The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day.

I have spend my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument.
The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart.
The blossom has not opened; only the wind is sighing by.

Rabindranath Tagore – Gitanjali

Isn’t it true that each of us has some song to sing, some words to say, some one thing that we deeply long to bring to the world?

I admit it. I find myself busily getting things just right, ever closer to perfect, and setting up all kinds of conditions before taking the chance to speak, act, or sing. What it means, of course, is that I don’t speak, and therefore whatever it is I have to say isn’t heard – by me or anyone.

As I feel into it now, I can only admit it’s because I’m looking for approval, or at least not to get criticized.

So what? I ask myself. What if I were criticized? What then?

Who doesn’t get criticized? Is my ego that big that it’s getting me to hide in the corner?

I also see that this blog is a step in that direction, as it has my words and thoughts out into the world where they be be freely criticized if need be. So far, just the opposite has happened, as I’ve heard many compliments and reflections. Is this my song? Well, although I’m still “tuning” my words, the little utterances I share are bringing me closer and closer to feeling I am singing my song.

Oh, I’d love to hear yours!

Thay (Thich Nhat Hanh) recently wrote a book titled “Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life”.

He collaborated with a dietician, and the book is wonderful. It includes lots of alternatives, all centering around the simple power of being mindful. Problems with overweight and obesity are often associated with excessive screen time: TV, computers, and smartphones.

The book includes several “Screen-Time Alternatives”:

Screen-Time Alternatives

Acting

Journaling

Bike riding

Jogging

Bowling

Jumping rope

Camping

Knitting or crocheting

Learning a language

Caring for your pet

Listening to music

Cleaning the house

Meditating

Mindful walking

Cooking

Mowing the lawn

Crafting

Organizing

Dancing

Painting

Doing laundry

Planting flowers

Doing push-ups

Playing an instrument

Doing sit-ups

Playing board games

Doing yoga

Playing Dance, Dance Revolution

Drawing

Playing Frisbee

Fishing

Playing tag

Gardening

Playing team sports

Going to a house of worship

Playing tennis

Going to a spiritual center

Playing with a hacky sack

Going to the gym

Playing with children

Golfing

Reading

Hiking

Relaxing

In-line skating

Scrapbooking

Inviting friends over

Talking on the phone with friends

Singing

Tutoring

Sleeping

Visiting a museum

Solving number puzzles

Volunteering

Spending time with family

Walking

Storytelling

Woodworking

Stretching

Writing poetry

Swimming

Taking photographs

Do you have any others you would share?

I’m good at being uncomfortable
so I can’t stop changing all the time.
…
He’s no good at being uncomfortable
so he can’t stop being exactly the same.

- Fiona Apple in the song Extraordinary Machine

Maybe that’s one of the secrets to growing and changing; hanging out in discomfort.

It reminds me of a line in the movie My Dinner with Andre where Andre shares with Wally: “Remember that moment when Marlon Brando sent the Indian woman to accept the Oscar, and everything went haywire? Things just very rarely go haywire now. If you’re just operating by habit, then you’re not really living.”

Maybe that’s the point those Indian mystics were trying to make with their bed of nails? (pun intended)

Everyone has that gift of listening to their intuition to find that they have to offer, and what they have to give to their fellow citizens, their communities, to their family, or to whatever organizations they belong to.

- Serafina Gallente

The actors and scriptwriters in Hollywood are often influenced by their Southern California environs, their therapists, and their dreams. So, inspiring messages sometimes slip into movies. In the comedy City Slickers, Curly dispenses some wisdom with just one finger ominously held upright:

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?

[holds up one finger]

Curly: This.

Mitch: Your finger?

Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.

Mitch: But, what is the “one thing?”

Curly: [smiles] That’s what *you* have to find out.

Jack Palance as Curly in “City Slickers” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101587/quotes?qt=qt0238715

The first question is, how can we each discover what that one thing is for us?

Rehabilitation – getting out and staying in

The rehabilitation of the body – in the sense of fully inhabiting it and cultivating intimacy with it as it is, however it is – is a universal attribute of mindfulness practice, including mindful yoga. Since it is of limited value to speak of the body as separate from the mind, or of mind separated from body, we are inevitably talking about the rehabilitation of our whole being, and the realization of our wholeness moment by moment, step by step, and breath by breath, starting, as always, with where we are now.

Jon Kabat Zinn – in Arriving at your own Door: 108 Lessons in Mindfulness

If you ask most people about rehab, they’ll say it’s for people needing help with a physical addiction – alcohol or other drugs. They sort of describe it like the person is going to a laundromat, to have their body scrubbed for a while, so they can return squeaky-clean to their regular life.

If you ask anyone who’s been through rehab, they’ll probably tell you a different story.

Those who went to rehab and successfully rid themselves of their physical habit will tell you that the hardest work in rehab wasn’t physical at all – it was their whole being: body, mind, attitudes, beliefs, and their whole being.

Even the most successful will tell you that you never really leave rehab. In fact, living fully requires ongoing presence, continued attention, and mindfulness. That’s why one of the most widely known AA phrases is “One Step At A Time” and why so many meditation practices begin with the breath. These simple things – our steps and our breath – are very close to most of us.

The good news is that our steps and our breath are close to us, and they can lead us into mindfulness, and help us stay there.

How to Not Lose

You can’t lose if you take this approach:

“To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and whatever you hit call it the target.- Ashliegh Brilliant

While this is one way to avoid losing, it’s also not likely to lead to fulfillment. Instead, you’ll end up with a garagefull of relics gathered through random pot-shots.

