A different terrain

We are living in a time where conciousness is shifting.  Of course this gives rise to an increasing number of folks feeling a need to “work on themselves.”  It is common to see gurus promising everything from aligning our chakras, helping us find nirvana through vision quest, becoming a shaman in a week long program, or any other technique to fix our “broken selves.”  Of course this is not to say that self improvement is a bad thing.  Heaven knows we all have dark, shadowy sides that call to be reckoned with.  Giving  our power to another promising to fix us only makes us dependant and not true to our selves.  We begin to gain a sense of spiritual superiority thus making many feel the need to peel those who no longer fit their new found sense away from their lives.  There is nothing more pious than the newly spiritually converted.

Ashrams and retreats are filled with individuals looking for an external mechanism to change them failing to realize that change is an inner process and a slow one at that.  Some isolate themselves feeling their need for self work cannot be accomplished in relationship with others failing to understand that others are also doing self work.  Naturally when we go through life changes, many things will no longer fit and our lives will feel chaotic for a while.  Things somehow just do not make sense.  Spiritual teachers can be valuable assets but as with anything their beliefs and methods are not our own.  They are human and subject to prejudices and foibles as we all are.  If any human were perfect they would not be here on planet earth. 

As a child I was taught many lessons and given the belief system of my parents.  Being a devout Christian we would sit every Sunday listening to a spiritual leader telling us how sinful we were.  As an adult, I have chosen what fits me and discarded the beliefs that no longer fit.  This is our role when we are working with others.  Undoubtedly there will be some things we will want to keep and others that are not in alignment with our authentic selves.  We feel it and if we listen, we will hear.  We will walk our journey alone but we will meet others along the way.  The path will be shared.  No woman or man is an island even the self proclaimed spiritual ones. 

I am running at full speed.  I am passing scenery and forgetting to look or breathe.  It has been this way for the past several months.  I look at my face in the mirror and wonder why. I am caught up in the epidemic.  It is an epidemic of not enough hours in the day to do everything I need to get done.  Alas, there lies the kicker, there are enough hours in the day.  We all are given the same 24 hours as the earth spins.  It is us who run at the speed of light daring to stop for a moment.  Needless to say, I am exhausted.  I am too exhausted to hold conversation, too exhausted to do what I need to do and well just too exhausted.   It is time for me to breathe.

When we forget to breathe we lose our way.  We lose connection to those that matter most.  In our crazy culture, we idolize being busy.  Perhaps we equate business with importance.  We have become slaves to the very thing that was supposed to free us, technology.  Looking across a busy restaurant it is not easy to miss eyes glued to Iphones when it should be our loved ones eyes in which  we are peering.  In our busyness, we miss out.  We miss the impromptu lunches or coffees with friends.  We miss that spur of the moment hike into nature.  We fill our heads with list of items we deem important.  As we sit idly we start to fidget and wonder what it is we are supposed to be doing.  “Am I missing something?”

I recall a journey to a remote part of South America.  I watched with amazement how we a group of well adjusted healthy women ran with warp speed to the nearest internet cafe upon reaching cilvilization.  I recall how we stood in the rain in a humid jungle trying to find just the right spot where we might get a phone signal.  Not to mention we had only been away for a week.

Today I sit in a Tuscan villa watching rain and fog cover the landscape. I have finally figured out how the light switches work but yet to grasp the heating system. Thanks to technology. As I sit I wonder what I did before an Iphone or my electronic tablet that sits by my side. Although I make my daily pilgrimage to the little house that has wi fi, I am making a promise to unplug for a little while.  I will allow myself that uninterrupted cappucino with loved ones and friends.  I will spend time resting and regrouping and trying hard not to fill my mind with all the things that I forgot to pack or bills that I forgot to pay. I will sleep late and not rise to the ring of an alarm clock and I will pick up a pen and write.

The internet is abuzz with a wonderful story of a young McDonald’s employee leaving his work post to help an elderly disabled man to eat.  The image captured by another customer shows the young man with freshly donned gloves cutting the elderly gentleman’s food with great compassion.  To be honest, I shed a tear when I read the story.   To see or hear acts of random kindness gives me faith and hope in my fellow human.  We are bombarded daily with news of suffering, inhumanity and events which all serve to bring about anxiety and a belief that we have all gone to hell.  If we believe the media, it is easy to come to the conclusion that kindness or compassion are no longer a part of our existence.  I blame the media as they know good news does not sell.

Every now and then a news hiatus can be a welcome relief.  A few months ago, I did just that.  Not only did I feel less anxious and irritated, there was almost a zen like effect from not dwelling in the swamp of negativity that has become our news.  We have been lulled into believing that evil exists around every corner causing us to batten down the hatches and cast an evil eye towards anyone or anything perceived as a threat.

Believe it or not, there is good in the world.  There are those who reach our with kindness and compassion every day.  It benefits us  to shine the light on those who are making bright spots in our world.  It is sad that acts of kindness have become so rare that they become events.  In a perfect world, compassion would be the norm of the day.  A kind act would not be a surprise.  I salute that McDonald’s employee and I am certain he made the recipient of his kind act feel like a million bucks.   Be kind to each other.

