Kintsugi

 Kintsugi is a way of mending broken pottery in Japan with lacquer dusted with gold or silver powder. It is recognizing, allowing, acknowledging and celebrating a crack or what might be seen as a flaw, but is an imperfection that joins all humanity... we are all imperfect which is part of what MAKES us human. I believe we are in this human life to grow and expand which requires some kinks along the way, and maybe even some suffering... so our suffering can be purposeful, which is encouraging and reminds me to be with suffering so that it is not wasted. It contributes to my heart's expansion and compassion. 

One nice excerpt from this article:

Today, extremely strong and barely visible epoxies and other repair compounds exist – but none add value to the pottery the way kintsugi does. If the perfect repair is done and the pottery looks as good as new. That is well and good, but it is also no better than a brand new mass produced item.

Again, same for humans. With age comes experience. With failures comes wisdom. Instead of hankering for a clean slate, forever wishing to take back one’s old mistakes, grasping for something different, we should instead highlight ourselves, flaws and all in large bold gold letters and become more beautiful for it.

In doing so, by practicing the philosophy that kintsugi so perfectly encapsulates, we find that ourselves and our lives suffice and is innately wonderful.

Honoring Land Ancestors, The Osage

Today, walking in Overland I noticed a sign that mentioned an old Indian burial ground... I wandered behind a church and said a prayer on the grassy slope there... honoring ancestors. I decided to research the native American, indigenous people of the st Louis area...

The largest and most powerful tribe was the Osage.

Here we see an Osage warrior.

"The men are tall and perfectly proportioned. They have at the same time all the physical qualities which denote skill and strength combined with graceful movements. . . .

by Charles Evret de Saint-Me

". . . their ear[lobe]s, slit by knives, grow to be enormous, and they hang low under the weight of the ornaments with which they are laden. There is a complete lack of beard and eyebrows on their faces, for they carefully pull out the little hair which happens to grow there.

"Their calm, dignified faces show great shrewdness; there is something soldierly and serious about the expression. Their hair is black and thick. The Osage shave their heads, except for the top, from which two strands of hair branch off and grow straight back to the occiput, where they form a tuft which falls to the lower part of the neck; between these strands grow two braids, the beauty of which consists in their length. . . .

"The [Osage Indians] seldom go out without painting themselves; the colors they use are, first, vermillion, then verdigris [greenish-blue], and then yellow, which they buy from the trader; lacking these, they use ochre, chalk, or even mud.

"The Osage always paint red that part of their head around their hair, the eye-sockets, and their ears; these are the national colors, the war-time paint. The other colors, indifferently put on the other parts of their bodies, depend upon their individual fancy."

-Victor Tixier, physician, 1839

I am moved by the discipline, ritual and self respect that comes through these images and writings.  I long for the days when tribal earth- and ancestral-honoring traditions connected people to each other, the past and the land. I long for a deep sense of respect for oneself and for the land as a way of life that is shared in community.

by George Catlin

#osageindian #osagewarrior #missourinative #nativeamerican #nativelands

My wounded child and the careening bus she sometimes drives

A week ago I returned from a retreat in Evia, Greece: Embodied Trauma Healing, led by Ralf Marzen who has studied with Laurence Heller who "wrote the book" on developmental trauma.

The one-week experience helped shine a light on the shapes of how my childhood trauma is still expressing itself in my adult life on large and small subtle planes. Whereas before, the effects seemed foggy, vague, I came from the retreat with more awareness and clarity, and last week a big trauma vortex materialized upon my return home.

It is incredible how much pain can come up from a past trauma when triggered by a current situation... was trying to grapple with what happened in my past that creates such an "illogical" reaction right now.... feeling the pain of opening up vulnerably to someone and feeling abandoned by them, even if they're not really abandoning me at all.

The only thing I can surmise is that when I was 3, my father had a bad car accident and left the country with my mother to recover in a New York hospital for 4 to 6 months. When he returned his personality was different and he was a little bit out of it, very disconnected from me. This traumatic experience was never processed so it was never completed because as a three-year-old I didn't have any language and the wisdom of the day was to pretend like nothing happened and everything is normal, to "protect" us children from emotions related to upsetting events. So even though it was a very upsetting event for the adults in the family, their approach was to not talk about it and stuff emotions and not explain or empathize with the four children who were surely freaking out on many levels, or just shutting down.

I have no direct memory of my three year old's experience, but last week while bending over with grief and intense crying in the kitchen, I did start to connect somewhere deep inside to the desperation of annihilation that my small child actually experienced, and that awareness made me cry so much harder feeling empathy for the little one who was completely abandoned and was completely empty and meaningless without her parents. I connected to awareness that the wound was never treated by her trusted caregivers.

Certain relationships today trigger that trauma experience of losing contact with my father.... So when a capable attractive man shows a special interest in me, even as a friend, and we connect vulnerably, I get drawn in and when we part, it can be very upsetting/triggering the childhood pain again. The more vulnerably I share with that person, the more deep into the wound our connection penetrates, and so when the connection ends (we both traveled home and went back to our lives after the one week in the retreat in this iteration, there have been many!) it's like the wound has been re-opened, and pus is flowing and the pain body is totally awakened.

So how can I complete the cycle of my 3 year old self losing her Dad's attention so I can safely share with people without feeling attached or abandoned?

I proceeded through flight, then freeze then fight responses as I went in and out of the trauma vortex over the course of 2.5 days. Thoughts of dying, going into the hospital, being in a tribal community with 20 people holding me in love and being a lover-partner to this guy were all fantasies I had. Then I popped out of the deep level of pain to a functioning place of going to the store with my faculties and language intact without wanting to fall back into despair... I had to function to deliver a workshop in a few days.

I called in my closest women friends as loving resource. I also spoke to this wonderful man and I criticized him for something he did the week before, and it was the weirdest thing to watch myself go there, to this blaming, wounded place again with him. Days later, I was reeling with regret that I let my little wounded child get a hold of the steering wheel of the bus of my life... she was careening through the relationship, banging into his knees. He had a pain response, and withdrew a bit... but has not totally fled. In many past situations when my wounded child would complain or ask for more attention, the man would flee and I would lose the whole connection, exactly my biggest fear.



