Tag: spirituality

The Gift of Sleep

Sleep

A day with the Earth.  No other voice. 

And now, in the last hour, her presence grows stronger.  Instead of fading into darkness, the Earth makes herself felt deep within me.  In what meditation calls ‘the still centre’, the hollow just below the navel, I feel filled and fulfilled.

Earth’s stillness becomes my stillness.  Her silence, my calm thought. 

Natural as a mother’s young who nudge toward the safe place she creates, sleep will follow.

 

The above words write themselves, after I spend a day alone and never switch on the news in any sound form.

In the current pandemic, many of us have trouble finding sleep.   Fear escalates and speeds away rest, bringing nightmares instead.  It seems as though we can’t help it.   Yet, after working in communications for many years, what I’ve found is that we can choose not to hear many of the voices who cause fear.

‘News’ is not the equivalent of truth, but something manufactured, designed to keep us as listeners, helpless in the face of what is presented as insurmountable.   Radio and TV announcers are trained to put the kind of urgency and emphasis into their delivery which heightens our fear and dependence on them.

When I quit the communications business after fifteen years, the first thing I did was to cut myself off from TV and radio.  What we hear has a direct line to the brain, one that I don’t want to offer to sources I have learned not to trust.  The Internet has now shown that the advent of fake news even taints the word as text, with many news and social media feeds being heavily biased.  More and more, silence becomes the cleanest option for sleep hygiene.   If we need updates, local health announcements on email are more specific to our individual health and lack artificial drama.  Even these, I allow to access my thoughts in a sparing and controlled way.  For example, I avoid news reports at times when my sub-conscience is most vulnerable, such as when I first wake up, or in the hours leading to bedtime.

I’m not suggesting that we all bury our heads in the sand.   But in our news-saturated time, most of us do the opposite: we let ourselves become defenseless in the presence of those who seek to profit by launching more and more fears into our psyche.

If there is only one message I can give to those who share this pandemic situation with me, it is: let’s be more selective about what allow into our minds.  No one should rob us of the rest that renews.

We sit patiently and allow muddy thoughts to clear.                                                                        Life then lives itself in us.                                                                                                                                                              –quote adapted by William Martin from the Tao te Ching                                                                                                                                                                                   

After Christmas:  Let Boxing Day be different

 

My mind is not noisy with desires…

And my heart has satisfied its longing.                                Psalm 131

 

As I write this, deep snow has settled on the evening of December 25th.  The Christmas shopping ritual has just ended.  On my car radio, among the tinny carols, I hear Van Morrison repeat a phrase from Poetic Champions Compose: non-attachment, non-attachment.

For those of us like me, who overspent again this year, and felt retail’s hollow afterthought where our spirit should have been, the song rings like an anthem for 2017.  Non-attachment is currently best known as a Zen way of thinking about the world without clinging to it, nor to our position in it.  Yet the above Psalm, quoted by Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy men, reveals that the idea of non-attachment continues in many other spiritual traditions.

As I quietly step in, brush off the snow and hang up my coat, I find solace in the silence.  Perhaps it’s not too late to find a new path for the holidays.  I live five minutes from a supermall, and the thought of returning there for Boxing Day shopping tomorrow sickens me.  So does the thought of plowing through all the excess food and gifted goodies in my kitchen.

Boxing Day is so named because, for hundreds of years, those who had plenty would distribute their extra food and clothes to the poor.  The idea of using this day for the prosperous to accumulate yet more, is relatively recent, a nightmare invented by retailers.

As I turn off the tree lights for the night, a thought comes to me.  My local YMCA is collecting food for local shelters and the town food bank. I remember that late on Christmas Eve, I noticed that, though we are one of the wealthiest communities in the country, the box was only half-full. Tomorrow afternoon, Dec. 26, is the time scheduled for the box to be sent out.  I can still make a difference!

I shrug off the fatigue I’ve been feeling from a day of too much food, too many gifts, and swing into action.  I find a large box of my own, and fill it with tinned soups, stews and all my extra boxed cookies and chocolate.  A clear recycling bag enables me to add the clothing I’ve received but don’t need.

I have a new plan for tomorrow now.  I’m going to bypass the mall, drop off my donation, and offer to help distribute to the needy.  As William Blake, the poetic conscience of the early Industrial Age, wrote:

“ You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.”

 

The light that wells up in me – Strategies for coping with S.A.D. this winter

After a day trapped in the city, its noise and shadow still closing in, I cut through rough country, to where still water hides.  On the shore’s soft edge, I cross my legs and lean back into the hammock of my raised arms.  So keenly the day distills into this small lake, I can barely contain the light that wells up inside me.

Did you know that our bodies read artificial light as darkness?  I learned this as a teacher, watching students drowse beneath the brightest of fluorescents on the ceiling.  Natural light is much more subtle, more susceptible to the kind of complex ‘reading’ a human body performs.  As soon as I flicked the switches off, and lifted the blinds, the young people opened toward me, like flower-faces at dawn.

