Emotion Toolkit.com

Recently, I meditated for five hours at the Zen Center in town.  During that time, I thought frequently of my children, particularly my five year old, Erik.  The next day, I told him that mommy was thinking about him and sending him love.  “I know,” he said, “I felt it in my mind.”  I thought that was amusing, so I asked him to describe his experience.  He said, “Wull, it was like, first I saw you in my mind, and then I saw love hearts everywhere.”  Of course, at this point I was melting into my chair, giggling, and euphoric.  Later, he pretended to remove love hearts from his head and put them into my head. 

So here’s to sending out love hearts!  Love hearts for you who need a friend.  Love hearts for you who worry about what will happen tomorrow.  Love hearts for you who miss somebody.  Love hearts for you who have too much work to do and not enough play.  Love hearts for you who need a hug or money in the bank or just some conversation and smiles.  And for all my friends and family.  Be well and have a wonderful day!

Last night, I went to a magnificent dinner in the home of someone who leads meditation practice at the Madison Zen Center.  They offered I and about twenty other guests, all frequenters of the center, an exquisite four course Italian meal.  The feast began with an unusual polenta served on fine china followed by the best lasagna I’ve ever had, the recipe from some famous cook in Australia.  I had baked fennel with olive oil, fresh lemon sorbet, a beautiful salad with pine nuts, and a dark chocolate torte in carmel mocha glaze that made me shivver.  The entire experience lasted more than four hours and cost nothing but the irrepresible smile on my face.

I sat at the end of a dining table only a few feet from the kitchen counter.  At the end of the counter was a book, A Grateful Heart, containing quotes about joy, lovingkindness, and thankfulness.  I thumbed through it at times, when I wasn’t directly participating in the many thought provoking conversations.  Each quote made me feel utterly blissful.  I felt as though I was basking in kindness and abundance.

The impromptu feast contrasted with a dream I had on New Year’s Eve just after a five hour meditation.  I was playing the role, apparently, of a Buddhist statue, and someone was giving me a food offering.  The offering was half of an avocado.  The avocado fragment had several bites taken out of it, as though it had already been offered to and rejected by someone else.  I took it in my hands and attempted to eat it, but I couldn’t find a place to bite into.  Ultimately, I realized that I didn’t want a half-hearted offering.  I wanted a whole one, a whole-hearted offering.  I returned the fragment and woke up.

When I think of having gratitude, I generally believe I must be grateful for all offerings, even if the offering is meager.  But if I blind myself to the spirit in which an offering is made, I might find myself accepting many a half-hearted offer and suffering a lot of sadness as a result. 

One can imagine a whole-hearted offering of a modest piece of food, and one can imagine a half-hearted offering of an exquisite feast.  So perhaps gratitude is not really about what you get, not so much about the quantity or even the quality of what you receive.  Maybe gratitude is an acknowledgment of whole-hearted generosity.  

After my first son was born, I spent the first several nights dreaming of all the horrible things that could happen to him.  I was terrified that he would be severely injured, killed, taken, or made to suffer.  Though such fates seemed improbable from a logical standpoint, his delicacy, fragility, and ultimate impermanence had a strong impact on me.  I felt as though he carried all my nerve endings.  I had something to lose, something bigger than my own self.

Over time, two things happened.  First, I began to ignore the fears and anxieties.  No parent can entirely eliminate the fears, but at a certain point, they can become debilitating, so I just pushed such thoughts away. 

Second, I began to notice that some part of me often seemed half asleep when interacting with my son.  Sometimes I would just zone out completely.  I attributed this to mental exhaustion, but beyond that, I felt emotionally disconnected.  I’ve been struggling for awhile with this sense of numbness.  

During the past few months, I spent a lot of time meditating on the problem with a deep desire to fix it.  I recently attended a special ceremony at the Madison Zen Center, in the spirit of the new year, involving repentance for actions that might have caused suffering to others.  I thought of my son. 

Something interesting happened.  First, I began to feel more awake, as though flood gates were opening, and I could feel my connection again.  It felt as though my nerve endings, the ones extending to my son, were tingling again after being pinched off (which is what happens when you’re foot falls asleep). 

The second thing that happened surprised me.  My nightmares came back.  Buried for years, I was suddenly overcome once again with fears for his safety.  Once again, I was in touch with this deep anxiety that something could happen to him. 

The return of my anxieties seemed directly related to the return of my waking emotional/sensory connection.  I think that when my fears had proven too much, I coped with them by going numb. 

