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cloudy days

1/14/2016

Some days the cloud cover is sufficient to cover the sun but the sun actually IS shining....It never stops.....ever. Today I'm wondering if that matters. If the sun's rays are not reaching the earth; not reaching me, does it matter that they are still back there. Does it matter that there are rays coming through and bringing warmth a few hundred miles away, in another state, when there are none shining here?

Is it helpful to know that the sun is there even if I cannot see or feel it?
Is it helpful to know that the clouds always pass...eventually?

I think it is ....

Some days there isn't enough hope shining within me to feel the warmth of life. It seems like over night my feeling of wholeness and basic goodness leaves. There is a life to be attended to.....work to do and schedules to keep but everything is shadowed with a suspicion that I'm not enough and that I'm only fooling myself into thinking anything matters. There is doubt and fear about the future and I cannot stay in the present moment because the present moment is this cold and gloomy hopeless state.

I try to know that hope, optomism and wholeness are here even if I cannot feel it.

I tell myself that this darkness always passes .... eventually.....

I know all about alternating states of suffering and happiness and expansion and contraction. But every time I fall into the gloomy, scared, apathetic place it feels so real.....like it is here to stay.

I know about practice and I keep it up. I show up for class and I get to my mat. I sit here with my computer and write it out.

and wait for the clouds to clear

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.....or die trying

1/11/2016

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A particular kind of contraction is personal shut down..... This is a thing we do in relationship to others. So much of the time we are wide open to everyone around us. We smile at passers by; we greet the people we usually see at the gym, coffee shop, school, etc. This wide open way of being is natural to us; it is our natural way of being as humans.

Because we don't live with any of these people; because they rarely get in our way; we stay open in their presence.

From time to time, however, we feel the need to shut down our natural, open way of being. Occasionally, something that another person is doing or saying has the potential to sting if allowed to enter our person.... in reaction we recoil in self protection.

We shut down to survive

It may seem dramatic to make it a matter of survival but I do believe that there must be a pretty good reason to make the shift of shutting down our openness.

When we are young and have very little power it's easy to see lots of situations as potentially dangerous so we learn to shut down early and do it often...... hence, our other seemingly natural way of being...

........disconnected

So, how do we sort all this out?

It follows the same pattern of expansion and contraction.

Once, I made a vow to myself to never ever cry over my partner again. I wrote the vow to myself to document the decision.... some time later I wrote this:
now, i feel stuck...so stuck and bottled up.
  yes, i am not crying over xxxxxx as i keep the vow,
but i feel stuck about everything.....
  this is a high price. the price for keeping my tears in is becoming too high
oh xxxx it.
i cry.
i will cry over xxxxxx.
i'll cry over xxxxxx for who i am and not for who he is
  as i cry my tears for me, not for him

I learned that the energy of shut down is highly destructive to me. I learned that as I tried to remain closed to my partner I was closing myself off from my own expression. In trying to withhold my acceptance and unconditional love toward him, I was unable to feel it for myself and I was literally starving myself of life force. I was affecting myself far more than I could ever affect him!

I recognize that there are moments when I lack the strength to remain open sometimes. But it would be a fatal error for me to think that this shut down should be my new way of being. To try to live long term in shut down would be like trying to live without water. Human connection and the exchange of lovingkindness is the stuff of life..... without it we will surely feel dead.

At times we may be worn down from the continual cycle of relationship...it is long, very long and we all have our growing up to do.

Being willing to repeatedly re-open to life just as the sun continues to rise each day can sometimes feel like it may kill me..... but then I remind myself about the time I tried to close down and wait for the end. It really wasn't better. It was way worse.

There is so much sweetness in life that is here for the taking and I have such a love for life really.

So here's to staying in the game....
understanding that
to play is to win....

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Contraction then expansion. Or maybe the other way around

12/10/2015

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In September I went to back to school night at my daughter's middle school. In one of her classrooms there were signs all over the walls of "universal themes". A few of them are: power, structure, change, systems, conflict and relationships. There are a few more that I can't remember right now.

On the wall, universal themes are defined as central ideas about human nature that can be applied to anyone. The main use of these universal themes is to connect ideas across many lines; cultural, gergrapic, ideological, etc.

