Serious Gumption

With heavy socks and an oil lamp in tow, my green puffy coat, winter hat & gloves, and a 1lb propane bottle to twist into the Heater Buddy, I fled from our 12X14 cabin to our nearby 1989 Chevy van. Lovely as they are, I wanted space I didn’t need to share. With his loud sleep sighs and tossings & turnings up in the loft, and the four-legged’s early morning antics, I had to get up out of there.

Quietude and solitude, uninterrupted time and space, are not mere wants or basic pleasures, but needs for me.

The woods were dark and cold and the sky was clear. The thermometer inside the van was bobbing just north of 20-degrees. I knew what I was in for and I went prepared. I fired up the portable heater and sat close to its friendly warmth and mandarin glow.  On went the gloves and the thick socks that were too thick to wear with my shoes.

Then I set up my cushion and my timer and fetched the small bell that lives in the van. O how my heart delighted in doing my own soul-crafted morning chant, using a passage verse from the Discourse on Knowing the Better Way to Live Alone. How enlivening it was to sing my heart out. To end the chant, with two slight edits to the original, by reminding myself about why I sit and practice: “The sage calls the one who dwells in mindfulness night and day, the one who knows the better way to live in the world.” (It’s not a great recording but I did record myself doing this chant last year. It’s on my SoundCloud page here if you want to give it a listen.)

Chanting and sounding the bell are morning rituals I’ve been unable to do when I practice sitting meditation inside the cabin, on account of my mate upstairs and sleeping. It’s a daily routine I’ve been dearly missing since we left the monastery. Whether I do the chant and sound the bell or it’s someone else, it’s a nourishment I am learning now is more important than I realized.

Note to self: I know it takes some serious gumption to toss yourself out of the cozy cabin right now. Off and out into the dark and early morning coldness to head to the van to do your daily meditation practice. But I think it’s a thing you need to keep doing. 

The Trouble With Spontaneous Living

I think many of us spend a fair amount of our time waiting, myself for sure included. Waiting for the sun to shine so we can be outside. Waiting for something uplifting to happen to elevate our mood. Waiting for a friend to reach out to make plans to get together. Waiting to run into the right person at the right time for the purposes of connection. Waiting for joy to find us; for happiness to fall into our lap; for the stars to align in the creation of the perfect day; for the weekend to do X, Y, Z; for whatever current upswell of frantic activity we presently have to be over and done with. I think many of us are hoping that we can just sort of spontaneously fall into a good life.

I don’t think it’s a conscious undertaking. I think many of us operate this way without knowing it. It’s a learned pattern of behavior, instilled in us on the sly by our collective culture. Intentional, purposeful, choiceful living is a worthwhile endeavor to put our time, energy, and effort into. Because the thing about routinely waiting around for something good to happen or someone good to text us is our well-being is not in our own hands. The quality of our day – of our life – is out of our control, and we’re at the mercy of whatever just happens to happen, or doesn’t.

I’m not at all suggesting that spontaneous living or spontaneous joy isn’t a thing. Of course it totally is. What I am saying is maybe it’s worth considering actively investing in the things and people that are most important to us. Maybe it’s worth figuring out what our biggest values center around and what our highest priorities are, in order to make conscious decisions about how we live our life. Maybe it’s worth making a few more plans about how we will actualize what we really want in life.

The Five Remembrances

The Five Remembrances (5R) are something I stay close to in my practice. I recite and reflect on them often. Recently, I’ve been connecting with them first thing when I start my daily sitting meditation session in the morning. The 5R are as follows:

I am of the nature to grow old
There is no way to escape growing old

I am of the nature to have ill health
There is no way to escape having ill health

I am of the nature to die
There is no way to escape death

All that is dear to me and everyone that I love
are of the nature to change
There is no way to escape being separated from them

My actions are my only true belongings
I cannot escape the consequences of my actions
My actions are the ground on which I stand

When we interact with the 5R on a surface level, I think it’s quite normal to regard them as being downers. Once a month at my home sangha we read the Five Mindfulness Trainings, followed by the Five Remembrances. After the reading, we open up for sharing. Many times I’ve heard folks share about how the 5R are rather depressing. 

I think the 5R are a rather advanced practice to work with. I’m not saying they can’t benefit newer practitioners or that they should be held back from beginners for later use, but I do think that in order to interact with them more deeply, and in such a way that bears fruit, a certain foundation of practice is needed.