“In the same way that physical pain unifies our sense of having a body, we can conceive of the general experience of suffering acting as a unifying force that connects us with others.  Perhaps that is the ultimate meaning behind our suffering.  It is our suffering that is the most basic element that we share with others, the factor that unifies us with all living creatures.”

From The Art of Happiness, by H. H. the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D.

I wonder how many other ways we have of coping with this scenario.  A sense of connection creates a sense of identification, as though the person we are connected to is an extension of ourself, except that this part of ourselves is off running amok without our control.  They could get hurt or lost, and we’d be helpless to stop it.  We can either tighten our control or find some way to feel less, to identify less.  The result is that some sensation is lost; the sense of connection is diminished.  I always thought that the primary obstacle to keeping one’s heart open and awake to another is a fear of getting hurt, but here is a case in which the fear is that the other would get hurt. 

As my fears returned, I had a very heartwarming realization.  For the past year or so, my son has been obsessed with a fear of dying.  He has constantly sought consolation from me, and over and over again I’ve explained that death is nothing to be afraid of.  Over and over again, I’ve allayed his fears about his own impermanence.  All the while, I thought the whole point was for ME to help HIM get through a deep seated issue, but I think that I was healing myself too.  Now when my fears come back, I think of everything I’ve told him, and my heart is put at ease… and remains wide awake.

All around campus, buildings are constantly being demolished and new ones created in their place.  The energy or spirit behind the demolition stands in stark contrast to the energy behind the creation of a new building.  In a matter of days, a wrecking ball tears apart the old, but it takes many months for the new structure to take shape.  I wonder if the same people who operate the wrecking ball are the same people who construct the new building, because the latter requires an entirely different approach.

It takes courage and faith and a sort of reckless abandon to leave a marriage, to demolish a structure for the sake of something more sound.  The fear of losing the familiar structure, the very ground underfoot, is so intense, so ineffably terrifying, it requires a form of controlled insanity to leave it.  You stand on the precipice knowing that if you don’t leap, the ground will swallow you up, but if you do leap, you cannot know what fate awaits.  You deliberate and deliberate, wringing your hands and pacing and sighing, but there is no middle way.  Ultimately, you leap into the unknown only by closing your eyes and dispelling all fear long enough to move your body forward.  You just know you have to do it, so you focus on that knowledge, and you do it.

Then you know what it feels like to move forward without fear.  You leap, and a safety net appears, and you discover what it feels like to trust.  You learn in the most direct, visceral sense that moving into the unknown is… amazing, and this frees you to live life in ways you never fathomed possible before.

Soon, you eye the barren landscape and become inspired to build something new.  But if you take that same energy into the rebuilding process, you risk rushing in without thinking things through.  

In my oil painting, “Reckless Abandon,” several women are dancing on a stage with nothing but fearless joy.  They toss vases into the air, not caring where they land or how they fare.  This is the spirit and energy one needs to destroy a lifestyle that isn’t working, one that only brings pain and sadness, and to find that unconditional joy and love of life that permeates the heart.

But the story must not end there.  If there were a second painting to follow “Reckless Abandon,” it would show a woman sculpting a new vase.  Gently, deliberately, lovingly.  Allowing the clay to take shape naturally and organically but guiding its formation with tenderness and care, the care it deserves.  If the vase cracks, her first thought is a memory of the shattering vases from the first painting, and she knows this only as a sign of destruction, but this is a new vase.  She looks at it again.  She patches it, allowing the pieces to fit together in a way that makes sense, and finds it even more beautiful.

My efforts to engage life with fearlessness and openness have been a bit haphazard, but I’m inspired to look ahead with greater appreciation for the planning and scripting that goes into the creation process.  I think one can be fearless and deliberate at the same time. 

To the cultivation of true friendship!

“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”
~ Henry David Thoreau

Falling in love is often characterized as a biological process involving chemicals and neurotransmitters that generate fleeting euphoria and culminate in a form of addiction.  Understanding the obvious evolutionary functions further invalidates the emotions and perceptions of infatuation.  Somehow, when the biological substrate of a perception is delineated, the perception is found faulty.  We dismiss purported out-of-body experiences, for example, because they can be induced through stimulation of the temporal lobe in the brain, but we don’t dismiss vision because it can be induced by stimulating the visual cortex.

Then there is the tendency to think that this disgraceful state of infatuation can only be pacified with ownership contracts of some sort, written or unspoken.  A lifetime of romantic movies provides the script by which such upheaval must then abide.

