Bittman Bliss Blog

The Buddha said, “When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.” When he referred to a pure mind, I don’t think he was talking about one that was free of lustful thoughts (at least I hope not). I think he was talking more about a mind that was un-muddled and un-muddied by what he called “conditioning”; one that was relatively free of learned, robot-like, ego-based reactions, patterns, and mechanisms.

One my teachers, Richard J. Santo, used to say, “If you want to be happy, stop doing whatever it is that’s making you unhappy.” He was saying the same thing as the Buddha: unless we choose something else (consciously or unconsciously) to occupy center stage in our awareness, we would experience joy. Joy is like a bottomless well that sits just below the surface of our minds that is often obscured from our sight by all the resentment and guilt and worry and thinking we don’t deserve and thinking we must beat ourselves up sufficiently before we could ever experience joy.

Sometimes joy bubbles up in the hardest and darkest times. That’s how I know it’s always there. The most dramatic example for me was when my dad was making his transition in 2005. We had spent a horrific 2 weeks in the hospital and at this point he had stopped talking. My brother, the nurse and I helped him into the bathroom and sat him down, and when we closed the bathroom door behind us the nurse asked, “Are you comfortable?” Now, my dad always had a stock answer to this particular question but hearing it in that moment was the furthest thing from our minds. But sure enough, a weak voice came through the door: “I make a living.” I still can’t quite describe the joy we all experienced in that moment and it clearly felt as though it had been there all along, just waiting for an opportunity to slip through all the other things we had been thinking and feeling.

So, with a general intention to experience more joy, I’ve been paying attention to how I tend to muddy the waters of my consciousness. And I discovered a big one recently while meditating: all the meaning I assign to everything, even my own thoughts. I was sitting out at the lake, soaking in the sound of the lapping waves, watching my own thoughts and my reactions to them. Everything was hunky dory until a car went by blasting some music, the bass sounding like a series of sonic booms. Instead of simply noticing the new sound and acknowledging it as part of my experience in that moment, I immediately went to, “Why does he have to play his lousy music so loud?” Four or five additional judgments later, I realized I had lost sight of my joy. In reflecting on this phenomenon, I realized I’m always doing this! I give meaning to everything, and often that meaning isn’t necessarily true. Often it’s the same meaning I assigned when I was two years old. Often that meaning is not aligned with my core values. Often that meaning limits me and makes it harder for me to unfold what is good and beautiful and true about me.

What does it really mean when someone disagrees with me, or disapproves of me, or judges me? What does it mean when someone’s behavior annoys or baffles me? What does it mean when things don’t go according to my plans? When I look deeply and honestly at these questions, the only answer is, “I don’t really know.” And when I don’t really know, I can remember that the meaning I assign to anything is essentially a guess or an opinion anyway, so why not give it meaning that expands me and allows me to express my highest? Why not give it a meaning that will give my life more meaning?

Among the beings I know well, the one with the purest mind is my dog, Brenna. Indeed, she never seems to be very far removed from her joy, even in situations when I know she would prefer things to be different than they are. And I really believe it’s because she doesn’t attach a ton of meaning to things. If I stop throwing her stick, for example, she doesn’t wonder why, she doesn’t assume she did something wrong, she doesn’t appear to hold anything against me or herself, she simply sits down and starts chewing the stick or starts throwing it around for herself. In other words, the only meaning she assigns to an “obstacle” is that it means she must make a different choice, one that still allows her to access her deep well of joy. I am truly inspired by this incredible wisdom, and I’m fairly certain one need not have a brain the size of a golf ball in order to display similar wisdom. And there are so many opportunities to practice!

This week I was “supposed” to go backpacking. We’d arranged our schedule to take the time off, and my daughter did likewise as she came up from Santa Cruz to join us. It was to be a time of fun, relaxation, communing, connection and oneness. Then the day before we were to leave, I jumped off a ten-inch high rock and landed wrong, severely tweaking my hip to the point where I couldn’t put any weight on it. Home I limped, feeling angry, scared, guilty (Hillary had been talking about going backpacking for years) and generally old, stupid and very sorry for myself. Where did my joy go?

Hillary helped me reclaim it by reminding me I was giving it all the meaning it had for me. And wow, what meaning that was! A brief synopsis: I would never be able to hike again, I sucked for ruining my family’s week, I brought it on myself because originally I’d had some resistance to the idea, etc., etc. With Hillary’s help, I emulated Brenna. My daughter decided to come up anyway, I surrendered to what was, I asked for prayers, I opened up and thoroughly enjoyed being taken care of, and we’ve had a time of fun, relaxation, communing, connection and oneness. And, my hip is recovering much, much faster than I imagined, and I think there’s every reason to look forward to a hiking future.

