My Book. Or, a book. By Me.

Because I hope it won't be the last.

The Sacred Pause

Theo and Dora at preschool ages, 2005

I had a moment of insight and clarity after meditation class this morning. What a surprise, right? But I've been feeling so low I almost didn't go to class.

We are reading Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach. She talks about our collective tendency in this culture to believe that we are deficient beings in need of fixing, which sets us up for a lifetime of trying too hard to be "perfect," and, inevitably, failing.

I know a place that gave respite from this delusional perspective. Montessori Country School, and the directors and teachers Patty, Karla, Sue, Meghan, Kasia, Liisa, Cindy, Lydia, Julie, Melissa and Emily. They created this completely rational and incredibly beautiful world within our crazy external reality that was based on a countercultural trust and belief in the true Buddha nature of our children. They did not need perfecting! They were not required to measure up to some external standard of learning or, more importantly, being.

They were treasured for their existence just as it was. They were welcomed without an assumption that they must change in order to belong. They were welcomed with the belief that wholeness and goodness and intelligence was their innate essence, and upon being shown a loving way to express that essence they would naturally fill an important place in the community. No one keeping score. No competition encouraged because every one is on his or her own path. No one had to "get ahead." There was time for it all. What a heartrending relief.

There is a tangible difference that any creature feels in being allowed to be. It's this allowance of the "sacred pause," which might happen anytime during an activity or between them, during which time one can sense the life streaming through, notice what one is experiencing, decide what one might do next. How many educational institutions allow this magic to happen? Certainly not very many traditional schools have built-in room for this kind of self-awareness.

We used to get it just being kids and having big chunks of time with nothing to do. Kids these days have precious little of that. And that is to all of us a far deeper loss than I want to consider. Nothing less than the building of a whole soul, navigating difficult moments, opening to the suffering and joy, learning to relate to the world outside, is happening during these moments. One could argue that this is the true education, because all future success depends on there being "fertile ground for wise action."

Ajahn Buddhadasa calls these interludes of natural or purposeful pausing "temporary nirvana." We touch the freedom that is possible in any moment when we are not grasping after our experience or resisting it. He writes that without such moments of pausing, " . . . living things would either die or become insane. Instead, we survive because there are natural periods of coolness, of wholeness and ease. In fact, they last longer than the fires of our grasping and fear. It is this that sustains us.

~Radical Acceptance

My children's preschool experience to me in looking back was full of so much of the spiritual feeling of safety and love and being held that I am beginning to understand from a more intellectual aspect now. How blessed we all were to receive it, even though we couldn't understand it fully.

Channels

Yesterday my teacher pointed out the difference between having a list of things to do and inhabiting a place where your tasks are part of a meaningful living process. For a short time I left the home I've made to spend time in the home made by my parents, left my mom/spouse list behind for the daughter one, but I almost didn't recognize it. Then I came back and once again felt myself struggling to locate myself in my life.

After 10 days in the hospital and recovering from an infection and emergency surgery my 79 year old father was hard to recognize too. He is skirting the edges, not taking life for granted. He talked about different things, and in a different way. He talked more about people and relationships, and with more emotion than I've ever seen him show. He thanked me for coming to be with him and my mom. Missing home made me want to leave, but seeing this dramatic change demanded for me to stay and witness. I felt that one other intense time, when I had to hold on to a tiny being and then choose when to let go because it would be forever. Being a parent has forever changed the way I am a daughter.

Life does not feel solid and yet it feels so heavy at times. Words are light. There is so much in them, and in a body and mind. Books full of words are available to me. Stores full of clothing, furniture, ugly and beautiful things. Take take take then throw away. Pull in muscles with or without breathing. Travel with or without enjoying. Stay at home with or without hiding. Hide with or without caring. Care with or without voting. Leave with or without knowing you can return.

The difference appeared in the threads created in the grain of the wood between the knots in the yoga studio ceiling. Where I once saw smiles and then patience (described here), now I see channels. Some ways narrow, widen, narrow, go through. Some are closed off and become islands, gathering places where the density of growth allowed for a branch to shoot off in a new direction. We can make our patterns in the world: breathing with love, moving with acceptance, seeing with appreciation, locating with gratitude. It feels good to find this again, even though I am not beyond questioning it yet.

What if your joy is tied up in knots?

