"From a distance you look like my friend, Even though we are at war..."

On Friday night January 15th, I flew from my little airport in Warwick, Rhode Island to Orlando, Florida where I would catch a connecting flight into Fort Myers on the Gulf Coast in southwest Florida. The next day we would be presenting the Opening the Heart Workshop to Avow Hospice in Naples. Since we are invited to do this workshop by a compassionate soul at Avow named Louise Kinney once each year, I am familiar with the routine, the embarking, the runway takeoff, the landing, the airport waiting. But on this night, as we approached the Florida coast on the Atlantic side, I was thinking about all the participants who would be sitting in the opening circle of the workshop in just a few short hours. I was thinking about their journeys, the arc of their lives, the deep losses that they live with every day. And then something quite mysterious and wonderful happened.

As the plane banked southwest, I no longer saw the endless black of the Atlantic Ocean but a dramatic change of scene as the Florida coast spread out into view, flying right over Daytona Beach. The gold and silver lights below were really beautiful and I imagined the world turned upside down and instead of looking down, I was now looking up at the Daytona Constellation, the Deltona Nebula, the twinkling lights of Winter Springs, or the Dolphin Star, and, finally, the great expanse of thousands of stars in the Orlando Constellation..

The beauty of it took my breath away. As we began to descend, the stars transformed into street lights and the shooting stars into highway cars. When we hit the runway and taxied to a stop, the cabin lights came on and the cell phones rang and the voices of individual lives morphed from the magical, dark, silent space ship ride: "Dad, we just landed." "Yeah, Carl, the meeting went well. When can you be here?" "Mommy, I'm tired". As i marched out of the plane with my carry- on, I was aware of the process of marching in the parade as opposed to what I was doing just minutes before- watching the parade.

And I thought again of the hospice participants at the workshop in the morning: sitting in the Opening Circle, perhaps feeling scared or excited, looking into other eyes around the circle, and quite possibly experiencing Difference in those eyes, and, therefore, feeling separation. And then I thought about the end of the workshop when, so many times, I've seen open, fearless eyes looking around the circle and seeing No Difference, and feeling compassion and acceptance. From a distance, things do look different. The change in perspective, I think, is just part of the parade, except for the very few saints who live in that timeless place and always see with new, fearless eyes. But even living in that space for a few moments changes things. The poet Kabir said he lived in that space for twelve seconds and it made him a disciple for life.

With Love and Respect, Jon

 

 I was just  listening to Neil Young's old song,” Heart of Gold,” and it reminded me of a story I used to tell at the Opening the Heart Workshop several years ago when the workshop was a much longer event than it is now..

 

 It's a  story about a diamond merchant in India. The merchant had gone to Delhi to purchase a huge and very expensive diamond. A clever thief had been waiting for his opportunity to steal the same diamond from the very store where the merchant had just purchased it.” No problem,” thought the thief,” I am the best pickpocket in all India.” He followed the merchant to the train station, finding several opportunities to brush against him in the  crowded street. Each time he slipped his hand into one of the diamond merchant's pockets, but it was to no avail, the thief could not find the diamond anywhere. Frustrated, he used the last of his money to purchase a train ticket on the same train as the merchant. The journey was a long one, and soon the merchant dozed off. The thief searched through all the merchant's belongings. Again he came up empty-handed. 

 Eventually,  the train pulled up at the merchant's destination. He collected his belongings and left the carriage. Overcome with curiosity, the thief could not contain himself.

” Sir,” he said,” I have to admit to you that I am a thief and I have followed you all the way from Delhi, trying to steal the diamond that you bought there. I  beg you, tell me where you hid it.”

The merchant smiled a knowing smile.

” I recognized that you were a thief the very moment I saw you at the jeweler's shop. I knew that you were probably a skilled pickpocket. The only thing I could think to do was to hide the diamond where you would never think to look for it.”

 With that, the diamond dealer reached across and retrieved the diamond from the thief's own pocket.

 

We search "the world"  looking for our "Heart of Gold" while, all the time, it is right here inside us. If we spent less time stressing and struggling, looking for happiness outside
ourselves, we would be more likely to notice that we already have everything we need. Instead of being frustrated "theives of happiness," constantly searching for the big prize, we could turn around and look for the treasure hidden in our own heart.

 

 

 

Sophie Glikson, one of our gifted Opening the Heart Workshop therapists, is also a talented artist.  Here we feature two of her recent works. Above is a tryptic - Ahh....Yes....Om..

Below is a detail from the work Precious Soul Center:

Sophie joined the leadership team for our recent Opening the Heart Workshops at Kripalu in Massachusetts and at Avow Hospice in Naples FL. I know that the participants at thosewho worked with Sophie at those workshops will enjoy seeing another facet of her creativity.

