Enough!

Probably we're all having different feelings about the murder of 20 elementary school children and six adults today.  I'm a bit numb and maybe I need to be restarted.  I'm furious and despairing, sad, and despairing, despairing.  It's too much!  I know that the US has had fewer massacres than other countries.  I know that we are privileged to live in a relatively peaceful country.  And I know it's not good enough.

In recovery, they would say that life has become unmanageable and we need to surrender to a higher power.  I agree that life has become unmanageable but I'm thinking the higher powers that be, the Big Dude, whoever, are doing a terrible job!!!!  What bottom does the human race have to hit before we get rid of guns and begin teaching peace in our schools and our families?

You can say it's not guns and blah, blah, blah.  It IS guns.  It is guns everytime in the U.S.  I cannot bear another minute in which we foster a culture that kills the weak and the marginalized.  It has to stop. 

I'm thinking of the song, "Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me."  It comes back to the tiny drop in the bucket that is each of us and making peace with ourselves and with each person who comes our way.  This is my pledge:

I'm going to hug the next 26 people I interact with. 

Roxie

Happiness vs the Other Shoe Dropping

Sometimes, happiness sneaks up on you.  And don't kid yourself, happiness is a spiritual quality.  Happiness is being aware of yourself doing well in the midst of circumstances beyond your control.  It's essentially noticing.  As the hero says in Joe and the Volcano: "99% of people are asleep and the other 1% are amazed!"

I've used that quote before in my blogs but it always bears repeating.  If we're on a spiritual journey, we want to be in that one percent, right?  We want to be awake and amazed.  That's happiness and beyond.

So, how do we become awake.  The first answer is yada-yada always meditation.  I'm not going to say that today.  I think the first answer is conscious choice for your own well being.  So often, we are on auto-pilot, zinging along and remembering our selves only when life catches us up short.  For me, that usually means that something painful happens.  Why is that?  Well, I tend to doubt the good things coming my way, to wait for the other shoe to drop.  Probably, I won't find myself in happiness while my eyes are on pending disasters.

All of this was brought home to me last week when I made a difficult, conscious choice not to act on an impulse.  I literally had to slam my computer shut and go to bed in order to make the right and good choice in that moment.  I did it.  The next day, I found myself really happy.  I talked with my son unexpectedly and with a lightness of being that surprised me.  I noticed my happiness at Thanksgiving dinner.  I caught myself trying to prolong it, trying to engage and participate.  I realized that, for once, I wanted to be where I was instead of rushing off to my hotel room.  The people around me seemed like blessings.  Instead of draining me, they were filling me up.

I believe it was the conscious choice of the night before that paved the way for me to be awake and amazed at dinner that day.  I confess that I have since been cringing occasionally as I slip back into waiting for the old shoe to come crashing down.  But, I'm aware that it doesn't have to and even IF it does, I don't have to be crushed by it.  I wouldn't say I'm exactly happy today but the groundwork is prepped, the bread is rising, and I'm waiting, not for the shoe to drop, but for happiness.  Wait, is that it?  Ahhhhh.  Roxie
 

Toast and Jam or Why Is the World So Fucked Up:

It's so hard to believe in the Big Dude or the Good God or even a Spirit of the Universe when it seems like they're such fuck-ups!  Child molestation alone can put me off such beliefs forever.  If you or I ran the universe, would we allow this?  And then there's rape and murder, wife beating, drugs, terrorism, and all the rest.  Finally, there's just your average lonely life, the "quiet desperation" that Thoreau speaks of.  A nun I used to know once said, "It's not the big things; it's the terrible dailiness of every day."  It's all those things that put me off God now and then.

And then, my great-nephew races to meet me in the mall and jumps into my arms.  Ahhhh.  Maybe there is a God.  Or, I'm driving through the Berkshires on the Mass Pike and my heart stops at the beauty.  Or a leaf is floating late from a tree, carried hither and yon on invisible currents of air.  And there's always the night sky when you're desperate.  One look at a clear sky opens those chakras right up. 

Which brings me to a spiritual dilemma:  Does God live in the whim of the moment?  Or, is the Great Spirit truly beyond time and comprehension?  If God lives in the moment, then I control him or her by my state of mind.  Check that one off.  That can't be true.  So, that leaves (a) no God or (b) the timeless, incomprehensible one.  I guess I like the latter option.

