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Archive for the ‘Awareness’ Category

I See Men As Trees Walking

October 4, 2023

For several months of looking through my study window about 6 am at meditation time I saw green grass, trees, bushes, birds, people walking. Now in early October, it is dark out. I can see just the blurred dark swath of trees and bushes. Then dawn rises. I gradually make out individual trees and bushes.

That probably relates to the phrase found in so many stories—it suddenly dawned on him.

But this takes me back to a country gospel song I first heard from Johnny Cash based on Mark 8—I see men as trees walking. Jesus touched a blind man, and that was the man’s response. Then Jesus touched him a second time, and he could see clearly.

We often experience coming to understanding that same way. Patience and perseverance pay.

Several things I’ve read over the past couple of weeks have nudged me to put aside my anti-Aristotelian prejudice and read Thomas Aquinas again. Last night witnessed the beginning of this journey. Summa Theologica Part 1. (I self-identify as Augustinian rather than Thomist; Neo-Platonist rather than Aristotelian.)

I struggled through the first few questions and proofs. Then, just as the dawn’s light brought those trees into view, I got the rhythm and sense of direction of the writing.

It’s the same—reading the Bible or a teacher’s text or even learning some new math equations. With patience and persistence, meaning will come.

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Body and Soul

October 2, 2023

The beginnings of Yoga according to tradition came from the desire to train the body to be able to sit in meditation for longer periods of time.

Have you an awareness of when your body tells you it just isn’t in peak form for thinking or undertaking a new task?

I had many good meetings last week in Folsom, California at the software conference. I was curious about many things. That led to many discoveries—about the software, about how people used it, and about problems they were all trying to solve.

There was one meeting that was quite unpleasant. The pain remains four days later. Rule 1 for exercising outside. Do not walk or run on a sidewalk. I was finishing. My inner brain guided me to the sidewalk outside the hotel. It was dark. There was one of those flaws you fear where one of the squares has raised. I couldn’t see it. My hands and knees met the sidewalk at full force.

The next three days revealed to me the barest glimmer of life with pain. Even with ample doses of Tylenol the brain struggled to focus on writing. I am much better today (Monday after the Thursday morning fall), but the feeling lingers.

Sometimes I make a poor food choice. Then I can feel it. I have trouble sitting and focusing on what I want to do. I know—I choose poorly.

This must be the reason the Apostle Paul used so many athletic metaphors and examples. The body is the temple, take care of it. He knew that to keep up the pace of meetings, speaking, traveling, writing, and his spiritual health, he had to maintain the physical body.

Yes, intentional physical activity and nutrition and sleep are key elements toward pursuing a rich spiritual life. Take care of yourself. And don’t walk on sidewalks, especially in unfamiliar places, in the dark!

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Build the Life You Want

September 29, 2023

Arthur C. Brooks teaches a happiness class at Harvard Business School. Students line up to take the class. Probably because the place is filled with people looking for happiness in all the wrong places (to paraphrase a song).

Oprah Winfrey read his bestseller, From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life, contacted him and invited to her home in California. They hit it off and agreed to collaborate on this book just out this month, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier.

This book is readable and practical. Much of this I know and practice. Many will not have heard of this research and story. This will help you and/or someone you love.

Let’s begin with “Happiness is not the goal, and unhappiness is not the enemy.”

Philosophers from ancient times have known that happiness is a byproduct of living, not the goal of living. Yet, each generation must learn the lesson anew.

The first chapters discuss managing our emotions.

The four pillars are discussed in detail in the remainder of the book:

Family
Friends
Work
Faith (Find Your Amazing Grace)

I leave you with two takeaways.

Augustine of Hippo (St. Augustine) gave a student three pieces of advice.

The first part is humility; the second, humility; the third, humility; and this I would continue to repeat as often as you might ask direction.

Another takeaway.

We need to detach ourselves and become free of sticky cravings. We honestly examine our attachments. What are yours? Money, power, pleasure, prestige—the distractions we sought to be free of with greater emotional self-management? Dig deeper. Just maybe they are your opinions. The Buddha himself named this attachment and its terrible effects more than twenty-four hundred years ago when he is believed to have said, “This who grasp at perceptions and views go about butting their heads in the world.” More recently the Vietnamese Buddhist sage Thich Naht Hanh wrote in his book Being Peace, “Humankind suffers very much from attachment to views.”

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I Am With You

September 12, 2023

Haggai, the prophet, wrote that God said, “I am with you.”

Jesus told his followers at the end of his ministry, “I will be with you.”

What does that mean?

Is it more than a feeling (sounds like a 60s love song)?

Jon Swanson asked once when Jesus asks you to follow him, what would you pack? Great question.

So, I packed to follow Jesus, because he is with me.

Literally? (OK, you Biblical literalists, hit me with that.)

Do I just think he is with me?

Do I believe that he is right here in the room with me? Do I see him? Hear him? Smell him?

Maybe I feel his presence in a way that cannot really be described in prose. It is more than a feeling. Yet, it is not a physical presence. I think they have hospitals for people who say they can see, touch and smell Jesus or God right now.

These meandering thoughts remind me of a Jesus movement song from a long time ago–love is something you do, not always something that you feel, but it’s real.

Yeah, that’s it.

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Look Inside For Causes

September 11, 2023

So instead of loving what you think is peace, love other men and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed–but hate these things in yourself, not in another.
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Oh, how easy it is to look at others and judge. How difficult to look within and see all the evil residing therein.

Somewhere inside we need a pause button. Like before we speak. Probably every time.

We look at someone and a story about them comes to mind. Usually not a good story. We think the worst.

