Forty-eight things I’ve learned along the way

Nora Ephron famously felt bad about her neck (though hopefully she no longer does). I do not, despite having the sort of neck not found on any swan, the sort of neck not flattered by a flaw-concealing turtleneck.

In those moments when I could be feeling bad about my neck, I instead choose to feel good about the head sitting on top of it–specifically the many contents that were missing in the days when the neck beneath was flawless.

In honor of my birthday, a list of 48 random things I’ve learned thus far. (Links are mostly to previous blog posts.)

1. How to choose my battles. It’s amazing when I think about it now, how many (unimportant) things I was once willing to pitch battle for.
2. Being able to recognize my ego’s involvement has really made all the difference. At least 99% of the time, that’s what the battle was really about.
3. Compassion is a great thing to have on hand when your own or someone else’s ego flares up.
4. Kindness is also pretty important. Even when you need to draw a boundary firmly, it’s generally possible to do it with kindness.
5. How to forgive continually.
6. And how to release bitterness–also key.
7. I used to think being smart was a lot more important than it really is. It’s nice, sure, but far from the most important thing.
8. Love–that would be the most important thing.
9. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear …” (I John 4:18, KJV). When fear comes up in one of its many guises, love is the antidote.
10. Learning to meditate—life-changing for sure.
11. I learned I was an artist–and I bet you are too. I’d love to see everyone find a really good way to access their right brains.
12. I grew up laboring in a huge organic vegetable garden, but only as an adult did I discover the joy of working hand-in-hand with Mother Nature to unleash plants’ amazing desire to grow and thrive.
13. I still remember reading the magazine article that taught me to recognize a narcissist. Based on my early experience, I was choosing narcissists as friends. (Word to the wise: they don’t make very good ones.) I’ve finally learned to stop doing that. Woohoo!
14. I’ve also learned to allow others to be exactly who they are. If people in my life are behaving badly, I generally do say a few words about it–and leave it at that. People have to change, if that’s what they’re going to do, at their own pace. I hope that if they’re not ready to hear now, they will be later.
15. But just because I must allow people to be exactly who they are doesn’t mean I have to allow everyone into my inner circle, regardless of their behavior.
16. Much if not most of what I was taught as a child simply isn’t true.
17. It’s OK to be uncertain. Embracing a model that offers a complete set of answers about how the world works is certainly tempting, but it’s also a pretty good way to be wrong.
18. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter a great deal what people believe, if anything. What really matters is how we treat others. Living a good life isn’t dependent on a particular worldview.
19. Therefore, beliefs are generally not worth fighting for–but a value might be. Justice is worth fighting for.
20. Karma is real–a universal law to which there are no exceptions.
21. At the same time, if you’re a graduate student in the school of life, expectations are higher for you than for someone at the elementary-school level–and that’s fair.
22. I no longer believe you only live once. I find this comforting, because it means there’s no need to try to accomplish everything, see everything, do everything, in this one lifetime. Accordingly, I don’t have a bucket list–or if I do, it’s a short one.
23. It’s OK to relax. In fact, it’s a really good idea.
24. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being an introvert. Oh, I am an introvert. (I was quite sure for awhile that I was right and Myers-Briggs was all wrong.)
25. Models are really helpful, but there’s still a lot they don’t reveal.
26. Life is not a competition.
27. Cooperation is really enjoyable.
28. Sarcasm is best in small doses, and is probably not one of the world’s great art forms.
29. Participation in social media is not a measure of the validity of my life. And Facebook friends are not the same as real friends.
30. Complaining isn’t a tool for making anything better, though feedback might be.
31. Having companion animals is totally worth the trouble and mess. And just think of all the money I’ve saved by eliminating carpet and rugs from my life!
32. An old house is worth the trouble too. But it’s best to have an excellent plumber, electrician, carpenter, and painter on speed dial.
33. I am the very best person, bar none, to define what my life should look like.
34. A good, hot bath can cure what ails you.
35. A good cup of hot tea (my favorite: acai green tea) is also a pretty good idea. I leave my desk for at least one cup of tea every day I work.
36. Whether or not you should listen to your mother depends entirely on what your mother has to say.
37. The leaders of my country may or may not be wise. If they are not, I should notice and take an active role in electing those who are.
38. Self-help is ultimately the only help there is.
39. But we could all use a hand up.
40. No one asked me to judge.
41. The less I judge, the happier I am.
42. This is what a feminist looks like.
43. I should decide what is and isn’t BS on the basis of how well it works, not what other people say about it or what it looks like on the surface.
44. But when in doubt, follow your gut.
45. It’s a good idea not to abdicate control, but it’s a mistake to think that every aspect of my life can and should be within my complete control. Forces of nature came by their name honestly.
46. I am responsible for making the world a better place–and so are you.
47. I’m not perfect, and neither is anyone I know. Discovering anyone’s imperfection should not be surprising. We’re all human.
48. The best is yet to come.