This is a cruel affliction... grasping to something I want to survive and feel worth being alive, and it evaporates when I get needy. And I am ready to hold it all and take a bigger ownership to heal it.

I realize now how much my little girl has taken the wheel in my relationships with men who tap into the wound as well as with friends and bosses... making them responsible to fulfill some of my needs.

And I can celebrate huge strides I have made in the last 10 years, not taking things so personally in relationships to friends and acquaintances, and creating better boundaries with men who were objects of my source of validation. I have maintained friendships with two of the men who triggered a trauma vortex for me in the last 9 years (but 4 or 5 others failed, being turned off by that child presence) and this feels like a success worth celebrating.

An area for me to focus on is my struggle with self-care and self-love... I struggle with doing nice joyful things for myself like making music, dancing, singing, creating art or poems... I used to do these things when I had steady jobs and rich social connections. I started a path of spiritual and personal growth, and while I have deepened into some close friendships, I have much less social contact not working, and not hanging out at so many events or hosting parties as I used to.

My ultimate goal is to be a full adult in this lifetime who takes care of her inner child(ren)... I think I have a 3 year old and a 10 year old in there that need love and attention.

So what to do now?

• attend to my own thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
• pay attention to what I want and need and I ask for support.
• take care of myself. I move my body and I connect to music.
• (AKA #resource)
• be in touch with what is going on right now, including how I feel about it.
• accept 100 percent responsibility for my own happiness, security, and needs.
• recognize and celebrate my strengths, while remaining humble about my weaknesses.
• consciously celebrate my power, my qualities, my unique lovable beauty
• get therapy with trauma healing counselors

source https://psychcentral.com/blog/sobriety-for-a-love-addict/

= LOVE MYSELF

While my wounded child can get a little passionate driving the careening bus, she is also happy to sit in the back seat and be cuddled with a safe loving blanket.

Marking Transition with Vision Fast

In May of this year I embarked on a six day road trip to New Mexico where I would join a group of women to co-create a Vision Fast experience. For me, I was looking for a way to mark the end of a 2.5 year hiatus from the worldly material life of employment... a hiatus spent in trips to India and internal exploration and realization of my past trauma.

A hiatus spent questioning work life, who I choose for friends, why I fall in love, my need for validation, how to cultivate self-love, how my house can consume my attention, why I eat when I'm not hungry, my fear of what others think, my aging body, why I deny myself time for creativity, how to care for my mother, how I want to connect to myself and to God, what Christianity, Vedic philosophy, Buddhism, and Krishna consciousness have to teach about those things, practicing life coaching, and mostly, how I am being called to be in service. 

I still hadn't made a plan or any major decisions. I wanted some direction and some confidence about at least a few areas of life. In my previous explorations of shamanic traditions I had heard about Vision Fast tradition and had wanted to do it. So in Spring of this year I found the Women's Vision Fast organized by the School of Lost Borders. When I read the online description I knew that these people were the real deal. Sincere honest spiritually connected people that were in service to people's process, not posturing or marketing to garner the most participants. Their fees were reasonable, and their website was basic, with emphasis on the verbal content, not design or purchase process. I felt connected and confident enough to sign up. 

I allowed myself 6 days to drive the 24 hours to the Santa Fe area, stopping to camp alone by the coast in Florida, spending 2 days in rural quiet gracious historic St. Francisville, Louisiana, spending 2 days in a canyon of West Texas, and then arriving the night before at a campground in Cochiti Lake, NM. I allowed myself this time to be with myself. I enjoyed my own company as I explored a historic cemetery and some sleepy sprawling plantations. 

I enjoyed the books on CD during the 5 to 6 hours of driving each day. Between the trip out and the one back, I listened to: 1) "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen R. Covey; 2) I tried "Care of the Soul" by Thomas Moore but stopped halfway through the first CD very uninspired after listening to S. Covey; 3) The Power of Vulnerability by Brene Brown; and 4) Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. Listening to these 3 books was in itself a valuable experience as I drove down highways in some of the most beautiful places I have ever been, having a lot of realizations about myself and about life!

The morning after I arrived at Cochiti Lake campground overlooking the largest blackest berm wall I have ever seen (retaining a giant reservoir), I gathered with the ladies in our first circle to share about why we were here; to share our individual reasons for wanting to be alone on the land. We were five participant women, ages 25 to 50, with two elder guides, Emerald North and Margaret Thompson, and two assistants, Galaxy and Kim Allen. 

The elder guides spoke about accessing our own deep internal wisdom and being on the land to connect with it. They shared about the medicine wheel of the 4 shields. The south shield is the childhood, based in the body, discovering the self (red). The west shield is the adolescence, going inside where it is dark to choose what from childhood we want to keep and what we want to leave behind (black). The north shield is the adulthood, where we are in action in the world (white). The east shield is elderhood, or spiritual life, where we connect it all and realize the higher purpose of being (yellow). Emerald then went through the aspects of living in an exaggerated way in any shield. Being depressed is exaggerated west shield. Being a workaholic is exaggerated north shield, etc. 

This framing helped me realize that perhaps my 2.5 years of hiatus had been a period of west shield reflection time for me where I sorted through what I have, what I have done, what I want to keep and what I want to shed... and my time alone in Vision Fast would be a time to claim what I want, and to my full adulthood. Moving out of the dark internal stage I would move forward, however slowly, in this spiral of expansion and development. 

The next few days were an exploration with the group guided by Emerald and Margaret, to reflect on what self-generated ceremony we could create on the Land. They talked about The Land and it's lessons for each of us, if we were present to receive. We were invited to ask the land for the gift of a message of how we can take our gifts to the people. It was made clear that this journey was one that was for the world, not for my own self. This spoke to me and I was moved. Yes, I want to serve with my highest gifts.

So what is stopping me? What is the roughness that seems to be providing resistance? Is it my perfectionism? I heard a snippet of public radio today that mentioned the conditioning of men to be courageous, and the conditioning of women to be perfect. Ouch! I resonated with that a lot! And I am gun-shy to move into a new area of vocation as I have changed careers once already and want to make the perfect choice this time.

