Hearing that I might be looking for quotes to share with you, my friend Richard gave me a beautiful volume, Through God's Eyes, wonderfully organized and annotated by author, Phil Bolsta.  The book brims with over 500 pages of short passages by various spiritual teachers.  Here are three quotes (from pages 56-57) that resonate with me. 

Seeking Love

       "A person desperately searching for love is like a fish desperately searching for water."

                                                         Deepak Chopra

       "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."

                                                    A Course in Miracles

       "Love is a state of Being.  Your love is not outside; it is deep within you.  You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you."

                                                        Eckhart Tolle

       When it comes to love, finding is more fun than searching.  Enjoy!

Have Fun

       Dusty and Lefty, two fictional cowpokes on the NPR radio show A Prairie Home Companion, ended a recent sketch with these words: "If you can't enjoy misery, you've got no business being a cowboy." 

       Thursday, after a full day and long week, I went home to mow the lawn.  The day was hot and sticky, and I grumped through most of the mowing.  There was enjoyment to be had, but I missed it – blue sky, a bit of a breeze, flowers blooming, lush and varied shades of green all about, and even some exercise-induced endorphins as I urged the mower up and down our hilly yard. 

       I missed an opportunity for conscious choice on Thursday.  For example, I could have acknowledged my discomfort and grumpy mood, stayed there as long as I wanted, and then looked around for what else was present, for something that might feed my spirit.  I could have, and can, make room for both discomfort and enjoyment.

       No doubt, you've heard the expression: "Any job worth doing is worth doing well."  Right now, I'm more inclined to say:  "Any job worth doing is worth doing with joy."

       Have fun.

Survival Strategies

       For some time now, I've been listening to myself and others from a curiosity that inquires:  "What did you learn early in life about how to survive in the world?"  Those early rules had value.  They allowed us to belong in the family culture into which we were born.  And, as youngsters, in order to survive we had to belong.

       Some kids learn to stay small, to be nice and not threaten anyone.  Others learn to be safe by being tough and fighting for themselves.  Some learn to take care of others and to ignore their own needs – to give and not receive.  Others, responding to scarcity, conclude that giving is losing and that they need to take care of themselves, because no one else will.  Some discover invisibility as a way of being safe.  Others survive by expressing themselves loudly and often.  Many kids learn to mistrust themselves.  Others learn to place trust in external authority.  Still others learn to trust no one. 

       Because the rules have survival value, we learn them quickly and don't easily release them.  We attach to these early conclusions about ourselves, about life and about how to survive.  And, because they're so well practiced, our survival strategies soon become automatic, unconscious and as natural as breathing. 

        But they don't always feel good.  At some point, usually not too far down the road, the original strategy presents its limitations.  It stops serving us.  Typically, our first response is to shore up the old approach by doing more of the same.  Over time, as we begin to sense our imprisonment, we try breaking the rules in an attempt to free ourselves.  And that's when we feel the fear – a powerful, nameless dread and lack of permission, whose job is to hold us back and keep us in place.  At its deepest level, this fear we can't name is about survival.  And so, of course, we resist like crazy the very growth – and freedom to be – we so deeply desire.

       Fortunately, the story does not end there.  Over time, for each of us in our own way and at our own pace, the growth impulse invites us to stretch past the old rules.  We expand our tolerance for the experience of dread.  We don't run from it quite so fast.  We don't return quite so quickly to the "safe" harbor of the old strategies.  Eventually, we come to see the fear for the fiction it is.  We're scared, of course, but not really in danger.   We're just breaking old survival rules and growing into new territory.  

       In fits and starts, we make awkward and unsteady, graceful and inspired movements toward freedom, wholeness, and permission to be – movements that take us from survival toward vitality. 

       This is hard, heroic work – requiring faith, commitment, persistent mindfulness, and the regular exercise of spiritual muscle.  In my experience, it's an ever-unfolding journey – with no end in sight.

A Love Experiment

       In the culture I grew up in, self-love was equated with the sin of pride.  Thinking highly of oneself was clearly not ok, while being rough on oneself, physically and emotionally, was considered virtuous.

       So, it's not surprising that, just two weeks ago while I was sitting with someone in my office, the idea for this experiment first came to me.  Acting on the inspiration, I suggested to my client that, once a day, she set aside time to face herself in a mirror and say the words, "I love you".  

       I've done – and written about – other mirror meditations, but not this one, so I decided to try it.

       The results have been revealing – and healing.  I encountered resistance – even cheated a few times, saying the words, but skipping the mirror part.  Early on, the words felt foreign, a bit hollow, but I determined to stick with them, as an act of faith.  Sometimes, the experience felt neutral.  At other times, a gentle peace came over me.  Once, there were tears.  

       I'm feeling a shift – a loosening, a freeing.  I'm going to stay with this experiment for a while, to see how what unfolds.

       Maybe you'd like to try it.   

       I need to face it:  Lately, Weekly Wisdoms have become Bi-Weekly Wisdoms.  After 4-plus years and over 150 postings, my energy is shifting.  As the practical parts of life have grabbed more time and attention, as I've pushed myself to keep producing on several fronts and as I find myself sometimes running on fumes,  something in me is pushing back, resisting, not flowing so freely.  I want to honor that push back.  And I want to honor the commitment I made to share something weekly.   

       A win-win solution that feels right to me is to post something most weeks, even if it is just a short quote that's come my way or a re-cycling of something I've posted before that still feels fresh to me. 

       So, here's one of the first pieces I posted – clearly relevant to my experience lately.

