February? Already? Here’s my monthly review post, format courtesy of Mon at Holistic Mama. This is when I share some more personal notes each month for those interested. If you’re not (interested, that is), come back later in the week or weekend, when I hope to kick-off a new series with a post on the varied roles symbols play in spiritual and metaphysical paths (and how each of us can use them too.) Hopefully (no promises) I will have my blog re-org ready to roll out by then too…
A thought…
It’s all in the eye of the beholder. Which is not an original thought, but this came home to me in a new way this month with the words “your kids are so energetic.” Our neighbor at our sometimes-home in Utah, who is practically our kids’ third grandmother, says this to us all the time, and to her it means “your kids are so vibrant and full of life.” But this was also recently said to me by someone else at a playground, and I got the distinct impression in this case that it was actually a euphemism for “your kids are completely wild and unruly.”
Ah well, they are all these things, and it’s OK with me.
A sound…
Rain on the roof. Not unusual in other parts of the world, but an EVENT here in southern California. At least the kind of rain we got this month, which bordered on a deluge some days. All our garbage cans washed down the street one day, along with all our neighbors’. It was very bonding walking through the street after the rain sorting it all out. And I do love the sound of rain on the roof…
A taste…
Curry, after reading Mistress of Spices, which I loved. Pop over to Book Club Mamas to read my thoughts on it.
An image…
I almost put Haiti, because I don’t think any of us will ever forget some of the images we have seen this month from there. But if I were to focus on a personal image for this month, it would have to be train tracks. My husband has discovered he can get extra pieces cheap on e-bay, and got a bunch for the kids for Christmas. He’s now become somewhat obsessed with building new tracks each weekend with them. This is the main living space of our house, so it’s not very convenient, but they do all have a great time:
A scent…
Dirty rags on the washer. Not a pleasant smell sorry, but a well-intentioned one. As part of Hip Mountain Mama’s One Small Change project in January, we attempted to give up paper towels, but ran into some hurdles. Mostly, that there are certain spills you don’t want hanging out on rags on top of your washer for long (at least if your washer is in the middle of the house, as ours is). The top two are: 1) Anything dairy, and 2) Bathroom ‘misses’ by three-year old boys. And since we tend to do all our laundry once a week in full loads to save water/energy that way, it doesn’t make sense to do a small load of just rags mid-week. So the goal has been modified to minimize paper towel use, and in that, we succeeded:-)
A word…
“I can’t explain anything to you about spirituality. I only write and research based on what I experience. And the same has been done with every spiritual doctrine ever created – it is based on someone’s experience. No one’s experience is better than your own.”
Amen! From a new blog (=new to me) that I’ve been visiting, Love Hate Flow.
A touch…
Also the rain, this time the feel on my skin. Which I spent a lot of time in, due to aforementioned garbage can incident, not to mention multiple school drop-offs and pick-ups each day.
A gift for me…
Movies. Netflix yielded some good ones for us this month. Heres’ my favorites in order of preference:
The Invention of Lying
500 Days of Summer
Julie and Julia
Funny People
A post you may have missed…
First off, thanks to all of you that added your funny stories to my Keep Your Sense of Humor post. If you need a laugh, check them out.
Some new blogs (again = new to me) or posts that I’ve enjoyed this month (always too many to limit here, but have to):
Of course I’ve mentioned Jan’s meditation challenge at Awake is Good a couple times this month, and as a series it ended up being an amazing compilation of resources and inspiration on meditation. So browse through it if you are interested in meditating and haven’t been there yet – you can access all the posts in her January archive in the sidebar.
Stacy at Mama-Om also did a wonderful series this month called ‘Practicing Peace’ in which she shared many of the mindfulness and meditation practices she uses in her daily life and with her kids.
Another ’spiritual mom’ blog that I’ve been enjoying (OK, don’t like that label, but have to use something!) is Nicki’s at Touching the Universe.
I thought this post from Karen Maezen Miller at Cheerio Road was the best I’ve read on what non-attachment is and isn’t: A Rose-Colored Carpet
I also loved this one, Karma is Love, at Waking Heart.
And for what it really means to move Beyond Karma, Kaushik has done a moving and insightful set of posts on the Dark Night of the Soul.
Or for something a bit more metaphysical, you can never go wrong with Akemi’s posts in her Starseed series, which she added several installments to this month.
Happy February and Namaste-
As you can see, I haven’t gotten very far with my blog re-org! I am determined to focus on that this week, and get two new series started in the coming weeks – one on the ‘inside’ of the chakras, and one on metaphysical and occult themes. These are both topics I love, and I hope you will too. And if you think they are not your thing, I encourage you to give it a try first before unsubscribing – you never know:-)
In the meantime, this weekend I watched the movie Funny People, which I really enjoyed (although it did get a bit long and indulgent at parts). It’s not really a funny movie, but it has a lot of funny moments, and more than anything it reminded me of why we need to laugh. Life overall isn’t very funny either, but if you don’t laugh while you are in it, you will be hopelessly crushed by the seriousness of your own intent. And I realized that this is one thing that unites two themes of this blog – spirituality and motherhood. In both, it helps tremendously to keep your sense of humor.