I also suffer from wanting approval. And this is very painful and sticky for me because I do not wear the same shoes or pants or skirts that my parents wear. My clothes are very different, and my vehicle for life is very different, and much of how I live is a bit of a secret and hidden from many because I will be seen as different and then un-welcomed. A shaman once encouraged me to have spiritual confidence. This means to me to be confident with whatever spiritual practice that serves me, and not have fear about others' judgments. But I experience others as so intensely judgmental. Many friends in the science community might think me a cook if I mention my connection to God not to mention any devotional activities to God.

Emerald really challenged me that this desire for approval is rock sitting on my wings (my words). That it can cripple me and that my spirit is here to serve the world, and it WILL be different from what my mother or father or school friends expect of me. 

After sweet guidance, reflection and exploring questions, we each created an intention. I created "I am a full adult healer-teacher and edgy elder." 

I spent four days alone with the wild place of Ghost Ranch. I added up the hours of non-eating which was 108. I wonder if Emerald knew about this number. Hunger was with me every day until the last day.

Each day was it's own journey. One day was about creating an altar that was my own with mixed traditions, writing a song, and getting a very intimate visit from a very large snake that gave me permission to be different, be diligent and focused. One day was about an excursion into low-lying sculpted river arroyos with surprises of life, shape and depth where I experienced my confidence and strength. One was a day of rocks when I rinsed my shame into them and owned my real desires with the full moon. When I celebrated and ritualized this a band of coyotes reflected my intentions with such clear acknowledgement, I was intensely moved and validated. I experienced nature as a reflective listener many times. In the yowl of the coyotes, in the echos of the rocks, in the warmth of juniper's shelter, in the sound of rocks falling down with my heart, in the energy of my arms throwing them with the anger that they took to the river.

I can recall the juniper, the special rocks, the edge of the river, the swallows keeping watch over me... and I reconnect to that place of self-acceptance and self-attention that was the biggest act of love I have created for myself.

After the fast, I shared about it with my therapist in Gainesville. I talked about getting the message to live more vibrantly. Be with people more. Be in some action. Like watching a tennis match is good for some learning, but playing tennis you learn more. So I want to be in action, host sharing circles, host events and facilitate book discussions.

I told her about my experience on the last night of the fast connecting to big deep grief about my previous boss at the university; how I spent 7 years with her, and our relationship ended. I felt discarded after all that energy I put into the organization she and I jumpstarted together. All our time together culminated in a bad taste in her mouth and her not answering my emails, and no remnant of me on their website. My ego was crushed that there was no evidence that I had ever been there. My heart was hurt that I didn't feel any compassion or care from her. I cried for 2 hours grieving those things. I also grieved the realization that I hadn’t known myself enough to know that I wasn’t in service there; that I was not using my best skills while not giving her what she really needed. But I stayed anyway... I stayed even though I was not happy there, and she wasn't happy with me there. I didn't recognize when my energy had run it's course, and my lesson there was finished.

I spent two hours at 1 a.m. crying about this loss. About losing the relationship with my boss. Why was it so painful? What importance was I assigning to that person and that relationship? The power dynamic and my boss's personality were reminiscent of my relationship with my father I guess.

My internal little girl was waiting and yearning for approval and belonging with that boss and that organization... I didn't recognize that I was barking up the wrong tree, and my little girl was recreating the abandonment experience she had when she was 3. At that age, my father had a debilitating head injury from a car accident, and my parents both went to NYC for his hospitalization for 5 months. My three sisters and I all had different experiences of confusion, terror and abandonment, not having had it explained to us why the parents left or when they would return. I felt discarded in both of these cases.

The Vision Fast provided me with some cleansing of some weight of emotions... it provided me with clear space to express myself and yell, cry and be with myself without interruption or needing to clean things up. I could express fully with no timeline. I splayed out my body and heart on big rocks that were sun-baked and moon-bathed. I allowed my own body to be sun-baked and moon-bathed. And I felt transformed and cleansed and open for new possibilities for myself coming back home. It was not the transition I was expecting, but it was the transition I needed to experience... the letting go of past attachments to approval so I could move forward in my more authentic self.

#visionfast #visionquest #fasting #ceremony #ritual #selflove #selfgeneratedceremony #lostborders #ecotherapy #

Kumartuli and the Art of Deity-making in Kolkata, India

In Northwestern Kolkata, close to the Hoogly River (part of Holy Mother Ganga river), is a neighborhood of deity-makers, Kumartuli, long honoring the traditions of West Bengal and India. I was there in the season of Durga Puja, seeing the preparations for the subsequent week's Laxmi puja. What an amazingly perfect time to feel the zeal and creativity of this most auspicious week for Bengalis in Kolkata. They are very proud of this tradition of Durga Puja which is celebrated bigger in this city than anywhere else in India.

I visited Kumartuli several times during the week of Durga puja in October 2015. One time at night, and one time at mid-day. Creation is happening at all hours, and generally the doors to the crafting workshops are open to those who want to see the process.

I fell in love with the partly-made deities. They seemed so vulnerable in their nakedness and half-made states. I saw the beauty of the creative process, which I loved photographing and sharing here.

While some deities are created alone with their vehicles, other structures are an assemblage of deities put together to represent the story and tradition of the puja. Laxmi's vehicle is the owl, and she is the Goddess of Fortune. She is celebrated on the third day of Diwali and traditionally devotees to her clean and decorate their homes with lights and finery. They prepare sweets to offer to her. They may also purchase new clothing (I saw lots of sales toward this at stores and markets). This encourages the blessings of wealth and prosperity for people honoring Laxmi in this way.

What I remember most about the season of Laxmi puja was the constant barrage of firecrackers and fireworks throughout the cities of Kolkata and Bodhgaya!

Photo Diary of Kumartuli:

A deity starts with a bamboo superstructure, holding wrapped twisted straw deity shapes.

  

Happy devotee posing with an early Laxmi. 

Then natural clay mixed with chopped straw is sculpted onto the straw form.

