2013-2014 No Resolutions, Just Reflections
Some of the big events in my life this past year: I lost a student to gun violence, went part time at my job, finished a year of graduate school, started a longterm relationship, sought spiritual teachers, dedicated myself to a daily spiritual practice, and in five days I will end five years of psycho-therapy. I've also experienced some small milestones in my career; being asked to write and speak more in front of likeminded audiences.
Thirteen Things I Learned in 2013:
1. Change is always difficult, even if it is for the better. I thought that working part time would allow me so much more time for peace, reflection and joy in my life. And it has. But it has also given me lots of time to feel into my doubt, my fears, my insecurities, and my griefs. It's been very hard to sit with it all.
2. Compassion transforms. Some people say that love is the most powerful thing, but the truth is that if one does not have a clear, compassionate and responsive way to express love... well, sometimes it just isn't received or it doesn't work. I think COMPASSION is a much clearer description. Letting go of your own ego, and coming into the other person's experience, and allowing that experience to shift and teach you. Compassion.
3. True spirituality is not a shot in the pan, not a one time meditation or retreat, not an "enlightening experience," or a specific medicine, or anything else that is short, quick or finishable. It's a relationship to life that takes time, dedication, intention, and discipline. Even when I don't feel like meditating or don't feel like praying, there is some way that I can maintain my connection to the divine that requires me to be more humble, more awake, and more disciplined than I ever thought I would be. Like any relationship, Spirituality doesn't always feel good, but it always transforms and moves me forward.
4. Blood relationships will always be the most difficult, the most slow to change, and also the most potentially transformative.
5. Exercise is non-negotiable! The rush of blood and oxygen in the body are so exhilarating and cleansing... like few other things. Which leads me to six...
6. The body has its own wisdom. This is a big duh to me but it takes learning and re-learning because we live in such a body-phobic and body-oppressive culture, that constantly pulls my attention away from what I know to be true. Half the time the best medicine for any ailment is to work WITH what the body is communicating, rather than against. For most of us, we have ignored or repressed the body too long, so that when its communication is a SCREAM or a PROTEST, extreme measures are needed to reduce pain or suffering, but do we ever learn to listen? I'm at a point in my life where my health is still good but I have passive-aggressive ways of ignoring my body. Even these small transgressions add up, as in spirituality, my relationship to my body needs to be honored as I would any other relationship...I want to have a full and energetic late life, which I think about more and more as I approach mid-life. I am learning to listen more carefully and attentively to my own body. From food that do or don't agree with me, positions and postures I like, activities my body wants to engage in (DANCE!), and any other subtle inquiry or request... I am learning more and more to be a gentle and good friend to myself.
7. Be careful what you ask for! In my life, I have a way of manifesting what EVER it is that I put my mind to.... It might take months or years, but the things I pray for and set my intentions on come to pass. I think we all get what we "ask for," in so many ways, but we may not be aware of all the myriad things we are "asking for" through our comments, thoughts, actions, intentions and behaviors. Every moment is a prayer, in many ways. There is no way that I can tell the future or know for sure that my expressed desires are actually in alignment with my path, or are just projections of what I THINK I should do. It's such a practice for me to be humble with my intentions, to be flexible with them, and to be in constant communication with Spirit about it, so that the intentions I set are not from a dogmatic place of will, but from a spiritually in-tune place that will help guide me on my life journey, that incorporates my deeper needs and inspirations, while listening to the voice of spirit.
8. INTERCONNECTION. Okay, this is in all caps because I am beginning to experience a type of interconnectedness that really doesn't fashion itself inside the English language. When I was a youngin in college, I remember being so inspired to learn about the interconnectedness of social movements and social structures, how every other human depends and experiences the impacts of the actions of every other human. Then, later I stumbled upon Thich Nhat Hanh, whose writings taught me to see that same interconnection in the water cycle, in the Earth, in a piece of paper. With my daily spiritual practice something has shifted where I no longer know these things on an intellectual level, but I EXPERIENCE THEM. And it is very difficult. At times I feel immense joy and wonder to be alive, at other times I feel a nameless intense Grief. And both of these things often make it hard for me to relate to others in those moments, because At the same time, I feel a huge grief at how DISCONNECTED a lot of us are, in our emotions and minds, from feeling our connectedness to other humans, other life forms, and to the Earth. It is an intense and confusing experience for me, mostly because I want to share it, but it's not such a common thing with our fellow "first-world"/ "modern"/ "humans." Lol, I put humans in quotation too because my experiences with interconnection have lead me to believe that this "world" would be better termed the "last world" in hopes that this pattern of human behaviors won't last long and that it be the last time we get this disconnected, this proud, this arrogant, and this destructive in a looooong time. For most of our history on Earth, we've been indigenous and land based peoples. This version of "human," would not be recognized as human to many of our indigenous cousins and indigenous ancestors.
