last moment. And if I did berate myself for being lost in my headspace, or fixated on replaying emotional body experiences, then there was still the next moment available to be.

Your attention isn't on the idealized image of the present moment (for instance, "oh, no I can't be feeling anxious.... I must get rid of this feeling!") but to be with whatever is presenting itself.

"The real voyage of discovery consists in not seeking new landscapes, but in having fresh eyes." - Marcel Proust

Over time, your mind won't automatically filter out the present material it has preconceived as being irrelevant, and you'll find much inspiration as the Universe (not as if it is separate entity) gets its job back as your filtering mechanism. I'm not sure at what level this occurs--brain, mind, existential unity, none of the above--I just know that it expands one without overload, or overwhelm.

If one doesn't ignore stimuli to which you've already been exposed that is called latent disinhibition. Just putting on my hunch hat, it seems all these mental filters serve a part in reptilian brain/limbic system of preservation and sheer survival in the sabre-tooth-tiger-eat-man scenario, but as far as living out Oneness, it isn't needed evolution-wise. Here's an exercise from the preview week of this Intensive, you might be surprised how much easier it is to do a month or so later:

"Look at a cup, for example. Do you see a cup, or are you merely reviewing your past experiences of picking up a cup, being thirsty, drinking from a cup, feeling the rim of a cup against your lips, having breakfast and so on? Are not your aesthetic reactions to the cup, too, based on past experiences? How else would you know whether or not this kind of cup will break if you drop it? What do you know about this cup except what you learned in the past? You would have no idea what this cup is, except for your past learning. Do you, then, really see it?

Look about you. This is equally true of whatever you look at. Acknowledge this by applying the idea for today indiscriminately to whatever catches your eye." - A Course in Miracles

Write, sketch or otherwise share your experience of really looking without agenda.

ART CREDITS: Photo by Beth Shepherd via Wanderlust and Lipstick.

our true home is the present moment - thich nhat hanh

Two quotes that stumbled into me yesterday in my meanderings in Venice, CA.

"Our true home is the present moment. To live in the present moment is a miracle." - Thich Nhat Hanh

"Your daily life is your temple and your religion." - Kahlil Gibran

Contemplate one or both today as you go about your usual. What arises? What stumbles into you?

ART CREDITS: Photo of prayer flags at Mahabodhi Temple, India by Sarah.

we think we procrastinate but the cosmos unfolds with immaculate timing. we are always exactly on time.- Almine

"We think we procrastinate but the cosmos unfolds with immaculate timing. We are always exactly on time." - Almine

Sometimes we spend much of our current believing we ought to be doing something (that we're not), or that we're not following through, or that we're stuck, or that we're dragging our feet.

And, often, that very interpretation of procrastination or impatience that's the issue at least as far being perceptive and enjoying the whole and wholy moment to moment.

What if, as Almine reminds, any transition can be done with pain--or with grace. That when Oneness is lived there is no discrete division, and thus truly no transition. That no obstruction is possible when it's all one Being, one contiguous wholeness--it's all part of the wholeness--whatever happens is that Wholeness, too. Even the obstacles are wholeness.

I mentioned in the FAQ for this faciliated Salon that I may share some clearing techniques to help us recall this Whole, this sense of inspiration, so I wanted to share a new, free video training on Ho'oponopono released today, April 13th (lesson 1 online now). The idea of this  technique is to recognize that most often we are operating from extrapolated memory and conditioning (our repetitive, stored assumptions and fixations) , rather than moment by moment perception and inspiration.

And, even, ultimately fixations aren't wrong--but it does obscure the lived-out-loud realization of being free from suffering, vibrantly alive and conscious.

(I call the Hawaiian shamanic technique Ho'oponopono a clearing technique, they call it cleaning--semantics.)

"Everyone wants a short-cut to cleaning and reaching Zero. I do, too.

But it’s that very impatience that needs cleaned. Wanting something right now is Memory playing out, urging us to get instant gratification. It’s data. The Divine has no sense of time and no urgency. Wanting things to unfold faster than they unfold is a wonderful opportunity to clean.

I keep cleaning because it makes me feel lighter, happier and healthier; it is a fast-track way for me to remove the data in my being so I can get closer to the Divine; and because it’s easy, effortless, and free. -  Joe Vitale, Free Ho'oponopono Training

Today, give Ho'oponopono a try. Or, at least, note how you layer oughts and shoulds upon how things are unfolding. Consider the possibility they may be perfectly timed just as they are. Write or share something dealing with these themes in daily life.