I think I’ll notice when I’m muddling my joy with meaning a little more quickly and easily now. And I know that will continue to reveal my bottomless well of joy in more of my moments. My mind may never be as pure as Brenna’s, but there’s always hope!

And if that’s all we remember, that’s more than enough for now.

I apologize for the grammar, but hey, it’s a lyric from a song.

The late, great George Carlin once said, “I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed.” There’s wisdom in that as well as humor. Living under a brain as I do, I’ve noticed that often it seems to me as if nothing changes, and apparently I’m not alone, based on how often I hear something like, “Same schmootz; different day.” This contrasts sharply with the truth of the matter, which is that change is constant and just as inevitable as death and taxes (and often equally desirable).

On every level of material existence, everything is changing in every moment. Nature shows me a different face every single time I commune with Her, which is often. 98% of the atoms that currently comprise my physical body will be comprising something else 3 months from now. Even more amazingly, according to Ken Wilbur the entire manifest universe blinks in and out of existence every .00000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds. So in the time it took Carlin to put the dollar into the machine, a whole bunch of things changed. It’s rather amazing how well our brains hoodwink us into believing otherwise.

Even the Bible reminds me that everything changes. One of the most common phrases in it is, “It came to pass…” Not once does it say, “It came to stay.”

I used to resist change, which is probably why I was OK with the hoodwinking. I even resisted change when I knew I could use a great deal of it. Change brings me into the unknown, which at times seems worse than whatever is going on, no matter how bad it is. This has historically been compounded by my tendency to want to figure out in advance all the possible ramifications, combinations and permutations that could result from making a change. And my figurings and imaginings were not usually what one would call the best case scenarios. No wonder I resisted change!

I’ve come to embrace change, and this has been a tremendous gift. Understanding that change is inevitable is very helpful to me. It reminds me that I can change. Sometimes I look at some of my issues and berate myself over the fact that I’ve been working on the same ones for 30 years. But when I breathe and look more deeply I clearly see that I view these issues now from a much different perspective, approach them with many more effective tools, and generally hold them with a lot more humor and lightness. That’s a huge change!

As I’ve let go of figuring out what might happen if something was to change and focused instead on expressing my deepest values and intentions no matter what was going on, every day I become more of the person that I choose to be; every moment the spiritual being that I am shines forth a little more brightly. In becoming aware of (and OK with) the impermanence of things, it has also helped me to remember to focus more on what doesn’t change, to identify more and more with the eternal, unchanging, unchangeable aspect of my being. This divine essence is my anchor and has become a safe haven in the storms of the world and of my mind. It’s easy to fall asleep to that essence when I buy into the idea that things don’t change. Change keeps me awake.

Change is gonna do us good, especially when we remember that it’s the only constant and when we remember to use it for good. The coolest thing of all is that every time I focus on what doesn’t change and awaken to the depths and truth of my being, everything changes.

And if that’s all we remember, that’s more than enough for now.

Independence Day is tomorrow and it’s worth celebrating if only because it’s about the only holiday we still celebrate on the right day (even if John Adams thought we ought to celebrate our nation’s independence on July 2nd). More than that, and much more than the beer and fireworks, it’s a celebration of our autonomy from external control and constraint, our nation’s freedom from external forces.

It’s quite a blessing, though it has me wondering how free I am from internal forces. I am a being of consciousness and often become imprisoned, not so much by what I don’t know, but by what I “know” that ain’t so. I (and undoubtedly you too) live under a brain, and therefore am not entirely free from its tendency toward “knowing” that I stink, that I am separate, that this universe is hostile and full of lack and limitation, that I am right and you are wrong, that you are stupid, etc. None of these things are true, and yet once I “know” they are, it stops me from knowing what IS true: that you and I are whole, beautiful and perfect expressions of Love.

It’s amazing how quickly my brain can believe it knows something or someone. I wouldn’t look at 1 piece of a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle and expect to know the big picture on the box, but my brain performs this amazing feat constantly. For instance, it thinks it can understand you based on one word, one look, or one action. Then, once it knows you, it will doggedly gather evidence to support that knowing. It’s crazy, and it greatly compromises my freedom, but on it goes. And I have a feeling that’s just what it will continue to do.