Yesterday was my birthday.  It was a day of introspection, reflection and a lot of well wishes from friends  that is if you count facebook friends.   I thought a lot about friends and where they fit into our lives.  I thought about my concept of the meaning of friendship.  As I advance in years, I have come to the conclusion that time waits for no one and we owe it to ourselves to surround ourselves with those who really love us and wish for our happiness.   All too often, we attract those I like to call “fairweather friends.”  All is good as long as nothing gets too deep or serious.  True friendship is complex and what many call friendship is not that at all but looks like it on the surface.  We come together for various reasons on the road of life but when our common interest have ceased to be, if you listen you can almost hear a big thud, the energy no longer works.  We grieve those losses and wonder what could have happened.  Sometimes, nothing happened.  It just is what it is or was what it was.

I have a true friend and for that I thank my lucky stars.  She has the gift of saying whatever she needs to say.  Of course this has not always been easy and have led to some serious disagreements but we have always come out on the other end.  We talk and communicate and are there in times of trouble or distress.  I know I can call on her at any time and she knows that of me.  I sometimes wonder how our friendship survives as we are opposites in every way.  One has to be able to communicate in order to have a true and real friendship.  Very few of us are born with the gift to read minds.  Often times there may be rifts or misunderstandings and resentment festers.  Harbored resentments, petty jealousies, or any real or imagined slights can be the end of friendship.  We all need those who have our back and will walk the journey with us.  However, sometimes things are not meant to be. When we clean the forest and hack out the dead wood, we make room for new things to grow.

It takes a mature and concious individual to be able to nurture and sustain an authentic friendship.  We need to be able to give as well as take and to grow well rounded relationships.  No man or woman is an island.

Several years ago I fell in love with Italy.  I was blessed to soak up the beautiful environment while studying the language and partaking of all things Italian.  In fact, before I moved to Santa Fe, NM Italy was a serious consideration of places to live.  I had grown weary of the US and wanted a more caring way of life.  I had watched over the years how we in the US had become a throw away society relegating our elderly to nursing homes so that we could move on with our lives.  I admired the Italians and the way they nurtured and valued the elderly.  I watched as my dear friend whom I had met on one of my sojourns cared for her father in law as he was suffering from dementia.  The tenderness and all inclusiveness was something to behold as he was cherished as a loved one and remained in the home.  Of course there was extra work as he required feeding, bathing and dressing but the love in which these activities were carried out was evident.  The last photograph before he died I took on one of my visits.  It was a holiday meal and we were all standing around the table with him in the foreground giving a gaze to the camera.  That is the life that I would want in my aged years.  I would want love, respect and a community of caring friends.

We are living in a time of youth obsession. Media tells us if we use the latest cream, exercise, take the best potions we can stay young forever. It seems as if no one wants to get old. There is a saying that aging is not for sissies. Everyone knows that along with aging there will be bodily changes. Our senses may dim and we will have to learn to navigate our world in a different way. Many of us spend a great amount of time denying and fighting the inevitable. We will all age and we will all die. We have done a disservice to our elderly. We have forgotten respect and how to listen. We become impatient with their increasing frailty and many avoid our elderly citizens all together. Nursing homes have become our nation’s dumping ground. Our elderly are the ones who carry our wisdom and our history. They are the ones who have carried the light on the path. Aging can be a passage with great dignity if we allow. Our older citizens deserve a place at the table of life and their voices need to be heard. Youth would learn much by disconnecting the latest gadget and listening.

I consider myself blessed as this day I still enjoy the friendship and love of my elderly parents. I never tire of hearing the same stories over and over. It is a gift.

There is no doubt  being a successful parent and  raising loving productive members of society is not for the faint of heart.  I marvel at jobs well done and I marvel at beautiful relationships between parent and child.  I marvel at my own parents who successfully raised and nurtured 3 of us and nobody ended up in prison.  I have been blessed to have had a wonderful relationship with my parents and as an adult we are friends.  I enjoy the people they are and all they have learned along the way and have shared with me.  I have gained a different perspective of my parents than when I was a child.  Of course when we are children we have the idea that we know it all and although our parents have walked a lot longer on the road of life for some reason we think we are wiser.  I can remember balking at discipline and crying out at the unfairness of it all with curfew.  Looking back I am grateful.  I am grateful that my parents cared enough to want me home by a certain time.  I am grateful that my parents cared enough to want to know my friends.  I am also grateful that in spite of rules my parents gave me trust.  They were not what we call today “helicopter parents.”  They kept a certain distance and allowed me to learn, to make mistakes and to grow.  Children require discipline, love and a sense of freedom.

Unfortunately, relationships are complex and often not easy.  Sometimes  conflict is the state of affairs  between parents and adult children.  I have seen grown friends cringe and tremble with worry regarding a parent’s visit.  I have witnessed a regression of my savvy friends to a dependant child like state in the presence of parental figures.  I feel sadness when I witness distance and hostility between those who we  hope would love each other the most.  Parents make mistakes as most have learned from old patterns and the way they were raised themselves.  It is unfortunate that parenting is often not viewed as a serious undertaking akin to getting a drivers license.  When we get our license, there is a test and should we fail, we have to try again.   Same should be said for parenting. When parents cannot address their own stuff, it is often laid on the shoulders of the child and makes for a cauldron of resentment.

