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1995: “The Whole Thing”

Posted on July 30, 2023 by jenny

SUNDAY, JULY 30, 1995 Sometime in the early ’90s I followed the program described in Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. “Morning pages” is one of the exercises in Julia Cameron’s program. Nika is the Artist part of me, I don’t remember now where her name came from. I started doing the program in May of 1995 as Nika. This post is from “Nika’s Morning Pages.”

Candle, dandelion tea, aap sahaee hoaa on the tape deck. Glorious day, snarling planes, enormous sadness. I’m seeing that in the struggle with the noise there are many “parts of myself”:

I am the one that screams intolerably loud, trying to get someone to pay attention to my pain.

I am the one that tries to avoid hearing the noise, that makes the noisemaker wrong.

I am the one that cries out and causes other people to feel the pain of their unhealed wounds.

I am the one who, attempting to enjoy my life, thoughtlessly causes pain to others.

I am the one who is damaged, before birth and all my life, by the toxic wastes of our unhealthy culture, and I am the one who perpetuates that pollution by the choices I make in how I live.

The hardest one to own is “thoughtlessly causes pain” since I have spent so much of my life’s energy holding myself back, holding back my power, my creativity, my intelligence, my joy, in the effort not to “hurt” people. But much of that fear was an illusion. And the truth is that I have, more than once, thoughtlessly caused pain by an unconsidered remark.

Walking back to the house to get a mug, I could see the beauty of the glorious day – sparkling blue and green, fresh breeze, white clouds — and the pain of my grief like a dagger in the heart and one did not shut out the other, they were both there, both parts of me, both pain and glory and they were somehow one, somehow some new thing that contains both pain and joy, that’s much bigger than either, that reaches out into enormous spaces. This is the whole thing. This is like the moment of the corpse and the blossoming apple tree, but more complete. Words are poor substitutes for experience — that’s the best I can do. I wish I could express it as poetry, there’s some sort of intensification that happens when the pain is there with the beauty, but doesn’t cut me off from the beauty. This is like the way the beauty of the world was intensified in the aftermath of Fiona’s death, but then the pain was greater than the beauty, and now the beauty is greater than the pain, includes the pain, is completed by the pain. I repeat to myself with wonder and tears: “This is the whole thing. I have it all.”

“This beauty opens a great heart, wide, wide a world’s refuge.”

The white clouds fly. The little green leaves quiver in the sunlight. A purple finch sits at the feeder. The sunlight falls on the pottery shells. Signs from Journey into Courage stand against the wall. Maria & Susie are elegant, the dollhouse is unfinished, the crone fabric hangs in the background. The white clouds fly behind the ugly transformer with its ugly wires that brings the electricity into the house to run the tape deck so I can be listening to aap sahaee hoaa, and the sound of a plane contributes a base note. A butterfly and a bee come to the window. “I am the sacrifice unto the One, day or night, with every breath, remember Him.” Not perfection, but completeness. Yes, Lord, I happily and with gratitude, give up “perfection” and accept completeness. “The Lord Himself has become my refuge.” What an astonishing, rich, complex, enormous place to live. And I have no name for it, can only feebly call it “the Whole Thing.” Perhaps this is god? Certainly there is a sense of a Divine Being who contains all these contradictory things, and has room for more, space in which utterly new things can appear. What’s Howard’s phrase for it? “Human freedom open to the new”, and God’s creativity breaking into history — “Behold, I make all things new.” And I say Yes! I want it all, the pain as well as the joy, the endless risk of being “open to the new.”

Howard, my ex-husband’s father, a minister, wrote: “Divine Grace capable of the new, and human freedom open to the new.”

Thomas Merton’s version of Chuang Tzu poem “How Deep is Tao” contains the line “he grows great, great, opens a great heart, a world’s refuge.” I don’t remember where the other quotes come from, can’t find them on the internet.

Posted in Healing, Journal, Trauma, Work with parts | Comments Off

1995: Journey Into Courage Video and Fear about Mom

Posted on July 29, 2023 by jenny

After the first showing of the movie about Journey Into Courage, I realized that my siblings’ names were listed among the contributors to making the video. I worried about mother finding out. At this point I still didn’t know about the trauma, I thought my father must have done more than my only memory of something I thought trivial.

