Cry, Laugh, and Pick Up the Phone

“There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’
No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.”

- The Dalai Lama XIV

It has been a trying week for our nation. In light of the tragedies that we have experienced in Boston and Texas, I  reiterate the importance of connecting with those you love. (See Holidays and Hurricanes from last November.) It seems that through tragedy we do strengthen the bond that we have with others and experience a renewed sense of community.

What else can you do during weeks like this? Cry. I recently heard that tears contain toxins that your body flushes out as you cry. It turns out that a man named William Frey was the first one to discover this. He found that emotional tears (as opposed to other kinds, like those we get from onions) contain the most amount of stress chemicals like leucine-enkephalin and prolactin. Crying also has been linked to lowering heart rate and the production of endorphins. It’s a wonderful thought. I like to think that it is not random that crying “feels” good. Our body—knowing always what we need—is doing something purposeful, not wasteful

On the other side of that coin though is the healing power of laughter. Today was a markedly gloomy day for me compared to the previous 2 months or so. Let’s just say I purged a lot of leucine-enkephalin and prolactin today. At one point while in the car, something crossed my mind that made me chuckle out loud despite my melancholy. I noticed that it felt good. So I tried to think of something else that I knew would make me laugh. So I thought of this:

For some reason it just always makes me laugh. That laguh felt good too. I wanted another and so I recalled one my own recent blog posts, It’s Not That Serious. Then I wanted another laugh and another. I’ve heard of people doing “laughter yoga” and even though I have difficulty picturing a group laughing session, I can see why laughter would be a part of a wellness regiment. Laughter is good for your chemical makeup. Like crying, it produces endorphins. It also relieves muscle tension, strengthens your heart, and boosts your immune system.

After crying and laughing and having a long (and long overdue) phone call with a loved one, all my problems weren’t solved. The world wasn’t nicer. The future wasn’t clearer. Boston wasn’t healed. Those lost in Texas weren’t returned to their loved ones. I hadn’t reconciled all my questions with God. But, I was calmer. My mind wasn’t spinning like it had been most of the day. I felt loved. I felt more hopeful.

So don’t forget to let yourself cry if you need to. Yes, even you men! Let your body clean itself out. And then don’t forget to laugh. Can’t think of anything to laugh about? Then find your nearest Laughter Yoga class. And if all that doesn’t work, call someone you love and let the mysterious and beautiful human connection heal you a little bit. It will most likely heal them too.