Here’s where I’m at now, especially in the realm of relationships. I can never understand anyone. What I generally think I know about you is only the tip of the iceberg. And, especially because I’m trying to know you based on my filters, judgments and perceptions (in other words, trying to understand you with only the tip of MY iceberg), my knowing becomes even more limited. I can’t see the unfathomable depths of God/love/being that you really are. I can’t see that at those depths, you and I are one. So if I ever have any hope of knowing you, I first have to plumb those depths in myself. I used to think I needed to understand someone before I could connect with them, now I know that’s bass ackwards. If I can go to my heart and make a connection with you first, I’ll know all I need to know about you.

This all came to light recently as we attended a retreat to mark the completion of our first year of Interfaith Ministry studies. We are doing the program by correspondence, so this retreat was the first time we actually met our classmates, our deans and the directors of the seminary. We had communicated all year by conference calls, emails and Yahoo groups. It’s hard to connect with people this way, based on “disembodied” words and stories, but that didn’t stop me from thinking I knew everyone. I had so many judgments (mostly not positive); I even “knew” what everyone looked like! I was almost 100% wrong on all counts, as usual. The retreat gave us the opportunity to connect heart-to-heart, and I fell deeply in love with everyone.

I see now why the Scots say, “I ken you” instead of “I love you”. It’s the same thing. When I open my heart and feel yours, I know all I need to know in order to love you. I know you’re just like me. I know you are just as screwed up as I am. I know you are doing the best you can. I know you’ve had horrible sadness, frustration and despair in your life. I now you’re looking for love. And I know that we are both spiritual beings, children of the divine; I know we are one. I may not understand your actions or your words, but I don’t have to (I’m still working on understanding mine!). I still have judgments, but I can see them for what they are: iceberg droppings. I can wrap them up in the love that we share and watch them melt. It’s much harder for them to make me forget the truth.

I’m practicing this now. And I’ve already noticed that it’s a lot easier to make a connection with someone when that is my primary intention. My trip home from the retreat, another Cecil B. DeMille United Airlines adventure story, provided multiple opportunities to practice. In one instance, I was trying to go standby on an earlier flight and was told by the agent that she would be with me in a minute. Ten minutes later, as she continued to make phone calls and shuffle papers, my head began to fill with judgments. I remembered my intention but I couldn’t use my usual arsenal of tools to make a connection (eye contact, smiles, hugs, etc.). I knew I’d find a way.

People joined the line, and I started answering their questions. “Oh, I hear the flight is booked but not overbooked.” “Yes, there are only 8 people on the standby list so far so it’s looking pretty good.” “No, this flight is scheduled to leave on time even though the earlier one to San Francisco is delayed.” I knew the agent was hearing all this, so I turned to her and said, “I want half your pay if I’m going to answer all these questions.”

She replied, “It won’t do you any good.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s gone before I see it.

“In that case, I want it all!”

She laughed and immediately her whole persona changed. And I could see that she had been confused and frustrated, trying to find help to figure out how to do something related to what everyone on line needed. I knew all I needed to know to love her.

To “understand” literally means to “stand in the midst of”, or even more literally, to “inter-stand.” So, when those iceberg droppings start plopping into the seas of my awareness I remember that in truth we are inter-standing, standing together in the truth of love and oneness. And when I think I know something else about us, I’m beginning to doubt it. It feels good to be just a little freer this Independence Day.

And if that’s all we remember, that’s more than enough for now.

I’ve been in the healing “business” for 30 years now and it’s still fascinating and meaningful to me that the word “heal” comes from the same root as the words “hale”, “holy” and “hallowed”, and that their common root means “whole.” I love that because I believe we are spiritual beings having a spiritual experience (the only separation between the spiritual and the human being in our minds), so we are already whole, and therefore health and holiness are our normal states. This makes the whole business a lot simpler for me!

Wholeness is defined as “an undivided or unbroken completeness or totality with nothing wanting.” So to say we are whole means we aren’t missing anything physically, mentally or emotionally; we’re not missing any parts and all the parts function in harmony because they’re not really parts, they’re just aspects of one indivisible whole.

For me, the best news about all that is that because I am already whole, healing on every level is always possible. I am whole, but my awareness of that wholeness may not be fully expressed. My “polar bear cage” (see last week’s blog post) may be quite small when it comes to my ability to see and know my own wholeness. But anytime and every time I become more aware of that wholeness, I heal!

I need to make a distinction at this point between curing and healing, as they are not even remotely the same. Curing is something that happens to our symptom or our health problem; healing is something that happens to (within) us. Curing is something that happens in the realm of appearances and form, healing is something that happens in the realm of consciousness and energy. Curing is sometimes not possible; healing is always possible.