9. Romantic relationships are easier and harder than I thought they would be. Easier because after all these years of me struggling with love and commitment, all it really required of me was deep letting go, really knowing and honoring myself, and willingness to grow and change with another. It's a lot harder than I thought it would be too, because it requires me to deeply let go, really know and honor myself, and to be willing to grow and change with another. LOL. Relationship is a practice.
10. Food matters, but not that much. Correction, food matters a whole lot! But if we have negative attitudes to what and when we are eating... it kind of cancels out that benefit. Let me explain. In my community folks are very aware of what they are eating and the impact it has on their bodies. You are what you eat and so on, This is great advice and we can see the health benefits to prove it. Except. A lot of folks, including me at one time, brought a lot of judgment, a lot of dogmatism, and a lot of fear into healthy eating. Judging different foods as good or bad, people as "conscious or not conscious," based on what they eat, fear of ill-health or weight gain... dogmatism about different diets, fasts, brands, or food preparation- all of these are non-productive. I am not discounting the very important information and awareness that has been raised about the importance of food; but just as much information and awareness has been raised about the impacts of our attitudes, our internal emotional health, our unconscious belief systems, and our relationships to each other. These knowledges need to be combined for a real health effect. What we consume is not limited to our foods, but also to our electronics, the health of our relationships, and the flow of our internal energies. It does no good to be a bitter, repressed, distrustful, energetically clogged Vegan. It also doesn't do much good to cloud one's mental, emotional, physical and energetic capacities with a hamburger a day (my problem). Our whole system is interconnected and interdependent. Dogmatism on one particular lifestyle choice is not helpful; attention to our whole being, and the whole beings of others is. See # 2, Compassion.
11. I am my own best friend. I am my own worst enemy, but mostly my own best friend. This is an old lesson, but it keeps reasserting itself.
12. Plant and animal allies are irreplaceable! This relates to number 8 Interconnection, but I want to talk about it specifically because I realized that when I first realized interconnectedness in my life, I was anthropocentric, which means, human centered. Us humans can be SO myopic and SO egocentric, we only see ourselves. We don't see the web of life we are precariously placed within and constantly snipping at and tattering. We don't see it until we are about fall clean out of the web into extinction, due to our own behaviors. But I digress. It's hard for me to express the sweet sweet cousins we have in our animal friends and the teachers we have in our Plant sisters. This language just doesn't allow it. Even more mind-blowing to me is the forgiveness present. Not all plants or animals are willing to forgive us our hubris, but many do. Just my little domestic babies in my house give me such communion, such peace and such friendship, that I never feel alone. Ever. And when I go on my hikes and my nature walks, I see a community now, not a dead or objectified place. I see a community of life forms, in which I am the visitor, the outsider, from a strange world of concrete and prisons, and it is I who have to learn the ancestral language.
13. Sigh. It was really hard for me to get to thirteen! The last one I will say is that Emotion is a Teacher. Our culture so much fears difficult emotions. We have this idea of positive versus negative emotions, an idea I used to subscribe to. And now, I just don't think that dualistic characterization is helpful. Emotions are neither negative nor positive, any more than hands are negative and feet positive. They just are. Yes they are fleeting and perhaps we shouldn't be too attached to them. But if we don't know them, don't understand what is happening inside of us, we can never truly know ourselves. And if we never truly know ourselves, how can we authentically love or know another person or life form? I am practicing seeing emotions, all emotions, as a gift of awareness and bodily communication. Yes, there are people who are a slave to their anger, or their fear. This doesn't make fear or anger negative. It means perhaps this person needs to renegotiate their relationship to their anger and find the true source of it. But if we teach them to repress, if we teach them to view anger as negative, and try to push them to let it go prematurely, then the unhelpful relationship to their own anger intensifies, and they never get to the source of the hurt. I see each and every emotion as a friend come to teach me something, and I got to listen, even if they scream and shout, cus well, that's what you do for your friends.
I am re-learning a different way of life. A gentle one, but difficult to capture in a violent world.
Coming Up: Fourteen Things I Hope for 2014.
