Aligning with Love

"Love is extolled by poets, tawdry and brilliant alike. For songwriters it’s a near ubiquitous theme. Scarcely a bestselling book or film lacks a love interest. Mystics avow that ‘God is Love.’ The Beatles sing ‘All you need is love.’ No doubt about it, love is a biggie."

Thus begins the essay in BECOMING called Aligning with Love. But what does love even mean? How do we love? What about love and Love? These questions have beleaguered me, and there have been times when it has seemed as though I don't know love, or how to love. The essay continues:

"Sometimes it has felt as though there is a yawning hole where my heart should be, a hard knot in my chest, closed and defended. I have been alarmed at times, and saddened, at the occasions and ways I am shut down, numbed out and deadened, like a proverbial zombie. "

Part of the confounding is that love has so many meanings, and is so hyped in our culture, if not lived. As I delved into my experience, it became clear that the love I wanted to know--explore, live, embody--was not romantic love, parental love, or the love of friend or even devotees. I'd call these forms of love, love writ with a small 'l'. They are important, beautiful, and have their place, in our hearts and the evolution of our species.

But there is a kind of Love that is deeper, beyond the personal, though it can manifest in a personal way. It's mysterious, universal, inside us but not only...poets like Rumi write about it,
mystics breathe it...spiritual traditions point to it...

Hear Teilhard de Chardin: "Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides , and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of Love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, humanity will have discovered fire." Chardin is speaking of Love with a capital 'L'. What is this Love? How do we know it, be it, do it? Or can we? What happens when we live it, succumb to it, are enveloped by it?

Through a mutual friend, Suzanne Barois, (integrally involved with transformation and human potential through the Be the Change Earth Alliance), I have serendipitously come to connect with Anne Hillman. Her work speaks to these questions in a profound and universal way.

Anne was inspired, deeply and early on, by this quote of Chardin's, and her recent book Awakening to the Energies of Love: Discovering Fire for the Second Time, is a rich, thoughtful treatise on these energies and their capacity for transformation.

Awakening provides a context for the big questions, and moves us toward understanding, resolution, and a new level of consciousness and capacity for love. And it's high time! Anne says "We stand at an evolutionary juncture, called to awaken to a new kind of Love. This Love is not a feeling; it is a great power...The power of Love initiates a complete change of mind--the fundamental transformation..." that when we awaken to it, is indeed akin to the discovery of fire.

I invite you to hear the call, to explore the depths, to listen to the whisper that there is something deeper, grander, fuller in us, and we in it, than we experience in our daily lives. It's truly an Invitation to Awakening, which is the title of the first chapter in Anne's book, and the book itself.

Helen Keller wisely counsels that "the best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."

If touching on these topics has ignited the fire in your heart, you might want to consider these

Questions for Relection: What is your relationship to Love, to the energy, to the flow, the power of it? Name some ways that you touch into Love in your life. What is your experience of yourself when you are loving? What assumptions and beliefs do you have about love and Love? How do they limit or expand your capacity to align with Love?


You may purchase BECOMING on line, or ask your local bookstore to order it. BECOMING can be a valuable therapeutic tool as well. Read a therapist's perspective on its numerous benefits. Another idea: the collections of essays makes a good option for your book or study group!

Gardens, Gifts, and Butterflies

"There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again." Elizabeth Lawrence

It's spring at last, on the calendar, but also in our hearts and in the air, as well as in our gardens -- a time of rejuvenation, birth, transformation, growth and change. Gardens all over are bursting with vibrant life!

Fitting for the season, I offer you an excerpt from an essay in BECOMING called Gardens and Gifts:

"There are many kinds of gardens in our lives, not just the ones that grow flowers or vegetables. One could think of a circle of friends as a kind of garden, the arrangement of our cupboards, the plates and herbs we choose, the range of jobs we’ve held…

The life of an octogenarian Austrian great-grandma I know comprised several kinds of gardens. Recalling Oma’s variety of gardens has helped me reflect on mine. I have found the metaphor of 'Life itself as a Garden' to be fruitful (pun intended) and munificent.

Oma has a vital and robust will to live, even under her present challenging circumstances. She is in her nineties now, frail, confused, wizened, but her face can shine like a fading flower’s last bloom as, with her sense of humor and unrelenting determination, she decides anew to make the best of the situation.

Oma ... has modeled for me in a way that made a lasting impression—how to cultivate the beautiful and useful, savor the honey and honeysuckle along the way, and not to pay unnecessary attention to the weeds or irritations, only deal with them if they’re choking other growing things.

We’re always planting seeds, whether we are aware of it or not. We never know when we may have planted a seed that will bear fruit some time, some place. It’s also probable, sometimes sooner, sometimes later, that we reap what we sow. 'Life as a garden' is alive, and can enchant, instruct, and nourish ourselves and others."

