How To Get What You Want

A very wise woman once told me that you have to create specific receptivity for the things you want to experience in your life.  If you are afraid to tell you the Universe that you want something, it will not necessarily fall into your lap.  Instead, bravery, perseverance and honesty about our deepest longings are rewarded much more often than self-protective indifference.  To illustrate this truth, this same wise woman asked me to think of a moment in my lifetime that felt particularly joyful.  I thought about it and settled on a moment of spiritual significance I had once experienced on a trip to Mexico.

Her follow up questioning sounded something like this:  "Now tell me, did you make yourself available for that joy?  Did you ask for it?  Did you put yourself in its path, and bravely stand there with your naked longing?  Or did you pretend not to need what you received in that moment?"

I think we're often afraid to ask for what we want - let alone acknowledge it to ourselves - because some superstitious part of us believes that we might be setting ourselves up for unbearable disappointment.  Yet, my own short experience on earth tells me that the Universe is not easily moved to collaborate with us when we're defended against her in this sort of passive-aggressive way. Of course, figuring out how to open our hearts towards our own deepest longings takes courage precisely because it means we have to be willing to relate to the most vulnerable parts of ourselves first.

The habitually unexamined self might think we want a certain job, partner, vacation, car, prestige, or positive recognition when really we're after something much deeper like "love, belonging, meaning, safety, healing, significance, or transcendence".  While considering this, I was reminded of the Christian scripture that says, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you".  Perhaps we have misunderstood this teaching so often because we've misunderstood ourselves more often.

A Sincere Approach to Meditation

While listening to an interview with one of the Dalai Lama's principal English translators, I learned the most stunning thing about the original meaning of the word "Meditation".  Sometimes while "meditating", I often wonder if I might be doing something wrong b/c I don't get nearly as much out of empty mental gazing, as I do from a gentle investigation of whatever it is that arises in my immediate experience.  Of course, I probably wouldn't be capable of the kind of investigation I'm speaking of if I didn't also know how to access the neutral curiosity that gets strengthened by those practices that value this process of "stilling" or "emptying" the mind.

According to this interview, however, the English word "meditation" is being used as a translation of the Sanskrit term (bhavana), and the Tibetan term (gom).  The Sanskrit word bhavana has an alive quality to it that means something like cultivation, like cultivating a field.  While the Tibetan word gom  has the connotation of familiarity, but also suggests a process of familiarity rather than a static state of familiarity.  So, arguably meditation can understood (at least, in part) as a process of discernment that has movement through stages and layers of discovery.  Consequently, meditation is a practice aimed at acquiring knowledge -- maybe the kind of true knowledge that available through sincere contact with direct experience.

The word sincere begs a little translation here too.  Sincere - meaning "without wax", from the Latin words “sin” (without) and “cera” (wax).  Apparently, this phrase "without wax" first became widespread during the height of Roman and Greek sculpture artistry.  When a sculpture had a flaw, artists would often fill cracks or flaws in the work with wax to match the marble, masking the imperfections.  An honest artist would create pieces of work "without wax".  For me, cultivating a practice of sincere contact with direct experience (both inner and outer) means trying to approach the immediate moment without the layers of self-deception, denial, and glossing over that so often cover over the truth that can be found there.

Curiously, a good teacher once said this to me about the practice of meditation:  "Even one sincere breath is a full practice".

Wise Action

When you pray, move your feet.

Book Evangelism!

The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren
A Little Book on The Human Shadow by Robert Bly
The Deepest Acceptance by Jeff Foster

The Intimate Life by Judith Blackstone

The Bond by Lynne McTaggart

Vibrational Medicine by Richard Gerber
The Polyvagal Theory by Stephen W. Porges
The Ever Present Origin by Jean Gebser

.... Ready, break!

Imperfection: the vehicle to all growth?

"Symmetry may have its appeal but it is inherently stale. Some kind of imbalance is behind every transformation."

-- astrophysicist, Marcelo Gleiser

Be The Mystery.

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. And as you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, this intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world shall cease to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
And to the rushing water speak, I am.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

The Intelligence of Play.

"Who knows what makes us play?  The young of very many species, including our own, spontaneously chase, leap, twist, wrestle and cavort, promoting strength and endurance, instinct, social bonding and adaptation.  Complex play with objects and goals is associated with more complex brains.  But playing is also, apparently, just for the sheer pleasure of play.  An aquarium fish will repeatedly leap in and out of a tiny waterfall.  Ravens have been observed sledding on their backs down slopes of snow, and kea parrots toss rocks in the air.  Elephants kneel to equalize play with a smaller playmate.  Cats, dogs and primates, among others, incorporate objects and obstacles in their play and often have favorite toys.  Dolphins invite play with human swimmers.  Play, in fact, is a principal way in which acquaintance is made with another".  -- from The Book of Symbols

Intuitively, we know how important play is for our ongoing development.  We teach children games and give them time to play.  Hopscotch, for example, has it's origins in myths about the soul's journey from earth to heaven through a labyrinth.  I have no idea why we stop valuing this way of learning for our adult selves, but I think it's a grievous error to do so.  As Ramikrishna reminds us, "The divine mother is always sportive.  The universe is her play... her pleasure is in continuing the game".

The Book of Symbols further elaborates: "Psychologically, consciousness and unconscious interact and impact one another in all kinds of play.  The reverie of play unveils feelings, aspirations, impressions, locked up pieces of experience and potentialities.  Play can evoke the affinity and polarity between psychic opposites, and dynamics of exclusion and integration, separation and reunification.  Alchemy described a part of the opus as "child's play" despite the arduous nature of the work of self-understanding, suggesting that psychic process requires an attitude of play and that the imagination was a primary tool of the adept".

Carl Jung played "children's games" of drawing, sand-tray, making models out of clay, and dialoging with unseen figures, all of which are ways of engaging the unconscious energies of the psyche in order to coax them into consciousness.  Physicists, also, play speculative "god-games" with specialized toys that can only be handled safely because of the agreed upon rules of a specific game.  We could conclude, consequently, that play allows for "evolutionary change, self-awareness, scientific discovery, artistic composition, invention, pleasure, good friends of multiple species and the resolution of many questions" (The Book of Symbols).

Do you remember being a young child and enthusiastically ringing someone's doorbell in order to see if they could "come out and play"?  I believe that THIS is a good intention to have with ourselves and each other throughout the entire course of our lives.  Tremendous creativity and learning can come from play in a way that few other practices are able to facilitate so... playfully.  :-)

Abundance of Life

You see, I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing
and are raised to the rank of prince
by the slippery ease of their light judgments.

But what you love to see are faces
that do work and feel thirst.
You love most of all those who need you
as they need a crowbar or a hoe.
You have not grown old, and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.

- Rainer Maria Rilke