Sophie practices Psychotherapy and Creative Medicine in Medford MA and is also an Expressive Therapies Clinical Instructor at Lesley University in Cambridge MA. She can be reached at sglikson@lesley.edu

I am so grateful that we are all still here, on this breathtaking, whirling, ever changing orb we call home.
Did you all see the moon last night?  How did she make you feel inside?  For me, wild, tender, time limited and small.  And a little hungry for something I couldn't quite put my finger on.  Small in a good way, like relief.  As a child, I worried about God.  All that work to do, never enough time to rest, even on a Sunday.  So many people hurting.  So many prayers to answer. A little like Santa with too many chimneys on multiple continents.  Hard to know how to dress in the morning, what to put on, and what to take off.
It's a relief to have work that we love.  It's a relief to love.

 

Donna

Whenever I go go Kriplalu to help lead an Opening the Heart workshop, I usually settle things in my room, check out the workshop space, get an iced drink in the cafeteria and then wander around the building a bit to take in the peaceful vibration of this retreat center that's so familiar to me. But I always find myself transfixed on the stairway landing looking at one inspiring saying framed on the wall. It's always the same for me: it's as if an invisible net emerges from the words and holds me still while the words penetrate the heart: "Be Kind- For everyone you meet is fighting a great battle."

My mind fast forwards several hours to what I will likely share with the circle of participants at the end of the Friday night session: "The reason I come back to this workshop over and over again is to see the transformation in the circle from Friday night to Sunday." My belief is that when we look around that circle at the start of the workshop and we see difference as we look into another's eyes, what we experience is separation. And as the weekend unfolds, and the descent begins and the masks are bravely removed, increasingly, when we look into those same eyes, we see no difference and what we experience is only compassion.

Hafiz, the 14th century Sufi poet, describes this experience in his "Wonderful Game" and the game "goes like this: We hold hands and look into each other's eyes and scan each other's face. Then I say 'Now tell me a difference you see between us'. And you might respond "Hafiz, your nose is ten times bigger than mine.' And I would say 'Yes, my dear, almost ten times'. But let's keep playing. Let's go deeper, Go deeper.... For if we do... even God will not be able to tell us apart."

There's a story about a father who takes his two young sons to a very crowded waiting room of a busy pediatric group practice and the young boys are running around the waiting room, unresponsive to the father's efforts to control them. Some of the other patients become annoyed and, eventually, one woman said to the father "Can't you control your own sons!?" The father looked at her sadly and said "I'm so sorry. Their mother died yesterday and I have not known how to console them".

When we're able to go deeper and see beneath the surface forms that people show in order to make it through a day; if we are ever priveleged to know the great battle of people who are buying stamps in front of us at the post office or selling us a pair of pants at the department store- if we are ever able to really know how many times they have been brought to their knees and resurrected themselves- if we really had a lived experience of the journey of loss and pain of the brother or sister standing next to us on the bus, then all we would experience would be kindness and understanding. With Love and Respect, Jon

We are past the Solstice and in just a couple of days it will be 2012.

As we get to this time of year I am reminded of a thought that used to occur to me when I was a teenager. It went something like "Wow, in 2000 I'll be 56 years old. That is so old." Well here we are 12 years beyond that - and I'll leave it to the mathematically inclined to work out my current age.

A couple of postings ago I was writing about "taking in the good" - taking time to be in the present moment for the good things in life. it's the beautiful practice of just stopping, breathing in, and really noticing our inner response to whatever we find beautiful or whatever moves us. For me I find that such moments easily turn into Haiku moments. Not that I spend time then and there thinking about a Haiku - that would definitely interrupt being completely present in the moment - but later, as I revisit one of those instants in my mind. William Wordsworth spoke of this process as "emotion recollected in tranquillity."

Here are a couple of Haiku from the last few days.

 

winter branches gilded with

possibilities

 

through frozen branches

scurrying wisps of gray cloud

but only one sky

 

Have a blessed happy and prosperous New Year.

 

Peter

 

 

 

 

 