I think about stuff like that all the time so naturally, these ideas have been running around in my head.

As I have reported before, I am on a quest to expand fully.... or expand into unlimited. Maybe I could call it unlimited expansion. Lately I've been noticing something about my quest for expansion...

It is always sandwiched between contraction......

I think a good universal theme is Contraction and Expansion

There seems to be a pulse nature to my process..... It is just like how there are two parts to a heartbeat. Our hearts have to be able to do both parts of the heartbeat....they have to be able to expand and to contract in order to pump.

This has been very helpful for me to understand. My impatient self wants to expand all the way and be in this open and expansive state already...and just stay there...I guess.

But this has not been what my journey looks like....

It looks and feels a lot more like a heartbeat. I have moments of opening up; I feel what that feels like; I explore what is there for me to experience and then something happens to bring me back in ....maybe, hopefully, not all the way back in but at least somewhat. Here is where I would usually get frustrated with my lack of "success" and feel like a lost case.

But since I started to open up my mind to the idea that this pulsing of expansion and contraction is a process...... slowly expanding and opening up to possibility..... I can appreciate these contracting phases of the expansion journey.

As long as I stay committed to the overall expansiveness of my being and to appreciating the process, these contractions or "setbacks" are just as acceptable as the expanding. Quite possibly, there cannot be one without the other.

They are just the preparation for the next level of open.

And with the acceptance of contraction;

I open

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ALL means YOU too

10/24/2015

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I've been spending a lot of time with my mother over the past month as she has had serious health problems that may have caused her death. She fought to live. Her conditions were painful and hard to endure yet she fought to stay here with us....and here, she is!

We, her children, have been at her side to support her as well as my father...... And as is usual in families we have "family dynamics". Truthfully we are quite a well functioning family with underlying love and acceptance of one another with only occasional flare-ups. Which I think is great. There are 10 children; 3 girls and 7 boys. My parents are hard working, honest, caring people and they did their best to raised us to be the same.

Two nights ago, as I was helping her into bed, I got her all settled in and was holding her hand, she looked into my eyes and thanked me for helping her. Then she asked me, "do you think all families have some dysfunction?" Now I'm not sure which "flair up" she may have been thinking about or if there was a specific reference to her question at all but I sensed some reflection had been going on in her.

I said to her emphatically: All families have plenty of dysfunction; we can't help it; it's the perfect design anyway. Each of us has our own set of issues that we seem to be born with. (Which we can see in our family....there are 10 of us and no 2 are alike in personality, propensity or issues) Then we get to live in a family with other people who love us .... unconditionally---to the best of all of our abilities. It's our best opportunity to be supported in our journey! It's nothing to feel bad about or think it could have been any other way.

The main key is to underscore everything or build everything upon a foundation of unconditional love, gentleness and friendliness with ALL. And ALL means ourselves too.

As I was going on about this she began to fall asleep; her eyes were fluttering open only every few seconds and I said good night to her.

She held on to my hand for a moment longer and said "thank you"

And I thought about the first time that I realized that ALL means ME too.....I remembered the relief and comfort I afforded myself on that first time and how inner gentleness and friendliness has become a basis for my journey and has allowed me to take risks, explore possibilities and calmed my fears.

I don't know how gentle she is or isn't with herself inside. I know she was and is gentle and loving toward us.

She probably just needed a little reminder...as we all do from time to time....that

ALL means YOU too.

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unwind

10/23/2015

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Several times a day I open my mouth as wide as I can and un-clinch my jaw. Periodically I become aware that it is tight again. Life and living seems to wind it up in a kink. It's not the only place that gets wound up either....shoulders and lower back are also common.

I'm happy today that It is noticeable enough for me to do something about it. Before I started practicing yoga and awareness I didn't notice things like this......I didn't notice my body or my relationship to it. I think this jaw must have been wound up so tightly for so long that I didn't remember anything else. With awareness and practice I began to let go of so much gripping....I began to understand what I was doing in the ways I move and hold my physical body and could, with awareness, choose something different.....I could choose to unwind the tight places.

