Category Archives: Life

IN AN INSTANT- LIFE REMEMBERED

Buddhism, Ego, heart, holidays, Joy, lessons, Life, Love, oneness, Peace, Pearl Harbor, Perception, Psychology, Reflection, transformation, Uncategorized, War, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Peace Doves

“Then, in the nightmare of Monday and Tuesday, there was the struggle to keep normal when planes zoomed overhead and guns cracked out at an unseen enemy. There was blackout and suspicion riding the back of wild rumors: Parachutists in the hills! Poison in your food! Starvation and death were all that was left in a tourist bureau paradise.”

Betty McIntosh, Hono­lulu after Pearl Harbor: A report published for the first time, 71 years later, Washington Post 12/7/12

This morning, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, I opened up my Washington Post to an amazing experience.  An article written by a now 97 year old woman named Betty McIntosh who was a journalist in Hawaii the day Pearl Harbor took place.  The Washington Post published her article today after 71 years has passed, as the paper she wrote for in Hawaii deemed it too graphic and traumatic for its readers at the time.  The article was written 7 days after Pearl Harbor took place, a piece about the woman’s perspective of a war that began with great uncertainty and fear, during a time that many people view from their heart and safe place in the US- the holidays.

In reading the article, I felt emotional and wanted to relate her experiences to something deep inside of me that continues on its human course to heal.  This journey that we are all on ebbs and flows with our fear and our light’s inner knowing.  We oscillate between feelings of love and safety to feelings of uncertainty and sadness.  The pendulum between the ego-driven mind and our connection to the divine, our inherent truth.

“For seven ghastly, confused days, we have been at war. To the women of Hawaii, it has meant a total disruption of home life, a sudden acclimation to blackout nights, terrifying rumors, fear of the unknown as planes drone overhead and lorries shriek through the streets.”

Betty McIntosh points out how on the morning of Pearl Harbor it was a lazy Sunday with people coming out of church still in their reality that a war could not possibly be taking place on their island.  Her narrative takes us on a journey of coming to terms with the reality.  Yes, a war was taking place, and as she walked deeper and deeper into that reality she saw things that shattered the safe place that most knew to be home.  The forest of destruction became thicker with every movement.  There are people still experiencing this in our world, every day, coming to terms with the expansiveness of the human existence and how our reality can so easily be shaken because it is so tightly bound with our expectations and what we are “used” to.

In our experience as fragile human beings, I find it important to remember that each day we could still possibly experience this same thing including our own death.  We don’t know what plane will be ready to take off in our reality and we can’t count on our expectations because they are rooted in our desires rather than possibility.  The only thing we can count on is our ability to choose our reactions and how we will treat people, what we will do that affects other people.  If we can remember the humanness of our bodies that we experience this reality in every day, we can create a motivation to love.  This is our gift.  It is the greatest gift that we can experience within ourselves and in turn, our experiences with others.  Our oneness will not evaporate like emotion or the quenching of an ego-driven desire.  Our oneness will always be here to reflect on.

During this holiday season, I would like to extend my own kindness to all of you out there in the only way I can- in these words.  I want to say thank you with all of my heart for every moment that you choose to reflect and to love.  Every one of those moments is affecting me right now and my potential to also do good things.  You are my olive branch, you are my peace- and I honor you for all that you have experienced as a human.  Whether those experiences are rooted in trauma or joy, I have experienced the same, and I can relate.

As those during any war come to terms with the darkness in the human existence, I can only honor their experiences of suffering in my own and pray peace.  I pray peace during this holiday season and hope that all may experience it in their interaction with others, so we may all remember that we are simply one.  Pearl Harbor, along with all war, has a purpose now to teach us that life is a pendulum of swinging possibility and to embrace it with a motivation to live in our highest potential.  Let us choose our light and shine, illuminating the path for all to experiences of peace.

A MOTHER’S LOVE

Death, Life, Love, transformation, , , ,

Some people may look at life and death as a moment that is divinely inspired.  That we have no choice in when these transformative, game-changing moments will take place- whether it is our own life, or the life transition of another.  Things happen in our lives; people come and go with life and death much like the clouds in the sky yet with much greater impressions pressed upon our hearts.  When I read the weekly writing challenge prompt many things went through my head.  So many things have happened that could be considered “life changing.”  But in the end, I kept coming back to one moment that I have to say, changed everything for me.

When my mother was pregnant with me, she had recently suffered traumatic loss.  A year before she married my father, her own father passed away from a sudden heart attack.  Within the same year, only a month or so before her wedding, her mother who was also her best friend passed away from a debilitating illness that painfully drains away your spirit.   She was the silent witness of that sacred second when her mother took her last breath.  It was a final breath that would echo forever throughout her life.

