Pam White

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The Journey

blog, environment, family, justice, mindset, Parenting, political environment, relationship

A young man showed up at his father’s house in L.A. He had hitchhiked his way from Boston  – it doesn’t matter but the year must’ve been around 1948. He was fifteen years old. My first thought when I heard him tell me was envy. A boy, a man, could do that. That would have been no easy path for me; it wasn’t for him either but he had a better chance of surviving than a girl/woman would.

He was there to see his father because he wanted to know him, to get a sense of who he was; who they were. Identity runs strong in all of us. Who we come from is important. It feels essential to know – particularly if you don’t.

His father wouldn’t let him in. I don’t know if he answered behind the door. I don’t know if he cracked the door or even stood in the doorway. My own familial dysfunction allowed me not to ask when I could and then that young man who was my cousin was cut off from contact with me, his 15 years younger cousin.

He would swim in and out of my life for many years either as dire threat, enigma or welcome drug dealer. He was my own personal example of lost and found. But that day at his father’s door he was lost.

He would go Ivy League earning degrees from an elite college and becoming a lawyer. He would marry into an old and courageous upstate NY family. I say courageous because they represented a couple of centuries of grinding life out on the land and becoming the First Family of a smallish town. When I met them (briefly) they were ensconced in a stately fraying enormous house (think winter!) near Town.  We all stayed in the house for the wedding. What I remember most were the shoes and suits that to my twelve year old eye were patched and polished beyond a normal life of a shoe or a suit.

This was my first engaged encounter with Different Ways to live.

In my own battle with Who to be and What to do I found myself a rebel. I molded myself against any mold that was offered, forced or coerced. To say that hampered my self awareness is an understatement. My decisions were made the way you might play pinball. Avoidance, embrace, avoidance, escape. Avoidance being the operative word. At sixteen I fancied myself a Nihilist. Without reckoning what that really meant. For that I understand the mood of many in this country at present.

I knew my cousin best when he was free of the trappings of what our parents considered normalcy. We were happy to be in a club where hating the institution was the entry fee. Any Institution would do.

I’d like to hope that now, decades later, I have walked and run through many iterations of myself. Picking up each piece of me, refinishing, rewiring, changing parts and placing them gently into the center of Me. I thank all the many philosophies, teachers, coaches, exes, and this amazing planet for bringing me home.

What I see now in this world, at this time, is a whole lot of doors closed to people who need to come in, opportunities that are not founded in the well-being of the participant or the recipients, teachers who tell lies, leaders who fear their followers, and many of us who simply do not know what to do next. I should also cover those who know very well what to do next and don’t or those who would be as I was at fifteen, ready to kill the world.

I was short sighted then and I have had the time and taken the opportunity to take in the wisdom I’ve been offered and see that the doors closed to me have offered new ways of being, places to grow and Be.

This is a journey the current world is offering and needing. Many of us have lost confidence in what we knew or if we are really who we think we are or who we want to be. Perhaps we haven’t given ourselves the chance to learn. It takes courage to learn, to change. It takes perseverance to stay where you are not comfortable or to seek transformation.

If you are looking for a guide if you are not functioning or feeling the way you want to, being the person you want to be. If you want to be the person your dog thinks you are, give me a call. We can talk for 20 minutes and see if we fit. There is nothing I do that is the same. I am an individual and you are too. I want to keep it that way.

I Can Change Your Mind

mindset

No, I can’t! That was just to get your attention. The fact is, no one can change the mind of anyone who wants to stay where they are. The forces of entropy are the sternest, clingiest, and most intrepid in this universe.
Alternative facts, early on a clarion call of Ms. Conway, once they take root are nearly immutable. The possibility of having to throw more and more sh–t on them to support their growth is merely a challenge for the farmer who owns the pile.
The mind can be a toxic instrument. Neither you (nor I) can rely on it to heal you when it itself needs healing. I have (or used to have, it fell down like the Cardinal’s hats in a cathedral*)a message on my refrigerator stating: “Do not believe your thoughts.” Always a good place to start when you are looking for truth.
Where else to start? Your heart, what you care about without interference from craving or control, is a great place. Last time I wrote about the Ho’oponopono Prayer which can reset your cells and free your spirit. I first read about it through the work of Dr. Hew Len, who went to a prison where the most recalcitrant prisoners were held. He saw that they were not getting less violent with the treatment they received. While saying the Ho’oponopono prayer holding each prisoner’s file in his hands, day after day for months, he noticed a softening in their behavior without ever seeing them or “treating” them in any way.
That was good enough for me to make it a permanent part of my life. Blaming others helps us focus outside ourselves, keeps the ball rolling, and lets our judgments and resentments dictate our attitudes. Harboring resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the person you hate to die.
Since I can’t change your mind, perhaps we can all be guided to act according to our heart’s courage. Yes, the root meaning of courage is Coeur, French for, yes, heart. The courage to love ourselves. To let go of what we think we want and just be here in the present moment. Easily said, hardly won, but a good commencement.

( *Traditionally, the galero – red cardinal’s hat – remains over the tomb until it is reduced to dust, symbolizing how all earthly glory is passing. In a cathedral that has no crypt, the galeri are suspended from the ceiling. For example, following the death of Cardinal Basil Hume, Archbishop of Westminster (UK), in 1999, his relatives had a galero installed above his tomb in Westminster Cathedral, alongside those of his predecessors.)

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.