   

A layer of wet clay is added to carve and shape the final form with detailed features. See photo on left with the man behind, chopping the straw on a cutting board to be mixed in with clay? Also, see the mold in the foreground here. They use some molds to creat limbs and faces, I think. It was a rare sight to see a woman deity-maker!

Molding the final clay form, while another man chops straw on the cutting board... and dog scratches.

Very rare female artisan.

This Laxmi is ready for her hands, and her exterior clay layer is dry.

Then deities are very skillfully painted in layers. White underlayer, then beige skin, then painstaking detail of the face and neck. Each diety has her characteristic details. See the red in Durga's eyes.

Night time working, painting many Laxmii deities.

Laxmi's holy feet and her owl vehicle.

Frist layers of paint on Laxmi deities.

Handpainted Laxmi face. I saw many Durga deities with the 3 lines on the neck.

Traditional Laxmi with her owl.

My favorite: Durga's traditional yellow face. 

Next, deities are clothed, and hair is glued on. Lots of workshops have their specialty... 

And finally, customers come to the market to buy from their favorite deity makers, to take their deities home...  

Happy Customer taking Laxmi to the family home. 

Customer taking a Laxmi home while vendor secures deities in his cart. 

Customers cart off an extra large deity ensemble (Visnu and consort Laxmi) in their truck that was driving by in the narrow lane... for a Laxmi puja pandal in Kolkata.

Or artists take their deities to a market in another part of town!

Laxmi's on the cart to be taken to market.

Sweet Laxmis tenderly packed on a cart for the market. Hold on tight for the ride!

 I so admire the detailed craftsmanship that goes into each deity. Each is handmade, handpainted by skilled tradesmen who care about this critically important aspect of their spiritual culture. It must be an honor to be part of one of these deity-making families. Traditions and vocations like these are typically passed down within families. They live in this section of Kolkata, keeping busy most of the year with the succession of pujas for the rich Hindu traditions that make West Bengal such a rich place of faith, tradition, color and fesitivity.

#kolkata #durgapuja #laxmipuja #westbengal #india #deities #kumartuli #hinduism #devotion #hindu #durga #calcutta #travelindia #sacredindia

Dragon Slaying at Mother Teresa's in Kolkata, India

This is about my experience with Mother Teresa’s mission at Prem Dan, where I volunteered for just one day in December, 2015.

After 6am mass at Mother House and a breakfast of Indian tea, white bread and banana, I walked for 20 minutes with a group of 10 or so volunteers (mostly from Europe and Latin America) through some gritty, poor neighborhoods. When we arrived, I walked past a van where they were loading a very skinny dead body wrapped in a white sheet, with a small flower arrangement laid on the abdomen of the covered body (wrapped like a package). I appreciated the clean whiteness, and the beautiful simple flowers on this body being carefully placed alone in the van. I said a prayer for the recently departed soul, still floating around, perhaps.

We went towards the women's dorm, as the men in our group went to the men's area. There was a covered area with a long concrete slab with 4 sinks and concrete slab in between. Two sinks were for washing and two were for rinsing with slab space for sliding laundry to the next stage. At the last stage, three resident ladies and a young volunteer was doing the wringing by hand of the sheets, towels, washrags and smocks. The older ladies were a bit tired, sitting, not able to wring too well… I was wringing strongly, gotta get more water out! I and a girl from Argentina worked the stairs to get buckets of wringed laundry up 3 flights to the roof where it would get hung to dry on the 100 clothes lines.

One young volunteer from China who was so beautiful to me, had bought jasmine flower garlands in a market on the way to the place, and gifted them to two ladies by putting them around their neck. One lady was very out of it and doing repetitive actions near the staircase where I was transferring laundry buckets. She kept opening a metal gate that was behind her as she sat in a wheelchair. She wanted to reach back and close it, or open it... or close it. Then she discovered this garland. As I brought buckets of laundry to the staircase for my Argentinian friend to haul to the roof, I saw the process of her inspection and dissection of this foreign and interesting object someone had placed upon her. She wasn't seeing beautiful flowers, but interesting shapes and textures, I think. She dropped the garland, I gave it back to her. A few times... There were lots of buckets going to the staircase...

After all laundry was done (40 or 50 metal buckets worth), we went up to hang… I loved this part, up on the roof, able to see out to the neighborhood. We looked at the other rooftops where there is quite a bit of life in India... Many people sleep, visit and hang laundry on rooftop terracess. Cats hang on rooftops to be safe from all the dogs. There could have been some great pics but no pics were allowed. Alis from Mexico said she would send me pics, but I have yet to email her to ask!

We then went to the ladies sitting at tables in their little cotton smocks with a random flower print. All but a few had shorn hair and no jewelry. They were sitting dutifully at the tables… maybe they had metal cups of water. Now it was time to be with these Bengali-speaking ladies. How to spend time with them?

There was a little toiletry bucket of nail polishes, combs, brushes and oils. We could paint their nails, comb/brush their hair, or massage them. Massage seemed the most therapeutic and intimate, so I decided to take the glycerine and offer massages. I massaged about 12 ladies… first arms and shoulders. Then decided to do full arms, hands and shoulders. One lady asked for leg massage after, so I did her legs and feet after arms, hands and shoulders.

One lady spoke to me in Bengali for 10 minutes before I started any massages, and she was telling me her dramatic story, of some injustice, I think… maybe how her family left her there… because Alis told me later that day that she saw a horrible thing when she arrived that morning. A man with a cane asked where is the exit, “I can’t find the door, where is the door?” and a pair of younger men came at him and pulled him away from the entrance while he protested, “No, I am not supposed to be here! Where is my family! I need to find my family, we just came here to go to mass! They will wonder where I am, I have to find my family!” They dragged him toward a building and obviously the family had abandoned him there without telling him. Will they ever visit him? Will they explain later, why he could not live with them anymore?

