What Can Presence Do For Me?

     Today I had a deliciously memorable Labor Day picnic with my daughter and a dear friend on her deck, on a perfect blue-sky-yummy-air day, with a magnificent lake view.  The company, the weather, the food - one of the most lovely lazy afternoons I've ever had.  The gift of presence, absorbing every "vibe" and molecule of energy from my dear friend, left her energy tingling on us even after we left.  Now, granted, she has got amazing energy anyway, but knowing about how to stay present even with a squirmy baby was such a gift today.   You see, my dear friend only has a couple months to live, and because of the gift of presence, my daughter and I are privileged to carry her energy with us.  If I had never learned about presence, consciousness, and the power of now, it would have been a very different afternoon.  It could have been filled with nervousness, sadness, mindless chattering to fill silences.  Instead, it was one of loveliest afternoons I can remember.  Thanks, darling!

"MONDAY is the day of giving"

     "On Monday, we agree as parents to do the following things with our children: 1. Invite them to give one thing to someone else in the family.  2. Inspire them to receive graciously.  3. Share a brief ritual of gratitude for life's gifts".  -Deepak Chopra, _The Seven Spiritual Laws for Parents_

     This is a little book I picked up while pregnant and meant of course to implement RIGHT AWAY.  I would meditate with my newborn.  I would be the model of gracious "please" and "thank you" and talk to her about gratitude even if she didn't understand.  I would, simply because I needed to be the model, suddenly become all of the spiritual things I read and talk about.  I would, because I was leading by example, be in the now, connected to the source, intensely present, and of course, always calm and radiant.

    One thing I love about a spiritual journey, versus participating in an organized religion, is the framework.  A journey is framed in the unknown.  There isn't a destination, there aren't any answers, only inquiry, seeking, and growth and transformation.  Ideally, this is the case in organized religion too, and for theology students it might be true, but organized religion has always seemed to me to have all the answers, finite, the end, period.  So I'm not beating myself over the head for failing to instantly transform into Spiritual Parent of the Month, because I can share with my daughter the process of seeking, of inquiry.  Of discovering that Monday is the day of Giving.

     Today with my daughter, I will model "please" and "thank you" with meaning.  That is how I will inspire her to receive graciously.  I will start to use the word "share" and model sharing (yum, Baby Puffs for Mommy!).  And on our walk today, I will talk about how lucky we are to live someplace we can be with nature.

     Share with me! How will you inspire your children to give today?  I would love to know other parents' ideas for kids of all ages!

The new "me time"

It used to look like this: a great novel, a sushi restaurant. Phone off. Ordering the usual with a slight variation each time: 2 pc salmon, 2pc tuna, 2 pc yellowtail, all no wasabi, all sushi. Avocado roll. Miso soup. Tea. Give or take the special sushi of the day. A woman alone at a restaurant, the best of company a good book. A leisurely dinner alone.

Or it looked like a hot cup of coffee, a porch, hours upon hours of magazines, books, nailpolish. I don’t even think I knew it was “me time” because it was just my life.

Now if I have a bowel movement for longer than 2 minutes, I call it me time. My shower is a beautiful luxury, and if I can actually get soap into all the right places, it’s a spa day. When there is a rare moment like this, my husband and baby asleep at the same time, I almost don’t know what to do. There are so many things I want to do.. to write, to archive her movies, to read, to sit and listen to the ocean with a cup of (cold, now) coffee.

Why don’t I do them? More often than not if I have the internet I just mindlessly browse websites. Fear. I don’t mind being interrupted from facebook or online browsing for bargains, which I don’t even want or need. But to be interrupted from the meatier endeavors… to be in a thought and hear her cry, or see him open his eyes and ask “What are you up to?” in the kindest of ways… I can barely stand to be a girl, interrupted. I avoid the marrow of life during these quiet moments so I can avoid the brutal involuntary tack like a windsurfer on violent waves. Where there was girl.. well, I can always look back and wave to her.

Maybe creating a transition of my own – a breath, a quick meditative transitioning mantra, something that makes the involuntary switch from woman to mommy seem more of my choosing. Something like “Your self is not in this endeavor, it is in the presence you bring to your next task”.

Your self is not in this endeavor, it is in the presence you bring to your next task.

Then I don’t have to try to turn and wave.

Reverse Design

In science, to prove that the independent variable has an effect on the dependent variable, reliably, sometimes we use a reversal design, or ABAB. I'm in one right now. The situation I THINK is causing my strung-out-negative-self-talk-anxiety-ridden-fits-of-crying-constantly is condition A. Then it was gone for a while (B). No crying. Happiness. Productivity. Then it was back (A). Stress. Gone (B) - no stress. I think we have proven something.

Given that I can't change the situation or get out of it anytime soon, I am completely mentally wrapped up in it. I have imaginary fights with people that aren't even provoking me yet, almost as a self-defense for when the moment comes that I do have to stand up for myself. How am I supposed to keep the inner peace when the stimuli around me are maddening AT BEST? ANd isn't it MOST important to be able to do so during times of duress? Who needs inner peace during halycon days?