“Nightlight,” by Lisa Lindeman

Yet, from the perspective of this present moment, if you temporarily set aside the norms and scripts, falling in love is wonderous just as it is.  In one moment, you scarcely notice someone, and in the next, you are awake to their presence.  They say love is blind, but nothing seems more aptly characterized as a process of waking up: waking up to a person, waking up to their existence, as if your eyes were closed before and you didn’t really see them. 

In the beginning, a person is like a cardboard cutout.  Your mind does not reach out far enough to really touch them; your being does not encompass them.  You are encapsulated in your own space and they in theirs, and so you ignore their beingness the same way you ignore most everyone outside your circle of awareness.  They are a non-entity, like a stranger at the grocery store.  You neglect their presence not because you don’t care, but simply because they are not written into your script.  They are not a character in your play, so why devote any consciousness to them? 

One day, you are talking with them and allowing the image of their face to settle in your mind, and they say something that imbues them with humanity.  They articulate something deep within them.  A dream, an insight, a confession.  You suddenly see them in three dimensions.  They take on life.  Your mind opens up to them, and your heart goes out to them.  The space is traversed and filled.

When you fall in love, it’s the heart that awakens.  Clarity arises when the mind awakens to presence.  Falling in love happens when the heart awakens to presence.  You sense the deeper presence of a person not with your thoughts but with your very being, and you are moved.  In this way, falling in love can be a spiritual path that transcends mere mental practices.

If falling in love is framed as a biological addiction, you might decide that the best thing is to never fall in love.  I say fall in love with as many people as possible!  Fall in love with everyone, every beautiful snowflake sparkling in the sun, and never fall out of love.  Never let the heart fall back asleep.

Cardinals
by John L. Stanizzi
From Ecstacy Among Ghosts

I had seen them in the tree,
and heard they mate for life,
so I hung a bird feeder
and waited.
By the third day,
sparrows and purple finches
hovered and jockeyed
like a swarm of bees
fighting over one flower.
So I hung another feeder,
but the squabbling continued
and the seed spilled
like a shower
of tiny meteors
onto the ground
where starlings
had congregated,
and blue jays,
annoyed at the world,
disrupted everyone
except the mourning doves,
who ambled around
like plump old women
poking for the firmest
head of lettuce.

Then early one evening
they came,
the only ones—
she stood
on the periphery
of the small galaxy of seed;
he hopped
among the nuggets,
calmly chose
one seed at a time,
carried it to her,
placed it in her beak;
she, head tilted,
accepted it.
Then they fluffed,
hopped together,
did it all over again.

And filled with love,
I phoned to tell you,
over and over,
about each time
he celebrated
being there,
all alone,
with her.

As a thought experiment, imagine that everything about you is exactly as it should be.  What if everything you think is wrong is actually right?  What if everything that other people don’t like is precisely what they need?  Every discomfort is a hidden pleasure, and every complaint is a secret delight.  Ignorance is a facet of enlightenment, and separation is a quality of oneness.  Wanting is having, and becoming is the height of being.  If this were actually true, what would you do?  How would you feel? 

“Becoming”

[Listening to: The Story of Light, by William Orbit, an uplifting song added to my collection by my big-hearted giraffe.  Click here to listen online free.]

Last night, I watched the movie, “Celestine Prophecy,” on the Netflix Play Instantly page, which contains mostly out-of-date, B movies.  The movie is based on a novel by James Redfield that I read about fifteen years ago within weeks of experiencing my first accidental moment of samadhi.  It follows a history teacher to Peru as he’s guided by a series of auspicious coincidences.  He finds a community of people in the mountains studying some old scrolls containing insights about humanity.  Essentially, the insights encourage people to follow their intuition and open their hearts to the divine energy in all things. 

The most important task, according to the insights, is to find your own light.  We must then give that light instead of taking it from others, because the attempt to take light creates only darkness for everyone, but in giving it, the light is amplified.

My ears perked up, because that morning, I heard a long, otherwise boring teisho (teaching) at the Madison Zen Center which focused entirely on the following koan:

“Each of you has your own light.  If you try to see it, you cannot. It is dark, dark.  Now, what is your light?”
~ Yunmen

Experience has taught me that my heart grows emptier when I try to find light “outside of me,” but when I give it, my heart becomes more full.  So, after all this talk about finding one’s own light and giving it to others, I was inspired to make it a meditation.  I laid out a blanket in my living room, lit some candles, got comfortable, and imagined the light in my heart going out to others.  I imagined those precious to me surrounded by this warm, loving light.

Obstacles

Opening the heart and giving light is not necessarily easy.  I was surprised by the obstacles that arose. 

