Tag: heart

Celebrate life: Jump in rain puddles – Christina Taylor Green

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The little girl Christina Taylor Green who was killed in the Arizona Shootings last weekend was born on  September 11th, 2001. Along with other babies born on that day, she was featured in a book called “Faces of Hope.”  In it we see a photo of her, with, on either side, simple wishes for a child’s life. She expresses the wish,  “I hope you jump in rain puddles.”It is a lovely thought, made all the more poignant by the tragic nature of her passing.

This probably would not be my normal response when coming across a puddle on the path. “Jump in, splash around“? My sensible mind would protest: “It would ruin my shoes. People will be watching. I would look daft”. We have a sense of  wonder and adventure in us as children before we cover it over as we “mature” and divide ourselves into what is seen and what we keep to ourselves. Somewhere along the way to adulthood we learn to hide ourselves, to appear reasonable, not spontaneous, to prefer order and routine to surprise. We become preoccupied the day-to-day problems of our lives and set out in the morning with a set of implicit or explicit goals. When the unexpected happens, like snow or rain puddles, it is seen as an inconvenience or a detour.  We get so goal-orientated, as if everything has to be won, that we do not see the fun that can be had in simply playing the game. Things can become difficulties or obstacles and not opportunities for play and spontaneity. We even can treat our recreation or sport as something to be “done”, serving some other aim.  It is as if being surprised or spontaneous is dangerous or makes us weak. We mask our sense of play out of fear of being judged as immature or too emotional.

Keeping the heart open with the eyes of a child is the key:  Enlarging our vision of all the  things that happen in the day- for surprise and for wonder –  even  the things we see a thousand times. And then giving voice to that sense of astonishment. To jump into the things that life brings, without holding back.  To be open to all, even that which we would prefer to avoid. The gospel tells us that the kingdom of heaven – the fulness of life –  belongs to those who welcome it like children. The shortness of little Christina’s life reminds me not to let life pass me by, to let go of those things which block my heart, to see things and people as if for the first time, to stop dwelling in the hurts of the past or the schemes of the future and to see wonder now.

We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it’s gone – its value is incontestable.

Joyce Carol Oates

A steady awareness

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Don’t think that only sitting with the eyes closed is practice. If you do think this way, then quickly change your thinking. Steady practice is keeping mindful in every posture, whether sitting, walking, standing or lying down. When coming out of sitting, don’t think you are coming out of meditation, but that you are only changing postures. If you reflect in this way, you will have peace. Wherever you are, you will have this attitude of practice with you constantly. You will have  a steady awareness within yourself.

Ajahn Chah

Don’t think that only sitting with the eyes closed is practice. If you do think this way, then quickly change your thinking. Steady practice is keeping mindful in every posture, whether sitting, walking, standing or lying down. When coming out of sitting, don’t think that you’re coming out of meditation, but that you are only changing postures. If you reflect in this way, you will have peace. Wherever you are, you will have this attitude of practice with you constantly. You will have a steady awareness within yourself.

Birds falling

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Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,

Emily Dickinson

In recent weeks, thousands of birds were found,  having dropped from the sky in Arkansas, USA –  causing fear in the town’s residents and puzzlement around the world. When I saw the pictures I was less worried about the apocalyptic warnings of the world’s immanent end and more sad on seeing these beautiful creatures fallen to earth.

It left me wondering why birds are so uplifting to the human spirit. They  soar and fly, with an air of lightness and freedom;  we too dream about flying. Emily Dickinson’s quotation above links birds to the hope that exists deep within us, in the soul. Dead or dying birds remind us of our disappointments and wasted dreams. And it would seem that, since ancient times, we have seen in birds some sort of link between our earth and the heavens. They represent something that is within us, or greater than us. They lift us up.  We want to be light even though many of our days are heavy. We dream of freedom, and spaciousness,  even when often we feel constrained. Deep inside we know that part of us is like them –   our  fragile aspirations  and desire for wonder. We too can soar, we can move beyond the constraints of our life or our history.  However, learning to fly takes courage: it often means we have to let go.

Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.
How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling,
they’re given wings.

Rumi

Looking outward

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Each time we reach out with joy, each time we cast our view towards distances that have not yet been touched, we transform not only this the present moment and the one following but also alter the past within us, weave it into the pattern of our existence, and dissolve the foreign body of pain whose exact composition we ultimately do not know. Just as we do not know how much vital energy this foreign body, once it has been thus dissolved, might impart to our bloodstream!

Rilke

Keeping the heart soft

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It is not easy to keep ones heart open in every circumstance. Each day we can have experiences with people who cause us to become anxious or afraid; at other times we protect ourselves by becoming angry, or blaming others. We throw up walls and barriers because of our deep fear of being hurt. And if we want to, we can allow these walls remain for weeks, months or even years, as something inside us closes down and we withdraw. It is natural to contract from frightening events, and at times we cannot see all the reasons why something or someone bothers us. The first response therefore can be sometimes instinctive and unconscious, or based on schemas which are below our awareness.

However, as the previous post reminds us, underneath the fears there is something deep and warm in all living things. We all dream about love and belonging, and, in reality, they are never far away. It is our fears which make us doubt. Living a full life means trying to act in accord with our deep capacity for loving and tenderness even  at those moments when our instinct is to shut down  and we can get stuck.  Sure,  we may wonder about this,  when we struggle  or search for some meaning to this life. However, beneath the surface of our fears, goodness and tenderness is always slowly coming into being. We all need to remind ourselves every day to  trust in this deeper reality.

We have a choice. Often our first thought is to withdraw. But if we can recognize that movement, acknowledge it and not necessarily identify with it, our heart can soften.  Often getting unstuck means that we can stay with the anxiety which arises, fuelled by  energies and memories beneath our conscious awareness. If we can do this, what we see is that there is a link between being kind and our ongoing happiness. Our practice helps us keep the heart open and stop the process of fear from becoming too fixed. Sometimes this is easier said than done. But even when my first reaction is fear, and I forget the soft place within the heart, what I find  is that I recover quicker and remember sooner, and am better able to leave the sadness of such occasions simply be sadness. I do not need to blame or withdraw more. I can trust in the deep goodness in myself and others. Sadness might remain, but without giving in to judgment or recriminations, the mind  is free to allow space for new possibilities to come to birth.

We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.

Pema Chodron

When disappointment is good

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That’s the magic moment-when we realize that searching outside of ourselves is not the way. At first it dawns on us just a little bit. And it gets clearer over time, as we continue to suffer. See, anything that we search for is going to disappoint us. Because there are no perfect beings, perfect jobs, perfect places to live. So the search ends exactly in one place, which is… disappointment. A good place. If we have any brains at all, it finally dawns on us: ‘I’ve done this before.’ and we begin to see that it isn’t the searching that’s at fault, but something about where we look. And we return more and more to the disappointment, which is always at the center.

The very peace we’ve been searching for so hard lies in recognizing this fact: I’m pinching myself. No one’s doing it to me. So the whole search begins to be abandoned and instead of searching, we begin to to see that practice isn’t a search. Practice is to be with that which motivates the search, which is unease, distress. And this is the turning around.

Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen