The Infinite Way

"It is right, natural and normal that we live full, happy, and prosperous lives, but we can do this without taking thought for ourselves, for our supply, or even our health. All the good necessary to our welfare will be supplied to us in greater abundance that we can accept when we give up the effort to and desire to get, achieve or accomplish, and come more into the consciousness of desiring only to fulfill our destiny on earth. We are here as a part of a divine plan. We are Consciousness fulfilling and expressing Itself in an individual way, and if we will learn to keep our thought away from ourselves and away from the fear that we will be without place or income or health, and let God fulfill Its destiny through us or as us, we will really find all things added unto us."

- Joel S. Goldsmith

Growing Through Grief

Grief is one of those experiences in life that we try to avoid. It is ironic then, that it is this very experience that holds for us the greatest possibility for growth.

The wonderful Catholic priest, mystic and writer Henri Nouwen said this:

"In a society which is much more inclined to help you hide your pain rather than grow through it, it is necessary to make a very conscious effort to mourn."

-Henri Nouwen   (emphasis by me)

This is a profound statement. The idea that we can grow from our pain (grief) by making a conscious effort to mourn flies in the face of our cultural worldview that we should avoid it at all costs. 

Let me make two points before going on:

1) In no way am I suggesting that working to avoid loss is in any way wrong or misguided.

2) Just as no one avoids death, no one truly avoids loss during their lifetime.

So when loss comes, as it will, avoiding the grief of loss really means choosing not to experience it. This is a deep problem because choosing not to experience it doesn't make it go away, it just makes it go deeper.

The healthier way of being with grief is to allow it to flow. This is what Nouwen means by "making a conscious effort to mourn." Mourning is allowing the currents of grief to move through us and be expressed by us. "Consciousness" is required because the understandable reflex is to avoid it, that is, to "stuff it." With consciousness we can make a different choice.

“Because loss is an inevitable part of life, grief for human beings is an important and largely neglected aspect of psycho-spiritual development, as well as a profound healing process … Grief is an opportunity not for ‘resolution,’ as in the popular parlance, but for transformation: a wholly new awareness of reality, self, beloved and world.” 

— Miriam Greenspan, Healing Through The Dark Emotions 

Greenspan touches on what Nouwen meant by "growing through it." In the conscious decision to mourn, we open ourselves to an altogether new experience of life itself. Somehow, somewhere in our hearts that have not just been broken by loss, they have broken open through mourning. Standing in that place of the broken-open heart gives us a view of life that could not be without the conscious effort to mourn.

The Well Of Grief 

By David Whyte

Those who will not slip beneath 

  the still surface on the well of grief 

turning downward through its black water 

  to the place we cannot breathe 

will never know the source from which we drink, 

  the secret water, cold and clear, 

nor find in the darkness glimmering 

  the small round coins 

thrown by those who wished for something else. 

The imagery of the wishing well is powerful. There are those who stand around the well of grief wishing that things were different. They throw coins - tokens of their wish for "something else," yet they remain in their experience, standing on the edge. Then, there are those who choose to go into the well of grief. They commit themselves to the "black waters" below rather than a mere token of a wish. They "slip beneath" and "turn downward" entering the "place they cannot breathe." And yet somehow in the place that appears to be the end, we find the "source from which we drink" a "secret water, cold and clear." And here, in this place, we find gold glimmering in that darkness; those coins, no longer mere tokens of a wish, but the embodiment of a transforming experience.

David Kessler, one of the visionary's of the Hospice and death and dying movement, in his book, The Rights of the Dying, said this:

“Few human experiences are as powerful and universal, and even fewer impact our lives so significantly as those related to death and mourning.” 

— David Kessler, The Rights Of The Dying 

May we all learn to make a conscious effort to mourn our losses, big and small, growing through them.

Shattered & Whole

When I was seventeen, I felt the weight of self-blame and anger with no recourse but to hurt myself. I remember looking in the mirror in my bathroom, seeing a face stare back at me that I despised. The surging emotion bringing blood to my face and tears to my eyes, I clenched my fist and punched that mirror with all I had.

My fist made a large indentation in the bathroom vanity cabinet. The impact made a dent with shards of glass radiating out from it some fell to the floor, some remained attached to the cabinet, hanging at odd angles. Still, I looked at the image, now shattered, in pieces, broken.