Laughter is a great way of letting go. This has been proven scientifically over and over. Laughing releases endorphins and lowers stress hormones in our system. The other two activities that do the same are sex and meditation. Some would say laughter is the least work of the three.
I once attended a spiritual workshop where we each had to think of a situation in our lives that had been really embarrassing for us, and try to tell it to the others in a way that made them laugh. Not in a self-abusive way, just funny. We were supposed to notice how the ’sting’ of embarrassment that we felt when we initially remembered this event subsided (and if there was no sting, it wasn’t the right event for this exercise). I think this really gets to the heart of how humor and spirituality are linked. When you can laugh at something that once was not funny to you at all, you have gained some perspective. The sting of embarrassment – or even worse, shame – is like a knot inside you, and when you have come to the point where you can at least smile at it, you can untie it, let it go.
One of my favorite Buddhist books is Chogyam Trungpa’s Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. This is not a light read. It is all about how the ego can co-opt the spiritual process, and our practice can become a way of accumulating even more baggage, instead of shedding it. And smack dab in the middle of this discussion, after dense chapters on the proper guru-student relationship and the hard vs. open paths of Buddhism, there is a chapter called ‘Sense of Humor’. And basically, it is all about how keeping your sense of humor is ultimately what will save you from spiritual materialism. It is the mark, in a way, of true self-awareness.
I am not really a funny person, and I certainly can’t write funny. But I do love to laugh. And I have realized lately that I need a bit more of this, especially in parenthood.
Similar to the spiritual workshop I mentioned above, I once attended a parent education workshop where we all had to confess our most embarrassing moments as a parent to date. I had plenty to choose from (even more now), but the two stories I told then were:
- One day when the twins were just a few weeks old, I had gotten all three kids down for a nap at the same time (a minor miracle) and was using the time to pump some breastmilk while reading a magazine (which is what passed for relaxation at that point in my life.) Then I saw the UPS guy walking up the sidewalk towards our door. In my mad dash to get to the door before he rang the doorbell or the dog started barking, either of which could have woken everyone, I forgot to re-attach my nursing bra and pull down my shirt, thus opening the door and greeting him with a full frontal. He looked downright terrified when he saw me, and I am sure that in my unshowered, sleep-deprived state, I looked completely psychotic.
- Once, I locked all three kids in the car. My eldest was 2 and the twins were around 6 months when this happened. After packing the diaper bag, getting all three of them in the car, and strapping them into their seats (all of which took about 1/2 hour in those days), I realized that the stroller I needed was not in the back. So I threw my purse and the car keys into the front seat, before shutting the car door and heading towards the stroller. I heard an ominous click when the keys hit the seat – the lock button had been triggered and I was now locked out.
My cell phone and house keys were also locked in the car. So, I ran to the neighbors and called AAA, who informed me it would be at least 45 minutes before they could get there. My neighbor, a retired fireman, suggested we call the fire department, as he said they had the equipment to unlock car doors too. So we did, and they arrived in under 3 minutes, with full sirens blaring. It turned out they did not have the right equipment to unlock our car, but their presence did attract lots of neighbors – mostly retired men (we lived in a community with lots of older people at the time). As I desperately tried to distract the kids by singing songs with my two-year old through the window, this increasingly large group of firemen and neighbors debated options for breaking into my car, and occasionally offered me completely unhelpful and patronizing advice such as, ‘you might want to put your keys in your pocket before closing the door next time’. Gee, thanks.
AAA did arrive – in less than 45 minutes – and everyone got out of the car safely. For weeks afterwards my two-year old asked me if I had my keys in my pocket every time I put her in the car, but now, at five, she seems to have forgotten it.
As you can imagine, many of the other stories shared in that parenting workshop involved infant bodily functions and/or loose diapers. The stand-out amongst these was probably the baby that projectile vomited in a priest’s face while being baptized in front of several hundred people in a cathedral. Another favorite story of mine was from a couple that had accidentally left one of their infants asleep in a car seat on the floor of the garage while they drove off to visit family. They had two preschoolers and infant twins at the time, and in the chaos of getting everyone strapped into the car, one got missed. They realized it about halfway to their destination – ten minutes or so – and frantically drove back. Luckily, the little guy was still asleep.
It’s very trendy in some circles for parents (and/or spiritual seekers) to confess all their wrongdoings, and beyond a certain point, I’m not into it. It can start to feel too cavalier, or self-punishing. But at this workshop, as we loosened up and laughed to the point we had tears streaming down our faces, it was deeply healing. Something in each of us, some pressure to be the ‘perfect parents’, was released. We realized what we all knew, but needed reminding of – parents make mistakes, and sometimes sh*t just happens, and our kids will be OK. We will be OK.