What have you learned along the way?

This post is illustrated with my SoulCollage® card Personal power + Leo.

SoulCollage cards are for personal use, and are not for sale, barter, or trade.

Six reasons to meditate

Every so often, I’ll be listening to a recitation of problems and I’ll say, “You know, I think meditation could really help with that.” And then I’ll get a list of reasons why the person I’m talking to can’t possibly meditate. (These are all real reasons.)

• Their dog has dementia and wants to go outside every five minutes. (A five-minute meditation practice is perfectly valid.)
• The apartment’s too noisy–someone’s car alarm is always going off. (It’s completely possible to meditate no matter the background noise–leaf blowers, fireworks, a thunderstorm. I do try to choose a quieter time if I can. No doubt every apartment complex, dorm, or other communal living space has its quieter times.)
• Physical issues make sitting in the ‘proper’ position too painful. (My view is that the proper position is the one that allows you to meditate comfortably for the amount of time that yields the benefit you’re looking for. Insight meditation also recommends being comfortable. I once attended a day-long meditation retreat, and found that the grouchy monk running the retreat and I had different views on this. As I made myself comfortable, he shot me looks, and finally explained how wrong it was to do so–that if a fly, for example, lands on your nose while you’re meditating, you should simply allow it to sit there for as long as it likes. I was very comfortable with never returning to that meditation center. I believe a real spiritual leader won’t judge you, and neither should you judge yourself, if you decide that being comfortable while you meditate is right for you.)
• They’ve tried it, but clearly have no talent for meditation, as they just can’t stop thinking no matter how hard they try. (There are a lucky few who have a natural talent for meditation–the rest of us get to get good at it the hard way, which starts off in exactly this way. As someone to whom a few things have come easily, I think it’s a salutary experience to keep working at something worthwhile despite no immediate signs of genius. I have read–and I believe this–that meditating with your mind running 100 miles an hour is still practice.)

So there are the excuses. If you haven’t yet committed to a meditation practice, here are a few reasons to meditate based on my own experience, that I hope will speak to you.

1. Meditation is great for releasing what’s bothering you. When I’m feeling upset, I often try to make time to meditate ahead of schedule (typically after breakfast and before my shower in the morning, and before bed at night). Inevitably anything I’m upset or excited about will cross my mind as I meditate. When it does, I visualize packing several symbols of whatever it is into a helium balloon, and cutting the string.
2. Meditation is also great practice for releasing judgment of yourself and the need to be perfect. It soon becomes apparent that thoughts enter your mind, that’s what they do, and it’s OK. Perfection, whatever that might be, isn’t possible, but awareness and recognition of what’s happening is. You simply recognize the thoughts, release them, and move on–nothing else is necessary. This works in real life, too–you notice something has gone off the rails a bit, take corrective action, and just keep moving.
3. Once you’ve meditated for awhile, not only does ‘monkey mind’ rarely happen during meditation, but my experience has been that it fades considerably all the rest of the time too. I used to actually try to drum up thoughts in quiet moments, asking myself, ‘OK, what’s next?’ I don’t do that anymore, and there are nice quiet spaces in my mind pretty much all the time. Peace, in other words. Calm. Serenity.
4. I find that meditating before bed generally puts me in the perfect frame of mind for sleep. Good sleep is pretty much impossible to overvalue.
5. When I meditate, I’ve found that I’m much more patient and tolerant. It’s not unusual now for people to thank me for my patience. I’m not sure that happened even once in all the years I didn’t meditate.
6. Studies have shown that violent crime decreases in the surrounding area when people meditate regularly. I love that a practice intended to benefit me and my own life, in combination with the practice of others I both know and don’t know, raises the vibration of our neighborhoods and cities such that harmful violence is prevented, and lives that could have been painfully disrupted or even ended, never are. Together, we can bring that about.

