It’s the Little Things

A female student came up behind me during the break and very discreetly let me know that my skirt was caught in my tights. She fixed it and smoothed down my skirt without ever drawing attention to what was happening, then went back to her seat.

I exchanged emails with a TRT™ classmate who wanted my scone recipe. She said, “I miss our little group already.” I was surprised to find myself admitting to myself and to her that I do, too.  I can’t remember the last time I was part of a group that bonded so deeply in such a short period.  We meet again 1/3 of the way through December for the last class and graduation.

Thanks to Supercook.com, I was able to turn the ingredients in my fridge and cupboard into a delicious supper last night: roasted portobello and zucchini sandwiches with parmigiana. (The veggies first marinated in balsamic and olive oil.)

All the Swedish Ivy on the window side of the table are blooming like mad and have been since October.

My issue of the Shambhala Sun came yesterday with a free sample issue of mindful: living with awareness and compassion.

Hazelnut-Pumpkin Cheesecake

From Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publications – Holiday Baking

Prep: 30 min  Bake: 48 min  Cool: 2 hours
Chill: 12 hours   Stand: 20 min    Oven: 350 F

Ingredients
24 gingersnaps
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
2  8-oz packages cream cheese, softened
5 eggs
1  15-oz can pumpkin (not pie filling, plain pumpkin)
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup hazelnut liqueur
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon grated whole nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 16-oz carton sour cream
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup hazelnut liqueur
1/2 cup hazelnuts (filberts), coarsely chopped for top of cake

For crust, in a food processor, combine gingersnaps and 2 tablespoons sugar. Cover and process to form fine crumbs. With processor running, slowly add melted butter, processing until combined. press mixture evenly onto the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan. Chill until firm.

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 F. Place cream cheese in food processor. Cover and process until smooth. Add eggs, pumpkin, brown sugar, 1/2 cup liqueur, cinnamon, vanilla, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. Cover and process until smooth, stopping once to scrape down side of bowl. Pour filling over crust, spreading evenly.

Place springform pan in a shallow baking pan. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 45 minutes or until edge is firm and centre appears nearly set when gently shaken.

Meanwhile, for topping, in a medium bowl, combine sour cream, 1/4 cup granulated sugar, and 1/4 cup liqueur. Transfer to a measuring cup with a lip. Without removing cheesecake from oven, pour topping over cheesecake, spreading evenly. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes more or until edge of topping just starts to bubble. Cool completely in pan on a wire rack. Cover loosely and chill for at least 12 hours.

To serve, loosen edge of cheesecake from side of pan; remove side of pan. Cut cheesecake while it is still chilled and firm. Let stand at room temperature for 20 minutes before serving. Sprinkle with hazelnuts (optional).  Makes 12 servings.

Kelly’s notes: I do not have a lot of cheesecake baking experience. This is what I learned this time: 40 to 45 minutes was perhaps not enough baking time. I should have left it in about 10 more minutes, I think, because when we served it, it wasn’t very firm and didn’t cut or transfer to the plate easily. It was a bit sloppy. Secondly, I think the crust should be thicker. Next time I will make 1.5 times as much crust. Also, if you don’t want to go out and spend $ on a bottle of Frangelico, I think you could make this recipe without that. You could use just a little bit of hazelnut flavouring or extract (maybe a teaspoon) instead. Fortunately, Sylvain happened to have a bottle of Frangelico in his basement that was a Christmas gift to him a couple of years back. I’m glad liqueur keeps!

One more tip: remember to wipe down the knife after slicing through the cake each time or you will have pumpkin-coloured filling showing around the edge of each piece on the otherwise pristine top of the cake.

As for the scones, that recipe can be found here.

Switched at Birth?

I think my favourite part of my class this weekend was meeting and bonding with the other participants. There were five students and two teachers. Our class took place in a very relaxing room that has a life-like mural of swimming dolphins on one wall and two real freshwater aquaria on another wall.  The teachers’ shared chair, which they took turns occupying, faced a semi-circle of recliners. We had brought our bed pillows and little throw blankies from home so that we were always comfy and cozy.

When we came into the room on the first evening, one woman sat in the farthest left chair and another woman took the farthest right. Then I took the chair to the left of centre and another woman took the chair to the right of centre. The chair in the middle of the semi-circle was the only empty one left when our fifth student arrived: the only male of the group.

I was immediately intrigued by the fact that the very goyish looking woman on the left end was wearing a Star of David bracelet, a little gold menorah and a gold open book with Hebrew writing on gold chains around her neck.

As if part of some divinely pre-arranged symmetry, her counterpart in the other book-end seat had a very Semitic face but made reference at one point to her higher power Jesus Christ.

I thought it was very beautiful when the woman on the left offered to bake and bring some challah and homemade jam the next day. “I usually only bake it on Fridays,” she added.

“For Shabbas,” the woman on the right said.

“Yes,” came the reply.

