I wonder what is right with …..

Eleanor

When we took Eleanor home 5 years ago, no one really expected her to live. She only weighed a couple of ounces, fit in the palm of my hand, and was even too young to be tested for any of the many diseases that a feral kitten could have. I would go through these bouts of fear about loosing her, but what really bothered me was that I found it impossible to see her as an adult cat. One day, the idea came to look up adult tortoise-shell cats on-line so I could get a visual.  I knew that if I could get that picture in my mind, I’d be able to focus back on it, when the fears came up.

I’ve heard the concept of visualization knocked by people who say things like, “Right. All I have to do is imagine what I want and it will happen?!” with this tone of sarcasm and unbelief, and I always want to answer, “So you have mastered your mind, huh?! You can actually go 10 minutes, or even an entire day, thinking of only the outcome that you would like to see, and not letting doubt, fear or any number of horrifying scenarios that you wouldn’t like to see, take over?”

But I would never say that, because any person who knew the power of their mind, could not doubt its power and would know that, far from being a passive, airy-fairy concept of “doing nothing”, focusing on the lives that we want (the desired outcome  for any situation that is a current struggle in our lives) is the biggest, hardest, most intense “work” that we will ever do. In the movie that I wrote about earlier this week, Dhamma Brothers, one of the inmates said that meditating, for the 10 day period, was harder than the last 8 1/2 years he had spent on death-row.

So if you are having a hard time focusing your mind, you are in good company. But keep looking for what you want to see anyway. Get an image in your mind of that good. Look for what is right. Ask yourself the questions, “I wonder what is right with me today?” or “I wonder what is right with this situation?”

“And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. FIx your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right and pure, and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” Philippians 4:8

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We’ll see….

Fred and Jackson (Tom and Lindsay’s dog) in the kitchen having a snack

Jack and I were deciding where we wanted to go to dinner on Saturday night and spent about 15 minutes, each offering suggestions which neither of us liked, until we decided on Saratoga. It’s interesting this feeling-out of right decisions. …why one place feels right at a certain time but not at another. A huge wind storm had come though our area about a half hour earlier, so within 5 miles of our house, the road was blocked by a tree that had been blown down. It was too big for us to move, so we turned around and tried a different road and again came to a tree across the road, but this time a car was on the other side of the tree, so Jack and the man in that car were able to drag the tree to the side of the road. Sometimes, when I feel like the trip I’m taking isn’t right, these incidences will serve as signs to turn around, but that wasn’t how either of us felt, so we kept driving.

About 10 minutes later, we were moving right along (in a fair amount of traffic) and I saw a flash of something to the right. At the same time, Jack noticed a man looking like he wanted to cross the road on the left.  We realized that it was a man whose dog had gotten away from him. I braked quickly stopping the traffic behind me, and as traffic on both sides came to a halt, the man was able to get his dog. As we started to drive way, he waved to us and said, “Thank you!” and the reason for our trip to Saratoga (not Bennington or Manchester or Glens Falls) and the 2 trees that delayed us (just the perfect amount of time) became clear.

We don’t always get such quick “happy endings to the story” …but the story is never really done. “The story” is our lives, unfolding perfectly (even if in the moment it looks like a mess).  If you’re having a tough time, or it seems like things have gone wrong, try not to pronounce it finished...keep looking for things to turn around. Sometimes even saying (in the middle of a rough spell, “I’m really looking forward to seeing what is right about this!” will help soothe our minds and emotions enough that even the thing that was seeming so wrong can look better, and when that happens we are on our way up).