Just like the places in my body that tense and kink there are places in my mind that do the same thing. A few years ago when this was first pointed out to me, I didn't get it. The processes of my mind were hidden to me and the only things I could be aware of were content....

.......Content is easy to recognize in the brain.....its aalllll the stuff we think about wrapped up in our assessments and judgements of it.

Content may be proof of the state we are in.....anxious, unsatisfied, afraid, etc. But knowing the content won't give us the insight we need to see how we are wound up in these things. What we really need is access and understanding of the process

The real benefit of yoga practice for me is that the physical practice of unwinding my body began to educate my mind and spirit. Just like it takes time, intuition, interest, awareness, patience and commitment to unwind and further my physical yoga practice; when I apply these to my inner life, things begin to unwind.

Trungpa Rimboche said that if you want to unwind you have to first see how you are wound up.

For me, starting on a physical level gave me time and space to enter slowly a place I wasn't sure I really wanted to go in...... I had tried acquiring a meditation practice but it eluded me and I gave up. It was quite by accident that I decided to try yoga as a fix for my aging posture.

Most of us have tried finding a place of ease, or of unwound in the right relationship or or the right circumstances but no one can do this work for another. I cannot practice yoga for my husband even though he is in dire need....I cannot have someone do my practice for me.... This stuff is an inside job.

It's actually empowering to know that I am the only one who needs to understand me and I am the only one who can change anything about my inner life. No one can come along and take over for me....telling me that I'm doing it wrong. No one can undermine my journey.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

Each of us has unlimited opportunities to be engaged in this process of personal evolution and we can choose to do it or not; we can choose from an array of approaches and methods.

Or we can stay wound up...... if that feels good.

Unwound feels better to me.

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Sparring

10/11/2015

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The constant contact of relationship can be exhausting.

It often feels to me that each person in my life is here to challenge me to a match; a duel of them vs. me. Some people are, of course, more confrontive or push my buttons more than others and some people seem to have targets painted on their foreheads inviting me to attack.

Nothing in my life experience makes me feel worse about myself that when I go on the offensive and attack another person.......yet I do it. Whether to their faces or behind their backs, I criticize, blame, and condemn others. Furthermore, when I see someone else on the offence attacking their fellow beings I am seriously bothered.....and condemn them for doing so.

What the heck is going on?

It's like I'm wired to do this or something.....

Maybe we are. Maybe we are wired to relate to others in ways that are really attempts to draw each other out.

Here we are, all of us, pure consciousness, pure light, essential goodness, and yet we are in a situation of separateness. We are now separated pieces of the same light housed in individual bodies....housed in bodies which are limiting and keeping boundaries on our energy and light that only want to shine and rejoin with itself.

We have been born into a puzzle and have limited instructions about it.

When I look at the reality of what we, in our current state, do with each other It kind of makes sense. With only a faint sense that we are all connected and that we all hold a piece of each other within ourselves we would naturally be anxiously engaged in rejoining.....yet we are very confused and try all sorts of craziness to do it.

One of my favorite teachers of awakening and expansion says that once we get a little instruction on the subject of who we are and that we can wake up, become fully human and expand; the process is begun. Then.....

" may we have long lives so that we can practice".

With some awareness that whether we are exasperated, angered or filled with love and compassion it's all the same intense desire to connect. We can see each human engagement as a sparring match designed to wake all of us up.

The kind of sparring partners we are will depend upon our commitments to mindfulness mutual benefit.

Today I aspire to be someone with whom you'd be willing to get in the ring.....

Today I am willing to get in the ring and practice.

After I meditate.....

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Survival

10/8/2015

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This morning my husband woke me at ten minutes to seven. Another day.....

There is usually a small window of time, just after I awake, of openness; openness to possibility; openness to connection; when I can breathe in freely. It's an easy time to feel this because nothing has happened yet. My current meditation practices allow for me to let go of the past fairly easily so that I awake in this state.

It was there today and I enjoyed it.

I am practicing taking it with me as I begin the work and routine of the day... It is my sincere aspiration that there will come a time when I feel open all the time....free of the contraction of survival.