The next morning in came the freshly baked challah and jams. There was much communing and hugging and sharing of challah between the woman who converted to Judaism and the woman who loves Jesus. The latter was beside herself at being given the rest of the challah to take home.

Where I Am This Weekend

In case you’re wondering where I’ve disappeared to this weekend, I am in a 15-hour course on 1st degree Radiant Touch ® (Authentic Reiki® ).

Also, I had some baking to do: a pumpkin hazelnut cheesecake with ginger snap crust for the ACIM group (it spent last night chilling in the fridge); and pumpkin scones to take with me to class today.

The apartment smells wonderful.

Happy (American) Thanksgiving

I am thankful for:

• the books I found in the blue bin (thank you, whoever bundled them with twine and placed them in the blue bin)
• Eckhart Tolle, who suggested I become aware of my breathing every day for a whole year; it started me on this journey
• Brandi and her Joy Rebel Army
• Pema Chodron and her lineage of teachers
• you my readers and fellow bloggers and fellow Shambhala warriors, who are my teachers no less so than she
• whatever it was in me or outside me that guided me to finally quit my job
• Sylvain, who supported and encouraged me to run off to Toronto and get the TESL accreditation
• and paid my condo rent while I was away
• Martine, the best TESL teacher ever
• my classmates
• my mother
• my late grandparents, who paid the tuition and lodging
• my VW City Golf
• the view from my window
• Windsor Meditation Group
• my health
• the beautiful violet I found in the garbage
• rain
• Algonquin Park
• ferns
• hazelnuts
• friends new and old
• pigeons
• the quiet of my apartment when I come home after a busy day
• living in this beautiful, peaceful country full of amazing human beings
• people who write encouraging messages on rocks and leave them around for others to find
• past lovers
• the soft, rounded edges of well-used antique wood chairs
• squirrels
• people who laugh easily
• strangers who smile at one another
• that Sylain and I are both healthy
• my precious students and the way they always say “thank you” after every lesson without exception
• my sangha
• Unity church of Windsor, my latest discovery
• my ACIM study group
• the treasure of this moment, this day

I hope that all my American friends had a wonderful holiday today and had a chance to reflect on those things for which you are thankful.

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Remembering to Laugh

Amy,

I haven’t gotten to any lesson about remembering to laugh, but I’ll comment nonetheless.

I have heard more than once that God has a sense of humour. I think it must be true because how else would we have one? I’ve also seen interpretations of the Gospels in which Jesus is portrayed as having a typical Jewish sense of humour. I’m glad we are starting to see movements like Laughter Yoga and things like that to get us to come back to lightness and the ability to laugh at ourselves.

I do believe most of us (me included) take ourselves WAY, way too seriously. We do forget to laugh.  When I lighten up, I find myself laughing at the minor trials and tribulations of daily life. I am learning to laugh at myself, and that feels great.

This Sunday the guest speaker David Matthew Brown gave a message about the importance of playing and laughing.

One thing I notice is that when I have those breakthrough moments in my spiritual work, I feel so light and carefree that I laugh very easily. So I think there must be a strong connection between enlightenment and laughter.

xo K

Yikes, What Am I Doing?

Good morning!

I woke up and thought, “What am I doing?”  Talking about model this and model that isn’t productive at all. For one thing, I am a very early beginner and have no idea what I’m talking about. Secondly, the most powerful of the models that attract me are full of paradoxes. If we get to talking for more than 5 minutes, we are going to hit one of them and go nowhere fast.

Also, I remembered that in my favourite of all models for how the world works, which is turning out to be a Tibetan Buddhist model (which does not, so far as I can tell, conflict at all with the teachings of The Course), I don’t exist.  The ego is a construct or, as one of my favourite bloggers recently pointed out, nothing more than a bad habit.

And Suki, thank you for reminding me of Tonglen. Very good point.

One reason I was always so comfortable in a Quaker Meeting for Worship was that there is no dogma, no creed, no set of beliefs to follow except for the belief that the only way to find the truth is through each one’s personal experience.  I can’t show you anything about reality and you can’t show me anything about reality. Each of us must listen to the still small voice within.  If something resonates with … what do we call it … Holy Spirit? The Inner Wise One?  If something resonates with that, then go for it.  If not, then walk away fast.

The reason I buy into some of these seemingly crazy and very paradoxical models is that when I test them out, I relax. I find inner peace. I feel joy. I smile more. I take better care of my neighbours. I love more.

Yesterday Sylvain and I rose early, each at our own abodes, so he could pick me up at around 8:00 for a shopping trip to the States. He needed a winter coat and we had not found any to his liking at any of the stores in this city.  I needed a few little items, too. Knowing we would be in a mall surrounded by Christmas shoppers for several hours straight, I toyed with bringing my earplugs, which is something most self-aware HSPs probably do.  I forgot them.

We shopped all day, stopping to eat lunch at Chili’s. Sylvain was absolutely dumbfounded that he burned out before I did. I was still going pretty strong when it began to get dark out.

This is the same person who would once have been grumpy and whiny and ready to go home after three hours.  I can’t attribute all of that to the spiritual work I’m doing , but a lot of it I can.  When you trust the Universe 100% in every moment, there is no stress. When you get out of your head and into the Here and Now, you become lighter. You see beauty around you instead of constant threats.  Things that were once trying become easy and fun.

So if I sometimes give into the potentially dangerous temptation to pontificate, please forgive me and know that it’s only because I want others to feel as light and joyful as I’m learning how to feel. But in the end I know that you can only get there by listening to your Inner Wise Voice. And the path that is helpful to you may be entirely different from the one that calls me.  Use what works and discard the rest.

Nothing Exists Outside Your Sphere of Here And Now

I want to continue to explore a bit more the subject of my previous post.

One way of looking at reality–a view that is possibly supported by quantum theory–is that nothing exists outside your sphere of Here And Now. I say “possibly” because what I am proposing with this model does not necessarily follow from what the new physics is teaching us. Many physicists would say I am wandering off into “pseudo science.” And I am. BUT…it’s pseudo science that works for me. It brings peace and joy to myself and to those with whom I come into contact. I believe that it’s true even though it isn’t YET fully supported by the science. I believe that one day we may prove it if it is provable. But I don’t care if we prove it or don’t. I operate as if it’s true and it behaves as if it is true.

Back to the model.

As Sylvain and I were driving to an outlet mall in Michigan this morning, I mentioned to him Suki’s comment that the [war or whatever event] may not be real for her in that moment but is real by some definition for [someone else].

The thing is, though, that under the model in which that war doesn’t exist, those people don’t exist, either.

“My parents don’t exist right now,” Sylvain said.

“Exactly,” I said.

Now here’s where it gets dicey. Some think that my adopting such a view of reality means I am selfish, not compassionate.  That I am putting on blinders and ignoring the suffering on the other side of the world.

If this crossed your mind, I would answer that in a few ways.

1.  Does my life strike you as void of compassion? Am I not brimming with love for my fellow humans? Do I not live that love with my actions every day? In fact, by turning my attention to what is with me in the Here And Now rather than devoting energy to imagined (non-existent) conflicts on the supposed other side of the world, I am MORE able to fully love everyone and everything in my Here and Now. And since everything is connected through the mind-matter field, I am also taking good loving care of everything in the Universe.

2. Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that the war in X country does exist and is real for someone somewhere. Do you not trust the Universe to take care of that? Are you the earth’s only angel? You do not need to be everywhere at once.  Let go of that sense that solving all those so-called problems outside your Here And Now is on your shoulders. The Universe (which is not separate from you, anyway) knows what it’s doing. You have chosen a part of it to take loving care of. The part that is assigned to you is the part that arises in each fresh Now.  Nothing else exists. When you dream other stuff into existence, you are just needlessly siphoning off energy that could be used to love your Here And Now, which is your only job.

3. Nothing is separate.  You are connected to and constantly communicating with the entire Universe through the mind-matter field. If you have the time and patience, I highly recommend that you read this abstract or anything, for that matter, about quantum theory. Especially important are the ideas of non-locality and potentialities.  When you use your mind to commune with Love, all corners of the Universe are affected.

Comments on ACIM Workbook Lesson 14 for Suki

Suki, I am honoured that you would ask me to comment on workbook lesson 14, which I think you can read here. In the answer that follows, I use the word God because the Course uses it. For me, it is nothing more than a label of convenience that is part of one set of metaphors…no better or worse in my mind than any other set of metaphors used to describe our world.  I hope you will substitute whichever word works best from your metaphor set.

Model #1: Get some perspective.

Step outside your body (use your imagination for a minute). Step outside your body and float up above the room. Float above the city. Keep going out… out… out. It may help to watch the Eames’ film “Powers of Ten” before doing this exercise.

Get out there in the solar system and keep going. Go out of our galaxy. Go all the way to the next galaxy and beyond.  Get some perspective.  Now look at the whole thing…all the spinning systems and planets and comets and stars, and tell me. Is there a plane crash?

When you walk to the store, you step on many little creatures and kill them. You are somebody’s earthquake. Is there really an earthquake, or is it just a matter of perspective? To the inchworm on the sidewalk, something catastrophic happened. But is the “catastrophe” real or created by that inchworm’s perspective? What about God’s perspective? Do you mourn each skin cell that sloughs off, soon to be replaced by a fresh one?

When you say “plane crash,” you’re talking about two things – an event or situation plus your thoughts, interpretation, value judgements of same.  What you really think is that a plane crash is a terrible thing. It’s a disaster. It’s something to feel depressed about, or fearful about or confused about. Your view of it helps you to see the world as chaotic, meaningless. Why would God let it happen? But I am telling you, God did not make a disaster nor anything meaningless. You are making it with your thoughts.

Before you added your judgments and thoughts to the picture, there was no catastrophe.  There is just the Universe chugging along doing what a good universe does. Birth happens. Death happens.  Leaves fall off trees. Is that a catastrophe?  It may feel like one to that particular leaf; I don’t know. I don’t think God created a catastrophe when God designed leaves to fall off trees in the autumn. It’s not even really death; it’s the death of one physical form. The human ego provides the definition of “crash” and “war” and “illness.”

In order for you to see physical death or decline as a bad thing, you have to view yourself as separate from the whole, as somehow deserving to be exempt from the natural processes of life and death.

Think about a virus that causes a bad flu in your grandmother.  Is this illness? It is in the thoughts of the grandmother and her family. But what is it to the virus germs? To them, it is just transportation. Do they not deserve to live, too? Did God not create them to thrive just as She created us to thrive? There is a balance in the design.  Sometimes your grandmother gets to live another day, sometimes it’s the virus’ turn to live another day.  There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Is there war? Is there illness? Is there a plane crash?

Model #2: you are responsible for your hologram

Nobody exists in your hologram except you.  The others who appear to exist are creations of your mind projected onto the screen of your hologram.

You will ask, “But what about my son, my ex, my friend? Are they not real?”

I say to you that they are each real within their own dreams, but not in yours. In your dream, they are characters you have created and put there.

Now, back to whether that war, that plane crash or that disease is real.

Is anyone shooting at you right now? No. Then how does that war exist for you? You are creating it out of images from the television or newspaper. God is not creating that, you are. The paper is real because you are touching it. You can even put it to your nose and smell it. But there is no war in the room with you right now. It doesn’t exist.

Ah, but what about a so-called illness that you are currently experiencing? Again, there are things that are real and there is the spin put onto it by your mind. If you stay in the present moment at every moment, there is no diagnosis. There is only what is happening in each moment as it unfolds. Your mind can make anything of it that it wants to. If you open to the Voice of the Holy Spirit, you can experience what is really happening, which just is what it is. If you listen to ego, you will hear a story that is full of fear and loss and I don’t know what all. Which one is reality?

Model #3 – There is a third model that I don’t feel very qualified to expound on and am not even sure what to name it.  I might not even understand the gist of it, but I’ll do my best to describe how I THINK it goes: We are dreaming this world into existence together. We are creating war and famine. When we stop dreaming them into existence, they will stop. God does not necessarily want us to create these things with our minds, but won’t stop us because we have free will.  One by one, She is calling us back out of this illusion, back to Truth, back to peace and love and harmony.

Think about what Gandhi said. Be the change you wish to see in the world. You cannot make everyone on this planet stop dreaming the war. You can only take responsibility for your dream. So withdraw your belief from it and you are doing your part to shut it down. Although this model sounds impossible and mind-blowing, I can tell you from experience that acting as if this is true causes it to begin to be true.

Under which model this example goes, I’m not sure, but I can share an experience with you.  When I stop believing in crime, I begin to live in a world without any.

The other day I reached my car at 3:15 to find dog excrement smeared across my windshield, a crumpled napkin still stuck to it. I did not get upset. I just removed as much as I could using that napkin, put that soiled napkin inside a plastic bag in my trunk so I could throw it away when I got home ( rather than tossing it to the ground, which is what my ego told me to do).

When I got home I spent 30 minutes slowly soaking and cleaning the crusted-on feces from my windshield. I did not label this in my mind with any of the words society would like me to use for it.  It was just a situation. In the present moment, there was only one thing to do: clean it off.  In my world, there is no such thing as “vandalism” or “insult” or anything like that because I choose to create my hologram without those things.  I was with God while I cleaned the windshield. The love was very real.  Had that happened to me before I started the Course in Miracles, there would have been a disaster, a reason to have a bad day, a thing called the crime of vandalism and other things. But would they really have existed outside my mind? Today my thoughts have changed and my world does not include crime.

Who Is This?

Is this really me?  Often I don’t recognize myself these days.

I had paperwork to catch up after I got off work at 3:00; I stayed and worked until 4:00.  Spanglish starts at 5:00, so if I had just an hour to grab a bite to eat and make my way to that neighbourhood if I wanted to go.

Amazingly, I did want to go.  The old me would have gone home to crash on the sofa.  The old me never went from one thing to another without plenty of down time in between. The old me would have felt stressed and rushed.

I had dinner at Island Cafe and then made my way to the Ska Na centre. Hey, that was a first for me! I found my way there without a map even though I was cutting through various neighbourhoods using side streets. Windsor is becoming my town.

I arrived ten minutes late but didn’t let it bother me. Sure enough, I saw my friend outside on his bike. He said, “They are getting a late start.”  Of course they are. I’m so glad I didn’t shovel my food down or stress out about being a few minutes late.

E and G, newly arrived from Colombia, were there. Yay!