One story that always has affected me was how my grandmother struggled to sew my mother’s bridesmaid dresses near the end of her life.  I try to imagine what that would be like.  To know that you are so close to death, to feel it deep down in places you didn’t even know existed, while tirelessly piecing together dresses for a wedding party- the wedding of your only daughter; and to know that you will most likely not be there for the celebration.  I imagine that piecing those dresses together would be an exercise in piecing together your own life in your heart, using it as an exercise of love and meditation.  I know these events had to have been powerful, game-changing experiences for my mother, and affected another turn of events that gifted my soul with a life trajectory.

Shortly after my parents’ wedding, my mother became pregnant with me.  At the time of my birth my father was away training for his new job as federal law enforcement in Georgia.  My mother was all alone, 9 months pregnant and staying at my grandparents’ house.  My grandfather was a man of few words, and did not come off as the warmest of souls.  My mother went into labor and was taken to the hospital by my grandfather knowing that she was in this all alone.  It was her opportunity to bring new life into this world after the loss of both of her parents.  It was her first time giving birth, not knowing what to expect in her heart.

After my delivery, she had an allergic reaction to the anesthesia.  My mother had a near death experience where she witnessed her soul leave her body.  She could see everything happening around her body from a distance- the nurse rush in, the resuscitation efforts.  I know for me, this was an event that changed my life forever.  In this moment, my mother had a choice- to leave her body behind and move on from this life, or to come back and live out her current life as my mother.  She chose to come back.  Because she did I have had a mother that has taught me many lessons that I could not have learned without her.

They were not all rosy moments, but they were not all tragic either.  I am who I am today because in that instant when she could have chosen to move on from this life, she did not.  My mother went on to tell me this story about her near death experience and here I am, writing it now and sharing it with many others. I share it with the intention that you too may think about how precious life is and how our ability to witness the suffering and joy of others is a profound gift offered to us as an experience of deep abiding love.   Our suffering is not isolated.  We have the opportunity to remember the importance of every instant we also share with others and how the simple act of sharing even a little story can change someone’s life, in an instant.

LESSONS LEARNED FROM POP CULTURE- LOVE ACTUALLY

Buddhism, Compassion, Film, Forgiveness, Joy, Karma, Life, Life Coach, Love, Peace, Power, , , , , , , , , ,

“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion… love actually is all around.”  Prime Minister, Love Actually

Whenever I feel depressed or downtrodden myself in regards to life, I love to put on a film that will help me gain perspective and turn things around.  It’s like that moment in the movie Reality Bites when Wynona Ryder’s character feels herself sinking as the elevator is going down. She realizes that all the roads she is attempting to take for her employment are going nowhere and she is beginning to fail miserably in her quest to validate her hope in the world she had created in graduating from college.  “Love Actually” is one of those films that always helps me gain perspective, especially when I hear the opening quote by the Prime Minister.  Just watching the scenes from the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport I begin to tear up.

And now, whenever I’m actually at the airport I have the same experience!  I think the most catching part for me was when the quote goes into the planes hitting the Twin Towers.  The writer gives insight into the beauty of our human connection and our purpose as human beings- to express love and learn from it.

“When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love.”

When I heard that piece of the quote for the first time, it was like someone opening the curtains and letting the sunlight in my heart.  Whenever I hear the quote now- I have the same experience.  My experience never changes no matter how many times the television comes clean with the same statement about messages of love.  If you knew you were about to die and you had a chance to call someone- who would you contact to convey a message of love?  Who would you forgive as well as apologize to?  I know it may sound cliché, but life is short and we could very well die tomorrow.  The person you want to apologize to could die tomorrow as well.  There is a temporal aspect to our experience and we have to embrace every opportunity we have to clean up all the regrets and resentments we carry around in our hearts, our minds.

When I was training as a life coach, we were given a great assignment- to go through all that baggage and clean it up already.  Every person I had wanted to so desperately apologize to for something I thought I had done to them- I had the opportunity now to write it all down in a big list and purify it all with love.  Facebook became the greatest invention on earth for me!  I was able to contact so many people and just say, “I’m sorry.”  It was one of the most liberating experiences in my life.  I felt so light, free- so filled with gratefulness for the opportunity to just simply let it all go.  All of us have that opportunity and it is up to us to do the work, let go of our stubbornness and desire to point the finger in someone’s face.

We have a great opportunity and I recommend that everyone do it at least once in your life!  One of the most interesting insights I learned through the whole process was how much weight I had placed onto my experiences all by my lonesome self with shame and regret- when the other person did not even have a clue nor did they even think I had really hurt them.  We feel shameful and embarrassed for behaving certain ways in our ignorance or incorrect state of mind and don’t realize how much this baggage really affects us.  When you grab your past by the reigns and really plunge into the future with full-on releasement you free yourself from the grasping of the mind that perpetuates karma.  You give to yourself, as well as that other person, a great opportunity of freedom and joy.  And, it is beautiful.