This is what laughing is about – letting go. Realizing it will be OK, we will be OK. It’s OK if we yelled at our spouse even though we’ve been meditating for 20+ years (just hypothetically, of course) or are filled with an intense desire to flick someone off on the freeway on our way home from a class on metta (lovingkindness) practice (again, entirely hypothetical;-) We are complicated. And every time we get bogged down in self-judgment (which is not the same as discernment) more weight is added to our already heavy burden.
This seems like a good time to mention (or re-mention) a favorite spiritual blog of mine – Monk Mojo. Really, his stuff never fails to crack me up. Nothing is sacred, least of all the spiritual ego. The punchline on a recent favorite of mine is “the concept you have of yourself is pissing off the concept I have of myself.” It might be an acquired taste.
I am determined to get my blog changes done this week, so I won’t be able to do a lot of commenting elsewhere, but for any of you that make it here, I’d love to hear about things that make you laugh (or even better, your most embarrassing moments – not just about parenting either, of course.) And I’d love to hear from some of you that don’t comment often. Be brave! Share!
In the meantime, I thought I would leave you with some of my kids’ favorite current humor. For the twins (3 1/2), it’s very simple: Just put ‘poopy’ in any sentence, and they will laugh. They are my easiest audience.
My five-going-on-fifteen-year-old daughter is above ‘poopy’ humor now. She is, however, into knock-knock jokes. Here’s her current favorite:
Knock-knock.
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock-knock.
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock-knock.
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock-knock.
Who’s there?
Orange.
Orange who?
Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?
It’s really very funny in person.
Namaste-
Jan Lundy’s 28-Day Meditation Challenge over at Awake is Good is halfway through, and so far it has been a goldmine of information on different meditation techniques, themes, and questions. At this point, over 100 people are officially participating. I am over there today with a basic chakra meditation that anyone can try. And I thought I would tie into that by writing my own post here this week on meditation, giving my view on two questions I often get asked in classes – how often should I meditate, and how long?
First, I have to offer some disclaimers on ’should’. I chafe at this word in relation to meditation, and so I actually hesitate to answer these question at all. As cliche as it sounds, I think we are ’spiritual beings having a human experience’, as the famous quote says, and meditation may or may not be part of that journey. When there is an intent to grow – and frankly, not everyone has this intent or desire and that is just fine – I think we are drawn to the techniques and approaches that work best for us. For some that includes meditation, and for some it doesn’t.
One point that often falls by the wayside in discussions about meditation is that it is just a tool. Being able to meditate ‘well’ – whatever that might mean (and it does mean different things in different traditions I think) – is not the point. Being able to live well is. Meditation is a tool for helping us discover levels of ourselves, our awareness, that might go unnoticed in the craziness of our busy lives. For some, such as myself, a formal sitting meditation is essential to this discovery process. For others, it is not.
That being said, we each are at least initially drawn to meditation for different reasons, and depending on the reason, there are guidelines that might be useful in determining how often or how long to meditate.
The first is related to health, and specifically lowering blood pressure and/or decreasing the production of stress hormones in our system. Meditation has repeatedly been shown to do both, and the standard that has most commonly proven effective is 8 weeks of daily meditation for 20 minutes. The meditation methods most often used in these studies are following your breath, counting your breaths, and/or repeating a soothing word or phrase.
So there you go. If you want to lower your blood pressure, and/or decrease the production of stress hormones in your system, meditate daily for 20 minutes. You will almost certainly see a measurable impact (or rather, your doctor will) in 8 weeks. Then of course, you have to keep going to sustain those results!
Interestingly, these results occur regardless of whether participants in these studies self-report enjoying their meditation, or disliking it. Love it or hate it, making the effort to slow down in this way for 20 minutes a day has the same beneficial results.
I think this is an important point for ’spiritual’ meditators as well, because there are so many romantic stories circulating out there. People often feel like they should be feeling waves of joy and bliss on a daily basis within a week or they are ‘failed’ meditators. I have often heard people say “it’s just not for me, I’m just not a meditator” out of disappointment that they didn’t have such experiences. Not helping matters are ads such as one I recently saw for a meditation class near me that read “30 Days to Samadhi, Guaranteed!” (Samadhi is a sanskrit word for different states of meditative bliss.)
It’s partly because of these romantic illusions that I am a fan of developing a regular, daily meditation practice myself. I think that once you get that habit built in, once it is part of your daily life, some of the ‘performance pressure’ is removed. Your practice is there, every day. Some days you enjoy it, and some days you don’t. At a certain point, you stop thinking about it in those terms, and often then, you can truly relax. Of course, everyone has days they can’t meditate. Then, not letting it become another source of ‘guilt’, a failing on your part, is essential. Few of us need more of that in our lives.