If you meditate, what benefits have you experienced?

This post is illustrated with the SoulCollage card I made today, Meditation.

SoulCollage® cards are for personal use, and are not for sale, barter, or trade.

What I wish I’d learned in school

This past week, I had lunch with the program director for Chancellor’s Scholarships at my alma mater, the scholarship I had in college. Our conversation about my college experience got me thinking about what was missing from my education–what I’ve needed to learn on my own since I graduated.

I’m really grateful that my university experience set in motion the process of opening my mind and forming my own values, causing me to examine the belief system I’d been given, and begin the process of determining what I wanted to keep, discard, add, or change. Looking back, though, I wish there’d been more balance in my education, and that a few other processes had been set in motion earlier for me.

As I reminisced this week, it suddenly became clear to me that an emphasis solely (or nearly so) on “the life of the mind” is a seriously imbalanced approach. And really, it wasn’t just about the mind, it was pretty exclusively about the left brain. The right brain, heart, intuition, body, and soul are pretty critical too. Of these, the most emphasis was placed on the body–two physical education classes were a core requirement. I ended up taking three, and after dreading and putting it all off till my senior year, I enjoyed all of them. My modern dance class especially helped me understand my body in a new way. The instructor would regularly give us instructions like, Now breathe through your heart! And I’d try it, and interestingly enough, it was possible. Other than this relatively minor emphasis, though, the whole four years were about developing the left brain. Which in my case, was rather developed already.

When I take the Myers-Briggs type indicator test, my results for the Thinking/Feeling (T/F) axis are equal, but my preference is Thinking, meaning that I like to reason out decisions. So an emphasis on “the life of the mind” pushed me further in the direction of my natural inclination, and I ended up valuing being intellectual to an extent that today I believe is unjustified. It occurs to me to wonder how those with a Feeling preference find this emphasis–balancing? invalidating? I don’t know, but in my case, I believe it was unhelpful.

I remember being asked to take Myers-Briggs in college, and by my first employer, which I did. The results of the test, though, weren’t given to me in any meaningful way. That is, I was given the meaning of each of the four letters, which made little sense to me, but not an explanation of my four-letter type, which I’m sure would have.

Later, on my own, I found the amazingly-accurate type descriptions in David Keirsey’s Please Understand Me II, and found the information quite helpful. Particularly since I have a rare personality type, I wish the institutions that gathered this information for their own purposes had explained to me what they’d learned. I find the ethics of deriving such revealing information, but not sharing what has been learned with the person who’s been tested, at least questionable. I also would love to have been shown how the different personality types fit together like the pieces of a puzzle–no right, no wrong, no judgment, and all necessary to the whole.

I also wish I’d been taught how to meditate, like every student at Oprah Winfrey’s Leadership Academy for Girls (who meditate before every test). I feel pretty certain this one change would have altered my life fairly significantly, if only because I would have been able to consistently hear my intuition–which, without meditation, was usually drowned out by the constant chatter of my mind.

The school I attended was so privileged that there was hardly ever a need to mention it. But I think an introduction to the concept would have been really useful to all of us. I also would like to have been prepared, as I left an environment that was generally ethical and discrimination-free, for what I was likely to encounter in the real world–best case, worst case, and on average.

It’s taken most of my life thus far to bring my voice into something resembling balance. I understand why this was an issue for me, but I see a lot of people (perhaps especially women) who share this issue, and it’s also much more rare than I believe it should be to see people of either gender using their voices for good. I took a ‘cattle call’ speech communication class to meet a core requirement, but I wish I’d been taught to use my voice in a more useful way.

Often it seems that justice and injustice hinge on nothing more than whether or not people are willing to speak up for what they know is right. Just one voice can make a difference. So I wish I’d been able to speak to a real audience about a meaningful topic, with an opportunity to make a real difference.

More than one young girl has recently voiced an opinion and made a difference. One example … Els, who’s eight, wrote a letter to Scholastic Books about their gender-based categorization of books. She loves pirates, but all of their pirate books have been printed with “for boys” right on the cover. Based on her letter, they’re changing their catalog and all their covers to eliminate this gender bias. She will know forever the difference she can make by speaking up.