If you find the metaphor useful, here are some questions for reflection: How does your garden grow? What sorts of seeds do you believe you are planting? If the fruit they bear are not exactly what you intended, what seeds would you like to plant and how could you nurture them? What are some ‘weeds’ in your garden and how do you relate to them? What are some aspects of your ‘garden’ that you particularly treasure and why?

As we go about tending the various gardens in our lives, or the garden of our life, let us also pay attention to the butterflies! Elisabet Sahtouris, an evolution biologist and futurist, offers this: "An old unsustainable system fights to preserve itself as a new system struggles to be born... There is no point in being angry with it and there is n need to worry about defeating it. The task is to focus on building the butterfly, the success of which depends on powerful positive and creative efforts in all aspects of society and alliances build among those engaged in them."

Let's tend our gardens and build more butterflies this spring!

You may purchase BECOMING on line, or ask your local bookstore to order it. It can be a valuable therapeutic tool as well. Read a therapist's perspective on its value. And another idea: the collections of essays makes a good option for your book or study group :-)

Flow and Awareness

What is the connection between a spiritual way, a path, and our activities in the world -- our craft, our work? Carla Needleman, potter and author, has written provocatively on this topic in her book, The Work of Craft. Even asking the question leads us to approach our relationship between the spiritual dimensions and our day-to-day activities with a wider perspective.

Stepping back from the usual grind of our stories and patterns, we can perhaps begin to discover that beneath our habitual activities we can sense connectedness, yes also interconnectedness. The theory of butterfly effect explores the rippling, expanding waves of sensitive dependence, where systems (and we ourselves are a system too), can unfold in a multitude of different ways from any given point, and it's impossible to predict--precisely because of the intricate interdependencies--where we will go--or, in spiritual terms, how we will unfold.

Here's the kicker: as we understand more about brain plasticity and how the brain works--indeed how learning changes our brains--and as modern psychodynamic insights reveal more about how we become the personalities we are -- we are led back to the critical role that attention and awareness play in our development-- how they actually affect the directions we take and how we unfold.

What are we paying attention to as we work and play, as we eat and relax? Are we present, are in touch with being, or are we stuck in stories about ourselves and others? Are we 'here, now,' or are our minds and psyches dwelling in the past and/or the future, as Richard Moss, in his seminal work The Mandala of Being suggests? Where is our attention, our awareness as we go about our lives and work? The answer can be part of a tipping point toward being, creativity, ease, richness, and joy.

I offer up an invitation to reflect on awareness today... what are we paying attention to, what's happening in our body, our mind, our belly, as we go about our craft, our leisure, our lives?

If you would like to explore this in your volume of BECOMING, we address these questions and connections in several essays, in particular in Flow, on page 189 ff: "We can be very involved in any given activity--teaching, reading, balancing a checkbook...and we can be quite focused and alert, but not aware...more or less running on automatic. ...Flow has to do with the degree to which we actually bring full awareness to the activity, are embodied, fully present to what we're doing." It is then as if we have added an extra dimension to our bodies and to our experience... focused and alert, yet also aware and richly in our being.

"Without knowing quite how it happens, not really being the doer, but nevertheless showing up, paying attention, being present...opening my mind and heart, I am in sync with the flow, I am lived, I am flow."

Questions for reflection: Consider a specific activity in your life, a familiar one that you sometimes do on automatic pilot. How do you experience this activity in your usual, everyday mode? Now describe what it could be like to be engaged in this activity when you are fully aware, present, in your body, in the flow? How do, or might, the insights affect your experience of the activity? Of your life?

You may purchase BECOMING on line, or ask your local bookstore to order it! A good option for your book or study group :-)

Circles of Awareness

I am pleased to tell you that we have added a new tab on the BECOMING website, Therapy and Counselling. I would like to thank Kathy Barnhart, marriage and family therapist (and talented photographer!), Toni Pieroni, registered counselor and Imago therapist, and Larry Butler, hypnotherapist and webmaster, all dear friends of mine -- Kathy for suggesting that BECOMING would be of great use as a therapeutic tool, Toni for writing a draft text of the 'how and why' of this new approach, and Larry for his generous, intensive, and extensive work on the website.

Here are some of the therapeutic benefits Toni mentions, that may come of reading and using BECOMING:

• To help individuals see their own life story as a story of 'becoming'
• To increase self-awareness and compassion for self and others
• To develop and strengthen their “observer” self (Brain science is showing that benefits to health and well-being come from developing that capacity.)
• To help people see that 'how' they tell their story impacts their perspective and feelings about their life – and that there may be more than one way to perceive one’s life.
• To help clients, or individuals, journal in a productive and meaningful way and help them break out of the circular looping the mind can often get stuck in.
• To have a way of seeing life’s journey as a process
• To assist clients in engaging more deeply with their own lives – taking on the task of 'authenticity'

If you know therapists, perhaps you could make them aware of this post or the website where there is further discussion of the topic. If you are a therapist yourself, well, voila! :-)

It becomes increasingly clear that readers are finding BECOMING valuable and rewarding on their personal journeys, and this additional use may be another way to expand the circles of awareness, reflection, and growth.

