Peaceful and at Ease

May I feel peaceful and at ease.

You might think that repeating this phrase as part of meditation would be easy for me.

If I'm in the right mood, just saying the words makes my body relax the tension it's holding and settle.

If I'm in the wrong mood, however, a dry-voiced and smarmy monster begins to explain that ease is not possible for someone as disabled as I.

When I first began using a wheelchair, I comforted myself with the semi-affirmation that "Nothing is easy. Everything is a blessing." It was designed to respond to the many frustrations I felt whenever I tried to take action.

As my disease progresses, things I used to do easily become difficult. That's the truth.

So where does ease come in?

I resist the idea that it's a matter of attitude. My left hand is pretty floppy today. Manipulating the mouse takes effort. I have to move my hand consciously and think about where I am aiming the cursor. During good times, I can think about where I want the cursor to go in my hand moves it there without trouble. My mentally assuring myself that moving the mouse is easy doesn't make it so.

My daughter has been visiting a hypnotherapist to help her with math and test anxiety. I am in the sessions, listening to the therapist reassure Alexis that she can do math without upset, that it comes easily for her. She advised Alexis to say, "math is a challenge for me" instead of "math is hard." She explained that the subconscious mind believes what the conscious mind says.

I'm willing to play along, so I will stop advising myself that everything is difficult. I can believe that "many things are a challenge; there is blessing in everything."

I chose the word "feel" to be part of this phrase because I find it difficult to consider ease an absolute.

Much of my life is a challenge, but I don't have to feel distressed about it. If, as I mentioned last week, I am living with joy, that means I am turning away from disturbance.

I can feel at ease amidst challenge.

Peace is easier for me. A child of the sixties, I have always seen peace as an unquestionable asset – not worth fighting for, but worth dying for… worth living for.

Interviewer: Do you know what peace is?
Four-year-old girl: A wagon – a purple wagon that someone pulls.
.................Purple Wagon

That wise girl teaches me that peace and ease are not the opposite of effort.   If the wagon is purple there is joy in the pulling.

Living with Joy

The third phrase of the meditation I am learning has evolved into, "May I live with joy."

The older I get, the more I realize I am a struggler. I don't allow things to come easily. I argue with myself over ideas and only after a good argument do I find acceptance. (Maybe I should have been a lawyer…)

The third meditation phrase my teacher presented was, "May I be happy."

Simple enough, eh?

Not in this mind! As soon as I was given permission to change the phrases so they resonated more strongly with me, I went to work on that third phrase.

At the time, I was in the middle of reading "The Happiness Project." If I were willing to accept Gretchen Rubin's I'll-know-it-when-I-feel-it definition, I might've been able to live with repeating "May I be happy."

No. Happiness feels to me like a state of being that relies on outward circumstances being Just Right. Can I be happy and in pain? Not in the way I think of happiness.

Joy, on the other hand, is a deep attitude that can last for moments or a lifetime, irrespective of outward circumstances. I can feel joy and pain simultaneously. (Childbearing springs to mind. Come to think of it, so does child rearing!  )

One of my options was to use "May I feel joy." That works for me, but saying, "May I live with joy" seems more of a commitment. I am choosing joy as my internal constant.

Like life itself, I will have to choose it again and again, each day, each hour, each moment.

Gaining Strength (for what?)

The second phrase in the metta meditation I am learning is "May I be strong."

Since I am working the metta phrases into my stretching routine, I do have a bit of monster-mind feedback. I lean forward and stretch my left arm out thinking "May I be safe." Then I lean forward and stretch my right arm out thinking "May I be strong." My right arm is much weaker than my left. Sometimes I can barely straighten it. The monsters are quick to shriek "you're not strong. Look how weak your arm is!"

An internal argument follows about mental/emotional/spiritual strength versus physical strength. (The fact that all these voices are arguing is evidence of some kind of goofy strength.)

The definition of strength uses the word "power" liberally: "having, showing, or able to exert great bodily or muscular power… Mentally powerful or vigorous… Able, competent or powerful in a specific field… Great moral power…"

If I was working with the phrase "May I be powerful," the monsters would really be hollering! [My monsters have no doubt that power corrupts…]

The definition of power, though is "ability to do or act; capability of doing or accomplishing something."

Like everyone, my strength is limited. Like everyone, I can increase my strength by exercising...by practicing. Just as an occupational therapist has given me exercises I can do to maintain what I can of the strength in my arms, my meditation exercises will help maintain (maybe even increase) my emotional and spiritual strength.

19th-century thinker Henry David Thoreau wrote, 'It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?'"

It is wonderful that I am encouraging myself to be strong. The question is: strong enough to what? The answer lies in the rest of the metta phrases. My version is:
May I be safe.
May I be strong.
May I live with joy.
May I feel peaceful and at ease.

I am practicing to develop the strength to believe those phrases and embody them with every breath.

[Intrigued by this metta practice? Follow the work of Janice Lynne Lundy.]

Feeling Safe

When I first started taking time in the middle of my work day to stretch my body, I found it difficult. I am not talking about taking a lot of time to practice a yoga pose.  I downloaded a software program called Big Stretch Reminder that pops open a (customizable) window advising me to move around. (Mine says "breathe, stretch and smile.") Many times, I would just click okay and close the window. After some practice, I realize thinking "it's safe to take this time" helped me do the stretches.

Safe? Really? I work for a human-friendly nonprofit organization. My bosses frequently remind us to take lunch away from our desks, stay home when we are sick and take time to connect with our families. They are certainly not going to complain about my two-minute stretch breaks.


I am learning a new form of metta meditation. The first phrase in the quartet we are using is "May I be safe." My monsters rebelled against this idea. "There is no safety in this modern world," they shriek. "There are wars, terrorism, people who intend to do harm. Your body itself is attacking you. That's what auto immune diseases mean. Prove to us you deserve to be safe!"