It’s only recently that I’ve begun making art, and I wish a core requirement had pushed me out of my comfort zone and into the fine arts building to learn a new skill and start creating.

I also remember noticing immediately after getting my first real job that the academic model of individual achievement that I’d been working in since kindergarten in no way reflects the real world. Nor do business-school ‘teams’ reflect my experience of the real world either. The unequal division of labor may be true to life, but fortunately it’s far less easy for people to take credit for work they didn’t do in real life. I would love to have had a positive, useful experience of teamwork in an academic setting.

I’d love to hear what you wish you’d learned in school.

This post is illustrated with the SoulCollage® card I made today, The flowering of knowledge.

SoulCollage cards are for personal use, and are not for sale, barter, or trade.

Unshakable beliefs

Recently I came across a “Something to think about” question in an old issue of O magazine that made me want to sit down and answer it … “Which of your beliefs are unshakable? In the space below, write the fundamental principles you live by.”

Such an interesting question. I was raised in a fundamentalist environment chock-full of “unshakable beliefs,” virtually none of which I subscribe to at this point in my life. I’ve changed my mind so many times that there isn’t a lot that I like to say I’m absolutely sure of. But I suppose there are a few things …

• Love is stronger than hate.
• Karma is for real, and there are no exceptions.
• Doing the right thing as best I know how is the key to a peaceful mind.
• Justice does prevail, though it may not be anything like immediate.
• I live in a benevolent Universe.
• I chose to be here.
• I am here to learn.
• Life is difficult, and also beautiful.
• I prefer the truth to anything else.
• Change is constant–you might as well welcome it.
• Positivity beats negativity.
• Ego is incompatible with enlightenment.
• Meditation–preferably twice a day–is essential to my living my best life.
• Healing is worth the effort.
• Kindness matters.

How would you answer this question … what are your unshakable beliefs?

This post is illustrated with my SoulCollage card The Lover, the last of the cards I made at the archetypes retreat I attended last month.

SoulCollage® cards are for personal use, and are not for sale, barter, or trade.

Beaming love to the world

In recent meditations, I’ve been getting some intimations of what’s next for me in the new year. One of the primary things I’m expecting is a (figurative) expansion or enlarging of my heart. Today I made a SoulCollage card (above) to represent this idea.

On Christmas evening, after all the festivities were complete, I was shuffling a stack of books on my ottoman to get to a reference at the very bottom, when I was drawn to another book in the stack, Sonia Choquette’s Ask Your Guides. I flipped it open and read a few chapters, one of which was about light beings. (Each chapter of the book addresses a different type of guide.)

In this chapter, Sonia writes about encountering light beings who encourage her and her audiences to help raise our planet’s collective vibration from fear to love–a change they characterize as necessary for our survival.

I’m sure you’ve noticed the rampant fear that often surrounds us, in the form of negativity, prejudice, judgment, war, existential dread, hoarding, lack of generosity, and many other forms of ugliness and unhappiness. At Christmas time we refer to the spirit of fear as Scrooge or the Grinch, but it’s with us all year round. Perhaps you’ve wanted to do something about it. Maybe you’d like to see more optimism, sharing, positive solutions, openness, acceptance, peace, and flow in our world. If you’re reading this, I’m pretty certain you do feel that way.

Here is something you can do about it. I have begun doing this as part of my meditation practice.

To get started, place your hands over your heart, and imagine the energy of your heart chakra arcing clockwise through your hands, around your heart, and back again. You can ask for the support of all light beings who are interested in helping us raise our vibration in this little corner of the universe, to strengthen this energy. After a few minutes, extend your hands in a way that’s comfortable for you, to beam this energy outward. Feel the loving energy flowing through your hands.

As in the lovingkindness meditation, you can direct your loving energy first to specific people, and then to larger groups, ultimately sending it to the world in general with the intention to raise our collective vibration from fear to love. Remember how much stronger love is than fear. Allow the energy to flow for a few minutes, or as long as you like.

If you try this, please feel free to share your experience below.

SoulCollage® cards are for personal use, and are not for sale, barter, or trade.

Open the doors of your heart

Open the doors of your heart.