Early man did not just use light as a means to prolong work.  He interpreted it to understand weather, and the changing seasons.  His senses took from it complex clues, such as when plants would be ready to eat, and which sides of a ravine, chosen for shelter, would allow his children to grow and prosper.  Far in the reaches of his brain, there turned rhythms.  Light-sensitive, these led his body around the circle of a day toward the deep, ingrained marker where he would fall asleep.

The loss of Circadian rhythms is perhaps the single deepest felt loss our recent generations have sustained.  Electricity has forced countless shift workers into poor health and prolonged mental confusion, as they struggle to overcome what the body knows.  Tube lights notwithstanding, our inner self feels acute awareness of the dark, and the need to sleep.  Beyond factories, many office workers are so strapped for time during the day, that we try to cheat our bodies with night-time chores, such as shopping.  This turn forces retail workers into night work limbo.  In Northern countries, higher proportions of us spend whole work-weeks without natural light than ever before.

Small wonder that many of us begin to feel ‘low’.  When you have no sight of the sky, where will you find room to soar?  I challenged myself with this question when, in my early thirties, I lost motivation as soon as daylight savings time ended.  I had never heard of S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder), but my family doctor had no doubt that it was the cause of my listlessness and depression in late fall.

Strategies for coping with S.A.D.

Just the way you would move a houseplant to catch the sun, I began to seek ways into the light. Below I’ll share with you what worked for me.

1)I stopped taking the subway to work, walking blocks in pearly light to watch the morning rise.

2)I took in fresh air and outdoor light every lunchtime, nourishing all my senses, not just my tongue.

3)If winter days were short, I’d take an outdoor stroll or run near my work location, rather than sliding into the gym when I got home.

4)Most of all, I made a quest of each small park, ravine and body of water concealed within my urban environment. (Water reflects and magnifies light, so it can cause your eyes and spirit to lift on even the dullest day.)

5) Find a way to hold and cherish your moments of light, by drawing, word sketching, or even composing a song. (This piece was written by a hidden urban lake, in a small window of time.)  Let’s return now to where that window opens…

Just before sunset, the lake lays down a path into the Milky Way, leads my eye down through the depths of clouds, toward planets submerged beyond.

At this moment, I glimpse why people immerse(baptise) to become holy –

Water is the closest sky.

Find Life Beyond Work in the New Year

Those who create are like you [God].

They long for the Eternal.                                                             -Rilke

 

Thinking of some New Year’s Resolutions this year? Consider not making any, except for one:

Live forever.

Stated simply, that’s the goal of every creative person — to make something that will outlast the moment, and transcend the repetition of ordinary, work-a-day life. It’s no accident that many of the world’s great artists and musicians have led exceptionally long lives. Beyond this, their creations have transcended time to enchant and inspire generations after them.

To live creatively in the coming year, I think it’s important to see the differences between a resolution and a goal.

Resolution Goal
-an intention – an action
– untimed – linked to a schedule
– without a plan for measurement – with feedback built in
– stated in vague, general terms – written and noted in clear, specific language
– is my responsibility to meet alone – draws on support from many different teachers, mentors and heroes

So how does “Live forever” become specific? It’s the difference between “doing something after work” and “practicing the saxophone for at least an hour every day (3 on weekends) so that I’ll be good enough to join a jazz band next September”.

I was once present at an interview with the hugely successful writer Nora Roberts. She described starting out as a busy mom, with only the kitchen table as her workspace. To beat the endless chores and distractions, she set a deadline every night. She strictly forbade herself to go to bed until she had met a certain number of words. And her page quotient went up every week!

Every night, Nora turned her table into a kind of altar to the writers she admired. She stacked her favourite books around her. She recorded and replayed radio and TV appearances by her favourite authors. When her kids were old enough to go to school, she took classes at a nearby college.  There she learned about writers’ conferences, a way to get closer to her role models and to meet those who would one day publish her writing.  When it came time to submit herself to the ordeal of rejection letters, she drew on her personal background of spirituality to keep faith in herself and keep creative.

“But I’m not good enough,” you may be thinking, or “I’m too old to start now.”  The idea of rejection brings us to the red flag thought that stops so many of us from being creative: “What if I fail?”

In the Western world, many of us have been raised to think of success as a kind of reward program, usually measured by material gain. Yet there are many instances of people such as J. Randolph Hearst and Howard Hughes, who found that, the more they could accumulate in cash and objects, the less happiness and quality of life they could find.

To balance the material weight that seems to tip our life balance, many Westerners have come to consider the East.  The Buddhist concept of “non-attachment” to an outcome allows believers to set goals, but to be flexible about how to achieve them.  This simple shift widens the lens that can make a set-in-stone goal seem daunting. It puts the emphasis on life as process, the unique unfolding of an individual. For example, it can make a player like Sonny Rollins stop clearing the classical hurdles, and find a music of his own.