Given a particular situation, healing can show up in many ways: in helping us tap into resources, support, or help we didn’t know we had, in strengthening our relationships, in helping us to not stress the small stuff, in helping to transform fear into love, in teaching us that sorrow and joy can coexist in the same moment, etc. Healing is a movement in consciousness or energy toward wholeness, on whatever level that happens and by whatever means that happens. We are not the same after such a movement in consciousness; we generally experience more peace, more love, more faith and/or more joy, more of the truth of what we are, as a result. On the other hand, a cure can happen but nothing shifts on the inside and often the fear remains (“what if it comes back”?). I have nothing against cures (though they are often worse than the disease), in fact I admit there have been times in my life when nothing else seemed important. But without healing only the appearance of things tends to change; our inner atmosphere and our state of consciousness often don’t.

It takes imagination to see our wholeness, to see past the appearances and the bars of our cage, and this is hard to do when our issue is in our face. When I have a health issue and all I do is focus on the diagnosis or the cure, the problem becomes like a stone I hold right up against my eye. I can’t see beyond it, even if the stone is relatively small. I can’t see the bigger picture or the possible gifts; I can’t take advantage of the healing opportunity.

The same is true if all I do is ask why I got the problem to begin with. More and more I’m convinced of the truth of, “Everything happens for a reason.” And, I’m equally convinced that I don’t really ever have a clue what that reason is; at least the entire reason. So instead of asking why, why not use my imagination to see the wholeness that is always there? Generally that simply means I have to move the stone a little bit further away from my eye.

Here’s an example of what I mean. About 10 years ago, Hillary was in the throes of menopause. She was having weird pains and scary neurological symptoms, heart palpitations, significant sleep deprivation, and a bunch of other things I’ve happily forgotten. Through this time, the words of Archie Bunker kept going through my head, when Edith was going through a similar process: “Edith, if you’re going to change, just go ahead and do it!” Alas, that didn’t happen for Hillary any more than it did for Edith.

One day, upon returning from a breakfast meeting with our mastermind group, Hillary was convinced she was about to die. She was extremely agitated, fretful, angry, overwhelmed and hopeless. There was no cure in sight. I wasn’t sure what to say or do, but these words came to me: “If this really is your death, is this how you want to do it?” This was exactly what she needed in order to move the stone away from her eye. No, she didn’t want to do it that way; she wanted to do it with more peaceful acceptance and with much more awareness of the love within her and around her. So first she used her imagination to actually contemplate her possible death. This brought her fear out in the open where it couldn’t lurk just beyond her awareness and run her. Then she used her imagination to fill herself with light and love, to affirm her wholeness, to open to the unlimited possibilities inherent in that wholeness. This helped tremendously, not so much with the symptoms, but with her perspective. It was a healing. And to this day she’s convinced that if hadn’t opened up to that healing, she would indeed have died.

So the question for me becomes how do I want to live, whether or not I have a health problem, even whether or not I’m dying (which, you’d have to admit, we’re all in the process of doing). When I keep that question on the center stage of my awareness, the answer is obvious and my vision immediately becomes bigger, better and more beautiful. Every moment is a healing opportunity, and when I use my imagination to remember this, I can take advantage of more and more of them.

And if that’s all we remember, that’s more than enough for now.

I’m not sure exactly when my imagination started running away with me, that is, when I began using it to limit my self-image, to blind myself from my own light, my wholeness, my greatness. When did I become like that polar bear cub I heard about many years ago that was kept in a cage at a zoo for several months and when finally released into its permanent enclosure would not venture beyond the limits of its imaginary cage? When did I start putting up the blinders and the filters and the defense mechanisms and the bars? I distinctly remember as a young boy using my imagination to become bigger, better, stronger, more like Superman…or at least more like Shane. I used it in order to see myself as being capable of accomplishing anything and everything. I loved letting my imagination run away with me that way. Then it turned around and double crossed me and started running away with the “real me.”

Maybe it began around the same time I started believing that it wasn’t safe or appropriate to show my feelings in this world. But it doesn’t really matter how or when or why it happened. What matters, as always, is what I do about it now. Because I’ve used my imagination to limit myself for so long, it has become hard for my eyes to see what my heart knows is true of me and of everyone else—that we are whole, perfect and complete. As Mark Twain said, “You can’t trust your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” So I can refocus my imagination by using it to see the truth of me.

I can envision myself showing up in life exactly as I choose to. I can envision myself responding with patience, love and compassion instead of reacting with anger or judgment. I can envision myself sticking to my intentions, acting with kindness, giving hope to people, helping to birth a greater awareness within myself and other people of our wholeness and oneness. I can envision myself going beyond the bars, opening up to a more expansive picture of myself. I can do all this because I still have a power of imagination. And if I imagined all the illusion and limits, I can certainly imagine the truth.