If you feel scared in your attempt to nullify an uncomfortable situation, simply remember, “…love actually is all around.”

COMPASSION FOR OUR DARKEST MOMENTS

Attachment, Awareness, Buddhism, Carl Jung, Charter for Compassion, Compassion, Debbie Ford, Ego, Forgiveness, Joy, Life, Life Coach, Peace, Psychology, self-help, , , , , , , , , , , ,
From Charter for Compassion, Article by Rita Hibbard, Relying on the Kindness of Strangers

Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
And all of the ghouls come out to play
And every demon wants his pound of flesh
But I like to keep some things to myself
I like to keep my issues drawn
It’s always darkest before the dawn

And I’ve been a fool and I’ve been blind
I can never leave the past behind
I can see no way, I can see no way
I’m always dragging that horse around
And our love is pastured such a mournful sound
Tonight I’m gonna bury that horse in the ground
So I like to keep my issues drawn
But it’s always darkest before the dawn

Florence and the Machine, “Shake It Out”

In my own journey, I have learned a great deal about compassion.  Not only for others, but compassion for myself and all my foibles in this life.  As most of you know, and at the risk of sounding utterly cliché at this moment, without our life’s foibles we would never grow- that is, if we have the wisdom to see our foibles as growing experiences rather than things “happening to us”.  If compassion does not begin within ourselves, then it is very difficult to have compassion for other people.  In fact, those that are very hard on others are most likely even harder on themselves.  Our outer is a reflection of our inner no matter how we deal the cards.

A long time ago at a retreat for my coaching work, my teacher Debbie Ford came on stage holding a baby doll.  She brought to everyone’s attention how cute and sweet this innocent little child was.  Then, she started yelling and criticizing the baby doll and hitting it against the chair.  Afterwards, she noted that this is how most of us treat our own selves emotionally every day through constant criticism and fear.  We usually treat others better than we treat our perceived self because no one can hear how verbally abusive we can truly be when we are talking to our selves.  Sadly, not all stick to just verbal abuse with themselves.  There are many in this world that physically abuse themselves as well.  I am confessing in this moment that I was once one of those people.

What most don’t realize is that there is an aspect within ourselves that really is genuinely receiving this criticism and begging for love.  It is usually the piece of us that made that very mistake when he or she was a little child, and shamed for making that very mistake.  In taking on WordPress’s “daily prompt”, I googled the word “kindness”.  In that “googling” I was presented with the above image as the 11th.  It was a graphic on the article “Relying on the Kindness of Strangers” by Rita Hibbard for the Charter for Compassion website.  I love this graphic!  It was perfect, and brought me to one of my favorite topics- compassion!  All of a sudden the song “Shake It Out” by Florence and the Machine came on my Pandora station- and the lyrics (listed above) met me at the fork in the road concerning this inspiring graphic and word.  In the song Florence states that it is “always darkest before the dawn” and I could not agree more.

How many of you have been dragging a dead horse around so to speak on your back and you just can’t let it go because it gives you an opportunity to continue to criticize yourself?  What does this opportunity afford you?  Many people believe that attachment has to do with those things we love in this life- but this is not true.  We are also attached to the opportunities that allow for our inner demons to control our life.  Face the inner demon.  It will only get better from there, I promise.  I say that as testimony to my own darkness and how facing it changed me forever.  It gave me new opportunities to love and embrace the joy that I rejected because I didn’t think I deserved it.  The only way I could face it was through compassion.  I was enabled to see that little girl in me suffering and give her the love she needed to move on and own her light.

To express our light takes great courage, and I invite you to express your light and have compassion for yourself.  Let those foibles go and you will be of greater service to this world through the expression of genuine compassion for others suffering.  I promise.

COLOR ME SKY ANEW

Awareness, Buddhism, Compassion, Ego, Emptiness, Joy, Life, Nature, Peace, Poetry, Self Perception, , , , , , , , ,

This recurrence of feeling appearing from somewhere
Walking around this labyrinth of moments- singing and laughing
Something is happening as a dancing wisp of light
Lifts me into the sky and I am somewhere, again
Everyone wishing for this light to seep into their denseness
To become something other than the heaviness of the mind
Opening up my arms to the possibility
Where is everyone?
A leaf twists in a dollop of warm air that drops from my mouth
I shall blow my dreams upon you little leaf
And you will carry them for eternity
Even when your color turns in the midst of a changing temperature
You will ride another wind into a soft tuft of grass where I shall lay my head
As you blend into the earth beside my worn face
You will give me compassion and I shall cry
As I water the earth with my heart and tears
We shall become new again.

When I wrote this poem, I was sitting outside on my patio one evening admiring the New Mexico sky and all its amplified color.  Living in New Mexico I am lucky to live as a guest and witness to some of the most extraordinary light.  This light illuminates the world around me in a way that is inspiring.  Witnessing nature and all it reveals to us is a gift and a place of contemplation in simply being.  I am grateful every day for all that nature reveals to us through the movement of the sun and moon each day, and through the changing seasons.  Here we are again, fall…..autumn.