My hand was bloody, but in a strange way, it felt good.

That was forty five years ago. It has taken forty five years for me to gather up all the shards and broken pieces, one by one, breaking my psychic skin with many of them. It has taken me forty five years to assemble them back into a flat reflective surface. In the process the image in the mirror was never complete. Until recently, I could not get a full glance at the man in the mirror.

I do not look back to that day forty five years ago and wish it had been different. I do not blame anymore, I don't feel blame-worthy anymore. When those shards of my face fell to the floor, when my blood dripped to the floor, when I was cut again and again by picking up the pieces, I was unknowingly nourished for the journey to this moment.

This life is a process. The process is continuing to move while not knowing the rules. The process teaches us the rules, and that's the point.

I had to shatter - to die - so that I could become my self. Now, enough of the mirror-puzzle has been reassembled that I can see the full refection. My face is lined with breaks and cracks, marked by age and the effort of gathering what was shattered and placing the pieces in order by my own intention and vision.

Blame has become gratitude. Anger has become joy. Hatred has become compassion. Then, at seventeen, indifferent to my life, now I love, I am loving, I am lovable.

I Listen You

How can I stand by and watch you be so harsh to yourself? How can I not speak when with a heavy hand and a sharp voice you deal with your own heart. How can I not hear the cry of your soul as the wounds of long ago arise with a face so like your own?

I cannot.

I cannot because I know that harshness, that voice, those hands. I know that face and that cry.  And I know how to witness these familiar energies, and hear that voice beneath it all.

I can listen you.

I can take it in and breath it out, and give you a moment of clarity. And there, in that breath, may you find the lotus becoming open, the clearing in your own heart.

The Lords Prayer (from the Aramaic)

I found this on another blog...

I like this version. How about you?
 

O Birther! Father- Mother of the Cosmos
Focus your light within us - make it useful.
Create your reign of unity now-
through our fiery hearts and willing hands
Help us love beyond our ideals
and sprout acts of compassion for all creatures.
Animate the earth within us: we then
feel the Wisdom underneath supporting all.
Untangle the knots within
so that we can mend our hearts' simple ties to each other.
Don't let surface things delude us,
But free us from what holds us back from our true purpose.
Out of you, the astonishing fire,
Returning light and sound to the cosmos.

Shalom,

Stephen

A More Perfect Union

I have been blessed to become acquainted with the community of Congregation B'nai Israel here is Sacramento. In particular, with Rabbi Mona Alfi. I see in Rabbi Alfi something that seems to be rare in spiritual leaders: a keen sense of oneness along with a commitment to inclusion, restoration and united effort.

Rabbi Alfi was invited to speak on Thursday night at the Salaam Center of Sacramento on the occasion of the 10th Anniversary of 9-11. 

Rabbi Alfi's remarks follow.

[Just as a note, Judaism and Islaam have the common root of being the tradition and lineage descended from Abraham, Israel (Judaism) from Abraham's son Isaac; and Islaam from Abraham's son Ishmael.]

A More Perfect Union

(Presented at Salaam Center of Sacramento, Sept 8, 2011)

 

Hinei mah tov u'mah nayim, shevat achim gam yachad - How good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters dwell together (Psalm 133).  Tonight we come together, as brothers and sisters, children of a shared dream, a single family that has also suffered loss together, all of us the children of this great nation of the United States.

In the Bible we are taught that when our father Abraham died, his sons Ishmael and Isaac came together to bury him (Gen. 25:9).  

The Jewish tradition teaches us that with Abraham's passing, Isaac and Ishmael lived in harmony with each another.  They came together not only to mourn their shared loss, as brothers should, but they also found healing from their pain, by living side by side in peace.  

I can easily imagine these two brothers standing at their father's grave, weeping and embracing each other, and asking themselves what is the purpose of fighting?  What greater way is there for two brothers to honor their father's memory than by living in harmony with each other?

Today we come together, also as brothers and sisters, to mourn our shared losses of all those who perished on September 11, ten years ago.  This is a time for us to remember that we are all part of the same American family.

