Radical Kindness

The Hour I First Believed

May 6, 2013

in Aging with Grace, Approval, Inquiry, Questioning the Mind, Radical Kindness

Body in SwirlsMy body for so long was my secret shame, the taboo subject. I remember lying on the couch, looking at my seven-year-old legs and declaring to myself that they were too fat.

I had become a believer. In that specific moment, all the judgments I’d absorbed from the world around me just popped into my head, a full-grown bundle of beliefs that I’ve carried most of my life.

My religion had simple rules: it was good to be thinner. Click for Full Article

Tagged as: Aging, Body, Caring, Getting Unstuck, Investigating the Mind, Questioning the mind, Self-care, Stories

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Trying to Control What Cannot Be Controlled

October 15, 2012

in Navigating Crisis, Radical Kindness

” I am tired of trying to hold together things that can’t be held. Trying to control what cannot be controlled.” These words took on a glow, a forgotten treasure of truth, buried 400 pages into an immersion-experience-of-a-book, the The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern.

I’ve been able to savor this read mostly because I got stopped in my tracks (literally) by a traffic accident less than a month ago. For the last week, I have been dipping into renewed and shocking awareness of the line between life and death, through the vehicle of whiplash and a fortuitously small broken bone. My little Prius was slammed head-on by a van on the very day I set aside for a Time Out and a reboot of a life that had been feeling a bit serious, a bit rushed, a bit out of control, despite all my attempts to rein it in. Click for Full Article

Tagged as: Coming home, Getting Unstuck, Navigation, Radical kindness, Reality, Self-care

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Surrendering the Big Girl Britches

September 20, 2012 Coming Home
A little late? The car was totaled, I was hurt and in shock, surrounded by the flashing lights of emergency vehicles, and I’m going to be a little late? For body work? Make that “a little late, but we now have a pemanent relationship. An uber-responsible reaction is one sure sign I’ve pulled on my [...]
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Tired of Wired

August 29, 2012 Coming Home
“I’m tired of being so wired,” I wrote in my journal a couple of months ago. At that time, writing a blog about the topic of being too technologically connected seemed just a tad hypocritical.

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Independence from My Inflatable Bully

July 3, 2012 Questioning the Mind
Independence from My Inflatable Bully: This could be the most memorable Independence Day celebration ever. Because I’m getting deadly serious about smoking out bullies in my life.
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Living an “Inquiry Kind of Life”

May 7, 2012 Byron Katie's Work
Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. ~ Rainier Maria Rilke
I’m an impatient sort. So I’ve been living my way into answers right now. Fascinating insights.


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Law of Distraction

March 22, 2012 Questioning the Mind
I have nothing personal against the Law of Attraction Except for the painful shadow it casts when it becomes your direction-finder and distracts you from what needs to be learned or done about your current reality.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s much to be said for hope and belief and positive intention. Leaning into life’s possibilities, as a way of walking the planet, offers joy and curiosity.

But imaginative envisioning is half of an equation, and it can be a distraction to sit in wishful thinking when a lot of life perspiration and determination. It’s really true what they told us when we were little: Almost everything that has any worth and personal value requires work, and that sense of accomplishment is its own reward.

But the darkest shadow of the Law of Attraction is the way it seems to trigger the belief that if bad things happen, I must have done something wrong
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A Personal Prescription for Happiness

March 5, 2012 Getting Unstuck
I love a good fight. Whether I’m “fighting traffic, fighting the Battle of the Bulge, or having a disagreement (aka “fight”) with my husband, I know that somewhere in there is my “prescription for happiness,” as Byron Katie describes what happens when you turn a painful belief around and discover what’s there that you might have been missing.

He should be more sensitive? Once I can really see how that deep belief causes suffering in my life, really close-up and personal, the little slights and unkindness it creates, I’m more than ready to let go.
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Emotional Weather Front

March 2, 2012 Inquiry
There’s an old saying here in Oregon. “The only people to predict the weather are fools and newcomers.” Guilty on the first count. It’s March 1st, and I had planned to wake up to warm spring breezes and beds of daffodils swaying. Instead I get this blanket of pure white beauty tucked softly over the hills. Lovely. But hardly what I planned. Fooled again.

The last couple of days the weather has brought other surprises. Sleet. Heavy winds. Chilling to the bones. I didn’t like that surprise. But one thing that Oregon has taught me is not to take the weather personally.

I’m noticing the same thing about feelings. We humans have these pesky emotions that seem to come through just like weather fronts. When we don’t take them personally, each one of them leaves a particular gift or shows us something we need to see. And then it moves on.
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It’s the Glue

February 23, 2012 Byron Katie's Work
I recently heard of a Tibetan Rinpoche who said “it’s not the thought. It’s the glue.” Body and mind shouted, YES!

I’ve spent a whole lot of time in the last seven years looking for THE thought that would bring freedom, finding thought after thought that opened the doors of truth. Painful beliefs have a way (only always) of not being true.