The moment I heard this during meditation this past week, I knew it would be the theme of my next SoulCollage card.

Today I started looking through the many door images I’ve collected, pulling a few, but nothing really resonating yet. I realized I needed a background image, and that’s when I found these beautiful vintage elevator doors. This one resonated.

“Those are some serious doors,” I thought. Indeed they are. Certain kinds of upbringings come with inevitable consequences of one kind or another, in my view. I’ve written before about releasing bitterness; this image confronted me with another consequence: guardedness.

I know that the time has come to throw those doors open for good. I truly don’t need them anymore.

Listen

“Listen” has been a recurring theme for me during meditation for probably the past couple of weeks now.

Listen … all is well. Listen … important. It’s important that you hear what we have to say–we can help you.

Listen–you will hear. Guidance, truth. Much you already know yourself.

Listen–that is the theme. Listen to guidance.

So today I thought I’d make a SoulCollage card to represent this theme.

I found it interesting, when I started looking for images for the card, that I couldn’t find any of people who were clearly listening. Now maybe that’s because our ears aren’t that mobile. Or maybe it’s because we’ve organized the world in such a way that our survival rarely depends on our listening skills.

In the wild, animals’ ability to survive depends on their ability to use their senses effectively–and listening is among the most important.

While we may be able to survive while barely listening, I do believe that the ability to listen well is key to our being able to thrive.

Today,  I am listening.

How to receive inner guidance

You will be guided into port, out of the storm.

During a recent meditation, this sentence popped into my head. Whenever I feel as though there’s something I have to tackle alone, I find it comforting to think of the support system I have that’s invisible to me–angels, guides, ancestors, my higher self–all looking out for me, wanting the best for me.

A few days later I had lunch with a relative, who was telling me that she’d connected the dots between an optional medication and a deal-breaker side effect, and had stopped taking it. I mentioned how I like to consult my gut instinct when making decisions, and she said that she had had misgivings, but overrode them because she was determined to take the medication anyway due to other factors. I said something along the lines of, “Yeah, you gotta stop that.”

I know, because I used to approach life in just that way … and it turns out that when you’re bullheaded, when you ignore your gut, when you don’t ask questions, when you barely listen to anyone (let alone your true self), when your ego is firmly in the driver’s seat, when you go so far as to override your conscience because you’re stubbornly determined to do what you want to do no matter what, life just doesn’t go terribly well. You end up doing the wrong things. You end up doing things you regret. You end up at dead ends rather than on your right path … you end up stuck and unhappy, mired in inertia. (And of course, there are worse things than inertia–you could be headed off a cliff.) This approach is not the secret to a happy life. I know this very well.

All of this got me thinking about the usefulness of inner guidance. I truly believe that the beginning of wisdom is beginning to listen–to your higher self, to your gut instinct, to guidance, to your conscience. And to listen, you must be still. Cultivating stillness frees us from the tyranny of thought and ego, and allows us to make contact with the touchstone of truth and wisdom whenever it’s needed. And if you’re anything like me, that need is pretty constant.

Especially when I’m at work, I like to check in with my inner guidance a number of times a day. Is this the right way to respond? I might ask before sending an e-mail. Am I missing something here?

Very often when I make mistakes, I realize that I had a background awareness of something being amiss that I chose to ignore. The more I listen, the more I investigate, the more questions I ask, the fewer mistakes I make, and the less I do that I later regret doing. I don’t have many significant regrets, but I do have some, so it’s a little late to have a regret-free life. But I believe that by listening, by not rushing headlong, by taking decisions deliberately, many regrets can be avoided. In fact, it’s possible to come to the end of the day, or week, and hopefully a lifetime, and be able to say, I did well.

But first you have to be still enough so you can hear. For me, meditation has been the key to becoming still, and creating gaps in the flow of thoughts through my mind that allow wisdom and guidance to enter. To my mind, one of the most significant benefits of meditation is this space it opens up, allowing us to make better decisions in each moment, which in turn facilitates our being our best selves.

It also really helps to stop sweating the small stuff. If you’re worried about your imperfect nose, or static cling, or whatever completely insignificant “problem” du jour the advertising industry would like to create major concern about in order to move product, all of that is taking up mindspace that could simply be clear. Getting older really seems to help–and thank God for that!