Do What Spurs the Heart

image: a page from Nick Seluk’s book Heart and Brain: Gut Instincts

Just as we need mindfulness trainings in order to help us develop skillfulness of mind and body, we need heartfulness trainings in order to help us cultivate connection of heart and spirit. 

Based on the word patterning of the Five Mindfulness Trainings in the Plum Village tradition, here is my first attempt at a training of the heart:

Aware of the many hardships of being human, I am committed to finding ways to bolster and nourish my heart. I am determined to practice self-care, rest, play, and water seeds of joyful living. Knowing that time is precious, life is short, and energy is limited and ever-changing, I will contemplate the necessity of keeping my heart strong, for the benefit of myself and all beings. 

Perhaps more “Heartfulness Trainings” will follow and I will craft a few more. In any case, this feels like a good start. The Five Mindfulness Trainings don’t just target the body and mind, of course. They involve and evolve the heart, too. But in the way I am looking at things currently, I think it’s helpful to make a distinction between trainings of mind & body and trainings of heart & spirit. Isolating them for the sake of investing in their development can lead to deeper levels of engagement and insight. 

My strong sense is that what many of us are looking for, interested in, and/or desperate for is a resurgence of heart. Ways of living and being that activate, engage and nourish our spirit. Alongside working for pay, household upkeep, and tending to kids and family, it is possible to also invest in the well-being of our spirit and enlivenment of our heart. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not saying it won’t take some figuring out. I’m not even necessarily saying we should. I’m simply saying it’s possible. I’m also saying it’s probably a pretty darn good idea. 

A few things that leap straight to my mind when I think of actions that can help spur the heart and feed the spirit:

Home

As I type, my small laptop is perched on top of a bucket of kindling and I am feeding the woodstove simply for the quiet joy of watching the fire. It’s Thursday morning and we arrived home Tuesday late afternoon. I woke today at 4am and have been reading and writing poetry, penning letters to friends, and enjoying tea. I appreciate more and more making the big life change move we did, in order to live more simply, less consumed by so much work-for-pay, able to afford living more by feel and heart than societal conscription. And even though I sometimes feel like I am too much just one giant heart walking around, I am proud to be a woman with a growing capacity for living and loving. 

It was hard to leave Deer Park. Harder than I remember in past years. It’s the same heartbreak I experience when we leave Montana and head there. I’m starting to realize that my heart has been getting a certain workout, a certain potent kind of next-level training, in splitting our time for longer stints between these two homegrounds for the last 4-years. I am discovering that my heart is expanding in ways that I didn’t know was possible. And in the unfolding process of this heart expansion adventure, I am experiencing that the more the heart grows the more frequently it breaks. And as hard and gut wrenching as it sometimes is, I am also pretty sure it’s worth it. 

It’s rather a strange feeling to have one’s heart reside in two places. To have two different landscapes set 1,200 miles apart which complete one another in an energy cycle of affinity and affection. But as my practice continues, I am learning how to hold more than one thing at a time. The vessel of my heart is expanding in its capacity for bringing aboard new passengers. I am learning that I don’t always have to choose between one thing and another thing. The more my heart grows, the more I can hold and the less I need to choose what to keep and carry and what I need to throw man-overboard. 

Admittedly, it’s a hard superpower to wield. But then, everything takes practice.

Practice Q’s

I recently sent out an email to a group of friends and fellow mindfulness practitioners prompting folks to send me any practice related questions they might have, for the purposes of helping me to hone my answering skills. I consider myself as being notoriously not good at answering practice related questions on-the-spot. Logistical type Q’s are no prob for me, but practice based Q’s are another story. 

As a writer, internal processor and a slow percolator, I am far more skilled at being able to give a response after I have had time to reflect. So as a self-growth and skill-building exercise, I thought I’d lean into my community to help support me in developing my capacity for getting a little better at answering practice questions, simply by having some Q’s to practice answering.

Here are the Q’s I was sent (thank you sweet friends), along with my attempt at an answer. 

Q: How much does it matter how long a person meditates each day, and is a consistent time of day recommended? Your thoughts on setting a specific intention for a meditation session?