ART CREDITS:  trail and eros of becoming the king, by Outi Harma

if you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. what isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us. - Herman Hesse

"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us." - Herman Hesse, Demian

Last night during an interview with a documentary filmmaker, I heard the interviewer ask about this statement: "You are what you hate."*

Sometimes if we don't feel the intensity of hatred, yet there may be annoyance, dislike ("don't like __"), a sensation of pushing away, rejection, withdrawal, pulling away, pushback, aversion present with a person, thing, thought, feeling, and/or situation.  

Notice when there is pulling back or a pushing away energy in your daily life today (don't  attempt to change it or you). .. simply an exercise in observation, in awareness.

Often a "push away" arena is one that we haven't really allowed to be seen with inquisiteness, and thus we are not present (it's a form of resistance as it is impossible to be fully present plus checked out in withdrawing from the present we "hate" simultaneously). 

One need not have to actually like or prefer something to be a neutral space of observation. From that neutral space many insights may be revealed--as well as a sense of pervasive wholeness.

Today, notice not what you enjoy and easily take note of, notice not what is neutral--notice what has an edge of distaste to it for you (nevermind popular opinion). Use that in your focal point for your writing, photography, sketch or other expression. Put concrete imagery to it:

"Instead of telling your emotions, show it by using concrete imagery.

Example of telling:

the funeral over--
the house is so lonely
without him

Example of showing:

the funeral over--
his aftershave lingers
in our bedroom

This shows loneliness. However, the phrase "I'm lonely" is nowhere in this poem. This is just one of many examples of show don't tell." - from ShadowPoetry.com website resources on Haiku and Senryu

* I don't recall who said that quote originally.

ART CREDITS: Private Property by Cecilia Feld

make each day your masterpiece. - John Wooden

"Make each day your masterpiece."  - John Wooden 

I saw the quote above engraved into a building at the UCLA campus last Friday, and thought it so apt for Casi Cielo.  In a Google search, I found someone interpreting the "Make each day a masterpiece" quote as:

In other words, how would you spend today if it were the one day by which your entire life would be judged?

I don't see it that way at all. That interpretation carries unnecessary burdens upon the present day, or present moment, to be some image of perfection upon which you or it will condemned, or not by how well you or it performed.

Make each day a masterpiece can imply a  graceful, less pressured existence than that. It can be quietly inspirational, rather than a harassing commandment. Usually it's a matter of noticing the masterpiece that is before us. Perhaps taking an eagle's eye perspective--rather than the focal point of "my" life, a focal point of Being all life.

What masterpiece did you take note of today? What does the theme of masterpiece evoke in your daily life?

ART CREDITS: The Dream, by Michelangelo.

for a creative writer possession of the 'truth' is less important than emotional sincerity - george orwell

Sometimes I feel the need to block emotions or other physical discomfort in order to force myself into the present moment.  This strategy only lasts at most a few moments before I realize that sensation is the present moment. If we have a sensation that feels far from 'ordinary rapture,' we might try to get rid of it, or to distract ourselves from it.

What if it was perfectly okay to be with uncomfortable feelings (and the same goes for physical discomforts)-ride them out rather than rid them out? Again, the best way to allow these sensations is to remember they ARE the present moment, so they don't need to be suppressed as they occur. Observe them, see what is present. It's often remarkable how they dissipate or lessen when given breathing room to be.

I believe this quote by George Orwell is true for a vital life too: "For a creative writer possession of the 'truth' is less important than emotional sincerity." And emotional sincerity comes from the willingness to be with emotions as they arise, rather than avoid them altogether. 

I've found the practice of writing gratitude lists (not the ordinary kind that focus solely on positive at exclusion what is real, true, and of all of it) extremely helpful. Here's a bit more about how to write a gratitude list--acknowledging everything, including what's unwelcome.