By coming together tonight we are given the opportunity to not only look back at the terrible events that haunt us still, but it also reminds us of the necessity for us to look toward the future and our shared obligation to create a society that lives by our country's greatest teachings.

In the preamble of our Constitution, our founding fathers wrote that "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity..."

We are the lucky inheritors of these great ideals.  And what greater way is there for us to honor our founding fathers than to live by these beliefs?  This is not an inheritance for us to put on a shelf or to simply read about or study.  This is an inheritance that provides for us a blueprint of a great and just society.  

The Blessings of Liberty that the founding fathers spoke of are blessings that need to be secured and nurtured by each and every generation.  And it is our shared responsibility to create opportunities to come together for the common good, so that we can ensure that our children, and our children's children, will enjoy these blessings as well.

We must never forget that our nation is a Union - a collection of people with different backgrounds and religions, different regional interests, different political beliefs, and yet we can come together with not only common purpose, but also a shared feeling of responsibility for each other's welfare.

We are a family, and like every family, we do not need to be the same, but we must listen to each other, accept each other, know and understand where each other's concerns are coming from.  We must find ways to honor our differences and protect each other's rights.  And we must never forget that our destinies are intertwined.

When my brother grieves, my heart is saddened.  When my sister has success, I am joyful.   And when I weep, or when I celebrate, it gives me comfort to know that it matters to them.  In the shadow of 9-11, we must never forget that all Americans are brothers and sisters, and we must never fail to act as such.

Ours was a shared horror as we watched the Towers collapse and the Pentagon attacked.  We all mourned the deaths of those who were killed.  We were all inspired by the first responders and those on United Flight 93 who showed tremendous courage on that fateful day.  We all felt lost and scared in the days, weeks and months following the attacks.  And we went through all of these experiences as an American family.

But just as we are able to come together in times of mourning and remembrance, and in times of great celebration, we must remember what makes a family strong is how they interact on a daily basis.

Let us study together so that we can understand how to put our shared beliefs into practice.  Let us repair the world together by helping the most vulnerable in our society.  Let us break bread together, and share our stories, and remind ourselves over and over again - how good it can be when brothers and sisters dwell together - hinei mah tov u'mah nayim, shevat achim gam yachad.

May the Holy One, the Creator of all humanity bless our nation with shalom, with salaam, with peace.  Amen.  

Rabbi Mona Alfi

 

A Secret?

The Way of Mastery:

"There are many that learn some valuable lessons by following the path of certain teachers that will teach you that you can create whatever you want. That will seem like such a big deal until you realize it is what you are doing all of the time. You are always creating exactly what you decree. It is no big deal and it is not a secret."


Shalom

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod

You are invited to follow this blog. Just click the link.

Albert Speaks

“A human being is a part of a whole, called by us “universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

- Albert Einstein

Honesty

Everyone starts at the bottom

of the mountain of honesty.

The climb is long,

littered with the stones of lives

that became hard and brittle

with what is required in this ascent.

Slowly, and upward, things become sparse,

exposed, elemental.

Slowly come

the brilliant views,

the intense light rising within,

the brutal effort in moving another step.

And then the summit

presents itself:

a mirror of diamond clarity

giving nothing, reflecting everything,

offering you to yourself.

In this moment, you are alone.

In this moment, all that is in you

is all that is needed,

and you must decide if that

is enough.

Things Fall Into Place

[An essay for you... ]

Tonight I will sleep in the White Mountains of east-central California at a high, lonely place aptly called Grand View Campground. At 8000 feet on the western flank of the range, it provides an overview of Owens Valley, and an awesome panorama of the Range of Light, the High Sierra. A small dirt track leads west from the campground through the sage and Piñon Pine to some craggy outcrops distinctly uncomfortable for sitting. I know I will stop there, facing this awesome sweep of altitude, granite and ice … and of time.

I have visited these mountains since I was a little kid. Dad was a geologist, a teacher at the university, and for many summers conducted field camps in this area for his students. Visiting him during those summers introduced me to this country. In 1971, years after dad’s involvement in the geology camps, I returned. I wrote a line of poetry so foreign to my life at that time that I have not forgotten: “If God is anywhere, this is the place.”

I’m not a religious man, though I had my share of it in my twenties through forties. Those decades of experience are probably why I’m not a religious man today. Back in 1971, in the high Whites, religion wasn’t present in that line of poetry.

