In Word and Deed

In 2015 I focused on three words to guide my decisions and actions: Happy, Healthy, Helpful.  I enjoyed exquisite health this year and moved into greater health regarding my eating.  Today I don’t eat sugar, haven’t for 9 weeks without a day off.  Since I can’t eat sugar in moderation, having none is really the best route for me, and it feels like this has now become a habit. Although I haven’t lost much weight, I have reached a mental clarity that I find exhilarating,  and a level of joyful energy flows through me more often than not. 

I wouldn’t have been able to ride this wave of health without being happy, which is why I put that word first.  For years my happiness has depended on my weight and body size, and that’s a losing proposition.  This year, instead of waiting for results that I thought would make me happy, I went right to the happiness by focusing on the aspects of my life that are working well and being much more consciously appreciative and grateful as a discipline.

How helpful I was this year is harder to measure.  I showed up for work wholeheartedly,  attended my recovery meetings, and sponsored women, whom I speak to weekly. I prayed to be gracious when people came to our home, and now that we’re moving, I’m being helpful in the preparation and facilitation of that process.  

Could I be more helpful? Probably, so I’ll continue the weekly work of self-examination and conversation with a sponsor and the monthly check on my spiritual fitness with my spiritual director because both of those guides help me stay humble, which I suspect is the foundation for being truly helpful.

This coming year, I’d like to be Calm, Clear, and Kind.  

What will your guiding words be next year?

Guarding the Heart

I tend to finish what I start, yet I just stopped reading a 688 page book on page 227.  I realized that my customary good spirits were waning, and I connected that to reading this award-winning novel each night. The talented writer renders a complicated context in which each character lives and recreates the oppressive conditions of its setting in the reader. However, I cannot absorb a couple hundred pages of violence and the worst in human kind with impunity.

There’s a spiritual concept called “guarding the heart” and “guarding the eyes” that comes from the desert fathers and mothers. While I’m not oblivious to the mayhem in this world—headlines of heartbreak and outrage come steadily into awareness-- I do watch where I put my attention during discretionary time. 

 Just as I don’t pay for movies that scare me or go on amusement rides that turn me upside down, I use my free time to seek out kindness, wonder and the kinds of connections often called “heartwarming.” I guess that’s why I’m so drawn to the concept of leaning into the light.

 I can appreciate the accomplishment of this massive book and be grateful for the privilege of setting it aside.

In Praise of Hot Coffee

I was on silent retreat last weekend and was consistently amazed at how hot the tea and coffee was at the monastery.  Every single cup impressed me with its delicious flavor and, most of all, its heat.

On the second day it occurred to me that there was nothing special about the retreat center’s coffee dispensary; I was simply drinking immediately after pouring, something I apparently never do.  

Rarely do I drink a cup of tea immediately after preparing it, and this is even true at home, first thing in the morning. At work, I make a cup and then do 17 other things that call my attention. Every cup I drink is cool or lukewarm at best. 

On retreat, after 24 hours of “desert time,” my powers of observation and awareness were keen. The silence and the pace slowed me down so much that while I was reading a poem and drinking a cup of coffee a voice inside said “too busy.”  I wasn’t really focused on either action, so I put down the poem and simply drank the hot beverage, savoring each sip.

How I wish I could be so attentive always.  Yet last night driving home in traffic I had to slam on my brakes so quickly that everything on the front seat fell to the floor. (This used to happen weekly so I’m happy it occurs less often.) Where was my attention when the car in front stopped?  

As much as I’d like my life to feel like a retreat, it doesn’t always. Even as I finish this blog I’m eating my lunch because I have to be somewhere in 12 minutes. Ah well. Walking the spiritual path is a continuous process of notice, adjust and savor. Notice, adjust and savor.  

Ambient Addictions--an Inventory

I’ve been intrigued by what Mark Muldoon calls ambient addictions, the background activities or thoughts that preoccupy us and keep us sleepwalking through life. No one is exempt from an ambient addiction; we all do something to distract ourselves from moments of uncertainty, discomfort or emptiness.

 Muldoon observes that “we learn to do [ambient addictions] automatically when anxieties begin to flare and we need to manage them without acknowledging them. . . .The actual substance or activity that our bodies have learned to employ are only a means to an end to manage our un-owned anxieties by altering the mood of fear and threat that accompany them” (“The Addicted Pilgrim” 24).   Facing our “un-owned anxieties” is the work of a spiritual path.

Many ambient addictions are rewarded and made to seem the norm in our society--shopping, exercising, workaholism-- when they are actually “substitutes for the Holy,” in Muldoon's words. Spiritual growth occurs when we knock on the door of our ambient addictions and enter.

 

I've created this inventory to discover what my ambient addictions might be.  I hope you find it useful.

Ambient Addiction Inventory

1.      Who is the least addicted person you know? How do you feel around them?

2.      What do you tend to do with unscheduled time (10 minutes, an hour or two, a day)?

3.      On what do you spend discretionary money?

4.      List the traits and habits in your partner or someone close to you that most bother you.

5.      If you had a six month sabbatical in life, how would you spend it? 

6.      Why aren’t you doing that?

7.      During a typical day, what brings you contentment, ease or joy?

8.      What do you do that you know you shouldn’t do or should do less of?

9.      What do you not do that you think you should do or do more often?

10.  What gets in the way?

Big Thanks for Big Magic

When I finished reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Big Magic I burst into tears.  It's  an extended note of permission to be creative and was just what my soul needed to hear. Gilbert demonstrates that ideas are alive, looking for a human to manifest them.  When we get one, she says, we have to do something with it or it moves on to another person who will do the work.  Keep working, she argues, because inspiration looks for motion rather than inertia.

I’ve been struggling to not eat sugar on and off for several decades now, and the only times it seems to be effortless is when I’m creating something.  When I'm engrossed in a project I eat to survive rather than to distract or entertain  myself. It's not enough to know what I don’t want (i.e. to be fat and cranky); I have to know what I do want (to be kind and happy, creative and alive) and lean into that. If I really am leaning into the light everyday, I’m creating the life I want.

So I’m going to get a writing coach to keep my own work moving along. I’ve got a couple projects in progress, and have been writing pieces on spirituality, recovery, relationships and growing for years. It’s time to gather them, see what still resonates, ask more questions and follow the answers wherever they lead.

There’s a direct connection between creating and becoming lighter, literally and metaphorically, because creation comes from our light.  Gilbert puts it this way:  “What you produce is not necessarily always sacred just because you think it’s sacred. What is sacred is the time you spend working on the project, and what that times does to expand your imagination and what that expanded imagination does to transform your life. The more lightly you can pass that time, the brighter your existence becomes.”

So I will publish my thoughts and observations, questions and curiosities more regularly and keep the momentum moving.

Ingredients for a Sweet Life without Sugar

I’ve recently stopped eating sugar, again, because I like who I am when I don’t have sugar in my system and I’m not capable of occasionally just having a little. Sugar-free, I’m more patient, joyful, and kind, the person I really want to be. However, I’ve tried this many times since 1989, so I have to reframe “giving up” sugar into leaning into something better. How might I make every part of my day sweeter, which is what I wanted all along when I ate that third ice cream bar anyway, a sweet life.

1.       Wake up eager for the day. Be curious about who will cross my path. See everything as an opportunity to connect, all good, all the time. There are plenty of highlights to be had beyond food.

2.       Savor the food I prepare. Be it little or much, simple or complex, put it on a beautiful dish, clear the area, use a real napkin and enjoy.

3.       Move intentionally, stretch fully, breathe deeply, enjoy the emptiness, the fullness, flexibility or new awareness of some change. Celebrate my body's health and functionality rather than focus on appearance.

4.       Greet people with delight, true delight. Kick up my energy a notch, look them in the eye, stop moving when I greet them and really see them. Hug them if they’re open to that. Connection is food for the soul.

5.       Leave silence between words, activities, locations. Inhabiting a silence fully will help me transition seamlessly from one thing to another because I will be aware. Transitions are toughest when I’m not really there and I often used food to transition.

6.       Look at the sky, absorb sunshine, drink in natural beauty, appreciate architecture, look for some beauty in every scene to appreciate and the whole world brightens. These are the true treats of life.

7.       Act on a good idea as soon as possible. Trust the inspiration and take action, which widens the channel to perceive even more. Keeping forward momentum for a purpose makes eating a source of fuel rather than entertainment.

8.       Thank people for who they are, show them I appreciate them with a smile, light touch, laugh and encouragement. Coming from the best in me to the best in them is the tuneup I need.

9.       Give advice only when asked and only when it’s necessary (and most times it’s not needed for everyone has her own guidance).  I’ll be less tempted to give advice the more I’m following my own guidance.

10.   Take time each night to enjoy having a bed, sheets and a great mate.  Savor the times my heart was filled that day. That's a true dessert.

12 Steps to Joyful Connection

12 Steps to Joyful Connection

1.      Don’t doubt the presence of the holy (guides, angels, teachers, higher power, God).

2.      Be wide open to what you will receive, no expectations or fears, no preconceived ideas or concerns.

3.       Be willing to be changed by the information. Knowing and not knowing are equally glorious states—enjoy it all.

4.      Be totally honest in your questions, your hurts, your desires, dreams and longings. Without that level of honesty with yourself, there is nowhere for us to land.

5.      Hold nothing back from us. Just because we already know doesn’t mean we can act on it without your revelation and request. Share it all with us, not just what you think we want to see.

6.      Love all of yourself, the good, the bad. Laugh at your mistakes and give up on perfection. You can’t do this wrong and stretching is how we all grow.

7.      Let us help you when things get hard.

8.      Stop worrying about past mistakes. People were hurt because that’s how they interpreted things. You were hurt because of your story and interpretation. Shift internally and it all goes away.

9.      Love the people in front of you, strangers in cars, the lover in your bed, the sister on the phone, the friend obsessed with his pain. Love them all and you will mend and heal all wounds.

10.  Be totally present. This is the only moment, so hold it gently and savor.

11.  Open to us often. We are always available, accessible and eager. Do not turn to us for answers only, but affirmation, assurance, and the pleasure of our company would be nice sometimes.

12.  Love and live fully. Be helpful and enjoy. Take care of your heart and your true desires will always be helpful to others. Share what you know now without waiting for it to be perfect, really.