For myself, my meditation practice has varied over the years. In my fancy-free single days (which really weren’t all that fancy-free), I meditated for an hour a day, and then tried to have at least one weekend morning when I meditated as long as I wanted, i.e. no time limit. That was essential for me at the time, and what I was drawn to do. A lot of surfacing and releasing occurred – I can see that in retrospect.
On the other hand, as I’ve mentioned here before, I can certainly see that there was a lot of attachment happening too. Attachment to certain states, and to a certain kind of personal power, and to the ‘idea’ that I was a dedicated meditator. All of which became hindrances to my journey, instead of a help. This is a common ‘trap’ mentioned in the more meditation-heavy Eastern traditions, particularly those dealing with kundalini and chakra meditation – the ‘trap’ of mastery, the ‘trap’ of the samadhis.
As I sometimes say in class, you can meditate A LOT and still be an a**hole. I think it’s Ramakrishna (although I couldn’t actually find the quote) who said that sitting meditation is like putting a fence around a fledgling tree. The fence is there to protect the tree from animals and elements, to provide less distraction and hindrance to its growth. But hopefully it eventually outgrows the fence, and is strong enough to grow without it.
In the case of meditation, I don’t think it’s about outgrowing a practice, but it is about it becoming more and more of a reference point for your daily life – about your sitting meditation and daily life becoming integrated, one seamless field of awakened awareness. Any beautiful experience or insight you have in meditation is available at any other time too. But as long as you label your meditation experiences as ’special’ or ‘precious’, or think they can only occur when you are sitting (or for that matter, that they can only occur in a certain place in nature, or when you’re alone, or when you get enough sleep – you get the picture) there’s no space to discover that.
For me, having kids brought about a monumental shift in my relationship to meditation, because I had to let go. In the early years especially, there was no way I could keep up the practice schedule I had had – there were days on end where a shower was a luxury, so meditation was most certainly out (although, when you haven’t had a shower in awhile, it becomes an exquisite meditation.) And that forced me to re-evaluate what my practice was, and forced me to think more about integrating. Call it mindfulness, call it integration, call it whatever you want. The point again is, meditation is a tool, not the endgame.
On the other hand, I do think that if you have a regular meditation practice, and find yourself wandering from it, letting it go, it’s worth asking why. Because sometimes we avoid sitting meditation in order to run from things we don’t want to face in ourselves. Meditation does surface things – not necessarily in the meditation, but because we are doing it regularly. And sometimes, when we find ourselves letting it go, it is out of fear – it is a way of running, of escaping, into the relative superficiality of our daily lives.
I am also a fan of occasional meditation retreats, done in a group or on your own. Basically, just any period of time in which you really dedicate yourself to your formal sitting meditation, and make a considerable time commitment up front. It allows you to work through layers, to settle in, to decompress in a way that many of us desperately need these days.
So there you go, my thoughts on how long and often to meditate, and how to go about setting a goal for yourself. I’m interested to hear yours. And if you are just thinking of getting started, do check out Jan’s challenge – there are 2 weeks left, and that is more than enough time to build some momentum.
Happy Meditating and Namaste-
Happy 2010! Just a quick month-in-review post to get the blogging year rolling, format courtesy of Mon at Holistic Mama (although I’m not sure anyone else is doing one of these this month – I’m a bit late.) But first a few notes and recommendations:
Note: Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be reorganizing this blog, and possibly even migrating it to the full WordPress platform, so sorry in advance for any annoying extra posts or test notices you receive as a result if you are a subscriber (and thanks for that, BTW:-) Hopefully I’ll be back to my regular content (and a new series I’d like to do this year) soon.
Now some recommendations to start your New Year off right:
If you would like to jumpstart or overhaul a meditation practice this year, consider joining Jan Lundy’s 28-Day Meditation Challenge over at Awake is Good. Close to 40 participants already! Dialoguing in a group like this can be very helpful…
Also, if you have started or are thinking of starting a business this year, be sure to check out Akemi Gaines’ Lightworker’s Guide to Self-Employment (you may remember I interviewed Akemi back in September.) This e-book has a powerful clearing transmission behind it, I think. So if you are feeling blocked (or even if not), be sure to read it. And it’s free!
Ok, December in Review, through mind and body:
A thought…
Art as self-expression vs. as a spiritual conduit. This theme started when I was looking for pictures of the yantras/mandalas associated with each chakra for a workshop I was doing. Although I found many lovely representations online, I didn’t feel any were suitable for meditating on, because I could feel the artist in them too strongly. In other words, they were more about self-expression than expression of the chakra energies, and I wanted to meditate on the latter, not the former.
Over vacation I read a novel called The Immortals by Amit Chaudhari, which centers around a music teacher in Bombay, and had lots of interesting insights regarding classical Hindu music. The ancient ragas and other Hindu ’story-songs’ didn’t have known composers – they evolved over time and were handed down from teacher to apprentice. This reminded me that a lot of religious art, especially that created in monastic settings, is unsigned. The art of creating it is considered a spiritual practice in and of itself, and the goal of the artist is to get out of the way, so something bigger can come through.
I don’t have any problem with art as self-expression, it’s just an interesting difference to contemplate, especially as a blogger, since blogging is, almost by definition, about POV…
A sound…
Despite my non-organized-religion tendencies, we do Christmas big around my house. I choose to consider it a celebration of enlightenment, and define it my own way (which so far, with the kids so young, works fine…we’ll see as more external forces start shaping their views how it all goes.)
So the prevalent sound in our home (and car) this month was holiday music. And in that category the hands-down favorite was The Nutcracker, mostly because my eldest daughter was a bon-bon in a local version. She has been bitten by the performing bug, I might add (not a surprise, considering her personality, or, for that matter, her astrological chart.) I like Tchaikovsky (what’s not to like?) as much as the next person, and was initially glad we were listening to this instead of, say, Frosty the Snowman, over and over…BUT, I have to admit, it got very old. I will gladly not listen to The Nutcracker for another year. Hopefully, by next December, it will seem like an old friend again.
A taste…
This would have to be moon cookies, an annual favorite in our house – basically butter (LOTS), cream, ground almonds, flour, sugar, and vanilla, shaped into crescent moons and rolled (smothered, with my kids) in powdered sugar. This is the only sweet my youngest daughter enjoys (not that I’m pushing sweets on her, of course!) I’m not a big baker, but these are SO worth the effort.
An image…
Snowflake-catching in Utah, where my southern-CA kids get to experience a bit of winter each year. Their fascination with snow much amuses my mostly midwestern family, who were buried in 2 feet of snow in the last couple of weeks, and are long past the snow-infatuation stage…
Snowflakes
A scent…
Pine, of course, from our Christmas Tree! Or you can call it an enlightenment tree if you like…we gave it many thanks for sacrificing it’s life for our enjoyment:-)
A word…
“Remember then that there is only one important time, and that time is now. The most important one is always the one you are with. And the most important thing to do is good for the one who is standing at your side. For these, my dear boy, are the answers to what is most important in this world.”
- Leo the turtle in The Three Questions, a children’s book by Jon Muth (who also wrote Zen Shorts and Zen Ties, two other children’s favorites of mine.) The Three Questions was given to us by a friend for Christmas, and I think it might be my favorite of the three. It’s based on a short story by Tolstoy, and features a boy with (what else?) three questions.
A touch…
Hmmm….always the toughest one for me, although my life is full of touch, with three little ones. All that comes to mind is cuddling under a blanket, while watching Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer with the kids (which does not do a whole lot to mediate kid’s dentist-fear, lol.)
A gift for me…
A massage…and a series of completely silly and irrelevant chick-lit books for vacation reading (after The Immortals)…I can’t even remember their names, frankly…but oh so worth it at the time!
A post you may have missed…
I usually use this section to feature others’ posts that I liked, but I’ve been offline for 2 weeks and am woefully behind on my favorite blogs!! So here’s an old favorite of my own:
Meditation- Intent, Intuition, and the Stillpoint In Between
I have had a lot of ideas floating around in my head for a post this week – on the meaning and energy of Solstice, on Jesus, on owning the darkness, and more, but none of them quite came together. So they are for another time, perhaps. I did do an article on Buddhist views of Jesus for BellaOnline that might interest some of you. And other bloggers have touched on some of the themes that intrigued me in their own recent posts, so I will share some of their posts at the end of this one.
For here I decided to add to the Women Mystics page (which I repeatedly vow to do monthly and then forget!) I wanted to profile some of my own favorite women Christian mystics – the Desert Mothers.
The ‘desert mothers’ are the counterpart to the ‘desert fathers’ – the first Christian ascetics, who headed out into the deserts of the Middle East to replicate Jesus’ own desert spiritual realizations through meditation, prayer, fasting, and very simple living. One of the most famous desert fathers, St. Anthony the Great, is considered the father of Christian monastics, and is attributed the following quote, which in a way encapsulates the difference in attitude between these early Christians and the later church (especially the medieval church):
“I no longer fear God, but I love Him. For love casts out fear.”
These early Christians began heading out into the desert in the first century after Jesus’ death in order to escape persecution. They would live alone or in small groups, surviving off the land, and engaging in long periods of meditation and prayer, just as Jesus himself had done during his 40 days in the desert. Teachings and practices were passed orally from generation to generation. When the Roman Emperor Constantine cast his support for Christianity in 313, these communities and hermitages became more open, and continued to grow in strength. Eventually some of these communities began to formalize their structure, laying the foundation for monastic life.