The contraction of survival is a place that I'm familiar with......It is wanting for enough while not even knowing what enough is..it is hoping for security and fearing the worst. It leads to fear driven decisions that make my range of possibility smaller and smaller as I reach for the freedom of expanse. It makes no sense, yet it seemed to be my only choice so much of the time.

I used to harshly criticize myself about this fact; criticize myself for not being able to stay out of this place. I hoped to leave it behind and feared I would never be able to......adding the contraction of fear to the mix.

Today I stayed pretty open as the day unfolded with kids, shoes and socks, lunches, backpacks,etc..... The openness allows me to observe from a vantage point that is not so in the front of my brain where the thinking is . The openness allows me to observe more what is going and be interested in all of it The openness allows an awareness which is more neutral than anything else.

As I pulled up to the high school to drop off my daughter, I noticed all the young adults who were also arriving. I felt a great connection to my daughter who was going out into that campus to have her experiences of the day as well as to all the others. I observed their faces and could feel their energy....a mix of excitement and fear on multiple levels that added up to life. I know as well as they do that life will be a mix of fun and hard, of interesting and boring, of happiness and sadness and I wanted to tell them all......

Just stay open to all of it. !!

I wanted somehow to convince them now, at their young ages, that the contraction of survival and fear are not the safety that they seem to be. I want them to know that they don't have to waste precious time in the small spaces like I have. Ultimately, all I could do was tell my daughter that I love her and to enjoy her day and to flash my biggest smile to the boys inn the crosswalk in front of me.

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts."
--Winston Churchill

In the openness we can all do more than survive....

In the openness we can connect on the heart level and help each other out.....

In the openness resides possibility.

I'm just going to keep saying it.

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the constant call of humanity ( or resistance)

2/2/2015

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Resistance.......

Why is resistance so popular? I read recently that what people want most is sovereignty.......that is; supreme power or authority over themselves.

This makes a lot of sense. No one wants to spend any of their personal time in life doing something that is dictated by someone else. This is why kids can't wait to grow up. We all remember saying those things to ourselves about being free to choose everything once we are grown up and no longer under our parents control.....I do!

As societies go, no one group wants to be under the control of another.....

We all want to be free!

And......

We want someone to do something about all those who would run roughshod over us in all manner of obvious and not so obvious controls while we are living out all this self directed destiny. We would like someone to provide some peace and security so that we can enjoy this sovereign existence......please.

Here is where resistance comes in. Opposing forces! Opposing desires! Opposing wills!

My sovereignty against yours.

The stage is now set for the ultimate competition.....Who will win over whom in the fight for the thing they now threaten?

The absurdity of this situation is clear and we live it out every day.

How?

With resistance. The only way to live out this illogical and unwinnable battle is to resist our inner wisdom and the constant call of humanity.

In every moment of every day every member of the human race hears the call of their fellow beings. I believe that we all know in our bones that we are all connected to each other and that to deny another is to deny ourselves. We can feel in our hearts that when we reach out to help another that we are helping ourselves. I believe we know that fear is running the show and that when we assert our sovereignty over one another's we are losing our own.

We know in these same bones that our axis is amiss and that something must be done to fix it or we will fall out of orbit.

We must justify. We must straighten out this axis if we are all to be spared.

Now, who will be first?

Who will offer space to the other? A srtip of land? A helping hand?

We can do it where we are......I'm not the owner of a great piece of the world but I do walk about in it and I do come into contact with others every day and likely, so do you. With some self-honesty and self-reflecting I can do some straightening wherever I am. Resistance begins on the cellular level of each of us as a living being. It can be uncovered and discarded.... rooted out of our hearts and minds.

If this option doesn't seem workable then the only other one is to

Resist......

........and this is why resistance is so popular.

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Days of Grace

2/1/2015

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For the record; I am the mother of 11 children: 1 with my first husband and 10 with my second. Also for the record; my husband, Dennis, also has 11 children: 1 with his first wife and 10 with me. Of course, that is 12 altogether.