The actual memory: I was about 12 years old, and my breasts were just starting to grow. My father came into my bedroom and put his hands on my breasts. I thought O no not this again. Then I groaned and turned over. He never did it again. Because I was unable to have sex with my husband, I thought I must have been abused sexually. But in fact, my difficulty with sex was due to early trauma. At one point my brother said he made sure his daughter was never alone with my father because he didn’t like how Daddy treated his other girl grandchildren. This was validation for my memory. There was also the fact that my groan and turning over stopped my father from doing it again. I think both these things helped make it not be so damaging an experience. It was not invalidated, and I was able to stop it. However, one piece of damage was I have never been able to sleep on my back since then.

My script for Journey

From my journal for July 1995:

I’ve got an awful pain in my heart. I think it must be that I’m afraid that mother will see the video and be “hurt.” Although of course she won’t express it as hurt, but as anger and invalidation. I wish I had asked Bess to keep my brothers’ names out of the credits — and then I get angry: why shouldn’t they get credit for their support of this project? I imagine mother calling “You’ve embarrassed me in front of my friends..” and me saying “You’ve embarrassed me in front of my friends many times.” Of course, she’ll see that Jess and Jerry and Jo all contributed to the production, that would make it a little hard for her to scapegoat me. It’s true that I do speak of “another incest survivor” and “her father approached her too,” but don’t give any graphic details. I do talk about the alcoholism in more than one place, especially in my identification with the soldiers fighting in Vietnam. So what do I want in this situation? I want mother to never see the video, never know about it, I don’t want her to be hurt. Except for that part of me that really wants her to know how much I’ve suffered. Then I get angry at how I’ve held myself back all these years because I was afraid of “hurting” her. I see how I’m having the same problem with Mom that Beverly is having with Arlene and Lynelle with Sara. How to cut off from a person who doesn’t see you as who you are, and who will protest that you are “hurting” them if you speak your own truth?

If it could be any way at all? I want Mom to see the film, understand that she had a wonderfully creative, talented, and loving daughter, who she damaged through her drinking, I want her heart to break open, and then I want her to get help, AA or therapy, to start healing her own pain and stop drinking. I put “see the film,” but that’s only an imagined process toward the goal. The real goal is that she would see what kind of person I really am, and there’s no way she can do that without going through enormous pain. And I also want her to address her pain and her alcoholism. And I don’t believe for a moment in any of these things coming to pass. I do think it would take some kind of shock, like seeing the video, to wake her up, and I expect her to be much too well defended to let it in.

“How could you do that to your mother?” (How could she fucking do that to me? My sex life is dead because she failed to protect me from my father, and possibly also left me with an inappropriate baby sitter. I’ve lost the chance for a life in theater because she was so jealous and threatened, I lived for fifty years hiding and denying my creativity because I didn’t want to “hurt” her. I’m done with hiding and denial, dammit!)

“I respectfully give you back your pain, Mother. Here it is, I’m not carrying it for you any longer.”

“You don’t care about me.“ “I do care about you, and there’s no way I can express it that you would get. Because I care about you, I’ve spent my life holding back the parts of me that you didn’t like, and I’m not willing to do that any more. I’m no longer willing to sacrifice myself for you, especially since it doesn’t do you any good — you don’t appreciate it or even see it — I’m hurting myself and the only result is that you get to go on living your lie. I will not protect you any longer. My creative life — the life of my soul — is more important to me than not hurting you, and speaking the truth is more important to me than allowing you to remain in your comfortable denial.”

I LOVE MY CREATIVE LIFE
MORE
THAN I LOVE CO-OPERATING
WITH MY OWN OPPRESSION

and that’s the truth. And it’s right for my donation to the film to be “anonymous” — anonymous was a woman after all — and it’s right that my siblings should be given credit for their contributions.

“I won’t hold back my creative life any longer in order to not hurt you. I’m sorry that you can’t be proud of me for my part in something that will help make the world a better place to live in.”

“How dare you say you are an incest survivor? Nothing like that ever happened to you.” “How would you know, Mom? You were drunk.”