Ann Morrow Lindbergh, in _A Gift From the Sea_, talks about the need for solitude. She says that since Virginia Woolf's time, women have come far enough so as not necessarily to need a room of one's own - after all, we are no longer property (but we still take his last name. WTF?) But she says we must have TIME of one's own. Says she, "Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. .. women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves: that firm strand which will be the indispensable center of a whole web of human relationships. She must find that inner stillness which Charles Morgan describes as 'the stilling of the soul within the activities of the mind and body so that it might be still as the axis of a revolving wheel is still'".

While my family was on vacation in the outerbanks, all three of us in a one room cabana (maybe I SHOULD reconsider a ROOM of one's own), I stole a couple of hours throughout the two weeks and was able to rejuvenate my creative side to a degree. Walking alone on the beach, sitting with a book and coffee on the upper deck (reading _A Gift from the Sea_ by the seaside is a TREAT!) Following the hour of solitude, I was able to re-enter the happy madness and claustrophobia of family life with a much more present and calm being.

How do you keep your still axis during times of overwhelming stress?

Curses!

I don't think I care about cursing around my daughter.

Words are kind of meaningless.

Intonation and intention, I care about. And namecalling.

Everything is Temporary

Seems like the simplest thing. Kim Eng said to me, on a retreat, "All your baby needs is for you to radiate love, peace, and acceptance". That was SOOO not a problem when all she did was nurse, poop, and sleep sweetly on me.

Today while I was trying to wrestle her into her jammies while she pooped in her nighttime diaper for the 3rd time and the poop was on her jammies and I didn't have spare ones so I got her all cleaned and it was just one of those "I CAN'T" mommy moments at the end of the day... It is hard to remember to accept the moment. You don't have to LIKE the moment, or wish the moment would go on, you just have to ACCEPT that THIS IS the moment, and it's a temporary moment. When that flashed in my mind, I was able to breathe. Once you can breathe, the rest is history. I was still annoyed at struggling with too-small poopy wet jammies and running out of nighttime diapers and jerry-rigging her whole night thing, but the annoyance was remote. Unimportant.

Everything is temporary. She's sleeping sweetly now.

Completely in the Dark

Still standing... came out of the other end of the loooong, loooong winter, being indoors waaay to much for this nature lover, feeling completely claustrophobic and then MIRACLE! Along came the sun, just when I couldn't take another indoor day. What a beautiful season. Delilah and I have been walking, and walking, and walking. Well, she's rolling and I'm walking. We walk and roll.

This phase of my life is a completely new spiritual challenge. It was so comparatively easy to stay centered and focused when I had quiet moments to re-center and re-focus throughout the day. Now, in my day, I'm lucky if I get to respond to one email... never mind sit and be with my breath for 15 minutes of meditation.

So I ask you, parents and busy people, how do you carve out opportunities in a chaotic day to stay focused and centered?

Snow days

I am sitting at the kitchen table watching my daughter sleep. She is so relaxed that her lips are drooping to one side. Outside, snow is falling from the sky in every which direction, and being whipped up from the ground in every which other direction. A couple feet of snow cover everything - trees, the place where the patio table is no longer visible, the pool has disappeared... it is chaos outside.

Inside, there could be chaos too. My life situation at the moment is one of "1,000 what-ifs". The kitchen table I'm sitting at is my parents', as my family has been living here for the last year. Lots of extenuating circumstances - particularly the beautiful lovey lump over there - have lead to this kind of thinking: "What if Grandma gets a job and can't take care of baby?" "What if we sell the apartment and move to a 2 bed and get pregnant again?" "Should we stay here until we can save for a down payment?" "Should we...?" "What if...?" The next phase of our lives could play out in infinite ways, and trying to think them all through is like trying to imagine the vastness of outer space.

In _A New Earth_, Tolle quotes a Zen saying that has become kind of a mantra to me in times that look a lot like the chaotic snowy day outside. "The snow falls, each flake in its appropriate place." Says Tolle, "Behind the sometimes seemingly random or even chaotic succession of events in our lives as well as in the world lies concealed the unfolding of a higher order and purpose". Once all this chaotic snow has passed, the world is covered in a serene, seamless blanket of beauty and stillness. We are just a snowflake falling toward that perfect pattern, into our perfect places, unable to see the bigger picture until it has unfolded.

In other words, people, stop trying to row against the current - just get in the boat and let the river take you. You'll end up in the same place either way, so we may as well enjoy the scenery.

Cozy up!

A Strength is Something That Strengthens You

Today my Yogi Mother's Milk tea tag said: Live in your strength.

A while back, during a career "crisis" which consisted of me brutally losing a job I'd had for 8 years, I ended up thanking my lucky stars, that it happened. The "crisis" resulted in the deepest, most peaceful three days of my life. Three days that I've been trying to get back to ever since, where for a brief time I was working "in flow" with enthusiasm, experiencing each moment with deep gratitude, living a dream I'd had for many years.. .until I realized the reality of that dream wasn't quite all it was cracked up to be... because I'd had my strengths and weaknesses mixed up.