I find it hard to believe that just a few months ago I was completely incapable of thinking on my feet in the classroom. Every lesson had to be planned out days in advance. My lesson plans included a column along the side where I would write how long each activity should take.  They looked like this:

11:35 – warm up, activate the schema

11:42 – first controlled activity

11:56 – pair work – semi-controlled

12:12 – free conversation using role-play prompts

I remember being terrified that a teacher might ask me to supply teach and not leave me with any lesson plan. Now such an occurrence is just a minor inconvenience and not a catastrophe.  Tonight the person who was supposed to give the lesson during the second hour did not show up. At the break, someone approached me to pinch hit. I spent the coffee break trying to come up with an idea. When break was over, I got in front of the class and began to fumble. Rather than freak out, I just let things unfold and stayed open to what was happening in front of me. I tuned into my audience. The next thing I knew, I was giving the “cows eat grass” lesson. I don’t know how it happened; it sort of happened by itself. And it was a hit.

We broke up at 7:00, but I wanted to talk with E and G some more. Inspired by Honorary Newfie’s question from the other day, I asked them how they got here. They flew from South America to the states. After staying a while with friends, they were driven to the border. They walked across the border carrying their little scottie dog.  They live right by my workplace and have invited me over to meet their doggie and have tea on Monday when I get off work.

When I was in analysis, I remarked one day to Anna that learning to set healthy boundaries was bringing out the extrovert in me.  Having healthy boundaries made being around others less taxing. Now I’m noticing that many other aspects of the work I’m doing is making it easier and more enjoyable to spend time around other people.

Transcendent Experience with ACIM Lesson 68

Some days the ACIM workbook lesson of the day doesn’t really grab me, but I do it anyway knowing it is working on me at a subconscious level. Other days… shazam!   Here is the text of today’s lesson. My reflections follow it.

Lesson 68

Love holds no grievances.

You who were created by love like itself can hold no grievances and know your Self. To hold a grievance is to forget who you are. To hold a grievance is to see yourself as a body. To hold a grievance is to let the ego rule your mind and to condemn the body to death. Perhaps you do not yet fully realize just what holding grievances does to your mind. It seems to split you off from your Source and make you unlike Him. It makes you believe that He is like what you think you have become, for no one can conceive of his Creator as unlike himself.

Shut off from your Self, which remains aware of Its likeness to Its Creator, your Self seems to sleep, while the part of your mind that weaves illusions in its sleep appears to be awake. Can all this arise from holding grievances? Oh, yes! For he who holds grievances denies he was created by love, and his Creator has become fearful to him in his dream of hate. Who can dream of hatred and not fear God?

It is as sure that those who hold grievances will redefine God in their own image, as it is certain that God created them like Himself, and defined them as part of Him. It is as sure that those who hold grievances will suffer guilt, as it is certain that those who forgive will find peace. It is as sure that those who hold grievances will forget who they are, as it is certain that those who forgive will remember.

Would you not be willing to relinquish your grievances if you believed all this were so? Perhaps you do not think you can let your grievances go. That, however, is simply a matter of motivation. Today we will try to find out how you would feel without them. If you succeed even by ever so little, there will never be a problem in motivation ever again.

Begin today’s extended practice period by searching your mind for those against whom you hold what you regard as major grievances. Some of these will be quite easy to find. Then think of the seemingly minor grievances you hold against those you like and even think you love. It will quickly become apparent that there is no one against whom you do not cherish grievances of some sort. This has left you alone in all the universe in your perception of yourself.

Determine now to see all these people as friends. Say to them all, thinking of each one in turn as you do so:

I would see you as my friend, that I may remember you are part of me and come to know myself.

Spend the remainder of the practice period trying to think of yourself as completely at peace with everyone and everything, safe in a world that protects you and loves you, and that you love in return. Try to feel safety surrounding you, hovering over you and holding you up. Try to believe, however briefly, that nothing can harm you in any way. At the end of the practice period tell yourself:

Love holds no grievances. When I let all my grievances go I will know I am perfectly safe.

The short practice periods should include a quick application of today’s idea in this form, whenever any thought of grievance arises against anyone, physically present or not:

Love holds no grievances. Let me not betray my Self.

In addition, repeat the idea several times an hour in this form:

Love holds no grievances. I would wake to my Self by
laying all my grievances aside and wakening in Him.

===================

Now I know that the text and the lessons are written in a language that strikes many as unnecessarily cumbersome.  I don’t let the style of writing stand in my way.  As I said, some days the lessons are hard for me to penetrate. But today? Holy Hannah.

I started, as I always do, the minute I woke up. I keep the book in the bathroom open to the right page. This way I can’t forget to start my lesson first thing. It goes with brushing my teeth and peeing.  So the first thing I did was grab a piece of paper and pen from the kitchen so I could jot down names of people against whom I am harbouring grievances of any kind. Before doing this lesson, I thought of myself as someone who holds no grudges or hard feelings against anyone. I have let go of the business of what my step-father did to me. I can convince myself that George W. is just a sociopathic idiot and not worthy of my hate energy. And so on. But as I looked with great honesty inside myself, I found that I have lots of people for whom complete feelings of love and acceptance do not flow easily from me.  I started with a couple of names, but soon my pen was flying. I had ten names in no time, including that of a man who lives in this building but whom I do not know. I realized I harbour ill feelings about him because of the smells that emanate from his apartment, necessitating my holding my nose every time I have to pass down that hall. Because he reminds me of my brother, every time I smell the noxious smell from his apartment, it reminds me of when my brother would allow urine-soaked laundry to sit for days on end without doing his washing. Shenpa.