That means I do (alas) need to work at spiritual development.  The great traditions seem to agree that it's about loving yourself and your neighbor, doing good works, and being present.  The rest is some kind of grace or gift over which we have no control.  I've been sloughing off on my spiritual practice again.  Why is it so HARD to make myself do this?  Why don't I joyfully sit in meditation every day for as long as possible?  How can I NOT want as much contact as possible with the Great Spirit?  I think I do want that.

The problem is I'm a lazy-ass human.  I'd rather God came to me in a more whimsical way.  I'd rather he fixed world hunger and child abuse directly.  I don't want to have to do the hard work of opening to God and THEN do the hard work of making life a better place.  No wonder the world is so fucked up.  It's on us.  It's only as good as we collectively make it.  We're TOAST!  Well, and jam, maybe.  Roxie

Gratitude: A Derivative of Grace

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the US.  I love this holiday.  It's so American.  It brings us together.  You don't have to think about being politically correct in your expressions; you can say "Happy Thanksgiving" to everyone you meet.  Granted, there may be Native Americans who don't relate to this day, but if that's true, they graciously go their own way without making anyone feel guilty about it.  Maybe we can all relate to gratitude.

Gratitude should be a derivative of grace if it isn't already.  When I am in a moment of grace, I don't have to think about what I'm grateful for; it pours through me and out of me.  It transforms everything.

Well, that makes me think.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if we all were simultaneously in a state of grace?  Surely that is the alpha and omega of the spiritual life.  The Buddhists would say:  No one is fully enlightened until everyone is enlightened.  I love that.  It makes me feel connected to all the rest of you and it makes my sacred journey a shared one.

How little we know when we're in our rational minds!  How easy it is when we are in grace.  May Thanksgiving Day be a day of grace.  Gratitude will be at the table.  Roxie

Isn't It Pretty to Think So?

What if there really is a God?  I know. I know.  I have created this character called the Big Dude and another one called the Good God (aka GG) and, more recently, have been caught up in the idea of a Higher Power.  But, what if there really is a God, God.  Beyond my mind.  Directly infused into my spirit.

Today I was meditating as usual, my mind flinging itself back and forth between the class I have to teach shortly, the squabbling of the birds at the bird feeder outside the window, and the various dramas that have been going on in and around me.  All of a sudden, my third eye was filled with a clear white space.  The words, "Be still and know that I am God" filled me. 

I don't know if that was really a communication from the One or a figment of my imagination, but it raised a question:  What if there really is a God?  Just the question overwhelmed me.  I was filled with what I can only call humility and reduced to a lump of clay just by the question.  It's as if the question immediately presupposed the answer.  The question called forth the God. 

So, does faith itself call forth the God?  Is that it?  Is faith a kind of communion of my admittedly pitiful outreach and the God's powerful response?  I wrote once that to access the internet, you had to turn it on at your own control panel.  Maybe that's how it is with God.  He/She/It is always hovering, present in everything but each of us has to turn the switch to receive the waves or rays or grace of it.

I don't "know" the answer in my rational self.  I sometimes experience strange goings-on that seem too individualized to be coincidental.  Over and over again, people in recovery have affirmed: If you tune into a higher power, even someone else's higher power if you can't find your own, thngs start to align and fall in place.

Why am I so afraid to believe?  I'm afraid.  Afraid it's a trick.  Afraid, as with love, that I'll give my faith only to have it rejected.  Afraid in the moment of death, I'll hear "a fly buzz" and know with Emily Dickinson that it was all for naught. 

I guess, faith is a "so what!"  in the face of the rational mind's doubts.  So what if the old fly buzzes.  So what if it's all for naught.  So what. So what.  Isn't it the HUMAN condition to reach for the stars, to forge on in the midst of great desperation.  What fuels that human optimism, resilience?  Maybe it's a kind of faith that says I CHOOSE to believe otherwise.  Saying with Hemingway, "Isn't it pretty to think so."  Yes, it is.  Roxie

 

Attachment Goes Not Gently Away

Great religions and spiritual traditions speak of detachment--letting go of the things of the world for spiritual purposes.  Did you ever try it?  It's so hard!  I first noticed my penchant to cling to the things of the world. Like Dylan Thomas, I am one to "go not gently into that good night."  I cling to my best friend, to my son, to my opinions, to my unique family and history.  Recently, I realized I even cling to my faults and my problems.