Several communities of desert women ascetics sprang up, in spite of harsh disapproval from Christian ‘urban’ leaders. Their lifestyle was austere, partly because of the desert surroundings and partly because of their strict renunciate vows. As in the case of most ascetic traditions, their asceticism originated not as a rejection of material goods and the world, but instead as a means for stripping themselves down in order to hear ‘the voice of God.’ The process of simplification and purification was a means of lessening the ‘noise’ that blocked them from what they believed was their natural connection to God.
The desert mothers also highly prized humility and celibacy, both of which they also saw as a means to clear out distractions. At times their rigid rejection of sexuality can seem a bit tiresome to our modern sensibilities…but of course that’s been a problem with Christianity throughout its history, so I try and overlook that when I am reading their sayings. What I find inspiring is the great lengths they went to, defying the social expectations of women at the time, and the physical hardships they suffered, in order to follow the spiritual drive within.
We don’t know a lot about their lives, but many of their teachings and sayings have come down to us through later monastics. Here’s a few of my favorites (they are all referred to as ‘Amma’ which means mother.)
From Amma Matrona – from what little we know of her, she resided in the deserts of upper Egypt:
“We carry ourselves wherever we go and we cannot escape temptation through mere flight.”
In the context of her other quotes, this one has a lot of depth and relevance, as she is saying we can’t simply change our job, or our house, or our environment, or religion, or spiritual practices, or anything else and expect that on its own that will solve any of our problems or bring us any lasting happiness. It’s an ancient variation on “wherever you go, there you are.” The real change is always within.
From Amma Synclectica, who has many quotes ascribed to her and appears to have generated quite a following in her time:
“Those who have endured the labors and dangers of the sea and then amass material riches, even when they have gained much desire more. They consider what they have at present to be nothing, and reach out for what they have not got. We, who have nothing that we desire, wish to acquire everything through God.”
Of course this one could be right out of a Buddhist text, in terms of the assessment that desire just begets desire. And although Buddha ultimately rejected pure asceticism in favor of ‘the middle way’, I think this quote gets to the heart of what renunciation is really supposed to be about in both traditions (and other spiritual traditions, for that matter): It isn’t meant to be a moral rejection of the body, the material world, or physical reality in general. It is meant to be a simplification, a lessening of distraction, so that we can hear the quiet voice within.
From Amma Sarah, whom we have more life details for: She was born into a wealthy Christian family in Upper Egypt, and as an adult rejected her family to move near a women’s monastery in the desert. For many years, she lived alone nearby in a small ascetic cell, and was known for tending to the sick in the local community. Eventually she joined the monastery full-time and became a spiritual elder there. Many sayings are attributed to her, including:
“If I prayed that all people should approve of my conduct, I should find myself a penitent at the door of each one, so I shall rather pray that my heart shall be pure towards all.”
I think any of us can relate to this quote, in terms of the impossibility of ever earning the approval of everyone we know. We can never control others’ perceptions of us, only our response.
If you want to learn more about the desert mothers, a couple of good books are The Forgotten Desert Mothers, by Laura Swan and The Desert Mothers by Mary Earle.
——————————————————
A few recent posts I’ve liked, that are related to this one or at the very least the holiday season:
A two-part series at Happy Lotus, When in Doubt: To Be Like John or Jesus?
An honest description of a Vipassana retreat (which is probably the most ascetic Buddhist tradition alive today) at Abundance Tapestry - Goenka Vipassana Meditation: Your Body as a Laboratory
By Mermaid from a personal perspective, an account of Embracing the Darkness (which is really what the energy of Winter Solstice is all about, from my perspective – embracing the darkness to come back into the light new)
And at Holistic Mama, ideas for celebrating Solstice/Yuletide/Winter without the hype of Christmas in Magic (mostly) Without Christmas
————————————-
This will probably be the last post of the year for me, so I truly wish all of you a light-filled solstice/Christmas/New Year (or whatever!) May love and joy be yours.
I didn’t get an October month-in-review post done, so I thought I’d try out another of Holistic Mama’s memes – FAB, or Film/Audio/Book share. And in my case I’m making it FABB, because I decided to add some blog posts I’ve liked recently too. And then I threw in some great pictures from some friends’ trip to Egypt. Why not?
Feel free to join in with your own recommendations in the comments or your own post…
At My House We’re Reading…
The Lotus and the Golden Pearl, for my eldest daughter (5 years), about a young girl who is spirited off to a magical island with talking animals to help resolve a dispute. It’s really about peace, and how to see to the roots of conflict and make connections, instead of ‘otherizing’. But don’t worry, it’s not heavy-handed (like most kids, my daughter shuts down when confronted with any book that is trying to ‘teach her a lesson’.) This book is actually a chapter book, so for independent readers probably 9-12 year olds, but I read it to her over three nights.