Maybe if we hit that pause button and then ask a conversation starting (not ending!) question and actually listen. Maybe by listening we hear a story. Almost always that story will change the opinion. We discover people who are hurting just like us (who won’t admit it).

Maybe there is grief in the family. There are many kinds. They hurt.

Maybe they just feel left out. All they needed was someone to greet them and listen to them.

Maybe a recent diagnosis–theirs or family or friend–is weighing on them.

Maybe we pray for peace and justice, but even there we need that pause button and look inside at our attitudes towards other–maybe fear based on our own insecurities, maybe dislike merging with hatred of someone different, maybe rooting for war somewhere.

Pause and look inside. I know. I have. There’s no perfection there. Work remains to be done.

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Childlike or Childish?

August 24, 2023

I may have written before about how I loved to take woks with my grandson when he was a toddler. We weren’t trying for distance. He would stop and explore leaves and bugs and worms and little lizards. Everything was fresh and new. He was filled with child-like wonder of things.

Perhaps that was the picture Jesus had in mind when he suggested that we should become like little children. Take in new experiences with eyes open with wonder. Accept whatever people came our way with the same anticipation and joy.

The rare times I turn on TV news or scan news on the internet, I’m shocked by the realization of how adolescent and childish so many of these people are.

We need to look at ourselves. The daily Examen. Morning and evening reflect on the day. Where did we delight in someone or something with childlike wonder? Where and when were we acting childish like a 2-year-old?

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In The Spirit and Doing Good

August 21, 2023

An ancient observation, about 4,600 years old:

One of complete virtue is not conscious of being virtuous.

One of whole virtue does not need to do anything in order to be virtuous.

This is similar to what the Apostle Paul tried to explain many times as he taught about those living in the spirit of God as followers of Jesus and those who tried to avoid God’s anger by obeying each and every one of the 600+ laws of the Hebrew tradition.

If we are truly living in the spirit, living a life with-God, we just naturally live good (maybe not exactly perfect but good) lives. We are kind, empathetic, helpful, virtuous. We have peace and joy and hope. We don’t even realize it. We just are.

Yet, so many read Paul in order to find more rules (laws) to add to the 600+ Jewish laws. They unfortunately miss the point.

So many of us miss the point. Missing out on the sort of life that God wishes for us.

Self-awareness begins the journey. Focus and attention—not on ourselves but first on God then on others. Or, maybe first on others then we realize the God part comes along. We can change, otherwise Paul wouldn’t have written all those letters to guide us.

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When To Quit and When Not To

August 7, 2023

The hardest decisions for the owners and managers of a successful athletic organization involves timing the retirement of its star athletes. The hardest decision for almost all premier athletes is knowing when time and age have caught them and they need to step down.

The same can be said for politicians and business leaders. I’ve observed church leaders in the same situation. They stay too long. Lose their edge. Begin to make mistakes. Think they are not only above the law, but that they are the law.

The opposite holds true in the spiritual life. We can retire too early. We may have had a spiritual experience of oneness with God. Then spend our lives trying to recapture that moment.

Or we become convinced of a certain “truth” early on and never grow from that or re-evaluate in light of further study and experience.

Every day in the spiritual life we can sit in the first hour of the morning and open ourselves to God asking what new experience or opportunity will be shown us that day. And opening ourselves to making the appropriate response. Living a life of loving God and loving other humans only ends at death. There is no retirement.

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Keeping Yourself Firmly Grounded

August 1, 2023

Carole King put it, “I feel the earth move under my feet…”

Jimmy Buffet sang, “Earth she’s movin’ under me…”

These are powerful images. We expect the earth to be solid under our feet. When we teach Mountain Pose in Yoga (standing upright), we lead the students to feel their feet firmly grounded as they lengthen their spine yet relaxing their shoulders. Feel strong and grounded like a mountain.

The relaxation meditation I used last night told us to sit in the chair, place our feet flat on the ground, and feel grounded to the solid earth.

We want our emotions grounded. Not like air, moving randomly this way and that.

Building our spiritual, emotional, and intellectual life upon a solid foundation leads to a stable life ready to grow and serve.

Perhaps Jesus had something like that in mind when he told us, To hear my words and do them is like building a house on a solid foundation of rock where the rains, and the storms, and the winds came and yet did not destroy it.

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Metaphor in Search of a Story

May 30, 2023

We bought a house where the back yard meets the brush along a creek. The good news is that no one can build adjacent to us. We’ll always have a buffer. The bad news is that an invasive species of bush/tree appeared in our development. Over the past three years it has spread along the outer edge of the creek.

This plant propagates two ways. It sends root runners out where new plants pop up seemingly at random. I watched the progression of these toward my patio and house. The landscaping guy told me to use a week killer on the sprouts to kill them off. That sort of works and sort of not.

The HOA employed the landscaping guy to spray the bushes. Perhaps that takes care of the, ahem, root cause.

These Sandbar Willows spread a second way—seeds. They grow seed pods and then release the seeds into the air. They are fuzzy like cottonwood or dandelion seeds. They release into the air and are carried by wind currents to new places.

Here is the potential metaphor—the seed pods were green. Then, as the bushes began dying, the seed pods matured and began sending out millions of seeds to begin a new generation.

Back in the 60s/70s of the early Jesus movement songs (much more meaning than the so-called praise choruses that swept Christian music later and still predominates), there was a song that included the refrain, “and in dying we are born to eternal life.”

Not only in Christianity, but also other religions as well as psychology there are observations and teaching about the necessity of dying to self in order to grow beyond. The excessive parts of the ego must die so that we can experience life in fulness. I think one of my first published poems carried that theme. It’s long been on my mind.

Don’t cling so much to the old that you miss out on new growth.

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