Such a problem is my lifetime battle with insomnia.  That started when I was a tiny person.  I would get up and go to the bathroom during the night and then be afraid to go back to bed.  I would sit on the toilet all night waiting for some sound from my parents' room indicating they were awake. At the same time, I was afraid to flush for fear I would wake my Dad and he would be angry with me.  I was awake and terrified until daylight.  I still am sometimes. 

Insomnia shapes my life.  I don't like to travel because it affects my sleep patterns.  I won't stay at other people's houses.  I won't stay anywhere unless I have a bathroom connected to my bedroom.  Naturally, I also won't sleep in the same room or bed with anyone lest I have to use the bathroom or lest I can't sleep all night.  What will they think of me?  Will they love me less because I am not the strong woman they know in the daytime? I have turned down jobs, opportunities to fly to foreign lands on private jets, and even marriage proposals because of my insomnia.

I was reading something about detachment this morning (after a rough night) and the author suggested that detachment doesn't just relate to people but also to problems that you obsess over.  I immediately realized that I obsess over sleep or the lack thereof. What would happen if I turned sleep gently over to the Big D, my higher power.  I envision myself wrapping it gently in gossamer threads, a lumpy package with defiant tendrils trying to escape and come back to me.  I stand before my higher power and, as if pledging my troth, close my eyes and hand over the shapeless mass.  I feel it fall from my hands but I don't know if it was taken lovingly or whether I am imagining my relief.

I don't suppose it will be so simple as giving it over to the higher forces, but recovery and all spiritual guides suggest we "let go."  If you think about it, clinging to anything of the earth is a pointless activity.  Either there is gravity holding us or there isn't.  All the clinging and clutching in the world doesn't make us more securely attached; it just means we can't move about the beautiful earth as easily. I'm letting go, lettting go already.  More to come,  Roxie

Spiritual not Religious!

Well, spirituality today trumps religion, so says a recent poll. Is it laziness or lack of willingness to commit? Is it free thinking? Why are so many of us claiming to be spiritual while not having a religious affiliation? Is it because so many religions have screwed up so badly? Think religious wars, abuse of women and children by religious leaders. Think of hoarded wealth and freely distributed righteousness. So, there's a lot of reasons why folks may be choosing not to be spiritual. There's another side to the story though. Alternative spiritualities and practices are on the rise. Many of us have turned to Zen Buddhism, for example.

What really fascinates me, however, is the rise of the 12-Step movement. Widely thought of as a kind of cure for various addictions, 12-Step groups are also highly spiritual and intentionally not religious. The idea of a "higher power" of each person's understanding permeates all 12-Step work. When you think of the millions of people who participate in one such recovery group or another, we are looking at possibly the largest source of those who might well claim to be spiritual and not religious in the polls.

I am one such person. Being a bit of a Buddhist, an occasional Unitarian, a member of the alternative Unity Church (bringing all spiritual practice together, baby), I've recently become a member of the recovery community. I bow my head in shock and awe at the spiritual power of these groups. My membership in recovery is actually why I haven't posted for so long. I was reluctant to include what is a new and powerful growth process in this alternative spirituality blog. I didn't want to dump the Big Dude. I was afraid I would lose my readers if I truly shared what I'm finding to be a powerful, transformative spirituality. My intellectual self rejects the idea and I worry that yours will too.

Deep breath. When I first went into recovery, it was to help a friend. I was skeptical, doubtful, and sarcastic in my attitude. I didn't want to be there. As time went on, I began to catch glimpses of a different reality. I saw that I was not who I'd always thought I was. I was both far worse and far better. I can't really explain what happened but I will try to speak the spiritual truth I'm observing and experiencing in the recovery rooms.

For starters, take the idea that each person has his/her own higher power, unshared with and untapped by other humans. Kind of like the "guardian angel" concept of some other religions. In a way, it is a kinder, friendlier Big Dude--my own Big D. I can selfishly ask for help or comfort without worrying about the abuse and starvation of other humans who might need the services of a God with broader responsibilities! More to follow. Roxie