Release From the Paralysis of Perfectionism

(This week's offering is a day early and a bit briefer than usual because I am off with some friends to do some of the shamanic ceremonies we have shared for over twenty-five years and have some fun and relaxation together at a lakeside cottage for a few days. Will return next week- maybe with pictures if I can figure out how to post them here!) 

"I once heard Robert Bly talking about poet William Stafford. Stafford apparently made it a practice, a commitment, to write one poem a day. Once, when an interviewer asked him what he did when the poem he produced was no good, Stafford replied, 'I lower my standards.'" ~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer from "What We Ache For."

It feels counter-intuitive, but even as I tense a little at the idea of "lowering my standards," I am attracted to the possibilities it holds. When my desire to be fully present in each moment is derailed by distraction, what if I simply "lower my standards" to being present for this moment? What if, when I realize I have said or thought something unkind, betraying my resolution to be compassionate with all, I lowered my standards in this moment to being kind with my own failure to live true to my intentions in every moment? Surely that might increase my chances of being kind with others in the next moment.

Perfectionism makes us give up- No point in eating a healthy dinner because I didn't have my green smoothie this morning. Lowering our standards- letting go of our attachment to perfectionism- allows us to do our best in each moment, helps us begin fresh, again and again.

Oriah (c) 2013

Dismissing The Critics

Awoke a couple of mornings ago with the last two lines of this wonderful poem calling me up out of dreams. Written by the Mirabai, who lived in the sixteenth century this version is translated by Robert Bly. I once saw Robert recite this poem, and was deeply moved by the way he embodied the voice of the feminine claiming her own life. As he read the final two lines his hand moved in a slow and graceful circle as he embodied Mirabai's dismissal of her critics. 

Conflicting stories of Mirabai abound, She was from Rajasthan, one of the most significant figures of the Sant tradition of the Vaishnava bhakti movement. Unhappy in the marriage her family had arranged for her, she did the unthinkable- she left. Not only that, she left to wander the countryside with few possessions as a mystic, a poet, a singer and devotee of Lord Krishna. One of the stories is that her aristocratic family, mortified by Mirabai's behaviour, hired men to bring her back home. When she refused, they hired assasins who tried to kill her.

Bly presented this poem as Mirabai's answer to those who said she must submit to the role her family and culture assigned to her. "The Dark One" referred to in the poem is Krishna, often pictured with dark blue skin. I love the passionate commitment to her own direct experience of the divine expressed here, her indifference to others' approval or disapproval.

May we each allow our lives to be penetrated by the direct experience of the sacred, the divine as it appears to us. May we all find that which is, for us, "the sway of the elephant's shoulders."

Why Mira Can't Come Back to Her Old House

The colors of the Dark One have penetrated Mira's body;
    all the other colors washed out.
Making love with the Dark One and eating little-
    those are my pearls and my carnelians.
Meditation beads and the forehead streak-
    those are my scarves and my rings.
That's enough feminine wiles for me.
    My teacher taught me this.

Approve me or disapprove me;
    I praise the Mountain Energy night and day.
I take the path that ecstatic human beings
    have taken for centuries.
I don't steal money, nor hit anyone;
    what will you charge me with?

I have felt the swaying of the elephant's shoulders. . . .
    and now you want me to climb on a jackass?
Try to be serious!

~ Mirabai [Translated by Robert Bly]

From News of the Universe: poems of twofold consciousness, chosen and edited by Robert Bly Published by Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1980.

How To Be Here Today

I am late, stuck in rush hour traffic. I take a deep breath and am suddenly overwhelmed by the beauty of the roses blooming in front of the brick duplexes and modest homes along the street. There are low bushes and high hedges filled with blossoms- pink and blood red, white and pale yellow- wild and unruly, bowing and swaying on slender stems in the light breeze. I can feel my whole body smiling at their offering, at this abundance so freely given. 

This kind of unexpected inhaling of beauty that lifts me has been happening more frequently as I work on a new book, tentatively titled, "The Choice." 

Writing, for me is an exploration. I write myself into the questions that matter to me. Working on a new book I live into the question, How can I be here fully? And then, one night in a dream I hear a voice whisper words I recognize from the writing of the nineteenth century Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore: “We live in the world when we love it.” The words pull me up out of sleep and I know Tagore is right- we cannot be fully with that which we do not love.

The next morning I get up and open a new book of poetry that someone has sent me. The slender volume, Mary Oliver’s Thirst, sits on my bedside table- a promise of poetry that is as brave as I would like to be. Oliver's first line in the book’s first poem, “Messenger,” declares, “My work is loving the world.”