In that clear, still space, I like to listen, to ask my question, to tune in. If I’m not sure of the right fork in the road (literally or figuratively, actually), I like to ask myself whatever the question is, and then quietly wait for the answer. If I’m still not sure–sometimes at this point I have conflicting thoughts–then I save the question for meditation later. After meditating for awhile, which creates a truly clear space for an answer to arise, I ask the question again.

Unfortunately, sometimes negative self-talk can get in the way of hearing the voice of wisdom, the voice of love. That’s where discernment comes in. This is my mantra whenever I feel that what I’m hearing may be the voice of fear, or the voice of ego …

I ask that all input be filtered through my higher self, including my own.

Of course, sometimes our inner guidance is delivering an authentic message of fear–This person cannot be trusted. You’re in danger. Get out of here now.

I don’t second-guess a message like this. There’s no harm in being somewhere else, or in taking a different elevator. And you never know when listening to your gut could save your life. Friends tell me that a mutual acquaintance makes the hair on the back of their necks stand up, gives them the creeps. I don’t get that from him–but I don’t question for a moment that they do, or try to change their minds.

For me, this is why it’s such a good idea to get generalized fears and prejudices out of your mind and heart–so that you can hear and feel clearly a specific fear when it arises. You may not be able to explain it; you probably won’t be. But it’s well worth listening to.

I like to look someone in the eyes to see if I can trust him or her, at least for the next few minutes. I do this when I see a homeless person with a sign (I keep energy bars in the car for this purpose). It’s also great for all types of interviews.

Of course, the need for true fear is rare. Far more often, all is well, and listening to the voice of love is all we truly need. As long as we’re in touch with the voice of wisdom, love, and truth, I really believe that each of us is the very best person to determine what’s truly right for us.

Do you perhaps have a burning question right now? Is there something you really need to know? Don’t be afraid to wrestle with the angel if you need to. But most of the time, in my experience, getting still and asking the question will yield the answer you need.

You are the ultimate arbiter of what’s right for you. Seek within.

How to deal with anger

Buddhism also teaches helpful meditation techniques so we are not swept away by the force of conflicting emotions like anger. These techniques allow us to take advantage of the brief gap in the mind between impulse and action. Through the practice of mindfulness, we become aware of impulses arising and allow a space in which we can consider whether and how we want to act. We, not our emotions, are in control. –Melvin McLeod

For me, anger and a sense of injustice are a motivating force. –Chelsea Clinton, the Clinton Foundation

I believe that anger can be sacred. Anger is meant to lead us to protect ourselves by saying a clear and decisive No to those who would otherwise use or abuse us. Anger is meant to help us create clear and helpful boundaries. Anger is meant to lead us to defend the weak and helpless, and to seek justice and truth-telling. These are all very good things.

I want to mention the upside of anger right up front, because anger is often perceived and talked about negatively–no doubt due to its profane side, which is itself abusive. Learning the difference between sacred and profane anger can be quite difficult for anyone who, like me, has had extensive exposure to inappropriate anger.

I’ve written before about the moment I decided I was tired of being as angry as I was, and that something needed to change. With the work I’ve been doing on grounding over the past month or so, all these many years later I feel like I have finally gathered a complete set of tools to transform my relationship with anger, and so I wanted to write about the topic again.

This past week I read the Readers Write section of the July issue of The Sun magazine. The theme is Never Again. Many of the entries are heartbreaking–particularly one written by a mother who is the child of an angry parent, has now become one herself, and doesn’t know how to change. This, for me, has been the path to that change I decided absolutely had to happen. For me it has been the work of many years, but I don’t see any reason why the process couldn’t move along a bit faster! If you experience anger as a force that seems like it’s controlling you rather than the other way around, I recommend the following …