Have a beautiful Sunday. As always, I am so thankful for YOU.

~~~S Wave~~~

The Opposite of Love

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.

- Saint John

We teach that hate is the opposite of love, but I’ve been thinking that it is actually fear that is the opposite.

As I was writing about the things I want to transcend, I realized that most of the things that we want to overcome can be reduced down to a fear. Let’s say, for example, that I want to overcome a concern about what others think of me. That’s reasonable. But where does that concern come from in the first place? Fear, right? Fear that if someone thinks something negative then I’ll be shunned, rejected, left. So isn’t it really from the fear that I would have to be liberated first?

Fear, though, gets forgotten as our attention and our “treatments” gets directed to what are really just the manifestations of the fear. We end up being held back from knowing the fullness of our Selves and the beauty of our dreams because the underlying fear isn’t addressed. Imagine if that fear was gone. What if the prospect of rejection, neglect, and abandonment just wasn’t scary in the first place? What if you weren’t scared of loss, of death, of pain? Sounds pretty liberating.

In my experience, the first step to getting free from fear is recognizing that it’s there. When you think you are upset by something, try being still and asking our mind and your body what they are really scared of. Accept the answer you get without judgement and with great compassion. Connect with your belief in a higher power that is interested only in your greatest good. Then you are ready to begin to let that fear go.

Some fears are easy to change simply by CHOOSING to believe in something different. For example, if I declare that I believe in all things working together for good, it is much easier for me to release the fear of failure, because even “failures” must be part of the good that is unfolding. They lose their power.

Other fears of course aren’t so easy to let go of. The process might be longer, but it is the same in principle. No matter what your belief system is, if you sit with compassion and listen to the pain that resides in you, asking it what it needs and offering YOUR love to it, I believe that it must dissipate. Because love does cast out fear.

Media credit: Leah Piken Kolidas

Besides your own liberation and accessibility to your dreams, there is another benefit to realizing that fear is the opposite of love: you begin to have more compassion for others.

I have someone in my life who must have been sent to teach me about loving others! I sometimes find this person to be condescending or dismissive toward me which then triggers sensitivities in me and make me feel hostile toward her. It’s a terrible, but common cycle. This morning, as I was thinking about my experiences with her, these realizations about fear  entered my mind at the same time and I realized that the two are related. I realized that just as I have fears that lead me to operate in less than love, so too does everyone.

As I reconceptualize her condescension as a product of fear–hers and mine–I can feel compassion for the two of us. We become reduced to our essences…two souls traveling in this journey on Earth together and navigating our experiences with our own level of consciousness at this point in time and space. Separateness becomes comradery. We’re in this together! Why be cells that are battling against each other when we can come together and form something new??

Of course she may not have the same realization, but suddenly that doesn’t matter. I recognize and express gratitude for our connection and I embrace her in a protective, prayerful energy that genuinely desires her highest good. It feels good to be free. And to let her be free as well.

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I have been receiving a lot of wonderful, simple insights during my times of prayer and meditation. I post these most frequently on our Facebook page so don’t forget to visit us there. You are all such joy to me. May you be free from fear today!

What is Written On Your Banner?

This is going to sound odd, but it will make perfect sense by the time you get to the end of this post:  Sometimes my friend and I place a banner over one another.

This began years ago during our prayer time together. I don’t know exactly how it started except that –knowing us–one of us probably had an intuition to do it and so we went with it. For us, it means that we are claiming something for the other. For example, I might say, “I am placing the banner of ‘I AM COMPLETE’ over you,” when my friend feels a strong sense of lack. She might place a banner of “STRENGTH” over me when I feel scared. You get the idea. It’s not a literal banner (that would be pretty cool though) but it is a spiritual proclamation of allowing, inviting, and claiming that thing to be so.

In Song of Solomon, the lovesick maiden coos, “He led me to the banquet hall and his banner over me is love.” Moses built an alter and named it, “The Lord is my Banner.” We wave our literal banners to demonstrate our allegiances and our pride. In a spiritual sense, the banners we place over ourselves, our days, our friends, or our homes do the same. We can either be intentional in placing our banners, or we can be unintentional. If we are filling our homes with stress and worry, then our banner unintentionally reads, well, STRESS and WORRY. Or maybe FEAR, because isn’t that the root of stress and worry anyway?

Today, I had a moment in which I asked myself: What does my banner read today? If I had to be honest, it would have read IMPATIENCE in that moment. After all, there I was stuck in L.A. traffic running 30 minutes late already. Luckily I remembered the power of my intention. I took down that banner and unfurled the one that reads: TRANSCENDENCE. Today—heck, maybe for the rest of the month!—my banner will read TRANSCENDENCE. I claim transcendence at all levels. Transcendence above my immediate circumstances and the emotions they trigger. Transcendence above my ego. Transcendence above my physical urges. Transcendence above my mortality. Transcendence closer and closer to God.

So I want to know!…What is on your banner today??

What are you connecting with and claiming? Can you think of someone who doesn’t have the strength to lift their own banner right now? Can you lift one for them? Let’s connect not just in love, and not just through energy, but also in power and for strength.

Have a beautiful, transcendent day!!

Love, the Liberator

“I am grateful to have been loved and to be loved now and to be able to love, because that liberates. Love liberates.”

- Maya Angelou

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Today I took a meditation hike. I listened to Vive’s album, Chakra Songs, and ended my walk on top of a ridge at Hollyridge trails.

Today’s meditation spot

I thought a lot about love up there and what can sometimes keep us from being able to love in the way we want to. Maybe you’re like me and have certain familiar walls up that impede the exchange of love between you and others. And by love I mean love that moves no matter context, no matter mood, no matter consequences. The “do unto others” and “turn the other cheek” kind of love. Today I decided that I’m tired of my walls. My walls have been defending me for a long time. Letting those come down puts me in all kinds of harm’s ways. Unfortunately, those same walls also keep me locked in.

I want to be liberated.

I believe that God is pure pure pure love.  There is no other ingredient in God but love and there is no other source of love but God. I believe that God’s love is unconditional. I know that showing and receiving that kind of love isn’t something you can fake or really even learn. Perhaps allowing (as opposed to concocting) unconditional love to flow in and out of me–which is really what it (i.e., God) wants to do anyway–is THE ultimate defense and simultaneously the ultimate liberation.

I’ve never thought of it that way. I’ve always thought that to love others meant letting myself get hurt and that somehow I would have to grin and bear that. It always meant being a martyr. Moreover, it was something I had to work really really hard at doing. But imagine answering hate with genuine love, answering betrayal with genuine love, answering neglect with genuine love. Imagine having a response of love be your nature.

Why can’t it be so?

One thing I have learned from years of trial and error, is that just saying a genuine “YES!” to what you feel bubbling up inside you makes the heavens and the earth respond. Things begin to happen. Changes occur. I have felt something bubbling up in my spirit and it has to do with this question of love. A new understanding is brewing.

So be it. Here I Am!

A woman offering up her heart for the divine intentions inside and outside of me to do what they will for love. I say YES to the challenge of letting old defensive walls crumble, and I know that the universal response will not disappoint. I surrender my human efforts and wait for a path to appear. Let’s see what happens!

Birthday Gratitude

I cherish this quote. It reminds me to give thanks for all the things in my life that are precious to me. Sometimes they go overlooked, but they are worthy of my impossible constant gratitude. I recognize, as well, that they are my lifesavers. Indeed, they are my very life.

Read this aloud to your own heart, slowly. <3

Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren’t any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true.

- Karen Eiffel (played by Emma Thompson) in Stranger Than Fiction

Postscript: Today is my birthday and on this day I want to tell you how grateful I am for each and every one of you who has shared in the creation and blossoming of this little endeavor, Life As a Wave. You  have been a lifesaver as well, giving me another reason to rise to the challenge of remaining optimistic, hopeful and full of faith no matter what. May our exchange of words continue to buoy us through the waters and gently demand our continued growth as individuals and communities.

With love,