Lynelle gave me a card to take to the screening. She said she came into the house and up to my desk and felt a lot of fear in my space — all the fear that I haven’t been letting myself feel. The card was a black madonna, “Protectress of the Oppressed,” and she had written a message of love and support. She also enclosed a little tale about two birds. One had sat on a branch and watched 3,741,952 snowflakes fall on it. “When the 3,741,953rd dropped onto the branch, nothing more than nothing, as you say — the branch broke off.” The dove thought about the story and then said “Perhaps there is only one person’s voice lacking for peace to come into the world.

I wish I had saved that card.

Posted in Journal, Spirit, Story, Trauma | Comments Off

1995: Glider Hatred

Posted on July 27, 2023 by jenny

During the years from 1984 to 1997 I suffered from the noise of small planes from a nearby airport. The worst were the ones that towed the gliders because it went on so long. I wrote this in my journal at the beginning of July 1995:

Downstairs making my second cup of tea, I found myself going off on a diatribe against the gliders — sparked by the piece in the Chamber of Commerce magazine: “soaring lifts your spirits”, “enjoy a place of spectacular peace and beauty” — and I want to yell at them “Soaring may lift your spirits, but the noise makes me want to kill myself” — “the spectacular peace is ruined by your exploitation of it” and in response to their imagined reply “NO I am not too sensitive — you are too noisy. How would you like to sit in the dentist chair and have a sensitive tooth drilled 10 or 20 times a day periodically throughout the summer? That’s what the noise feels like to me.” I hate them, and I don’t like hating them, I don’t like how it feels inside me when I hate. And I don’t know what to do about it. This sudden spurt of anger reminds me of my anger at Susan, and I wonder if they are connected. I also see that I am like my friend Eleanor, I want to kill myself because the planes are hurting me — it’s the exact same thing as what I get so upset with her for. And I think comes out of the same kind of invalidation — you’re too sensitive to live in this world, you’d be better off dead. Wanting to kill myself is a response to a sensitivity I can’t do anything about — well that’s not entirely true, all my efforts have lessened it, but they haven’t made it go away — and I think I’m wrong to be that sensitive. The sensitivity is bad enough, but it’s the invalidation of the sensitivity that makes me want to kill myself. At least I think so, but the two are so tangled up that it’s hard to separate them. I hear the sound and want to die, it seems direct to me, there doesn’t appear to be any self-invalidation in between. Well, of course, the planes themselves represent and re-stimulate the world’s invalidation. They are like that harsh edge that comes into mother’s voice when she’s drunk and when she has said particularly nasty things to me — in fact I wonder if it’s the same frequency? That would account for why it bothers me so much when other people seem to hardly notice it. And the planes are also saying, or rather snarling: “What’s the matter with you? You’re too sensitive. You have to learn to be tougher. We’re going to teach you a lesson.”

To which I respond: what’s the matter with me is that I am a very sensitive person who responds with great depth to the world around me. I am not “too sensitive”, the world is much too noisy and it’s bad for everyone’s health even though they don’t know it. I was abused as a child and the noise just re-stimulates it. I do not have to learn to be tougher — my sensitivity is part of what makes me an artist and it is my gift to the world. The world — by which I mean human beings — needs to learn to be gentler, or we are going to destroy ourselves with our own violence. And that whole attitude of “teach you a lesson” is a really shitty one and part of “poisonous pedagogy.” SO THERE! “I’m a natural resource & endangered species just like the Bald Eagle and the Whooping Crane and the Furbish Lousewort — and I deserve to be protected — I need to be protected if you are to survive and you’d jolly well better learn how to do it. And if you refuse to learn from me, then I hope you’re mugged or raped or assaulted or even murdered and you can see how you like “being taught a lesson” and whether it teaches you anything worthwhile.”

Phew! I hope that helps. I feel stronger & more solid in my middle.

It turns out that the sensitivity to noise is a symptom of PTSD. It was finally healed by a combination of medication and an astute therapist. I notice that expressing my anger helps me feel “stronger and more solid.”

It’s also true that I was a “Highly Sensitive Person,” and this made me even more sensitive to the noise.