John Muir said that “imagination makes us infinite.” It’s a beautiful phrase, but I beg to differ. Imagination doesn’t make us infinite, we already are infinite. Imagination can help us see it. And when we can see the eternal and the infinite in ourselves, we can see it in others and in the world.

It might feel like pretending, but that’s OK. It only feels that way because I’m inside the cage right now. And, as it turns out, the word “pretend” comes from the same root as the word “claim.” So I don’t look at imagining my bigness and wholeness as acting, I look at is reclaiming my birthright. I look at it as remembering. I look at it as reclaiming and repainting a picture of myself that is good and beautiful and true; a picture I can continue to grow into.

The polar bear cub had to have some imagination to have ever seen past the imaginary bars. I can see now that imagination has played a similar role in everything I’ve ever done that had real value. Everything I’ve ever done to truly love and serve others involved me first seeing past the imaginary bars of my own creation and into a realm of greater possibility for myself.

That’s the really good news: that whenever I break through any imaginary barriers and realize more of my bigness, everyone benefits. We break through barriers for each other, because we’re all one. Before Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile, it was thought to be impossible. Within months, many other runners did it. As Marianne Williamson wrote, “When we let our own light shine, we unconsciously allow others to do the same.”

I’m always learning how to let my light shine more brightly, and this has been another piece. I’ve allowed my light to be dimmed from my sight over the years, and now I know that it was just my imagination running away with me. So now I’m letting it make amends by finding me. It’s only fair.

And if that’s all we remember, that’s more than enough for now.

Memorial Day has held little meaning in my life beyond family picnics, the onset of the “summer vibe” and invariably, in my 33 years here in Lake Tahoe, snowstorms. I’ve always been aware of what the holiday was about, that it used to be called Decoration Day, but perhaps because I had no close relatives who died in battle I was insulated from its true meaning. At least in my early years. Growing up during the Vietnam War, that all changed. There were guys I grew up with in my neighborhood that didn’t come home.

But by then I had become a bit of a hippie and peacenik, and decorating the graves of soldiers just didn’t seem to be part of the program. Though I had grown up marching with my toy gun to John Philip Souza and reveling in multitudinous John Wayne films, by this time in my life anything related to military endeavors had not only lost its luster, but was an anathema, scary, unimaginable and something I didn’t even want to look at, let alone remember.

I see now that I have done a lot of people a tremendous disservice. For all these years, I have equated the warriors with the war. Even worse than that, I have blamed the warriors for the war. I have met a ton of Vietnam vets and so many of them are understandably bitter about the way they were “welcomed” home. In my anti-war stance I’ve managed pretty well to avoid any responsibility or self-recrimination for my part in that. I can’t begin to imagine how that must feel and I now humbly apologize to all of you. I realize it means little at this point, but it means a lot to me. Not only do I intend remembering all the fallen today, but also all those un-fallen who still carry the scars and wounds of war.

My stance on Memorial Day has changed as it has suddenly become clear that I am just as much to blame for war as anyone else. Every week in most Unity and Religious Science centers the service ends with The Peace Song, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” Some in our community have wanted to change those words to more affirmative ones, “Yes, there is peace on earth; I know it begins with me.” I’ve been reluctant to change the words because as they stand, they remind me that in every moment I have a choice to allow peace to come into my awareness and into the world. Now, the next time someone asks about changing the words, I’ll be tempted to say, “Fine, as long as we also add the line, ‘Yes, there is war on earth; I know it begins with me.’” In every moment, I also have the choice to create violence, and I’ve become aware recently of how often I do so, in some subtle and not so subtle ways.

I just came back from a Unity men’s retreat. Thirty-three guys and the great majority have served in the military. They were some of the most peaceful men I’ve ever met, and it was perhaps the most peaceful gathering I’ve ever attended. Thirty-three guys and not one mention of football or politics. We laughed and cried and played music together. We shared things with each other that we hadn’t shared with anyone before, with the possible exception of our closest relations. We shared our gifts and also our authentic, screwed up selves and found out we weren’t alone in being gifted and screwed up. We found out that sorrow and joy can coexist in the same moment; that they are in fact inseparable. And we found out that we can each learn volumes about ourselves in community, especially when we can simply be ourselves in that community.

It seems ironic that I learned so much about violence by participating in such a peaceful gathering. The gift was that violence was so glaringly absent I was able to pay attention to what was missing. We weren’t competing! We weren’t doing all those usual man things like trying to fix each other or giving advice or negating others’ experiences (“ah, you think that’s bad? Well listen to this…”) or attempting to shift someone else’s reality (by interposing our own, of course) or sharing words with the sole intention of showing everyone how much we knew. These are common acts of violence! And I’m not sure they’re only man things.

