Pam White

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Last Days Of August

blog, environment, family, justice, mindset, relationship, Uncovering Blocks

The birds are flocking, packing up, many have already left. To my ear they are the early morning songfesters. The ones I wake to and sleep through. It’s quieter now as the rest of us are preparing for winter each in our special way. Some are in denial, others have hay in the barn and food on the shelves. And some of us are flocking to our respective corners in readiness for whatever the next few months will contain.

This does not feel like a “que sera, sera” moment. I feel a kind of destiny, a turning of so many wheels. I guess climate change isn’t enough, we need plagues and unrest of every kind. We have peaceful demonstrations, looting and burning, killing and flexing guns, rage and religion. It feels as if everyone can have a place in the world, which I used to think would be a good thing, but this moment feels profoundly unsafe, there is no easy navigation.

The biggest “stop” I know for a change agent is love. When complexities are endless (and they are) and confusing and good people want to be good but there is such a history of bad, and bad people don’t know it or care – or maybe they are doing the best they can – I lean in on cultures who share love through forgiveness. Always starting with myself.

I can thank this current moment for revealing so much pain. Not necessarily mine – or yours – or anybody’s in particular. I feel a whole culture of pain, pain as a guiding light, pain as denial, pain as hope; a clear choice for love to come into the cracks left by generations of us.

I want to give pain its due. It’s above mine, and yours, it’s way beyond my conceptual abilities, and that is why and when I lean on the Ho’oponopono prayer. It’s simple and can be said hundreds of times, which I do. How can I stand all the injustice I know and that of which I know nothing. How can I walk around knowing and not knowing? I need a process by which to make things “right” in my relationship – to the earth, my pain, your pain. I need to take responsibility and be relieved of it at the same time. There is too much here to count. My poor human body/mind/heart is crying.

Here’s how it goes:

Thank you.

I’m sorry.

I love you.

Please forgive me.

That’s it. Any order, each phrase spoken in your mind or voice, over and over. It promotes a clearing, a cleansing and a space to love the connection I have with everything – even me.

It was hard to say, “I’m sorry,” at first. It got easier. I hated “please forgive me.” It too got easier. The phrases became healing, each in their own way and in their own time.

It helps me be here now: this time, this place, this action – or reaction. Breathing helps too.

Thank you.

Please forgive me.

I’m sorry.

I love you.

    HEART OF KINDNESS

    mindset, political environment, relationship, Uncovering Blocks

    “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.” Rumi

    I excuse myself – and you too – if we find it hard to grasp there may be such a field in our present time. But there is. There always is.

    I’ve come to a certain faith that allows for disparities, opposing ideas, and flat-out phantasies to be equally true. Many decades ago in a school play I was dressed as an angel, we all were – I wouldn’t have done it myself! I only liked it because my best friend had the same last initial and we were together for rehearsals and the performance. It was the first and last time I would get that close to life-sized angels. Until another friend, years later, would put wool together and make the angel in the photo above.

    When I think of the word “field,” in Rumi’s poem/prayer/request my mind races to “playing field,” where games and wars are won and lost. Exactly the wrongdoing/rightdoing thing. It takes me a second to remember fields as in quantum and bosonic and to relax into the maelstrom of support they lend to my psyche/bodymind. And even if I get confused by those concepts, they allow me to expand my heart to include anger where I didn’t think it would fit. Notice I say “think,” because that is the first mistake I make. “I think therefore I am,” lent me decades of justice/injustice, right/wrong. It was years of poking about in all kinds of places before I realized that even our anger can be held by a heart of kindness. Luckily I wrote it down and found it and found that I could believe in it because it’s been what I’ve been doing and the need for my heart to be open, to be inclusive is not going to stop. It’s more important than ever.

    Think For Yourself

    environment, family, justice, mindset, relationship

    My meditation teacher Narayan Liebenson in her book, “The Magnanimous Heart,” talks about the Buddha’s call to us to wake up, to see things for ourselves.

    How do we see things for ourselves? How do we trust ourselves to know what we see, what is truly there?

    We have spent our lives listening to parents, friends, teachers – perhaps not in that, or any order – so how do we know what we see? How can we trust that we are not just seeing what we know?

    Are we not conditioned to see things as we are told they are? Our life has likely been filled with “this is,” “that’s how we do,” and a multitude of factual, emotional references to enable us to live in the world we inhabit.