My throat and my chest suddenly fill with sweet tears. When we hear a truth we need the heart breaks open. I get it: To be fully here, we must each find our way of loving the world.

So, the question shifts, becomes, “How do I love the world?” I ask it when I awaken at four am with a searing migraine, and when I am with my father as he wanders in his Alzheimer’s haze. I hold it close when my mother’s Alzheimer’s advances and she rages against losing her driver’s license and then her home. I ask it when illness flares and lands me in bed for weeks. I keep it with me when I listen to news of war in Syria and wildfires in California.

The question does not provide easy answers, but to my surprise it shifts my attention away from trying to survive what is hard, to opening to the possibility of letting the inquiry itself guide me. It opens my eyes to seeing and receiving the beauty that is in each situation- the sweetness of watching the pre-dawn darkness give way to the light, the kindness of strangers providing care for my parents, the courage and generosity of those providing help in war-torn and weather-beaten areas of the world.

The Grandmothers in my dreams counsel me in how to love the world: “When you open your eyes, your heart opens. When you truly see and receive what is around and within you, you cannot help but love yourself and the world.”

And so it is, more and more each day. Oh, I don't want to imply that I have turned into some all-loving, always-centred, enlightened being. Ha! I still snarl at pain before I relax around it and notice the dawn, still worry about my parents before I surround them with love and prayers in my morning practise, still ache to hear of the suffering of others. But something has changed. I have found a willingness to return again and again to feeling my way into loving the world under all conditions. It may require action or stillness, work or play, speaking up or remaining silent. But always, as the Grandmothers remind me, it asks that I open my eyes and my heart.

And so, I continue to write, exploring how I might make the choice to be here by loving myself, others and the world, deeply grateful to consistently find that what is needed to keep my heart open is provided when I am willing to see and receive.

Oriah (c) 2013 

(This blog is part of the June 2013 newsletter. You can view the complete newsletter . If you would like to go on the mailing list for future newsletters please send your email address to mail@oriah.org)

Why Death Makes Me Grouchy

I know that death is part of life. It’s the way things are in a physical world where impermanence is universal. It is quite possibly a feature and not a bug- meaning something from which we learn a great deal that lends incredible value to our unpredictable and precious time here.

On Sunday night the husband of a woman I know died suddenly. Steve was healthy and robust. He died of an aneurysm. Needless to say his wife and family are in shock and deep grief. Theirs is a large, close family- there will be much mutual support and love in the coming months.

What I noticed on the day after Steve’s death is something I’ve noticed before: death or serious tragedy, particularly when it happens to someone I know, makes me grouchy. I was reminded me of how easily irritated I became for almost a year after my friend Catherine had a brain aneurysm. Catherine survived, but has lived in assisted living since, unable to work or resume the life she loved. Of course, my first reaction is always deep sadness and concern for those directly impacted. And then I get testy, unnecessarily blunt, grouchy.

I noticed my impatience while going through emails and updating Facebook, and I wondered why. And then I got it: reminders of just how unpredictable and short life can be lower my tolerance for the ways I waste time and energy, ways I let myself get derailed from the writing I want and need to do, ways I am not present and get embroiled in or reactive to things that simply do not matter to me.

In the shamanic tradition in which I was trained we talk about death as an ally, a reminder of our mortality that can offer us insight into whether or not we are living fully the time we have.

Because the truth is I'm not interested in providing an endorsement for someone’s book about discovering your pet’s past lives. I don’t care about the past lives of pets, which doesn’t make it something unreal or unimportant to someone else. It just means I don’t want to read about or even respond to requests to read about it.

And the truth is I do not want to engage in academic conversations disconnected from the heart or real life experience debating semantics or abstract spiritual principles or ideals. I value compassion and kindness, integrity and intimacy, but I want any explorations of how to live these values where I participate to be rooted in the realities of our lives and our communities.

And the truth is I don’t want to read a stranger’s critique of my life or my writing and his unsolicited advice about what I should or should not do.

The problem, of course, is not the email request, or the Facebook thread, or a stranger's critique- it’s the impulse that borders on a compulsion I sometimes feel to read and respond to everyone and everything. It's the way I can get hooked into conversations that don’t matter to me, using precious time and energy I need for other things that are close to my soul.

Oh, I understand how and when these impluses and hooks were planted in my psyche. But when awareness of the inevitability of loss in all our lives touches my heart, the unexpected irritation with myself that arises prompts me not to explore that understanding but to simply drop that which is not working, to walk away mid-sentence from communication that does not matter to me or serve life. Feeling grouchy is about thwarted soul desires that whisper, "If not now, when?"

Years after Catherine's brain aneurysm we talked about why she thought it had happend. She said, "We can't know why, Oriah. Just make it count."