Poet David Whyte once said, “Sometimes everything has to be enscribed across the heavens for you to find the one line already written inside you.” I found my “one line” sitting among the ancient Bristlecone Pines, native to the high reaches of this desert range. These trees are wind swept, sand blasted, living beings of immense age. They were both the inspiration and the only audience for the words I wrote that day. It took the harshness of this place and the almost inconceivable stretch of time these trees have lived to nurse open a broken spot in the hardness of my young life. And God showed up. I remember that feeling, that initial breath of spirit coming to consciousness.

Tonight I will be there again.

The road up Westgard Pass is steep and serpentine. This is sun broiled country, and the sand and the rock radiate heat back upward. The canyon narrows, and around a northern bend, an incongruous eruption of green appears. As we approach the spring, the memories come to me. In the early evening, after a day in the field and a good camp meal with his colleagues and students, Dad and I would walk up the hill to the old flat-bed Ford. On the bed of the truck, like a blob of melted tar, was a great rubber bladder, an Army surplus relic. This held the water supply for the geology camp, the headwaters of a system of pipes that fed two outdoor showers among the Piñon Pines. Each afternoon there was a silent competition for the first water out of those pipes, which had heated during the day. The bladder needed re-filling every three days or so. Dad liked that duty, and when I was in camp, it was my job, too.

After unfastening the fittings, we climbed into the cab of the truck. It seemed an enormous vehicle to me. My chin could rest on the sill of the open passenger window. Dad put it in first gear, and we moved slowly down the sage covered hill to the dirt ruts leading out of camp and onto the Westgard road. The trip to the spring took about 30 minutes. I can’t remember what Dad and I talked about, but it is a sweet memory for me, knowing that it was just him and me. I imagine he had plenty to think about after a day in the field with his students. But maybe that’s why he liked this particular errand. There is something settling and simple about the high desert; perhaps Dad and I didn’t talk much. Perhaps silence was Dad’s way of courting solitude and teaching his young son to do the same.

The water from the spring up on the hill was captured and guided into a pipe that brought it down near the road. We would park the truck next to the stone and mortar trough holding the water that bubbled out of the pipe. Dad would tap into the supply higher up the hill so the bladder would fill by gravity. I always liked to sit on the bladder where the hose attached. I could feel the bladder gently swell as it filled with the cool water. It took about two hours.

In the mild cool of the evening, as the light lowered in the canyon, bats would rise from the dense Cottonwood foliage. They were silent soaring shadows creating amazing designs in the sky. Dad said they were eating mosquitoes, and that he was glad there was something that liked eating mosquitoes before the mosquitoes would eat us. He found a joy in that little joke. He said it every time we came to the spring for water.

I liked trying to hit the bats with rocks. This was far less possible than I liked to think. But I remember Dad encouraging me as one of my tosses came close, and laughing at the futility of the effort. In these simple things, I remember a childlike joy in my father. He loved the natural world; he loved unfolding it in knowledge for others, and there at the spring, his joy, and his love for the natural world were planted in me.

On this trip to the White Mountains, I travel with my cousin, Dave. He and I have become close over the past several months. Dave is a landscape photographer. His love for wilderness beauty and his quality of seeing draws me to him. This was the first time he has come to this area, although he knows of it through family stories and friends. He is planning on photographing the Bristlecone Pines for the first time.

In the morning, Dave and I drive out from Grand View Campground, and head up hill. The first access to the Bristlecones is at Schulman Grove, at about 10,000 feet, but we opt to go higher. The pavement ends at Schulman Grove; twelve miles along the dirt road we come to Patriarch Grove, at just over 11,000 feet.

Foliage at this altitude is small and low-growing: a few clumps of sage, mostly lichen and tiny, brilliant wildflowers. From a distance these little flowers give the white dolomitic soil and rock a dusting of pastel color: pink, blue, yellow. The only other foliage are the Bristlecone Pines. Though they are not tall as trees go, they dominate my attention.

Neither Dave nor I speak much as we drive down the rough spur leading to the Patriarch Grove. These trees have a presence much larger than their physical being. Words almost seem inappropriate. I sense in their presence a patience, an acceptance, and a wisdom that is as tangible as the rarefied air the trees grow in.