But, dang it, some of those doors are pretty determined to slam shut again. It’s as if there is a very viscous and sticky substance that allows them to open just enough to get a peek of possibility, but then pulls them closed. So I’ve been getting curious about that glue, poking a stick in it and then pulling it out and seeing what happens, as I sit in my own inquiry.
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Subtracting Insult from Injury

February 5, 2012 Byron Katie's Work
Instead of adding insult to injury, I’ve been learning to subtract. Three weeks ago I broke my collarbone in the middle of the night on Day 2 of a long-anticipated tropical vacation with my husband. I slid on some slippery Mexican tile and catapulted down three steps to land on my collar bone. At three a.m. on a Sunday morning. The story of How I Spent My Vacation starts with that event, with riding a ferry from the island to a hospital and harnessing myself into a splint for the next two weeks.
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Dipping Deeply Into the New Year

January 3, 2012 Coming Home
Honey dripping from a dipper It’s pretty darned hard to miss the flashing ads and headlines that remind me, and all of us, that this is the time for resolve, discipline, will power. My own natural desire to get more in touch with my healthy body through diet and exercise at this time of year always finds plenty of support from the culture around me. I don’t mind riding that wave. But anybody at my gym will tell you that the new spurt of activity lasts about six weeks.

What makes it stick is when I dip deeply to discover what’s been in the way of change. I’ve discovered for myself that any resolutions for the new year just don’t take unless I spend some time thinking about where I’ve been, getting my bearings for what’s ahead.

Because the unquestioned past seems to have a way of becoming in the future.
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Not Forgetting

July 28, 2011 Getting Unstuck
This poem has been on the marquee in my town for a long time. A wonderful mantra. I’m so glad it’s there. Because it’s so easy to forget. Remembering. That’s the trick.
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Building a Kinder World

July 26, 2011 Getting Unstuck
Thumbnail image for Building a Kinder World There’s a line in the recent Sherlock Holmes movie that grabbed my attention.
“Give me some evidence, Holmes. With a little mud I can build bricks and from there I can build a case.”
I’m struck by how often we use the evidence we have to wall us into a world view that isn’t kind to us or the people around us. Someone cuts us off in traffic and we take it personally. Our kids are acting out. Proof we’re a bad parent. And so it can go, if we believe our case that we’re failing or not measuring up, somehow.

What I’ve been discovering as I work with my own mind and assist others in inquiry is that there’s another choice.
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Shifting the Lens

May 17, 2011 Getting Unstuck
There’s a color commentator in my head who spins me this way and that with a play-by-play of how I’m operating in the world. I call her Ethel. Ethel touts all the stats she remembers from the past and predicts the future.
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Baja: A Whale’s Eye View

March 28, 2011 Creating Community
Whale's Eye I just arrived home from a pilgrimage to the birthing lagoon of the gray whale in Baja. I had heard rumors about mother whales there who introduce their calves to humans, much as we take our offspring to meet other species. This image had lived in my imagination for several years, increasing its ranking in my bucket list. But my watery imaginings didn’t begin to match the experience of being in their presence—the power of a whale’s eye view.
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“Exploding Head” Remedy

March 2, 2011 Confusion to Clarity
Last week I co-hosted a cross cultural dialogue with Balinese visiting San Francisco. The focus was on Tri Hita Karuna, the ancient principle of balancing relationships with community, spirit, and nature. When I asked a beautiful Balinese singer to share. she said,
“All this talking and talking makes our heads explode.”
Then she led a long, lovely chant. A sense of connection with each other, with the world, with spirit, saturated the room. We were singing our world back in balance.
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The Space Inside Stuckness

January 31, 2011 Coming Home
Thumbnail image for The Space Inside Stuckness Sometimes I find myself slipping into an old robotic pattern, a certain contracted stuckness. This trance-like state of being shows up in different ways: reading late into the night and awakening tired, heading to the snack cupboard instead of going on a walk. Leaving a little late for an appointment and then rushing to get there, forgetting my goal of staying present in my life. As if this added drama gives me a life of purpose. I slip into a way of moving through my life as if I’m wearing blinders. There’s very little space for different choices. After all, that would upset the robot with blinders.
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Help Me to Believe the Truth about Myself, No Matter How Beautiful It Is

January 21, 2011 Aging with Grace
Thumbnail image for Help Me to Believe the Truth about Myself, No Matter How Beautiful It Is This is the prayer we used to close my woman’s circle for the past 11 years. I had learned from the Sufis, but it was written by Marina Widerhehr. Last week was the group’s last circle. We shared “popcorn shapshots,” images of the precious and not-so-precious moments that have united us: the weddings, funerals, illnesses. The laughter and tears.

Since then I’ve noticed my own popcorn images: photos of me in the full bloom of my twenties and thirties. In the radiance of my forties and fifties. I noticed that only when I look at the snapshots from this distance am I able to see the beauty that I was. When I was younger my mind was way to full of the mosquito beliefs brought to me by my inner spin doctor. You’re too fat. Your eyes are too close together. Teeth too big. In a nutshell, There’s something wrong with me.
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Reflections after a Dead Puppy Christmas

January 9, 2011 Coming Home
Every year at this time I ask myself the question. “Now where was I?” It’s as if I left “my life” for somebody else’s. Which just might be true, at one level. Always the holidays are full to overflowing with the unexpected. This year my daughter brought home puppies from a rescue mission that had gone awry and we set up an emergency vet clinic here, where we nursed and held half-pound infants, trying desperately to save them from the ravages of Parvo. Only one of 15 made it, and it was happily delivered on Christmas eve. In the middle of all this sadness, carols, games with friends, and the Beatles on Wii were islands of laughter.

Which brings up the big savior: dark humor. I’ve lived long enough to keep in mind the story in family history WHILE going through the tough stuff. This will be the Christmas of the Dead Puppies, and we will laugh. Soon.
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