We honour the pain of loss and make it count by letting it remind us of how short and unpredictable life is, by paying attention to the places that feeling grouchy point to- the places where we are not living in alignment with our deepest soul desires.

So feeling grouchy is okay. Feeling grouchy is something for which I am grateful. 

 Oriah (c) 2013

Your, Mine & Not Always Ours

Projection: the ability we all have to ascribe some of our own qualities, preferences or even circumstances to others. It can be a defence against owning aspects of ourselves or our lives that we find difficult. It can also be a more innocent result of reaching for or feeling a connection with others and assuming that we have more in common than we might.

I’m discovering that of all the areas where we seem to consistently (and often unconsciously) project our own circumstances and feelings onto others is around birth family mythologies, realities, stories and values. This actually makes some sense. After all, the conditions and dynamics of our birth families weren’t just a reality, they were Reality as we first encountered it in our lives. As small children we took our families to be The Way Things Are, like the sun and the earth and the air we breathe. We may have encountered variety later in our lives, but when emotional issues of family are front and center (arrival of a new baby, care of aging parents, marriage, divorce, family losses or celebrations etc.) it’s easy to forget that our family is not identical to others.

Recently, while taking a course with the Alzheimer’s Society one of the other women in the group was advised by the facilitator to include her mother in exploring all possible residences. The woman replied, “Well, actually, my mother really trusts me to know what matters to her and to narrow down the choices.”

I was mesmerized by the phrase, “my mother really trusts me.” I could not imagine ever thinking, let alone saying those words in my lifetime. It’s not quite as personal as it sounds (or felt for many years.) My mother doesn’t really trust anyone. But still, I sat in awe for a few moments, reminded that all families are not identical. Knowing this I remember that what works for one will not work for others, so comparative judgements or one-size-fits-all solutions are not helpful.

I remember the first moment in my life when I entertained the idea that all families were not the same. I was seven. My six year old brother, Doug, had brought his friend Tommy home to play after school. As we sat on the front porch Tommy suggested that we watch a television show. Doug and I hesitated. We wanted to watch the show but, as we explained, we would have to ask my mother if we could turn on the television. Tommy shrugged reasonably and told us to go ask her. We froze.

Doug shook his head emphatically and said, “I’m not asking her.”

I said, “Well, I’m not doing it!”

Tommy looked puzzled. “What’s the big deal?” he said. “All she can do is say no.”

Even as I stared at him in disbelief, I felt an opening, the whisper of awareness that something important was being revealed. Was it possible that some mothers said yes or no to requests without getting angry because you’d asked? And, if that was so, what else might not be ordained as The Way Things Are? I couldn’t see any particular immediate use for this insight but the audacity of just considering the possibilityopened a door to the notion of choice in areas I had considered as immutable as gravity.

Families are different- as are marriages and jobs, individual beliefs and health and circumstances. I’ve done it myself: assumed that another’s situation is more similar to my own than it is, projected my sorrow or my joy, my well meaning but possibly mis-directed support or less-well-meaning and not-as-hidden-as-I-would-like judgement onto someone else.

We do share a great deal. Often I can see how the other is another myself, a mirror of my humanness. But each other is also wholly other, with their own history, experience, and perspective, a Mystery to me. If I can hold both of these truths, I can give and receive love while allowing and claiming the breathing space for each of us to be ourselves, to find our own way forward, to live our own lives fully.

Oriah (c) 2013

Receiving Without Fear

Some of us find it easier to give than receive. Since receiving really is a critical part of our first experience (none of us would have survived infancy unless we'd received some care) I'm curious about why this can be such a challenge for many of us.

There's the obvious culprit: a dominator culture that values power-over tends to see the person who is giving as stronger and, by inference, the one who is receiving as weaker. The implication is that if you have something (time, energy, money, advice, insight, support, compassion etc.) to give, you must be doing something right, and if you need something you cannot provide for yourself, you must be doing something wrong. In part, this goes along with the cultural premium that is placed on independence- a fallacy if there ever was one in an inter-dependent world.

I recently heard a news story about a ninety year old woman who committed suicide because she knew that sometime in the next few years she would not be able to live independently. Now, this is the kind of decision re:quality of life I want to leave up to individuals. Still, I could not help but wonder if the collective value we put on so-called independence might not make it difficult for those of us living in affluent parts of the world to see receiving assistance as we age not only as loss, but also as a way to learn something together. I have gone through periods when illness has necessitated relying heavily on friends and family for care. My delusion of self-sufficiency was shattered, and nothing has softened my heart more to myself and others than needing and receiving help. 