Dave and I walk down a trail to the tree after which the grove is named: The Patriarch. It is the largest of the Bristlecone Pines, with a trunk circumference of about 37 feet. I estimate its height to be about the same. As we approach The Patriarch, I notice how it has grown. The highest reach of this magnificent tree is formed from long-dead trunk and limbs. They are beautiful tan, brown and wine-colored spears pointing into the depth of space. Out from the center horizontally and below the vertical rise of the old, dead trunk, the branches, needles and cones form a lush doughnut of living tree.

I walk up to the tree. I’m breathing deeply with the altitude. I gently touch one of the needled boughs above my head. I walk beneath the tree, into its space, into its embrace. Emotion rises freely. I am greeting an understanding, compassionate seer. I touch the living trunk. I feel its rough texture. I say “Thank you.”

Dave has thoughtfully given me space for my experience, but I walk around the huge trunk and see that he is having his own moment of greeting with the tree. I can see Dave’s eyes see — not what he sees, but his intense focus, his noticing of detail, his connected heart, his love. He moves slowly, looking at all angles; then he moves quickly with some silent intuition of another image that captures a small slice of soul of The Patriarch.

Dave and I walk out across a large flat meadow of white rock and lichen, and ascend a hill south and east of The Patriarch. We slow our pace as we move up the slope allowing our lungs to keep up with us. From the top of the hill we look directly east and down to Cottonwood Basin, a lush oasis of granite, aspen, grass and sun. The eastern horizon draws our sight across the vast Great Basin. John Muir described this view as “ridge upon ridge, as great layers of ash dropped from a burning sky.” To the north, White Mountain itself glances over the intervening ridges. It stands as high as the highest of Sierra Peaks.

How can anything grow here? Let alone survive for almost 5000 years. These trees do. It is the unique qualities of the Bristlecone Pine in concert with the harshness and difficulty of this place that actually contribute to such longevity. Dr. Edmund Schulman, after whom the Schulman Grove is named, wrote, “…on the driest and most adverse sites it is easier to find a very old tree than a very young one.”

I enjoy picturing Schulman who, in the mid-1950’s came here on a whim and a rumor, and he found the culminating discovery of his life’s work: the world’s oldest known living thing. His love and wonder for these trees is palpable when he writes: “There is something a little fantastic in the persistent ability of a 4,000-year old tree to shut up shop almost everywhere through its stem in a very dry year, and faithfully to reawaken to add many new cells in a favorable year.”

I imagine him walking among these trees over forty years ago. I like to think that the trees drew out his heart the way they do mine. I see him asking permission of the tree to take a core sample, and the gentleness of his intrusion. And I see him in his small lit trailer, late in the evening, counting dense rings under a microscope. I feel his excitement and awe as it begins to dawn on him: “That evening I had our long cores…under the lens, and as I dated the outer centuries of rings and then went on to a quick count of the earlier rings, unusually crowded even for Bristlecone, I felt excitement rise, for we were rapidly piling up the centuries. And when I got to within one inch of the inner end of our cores, I fairly shouted at my colleague working across the table.”

I have already lived more years than Edmund Schulman. He died early, at 49, which I find an irony in light of his work with the Bristlecones. Many times in my life I have questioned my own purpose and work: what my life means. At times this questioning has seemed as intrusive as a core sample must be to a tree. I feel as if I have counted the rings of my life, identifying the growth, the hard and lean years, the times I shut down.

Dave and I spend the evening atop a wide ridge watching the sun drop and the full moon rise. He is absorbed in his art; I allow my thoughts to move. It occurs to me that personal meaning is a very present experience. Meaning draws on history, but doesn’t live there. We bring meaning to this moment alone.

Edmund Schulman’s work and love for these trees. Dad and me at the spring on Westgard Pass over forty years ago. That one line of poetry that came to me as an opening to something greater in life. Being with the ancient Patriarch today. Dave’s passion, focus and engagement in wanting the world to see what he sees. All these bring meaning to this moment, and I sense, in the presence of all that has come before, a grand design complete now, but still forming. From this vantage point in the high Whites, among the ancient ones, I know that things fall into place.

[May you be well. Stephen]