We sat with our judgments and explored their origins within ourselves. We had agreed right off the bat to see and treat each other as whole, perfect and complete. We did a pretty damn good job of honoring that agreement, and peace reigned supreme. All this certainly wasn’t easy for me, but what helped was first honoring, and then tapping into, all the warrior energy in the room and finding it within myself. In letting go of my blind spots around what being a warrior means, I received a much greater awareness of what it means to be a peaceful warrior.

Gandhi said a coward could never be nonviolent. This means that all the qualities we attribute to warriors, such as discipline, decisiveness, preparation, mindfulness, courage and perseverance, are indispensible as we battle the demons and violence and craziness in our own minds and transform them so that love and peace remain.

I had another similar realization at the retreat: being anti-war never brought me to peace. Not once. By choosing to be against war and against warriors and against violence, by choosing to be against anything, I was just as guilty of choosing violence and expressing violence as everyone I judged. I believe we’ll continue to live in a violent world until we all take responsibility for the seeds of violence that we harbor and “put out there”, because only then can we begin to address the cause and use our warrior natures to transform our own consciousnesses.

So now I’m choosing to be for peace, and to be a warrior for peace. I know that begins with me, and for a start I’ll remember all the warriors today with honor, with gratitude and with love. I see a day when we won’t have to decorate graves and instead can focus on decorating the world with our beauty. Peace.

And, if that’s all we remember, that’s more than enough for now.

If there’s anything more dangerous than wishing someone a Merry Christmas, it’s wishing them a Happy Mother’s Day! I seem to be among the minority of folks who don’t have major issues around it. Of course, the issues are completely understandable. Lots of people have lost their mothers, and whether they miss them terribly or regret the relationship they had with them when they were alive, it’s not particularly fun to be reminded about them. Other women never had children and that is their deepest regret in life. Others have lost children or have children with whom they are estranged. Still others don’t feel honored on Mother’s Day because of other mothers (and/or mothers-in-law) in the picture. For all these reasons, every year when I do a talk at Unity on Mother’s Day, I feel as if I’m treading on shaky ground. Yesterday, as always, I attempted to reframe the holiday for people who need that and to focus on some themes and reminders that could be meaningful to everyone. I will repeat that here.

First of all, the holiday originally had nothing to do with honoring moms. It was essentially an anti-war protest. Julia Ward Howe, who wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic in 1858, was so distraught after the Civil War that in 1870 she issued a “Mother’s Day Proclamation” calling on mothers to come together and protest the futility of their sons killing other mothers’ sons. She actually proposed converting July 4th into Mother’s Day. That obviously didn’t fly, but in 1873, women came together in 18 North American cities to observe this new holiday. Most of the gatherings were personally funded by Mrs. Howe, and when she stopped footing the bill, they petered out. But a seed had been planted.

A WV women’s group led by Anna Reeves Jarvis began to celebrate an adaptation of Mrs. Howe’s idea, to re-unite families and neighbors that had been divided in the Civil War, calling it “Mother’s Friendship Day. “ After she died, her daughter Anna M. Jarvis campaigned for the creation of an official Mother’s Day in remembrance of her mother and in honor of peace. On May 10, 1908, the first official Mother’s Day celebration took place in West Virginia, and in 1914 Woodrow Wilson made it a national observance on the second Sunday in May.

Besides using Mother’s Day as a wakeup call for peace, we can use it to remind us to honor all the people in our lives, perhaps besides our mothers, who have nurtured, protected, cared for and otherwise mothered us. We can include Mother Earth in this category (that would be two times a year we honor her…yahoo!), since she undoubtedly meets all those criteria. We can even include God in there, if that fits our belief system. All faith traditions honor those more feminine/motherly aspects of God, which I believe are right inside all of us.

Sometimes the least safe and least nurtured place I ever find myself in is inside my own head. So I like to use Mother’s Day as a reminder to mother myself more. Over the years as I’ve done that, my mind has become a much safer place to hang out, and I’ve noticed that I see the world as a safer place. I’ve tapped more and more into the part of me that is always ready, willing and able to mother me, to nurture me, to whisper encouragement and support in my ear. But it has taken some work to find that place, and most of it has involved actively mothering myself.