An Antidote for Exhaustion

       Poet, David Whyte, once asked his friend, Brother David Steindl-Rast, about a cure for exhaustion.  The reply was something like this:

       The antidote for exhaustion is not necessarily rest, though in some cases that may be true.  The antidote for exhaustion is whole heartedness.

Originally posted on May 16, 2009.

       When I honor my heart, it blossoms and energizes me.

       I've been noticing lately the choices I've been making.  Not so much the big decisions about life.  Rather, the small, moment-by-moment choices – to stay attuned in my body, to see beauty, to connect appreciatively with what is.   Presence is such an attractive alternative to the imaginary stories and interior dramas that so automatically claim center stage.

       Here's something I posted a couple years ago that recently caught my attention.  Hope you don't mind the re-run. 

New Now

Feeling bored?

Life a bit stale?

Try opening

Eyes and ears

Skin and

Taste buds

To novelty

And mystery

In this moment

Unfolding now.

Ego ho-hums,

"Same old, same old."

Not true,

Not true.

Spacious hearts

And intimate eyes

Greet and treat

Each life-moment

As unlike

Any other.

Want aliveness?

Adventures new?

All yours –

Right now.

       Looking out the front window, I notice that the crab apple tree, in full bloom just days ago, is dropping her petals and decorating our driveway's dark asphalt in a blanket of white.  I'm reminded about the temporary nature of life's beauties and that, often, one beauty is replaced by another.  I'm called toward deeper appreciation.

       Memorial Day, celebrated today in the U.S.A., invites us to remember those to whom we're connected – which is another way to remind us about who we are.  We're asked to re-member, re-mind and re-orient to the passages of life and to the beauty of the temporary.

       Here's a poem by William Stafford – circulated in group on Thursday evening when the crab apple blossoms were in full glory, sharing their beauty and sweet fragrance with group members as they approached our front porch. 

Our Story

                        remind me again – together we

                        trace our strange journey, find

                        each other, come on laughing.

                        some time we'll cross where life

                        ends.  we'll both look back

                        as far as forever, that first day.

                        i'll touch you – a new world then.

                        stars will move a different way.

                        we'll both end.  we'll both begin.

                        remind me again.

Mirror Meditation

       At a recent retreat with Richard Moss and a special group of sojourners, I focused on inhabiting the body – appreciating its wisdom, attending to its physical sensations and feelings, interrupting ingrained patterns where I disregard my senses and move automatically to analysis and stories – a movement away from what's real to thoughts about what's real.  During the retreat, I realized, once again, that connection "in here" is the basis for all connection "out there".

       One difficult morning, as I sat in meditation at a desk facing a mirror on the wall, some affirmations arrived.  I wrote them down, faced myself in the mirror, looked directly into my eyes, and spoke each affirmation out loud.

       I invite you to try this practice.  Breathe, relax gently into the body, and let the affirmations emerge from quiet connection within.  Take your time.  Wait until you feel connected before speaking.  Let each message resonate in the body, before moving on. 

       Here are the affirmations I used.  The last one is a quote from Richard Moss.  You can use these or create your own version of a mirror meditation.  Enjoy.

       You are a unique expression of infinite vastness.

       You dwell in a body that's intimate with the universe.  Listen to this body.  Trust its wisdom.  It is your pathway to the infinite.

       The vastness within is larger than any feeling or story or problem you can have.  Let it hold you.

       Soften to this vastness.  It loves you completely.

       You are, already, that which you seek.

Home Body

Inhabit the body

Let it be home

Sensation and feeling

Ground and guide us

At home in body

We connect to self

Connecting with self

We connect to other

Humans and critters

Planets and plants

All one playing in the Field

The Big Body we all inhabit

Little body nestled in Big Body

Home within HOME

Universe and Us

       Once upon a time, at the very, very beginning (about 13.7 billion years ago) before there even was time, there was a mysterious emptiness, a profound and fertile quiet.  We're not sure exactly how this happened, but in a trillion-trillion-trillionth of a second (an unimaginably small amount of time), the universe appeared on the scene.  It was about the size of an atom and it was very, very, very hot.  Cosmologists called this event a "singularity" - a oneness that contains everything.  All the energy that would ever exist in the universe was in that tiny speck.   

       Over the next one billion-trillion-trillionth of a second, in what we now call the "big bang", the universe expanded to the size of a galaxy.  Nothing before or since, not even light, has ever moved that fast.  And it moved at exactly the right speed.  If it had been one trillion-trillion-trillionth of a percent faster or slower, the universe would never have been more than a big bunch of atoms. 

       There's an amazing elegance and intelligence in the unfolding of the universe – so many critical moments when the universe had to get it just right.   There's a messiness too.  It wasn't always pretty.  For example, in the firestorm just after the big bang, most of what was created was immediately annihilated.  And yet a vastness remains.    

       At the moment, there are about one trillion galaxies in the universe, with an average of 100 million stars in each galaxy.  That adds up to 100 million-trillion stars.  That's a 1 with 20 zeros after it – a very big number.  Each star is unique and one of a kind – just like every planet, every person and every blade of grass.  And all that uniqueness, richness and diversity originated in oneness.  It's all interconnected.  Every bit of it is kin to us.

       I believe the story of the universe is a story of love.  And, because we are inseparable from it, it's our story too.  There is a vastness in us that mirrors the vastness of the universe.  There is a richness and diversity in here that mirrors the richness and diversity out there.  There is a messiness and elegance in humans that mirrors the messiness and elegance of all creation.   

       We live in a universe imbued with intelligence, creativity and love.  Where we live is who we are.