    How are we to separate from this lexicon of ideas, attitudes, and beliefs? In my psychology training these habits are called a “belief system.” It is very hard for us humans to recognize, separate, and visualize a choice that deviates from what we have learned and intuited from our caregivers. We are so long helpless, it can be a huge issue for us to know who we are enough to let our reactions, which are early learned, become actions.

    Once we “know” something, it is difficult to learn something new within the same mindset context. We have to “molt” and be without assurances that we know where we are. We all know that every Being who changes something constitutionally is fodder for an aggressor, call it another point of view. The Hermit Crab, the snake, the bird are all vulnerable in these days and moments of faith that the next thing will come, the next moment will continue their life.

    This doesn’t always turn out the way they (we) want. A competing interest may derail us. Someone may see we are open to change and want us to come with them. If it comes at a moment when we are lost to ourselves, we may find ourselves on a different path. Sometimes we may have cut ourselves off and been sniffed out by a predatory “friend” and get eaten up with their belief system which we come to call our own.

    This self-awareness is, in my view, the whole point of meditation. Meditation is not meant to make me better, it is the practice of clarity, of winnowing a thing to its essence. It is the most intimate moment with myself. There is a lot of talk about mindfulness and awareness, it has become a Big Deal, for which I am grateful. The structure of awareness and mindfulness certainly makes life easier for those who practice it and for those around them. I hope I am easier to live with and I know my life is easier with it.

    I see this as taking responsibility for my mind – which is always my intent, whether I am able is another matter. I know for sure that without giving my mind a break from what I “know,” external forces will hop in and choose for me. My education has been a learning process in what to let go. I have a degree (cum laude – I worked hard) in dead white men’s literature and a concomitant major in dead white men’s psychology. These were the forces that shaped me.

    I grew up in a misogynous world and I didn’t trust a woman to pilot a plane or drive a bus any more than my mother did. Yes, that was one of my “drops.” Early on I’m happy to say – but not before my education was over. It took me a long time to listen to women, to say “no,” to think that taking care of myself was not a selfish thing. Mind you, this is ancient history. I finished my college years which became archaic as the Seventies brought workshops and encounter groups that would teach me how to say no and give my feet a place to feel comfortable.

    We are all vulnerable to what our minds tell us. Sometimes our mind is like a telephone game, whispering what we want to hear while we say what we think “they” want to hear. How can we deal with that? What’s the truth? How can we trust? The game of life, of seeking and seeing, knowing and speaking, is best played from the heart. Our heart.

    Emotional relevance is the engine of the heart, we can damage our hearts with negative emotions, with depression – among other things. When our mind and heart are relating and have coherence we can trust that we are close to truth. When we feel “off,” or a dissonance, however that may be felt, the sign for “help wanted” has been posted. The dog’s first growl has been detected. The horse’s ears have told what’s to come.

    Meditation equals noticing more subtle clues. We don’t have to be bitten. kicked, fired, or left if we heed early warnings. The by-pass can pass us by. What we need can be attained because we have learned to be open to what can happen, not expecting some rote evidence of ourselves from what we were told to be or not be.

    Achieving awareness can become a goal and a habit. Letting go of assumptions has lead me to a world of sharing I never knew when I thought women shouldn’t fly and only men could think. Letting my heart lead has often felt weak and embarrassing but I have found no finer place than this life I live now. No sorrow or fear cannot be displaced (eventually!) by the great good that is my heart.

    Dealing With Pain?

    mindset

    Psychic or physical pain will yield to a new mind.

    Rather than tell you why – the research is so clear on this – I would like to explore a “how” with you.
    Here is a simple sequence you can follow anytime, wherever you may be.

    Allow your eyes to close gently.
    Center your attention on your breathing.
    Now move your awareness to the part of your body or the thought(s) in your mind where there is discomfort.
    Rest there. In peace. Gently notice what is there. Allow whatever you find to be what it is. Let it be. No fight. No struggle, be as curious as you can be.

    Continue being with your breath. I use the term “being with,” as a way to gentle your focus. A gentle attendance will help your patient self come to your bodymind.
    We are so wired and trained to react strongly and to want instant relief. It might be inconceivable that just listening to your bodymind could have any effect but it can be instant!

    Breathe into and through the pain or mind worm as if this were the place where the breath actually enters and leaves your body.

    Quietly and without force direct these phrases to your area of pain.

