the heart as a portal, not as a pump

This past week-end my meditation teacher equated the heart with a portal, a portal to within, a portal to infinite self-love and compassion. Rudolf Steiner said over a century ago that our human destiny would change once we recognized that the heart is not a pump.  There are two interesting articles on that, one by Thomas Cowan, MD and the other by researchers from Temple University.  Both articles refute the pump idea from the perspective of fluid dynamics and propose an alternate way of understanding the heart.  Perhaps rearranging this understanding of the mechanics will lead us to recognizing our interface with the spiritual.

Consider our cultural symbolism of the heart as the center of love, as an expression of our compassion.  I like the portal analogy, especially after reading Harry Potter and its many portals, unassuming gateways to much larger realities, unrecognized and untapped by those not in the know.

Food for thought indeed.

life's yummy factor

Holistic comes from whole and also holy and means that something includes both the qualitative and the quantitative, seen and unseen, physical and metaphysical aspects.   Our culture is a bit lopsided because it has favored the quantitative aspect of science over the spiritual aspect at least since Isaac Newton.  But the qualitative aspect, the spiritual, the unseen, is what adds the yummy factor to life.  Knowledge of the calories of a strawberry, or its vitamin content, is pretty dull and meaningless without the smell of the ripe fruit, the visual appreciation of its red ripeness, the feeling of the teeth sinking into the juicy flesh, and finally that distinct sweet strawberry taste on the tongue.

The yummy factor is what makes life worth living.

wordlessness

I admit, I did not get it for a long time, the “don’t think,”  “drop into your heart space”  or “count from 1 to 10 and then start over” effort to get “out of my mind.”  Finally I did get it when I recently read Martha Beck’s new book Finding Your Way In A Wild New World.  Martha spoke about dropping into “wordlessness.”  That’s it!  Somehow I understood that analogy a lot better than all of the others and a lightbulb went off. It’s as if there was a word world floating in, around and above us that engulfs us.  We name everything, categorize everything, judge everything, and clad everything into words.  However, words lock our experience, our vision into our individual perspective with our particular set of emotions attached to it.  On the other hand when you drop out of that framework by leaving the words by the wayside everything simply is the way it is – it is not tinted with the meaning of words.  When I slip out of this word cloud that surrounds me I find myself in a space where there is only feeling, seeing, sensing, being.   That world is devoid of anxiety, anger, and all of the other negative emotions, because those arise only out of the connection between words, past experience and future expectations. Try it sometime!

same time next year

It is comforting to me to live in awareness of the circularity of life.  That’s why I have always minded my children’s 6-day school schedule, it goes against the grain and is confusing.  Not that “if it’s Tuesday it must be meatloaf” is such an inspired idea, but there is something to be said about “if it’s Tuesday we must have Art.”  Today is June 22 and it is my birthday and I like the notion that it comes back year after year, like all of the holidays.

In reality, though, nothing ever stays the same.  Perhaps because of that, because life is all about change, the regularity of circular rhythms such as the seasons, the planetary revolutions, the tides, the full moons, the reoccurrence of our birthdays, even the rhythm of the school year, builds a reassuring structure from where to watch and live the change.  Children who grow up with a strong awareness of these rhythms, as they teach it for example in Waldorf education, can become grounded adults.   And as an adult I am learning to see the circularity of life beyond my own death as a continuous cycle - in and out of physical life, in and out of non-physical existence – in an even grander perspective.

it's the little things that count

Setting the table nicely is important to me.  It’s a little ritual that improves the quality of life, even though my son thinks I’m silly when I mind one yellow and three white dinner plates, and insist on four matching ones when the children set the table.  And we have other little rituals, like eating croissants on Saturday mornings, or getting special breakfast items from our favorite French baker in town for special breakfasts, like Father’s day or birthdays, or setting up the birthday table with a special table cloth, a candle, flowers, the birthday cake, and all the presents and cards.  Ritual and predictability add rhythm to life and remind us of its circularity; paying attention to little things makes life more meaningful.

my spiritual life begins with putting on lipstick in the morning

Swami Rudrananda, the spiritual teacher also known as Rudi, used to say that your spiritual practice begins with making your bed in the morning.  Although I do make my bed in the morning, my day begins with putting on lipstick.  What Rudi meant, though, was that your spiritual and your everyday life are one and the same, and your everyday life has to be in order as a basis for a good spiritual practice.  It is misguided to neglect your everyday life for the lofty pursuit of a removed spiritual life.  One such example was published in  The NY Times last week about a 3-year yoga retreat that ended prematurely and with a fatal consequence for one of two participants.  Instead, you eventually interweave your spiritual convictions and practice with your material life.  Since most of my work happens in front of my computer at home I need to get myself and the house in order before doing anything else; part of that is dressing up nicely and putting lipstick on.  After that I am ready for the day.