Once upon a time, there was a farmer in the central region of China. He didn’t have a lot of money and had only one horse to plow his field. One afternoon the horse ran away. Everyone in the village said, “Oh, what a horrible thing to happen.” The farmer said simply, “We’ll see.” Three days later, the horse returned with two wild horses.  Everyone’s reaction now was, “What a lucky man.” And the farmer said, “We’ll see.” A couple of days later, the farmer’s son tried to ride one of the horses but it threw him off and and he broke his leg. Everyone in the village shook their heads and said, “What a poor fellow!” The farmer just said, “We’ll see.” Two days later, the army came into the village to draft new recruits. When they saw that the farmer’s son had a broken leg, they decided not to recruit him. Everyone said, “What a fortunate young man.”…

The farmer smiled again – and said “We’ll see.”    Chinese Parable

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The truth of who you are

Luke resting his face on my arm as we went for a drive yesterday

Sometimes, when I sit down to write a post I think, “Did I say the same thing last week?” I try to stop this second-guessing of myself by saying, “It doesn’t matter if you’ve said it 100 times. It’s the thing that seems to be pressing to be expressed again, so just write it.” And then for good-measure I will add, “And lighten up and get over yourself Mary.”…that does seem to help….sometimes it actually makes me smile. It reminds me that the part of me that I’m trying to “get over” is the self-concerned, petty, small-minded, fearful person who looks for what is (or might be) wrong instead of right, sees the bad and overlooks the good. This is not the real me, but it can sure do a pretty good job of convincing me that it is, and when I listen, I stay small.

This quality of lightening up, being easy on ourselves, looking for reasons to appreciate who and what we are, and letting go of the concerns about how we will be perceived by others, is so freeing to experience (and to be around). I love the quote below. The simple, yet profound words, “Simply try to tell the truth…”  and the truth is that you are a unique being who (at your core) is pure Divinity expressing through the shape of you. And there is nothing small about that.

“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it“. C. S. Lewis

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The land of (good) opportunities; our lives

our little old guy, Noah (a sweet, sweet cat!)

I woke up on Wednesday morning with a new resolve to focus my mind only on the good. To look for the good in myself and in others, talk about the good in Life, write and think about the goodness of this world. I’ve known (seriously known) for a while that we get what we focus on and that if I’m looking for what is wrong with something (or someone), that quality will be magnified until it seems like that is all they are.

It is odd that it can seem so much easier (and even more natural) to do this, than to look for what is right and refuse to entertain the negative. And yet at our core, we are all Love, we are all growing tips of God-consciousness, and the most “natural” thing for us to do is to express that…and we have hundreds of opportunities to do just that everyday.

On Wednesday,  I woke with the thought,

“Before I really knew about the power of my mind to create, I created a fair amount of crap,…a lot of good, but some not-so-good too, and I’m going to let myself off the hook for all of those years when I was less conscious about what I was doing. But now I know, and I don’t want to be sitting here, 25 years from now, thinking, ‘I knew this stuff when I was in my 50′s. I was just too lazy and undisciplined to focus my mind.’” That would feel like a lost opportunity to me.

Every thought presents another opportunity to choose which way to turn, and like little tiny steps taken in the right direction, they will lead us into more happiness, more love, more connection…more of the life of our dreams.

“A man who is happy seldom tells anyone. The unhappy man is more communicative. He is eager to recite what is wrong with the world and seems to have talent for gathering a large audience. It is a modern tragedy that despair has so many spokesmen, and hope so few.” Oscar Hammerstein

 

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Teaching ourselves with love; turning to the right

Think about the good

For much of my life, I didn’t believe that what I thought about, had anything to do with the way my life was going. Growing up, I never heard my mother say a nice word about my father. She talked and thought negatively, day and night, about the way he acted toward her.  She felt justified in her criticism and she was right. All negative, fearful, and suspicious thought is eventually “justified” because we are the creators of our personal experience.

We have somehow come to believe that it is responsible to be able to “intelligently” talk about the ills of society and what is wrong with the world and the people in it. There’s a belief that if we point out and focus on what is wrong, then we are doing our part to change others and the world, for the better. But trying to make positive change from a stance of criticism, disgust, anger, fear and self-righteousness doesn’t work. The best teachers in this world are not the ones who focus on what is wrong, but the ones who can see the good (even if it is tiny and imperceptible to everyone else), and magnify it.