Rather than trying to remember every part of this lesson, I allowed myself to be carried by the passage that seized me: “I would see you as a friend, that I may remember you are part of me and come to know myself.”

My years spent in Jungian analysis influenced how and how deeply this passage worked on me.  It’s never been hard for me to understand the concept of projection. When something in someone else irritates me, I know that there is an aspect of myself I have suppressed in my subconscious.  The first step for me is to acknowledge that this person simply serves as a mirror for me.  He is helping me see a part of myself I have relegated to the shadowy corner of my psyche.  As I bring those rejected parts of myself into the Light, I feel freed to love others more completely. I stop projecting my shit onto them.

So yeah, I have had a few years of practice with the concept of projecting. But for some reason today’s lesson took me to a whole new level.  It wasn’t just about psychology.  I realized that there was another level on which this idea could be understood and experienced.

We are all one.  I am not a separate entity from my neighbour. We are embodiments of the godhead.

I used that long and seemingly convoluted sentence as my mantra all day long. I divided it into three sections:

1. I would see you as my friend… (I said this part slowly and let it soften my heart.)
2. that I may remember you are part of me (we are not separate; and also, you are mirroring back to me a part of myself)
3. and come to know myself  (thank you for being such a mirror, because I want to know myself and come to love and accept every part of me)

I drove to work and continued to use this phrase to see everyone around me differently… including the person who tailgated me, the one who cut me off, and the one who threw a cigarette butt on the ground.

All day I felt a degree of peace and love toward all beings that I have never felt before.  Okay, wait. That’s not true. It wasn’t the depth that was different. It was the breadth. I’ve felt that depth of love and acceptance before…toward Mahatma Gandhi and the Dalai Lama, for example. But today it was easy for me to feel the same way toward all sorts of people… the irritating ones, the egotistical ones, the ones who blabber on about inane topics.  Every encounter was an opportunity to practice.

Sunday Adventure

I started my day in a very different way this morning. I set off by myself to a church on the other end of town.

Aside from occasionally accompanying Sylvain to Mass, I haven’t attended any church regularly in about seven years.  When I first moved to Windsor, I was hoping to re-join a congregation of the Religious Society of Friends, but there isn’t one in this city.  Feeling a need for instant community in those early days, I set out on my bicycle on more than one Sunday trying to find a service to sample, but my social anxiety got the better of me. The closest I came was hovering in the door to listen to the organ music and choir. It may sound like a cop-out, but I stopped short of entering one church basing my decision solely on the type of music wafting out through the door.

The other day one of the facilitators of our ACIM circle mentioned that Unity Church is quite compatible with The Course. She said that many who attend that church do The Course, and many who do The Course end up going to that church.

This piqued my interest. I had to find out what it would be like to be in a room full of people with this sort of mind-set.  Many churches have come right out and called ACIM the work of the devil, so I had to find out what type of congregation would embrace it. I took a pen and wrote on my calendar on the next Sunday, “Unity.”

From the minute I walked through the doors of the chapel, I felt good. The usher greeted me with a warm and authentic handshake.  I picked a seat among the concentric circles of pews and began reading the program that had just been handed to me.  Suddenly I felt the warmth of a hand on my back. A woman about 20 years my senior was making her way around the back of my pew to introduce herself.

Warmth.

That’s what I felt there. Lots of human warmth.

I’ve been in churches in the Bible Belt where people fall all over new visitors, but that’s very different from what I experienced this morning. The kind of welcome I got in the some (not all) churches in the South was a sickly sweet welcome that felt superficial.

There is one point in the service when people say hello to those standing nearby. In Sylvain’s church they have this, too. It’s when you wish each other peace and shake hands. The Spiritual Leader let us know ahead of time that this would happen at the end of the next song and suggested that we could shake hands or, if we preferred, we could put palms together and say Namaste (the Spirit in me acknowledged the Spirit in you), or whatever we were comfortable with.

When that time came, I learned very quickly that pretty much nobody settles for Namaste or a handshake. They all hug. Everyone hugs everyone.  Lucky for me, I’m a hugger.  I got a lot of nice warm hugs today.

Coming from one keyboardist and one soloist, the music was amazing. This congregation is blessed to have a singer with a voice every bit as divine as that of Joan Baez. I am not even kidding. I would go back just to hear her sing again… and to see her lovely smile.

I liked the fact that a same-sex couple sat with arms around one another.