Now the monsters are getting to their core message: proving, proving, proving. It is not enough to be. They want activity designed to gain approval.

Word Origin & History

approve

mid-14c., "to attest (something) with authority," from O.Fr. aprover (Fr. approuver), from L. approbare "to assent to as good, regard as good," from ad- "to" + probare "to try, test something (to find if it is good)," from probus "honest, genuine"

Ironic that I've taken an idea rooted in honesty and genuineness and made it mean trying to be better than I am. I am always busy proving myself and never rest from that effort.

I need to realize that who I am is enough. Not who I can be, not what I can accomplish, but who I am.

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience." --Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Book Response: The Happiness Project

A week ago, I finished reading The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Ruben.  It was recommended to me months ago by a happy woman I met at one of my speaking gigs.
I confess there is a part of me that thinks that happiness is not cool.  As a sophisticated thinker in the modern age, I should understand that happiness is an unrealistic, naïve response to life .

The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings,
and you know how happy kings are.
-James Thurber.

For her happiness project, Gretchen Rubin studied happiness and created a list of personal commandments and a resolution chart. Each month for a year, she addressed a theme (vitality, marriage, work, parenthood  etc.) and acted on resolutions related to it .

In her parenthood month, for example,  her resolutions were

• sing in the morning
• acknowledge the reality of people's feelings
•  be a treasure house of happy memories
•  make time for projects

She followed her progress in a blog and the book includes comments on the blog from readers who were participating in their own happiness projects.

This is the second book I've read this year in the new genre of "method journalism," where the writer takes a year to do something and documents her process (Eat, Pray, Love… Julie and Julia).

As someone who loves process, I find it a delightful genre. I'm also cheered that it often uses a blend of old and new publishing technologies; blogs informing books engendering websites.

The Happiness Project also satisfies the obsessive-compulsive in me. Its reliance on charts and checkmarks is comforting. Ruben identifies her Resolution Chart as perhaps the most powerful tool of her happiness project.

The project is inspirational. The book is fun and engaging.

Along the Way, Rubin began a Happiness Project Toolbox website, which is an online community containing resources and stories of people embarked on their own happiness projects. It has become a Movement!

I'm not planning to create my own happiness project, but the process has added another blossom to my "what's next" thinking bouquet.

Comfortable and Precarious

She caught her breath one day

and realized the life she had expected –

one of progress and accomplishment –

was not the one encircling her.

She moved gently forward,

hands outstretched

patting the uncertainties

like a woman moving into

a darkened bedroom.

The space felt, at once,

comfortable and precarious.

She made a promise then

to kindle a light if she could

or forgive herself  if she couldn't

and to explore her surroundings

    its soft soothings and

    its sharp surprises

until she recognized it

as her own.

Lessons from a Bur Cucumber Vine

I was delighted today (Delight of the Day, in fact) to rediscover the bur cucumbers along my walking path. I noticed them last fall but was afraid they had been uprooted over the summer. My path takes me along high-voltage wires and this summer the power company did a sweep, chopping down saplings and trees under the wires. Since their hosts are gone, I thought the bur cucumbers might not have survived. They've been there all along, of course, but I didn't recognize them until the pods emerged. ("The pod things are back!")

I confess I brought a sample home so I could identify and learn about them. Now, as I write, two cucumbers sit beside me, resting against their vine and leaves, tendrils curling like party streamers.

here is a photo of bur cucumbers in the wild, taken by Judy at Lilac Gate:

I love the plump spikiness of them and the tight spirals of their tendrils.

According to Botany Photo of the Day,

“These fascinating fruits go out with a bang, having an explosive dehiscence mechanism. Each fruit contains four seeds, which develop under increasing hydrostatic pressure. If birds or small mammals don’t interfere with the fruit before it fully ripens, the fruit will expel its seeds at a speed of 11.5 m/s!”

Later in the year, the vine will support cucumber skeletons, like the one captured by Marianne Friers at Northview Diary:

That is the state in which I first noticed them, hanging in the bush like pale yellow lanterns, speaking of beauty in structure.

I shouldn't have worried about the plant's survival. "The only way to remove it permanently," says a writer at Ramshackle Solid of the genus, "is to dig up the root which can weigh up to 100 lbs."

So what lessons am I learning/remembering today from the bur cucumber vine?

•  It's fun to learn. After years of ignorance, I now know this plant's name (I decided not to go for scientific version) and more about it. Before I admired it from afar, but now we are friends.
• Root well.  The luxuriant growth of the vine…all those leaves collecting sunlight…must be directing nutrients to the root. Strong roots mean the plant can endure much, even vigilant power company employees.
• If a source of support disappears, find another. The saplings on which I first noticed the vine are gone. It has exuberantly climbed bushes, the power line metal structure and other trees.
• Hang on tight.  Those tightly-spiraled tendrils make for a good grip.
• Protect yourself.  The spikes don't bother me when I touch them with my hands, but they are sharp to my lips. The fruits are poisonous, so eating them is not a good idea anyway, but Native Americans use them for medicinal purposes.
• Give with enthusiasm. 11.5 m/s? That's effusive!
• Dare to be a nuisance; go wild! Once I noticed it, now I realize it's everywhere. One of the descriptions I read describes it as "a nuisance like kudzu." When you seek support and hang on tight, some people will consider you a nuisance. Fie on them.
• Degrade gracefully. Having released their seeds, the pods open to the air and let light shine through their structure. The reason I'm noticing such things in the plant world is, of course, because it's my own next developmental stage.

 Thank you, teacher.

You didn't come into this world.  You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. --Alan Watts