A: I am a big believer in consistency being far more important than duration when it comes to the practice of sitting meditation. If a person can sit regularly and ongoingly for 5-minutes a day – 3 or 5 or 7 days a week – that practice can offer great benefit. If someone has the desire to sit for longer periods of time, my suggestion is to start small (3-5 minutes) and work your way up very slowly. But if someone can stick with 5-minutes a day and it’s working for them and feels good, I say great! I do think that longer sits can offer certain fruits that are harder to touch into during shorter sessions, however, it really depends on what intentions a person has for their sitting. Slowly working up to sitting for 20 or 30 or 45-minutes is not everyone’s aim, and doesn’t need to be. Most teachers I’ve come across suggest finding a consistent time of day to sit (and they also suggest meditating first thing in the morning). My sense is that for many of us, if we don’t create a specific time of day to sit, it’s harder to make it part of our routine. However, I also trust there are folks who can prioritize it in their day while also being flexible with the time (ie. sitting in the morning one day and in the evening the next). As far as setting an intention goes, I think it’s important to have one and I also think it’s good to not have it be too heavy, serious or strict. Without intention, why sit? Personally, I sit 6-days a week in the morning for 30-minutes and my intention is simply to breathe and connect with myself on the cushion. My intention is to practice showing up. 

Q: How does age and experience inform the practice: is it a benefit; or do accumulated life experiences lead to more baggage that gets in the way; or is it some mix of both? 

A Resurgence of Heart

Most of us are really good at living in our head. What many of us are out of practice with is attuning to and operating from our heart. 

Allow me to start by expressing clearly what I am NOT saying. I am NOT saying we need to ditch the head in service of the heart. We all know that having a brain in our head is not only an integral part of what it means to be human, but it’s a critical area to apply attention to and understanding of. Yes to all of these things: training our mind; developing our mental capacities; learning; studying; following intellectual pursuits; acquiring knowledge; cultivating mental skillsets. What I AM saying is that since most of us already know how to do these things, and we’re not in danger of forgetting anytime soon, maybe it’s worth investing time and energy in a resurgence of the heart. 

We don’t need to toss out the head in order to bring forth the heart. Fortunately for us, we can have both online at the same time. Trouble is, many of us have either learned how to tune or block out the heart completely; inferiorize it as being naive, trite, foolish, or not sensible; or we cast our heart’s agenda off into the elusive black hole of “later.”

When Sadness Attends the Dinner Party

Just as one would be hard-pressed to know I have a nerve condition called CRPS for which I am on disability for simply by looking at me, folks are unlikely to know my husband Mike lives with depression. I suspect that even those who have heard him share openly about it, which he often does, might still have a hard time thinking it affects him (or me) very much, based on how open, engaged, and warm-hearted he is when they see him. All of which he truly is, by the way. Alongside his friendliness and care and powerhouse presence geared towards others, however, is the fluctuating but constant companion of depression. 

Mike, by his own admission, has 2 primary modes of operation: on and off. When folks see him, he’s in the on position. The majority of the time I spend with him, however, is when he is switched off. Another way of saying it would be Mike is on when he’s in work-mode and off when he’s in home-mode. His capacity for being on when he’s not working is limited. Despite the beneficial growth-work he’s done and continues to do around allowing himself the space and grace to find acceptance for his depression while simultaneously not sinking into its depths (which has been incredibly valuable), it casts a long shadow on his spirit. 

When I first thought about turning the above two paragraphs that I penned in my paper journal into a blog post, I wondered what my angle would be. The answer arose pretty readily. Sadness. On board for me right now is the feeling of sadness. (PSA: Sadness and depression are not two different words that mean the same thing. It’s really important to understand the difference.) I’m sad he lives with this affliction of mind, heart, and body. I’m sad that even though he can touch into feelings of happiness, the ability he has to do so is incredibly compromised. Depression nearly always has the upper hand. I’m sad that depression robs him of so much energy and joy and the capacity to function in healthy ways. I’m sad that such a kind and wonderful man has to live with such a hard plight of the soul. 

I also feel sadness for some of the concessions I need to make, in order to partner with a man who lives with depression. While I have learned how to adapt to it in ways I deem are genuinely skillful and beneficial (both to him and to me), there are times when it’s a strain and feels like a burden. The ways in which I negotiate around and with his depression doesn’t eclipse my great love for him, but it does at times grow tiresome. I experience bouts of weariness with it. Bouts of sadness. 

I don’t mind telling you I far prefer feelings of anger than feelings of sadness. Anger has also been easier for me to work with in terms of holding, investigating, and unfurling it. Anger is a flash feeling, whereas sadness lingers. Anger also carries a certain sense of empowerment and agency, whereas sadness makes me feel vulnerable and shaky. (I’m not at all stating this is how these emotions are, but simply how they are, in general, for me.) Anger gives me the illusion of control. With sadness, the illusion is stripped away. I’m also able to give myself more grace when it comes to experiencing feelings of anger. With sadness, while intellectually I know it’s an emotion that is part of what it means to be human, when it’s activated in my mind/body system, there is an internal program running that says sadness means something is wrong and in need of fixing. For me, sadness is much more uncomfortable than anger. 