Autumn gives us a cyclical opportunity to remember that at every moment change has occurred.  My body, emotions, and mental state- they are changed and different with every passing second.  There is no permanent “self”.  My body that once was born and small enough to be held by my parents is now 5’7” and again- forever changing.  Nature has taught me that no matter how permanent my ego tells me I am, it is not true.  And I can use this as a subtle opportunity to remember to love and not be so hard on the world around me and my own perceived self.  Every moment of compassion brings about more change and what once “was” between me and another person may be anew with understanding and gratefulness.

I am grateful even for this small opportunity to write and share with you how your beauty that has been reflected in this season we call autumn has changed me, once again.

LESSONS LEARNED FROM POP CULTURE- GLORY

Attachment, Compassion, Course in Miracles, Ego, Film, Forgiveness, Life, Perception, Psychology, , , , , , ,

As a movie buff, and someone who loves good historical drama, I am in the full-on process of getting “psyched” for Lincoln.  From knowing many who appreciate film- I am aware of those out there who have a huge grudge against Spielberg and his film making.  But I can’t hold back my excitement for this upcoming film.  Perhaps it is my past-life attachment to the American Civil War still lingering in my heart- but Abraham Lincoln inspires me much in the way he inspired Walt Whitman.  Just watching the last trailer brought me to tears.  Perhaps the Civil War is my Bill Buckner video in the American version of Fever Pitch with Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon.  I can’t help but love the scene when Mr. Fallon’s character sequesters himself in his apartment after his breakup in a continuous replay of the “Bill Buckner Incident”- being a Mets fan doesn’t help but make me love that scene!

As I prepare myself for Lincoln, I feel ready after many years, to watch the film Glory again.  I can’t help but laugh at myself and my past history with this film.  When I was in high school I used to listen to that soundtrack over and over again in my teen melancholy.  In college, I would go to the Smithsonian and sit alone with the bronze sculpture by Augustus Saint- Gaudens, dedicated to the 54th Massachusetts Colored Regiment and its leader, Col. Robert Gould Shaw.  This film directed by Edward Zwick, truly affected me.  I’m sure there are a myriad of reasons as to why, including a past life attachment, but there are other reasons too.

One of the most emotionally difficult lessons for me to witness is when someone suffers simply for the sake of stubbornness and their need to be correct.  It really gets me inside in a painful way- almost like physical pain.  Perhaps it is because as a child growing up I used to always separate myself out from others just to prove a point.  In Glory, Denzel Washington’s character, Private Trip, holds onto so much pain and anger due to his difficult life as a black man and slave.  When he joins the 54th he is delivered an opportunity to reconcile some of his pain but it does not happen easily.

In the film Trip gets caught outside of camp and accused of desertion.  Even though Trip knows that he was not deserting, he refuses to say anything about why he was not in camp.  He would rather be flogged in front of his entire regiment than yield to his stubbornness.  Who knows- maybe if he had mentioned it, it would not have made a bit of difference.  But you just don’t know.  After the flogging, Col. Shaw approached Morgan Freeman’s character and it is here that he learns of the truth.  That Trip was outside of the camp looking for shoes because he was in so much physical pain due to a lack of supplies including proper boots.

When Trip’s shirt is removed for the flogging and they show the scars of his past beatings, I cannot help but feel the pain that not only this fictional character felt- but the pain of every culture that has endured racism’s sickness.  The idea that we are not human and deserve to be treated less than human because of a race or culture is the pinnacle of egomania to me.  The ego driven mind’s imperative mission is to continuously prove that we are separate from one another and it grasps at anything that will continue this delusion.  For me, this film portrayed how innately we share in our humanity with one another and how in the end- we all will die and be buried together just like the 54th regiment was buried with their white counterparts.  The pain we all feel is a place where we can meet and see how we are the same, rather than how we are “different.”

The compassion that grows within us is like a plant waiting to be watered.  We water it in sharing the love it yields with the world around us.  Even if it is to be shared at a distance- our inner landscape is a part of the greater good when we focus on our capacity to love and be loved.  When Trip’s character stands before his brothers in the prayer circle and finds the courage to say to them that they are the only family he has ever known, he chooses to share in his capacity to love rather than the stubbornness that he carried around as his great perception divide.  He chose to come together and live rather than starve his soul of the love he deeply deserved but believed he did not deserve.

The question to ask of ourselves here is- how do we divide ourselves from others and perpetuate the ego driven mind’s delusion of separation through stubbornness and holding onto our need to be right?  How would our life change if we let go of our stubbornness and simply allowed rather than pushing and pulling away from our truth, our ability to love?