1. Cultivate a sense of humor. I wouldn’t say I’ve had every advantage in life, but I have had some important ones. I consider having a strong sense of humor to be at least one of my top five, if not higher. There are definitely things worth getting angry about, but there are a lot more that are well worth laughing about. There’s nothing like a sense of the ridiculous to help you keep your perspective, and appreciate life here on Earth.
2. Let go of the past. If you’re getting disproportionately angry about little things all the time, in my experience it’s because you’re actually angry about something quite large that you haven’t dealt with. First you have to deal with the elephant in the room. For me, this step was about releasing bitterness about the big things that were bothering me. Once I did this, it became unusual for me to blow up over nothing.
3. Years later, I started to meditate. If you don’t already meditate, I hope you’ll begin today. People have given me lots of “reasons” why they don’t meditate–but they sounded an awful lot like excuses. If you’ve been making excuses–I can’t meditate because my apartment complex is too noisy; my dog won’t let me meditate; I have no talent for meditation (all actual “reasons” I’ve heard)–I hope you’ll recognize them for what they are, take a page out of the Nike handbook, and Just do it. What’s so important about meditation, you may be asking? Why do people talk about what is, after all, doing nothing like it’s the second coming? I’ve always known I became calmer as a result of meditating, but I’m not sure I could have explained why as well the quote above from the Shambhala Sun, which really illuminated for me the value of meditation as it relates to anger. The much-talked-about “gap” really does make a huge difference in everyday life.
4. Recognize the ego for what it is. When you recognize your own ego–as well as others’, they’re all pretty much alike, after all–and you no longer have to be right all the time, you suddenly have a lot less to be angry about. You really get it that there’s so much that happens that you no longer “need” to respond to.
5. The last step (so far!) has been the work I’ve recently been doing on grounding. My (Donna Eden) energy medicine practitioner realized that a) relatively slight stress, like recalling an unpleasant meeting, could cause me to become ungrounded, and b) even when I was grounded, it wasn’t a stable state. When I asked what could cause these issues, she mentioned trauma, and reminded me, “You didn’t have the best childhood, you know.” Well yes–there was that. Using the same meridians as Traditional Chinese Medicine, she determined where my trigger points were, and devised an exercise for me to do three times a day. (It took a bit more than 10 minutes at first, and now it takes a bit less.) As I understand it, this exercise allowed me to ground myself, break up unhelpful patterns, challenge my grounding, and then immediately re-ground myself. She suggested doing it for two weeks, and ideally 21 days. I scheduled an appointment after about a month, doing the exercise faithfully during the past month. My colleagues were so good as to challenge my grounding quite thoroughly just before my appointment. Whereas before I’d likely have responded appropriately, but felt (and probably also looked and sounded) rattled, after doing this work I was able to be calm both inside and out. My breathing changed, I was definitely irritated, but I stayed grounded throughout. I was able to express my viewpoint calmly and logically, and when I came in the next day, I found the person who’d been trying to weasel out of work in the meeting was actually doing some of it. I considered it a victory all the way around.

This post is illustrated with the SoulCollage card I started making in January and finished today called, So you think I have an anger problem. In January, my mood shifted before I could figure out how to make the card successful, and I ended up making a card for Courage instead.

If you’re interested in seeing a Donna Eden energy medicine practitioner yourself, here’s a directory.

The lovingkindness meditation

The limits of our goodwill form the ultimate boundaries of our peace of mind, for we cannot achieve peace while aversion is present. –Josh Korda

The lovingkindness meditation is a beautiful–and challenging–practice in which you offer lovingkindness first to yourself, and then to others … those who love you unconditionally, your loved ones, beloved pets, acquaintances, strangers, all sentient beings, relatives, and those who annoy you greatly. (These last two categories can overlap. OK, these last two categories do overlap.) I find it especially easy to offer lovingkindness to those who are now on the other side, as they are now even more purely loving than they were when they were here.

I’ve found in the past that serious resistance can arise to offering lovingkindness to those who seem to be doing their utmost to make my life difficult, or to those who’ve seemed to do so in the past. That’s why I’ve really enjoyed following Beth Terrence’s May is for Metta, which really eases into the lovingkindness practice, and helps build a strong foundation for it–to get in touch with your loving heart energy before you begin.

These are my favorite phrases to use during the meditation …

May I be safe.

May I be happy.

May I be at ease.

May I be peaceful.

May I be healthy and strong.

May I have a calm, clear mind, and a peaceful, loving heart.

May I experience love, joy, and wonder in this life just as it is.

And today may you experience love, joy, and wonder in this life–just as it is.

This post is illustrated with the SoulCollage card I made to represent my 4th chakra companion, a joyful bird, and also to celebrate Hope, that thing with feathers.