In gratitude for our interconnections, mutual enrichment, and with joy and pleasure in the shared journey,

Jill

WHO AM I...

and why am I here? How long do I have? What’s it all about?

Most of us grapple with big questions like these at some time in our lives. Even more so during transitions or times of crisis: moves, challenges in our work situation, our or our children’s lives, the death of loved a one, illness....

The beginning of a new year is also a time when many of us reflect on our lives, and it’s good so. There’s much to be gained by viewing and reviewing our journeys. Important too that this be without blame or judgement, of ourselves or others. No inner critic needed here!

There’s a bumper sticker that says, “Maybe the Hokey Pokey is what it’s all about!” I do chuckle whenever I see it on a car’s tail end. Lightness is also a quality that serves us well as we travel. It can invite us to go deeper. When I see that bumper sticker I take a deep breath, come into myself and return to the present moment – not always where I was!

A useful tool in reflecting on our journeys is to consider our parents’ lives. Carl Jung has said, “Nothing has a stronger influence on children that the unlived lives of their parents.” Two essays in BECOMING, ‘Being Alone’ and Finding My Niche’ explore this context and conclude with some probing questions: What do you see as your mother’s ‘unfinished business? What might this mean to and for you? How have your father’s choices affected your life? How might it be useful for you to address these issue in your life now?

BECOMING on line has a Search Inside feature now :-) If you’re inclined, go to Amazon and have a look. Better yet, consider a copy of your own as an invitation and accompaniment for your own reflections for 2010. There’s ordering information on the website.

Here’s another rich resource: Eckhart Tolle’s bestseller, A New Earth: Awakening to your Life’s Purpose, Chapter 7 starts with these words: "Know Thyself. What those words imply is this: Before you ask any other question, first ask the most fundamental question of your life: Who am I?" Tolle suggests to “Sit in silence and internally repeat, ‘Who am I?’ ‘Who am I?’ ‘Who am I?’ Be still and listen. Repeat the question and listen again in the silence. What did you experience? How was the question ‘Who am I?’ answered?”

Maybe you’ll come across the Hokey Pokey! Probably not :-)

I welcome your comments on this blog, and would be pleased if you tell someone about the blog and website if you find them useful.

Gratitude

Something I treasure in these days 'between the years' (which is what the week between Christmas and New Year is called in German speaking countries), is reflecting on the year just past, and filling up a couple of pages with things I am grateful for: time with children and grandchildren, health, the Canadian medical system, the newly formed Wild Salmon Circle which I co-founded; the celebratory launch of my new book and the heartwarming praise readers have bestowed on it; for the many positive directions Obama has taken the country and the world...

Then, after basking in this richness, for gratitude is indeed transformative, I enjoy creating a list of goals -- actually more like intentions -- for the coming year. At this point, I like to review last year's lists, and see which intentions have manifested, which are no longer relevant, which I might like to recommit to. For the notes I make at year end do not comprise a 'should' list, but rather are an invitation to the universe, and a declaration of my openness to move in these directions. I don't really look at them as the year unfolds, but find it helpful and interesting to peruse them as I create next year's.

I love this reflective process, this opening to a deeper place, a quiet self, settling in to a receptive mode... simply being...

As we cozy in for some more weeks of short days, and at the same time celebrate the return of the light and the coming of the new year, I offer this shared wish for you: "May the increased sunlight each day help you prepare for the coming year... And throughout the new year may you have new opportunities to love and be loved, to do good for others, and to find happiness in your life." Quote from Jane's brother, Steve :-)

Giving Peace

It can be overwhelming, this season of giving, especially when the issues that face us, economically and environmentally seem as dark as the days.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, “Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.”

As I let that sink in, I find that it invites both relief and responsibility, in matters large and small, personal and universal. One author says she believes "world peace is achieved and sustained by each one of us taking responsibility for the quality of what happens within a five foot radius of our own bodies, in our own lives. If there is peace in my radius and yours and his and hers and theirs—then there is peace in all of ours." (Cited on C. Baldwin's Storycatcher blog)

May this holiday season be filled with joy -- contagious, delicious, bubbling joy; peace -- a peace that resides inside us and radiates luminously to touch all those we meet; and gratitude -- the kind that has no source, but seems to arise from the universal mystery. May these be yours to taste and savor, and to share with ever widening circles. May there be peace on earth and let it begin in and with each of us.