For instance, I’ve become much more careful about how I talk to myself (please see last week’s blog post, Blessed are the Peacemakers). I’ve become much gentler with myself as I continue to grow in awareness and still make many mistakes. I spend a lot less time beating myself up and a lot more time checking in with myself and listening to my own needs and feelings. I give myself much more space to grow into the highest vision I have for myself, as I stubbornly hold that vision, much as a wonderful mother would do. And I’ve stopped thinking of all that as being selfish. In mothering myself, I’ve become a much better giver and server for others.

I’ve always been a nurturer. When I was a young child my favorite activity was caring for a doll and wheeling it around in a little stroller. Yes, the neighbors wondered and worried about me, but I see now it laid the groundwork for my life’s work as a healer and minister. But at one point in my life I realized I was mothering everyone but myself! And when I changed that, everything changed, and my healing ministry took on a whole new energy. I was able to give and serve from a place of fullness if I filled myself up first, not from a place of obligation or from a state of being tapped out or depleted. Many of us believe that as spiritual beings we “should” be loving and compassionate. Well, how about starting with ourselves?

So if the traditional way of celebrating Mother’s Day doesn’t work for you, perhaps you now have some other options. And if you’re worried about Hallmark, go ahead and buy yourself a card.

And, if that’s all we remember, that’s more than enough for now.

I’m not sure why, but still I sometimes tend to operate in life as if one of the “beatitudes” said, “Blessed are the control freaks, for they shall inherit the earth.” It would surely boggle my mind, if I chose to actually do so, to consider how much time, energy, focus, creativity and power I expend in the futile pursuit of controlling other people, events, the world, etc. No wonder I feel overwhelmed at times. No wonder I even, once in a while, imagine that there’s nothing I can do as an individual that would make a dent in the problems I see in the world. In attempting to force the world to conform to my ideas of it, there’s nothing left in me to actually consider and take effective action!

When I think about it, my heroes these days tend to be people who seem(ed) to direct their entire beings toward the only thing they could truly control: their own state of consciousness. These heroes exerted their power in order to transform themselves so that only love, compassion, forgiveness, joy and peace remained. I include folks such as Gandhi, Teresa of Avila, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Aung San Suu Kyi,the Buddha, Jesus. A quick check of this list reveals the incredible impact these people have made on the world. Elie Wiesel, a concentration camp survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, said, “Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.” Somehow, after losing his whole family in the Holocaust and living through inconceivably horrible conditions he devoted the rest of his life to forgiveness and peace principles. And because of that, he single-handedly requested and received the first formal apology issued by the German government for their role in the Holocaust.

None of these heroes of mine had easy lives, but they became peacemakers in the truest and biggest senses of the word. They always seemed to have reserves of strength and resources at their disposal that they used to create and perform effective action. By their very presence, they reminded people of what is good and beautiful and true. So I figure if they could do it, so can I. Indeed, to “be peace” has been my foremost intention for at least 2 decades, and it’s nearly always what this blog is about. It’s become pretty clear to me by now that trying to control everything other than what I can does not bring me to peace or leave me free to do what is mine to do in the most impactful ways. On the contrary, it’s more like imitating a hamster on a wheel; it takes lots of energy (and perhaps fun at times) but gets me nowhere. Fast.

As I’ve explored and unfolded this intention to take mastery over my own consciousness, it has also become clear I’m the one making the choice to evict myself from my true and innate state of peace and love, consciously or not. And lately I’ve noticed perhaps the foremost way I accomplish this: through the things I say to myself.

Lately I’ve been paying lots of attention to my self-talk and, though I’m happy to say it has improved immensely, it could still use some work. Just the other day Hillary and I were having a mildly heated disagreement, and during a lull in the proceedings I became aware of what I was saying to myself. A lot of it was about things wrong with Hillary that she needed to change so I could be happy and peaceful. A little of it was about how I, being such a spiritual person, should know better. None of it brought me back to peace and love. So, with this awareness, I was able to stop and remind myself that I love Hillary more than anything else in the world, and that she loved me too. I saw she had temporarily forgotten, just as I had. And I was able to then express love from a more peaceful place, which helped a lot.

Actually, I can’t really control my own consciousness either, but I can be a better steward of it. I can plant better seeds and take better care of the soil. I can nurture it and give it loving attention. In doing this I’ve discovered that my self-talk becomes a huge part of the background music of my awareness. In our Unity studies, Hillary and I saw a video of street scenes in New Your City. It was set to rap music and seemed very abrupt, frantic and hard to watch. Then the whole scene began to repeat itself, this time to classical music. It was then we noticed that in every scene, someone was helping or serving someone. None of us saw that the first time around. I’m not judging rap music (well…); I’m pointing out how important the background music is. It changes our perspective on everything. So as I’m exerting my power on my own consciousness, it’s critical I address the background music. When my self-talk is un-peaceful, it’s difficult for me to access peace. As my self-talk becomes truer, more loving and more peaceful, so does my life experience.