How many of these women I was with, were abandoned by their families at the stage of life where they are supposed to be relaxing after all the work of their lives, enjoying their grandchildren, and enjoying the labors of the children who would not cook and clean for them as they enjoy their elderhood. But now they are stuck in a Catholic home stripped of their Indian clothes, their long hair, their jewelry, their deities, and even of their pranams and “Namaskar.” I was told by a volunteer that the sisters do not like it when people pranam or say Namaste, or Namaskar. These women I massaged had interesting tattoos on their forearms, a relic of their past devotion and it was clear to me that many of them must be Hindus, and many probably are not Catholic converts in this Bengali city where women are extra proud of their extra shiny red and white sarees and Durga and Laxmi festivals.

I could not get a good sense of the mental capacities of these women that mostly didn’t speak. Some did speak to each other but without knowing the language, I could not tell how lucid and in reality they were. The hired staff were super efficient and logistical, not giving much loving empathy to residents in the tiny short time I was around them. After massages, the lunch was served onto plates and the ladies were given plates of rice with a rice/chicken/potato stew which looked pretty good.

One lady needed to be fed, as her hands were folded in and useless. She hardly had teeth, but was a vigorous eater. I would bring a spoon of food to her mouth and she would help me guide it in. She successfully communicated that she wanted more food on each spoon. She ravished the food. Not sure why... She was happy to be eating. She smiled at me after many of the bites. Maybe those were the bites that had the best amount of food and went into her mouth at the right angle. In a place like this, those little things make a person happy. I worked the side of the spoon to cut the chicken hearts into bitesize pieces... I think she liked getting little pieces of chicken heart in each bite like that. This was the highlight of my day. Helping a woman eat and catching the food not making it into her mouth with my other hand, and seeing her smile with a lot of the bites.

It was time to help some of the ladies to the dormitory now. Everyone moved with the routine and were tuned in to the timing of it all. I think they depended on teh timing of it all, like babies love the security of feeding, bathing and nap times. It was time to nap. I wheeled a few ladies to the dormitory. The beds are covered with clean sheets. The beds are about 2 and a half feet apart from each other. Set up in 4 rows with one aisle down the middle. There are beds in the breezeway area. It looks like an overflow, they couldn't fit more beds into the proper dorm hall. Soon there were traffic jams of wheelchairs as volunteers and staff were delivering their charges to their respective beds. One lady needed to use the bathroom. It's times like these that having a physically handicapped father who was unashamed of his limitations and asking for help comes in handy in my life. I didn't bat an eye going into the shared toilet area with water running constantly into a trash can for I have no idea what purpose so that the floor had a 1/4 inch of water on it... but when I wheeled my lady towards a toilet, she eased off her wheelchair, I struggled to help her to the seat, but she grunted that she would do her thing which was to move slightly away from the chair to pee right on the floor that had that constant flushing of 1/4 inch of water. OK, I see why the water is running over the edge of that container. Another woman was naked sitting on a toilet facing away from the door, hoping for something to happen. It looked like some level of struggle, but she was balanced and stable as far as I could tell. We were standing in the water she just peed in, but oh well, here we go back to the dormitory (attached by the door) tracking in the pee-water. But this place is clean. It looks and smells clean and the huge quantity of laundry we did that morning was a profession of the cleanliness. The ladies were all accumulating on their beds... sitting, lying. If they were sitting, I thought, "they must get so bored," but if they were lying I thought "it's nice they have a clean place to rest their body."

This is not the home for the dying, this is a nursing home for ladies that are not all there mentally, many probably rejected by their families... I wish I knew that their families visited them. I wish I felt that my visit had helped them some how. They seem unphased. Maybe I was just one of many new strangers that looks strange and speaks a strange tongue that comes to do something interesting overseas. I am not their daughter or husband. But I hope the human touch and gentle regard does support them somehow at some level they may not even be too aware of. The most important thing is for us to have an intention to help and give.

In India, Christians love St. George, the dragon slayer. A statue was installed here on an exterior wall. You can pick which dragon you are slaying in any particular time of your life - it seems we always have to be slaying one. Maybe anyone who needs to (me or some of the ladies) can slay the dragon of attachment to holding on to life as it likely was for many of these ladies in their rich Hindu Bengali culture living with their immediate families, all factors which are gone in this place. But who am I to say these ladies are sad for that, I am assuming... and projecting, perhaps, but it seems at the end of life people need their spiritual practice more than ever. I hope the internal practice can happen for these ladies, as their external world that I saw does not reflect the spiritual life that is practiced by most Hindu Indian people I have seen.

#motherhouse #motherteresa #kolkata #premdan #volunteering #hinduculture #missions #catholicmissions #india

Journey with Codependence

Ahh, what a time I have had in these last 7-8 years, heightening my awareness, through multiple friendships and romances, how my immature adult is wanting the things I didn't get as a child in a behavior pattern known to some, but a term shunned by many, as codependence. I have read 4 or 5 books about codependence, love addiction, the wounded heart, and women who love too much. They all have a common theme, that as children we were not wholly accepted exactly how we were and our parents wanted us to be a bit different, or just didn't see us and appreciate us as we already were.

According to Pia Mellody (a recognized expert at the phenomenon and treatment of it with an energy of positive acceptance and love) the signs of codependence in immature adult are:

1. Trouble valuing the self from within. Needing to get self-value from being wanted by others.
2. Personal boundary problems. Put up walls, or the opposite.
3. Difficulty being authentic about our feelings, needs and wants.
4. Difficulty attending to our own personal needs and wants, and having difficulty with interdependence.
5. Lacks an attitude of ‘moderation in all things.’ We may over- (or under-) indulge in eating, drinking, socializing, working, exercising etc.

and here is my understanding of what creates codependence patterns:

1. child was not treated as precious - child was ignored or abused
2. child was not treated as perfect as she is now- but expected to act certain way according to social norms, parental molding etc. 
3. child was not treated as dependent - her needs were not recognized, or were not important, and was expected to take care of herself or her parents either emotionally or physically. 
4. child was not treated as immature - was expected to do things inappropriate to her age, or was punished for acting her immature self
5. child was not treated as vulnerable - she wasn't protected, or certain healthy emotional boundaries were not created

I am starting to connect the dots between some fears and beliefs I have about myself, and what I experienced in childhood. I defintely experience all of the adult behaviors listed above, and can say that I also experienced all of the childhood experiences listed in the second list.  I don't want to go through my childhood experiences and traumas here now, but I listed out about 19 of them for a therapist I found a month ago, that specializes in helping clients using Pia Mellody's approach with practices, processes and work for recovery. 