Keeping the Practice Fresh

As mindfulness practitioners on the path of practice, I reckon all of us experience moments, days or periods of time when our desire and/or ability to practice wanes in energy. I can’t imagine any practitioner over the long-haul of practice not going through slumps of zeal or interest from time to time. 

This post is inspired by the question a dear friend of mine asked me recently: How do you keep your practice fresh? It’s a really good question, and a good topic for regular self-reflection I think. 

Anything routine has the capacity to become dull and lifeless, if we don’t regularly invest in nourishing the spirit. Goodness knows more of us are prone to being head-driven than heart-centered. But it’s precisely the heart that needs to be in play, if we are to keep our spiritual practice active, fresh, and strong. Otherwise there’s a solid chance we’ll lose steam at some point, and maybe quit our practice altogether. Or perhaps even worse: we’ll keep practicing but it will be a bore, bother, and chore. I don’t know guys. I think going through the motions auto-pilot style might be worse than an end move. 

True-to-form, here is a list (cuz I love making lists) of some of the ways I keep the spirit of my practice fresh:

Adding Our Name To The List

I’ll get straight to it. Involving our self in the practice of self-care doesn’t mean we need to stop what we’re doing in terms of offering direct supportive care to others. It’s not an either-or situation. Self-care is about adding our own name to the list of those we’re choosing to tend to. Also, while it is easy and very common to regard self-care with being detrimentally selfish or painfully self-absorbed, these are distinctly very different things. Self-care is not synonymous with any of the following: ego-inflation; self-aggrandizing; selfishness; narcissism; cockiness; being full of oneself; self-indulgence; or navel gazing. True self-care is an expression of self-awareness and deep understanding, motivated by a genuine desire to show up & care well for others.

In my current way of thinking, self-care involves these 5 aspects: 

• Tending well to our physiological needs
• Prioritizing nourishing enjoyable activities 
• Seeking input/support when it’s needed
• Actively practicing self-befriending
• Connecting with something bigger

Before I break each of these aspects down, I’d like to make a case for why self-care is important.  If we imagine our self as a vehicle, self-care is about filling our tank so we can keep going and doing what we do. We all need gas in the car in order to keep on keeping on. Where this overly simplistic analogy falls apart is that unlike an actual vehicle, the lower our tank gets, the harder it is to fill back up. Additionally, when we consistently operate on low fuel – which so many of us do – trouble brews, spreads, and grows. Many of us have learned how to adapt to chronic shortages of fuel in the tank of our mind/body/heart system, to the detriment of our own well-being. Important note: Don’t hold on too tightly to the whole us being a vehicle thing. We’re human beings, not machines. I just want to make that clear. 

Since we are in a near constant state of energy output, in order to function optimally, we need a steady stream of energy input. When our output is continually greater than our input, we are likely to feel rundown on a regular basis. If we don’t have enough fuel coming back in to restore what we’re expending, we will eventually be depleted, exhausted, maxed out or find ourselves broken down.

There are a number of ways that energy flows out of us as humans. While it’s relatively easy to see that physical activities expend energy, there are many subtle ways that energy leaks out or is drawn out that we often aren’t aware of. For example, we expend a great deal of our limited precious energy when we spend time ruminating about the past, worrying about the future, spinning around in obsessive over-thinking, and criticizing our self. We expend energy when we compare our self to others, when we are overly concerned about what others think about us, and when we hinge our self-worth on external factors. And we expend energy when we watch TV shows or movies that water seeds of fear, anxiety, jealousy, anger, regret, self-loathing, self-doubt, and despair in our consciousness.  

Thankfully, there are also a plethora of ways that energy can flow back into us as well. It’s worth a brief mention here too that there are different types of fuel sources available to us, some of which are more beneficial than others. There are certain common attempts many of us make in the interest of self-care through means that leave a gunky residue behind, such as watching a steady stream of rom-coms or crime shows (both of which I deem to be equally corrosive to the human spirit; although, rom-coms might be the worst offender – just one gal’s strong opinion), drinking alcohol, using drugs, obsessively shopping, regularly indulging in junk food, or scrolling and swiping endlessly. In all of these cases, we have unmet needs that we’re trying to satisfy through certain actions. Trouble is, they are not in our best interest, and ultimately leave us feeling more restless and disconnected in the end. Practices involved with true self-care are healthy, sustainable and more sustaining sources of fuel – and also among the cleanest burning.