First, I felt that my heart was not perfect enough to give.  My motivations are not always pure.  Sometimes I just want what I want.  Sometimes I have anxiety and sadness.  Who wants that?  But then I had to wonder, What if lots of people withhold love because they think their love is not perfect enough to give?  What a strange reason to withhold love!

Second, I was deterred for a moment by the moral baggage surrounding such intentions.  Every time I set out to open my heart and give unconditional love, I think maybe I’m just being full of myself in a different way.  Maybe I’m just trying to be morally “in the right.”  Am I just doing this to feel good about myself?  Am I just doing this to feel divinely smug?  Often, I’ll imagine that the person I’m sending love to should have no way of knowing its origins, or I imagine that after ten minutes, all memories of the process will be wiped clean, so that I will not even know I did it.  So I try various thought experiments to take out the whole moral element, because it really does stand in the way, ironically.  Usually I just get over it and try not to worry too much about it.  Generally though, the question does come up, “Why am I doing this?”  It highlights how unaccustomed we are to doing things soley for someone else, but I don’t want to feel like some self-sacrificing martyr either.  Ultimately, I must forget these concerns and just do it.

Third, I began to worry about how my heart would be received, hypothetically.  Am I being stupid?  I mean, if someone knew what I was doing, would they think I was being royally silly?  Would it feel positive or intrusive?  Maybe I should be doing my dishes, taking a bubble bath, or engaging in some other normal activity. 

Finally, I found myself gripped by an odd terror, as if I was facing death.  I felt as though I was giving away my soul, in a way.  It sounds comical now, but I just had this feeling that I needed to guard and protect my heart, to keep it safe behind a thick wall, and if I “put it out there,” someone would just stomp on it.  I think I was going against the very ingrained paradigm which suggests we must take light in order to have it, but that’s a poor metaphor, and the actual reality is more of a paradox.  So I faced the fear and did it anyway, and this is what it means to “die into love.”  You cross some threshold, and after that you realize that you’re actually stronger than you were before.

“He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”
~ Matthew 10:39

Aftereffects

Once again, this form of meditation had pronounced effects on my mind and heart.  I am always fascinated by the impact.  I have yet to encounter a practice more transformative than unconditional love, especially when you send light to someone dear to you whom you know will never return it.  If you know someone like that, count yourself blessed!  They give you the opportunity to give unconditional love.  Feel gratitude for being separate from them, because the separation allows you to turn your attention towards the deeper connection in a way that is without demands or expectations.

Once again, as my heart opened, my conscious awareness became ten times wider and more intense, as if I had more consciousness, as if I’d turned up the amplitude on my fundamental awareness.  Perhaps the only way to describe it is that my mind was more. 

I felt connected to others in a very real sense, very real.  This connection was accompanied by fleeting sense impressions and emotions that seemed to come from outside of me.  When people say we are all one, they are not speaking figuratively. 

Into the Fire

The mode of living and relating that we call normal has been shaped by fear, loneliness, and seeing things with a taking-getting-poverty mindset.  And this mindset can never be overcome within its own framework.  In other words, there is no end to that story, no satisfying conclusion.  The only way out of it is to “run into the fire.” 

As you begin running, the fire will feel insanely hot.  I mean, holy smokes!  You come into contact with your deepest heartbreaks, because that’s what you’ve been covering up. 

Before this moment, one is waiting around for the perfect experience or person to come along, gently lift the broken heart from its steel case, and heal it.  You were waiting for someone to give you the light that will put all the pieces back together, but the closer someone comes to being that perfect person, the more you notice the imperfections, the more you notice where they don’t measure up.  The more someone approximates your ideal or some lost light, the more critical it becomes that they precisely fit the mold until you are feverish with attempts to make them fit.  You are so close to making it happen!  By god, if they fail you now, it would be salt in a terrible wound, the worst agony.  So you turn off, detach, dismiss, downplay, and close even more, and your need for light becomes all the more intense, whether you feel it or not, and the chance that you’ll find it seems even more remote. 

As disappointment and disillusionment grow, the heart gives less, too absorbed by its own condition and completely oblivious to the aggressiveness inherent in trying to mold another into the light it needs.  And the approach that begins to make the most sense is that you should learn to live without light!  Learn to live in darkness.  Learn to like it. 

We’re all so tender underneath!  But that’s okay.  This tenderness is precisely what you confront when you set out to give light instead of taking it, but all the cliches about the heart are true, so if you run into the fire with faith, you don’t get burned.  Maybe you lose your eyebrows, but that’s really about it.