a new year's dedication

When choosing a dedication for the new year, I often spend a lot of time reflecting. This years theme seemed to barrage me from all quarters, in fortune cookies, in greeting cards, in notes and songs, in conversations and print. I chose happiness because it is something I resist and eye with suspicion, like a shady thief whose brilliant smile coaxes me, time and again, into a modicum of trust only to rob me of its riches come morning. Obviously, a skewed view of joy, founded in a belief that transience bespeaks falsehood (a belief, by the way, that I don't seem to apply to suffering). I recently heard Adyashanti speak on a similar topic with a challenge to "Allow everything to BE as it is". Wow. It seems difficult until one acknowledges that everything IS already as it is and it is insane to try to resist it at every turn while drowning out the "now" with a chorus of dictates on how it should be, has been or could be. The Course in Miracles reads, "Would you rather be happy or right?". Interesting how often we choose to impress our "rightness" at the cost of joy, our beliefs at the cost of truth, our story at the cost of peace. When once I asked my kid brother how to sustain happiness he answered with the twinkling eyes of youth, "Well Sis, it's just like flying in Peter Pan, you think happy thoughts". Hmmm. That is easier said than done, since thoughts seem to flow through the river of mind at the level of consciousness. Could a dedication to happiness raise the level of the water? Or might it encourage a playful dance with the waters of life, choosing to float and trust our innate buoyancy. This new year's dedication is an experiment really, asking what life might look like through the lens of joy. It's not a resolution, rather a north star pointing ever to this moment AS IT IS RIGHT NOW.

Comments

Wind said…

I learned something just now. Thank you for the words that led to an insight, thank you for the invitation to allow without constant editing what is. Aaaahhhh....

January 4, 2011 at 9:03 PM

tree digging

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much. It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall. The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep. But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy. I am a woman who loves the spring. I nearly live for it. When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis. I gorge. This year has been hard. Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally. The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...

Coraggio

When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment. It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float. It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within. It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains. Eyes closed. Eyes opened. A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being. It takes courage.

grief

Grief is defined as a deep or intense sorrow. I have been thinking a lot about grief, about it's wide and sticky reach, about the watery quality of it's absorption and the agonizing effort of swimming to shore. Intense sorrow happens. It is a part of life. Yet we press against it. We try to eradicate it. How? We encapsulate our grief in a story, thus effectively removing us from the immediacy of the pain. The mind promises salvation and begins to tell a story, over and over and over. We listen to the inner ramblings, the constant diatribe, the neurotic attempt to avoid the experience. When someone is hurting we listen to their story, we talk about it, we recount our own story, but we certainly don't jump in the waters of sadness, instead we sit on the bank of our familiar longing. Once, when I was floundering in deep grief, my youngest brother knelt next to me and held me for over an hour. He didn't speak. He didn't commiserate. He just jumped in the ...

angelbirdflies

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