A long time ago at a chiropractic seminar, a speaker shared, “If I talked to you the way you talk to yourself, you’d come up here and kick me in the butt.” My response at the time was, “How did he know?” Today I’m thankful for this: I have practiced some sort of affirmations and affirmative prayer in the subsequent 25 years, and now I finally understand why. Consciously and repeatedly reminding myself that I am good, worthy, loving and lovable, despite thoughts or behaviors to the contrary, has brought my self-talk to a truer, more loving and peaceful level, and it has brought me there along with it. I still forget, for sure, but the trip “home” is a lot more familiar and much easier to find.

Yes indeed, I still forget. And I’m allowing that to affect my self-talk less and less. I imagine my heroes forgot sometimes, but they had more important things to do than beat themselves up. So do I. So do all of us.

And if that’s all we remember, that’s more than enough for now. 

 Quick, what do Donald Duck and Moe of the Three Stooges have in common? If you get this one, you’re good (or, you looked at the title of this piece and guessed)! Besides the fact that I adored both of them as a child, the answer is that they both often exclaimed, “Hey, what’s the big idea?” They said it when they were annoyed about something, which they often were, but what’s interesting to me is how meaningful that question has become in my life and also how the refrain has been picked up by other heroes and teachers along my way.

For instance, at some point in my chiropractic journey I found that B.J. Palmer, the developer of chiropractic, had said, “Get the big idea, all else follows.” B.J. was saying that when one owned and embodied the bigidea of chiropractic, its grand purpose of restoring the expression of life through the body and thus reconnecting the physical with the spiritual, then everything else followed: motivation, success, fulfillment, what to say and do; even the healing results achieved. Another of my chiropractic mentors, Dr. John Demartini, said it this way, “When the ‘why’ is big enough, the ‘how’s take care of themselves.”

Then later on in my Unity studies, we were taught that the creative process follows a definite order, described as mind-idea-manifestation. Everything begins in mind (consciousness), and it’s the ideas that we hold dominant in our mind that determine what manifests in our life. The emphasis then rests on the ideas, not the manifestation. And while we’re focusing on ideas, why not make them big ideas, like love, joy, wholeness, compassion and abundance? I believe all this was stated best by another of my mentors, Jesus, when he said, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all these things shall be added unto you.”

For me, the Kingdom of Heaven is right within my own consciousness; that place within me that knows only love, joy, wholeness, compassion and abundance. It’s that place in which you and I abide together in oneness. As I’ve hung out in that place more and more in my life, I’ve learned that what I truly desire is not so much the things, but those aspects of being, such as love, peace and joy, that I’d thought I could only have by obtaining the things. I’ve learned I can experience and enjoy those aspects right now, with or without the things, and regardless of whether I label the experiences of my life as “good” or “bad.”

In an important way, this flies in the face of the Law of Attraction, as taught in movies like The Secret. It seems as though that is based much more on focusing on the manifestation. We’re told to think about the car, money, health result, perfect mate, etc, visualize and affirm it, see ourselves having it and feel what that would be like and we will attract it to us. Not that this formula doesn’t “work” in bringing me what I want. For much of my chiropractic career, for example, my goal was to adjust 500 people in a week. I thought that reaching this goal would bring me joy and fulfillment. I applied the formula for years and eventually reached my goal. Unfortunately, I quickly realized it didn’t bring me what I thought it would. There wasn’t even a ticker tape parade! Almost immediately my mind wanted to grasp onto a new goal. I then realized that all along the way, I had been focusing on what I thought I lacked, and because of that I’d often felt frustrated and that I was “doing it wrong.”

Now I see that all the things I have always truly desired (such as joy and fulfillment) are already within me, waiting to be expressed and experienced. They don’t even have to be “added unto me”; I just need to keep them center stage in my mind. So I’m now much more focused on the goodness than on the goodies, as one of my Unity teachers puts it. When the lens through which I look at life is centered in the biggest ideas I know of, I see more of all that in me and my life. When I get and hold the biggest possible idea for myself, that idea becomes my beacon, guides my choices and allows me to live in freedom, joy and gratitude. It allows me to experience those beautiful truths that I used to think only came from material things, right here and right now. And when I notice I’m holding some other idea of myself, one based on old limiting beliefs and tapes, I hear Donald or Moe asking, “Hey, what’s the big idea?” It’s a beautiful reminder.

I’ll get more specific on this in future posts. In the meantime, if that’s all we remember, that’s more than enough for now.