" I am tremendously blissful!" was one of the often repeated statements of my spiritual teacher Osho.
"Yeah…. right," sneered my skeptical mind — even though I felt great love and respect for him. I just didn't get how it could be possible to live in a constant blissful state.
Recently I've been reading Rick Hanson's wonderful "Buddha's Brain, The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom." It is a remarkable affirmation and celebration of the correspondences between Buddha's teachings and the discoveries of modern neuroscience. Chapter 4, "Taking in the Good" has proved to be the key to opening the door of blissfulness.
My daily walks were already positive experiences for body and spirit. The sense of aliveness engendered by robust walking addresses one of my essential needs. If I don't exercise, my systems rapidly come to resemble stagnant pools collecting all kinds of old rubbish, as opposed to clear flowing streams.
I am fortunate to live in a town with lots of open space and great walking trails. However, until reading Hanson's book, I was missing an opportunity that my daily walks offered. Hanson makes the point that, when if comes to negative experiences our brains are like Velcro, but when it comes to positive experiences, our brains are like Teflon. We have a predisposed tendency to hang on to and remember negative stuff and to quickly forget about — or not even notice — the positive. So — he writes — "Whatever positive facts you find, bring a mindful awareness to them — open up to them and let them affect you……….Savor the experience…………Make it last by staying with it for 5, 10, 20 seconds". When we are mindfully aware of positive experiences the neurons in our brain fire in a distinct pattern. The longer or more frequently we engage with the positive the more durably the neurons are wired together.
I don't know how many walks I have taken with some "shoulda, woulda, coulda" issue churning away in my brain, completely oblivious to my surroundings, but, after reading Hanson, I made a conscious decision to follow his advice.
What I can tell you is that it works! My walks take me along routes that are packed with "opportunities for positive response." Not necessarily beautiful scenery or a captivating flower — though these are certainly positive experiences — but also a well crafted building detail, the playfulness of a puppy, the gurgle of rainwater falling into a catch-basin, the starkness of winter trees silhouetted against the setting sun, the smile of a stranger on the path. I discovered that I was deluged with these opportunities, and that, if I stayed conscious of my positive response to these stimuli, I could easily access a taste of the blissful state that Osho was referring to.
Of course, I'm still working on "having it stick." Too easily I fall out of the state and into the familiar, everyday mind churning. But the more I practice, the more "wired" the state of blissfulness seems to be getting. I really encourage you to try it! Oh yes, if you're planning to purchase Rick Hanson's book, please purchase it through the link in our blog. Just scroll down the left hand side bar. The small kickback we receive from Amazon goes into our Opening the Heart Scholarship Fund.

Wishing you many blissful experiences of 'taking in the good.'

Peter

...Teach us how short

our time is;

let us know it in the

depths of our souls.

Show us that all things

are transient,

as insubstantial as

dreams,

and that after heaven and

earth

have vanished, there is

only You.

Fill us in the morning

with Your wisdom;

shine through us all our lives.

Let our hearts soon grow

transparent

in the radiance of Your

love.

Show us how precious

each day is;

teach us to be fully here.

And let the work of our hands

prosper, for our little while.

_______ Stephen Mitchell (a rendering of Psalm 90)

With Love and Respect, Jon

Have you ever won the lottery? No, me either. But you have had one of Those Days. I know you have. One of those days when you smell the new-mown grass for the first time in the spring; or when you sat on a sand dune with the warm sun on your face and watched the wind breaking the tops of the waves into a thousand prisms of light; or when you walk past a store and you see the socks you love and never thought you'd find them again anywhere- and they're on sale; or when a stranger does a kindness for you- just because. One of those days when the sun comes out from behind a bank of clouds and the world just seems softer, greener, more hopeful. You can actually feel your heart growing big enough to take it all in and you breathe it deeply inside to the places where light has been dimmed and muted.

I know that you have been graced with one of those days and the memory of it carries us such a long way through the desert times. And, at least for me, what I experience on Those Days is one simple and huge thing: gratitude. And what I do when that feeling holds me is that I express thankfulness. Honestly, it doesn't matter to whom: a parent, a partner, a stranger, God. What matters, I think, is the expression of thanks giving.

I remember years ago feeling this gratitude one day and deciding that I would practice giving thanks every day for my life. And so, the journey began. I don't really remember the date or the season that my intention began. I just remember failing miserably. I would remember weeks after my resolution that I had not remembered, even once.... So, I committed to being aware of the life I'd been given and, again, decided that I would express this gratitude every day. Well, in the months after my rededication, I found that I remembered about a third of the time- pretty discouraging, sleeping through two thirds of my days without giving thanks. But I was not about to give up.

I decided to tie this practice to something I did every day. After all, how many times did I forget to brush my teeth? So before every meal I would just close my eyes and offer a quiet prayer. If I happened to be with someone, I would do this practice privately, to not make anyone else uncomfortable.

Now it is impossible for me to sit for a meal without giving thanks. Years ago I watched the engineers change the course of the river running through downtown Providence. And I learned something that's probably pretty evident to most people: the point at which the river actually changed directions was where the most work hours, cement, scaffolding, etc. were given. But once that was done, once the "habit" was established, the river flowed.

By establishing this new river flow, I came to an interesting awareness: that the experience of gratitude didn't just follow one of Those Days- IT ACTUALLY CREATED THEM! Martin Seligman, Ph.D., the father of Positive Psychology, professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that making a daily list of things for which we're grateful; or writing a 300 word letter to someone who has changed our life for the better, and actually delivering it to that person, will make you "happier and less depressed one month later".... He guarantees it! With Love and Respect, Jon

Permalink     Comments (0)     Email to Friend