We are an unhappy society full of critical thinkers. It is almost politically and socially incorrect to be happy. Why not take this weekend to see what is right in your life…just in your life. Try to turn from thoughts of what is going wrong (or could go wrong) to what is right or could go right. Look for the good within. Shine a spot light on it. Magnify it and see what happens.

“There’s no reality except the one contained within us. “Hermann Hesse

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A Festival of Lights, beauty everywhere

The light inside

I was sitting in my car on Sunday morning, waiting for it to warm up, and saw this beautiful pattern on the windshield.  At this time of year, we are lighting a lot of lights and candles; celebrating Hanukkah, the Winter Solstice, Christmas, but as lovely as these traditions are, they are only “pointers” to what can be happening within us; within our own hearts and minds.

I had a lunch date with my mother a few days ago, and felt less than excited as I drove to the restaurant. I suddenly had the idea to imagine a little white candle burning in my heart, and the glow of it spreading out like loving arms. I drove along with this image, and felt larger and lighter myself. We had a wonderful time. I came home and emailed my brother to tell him about it, not realizing until this morning, that I had written to him, “Mom seemed really good, she was light…” What I was feeling, I saw in her too.

The world is an out-picturing of our inner state. Anais Nin wrote that you don’t see the world the way it is, you see the world the way that you are. If I feel heavy with worry, anger or judgement, the world will supply me with an endless stream of things to feel worse about. I’ll think it is “the world” and forget that it is the state of my mind finding expression in the people, places and things that come into my day.

Today I am going to, on purpose, look for the good; first inside myself…then, I’ll see it everywhere I go. Even on my car windshield, even in the smile of my 84 year old mother.

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Watch out!

Patty catches Wonder in the act of being cute!

Many years ago, when my sons were little, and I was struggling with how to be a good parent; wanting them to grow up to be secure, happy, self-realized people, someone said to me, “I always try to catch my children doing something great.” This statement was such a shock to me; such a change from the attitude of watching out for trouble, the prevalent societal mindset of ” These are the warning signs and the things to be aware of in your kids behaviour….” I never forgot this and did my best to incorporate it into my philosophy of parenting.

It goes beyond parenting though. I want to approach life and living this way too; being always aware of the great things that people around me are doing, believing that the universe is “conspiring to bless me”….conspiring to bless us all. Watch out! Something great might happen to you today!!

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Early morning grace, looking through a new lens

my first photography workshop, "Early Morning" Sagamore Lake

A few years ago, Jack signed up for a digital photography course at one of the “Great Camps” in the Adirondacks. He is a very good photographer but wanted to expand with more digital photography.  At the last-minute, he couldn’t go, and his money could not be refunded,  so I took his place. I was hoping to get some basic help, like how to turn a camera on.

I had, at some point in my adult life, grown “picture-taking averse”. It seemed like every time my mother visited, she had her camera slung around her neck, and was forever making everyone pose. I resented this (as I resented many things about my mother) and so I guess I had subconsciously boycotted cameras and picture-taking.

I was talking to a friend the other day about parenting (she has 2 young teenage boys) and the challenges of knowing how to raise them.  Since I had my sons in my early-mid  20′s, and had not worked through a lot of my own family/growing up issues, I told her that when I got into a situation with them and I didn’t know what to do, a lot of times I would think about my mother, about how she would handle it, and then, I’d do the opposite. Not a sound child-raising theory, I know.

I found it hard to see that my mother had any wisdom at all, and I wasn’t looking for it. I was looking for all that she did “wrong”…and I found that. When I look through my photo albums these days, and see photographs of my sons as babies, little boys, young men… I am so grateful that my mother took those pictures. That she tolerated my “attitude” and took the pictures anyway. I see my mother differently these days. I have widened my lens with a new intention of seeing the good…and I am finding that too. Lots more of it then I ever expected.

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