A few days ago, I wrote in a daily list to my gratitude partner a few days ago, "i am grateful that in this first version of the grateful list, i didn't hold back (as if writing ONLY for my eyes) and only went back later and edited out the curse words (as not necessarily adds anything to your understanding); i am grateful at the miraculous way that i was fighting a deluge an emotions and trying so hard to hold them back and something so simple as venting on this list kind broke their hold (or maybe they just wanted acknowledgment and allowance....); i am grateful for being in awe of how easy that was--all i did was be honest, whoa"

Also, I wanted to share a piece from my blog post Running Away, February 3, 2005 post, written about a month after surviving the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster:

December 24, 2004 (snippet taken from last journal entry before long lost journal found again somewhere in vicinity of Phi Phi, Thailand):

The day you realize that all running is futile you come to a dead stop right where God is. The day you come to know that you have not gained anything by running, you do not run anymore. -- from Finger Pointing to the Moon, by Osho

I used to think there was a place my pen resisted going to. This mysterious place I was adamantly fighting against was a crucial spot to visit, if I was dabbling, and to fully commit to a creative endeavor, to dwell. When you stop running and you stop searching under the nooks and crannies, you might notice the spaceless, timeless infinite realm is so close in front of our eyes it's nearly behind us - that's why we don't see it's right here, right now.

"...there is a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired." - The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

To craft in the universal language of the world - no translations needed - and tap into what Coelho refers to as the soul of the world is what every writer strives for. I know it comes from depths of the heart. Ah, which means of course keeping it open - no matter what the circumstances are surrounding me that beg: please, please fortify the fortress.

For a creative writer possession of the 'truth' is less important than emotional sincerity. - George Orwell

I realize I haven't been running away from writing per se - but I have been running away from opening my heart and keeping it open. (Which is to say I've run away from intense authentic writing that strikes a universal chord...but there are many many more ramifications to a closed heart.)

"[H]ow to be open without taking on all the suffering of other people? Yet while protecting us from further hurt, this fear of being taken advantage of, ripped off or walked over is also sabotaging our entire sense of wellbeing and connectedness; it is because of this fear of being open that we have become so closed to each other, so locked into separation and isolation.

The Dalai Lama has often said that he does not practice religion as such, that his religion is simply loving kindness. " - Unconditional Love: How to Live with an Open Heart in a Changing World, by Ed & Deb Shapiro

The book, Unconditional Love, challenges us to be heart warriors. "What the warrior renounces is anything in his experience that is a barrier between himself and others," Chogyam Trungpa writes.

"We were amused once to see the Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, being asked by an eager young television reporter for CNN what was the first thing he thought of when he awoke in the morning. You would have thought that this most revered teacher would say something deeply profound or insightful, something along the lines of vowing to save the world from its own ignorance; instead he simply replied, Shaping motivation. He said that we all, including himself, have to be constantly vigilant, to pay attention so that our intentions and motivation are focused on the open heart and not the closed mind. Shaping motivation each day means making the open heart your constant focus, extending loving kindness and making compassion your innate response." - Unconditional Love, by Ed & Deb Shapiro

Last night speaking after class with my mindfulness course instructor, whom studied in a Buddhist monastery for eight years, I realized the post-tsunami period was the first time ever I allowed my heart to break open. He looked straight into my eyes: "Heart Break Open. There is a mantra named, Break Heart Open." Because of past trauma, my protective coping mechanism is to wall myself off. I haven't shared this completely before in the blog but in a two-week period I suffered an injury, witnessed loss and devastation on a global scale, went through a breakup, and learned that a dear friend - my ex-husband - suffered a serious head injury in an accident. This series of events could send anyone over the edge. I choose to stay with whatever came up. He continued, We are afraid that if we sit still with the emotions - the grief, the anguish, the pain, the sorrow, the emptiness - then we will be totally consumed by waves upon waves of emotion.

What we run from pursues us, what we welcome transforms us, he repeated from earlier in class.

The staying was more intense than the physical tsunami for me. I wasn't sure how far done the rabbit hole I could keep falling...and falling. Where and when would the unraveling end? He shared that what usually happens is that as we go deeper into "what is present" we eventually go through it to the other side. And this is exactly what happened. I know without a doubt that my heart can never shut down again. And I know I am now ready to be the writer I always imagined."

 Write a gratitude list for today---or, otherwise express what is really roiling in you without condemning yourself.  Be an inquisitive observer. Another useful practice are "morning pages" ala Julia Cameron where one writes three pages by hand as stream of consciousness (this isn't creative writing, this is just being present with the actual and not trying to meditate or medicate it away) : "The point is to spew out all the petty, fearful, gunky stuff. ...".

ART CREDITS: Tsunami, mixed media by Suzanne Marshall via Art Talk Chicago;  tsunami art from Japan (cannot find the artist's name).