Many people have asked me, over the years, how it is that we decided to have so many children. I usually try to come up with a witty answer when they ask. The best one was to a substitute pediatrician who was talking to my 4 year old. He asked Jack how many siblings he had and when Jack had to check with me if the answer was 10 or 11 he became suspicious. This doctor looked to me for clarification and I confirmed that it was indeed 11 siblings for a total of 12. This unsuspecting doctor asked the usual "how on earth did you decide to have 12 children?" I responded......

.............It takes a particular lack of foresight.

But the truth is that I have felt an undeniable call of motherhood .... As I have answered that call and grown into motherhood my heart has joined with the hearts of my children we all have fallen into a rhythm....

....... the rhythm of our family.........discovered by us rather than written.

Each one has been an anticipated addition to our production. Dennis and I are certainly humbled at the job of raising them..... they keep us on our best behaviour and putting our best effort forward. Even as we try our best to give them all the goodness of ourselves we are continually thoroughly impressed with each one and know that it is they who are emerging as their authentic selves......

When I was pregnant with our second to last child we were informed that our baby was "not compatible with life" and that we could schedule a termination. This news was at once unbelievable and devastating. I can say for sure that this became a matter of the heart quickly for Dennis and me. It is a miracle, I believe, that my practice of connecting my mind and heart was well in place by this time and I could, with compassion, live in and through this experience from my heart and without fear running the show.

We determined not to terminate our child's life but to wait and let nature have her way.....

Our whole family had time and space to understand what was happening....physically and spiritually.

On February 2, 2008, at the 32 week of my pregnancy, I knew she passed....... I was aware that she had stopped moving and I could feel that she was no longer inhabiting her body. Instead of rushing to the hospital to end this experience we saw the doctor to check on her passing and on my health. My doctor confirmed and granted us time.....

Being lead by our hearts, letting go of fear, submitting to the process and the rhythm of our family, we stayed present to the moment. I've said many times that on February 2 grace descended upon our house.......

....I shall never forget those days .... the days of grace, of peace, of compassion, of pure contrast of bitter and sweet.

My days of grace come around every year on February 2..............

Our daughter Isabel was born still on February 6.

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the Ashram

2/1/2015

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Yesterday I visited an Ashram. It was lovely. The place covers 120 acres of hillside. There is a temple for meditation and worship, a bookstore/shop and many living quarters on the premises. The place is gated.

Now, I am not sitting in judgement of anyone. God knows, I have had my fill of that.....

I was reflecting afterward about how I felt up there in that gated off piece of the world.....

I was only there for 2 hours so I have no idea what it would be like to live there either full or part time. However, in these 2 hours I felt a sense of self indulgence... And I felt a pull from the valley below where my family, community and work resides.

Although it is somewhat attractive to me to retreat into a safe and isolated place of meditation where there, no doubt, would be less to suffer over, there is an even bigger pull for me to be out amongst my fellow sufferers...... maybe still in my own suffering as well.

Although it certainly could be a strategy to isolate and increase a spiritual practice and life, I can tell that it is not for me. Whenever I see those NOTW (not of this world) bumper stickers I think to myself..... well, you may not be of this world but I want to be so much of this world that I put all my effort of every kind into living on it. I want to love it and care for it and all its inhabitants so much that my highest value is to allow it work! Our world is such a delicate and elaborate system of life.......It is majestic!

I am honored to be a part of it.

My personal quest is to participate in alleviating suffering (everyone's) in the world while still being in it......not to achieve by default......... of the whole or partial deaths of people or planet.....

It just seems to me that if I am going to be involved in the business of ending suffering, I need to be in the trenches of that suffering..... that running away for the suffering just isn't the same as ending it where it lies.

And, maybe, still, there is no running away from suffering....maybe it comes along right up that hill and into those gates.............

And there is just as much work to do there as anywhere else.

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Lucy Facer Bernstein

I am a committed yogi and community member. I believe in the goodness of humankind and that as we discover our ultimate connectedness we can all find peace....within and without.

cloudy days

.....or die trying

Contraction then expansion. Or maybe the other way around

ALL means YOU too

unwind

Sparring

Survival

the constant call of humanity ( or resistance)

Days of Grace

the Ashram

Lucy Facer Bernstein

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