A while back I watched a Marcus Buckinham 3-hour workshop through Oprah podcasts. The bottom line of that workshop was that most of us are not living in our strengths. Buckingham redefined "strengths" for me forever. What do you think of when someone asks, "What are your strengths?" You automatically think of things you are good at. I personally am very good at making good quality educational materials for the people I work with. I am really good at Functional Behavior Assessments and data analysis. I run and develop a mean Functional Analysis. And of everything, I have to pat myself on the back - I am an amazing 1:1 therapist to people w/ autism. Especially those on the severe end of things. And because I am good at those things, I'm often asked to do them.

Perfect, right? I'm asked to do the things I'm good at, my strengths. So why do I put off doing Functional Behavior Assessments? All that boring direct observation. I want to be in the game! I leave periods of direct observation of students needing a double shot of espresso. I leave a 1:1 therapy session ready to climb Mount Everest. What's up with that? I'm good at both... but only one strengthens me. Only one is an actual strength. The other weakens me, drains me - even though I am good at it, it is a weakness. I had been living in my weaknesses more than my strengths.

What are your REAL strengths? Work tasks that nourish you, where you don't look at the clock? Tasks that strengthen you...

(PS: According to Buckingham, things you love to do but are bad at are called: A hobby).

The Comparing and Categorizing Mind

I am reading Mindful Motherhood by Cassandra Vieten. My mom bought it for me while I was pregnant. I love it because it reiterates everything I learned in A New Earth, but with focus on motherhood, and real life.

Since going back to work, I feel a little more alive and well rounded. I feel that I am exercising important and very expensive parts of my brain. I do not feel that I am fully in every or any moment though. By the end of the night, I am a zombie who falls into bed and is asleep in 20 seconds. From a former lifelong insomniac.. that says something.

Vieten talks about unhelpful ways the mind processes information, often by padding the facts of a situation - e.g., The Storytelling Mind that adds made-up information to a situation ("He must be a jerk, he cut me off, I bet he beats his wife too"). The Comparing and Categorizing Mind immediately adds a "good" or "bad" or some other category to simple observations. When I read this, I cried. "You might compare another mom's performance to yours... Or, one of the mind's favorite activities, you might create an imaginary, unachievable ideal and compare yourself against that ('I should have a conflict-free marriage, be content and fulfilled as a stay-at-home mom, be cheerful and sexually vibrant, and not worry about money')".

SLAM DUNK. This "habit of the mind" is undoing me. When I check into the present moment, I find myself completely inadequate against that wonder-mom. I don't look professional enough at work. I'm not eating well enough to provide nutrition for myself and the baby. I haven't finished my Mindful Motherhood book so I'm probably ruining the baby already. I can't find the playard sheet so she's sleeping on plastic. She has a cold, I should have been rinsing her binks. I am too tired to even think about sex. Who would want to have sex with me anyway? Certainly not the man lying next to me who keeps telling me he does. Lies, lies!

Oh, the mind chatter. No one told me how much it would mean to a new mom to hear frequently that she's doing awesome.

Says Vieten? "Don't believe everything you think". Sticking to the facts, and accepting the moment for what it is can help suspend the constantly judging mind.

Why work can be like a day at the spa

I came home from work today feeling... relaxed. Joyful. Enthusiastic. Entirely my authentic self.

For some reason today, the day flowed. I went seamlessly from one task to the next. I was fully present in each moment and each activity. The next activity, the next child, the next task were far from my mind. Yet somehow I never arrived late at a meeting, I never skipped an observation, and in fact I was hugely productive. Even my frustrating parent training session was not frustrating; in fact it bookended my day and left me feeling enthusiastic.

In _A New Earth_, Eckhart Tolle talks about levels of being in the moment: Acceptance, Joy, and Enthusiasm. No matter what the moment brings you, whether you judge it as good, bad, or ugly, you accept the moment and its contents. This is how I came serenely through childbirth. In a joyful moment, you feel happiness with what you are doing. In an enthusiastic time, you are going in flow. You are fully present. You are aligned with your inner purpose.

How do we get there more often?

Like a duck flapping its wings

An analogy from A New Earth really sticks with me as I prepare to head back to work after 3 blissful baby bubble months. He tells how ducks, after conflict, swim away from each other and flap their wings, then go about their business. The duck doesn't carry the business with them. The duck doesn't hold a grudge. The duck doesn't worry about "What will happen when I see Donald tomorrow, after our conflict today?" The duck's ego doesn't hold on to "How could he have said that to me? Doesn't he know who I am?"

Working in a school system, even working toward a common goal of doing what is best for the children, means a balancing act between teacher(s), parent(s), specialists (SLP, behaviorist, OT, PT, on and on), child study team member(s)... all with the child's best interest at heart, and all strongly opinionated. Conflict happens, it's bound to. There are always one or two personalities I dread encountering because of yesterday's conflict - even if it was civilized.

Be the duck. Flap flap. Tomorrow is a new chance to wipe the slate clean, dread nothing, be fearless in the face of personalities who want to eat me alive.

Be brave. Be kind.