And… not to skip the most important part… the sermon was good. Oh, and the five “Unity Principles” written out on the literature that I was given resonate with the way I already look at reality. I notice that different Unity churches word these slightly differently, but I’ll give you the version I was given today:

1. God is absolute good, everywhere present. Many paths lead to the one, loving God.
2. Our essence is of God, and therefore human beings are inherently good. This essence, called the Christ, was fully expressed in Jesus.
3. We create our experiences by the activity of our thoughts. Everything in our lives has its beginning in thought.
4. Prayer and meditation are important ways to heighten our connection with God.
5. Knowing and understanding Unity principles is not enough–we must also live the truth that we know.

When several women approached me after to ensure I was staying for cake and coffee, I felt fine about saying yes.  I did not feel pressured. I did not say yes just to be nice. I really wanted to stay a while.

That experience sticks out in my mind in how it differs from the experience I had while attending Quaker Meeting when I lived in Toronto for 14 weeks for school.  There I was showing up week after week, often staying after Meeting to join the line for a bowl of soup, often settling down on a comfortable chair in the parlor with people chatting all around me. Yet nobody ever asked my name or how I came to be there or whether I would come back again. In my experience, Quakers are very hands-off.

The same woman who had put a warm hand on my back earlier was now showing me around. Here is the coffee, here are the plates, come sit with us.  I sat with her and two others.

By the time I finished eating and visiting, poor Sylvain was about to go bonkers. I had promised I would call him after the service so we could decide whether to meet for brunch. It was very late by the time I called and the poor guy was starving. We met at Velvet and I told him all about it.

Sweetness

I washed my windows.

Very thick fog hung over parts of the city while other parts were sunny.

Fog horns blared and answered one another.

Wood smoke seasoned the damp air.

I learned a new word: cloudspotting.

 

Grappling with My Impermanence

Five of the most pivotal events of my life were:

1. my father’s death in 1969 and the ensuing impact on my young psyche of having been excluded from the dying process, removal of the body from our house, funeral and memorial service;
2. my grandfather’s death when I was a young adult and my intentional involvement in his dying process right up to his last breath;
3. realizing that I am more comfortable around death and dying than most people;
4. realizing that this constitutes a calling
5. following through on this calling by becoming a hospice volunteer

If you were with me in my living room now, you might take a curious peek at my book case while I went in the kitchen to put the kettle on for tea. I don’t own many books. I have about five cookbooks, a dozen or so field guides (ferns, birds, butterflies, wildflowers, etc.), English language and pedagogical reference materials, a few books in the area of eastern philosophy and spirituality, and my books on death and dying. Considering that no one subject occupies more than about one foot of shelf space, you could say that my death and dying section is predominant in the book case.

I not only devote time to reading Stephen Levine and Sogyal Rinpoche, but I make a point of contemplating my own death as often as I can remember to do so. When Thich Nhat Hanh admonishes us students to meditate on the vision of our own worm-riddled corpses, I take that to heart. I do it.

Once a week I spend over an hour with someone who is dying. This person might live another year or two, or might be dead before my next birthday.

In my advanced hospice palliative care class, we talk about our own deaths. We talk about our advanced care directives, organ donation, and whether we prefer to be buried or cremated.  If you can’t talk about those issues with regard to your own death, you won’t be any use to your clients who have life-limiting illnesses.

I want to be part of a movement to help this death-denying western culture to become more comfortable with this very natural and inevitable part of the life cycle. With this in mind, I jump at every opening a friend or coworker gives me to talk about death or about my hospice work.

And yet…

even with all this reading and training and contemplating…

even with hospice work being a central calling in my life…

I still don’t get it.

Intellectually, of course, I know that one day I will die.

But every time I try to think about it, I come up against a thick and impenetrable shell of denial encasing my mind.  I can’t seem to take myself beyond the most superficial level of comprehension of the fact that I am mortal.

Tonight, as I was driving home from palliative care class, I again contemplated my eventual death.  This time I felt just the slightest difference in how that contemplation felt.  I managed to slip through, just momentarily, the tiniest of fissures in the old veil of denial.

It felt good.

Company

The trash cans are emptied. There’s a clean guest towel in the bathroom. I’ve turned on the reading lamps.

I’ve stuck seven empty coat hangers in the front entry way closet.  A basket of house slippers (women’s and men’s in various sizes) and a long shoe horn are in a woven basket by the door.

A baking sheet full of Scottish Oat Cranberry Scones is in the oven.

I really like Sunday evenings.

Problems Have No Life of Their Own

Yesterday I posted an excerpt from ACIM workbook, but it wasn’t the passage I was looking for to share with you. I couldn’t find the one I was looking for. The reason I couldn’t find it was that the passage I was looking for isn’t in the Workbook, it’s in a book called Daily Meditations for Practicing The Course by Karen Casey. Here are the words I wanted to share:

When we’re in the midst of emotional pain, it’s not easy to believe that problems reflect only the life we give them. Why would we want experiences such as these?