Last week in the evenings Theo and Dora and I were sitting around the kitchen table in the warmth of the woodstove making things with wire, beads, and hemp. I was looking for a way to slow down the sense of busyness that builds up with the season. It's reliably pervasive--even though we don't watch t.v. or live in a big city somehow the intensity (I think of it as the commerciality) of the holidays seeps into our days and eats any extra minutes up for a quick snack.

I remember when Steve and I went to New Zealand years ago, um, 11 1/2 years ago, to be exact, since that is the trip on which we conceived Theo. We sold our house in Seattle and set off, first to New Zealand and then Southeast Asia, to have adventures, see some of the places I had lived growing up, and perhaps find a new place to live. For at least the first two months of the trip it felt like I had a wire pulled tight up my back and neck and through my jaw. I thought something had happened to my teeth because my bite had changed and my teeth weren't meeting in the nice point-in-the-indent way that they normally do. I believe I was internalizing so much stress from uprooting ourselves, even though it was planned, that my body couldn't relax. Almost 6 months after we left, we returned to the States and went to my parents place to pick up our car. Some providence of the universe put a book on prenatal yoga in my path on a trip to town and after Steve helped me do maybe 20 minutes of it I started to cry and cry. Pregnant! In this huge, uncontrollable world! That was the beginning of this wild ride of parenthood we've been on together.

I've had a similar knot in my shoulder and neck for the last two weeks. As before, I wouldn't have said that I was particularly stressed. But as before, I suspect my body knows better. So I've been making a special effort to say no to extra things, to focus in yoga, and to pick up hand work and slow time down. Having my children do this with me is more lovely than I can say.

This morning I did a guided meditation for pain, focusing on the crink in my shoulder. Molecules of dissolving breath were racing in the manner of ants to a picnic. 20 minutes later, instead of crying, I'm glad to say my knot of joy to the world was a smidge smaller and the day of social festivities could begin. The tightness was still there, but I could actually feel it loosening as I envisioned the edges softening. Truly, mind over matter! I've always been a sci fi fan, especially when it's a mirror for real life.

The benefits of a stroke

"The limbic system functions by placing an affect, or emotion, on information streaming through our senses. Because we share these structures with other creatures, the limbic system cells are often referred to as the "reptilian brain" or the "emotional brain." When we are newborns, theses cells become wired together in response to sensory stimulation. It is interesting to note that although our limbic system functions throughout our lifetime, it does not mature. As a result, when our emotional "buttons" are pushed, we retain the ability to react to incoming stimulation as though we were a two year old, even when we are adults." --Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight

Two things I love about this: the science that allows us to separate the making and existing of "cells" and "brains" and "senses" from the experience of having them, and the positivity with which she speaks of having the ability to react like a child. And a third: that a friend coincidentally passed this book on to me just a few weeks ago.

This book My Stroke of Insight is fitting neatly into conversations started in meditation class . . . people craving the equanimity and calm they get from meditating but not able to let themselves sit. When Jill Taylor had her left brain capacity removed by brain hemorrhage she was forcibly placed in just the position my classmates desire: floating, without a sense of time, in a world defined by perceiving rather than judging. When we want to suspend or slow down physical activity we are all fighting our own personal and our culture's left brain directives to be DOING no matter what.

In school each day my children are asked to move cognitively through hoop after hoop in training to be DOING for the rest of their lives. Ag! It's enough to make me move them to a freeschool! A friend's son told him about having an experience of being there (in the classroom, trying to attend) and then not there (for an unknown amount of time) and then there again (when asked to attend by the teacher). "Well we call that daydreaming," Says dad. "I think that's what I'm doing" says son, in quiet awe.

Just like Dora with her moments of wondering about non-existence. Given the choice, many kids would rather jump on a trampoline for 5 hours than sit in a classroom. They are all about living in the moment and experiencing the right brain. 30 years later, we struggle to allow ourselves 5 minutes of that kind of experience. My personal experience with that: it bites! I know the sparks of my creativity come from that place and it is SO dang hard to guard the space for it. Like speaking to a domineering partner, I have to say

LEFT BRAIN BACK OFF

That's the only way I'm going to be able to appreciate that you can do amazing things as well.

And a last cautionary tale for parents from Jill Taylor: "As a society we do not teach our children that they need to tend carefully the garden of their minds. Without structure, censorship, or discipline, our thoughts run rampant on automatic. Because we have not learned how to more carefully manage what goes on inside our brains, we remain vulnerable to not only what other people think about us, but also to advertising and/or political manipulation." Now that sinister spin makes it seem essential, doesn't it?