Today I am feeling more connected to this awareness and process for myself after feeling some rejection by a friend whose family I know very well and had welcomed me to participate in their dynamics, which were very codependent so I felt super comfortable, happy and anxious at the same time. But lately I have felt that friend and the family being very distant and it's triggering some very big feelings of being unimportant and inconsequential. So my motivation in life drops when this happens and it turns into powerlessness. I feel powerless and go into a mode of doing things around the house to keep active at a level that is familiar and just like my mother who is a cleaning addict.

I notice I am having negative thoughts. I had a session with a therapist about managing Automatic Negative Thoughts... One of mine comes up after some romantic failures. I go to a place thinking that I am worthless. I finally realized, this is not healthy or normal, where did this come from?? I don't want to feel this way, and it doesn't really make sense that I feel this way when one man decides not to communicate with me anymore. 

I want to move beyond the stories of childhood and be in my adult self. The 5-step process is to 1. Grow up, 2. Face reality, 3. Grieve what I didn't have growing up, 4. Learn to parent myself, and 5. Learn to forgive. 

I have been doing a lot of #3 and #4 these last few months... I will look more at what the others are about. Pia Mellody's books are smart, relatable, not negative, and have useful tools. I don't feel broken or less than others. I feel happy to know what is happening and how to really feel into what is happening so I can more deeply heal and be happier in my life with positive thinking that is genuine. I feel more connected to the Divine, God, feeling the unconditional acceptance of that big huge force that is total love for all of us beings human or not!  

Vippassana, 10 days of Quiet

I just finished a 10-day meditation retreat in Jesup, Georgia, in total silence; no talking with, or looking at, anyone else except the teacher and "the management."  Two meals a day, at 6:30am and 11am with fruit and tea at 5. Dorm-room residence on a woodsy piece of land with walking trails. All was separated for men and women, each having their own dining, sleeping, walking areas, and the meditation hall was divided down the middle with men and women on each side with separate entrances and separate management staff to talk to if any need arose. It was beautifully managed for our comfort and concentration on what we were there to do.

And what was that? We were there to look at our minds. Sort of.

We had evening lectures by S.N. Goenka (video recordings from a course he taught in 1991 since he left his body in 2013) a teacher of this style of Vipassana from Burma, which he says is the unpolluted original form of the teaching of mind-purification that Siddhartha Gautama Buddha taught. After 500 years in India, he said, it became mixed with other rituals, and changed, so wasn't effective and was thus abandoned there. In Burma it was preserved by a line of teachers, and it moved to Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and other eastern countries.

The first three days of the retreat we focused on our breath to enhance the ability of the mind to detect subtleties of breath sensations in our nose, on the edges of the nostrils and on the upper lip. This he called Anapana meditation.

We took 5 precepts on the 1st evening, observing "Sila" - abstaining from killing, lying, stealing, sex and intoxicants. Was black tea or coffee an intoxicant? I guess not since they stocked it in the dining area. Cool. And sexual fantasizing couldn't be either, since, I figured, most people here would have some sexual thoughts coming up, right? It was easy not to lie, since we were speaking only to the assistant teacher and lady manager.

I was getting terribly bored by day 3, still meditating on our nostrils and upper lip, wondering why I had to keep doing this same thing for 3 days, and I wasn't detecting much additional sensation. Maybe because I was so distracted by my thoughts of sex! I was fantasizing of a beautiful unavailable man that I had liked, and how we would meet, and what we would do. Many ideas were formulated, I felt very creative.

I also formulated the most amazingly worded monologues I would tell to this man I had liked but was never able to say just how I felt about myself or about him. So perfectly worded and slowly stated, and I felt that my truth was finally coming to the surface. All the confusion of feelings I had before blocked my access to my boundaries, my true desires, and what was right for me and for him. The confusion seemed to fall away, and my stillness of mind allowed me to get to the intellect and clarity to interpret my feelings and what I wanted to create with this person which went on changing over the days I was there, until I stopped thinking about it, or putting much importance on it.

I also generated wonderful ideas for writings, and activities back in Gainesville, and I kept thinking of many witty Facebook posts.

Day 4 we learned the art of Vipassana meditation, scanning the body for sensations such as the touch of fabric or air, tingling, numbness, pain, heaviness, lightness, vibration, tightness... You scan down from head to toe, then back up from toe to head... later he told us to sweep 'en masse', sweep 'en masse' which was very confusing coming from an older guy with an indian accent so I had no clue he was saying the french term until I asked the assistant teacher a few days later.  There were no subtitles on these videos of him that we watched every night.

I scanned myself. I felt fleece jacket on neck; pants on waist; pants on legs; pressure on feet; moisture on hands; after 30 minutes, there was tingling, some numbness coming up. Some coolness in some areas from the air. Many areas were 'blind,' with not much sensation, especially forearms, lower back and cheeks.

Day 5 I was getting a little calmer, and scanning over and over... but Day 6 I was irritated at this teacher. He kept saying these are not "useless rites or rituals." He criticized other religions for the devotional practices, and the empty activities by people who were still angry, fearful, and egotistical, not having any control of their own minds, and doing things for show, or our of fear, or because it was tradition... which, yes some of that could be true, but his attitude seemed to be making fun of other people, and I didn't think that was they style of a very enlightened egoless person. Not that he claimed to be...

On Day 6 I wanted to go home, and leave the lectures of this old Indian guy, talking stories about anger and greed on the most gross rudimentary levels with examples of slapping a secretary in anger, or kicking a man on the street out of disgust, or taking a brother's inheritance of land. When was he going to talk to us about all the emotions I was feeling in my heart and my stomach? He did not talk about emotions coming up in meditation. He seemed to have zero emotional intelligence and I was not getting the link between the feeling of fleece on my neck and my attachments and aversions to so many things in life. Hello? He was speaking a lot of theoretical things, and how we would get rid of all our aversions, attachments and miseries by observing all sensations of the body.