And for my fellow chakra lovers out there, all three kids and I also enjoyed Seven Spirals: A Chakra Sutra for Kids. Do I think kids need to learn about the chakras? No, but if you want to introduce them, this is a great start. (And as an aside – we don’t only read ’spiritual/energy’ books around here, far from it, but it’s just what I list here. Other bloggers are doing a great job covering kids’ books in general.)
For myself, as I mentioned in a prior post, I recently finished The Lost Symbol, the latest from Dan Brown (Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons.) I won’t even link to Amazon on this one, because this book has more than its fair share of hype. And I enjoyed it, but mostly for the symbology and noetic science stuff. But then, no one reads Dan Brown for storyline or character, really:-) This one revolves around the Freemasons rather than the Catholic Church, and it covers a bit of American occult history too (mixed in with FICTION, of course!!) A good travel read…
Coincidentally, I heard an interview with the author of Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation on public radio, and knew I just had to read that book! So I am about halfway through it, and will review it on Amazon and possibly also here when I’m done. If you don’t know about the many alternative religious groups that came to this country in the 17th and 18th century, and the explosion of spiritualism and occultism in the 19th, then in my view you don’t really understand America. And the entire New Age movement, as well as the U.S. current religious/cultural divide, can be directly traced to this history….
Also re-reading The Red Tent for Book Club Mamas – join in!
As for blogs and websites, here’s a few posts and articles I liked this month (and for the sake of variety, I’m trying to mix up the blogs I include on this list each time:)
* Found this cool site about Women Philosophers through StumbleUpon, well worth browsing if you are into such things.
* Enjoyed this post by Buddhist teacher Carl Jerome on Discovering Optimism in my Buddhist Practice, which addresses a common misperception about Buddhism I think – that it is pessimistic.
* Was enthralled by the story of this amazing underground temple complex built under a house in Italy based on one man’s vision…click through to the article for more pictures.
* Loved this article by Mama-Om called The Other Mother, on finding a connection, rather than judging, mothers who are having a hard time (and doing the same for ourselves…)
* And liked 15 Brilliant Thoughts About Unschooling, which is actually quotes from 15 different famous personages on education. (Education is MUCH on my mind right now, with my eldest in public kindergarten. Do NOT get me started. This could be another whole blog, if I had the time….)
* Was happy to find this beautiful poem by Rumi entitled The Many Wines, posted by Betaphi.
And I could go on and on, but will stop for now.
In My Car We’re Listening To…
The soundtrack from Wicked. Really. Don’t laugh. It is WAY better than the much-used Music Together CDs that the kids have made me rotate between for the last 2+ years. We do occasionally branch out to classical and local radio, but in general, we have found musical theater to be the only genre we can all agree on right now. And Wicked has an excellent soundtrack. Here’s our personal favorite:
It’s great in full stereo, trust me.
What We’re Watching…
So You Think You Can Dance! My all-time favorite show (and the kids watch it on tape the next day too, sans the ‘boring’ judge talk and commercials.) It’s not a stellar season so far, but my favorite couple right now are Legacy and Kathryn – he’s a B-boy/street dancer and she’s a classically trained contemporary dancer. In this dance, my favorite of the season to date, he plays her fear:
I also loved the Top 20 Group Dance, by Wade Robson:
Finally, I just had to share the following pictures from some friends, of Cell Phone Latte Buddha visiting the ruins of Ancient Egypt. Have I mentioned I am an Egypt-o-phile? And own the entire set of plastic Buddhas…
I look forward to hearing your own FAB(B) shares in the comments or your own post…and if I don’t get another post up before Thanksgiving, please know that you are all on my gratitude list:-)
First off, a shout-out to a book I never thought I would be shouting out (and which really doesn’t need my help to sell!): Dan Brown’s latest The Lost Symbol. He’s gone in a much more interesting direction in this one: Noetic science, merging ancient mystical teachings with modern physics. He references everything from Lynne McTaggart’s The Intention Experiment to the Zohar (a primary Kabbalah text) and practically every metaphysical and mystic system ever developed by man. Plus all the modern quantum physics stuff featured in movies like What The Bleep Do We Know?, The Living Matrix and others (many of which my friend Jenny Mannion over at Heal Pain Naturally has reviewed at some point if you are interested.) So if this is your thing, check it out.
Now for the topic at hand: More on women’s energy or subtle bodies. Recently, I have been reviewing the various theories on women’s energy systems that I have read over the years, from both spiritual and energy medicine sources. I was making a list of the various properties attributed specifically to women’s energy bodies for myself, and realized some of you might be interested. Although I’ve touched on many of these themes before, I’ve never put it all together in one post.