Hearing that jazz giant still play, well into his eighties, reminded me that living creatively means living longer. I also recently spent time seeing the works of Georgia O’Keefe, who only began painting very late in life. Upcoming in this space, we’ll be exploring the reasons why creativity is good for your health, including the concepts of stimulus, a proven way to prevent depression and flow, a mental state which enables time to be used for nourishment rather than fatigue.

Do you have a creative hobby that has made a difference in your life? Do you know a long-lived creative person whose story you’d like to share?  This blog is open to comments and welcomes positive input. Can’t wait to hear from you!

How to Love your Work

Why is work so hard? Why do so few of us feel creative and fulfilled by what we must do?

I ask myself this every time it’s my turn to do the housework, and the rest of the family leaves the house. This morning I resolved to make everything spic and span, until I remembered how hot, angry and frustrated I became last time. I simply couldn’t step back into the picture of myself from my last turn, when the dog ran all over the house in muddy paws, and the mop broke into five pieces leaving me to scrub on bare knees.

As I sip the last of my morning tea, I come across these words from over five hundred years ago.

Your separation from God, from love, is the hardest work in this world.                      -Hafiz (The Gift, translated by D. Ladinsky)

Entitled “A Cushion for your Head”, this extract from a mystic Sufi piece caught and held my attention. A sudden insight made me recognize its relevance to my own problem. As long as my family was there, and with them, love, I could do even the dirtiest work without feeling resentful.

Most of us, as parents, can remember such examples. Often, a baby would throw up all over me, and the only effect would be to intensify the bliss of mother love. This kind of joy is not only restricted to work with family. Once, my three-month old son peed straight into a doctor’s ear, and the kind man just laughed.

Yet often while we’re working we feel bitter and resentful, divorced from the flow of love. Before parenthood, I worked as a civil servant in a building hidden from the public, where my office had no contact with those I was supposed to serve. For 15 years, my career seemed less and less meaningful until I finally quit. Yet my friend Penny, a social worker, had daily contact with people in trouble. Her work was much harder, and more challenging, yet she was motivated to continue many years longer.

As the above quote sums up, it’s not the work itself, but the “separation” that’s the problem. If we can overcome this feeling of isolation, we can energize our work and our lives. I am not writing to convince you to join any religious sect. In fact, I find this quote most helpful when I don’t interpret it as part of a formal, orthodox relationship with God. I believe Hafiz, a highly individualist Sufi prophet, who speaks with respect of Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed, is talking about God as the love that flows through us.

Creativity has become a bad word, especially among accountants, but one thing is evident whether God or Science is the Creator of our world:

Life, and our survival on this planet, relies on continued creativity. There are multiple ways this can happen. Yet if we believe in denial, if we cannot find any way to be creative, then we are working against life.

Three Ways to Make Work Easier

1) Stop calculating, and start feeling.

All of us know how it feels to become energized by the spirit of love, as we feel it for others. Pet therapy, for example, has helped many Seniors turn around from deathbed situations. No matter how small, how simple, the gift we give to the world, we are nourished by the giving of it.

When we are not giving, or not seeing the positive results of our giving, we shrivel up into a shell. Our only purpose becomes to protect ourselves, and the wealth we have accumulated. Yet those who calculate theirs among the highest riches are often the most miserly and lead the poorest lives. They become unable even to be generous to their loved ones, even themselves.

A close friend from a wealthy family wanted to play the guitar. His father, an accountant, insisted on a financial career. As my friend grew older and wiser, he saw how limiting his work with numbers was. He found a way to bridge toward another life. He volunteered to help musicians overcome their tax difficulties. In this way, he found friends who helped him enter a world where he has now found a balance between work and art.

2) Engage in an active, evolving spiritual relationship with the world.

When we allow ourselves to explore, rather than calculate spiritual gains as though they were money, we become true expressions of the divine. Jesus said: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.” He was a seeker all his life. He did not remain hidden in a cloister of rules. He worked among the common people, searching and finding new ways to bring divine love to them.

3) Let your Gift take on a momentum of its own.

Perhaps you have chosen unfulfilling work out of obedience to your parents, or the way you were brought up. Maybe it seems that denying your brightest talent in order just to serve time at work, is the way to show love to your own children.

Yet the Bible says “Do not hide your light under a bushel.” Even if we do not believe in God, it’s easy to see, as parents, that when we deny our talents, we are teaching our children to do the same.

My mother was a gifted painter, and my father was born with a superb singing voice. Yet they both abandoned these, and told us it was for our sake. All my life, especially when I see films of great sons of great fathers, like Mozart and Renoir, I wish that my parents has allowed their art to enter our lives even in a small way.