~~~S Wave~~~

Connectedness…on a dreary day

I’m not going to lie. I’m not always a happy person sitting around praying and contemplating love and life. A blog is where, for many of us, we want to just be ourselves. We want to be authentic to a circle of strangers who, through words and common ideas, have come to feel somehow like distant friends or respected colleagues. So although I’m tempted to strictly maintain an uplifting vibe on this site, even at the cost of authenticity, I also just want to be real. Some days are dreary! I’m not Amma or the Dalai Lama after all!

But thank goodness that it also takes some thought to put together a blogpost because trying to write about feeling down got me to thinking….maybe the darker days and the less hopeful moments are just as important as the positive days in respect to being interconnected. After all, isn’t the challenge to maintain some kind of elevated perspective even through those times? To believe in hope and a greater love when there seems to be no hope, especially in “love”?? (Sheesh, I’m sorry but doesn’t love just deserve sarcastic quotes sometimes??) To hold each other up when that is what’s needed and to be sensitive to the energy of others?

The other day I cried. Just a few years ago I used to cry A LOT. I used to be quite sad quite often. Not so much anymore, except that last Sunday there was a familiar dark cloud over me whose presence felt like an old frenemy. And since my grasp on hope and optimism was already slipping that day, I willingly (and I would say, weakly) invited that old friend to come on over and stay for a while. The familiarity of something destructive is sometimes more comforting than all the (mere) potential good that the unknown holds.

The downside to inviting gloom to hang out is that it isn’t a friend who knows when it has overstayed its welcome. Hence, here I am on Wednesday night still entertaining my guest. If I had to counter that with an upside, I guess it would be this: letting gloom settle in for a while is a great way to get a lot of tears out…which feels so good sometimes,  especially when it’s been a while.

So point is, on Sunday I was crying a lot. Not that anyone saw that. I was supposed to spend part of the day with my sister and 21 month-old niece, two of the most luminescent lights in my life. But I called to say that the day was rough and I needed to be alone.  I didn’t think being around my niece who is pure joy would be the best place for me to be…like I would “contaminate” her with my energy. So instead I went for a long hike (and cried), I went to a matinee (and cried), I gave extra attention to my two cats (and cried), I talked to a few close friends on the phone (and cried), I cleaned the house (and cried).

And then something amazing happened later in the day. My sister sent me a short video of my niece, who calls me Momo. She was just sending it to say hello, but my niece surprised us both. On the video, my sister asked my niece, “What’s Momo doing?” My niece didn’t give her typical response of “sleeping,” “playing,” or “home.” Instead, she paused, her face became worried and she said, “Cry.” When my sister, perplexed, asked, “She’s crying? Why is she crying?” my niece responded with, “Tears on it,” in the same worried tone.  Then, as my sister prompted her, my niece went on to tell me she loved me, missed me, and that I should feel better. At the end her two little hands flew into the air, her smile broke out and my sister exclaimed, “All better!”

In talking about the video later that day, my sister told me that she hadn’t said anything about crying to my niece. We have no way of explaining why she would say that. That has to be a living, breathing example of interconnectedness right there!  At least I’m going to believe it is. And believing in anything right now is not something for me to scoff at. My niece’s video has been more than enough to get me through these last few nights anyway…and I’m beginning to think that, in the end, that is part of the purpose of being connected at all.

 

 

Stir up the love!

It has been interesting to look back at some of the posts I’ve written relating to animals and to compare them to our mission statement. Sometimes my attitude when writing about animals doesn’t quite reflect the magnanimous tenants that those of us on Life As a Wave believe in. I think to myself, “Will people read the mission statement and then wonder how I can be hating on the king of Spain or factory farm workers?!”