Posted in Depression, Journal, Trauma | Comments Off

1995: Art as Medicine

Posted on July 26, 2023 by jenny

Back in 1995, I did a couple of retreats with Shaun McNiff, who wrote the book Art as Medicine. I don’t remember the instructions, I think the painting process was very improvisational.

From my journal for June 1995:

FRIDAY JUNE 9 at Merriam Hill for ART as MEDICINE with Shaun McNiff. A beautiful day — green and blue day — see every tree on the mountains day. Came out a little in tonight’s painting — it’s that peak moment of June, the leaves fully out but still spring green, everything is fresh, nothing damaged yet, but we are almost to the top of the cycle, the wheel is turning and soon it will turn back down… The painting had flourishing fleshy green plant forms against a peach sky — that combination always makes me think of adolescent romance.

June 11 The lots chose me to work with Shaun yesterday — demonstrating how to dialogue with the images. He said I was absolutely fantastic at it, the best he’d ever seen (which is high praise — considering that he’s done this for years) He also said I was very talented. I doubt that I’ll be able to report the whole exchange, some things went right out of my head almost immediately.

Read a bit of the New Yorker at break — horrified at the tone of voice: superior and deprecatory at the same time: yes we are weary here at the end of the millenium, but will still have a dry sense of humor — I find it totally false and sad, an evasion of reality while pretending to be realist. Someone said after the dialogue exercise how powerful it was to be in the truth — yes, and when we are in the truth there’s no need to be superior and cynical and deprecatory.

Let’s see. Dialogue work. I worked with the Second “Creepy Man” painting and the “Woman with Masks.” To “Creepy Man” I said “You seem very chaotic, ungrounded.” The painting responded “I like my chaos. I am ungrounded because I’m springing off the ground.” I described the blue line as “bone”. Asked to speak for the blue line, I had to grope for words “cold— ancient — Iceland, Greenland — north,” but what I remembered was the hut of the north, built of icycles and bones, that I had drawn in my medicine journey. Shaun said it was like being at a seance with an Icelandic shaman. For the black crescent moon I also had a hard time finding words, said something about “New Moon begins in darkness,” then that the moon was a sickle, a curved knife to cut the umbilical cord. Later, when the others were allowed to respond, Enid sang a beautiful chilling soaring chant to the moon that gave me goose bumps it was so exactly what that moon was about.

When I moved to the other painting I found myself embarrassed and uncomfortable with the fullness of the breasts, but when I spoke for them — no, what happened? Shaun said, holding his hands to his heart, “I’ve got a lot in here,” and that opened the door. I burst into tears saying “O yes, I have so much inside, endless stores of grain, and bolts of cloth and melons, and glass vases —— and I’d like to give it all away, but I’m afraid people won’t like me, will get angry at me, and so I hide what I’ve got.”

I wish I had taken pictures of my works, I don’t remember now what they looked like. Reading this, I didn’t remember what Shaun said of me. I told Erica and she thought it was important so I decided to do this blog post.

I find it interesting that I couldn’t remember more of what Shaun said to me. I think it was “don’t think you’re so great” controlling what I could remember. I’m glad I got as much as I did.

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Foundational Qualities for the Next Era

Posted on July 21, 2023 by jenny

This is from Kosmos, from an article by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. I thought it was important enough to post here. The full piece can be found at the link.

Here are seven foundational qualities for the next era:

Respect for women and feminine principles, such as receptivity, patience, nurturing, listening (with the senses, the soul, and the heart). This does not mean that we will be returning to a matriarchal era, but that patriarchal oppression in all its forms will no longer be part of our culture. Without the return of the feminine nothing new can be born, nor will we be able to nurture a new way of being with the Earth.
Respecting the land as sacred and developing different new and old ways of working with the Earth in harmony with life’s biodiversity and interdependence.
Time no longer seen as linear, but a return to the rhythms and patterns of nature, the seasons—how Spring follows Winter—but also our place in other patterns of time, within our bodies and the world around us, for example the waxing and waning of the moon and the seasons of our human lives. Through this quality human life will no longer be seen as part of a linear image of progress, instead we will return to living in harmony with the many different rhythms of time, recognizing our place within nature and the cosmos. This will also help us to live more fully in the present moment.
The coming era will be non-hierarchical. How the present hierarchies—their dynamics of power and patterns of control—fall apart will be one of the defining experiences of the coming decades, even as new, non-hierarchical ways of living and working together emerge, often experimental, like seed nurseries for the coming era.
There will be a focus on forming communities of all types, which can connect together in an organic way, be interconnected and interdependent as in nature.
Oneness will be a foundational principle. No one will be excluded, everything and everyone will have their own place and be intrinsically recognized for their own nature, their note in the symphony of creation. This will be the most simple and the most difficult, because it is counter to so many of the patterns of human behavior of the present time. But with this principle, life and humanity will reorganize itself, reconstellate into new ways, new patterns and connections, that reflect the unity that belongs to all of life.
Love, love and care for each other and for the Earth will be the central spiritual principle. This will reawaken the Divine in a new way, returning us to an experience of divine presence.

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Spiritual Experiences

Posted on July 19, 2023 by jenny

In the writing group on Monday, July 17 I wrote about how miserable I was feeling, how despairing about the future of what humans are doing to our planet. Then how the spiritual reading I’ve been doing is not helping me. Then I ask “what spiritual experiences have I had?” and discovered that I’ve had a lot. Reminding myself was pretty amazing.

The writing:

Red sunlight coming through the window shining across the room. Apocalyptic — that word means the lid has been taken off. The heat is like a heavy lid, oppressive. heavy weight.

Reading Joanna Macy on our failure to dispose of radioactive waste safely. Who was it who was talking about time, how time has speeded up, how there is no time and because there is no time we might as well use everything up and leave nothing for the generations to come. They are not real to us.

And then there was the thing about children in the Congo mining cobalt, in dirty and unsafe mines, for use in the batteries of our smartphones and electric cars.

Where are we going? where am I going? What sort of future is there when it keeps getting hotter and the air is unbreathable…

I’ve been reading books about spiritual practice, spiritual transformation, but I feel confused and overwhelmed. The practices they describe don’t work for me.

What experiences have I had? I wrote some of them down recently. There was the dream I had, some time in my twenties. I was in Heaven and they told me to go back down to earth and tell everybody they were already forgiven before they had ever sinned. Then I was back on earth and starting to tell people, and then I woke up. I never even wrote the dream down but I’ve never forgotten it.

Then there was going to the Chalice Well in Glastonbury. I sat down on a bench near the well cover with the design of the vesica piscis, and felt the most amazing relaxation and peace settle inside me. All burdens laid down.

The Nature Sanctuary in Findhorn, an odd little building hand built of Lewissian gneiss, with a sod roof, in the shape of a spiral. A bench running around the inside and a sort of altar at the center. My companion and I sat down to meditate. I got the oddest feeling. It was like there was a soft pink fluid, sort of like water, it filled the building and held me up the way water holds you up. It came up to my heart. I somehow knew it was like an ocean, all around the earth. I could feel compassion even though there was no sense of a personal presence. It was an Ocean of Compassion. Several years later I learned that one of the names of the Dalai Lama is “ocean of compassion.”

Then there was the time I was sitting among the Stones of Carnac in Brittany. There was a short piece of rainbow in the sky. I was feeling discouraged and talked to the Goddess, saying “Thank you for your gifts. Maybe when I learn to see that your trials are also gifts…” and on that thought the rainbow stretched to the top of its arc.

This was as far as I got in the 20 minutes we usually have for writing. Some other experiences are described in blog posts so I’ve listed them. But there was one I never talked about.

In May 2021, I participated in a prayer call for India which was overwhelmed by COVID. It was on Zoom, put on by ServiceSpace. I was surprised to find that I could feel healing energy flowing through me to India, a wonderful feeling. Later I found out there were 500 people, all over the world, participating in that call.

I participated in a class put on by the Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Foundation and Wilka Roig. A number of people talking about near death experiences and experiences of life after death. I remember in particular one man who said when he was with a dying person he would pray silently “May my presence be a blessing.” I liked the sound of it, so I started doing it as I walked through the halls of Kendal where I live. I was very surprised to find that I could feel the same energy flowing through me to everyone, the same energy that I had felt on the prayer call to India. It’s quite a lovely feeling and it hasn’t failed me yet, I think partly because when I feel “I can’t pray now I feel completely empty” I think O BUT empty is just right for having the blessing energy flow through me.