It is a beautiful sight to behold to watch the love and mutual respect between parent and child.  To be able to sit, enjoy and converse with our parents is one of the best gifts we could be given.   One could only hope we would be so blessed as to have that in our own lives.

I am afraid of death.  In fact I used to  despise death and see it as the enemy coming to steal joy and happiness.   That is until I became a hospice nurse.  One would think becoming a hospice nurse would be the last thing for someone with a loathing of death. Looking back, the universe knew of my fear and had a plan.  It was a plan that I would make friends with death.  The two of us would become intimate and start to pal around together.  That might have been the plan of fate but it was not a plan of mine.   I simply wanted a job and it was there waiting for me.

Death had been a visitor early in my life losing my only brother at 17 years of age while I was 20.  Of course I had seen grandparents die but they had been ill and of advanced years and it had been expected.  I was more prepared.  It is very difficult to be prepared when death comes like lightening out of a clear blue sky.   Death has a way of putting things into perspective.  When we are lying on our death bed we can get very clear on what is important.  Clarity can be a side effect of impending death.

I was given a gift.  I became an  observer in the lives of many as they made the transition from life.   I stood by bedsides as  souls separated from bodies heading for places unknown.  I came to understand that no one dies alone even when the room is void of another human.  There is a presence and many a dying person is aware.  I never knew who they were talking to or reaching for but the invisible presence was always there.  Even in great pain comfort would come as breathing slowed..   It is a moment in the big scheme of things for as surely as we are born, we all have to die.

Yes it was a gift.  The day I sat with the 17 year old cancer patient who spoke so eloquently of his acceptance of impending death was also a gift.  He had made his peace and as he prepared lunch for me spoke of his parents great sadness and their refusal to accept that he was going to die.  His sadness and grief was for his parents but as he told me there was work for him to do somewhere else.  I was in awe of his tremendous bravery and strength.

In life so many forget.  We race thru life placing importance on things that will not matter in the long run; issues that will long be forgotten.  We take on an air of self indulgent importance as if we have forever.  Many hold grudges and refuse forgiveness as egos fight to claim self righteousness.  I am learning to slow my breathing to the speed of life.  I am learning to stop and pay attention to what really matters in my world.  I am learning to accept what I cannot change.  I still have not made death my pal but I can look at him now and know he is not the enemy.

One of the more difficult things to do as we tread along the road of life is to work on our own stuff.  We all have stuff whether we want to admit or not.  Often times many find it easier to keep busy with various external stimuli rather than confronting what some feel is the dark side of ourselves.  Make no doubt about it, the dark side can scare us and often reveal pieces of ourselves we had rather not see.  It takes strength and courage to confront our demons and invite them to dance in tune with the rest of us.  Very few of us are so spitually advanced that deep introspection would not prove beneficial.  We spend a large amount of time proving our spiritual worthiness through workshops, books, gurus, psychics, etc that we fail to look in the place where we will find the answers, within ourselves.  There is no one who has walked our exact path and our exact footsteps.  We are the ones that will guide us to our place of peace if we do the necessary work.  We must look long and deep and have the compassion for self forgiveness.  Without the capacity for forgiveness and a mature response to our dark self we place burden upon our very physical existence.  Professional therapeutic intervention can be a wonderful and beneficial asset when wounds are just too painful and deep.  We as compassionate humans deserve to know all of our parts and appreciate the gifts they bring into our lives.  Without challenges we would cease to grow and in growth we find renewal.

I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, and thank you.  These are the four tenents of Ho Oponopono a Hawaiian practice of reconciliation. I learned of Ho Oponopono some years ago. Dr Ihaleaka Hew lon a hawaiian psychiatrist developed the model while working with a ward of criminally insane patients. Although he never saw the patients, as he reviewed their file he began working on himself. Amazingly, the patients began to improve. Medications were reduced and those that had been previously in restraints were able to walk the grounds freely. He allowed himself to take full responsibility for all that was happening in his awareness. According to the practice all of our experiences come first from our minds. Nothing is outside of us. Dr. Lon came to understand as we improve ourselves, conditions in our world improve. The more Ho Oponopono is practiced the more peace one feels. However difficult, the practice would bring into our space a peaceful arena to work on our own stuff.

Although the practice may bring peace and enlightenment some forget a powerful piece of the reconciliation puzzle, the need to hear and be heard. In times of disagreement or chaos, both parties sit in the space with the mantra of Ho oponopono followed by saying what needs to be said. Both parties must allow each to have their own feelings without negating or interrupting. Only then can both be heard. A wonderful thing happens when we are heard and have matured enough to allow the same for others. Ho Oponopono can be a powerful tool for healing but cannot live in a vacuum. We are all spiritual beings on our own path. If we were not still learning we would not be on planet earth.