taking charge

A brief bout with mild depression a bunch of years ago taught me an important lesson and helped me to shift my thinking drastically.  At that time I felt like a victim of circumstances, believing that the world was to blame for where I was at in life.  I even went to an allopathic doctor and got myself some pills.  But then something shifted in my mind.  I realized that I create my life, my circumstances, my opportunities, the way I perceive everything around me, out of my own consciousness and beliefs, and that those are not static, I can change them.  I brought the unopened pills back to the pharmacy and took charge of my life. It is not only incredibly empowering to wake up to this wonderfully creative opportunity of shaping and creating my future today and every day, it is also an awesome responsibility.  And it has implications for the people around us.

Martin Luther King famously said something along the lines of “only when you are at your best can I be at my best, and only when I am at my best, can you be at your best.”  The more we realize our own creative potential, the more we illuminate everything and everyone around us.

To Life!

forever young

The world shapes itself around your beliefs.  Positive beliefs empower you, negative beliefs, on the other hand, hold you back. Whether you believe you are starting to “become old” when you notice a little ailment here or there, or whether you consider it simply a passing appearance that will self-regulate back to perfect health,  is based in no small part on your beliefs.  Whether you are an old 30 or a young 30, an old 90 or a young 90, has so much to do with your beliefs about life, the body, aging, sickness and health, and your attitude in general.  Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer staged the famous experiment with the nursing home residents who were brought to live for a few weeks in an environment that emulated a period several decades earlier.  Well lo and behold, their minds literally turned their bodies’ physical clock backward in small but significant ways (read more about this amazing study in her book Counter Clockwise).

Some beautiful examples of older inspired and inspiring people have come across my Facebook page.  They remind me that your attitude and beliefs can keep you forever young until the day you die.  One of them is the 94-year old yoga master Tao Porchon-Lynch, another one that brings a smile on my face every time is the older piano playing couple, and the last one is the former Rockette Louise Neistat who tap danced until her recent death at 92.

Two more well-known examples of the power of the mind are world records - it is not unusual for several more people to break a world record as soon as someone has broken one – and the supposed difficulty in conceiving children –  couples who have resigned themselves to adopting a child  oftentimes conceive as soon as they have actually adopted.

wu weiying or rolling with the punches

We wu weyed our way through this past week in quite amazing ways.  Wu wei, one of  the central concepts of Taoism, basically means going with the flow instead of resisting what comes your way.

For many years we had set our minds on finally building that perfect house on a beautiful piece of property we recently paid off.  Then we came to the shocking realization, much money and a few months of schematics later, that our architect was doing his own thing instead of steering the project towards meeting all our needs in the best possible way.  That’s where wu wei came in.  We rolled with the punches so fast it was dizzying.  Only a week later we have put a binder on a house with the most gorgeous property.  And while it is not a Passiv Haus in terms of energy efficiency, it meets all our other needs in more ways than we could have ever imagined.    Wu weying takes a flexible mind and trust that the universe brings you what you need - if you are able to visualize clearly what you need (not what it looks like, nor how it will materialize).  Without that inner resistance it is effortless to let the universe do the work for you, rather than striving hard towards a specific outcome.  Try it next time and let the universe come up with an opportunity beyond your wildest dreams.

sthira and sukha

A few days ago my yoga teacher spoke about the yogic concepts of sthira and sukha.  The Sanskrit word sthira means grounded or relaxed alertness, while sukha is a certain ease.  When I  think of a professional violinist, a Japanese calligrapher, a martial arts practitioner, or anyone else accomplished in their discipline, I see those qualities in them.  That combination of in-the-momentness and effortlessness arises out of years of dedicated practice and results in profound perfection.   When I see a classical ballerina dancing on stage what she does looks easy, but oh boy is it impossible to do what she does without years and years of hard work.  We can extend the goal of striving for sthira and sukha in yoga to striving for it in life.  Moreover, the gradual development and achievement of these two qualities in any one area or discipline will inevitably spread into and begin to permeate all other areas of our life.