I know that at the gut level it is hard for me to feel anything but disgust toward people who are exploiting or abusing animals; it is next to impossible to feel that I am connected to them on some metaphysical level as two waves of the same grand ocean. Yet from time to time I am inclined to step back and ask myself to check in with that contempt and judgment that I harbor for them. Are those people not me? Am I not them? Don’t I exist only as part of their existence?

Hold on. That’s too deep for right now…It’s almost 1am for goodness sakes. Let’s start again.

Basically, it is good to love. So yes, I love animals. I can love my loving neighbor. I can love my family. But can I love the (alleged) enemy in this scenario? Can I love the people who are performing vivisection? Or who are skinning animals alive for fur?  Are they really even my enemy? (By the way, sometimes when I see my own writing style I think I should just rename this blog, The Blog of Important Rhetorical Questions.) When I step out of my gut and get into that place of higher self I realize that there is love in me for them. It takes work to plug into it and it may be just a fraction of its potential, but it is there. I don’t like what they do and I would take action to make them stop but I don’t hate their essence…because I truly think it springs from the same source as mine. We are not so different.

I can feel compassion and sorrow for them. I can acknowledge my ignorance of their experiences and pains. I can wish for them better. I can hope for them joy and peace and happiness…just like I hope those for myself. It does my soul good to remember all of this. It stirs up my Love. And I want to act out of Love. I don’t want my advocacy to become aggression, neither mental nor physical. And I don’t want my compassion to diminish. I don’t want to vilify.

I recently heard a sermon given by Ishmael Tetteh in which he used the following analogy to describe our existence:

“Every wave comes into being by the collective power of the entire ocean.”

One wave would not be, were it not for every other wave. And every other wave would be be were it not for that one. Obviously this reminded me of our blog. And thinking about our mission statement–about what it means to live this life as a wave–is what led me think about all of this that I’m now writing. My new mantra, solemnly taped to by bathroom mirror, is:

“I come into being by the collective power of the entire universe.”

This is true moment by moment and eternally. I believe it. I believe I come into being through connection to every other person, galaxy, drop of rain, tree, animal, and ocean wave. So I guess it’s not too deep after all to ask about people “Don’t I exist only as part of their existence?” My best conclusion right now is, Yes.

Winter on the Waketrail Road

January 15th, 2012

Winter on the Waketrail Road

A light snow falls, and the temperature too… from unseasonably mild to the bone-chiller more common here in the opens, away from the coast, away from the tall sentinel skyscrapers of the city, away from the protective foothills and the green-black against-white-background trees.

In Huron Township, when January takes a deep chill breath and then exhales, when the damp of the clouds lets loose with tiny flakes all individual frosty white and impeccably perfect as they land on the darkness of the navy wool pea coat, one moment the drive is nothing more than peaceful and pretty in a winter way, while a tenth of a mile on, there is no visibility as the open patch allows the flurry of snow to become a cloud, and I in the thick of it. And then once again, clarity and gently-landing tiny feathers of white.

Where the seasons bring perceptible change to our senses, winter can be a fickle lover ~ it  courts us with a taste of its offerings, then doesn’t come calling for a time, leaving us wondering if the romance could truly be that short-lived, and then reappears at our door with all sorts of gifts ~ ornaments and snowflakes as large as a thumbnail and red woolen mittens and eggnog and cold winds that make our noses red and spiced apple cider and auld lang syne. And we are wooed by the flurry of snowy kisses and by the tender touches of joy in our hearts, and we are starry-eyed in love with the season.

One morning, you wake and there is a harsh note on the door … the air is so frosty it stings … you have to turn your face from the one you so loved the day before. Now its temper, bitterness and chill bite your cheeks and ears, and you must make a choice to vulnerably take it or leave it to its rant. In the warmth of your family, in the light of a crackling fire, with robust homemade potato soup on the range, you now take comfort and wait for winter’s storm to calm…when you can make up and embrace its loveliness as you did in the early stages and offer your own playful spirit in return. Together, you and winter dance once again to the music of the season, you make angels in the snow, and a walk through the field along the draw is sweet and welcome rather than brusque and cold.

The yin and yang of the seasons, and especially of winter, is reality on this plot of land; it’s felt in the heart as much as on the skin. It forms the earth of this place, the very soil that will begin to wake in the spring. Even now, in the bitter chill of this January night, the seeds of new life are waiting there. Cold and winter socks give way to gentle warmth and the robin’s song; they give way to 90 degrees and blue flip-flops; they give way to a laughing baby standing amidst bright orange pumpkins; who in turn gives way once again to the unique romance with winter, that love that we always come back to, though we say we’ve had enough, because it still is beautiful and good and makes our human hearts flutter at that first caressing snow.