There were 2 assistant teachers sitting on daises, and they were not ever speaking except to tell us when the breaks were. Why weren't they using their intelligence to bridge the gap between these general gross emotions examples Goenka was speaking of and the subtle emotion challenges that a modern western person might be more likely to be dealing with? Or why weren't they answering any questions to the whole audience?

I went to the female teacher 5 times to ask the questions. It helped a lot. It was beyond what Goenka was saying. Hm, confusing.

Okay, Day 7 I was finally having a quiet mind and trusting that some good things were happening for me. I felt it, as my attachment to that attractive man seemed to be reducing, and my internal dialogues with him were changing to less attachment and more compassion.

Day 8 it finally clicked! As I create equanimity with pain in my body, I can create a habit of the mind that has equanimity with things that happen in my life. Oh, ok! So if a mosquito bites me in meditation, I can practice on that training ground to be equanimous with the sting and the itch that is there... so when someone says something quite rude to me in future, I will have a mind trained to not react, but to consider and process and think before responding.

I was feeling more sensations, and by now had experienced a few surprising things.

After a few days of Vipassana I realized I was sensing my left side as blue, darker, like in the shadow, and the right side as orangey active yellow. Then I realized that these correspond to my yin side (dark, night, passivity, moon) and my yang side (daytime, active, sun). Wow, so I had firsthand experience at the feng shui idea of yin and yang qualities - I actually experienced those qualities and colors on my left and right sides! During one sit, I experienced my right side as tingly and vibrating in it's totality, while my left side remained largely un-sensing. Wow, the right felt alive, and the left felt half-asleep. The right is the masculine side, the left the feminine side... For years I have noticed more injuries to my left side than to my right and wondered about it.

It was revealed to us during one of the later lectures that we will end up getting a sensation of vibration and tingling throughout the body at some point, and it will very feel pleasant... but we should not get attached to this, just as we should be equanimous with pain we might feel, and this sensation is a good training ground to create equanimity with this nice sensations.

So the idea is: that our cravings relate to a negative body sensation that happens, and we want to react to alleviate it. As we practice not reacting to body sensations in meditation, our mind gets calmer about wanting satisfaction of craving, or to get away from things we have aversion to... and those cravings and aversions calm and balance out over time... then, we stop being reactive in situations and with people. We begin to get more accpeting of what is.

I can say that I had some amazing internal experiences (a few mentioned here), and am grateful for the seachange in my attachment that I had coming in to this retreat that has now been minimized to something very small.

There is more to the story of Vipassana that I did not discuss here (accumulating merit, karma, sankaras, etc) and that I have not learned about yet... but I think this has a great potential to help me with anxiety and worry that I have and for connecting me to what is true for me at a deeper level that I miss as I tend to keep myself pretty busy in action - that active yang side!

Wage Slave Society

"Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life energy." - Nikola Tesla, quoted in Waking up: Freeing Ourselves from Work, a book by Pamela Satterwhite.

I have noticed the robotic routines people engage in during the week, with weekdays consisting of rushed morning getting selves and kids ready for work and school at crazy early times... coming home or doing afternoon activities designed by others to "improve the self," grabbing mail and newspapers, changing, cooking, eating, watching some tv, or reading a novel or checking out some social networking... and going to bed, and repeating the next day. The weekends are full of home improvement, car maintenance, yard work, going to games, cleaning the big house with all it's stuff that needs to be cleaned... 

Someone told us that we need big homes with big yards, and big cars to take ourselves to long-working hours in jobs where others tell us when to work, and allow a few weeks a year which we use for a "getaway" vacation... giving us benefits that pay for exorbitantly unaffordable insurance.

This is the situation for the masses of people who are workers in large companies, and these companies are getting bigger, so that workers are farther and farther from those making decisions and they can't see effects decisions have on people, just how decisions affect numbers.

Capitalist society is structured such that most people are either unemployed or "wage slaves." This leaves little time for creativity, spiritual practice, organizing new groups to change politics/economics or being with oneself.

What is this doing to our self-esteem as a society of humans? How unconscious are we going to go, such that we don't notice that we are not having control of our own lives? How many of us just feel lucky enough that someone would allow us to work in their holy company and are willing to put up with being tired and overwhelmed by all we have to do each day?

Do we realize that the system is designed to wear us down, make us tired, make us busy? Even the fun that is offered is designed to keep us busy... don't think, don't organize, don't meditate, don't sit quietly with kids and have long conversations with them about what is on their mind.

We have been convinced in our society we must be always doing something. We must be productive. We must be active, or something is wrong. If someone asks another to a social event and the other declines, you might hear: "Why, what do you have to do?" It is often assumed that there has to be something that you have to do in order to justify that you won't accept an invitation. Or people ask, "Are you busy Saturday night?" So funny, actually!! The wording we have created around activity and invitations! Again it says, if you aren't busy, then you'd be going to the thing I am going to tell you about!

The news announcers list the great successes of the economy as more full time jobs are provided! People NEED to work 40 hours a week to survive!! This has been our creation. What an arbitrary numbver! Eight hours a day. "As long as you get your eight hours in!" is a mantra for many bosses... I have known many people who kill time at the end of the day, and stay at their desk until the clock strikes 5 o'clock. I have done this many many times at my last job! The boss was watching to see if she was getting her money's worth from me based on how many hours I was at my computer. It felt so degrading. Many jobs are designated as 40 hours... but some of those jobs require 30 hours to do the work, and some require 48 hours a week to do the work. The latter group has workders that don't take any breaks all day long, in order to get it all done; my sister is one of them. But she 'loves' her job! She leaves at 7am each morning, drives, and isn't back til 6pm each evening. This is 11 hours a day. What? How does this make a balanced life? And she takes no breaks at work. What? How is this acceptable, legal, and ok?

http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/meal.htm

I was in the workplace, in cubicles in offices in companies, with offices and CEOs etc. For a time, I worked as an information technology project manager that worked on developing a new payroll/human resource system and I learned about labor laws that were developed for factory workers who needed to sit down and take breaks for their own safety. The law said you should get a 1/2 hour if you work at least 6 hours. Every state is different. Most require 1/2 hour if working 6 or more consecutive hours. Puerto Rico reflects their own culture that values sleep and family, requiring an hour (in Latin America, people would typically go home for the home cooked meal if possible).