Other experiences described in blog posts::
God in a Sheet
Goodness Beyond Goodness
Foundation

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Dialogue with a Part

Posted on July 16, 2023 by jenny

Written in writing group on June 26. I was feeling very scared and worrying about Mocha’s illness. I thought I would try talking to a part who was scared.

I just want to cry. My teeth have been chattering all day. I don’t know what to do. Everything is scary. If Mocha gets really sick I don’t know if I will be able to take care of her. I feel so clumsy.

ME: how old are you?

EIGHT: I’m eight. And I got left to take care of the younger kids. Everything was OK, but I just felt inadequate. I didn’t know what I’d do if anything went wrong. What if somebody fell or something.

M: Didn’t they give you a number to call if you needed help?

E: No, were they supposed to? I thought I was just supposed to do whatever was needed. They thought I could do it. O gosh I’m feeling lost and scared again. What am I going to do? I just want to hide.

M: Now wait a minute. You’ve got friends who can help. There will be people you can ask what to do when Mocha gets to certain places. You won’t have to be all alone.

E: You mean I can ask for help? I’ve always been scared to ask for help. They made me wrong if I asked for help. I was just supposed to know. I thought I was stupid that I didn’t know.

M: You don’t know things if someone else doesn’t teach you. Some things you can find in books, but some things you just have to ask somebody. Your Mom & Dad just made you wrong for asking?

E; Yes. They didn’t want to be bothered. They acted like I should already know, what was the matter with me that I didn’t. Oh I just felt so lost, so alone.

I can’t think of anything to say. The weather is miserable. Hot and wet, sun alternates with rain, so uncomfortable. My head hurts and I’m so tired. Trying to understand why I’m in this uncomfortable place.

Two days after this, I was visited by the Vet who comes to your home. She didn’t think Mocha had the horrible disease, and she was able to watch her move around quite a lot. It was a great relief.

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Tangled Threads

Posted on July 6, 2023 by jenny

I’ve been thinking about the different themes I’ve been working with recently.

One is the idea of “handing things over to God” or Divine Beloved or Divine Process. The problem is that the “god” I learned about in my childhood was “capricious, malicious and willful.” When I saw that I realized why it is so difficult for me to trust “Divine Process.” I’ve also realized more recently that “capricious, malicious, and willful” really describes my mother more than my father. My father at least had values that he stuck by. I didn’t agree with many of his values, but at least they were consistent. Mother changed her values according to her feelings of the moment. I didn’t see that until I did the 4th of July Monologue. I also had the mantra Kripalu gave me “I offer myself to this process,” which was easy because process could be anything. I even had a sense that it was scientific, that is according to definite rules. But too much of my life was under the shadow of “capricious, malicious and willful.” Recently, talking to a 12-yr-old part, she said “God’s just like Daddy.” So that’s what makes it difficult to trust Divine Process.

Another thread: being able to accept whatever is happening right now. I saw that acceptance was easier for me to practice than letting go. So I went back to “Radical Acceptance” a book which I’ve read several times, this time with a sense of seriousness about practicing it.

The question of “self” vs. “no self.” I’m seeing that what you consider “self” depends a lot on your world view. Some authorities use the terms “self” and Self” to distinguish two versions of self. Then there’s the idea of being connected with everything. One way that could happen would be to smooth out everyone’s individual characteristics so we’d all be the same, homogeneous. That certainly wouldn’t work in a body, where it’s very important for specialized cells to perform their tasks. You wouldn’t want a liver cell and a brain cell to be smoothed out and homogenized. Each Self has individual qualities that are its gift to the world.

Paying attention to what my body is trying to tell me. Tara says it’s very important to pay attention to your body. I learned, when I was feeling uncomfortable, if I stayed with it instead of trying to get away from it, I might learn something important. I’m finding that paying attention to my body when I’m walking outside is a great way of staying present. I’m also fortunate that dance has been so important to me. It’s helped me be much better in touch with my physical self than many people in our culture.