The truth, of course, is that we create problems in an attempt to assuage our own guilt, the guilt we have for our perceived imperfections. What we dislike in ourselves, we relish seeing in other people. And when we do, we often attack them, or at least react in some judgmental, unloving way. What’s the way out of this insidious cycle? Lucky for us, there is one.

We do see only what we choose to see. If we decide we want to see only the good in other people and situations, we will. Obviously this means we can see only our perfect self too, the same self that God sees. We don’t need problems in our lives, ever. While some say we learn from them, and that may be true, we can complete our journey without them if we so choose.

I will be problem-free today, unless I choose otherwise.

With every day that passes, I become just a smidgen better at practicing these revolutionary new beliefs. At the risk of your rolling your eyes at the apparent triviality of the situation that offered me a chance to practice this today, I offer it up anyway.

I left the house at 4:45 for Spanglish club, which means I was running late. That is atypical of me. I like to be considerate of others’ time and don’t like being late for anything ever.

As I drove up Wyandotte toward Pillette, my mind was racing in a million directions. I know better than that! Be here now, Kelly! When my mind came back to the here and now, I thought I had overshot my turn.  So I quickly turned left and into a small business’ parking lot with the idea of looping out the other driveway and back onto Wyandotte going the other way.  That’s when I noticed the parking lot had only the one entrance. D’oh!

Immediately I could feel old habit energy TRY to kick in.  One part of my mind attempted to start up an old tape. My body started to react to that old tape.  But this time I noticed what was happening. I knew that what was trying to take control of my emotions and thoughts was some of the old brain wiring, the neural pathways that I am in the midst of changing.  Thanks to researchers like Norman Doidge, MD, we now know that we can change our brains. Yes, it takes consistent and diligent work, but it is doable.

You know that scene in A Beautiful Mind when Nash comes to understand that he has delusions? His wife and others have been trying to make him understand that certain people in his life exist only in his mind. Finally he realizes that the little girl never gets any older, and he believes his doctor and wife. And so he goes and has a conversation with the people who only exist in his mind. He says his farewells. He acknowledges what they have done for him, what friends they have been, but says that he cannot talk to them anymore.

The non-existent people in his life do not give up easily. They don’t want to lose his attention. It takes a great deal of discipline on his part the next time one of them makes a bid for his attention. But he trains himself to ignore them.

That’s how it feels for me now. One part of my mind tells me that something bad is about to happen, such as that I’m about to be late and inconvenience my friends. For whatever reason–probably going back to my childhood or whatever–that thought normally triggers a huge amount of uneasiness and anxiety in me.

I started to pull back onto Wyandotte and then realized that I had never overshot Pillette to begin with. I managed to get back on track. But something else shifted in me. I was resolute in my determination not to listen to small mind. I was determined also to halt the physiological response that had already begun in reaction to the old thought patterns.  I took a deep breath and turned my back on small mind, turning instead toward the beauty all around me.

You are trying to trick me, small mind. I don’t fall for your stories anymore. You are NOT a reliable source of information. You lie.

Several things happened after that which normally do not enter into my “I’m running late” scenario…because I never make room for them.

For one, I acknowledged that I was only five minutes late. I reflected on the ridiculousness of feeling/thinking that I cannot allow myself to be five minutes late for something one time in my life.

Secondly, a fact drifted into my field of vision that I normally screen out. Many other people are routinely late, much later than five minutes.

Thirdly, the person who came to the door of the building to let me in quickly informed me that our facilitator was running late but would be there soon.

How many times in my life has that happened? I busted my ass to be on time only to find that the other person was not even there yet.

Yes, being late or punctual is a trivial example of how our problems are manufactured in our minds. It would seem ludicrous to compare this to having a diagnosis of cancer or losing a loved one. Yet I know in my heart that truth is truth. And I do believe–because I am beginning to experience it–that we manufacture problems.

Eckhart Tolle puts it this way:

Ultimately… there are no problems. Only situations – to be dealt with now, or to be left alone and accepted as part of the ‘isness’ of the present moment until they change or can be dealt with… ‘Problem’ means that you are dwelling on a situation mentally without there being a true intention or possibility of taking action now… or you are carrying in your mind the insane burden of a hundred things that you will or may have to do in the future instead of focusing your attention on the one thing that you can do now.

And so I turn the car around, as that is the one thing I can do in that moment. But I do it joyfully. There is nothing more I can do. There is no sense allowing fabrications of my mind get my heart racing or my stress hormones pumping. I breathe deeply. I see that I am surrounded by tall maples turning yellow and gold. Every moment is a world to behold, to breathe in, to love.

Web Treasures

• http://vimeo.com/15979310
• This article might explain why my 96-year-old friend with dementia would finally start to “get” who I was and how we met after I had told her for the 20th time.  Interesting stuff.
• Watching this, I could almost move back to Amerika.
• Every post on this blog strikes a chord deep within me, but I’ll just share today’s. It’s as profound as any.