How to Not Win

You can’t win if you take this approach:

Set BHAG (Big Hairy Audicious Goals) which are so unrealistic or unclear that you keep yourself in a constant state of failure. Or, make a bucket list with so many enormous goals that it would take several lifetimes to achieve them.

Willy Loman, in Death of a Salesman, sets a widely-read example of someone who created goals for things outside of himself and mostly beyond his control. Read what the blogger Morgan has to say about poor Willy, and see her forward-thinking response.

http://teenenthusiasm.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/willy-loman-inspired-this/

How to Achieve Happiness, to Flourish, and to Feel Fulfilled

There is a middle way:

Set goals that begin with yourself. Start with those mostly within your control and less about changing others or that rest on the viewpoints of others. Willy’s lessons are that external things don’t bring happiness and don’t bring fulfillment.

Celebrate your progress along your evolutionary path. Yes, the climb out of our primordial muck may seem slow and daunting, yet simply acknowleding even the tiniest forward steps leads to fulfillment.

Look beyond happiness towards flourishing. Flourishing goes beyond momentary happiness to embody the grace of linking your heart to your mind. Opening your heart so it can sing its own song and hear its own drummer can align you with your true purpose and life direction.

Infinite Lovers seek to expand the love they offer. People without love try not to lose love.

To develop the drop of compassion in our own heart is the only effective spiritual response to hatred and violence. That drop of compassion will be the result of calming our anger, looking deeply at the roots of our violence, deep listening, and understanding the suffering of everyone involved in the acts of hatred and violence. – Thich Nhat Hanh

What would you have said to Osama bin Laden, given the chance?

Deep Listening with Compassion can lead to Peace

Shortly after 9/11 in New York, the Zen buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh gave a talk about peace, returning to peace, and dealing with anger.

In an interview with Anne A. Simpkinson, he describes what he would say to Osama bin Laden.

What I Would Say To Osama bin Laden: http://theconversation.org/archive/thich.html

He reminds us that answering fear with fear does not bring healing. He points out that speaking while in anger is not the most effective way. He counsels that deep listening can bring us to deep understanding.

This approach can help slow and even end cycles of violence and pain.

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/88/story_8872.html

o bálsamo do desilusão/The Balm of Disappointment (Disillusion) – from Night Train to Lisbon (Pascal Mercier)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gilderic/4284037767/

Disappointment is considered bad. A thoughtless prejudice. How, if not through disappointment, should we discover what we have expected and hoped for? And where, if not in this discovery, should self-knowledge lie? So, how could one gain clarity about oneself without disappointment?

We shouldn’t suffer disappointment sighing at something our lives would be better without. We should seek it, track it down, collect it. Why am I disappointed that the adored actors of my youth all now show signs of age and decay? What does disappointment teach me about how little success is worth?

…

I had a friend who died recently at the age of 94. She lived her life fully up through her time of passing. When she was about 92, I remember her telling me that she had found another fault with herself, and she was both disappointed and happy at the same time.

She had decided years before that a fearless inventory of her faults was her only way to live. She treasured each difficulty as a stepping stone on her progress toward perfection, while at the same time she never claimed to be perfect nor did she ever expect she would reach perfection.

…

One who would really like to know himself would have to be a reckless, fanatical collector of disappointments, and seeking disappointing experiences must be like an addiction, the all-determining addiction of his life, for it would stand so clearly before his eyes that disappointment is not a hot, destroying poision, but rather a cool, calming balm that opens our eyes to the real contours of ourselves.

Like my friend, I continue my own self-examination, and seem to have no end of things to find. Ha! I often laugh at loud at my foibles and persistency of my faults. Even bringing them to light doesn’t seem to automatically dispel them, although a little light and fresh air helps.

Even funnier to me, others in my life seem ever at the ready to point out my faults and shortcomings. Family members know me too well perhaps, and relationships really are the express train to me learning about my disappointments and illusions. Although it seems funny and ironic now, other times it is so challenging I find myself withdrawing. I know that doesn’t ultimately help me.

One would have the hope that he would become real by reducing expectations, shrink to a hard, reliable core and thus be immune to the pain and disappointment. But how would it be to live a life that banished every long, bold expectation, a life where there were only banal expectations like “the bus is coming”?

Avoiding life is not living. Let’s all take these steps together towards a clearer, fuller life.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/4000397560/

Do you feel you should get more credit for the love and attention you give to those in your life?

Even after all this time,

The sun never says to the earth “you owe me!”

Look what happens with a Love like that!

It lights the whole sky!

-Hafiz

 

Infinite Lovers have their love work hard for them. People without love work hard for their love.

This Infinite Love Principle describes how love has its own energy, not requiring force or extreme effort. Love wants to express itself as love, and the more force that’s applied, the less that love can shine in its own right.

Try letting the love in your heart and your life glow with its own light. See how it is to let it shine.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/javisitges/5445754851/

“People where you live,” the little prince said, “grow five thousand roses in one garden… yet they don’t find what they’re looking for…”

“They don’t find it,” I answered.

“And yet what they’re looking for could be found in a single rose, or a little water…”

“Of course,” I answered.

And the little prince added, “But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart.”

- From The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (translated by Richard Howard).

It may be easy to be distracted by the eyes, the mind, the ears, the ego.

 

It’s why online dating doesn’t work for so many. Match, eHarmony, okcupid, and so on, all are like wandering into a garden with 5,000 roses. Yes, there’s abundance and yes there are many. So what?

 

Don’t let yourself be fooled. Always exercise your heart’s knowing.

 

Then, let yourself be tamed by the beloved. Open yourself to the beloved to allow yourself to be tamed.

 

That will let that one beloved be the special one for you. Yes, there are thorns and that rose may not be a “perfect” rose. Yet, it’s your rose, your beloved.

 

Try it and see.