The question of holding opposites together, like grief and gratitude. I’m finding that one very difficult. I was surprised to see that I had experienced the sense of opposites together twice, but it didn’t get built into my memory. Would have forgotten if I hadn’t written them down. The two experiences are in Ritual Year. One is Real Life is Bigger than Happiness. The other is Blazing and Storm-shattered Maples.

I think of these themes as tangled threads, because they do connect in odd ways. My therapist, Erica, said when you are untangling yarn, you can’t just pull one out, you have to loosen one piece and then loosen another. I feel like that’s what I have been doing with these themes that I’m working with. I’m trying to find my way to “let my life live itself.”

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Three-Centered Knowing

Posted on July 5, 2023 by jenny

Written in writing group, Monday, July 3

I’ve been reading Cynthia Bourgeault’s book called The Wisdom Way of Knowing. She describes a retreat on an island in Maine with about 12 people. Their day was divided into chanting and praying, intellectual discussion, and physical labor. The physical labor was simple and rhythmic, such as stacking logs. The point was to activate 3 centers, the body, the mind, and the heart. By “heart” they didn’t mean an emotional center, the heart was considered “an organ for the perception of divine purpose and beauty.” p34 The idea was that using those three centers in a balanced way would raise our ability to understand. She said that as a group they found themselves interacting at a higher level than usual.

In connection with the three centers, she told a story of a young man who was having trouble experiencing his faith and devotion as strongly as he wanted to. This was in the Russian Orthodox Church. The abbot thought for a moment, and then told him to make 100 prostrations a day for a month and then come back. A month later he came back, his face glowing, his faith restored to something living.

I remember doing prostrations as part of Zen training. You bow with hands in gassho — prayer position, then go down on the floor, completely stretched out, arms over head, and you lift your hands briefly, then lay them down and get back up. I remember feeling very odd at first, not liking the idea of worshiping anybody, or bowing down to an idol. But I quickly discovered that a prostration gave me a sense of relief, of letting go of all of my troubles. I have no idea what an Eastern Orthodox prostration looks like, but it’s probably similar. Anyway, I started doing two prostrations, sometimes more than once a day. Not easy with an old body, but the same lovely feeling of letting go.

I know that I’ve really missed Sacred Circle Dance, and so I’ve added a couple of dances to the prostrations. I’ve done the Cantique de Jean Racine, Caravan, Loda alla Montagna, and Dreams of Harmony. It really lifts my spirits. I’m so grateful.

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Struggling with Some Ideas about How to Live

Posted on July 4, 2023 by jenny

From my journal for July 3:

Etty talks about accepting both high and low tides in relationship, and that sounded like a good idea. Acceptance is something I can practice, unlike the letting go piece which I don’t do well at all. So I got out Radical Acceptance. She talks about how the Buddha teaches that there is no “self,” no independent self, we are all connected. Something about that felt uncomfortable to me. No, I am me! Why do I want to be this person who is such a failure? What if I could just step back from her and love her, this woman who is feeling so bad about herself? Somehow my heart goes right out, like it does to people who say they are having a hard time. I see the problem with the slide show. I want to impress people, not share something I love. If it’s not about sharing something I love, I don’t want to do it.

Oh, yes, I remember when I stopped working on “Written in Blood” when I realized I was trying to prove I deserve to live. Building Neskaya, I never thought once about impressing people, or proving anything about myself. I realize that worrying about “me” as being antithetical to “connected with all” is one of those paradoxes that the rational materialist paradigm has a hard time with. My individual qualities are the gift I have to give to the world, but I also am connected to all and part of the whole as a cell is “connected to” and part of the whole body.

Reading Radical Acceptance I am finding lots of suggestions for how to handle the parts of my life I have a hard time with. One important suggestion is to pay attention to my body. Often feelings that I’m uncomfortable with are in my body, if I pay attention to them instead of trying to make them go away I have a chance to find out what’s bothering me, at which point I can do something about it. I noticed recently that when I got a sense of what I was uncomfortable about, it was a situation with a friend, the uncomfortable feeling in my body went away. I still had the issue I was uncomfortable about, but now I can see what to do about it.