Wow, 1/2 an hour break! Doesn't it seems a bit degrading when we are giving our life energy to the job? Then again, the culture of places I have worked is to not take breaks. Eat lunch at your desk and keep working through the breaks because we are busy and have a lot to do. Now if we are passionate our job and it is a sort that doesn't really feel like work because we are stimulated and excited and happy doing it, who needs breaks?

Well that is where I will be. In a role in which I give my life energy to something that is my spiritual calling.

I am happy that more people in my life are creating work schedules that match their energies where they have a lot of say and control over their work... and many of my friends are becoming more aware of the importance of alone time. I love when people do this for themselves, and I am becoming an expert!

I quit working a year ago. I am grateful for the great benefits I had in the mid to late 90s that allowed for great retirement savings and matching program at my company (14% match!). This allows me to ponder, sit, reflect, pray and be. For now. I will be in action again soon, but I do want to SAY NO to the 40 hour work week at someone else's office forever.

If I was in charge of a company that had workers, I would create a culture of taking breaks, and encourage people to stop and gather, and relax and visit and take care of themselves with some movement, yoga, or walks outside on the nice grounds with trees, bushes and birdbaths. There would be some games and... well that gets into a whole other discussion about all the perks that some companies are providing people with at work so they love being there! (Google, e.g.) I would want to hire a lot of part-timers so that people have an option to stay home with kids, or have 2 golf games a week, or do more spiritual practice or work on their guitar skills or read or just sit. We would measure work based on results somehow... not x number of hours, if possible.

I think 4 hours a day is a perfect amount of time to do good productive work... and not all at once.

And I would love our society to have the expectation and structure that every individual would take a year off of work every 7 to 10 years. Do the things we always wanted to do.

Eckhart Tolle was so depressed from working so hard on his PhD, and when he reflected on the I that was so tired, and exhausted, and suicidal, he had a deep inner awakening that there is no "I" but that is illusion. He quit is PhD, walked around London for weeks, sitting on park benches and observing the amazing beauty of everything around him, even the traffic.

These kinds of people are threats to a controlled society, by the way... it is not predictable or controllable, and the authorities have to be in control, they must provide us jobs, and affordable housing and entertainment, and really fancy, smooth black roads.

What if we could live more simply, work less, and just be still part of each day? Is it too painful? Are we too ancy and conditioned? I am getting ancy if I am out too much now. I will find the balance soon enough.

#wageslavesociety #overworked #makingaliving #tesla #workplace #howtolive

Stepping Off

I did a wonderful thing. I quit my secure, well-paying job at a university with great insurance and a great retirement plan. I got to bike to work in a great town through beautiful neighborhoods. I got to be at the nexus of policy, research and education at state and national levels. I made friendly connections with interesting dynamic change agents and decisionmakers at state and local agencies and educational institutions across the state. I got to travel to Africa and Central America to help on watershed projects. I got to work with top scientists in aquatic ecology, hydrology, geochemistry, and climate science. I learned tons about those sciences, and about water sustainability, research, hydrologic databases, and academia.  I also learned that I am not meant for a desk job dealing more with computer files than people being asked to help groups of faculty that are not sure what they need to be helped because they are in a brittle system set up to function only if each person devotes a tiny amount of time and thought to each of their 100 projects/students/classes.

Going to work started to feel like a chore, and even punishment, because my passion was really in my social, arts and nature activities. I had projects in sewing, puppeting, organizing, and work just seemed to get in the way. I had no time for this "work!"

My spirit started struggling and rearing up. My higher self  decided I was done with this pretense of comfort, because in actuality, I was growing to be very uncomfortable on many levels. I found I was pretending that how we were doing things was fine with me. And I felt unseen, and I squashed my own expression more and more... first with a sense of frustration, and then peacefully, with a sense of acceptance with a deep knowledge that this was so temporary and so not my world,,, I used to think that this academia thing should be my world. Then it was clear that I was meant for other endeavors.   I could see this was a big machine working in ol dwell-worn ways with old worn out ideas at the institutional level. How incredibly boring and uninspiring. I could go on. But let's get back to me.

I found a part of myself rebelling against the comfort and security... something suddenly surprised me... a suggestion that I should quit  without finding another job... I needed a break from 'working.' It was my spirit that insisted on this. So I saw myself deciding to quit as soon as I had saved $12,000.  I would somehow go outside of my routine and out of my current society for a while to shake up my world in such a way that things would look different, like shaking a snow globe or a etch a sketch like blowing a Mandala away. e a hunch that things aren't really as they seem right now. There is a lot of illusion. Until I get out of my routine, my house, my comfort, I will have limited viewing.

So it is time for a retreat, a time to step back, zoom out, refresh, put on new glasses (or take off the glasses), climb out of the cave (I love the image of Plato's cave where people are enchanted by their own shadows and are comfortable in that safe warm cave and don't want to realize that their shadows are just shadows, and that the bigger truer world of life and expansion lay outside the cave itself.

So I plan to go to India on January 24 with my friend Kanika and her family. We are invited to her cousin's wedding and I am so honored that they will host me in their home! I go north from there to the base of the Himalayas for meditation retreat down the road from the Dalai Lama. I will travel south after that to do yoga and retreat in several other places, to meet a few friends, to experience elephants. Then I fly to Thailand. There I will explore more of the elephant world and conservation. More about that soon... 

People want to know the PLAN... I think they get confused and worried when the plan is very loose, and undefined... maybe I am too a little bit. My goal is to establish connections with people there, and learn about opportunities and then have those in my list of options once I am there... but I won't have everything planned out. I know I will be ok. I am trusting the world to catch me as I step off the edge into the  arms of love from people and animals. I will invite that love by sending love out And I have plenty of intellingence and travel savy to help me along.