I’m interested to hear which of these theories resonate the most with you – which ones in your experience, and according to your intuition, seem true. And that goes for men too, because the implication in many of these is that men are the opposite or different from women on each of the counts. Ok, here goes:
1) Women’s Energy is Centripetal, Men’s is Centrifugal
The idea here is that by default women’s energy circles inward, and is therefore attractive, drawing things towards it, while by default men’s energy cycles outwards, projecting rather than attracting. Both men and women can control and reverse this with their intent (conscious or unconscious) but by default women’s energy is centripetal and men’s is centrifugal. This especially comes into play with sexual energy, and the different ways the two sexes try and attract sexual partners. It also comes into play in families, with the women in any familial group said to be the energetic ‘organizing principle’, because of this centripetal quality.
2) Women’s Energy Bodies are More Sensitive/Absorbant, Men’s are More Solid/Protective
Women’s energy bodies are also generally said to be more sensitive to external energies, and more likely to absorb these energies, rather than repel them. This has pros and cons, as external energy can serve as the ‘raw data’ for intuition, but absorbing too much energy, or the wrong kind, can deplete or disperse a women’s energy field more quickly in certain situations, for example, in a large crowd.
3) Women’s Energy is More Fluid, Men’s More Fixed
Related to the idea that women’s energy bodies are more receptive is the idea that they are more fluid – that they change more rapidly and more often than men’s, in response to the environment and other people. In nature, this can mean that women merge energetically with their environment more readily and quickly, and the same thing in a group of people (so obviously this also has pros and cons, depending on what you are merging with.)
4) Women’s Energy Bodies are More Expansive
Also along these lines is the idea that women can expand their energy fields to encompass others around them more readily (think Bella as a vampire in the Twilight series if you have read it.) Personally, I am not so sure on this one, apart from a mother’s energetic relationship with her children (which I’ll get to in a minute), as I have seen more men with powerful protective abilities in this regard, perhaps because I have known many martial artists. The centrifugal nature of men’s energy seems to actually make their energy fields more readily expandable, in this sense, to me.
5) Women’s Energy Bodies are Fertile Ground for Energy Lines
This one is a touchy one. The idea with this one is that in interactions with others, and especially in close relationships, women become the anchor line energetically for both parties. In sexual terms, some traditions teach that a woman actually gets an energy line ‘planted’ in her energy body with every sexual encounter, that can take years to cut if she wishes to do so (and that this is not the case, or at least less so, for men.) But it’s not just sexual energy lines, it’s really in all kinds of relationships – the idea is that women naturally harbor these lines. And that this can become especially problematic for us if we are ‘anchoring’ too many people for us to handle.
6) Maternal Energy Lines are Distinct, and Progress Through Time
This one concerns the energy line between mother and child. The idea is that the first 3-6 months after birth, a child really is an extension of his or her mother energetically – their energy fields are merged. Gradually over time this energy connection separates, and the child becomes a distinct energetic being, although a unique energy line remains between them for life. The energy line between father and child, or other relatives, is established through other means, through emotional bonding and history, rather than through this intrinsic energetic line.
7) A Women’s Energy Body is Cyclical
There are lots of variations on this one, but the primary one is that the nature of a women’s energy body shifts over the course of her menstrual cycle. Her energy body is ‘more’ of all the things listed above – centripetal, sensitive, fluid, etc. in the days leading up to menstruation, and especially right before and during, and then is a little less so in the days leading up to ovulation. So her energy body is always waxing and waning (moon cycle and all that!) in this way.
8 ) Women’s Energy Bodies Have Distinct Life Phases
Tied to this is the idea that women’s energy bodies go through very distinct shifts corresponding to the major reproductive-related physical changes they experience during their lifetime: The onset of menstruation, sexual maturity, pregnancy, nursing, perimenopause, and menopause. (I wrote about this a bit before, but there’s a lot more information out there on this.) This has implications for both their energy health and spiritual path at each point along the way.
9) The 2nd, or Sacral, Chakra Plays a Unique Role in Women
Because of #s 6 – 8, the chakra or energy center related to women’s reproductive system, the 2nd or sacral chakra, plays a unique role in their personal power and energy health. Just as women and men are each at risk for different physical illnesses because of their physical and hormonal differences, they are at risk for different energetic issues as well. And in the case of the 2nd chakra, this means that any damage or blocks related to it are particularly damaging to women. And conversely, that a healthy 2nd chakra has even more benefits.
10) A Women’s Sacral Chakra is a Unique Spiritual Doorway
This comes up in some form in all the ’sacred feminine’ traditions, even in those that don’t define chakras per se. The idea is that the 2nd chakra (or corresponding area in other systems) in women can function like a portal, a doorway to other dimensions and to spiritual insight, in a way that in mainstream teachings usually only the third eye and crown chakra are said to.
As you can imagine, I could write on each of these for days. But first I really am interested to know which of these work for you and which don’t. I do think these differences are a spectrum, not absolute, so they are more relevant to some women than others (and for that matter, some men also.) Also, which of these are you more interested in hearing more about, if any?