    “I welcome you into my heart.”

    “I accept you.”

    “I care about this pain. I welcome you into my heart.”
    “I accept what is happening right now.”

    “May I be free from fear, may I be happy just where I am, may I be peaceful with what is happening.”

    Allow the feelings of lovingkindness and compassion to flood your body and enrich your aura. Keep breathing, let all thoughts have compassionate attention.

    There is great love in us all.

    The Universe: Our Environment

    blog, environment, family, mindset, Parenting, relationship

    There is a lot of argument about global warming, the state of this planet and our species. There is always a lot of argument. That’s what one of my very early teachers said. She said, “This is the Garbage Planet.” I waited for more. For elucidation, but she just looked at me as if I was stupid. I was. And I was unsure of myself and in the middle of learning a lot of “new stuff.” I didn’t ask or go further in that moment. In the decades since, though, I have had occasion to learn a lot about what she said and I couldn’t agree with her more.

    This is the Garbage Planet. And a beautiful planet it is!

    I recently came across an article that I consider to be the smartest writing I have seen exploring – with facts and scientific evidence – the connection there is Everywhere. To say “everywhere” sounds trite or easy or just true.

    Some things can’t be said easily or taken lightly. Some Things get in our way and we have to live with, or they make our way and we live with that. We are all like the fish in the ocean or in your tank, we are dependent upon you yes, you, to keep it healthy. If you don’t, we aren’t.

    Simple.

    This is the beginning of the article – you should read it all! Tell me what you think.

    THIS YEAR ON EARTH by MARY HROVAT

    In 2018, Earth picked up about 40,000 metric tons of interplanetary material, mostly dust, much of it from comets. Earth lost around 96,250 metric tons of hydrogen and helium, the lightest elements, which escaped to outer space. Roughly 505,000 cubic kilometers of water fell on Earth’s surface as rain, snow, or other types of precipitation. Bristlecone pines, which can live for millennia, each gained perhaps a hundredth of an inch in diameter. Countless mayflies came and went. As of this writing, more than one hundred thirty-six million people were born in 2018, and more than fifty-seven million died.
    Tidal interactions are very slowly increasing the distance between Earth and the moon, which ended 2018 about 3.8 centimeters further apart than they were at the beginning. As a consequence, Earth is now rotating slightly more slowly; the day is a tiny fraction of a second longer. Earth and the sun are also creeping apart, by around 1.5 centimeters per year, although the effect of tidal interactions is very small. Most of the change is due to changes in the sun’s gravitational pull as it converts some of its mass into energy by nuclear fusion.
    The entire solar system traveled roughly 7.25 billion kilometers in its orbit about the center of the Milky Way. This vast distance, however, is only about 1/230,000,000th of the entire orbit.

    Twelfth Month

    mindset

    Lately I’ve not been finding too many friends in history. After the November elections I wanted to write about how much better it used to be.

    I did some research, looked up Aristotle, Copernicus, a few golden ages and a renaissance or two only to find a lot of human foibles expressed and not as much wisdom as I was hoping to find.

    In fact I found that we are better today. I also know that we do not always hear or know about all the small acts of courage, the gentle touch, the passing of a smile, a clear and profound desire for clarity.

    These can escape with the deadline, the editor’s knife, the eye of the beholder.

    You and I, we are stuck here and now. In the moment. What to do, what to do?

    I started by taking my eyes off the past and giving the present a look. My dogs Sadie and Georgi and Henri are very helpful. Guinnie is downstairs on her bed and is fine in this present. But the moment I look around the other three stand up and see me back. I keep my focus on the present and notice how beautiful each one is. Eyes of love could not have better representation.

    I notice there is heat on a cold day, light when it’s dark out and my chair supports me well enough. I love my pens and the feel of my paper, there is a linoleum stamp empty of design waiting for me on my desk. Water for tea is available and I have made coffee. These days may have shortness of light compared to other days and that will change. Things always do. I didn’t do anything to make the day appear. It did as it must. I haven’t thought of my breath for at least a half hour, and that too comes to me without struggle for which I have much gratitude.

    So, nevermind history. I love Aristotle but I can leave him be for now. And George Herbert and Marie Curie and anyone else I need to re member can be had on Google or with my library card.

    I’m good. It’s a good day. Leading into a good month and with some consciousness directed at what’s right in my world, I can make it a good year.

    Why not?