Of course receiving, depending on the situation, can sometimes feel unsafe. As discussed in last week’s blog, "Giving Without Resentment," giving is sometimes (consciously or not) done in a bid to gain power over another or as a way to make a bargain- goods or consideration for later unspecified favours. If these deals are vague and unspoken we can end up feeling we owe another, unsure of what exactly is expected. 

But the truth is, as adults, another’s expectations are only our problem if we buy into them. If someone gives me something, my role is to receive it as graciously and as freely as possible. If that person comes back later expecting or pulling for something in exchange that was not agreed to, I need to sit with whether or not I can or want to give what is requested, and to be clear that there was no agreed-to exchange. If this happens repeatedly with another, I will ask that implicit deals be made explicit before receiving. (If you cook me dinner are you expecting something in return?) If this still leaves the other expecting something unspecified in return for giving I may reconsider receiving from this particular person

Honestly, if we stay conscious about and aren’t drawn into obligations we never agreed to, the other will stop trying to create unspoken bargains simply because it’s not working for them.

But what if someone wants to give us something we don't need or want? Well, the first option is to simply say, “No, thank you,” particularly if what is offered is going to create any suffering (Eg.- a visit, even with someone we love, can be draining when we are ill.) We can receive and appreciate the caring intent but let the other know this is not something we can or want to receive right now. Of course, if we know what we need, the next step is to ask for it- post-graduate work for many of us leery of receiving. 

"We accept the love we feel we deserve," is a line from the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Perhaps, if we are reluctant receivers, it is because we have been taught to believe that we are not deserving- a  belief worth challenging as we learn to cherish ourselves.

The sad thing about not trusting our boundaries and our right to say "Yes please," or "No thank you," is that we may develop the habit of being non-receptive, of not really taking in what is offered and allowing it to replenish us each day. This can leave anyone who is giving feeling unreceived and the receiver strangely hungry for what is offered but not really received.

We cannot help but be both givers and receivers every day. And the world we co-create is largely shaped and coloured by how we are with ourselves and each other in our giving and receiving. Both can create knots of obligation and resentment or cultivate open-hearted joy and gratitude.

Today, may we take in with gratitude and without fear that which we choose to receive, and may we give without resentment that which we can offered in a truly sustainable way.

 Oriah (c) 2013

Giving Without Resentment

Thinking about giving, offering what we have and can give without endangering ourselves (ie.- truly sustainable giving.) Even a small offering of time, presence, material goods, compassion, skills etc. can truly touch and lift another.

Of course it gets complicated if giving is somehow mandatory (ruled by an inner "should.") Was rereading Gabor Mate's wonderful book When The Body  Says No. In it he says something like- if you have a choice between guilt and resentment, choose guilt, because resentment is soul-destroying.

Resentment arises when we give where or when we either really don't want to or it is truly not sustainable to do so. Guilt sometimes arises for some of us when we do not give where we have been taught we should (and some of us were taught we should give all of the time everywhere!) Giving can feel like a slippery slope for some of us if we feel that in giving anything we are obligated to give everything. But it's not true, and believing this leads to truly unsustainable giving (until we collapse) or refusing to give anything in a reacitve effort to protect ourselves (which robs us of the joy of giving and the other of what he or she might have received.)

Of course the catch is we need to stay deeply aware of our hearts and bodies so we know what we can or cannot give without detriment to ourselves or others. When conditions are stressful it's easy to disconnect from knowing what our inner and outer resources really are. It helps to develop a daily practice that brings us deeply in touch with ourselves.

Resentment can also arise where we are making a secret (as in largely unconscious) "deal" - for example, offering something to another in the hopes that we will be seen, loved, appreciated, praised or rewarded for giving. This one is tricky, because we can't be more conscious than we are, but if we find ourselves often feeling owed or misused where we are giving, there's a pretty good chance that we are expecting something in return. Explicit deals (as in- you can borrow my car if you pick me up at the airport at the end of the week) often work for everyone. Implicit, secret, unconscious or implied deals are likely to breed disappointment and resentment. Difficult for people to hold up their end of the bargain when they didn't know there was a deal being made.

Giving without resentment is a gift to both the receiver and the giver and truly one of the great joys of human life when it is clear, clean, without secret expectations or a sense of obligation beyond doing what we can. It is our nature to want to give what we can where it is needed. We are interdependent with each other, the planet and all life here. No one lives without giving and receiving. When we are aware of how frequently giving and receiving are in our lives, gratitude for both naturally arises and enriches our day.

Of course for some of us receiving is a bigger challenge than giving- but I'll mull that one over for next week's blog.

 (Thanks to Debbie Devine whose FB post last week started my mulling on this one.)

Oriah (c) 2013