Spirituality – Page 12 – KM Huber's Blog

Right Down the Middle

Posted on June 2, 2013 by KM Huber in Consciousness, Inspiration, Spirituality

I often think of present moment awareness as a matter of balance, and whenever I think of balance, I think of Buddha nature: “The reason everything looks beautiful is because it is out of balance, but its background is always in perfect harmony” (Shunryu Suzuki).

The background balance of Buddha nature is the source of the infinite possibilities available to us in every moment we have. Our lives are up-and-down, in and out, and all the while, the balance of Buddha nature holds it together while we try this and that.

There are many names for Buddha nature— the web that has no weaver, God, Allah, the Tao— and underlying them all is impermanence, the pain and pleasure of existence. All the great traditions offer ways to accept impermanence, for if we can wrap ourselves around the idea that change is what offers us opportunities, we can live in the moment for all that we are.

There is no one way to present moment awareness but all the great traditions encourage living life fully present. They offer prayer and meditation as tools but only we can find our middle way for balance is uniquely personal.

Yet, the nature of impermanence is that balance requires constant adjustment. Just when we think we have found balance, a way to live that accounts for most possibilities, something changes. Sometimes, everything changes or at least seems that way.

Those are the moments of greatest opportunity but they often require everything of us. Our emotions rage. These are not moments to be passed off in positive platitudes or repressed in any way. These are moments to explore the energy beneath the emotion. Present moment awareness plunges us into the energy without the thought.

Many of the traditions define emotion as raw energy with thought or a story attached to it. Usually, many stories emerge with our emotions. It is the stories that bubble up and we attach to them. Before we know it, our thoughts have removed us from the rawness of what is occurring.

The result is we either stuff the emotion away or devise a strategy to control what we are feeling but regardless, we do not immerse ourselves in the rawness but impermanence is the nature of existence, so we will get another opportunity. What present moment awareness offers is a way to wake up and be in the rawness.

It is not surprising that we are resistant to being in the moment for it means accepting the unknown, yet we do not doubt that life is unpredictable. We want a certain amount of unpredictability in our lives but we do not want to be uncomfortable.

When something outside our regular routine occurs, we get unsettled, and we struggle for balance. Whether the occurrence is as minor as not being able to get a cup of coffee or if it is life-changing, accepting impermanence as the nature of our lives gives us the power to deal with change. It is not approval of any event but acceptance of impermanence.

“So this place of meeting our edge, of accepting the present moment and the unknown, is a very powerful place for the person who wishes to awaken and open their heart and mind…it is what propels us toward transformation…the present moment is the fuel for your personal journey” (Pema Chödrön).

Meditation and prayer are two, sustainable fuel resources and always available. We begin within so that we may be all we want to be to the world. In finding our unique middle way, we awaken our hearts and minds to the ways of the world, able to adjust to its constant flux.

Thursday Tidbits: The Way to Fall Apart

Posted on May 30, 2013May 29, 2013 by KM Huber in Inspiration, Spirituality, Thursday Tidbits

This week’s Thursday Tidbits post considers retreat as a meditative withdrawal and as the idea of falling apart. As Pema Chödrön says, “Everything that comes together at some time falls apart.” Ours is to experience pain and pleasure–usually alternating but not always–for the nature of existence is impermanence.

Recently, I attended an online retreat offered by the Omega Institute, featuring Pema Chödrön. The retreat covered the four marks of existence–impermanence, egolessness, suffering, and peace–during the first minutes of the retreat, Chodron referred to the four as the facts of life. I felt a familiar stirring.

I had been drawn to the retreat from the moment the invitation arrived in my email box, about 72 hours prior to the event’s first session. I was not aware of having any connection to the Omega Institute, which is not to say I did not but is to say I do not remember a connection. Still don’t.

Serendipitous email or no, the retreat affirmed my suspicion that I was, indeed, falling apart again–health, writing, life–but the initial session on impermanence revealed how adept I had become at avoiding falling apart. That was an unexpected moment yet it was obvious I had been creating various bubbles of escape for some time. No wonder they felt so familiar, so comfortable.

You might think all my posts about allowing bubbles to float up and through us while remaining in present moment awareness might have had some effect on me other than escaping with the bubbles. They did, ultimately.

A few months ago when I started reading Pema Chödrön’s books, I chose The Places That Scare You over When Things Fall Apart. I felt a familiar stirring of avoidance when I made my selection but convinced myself I needed to read the former title–for what reason now escapes me.

Not surprisingly, the phrase that I kept hearing in the online retreat was “when things fall apart,” more by participants than by Pema Chödrön. That was not surprising, either.

“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. And they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy” (When Things Fall Apart).

The words falling apart have always been difficult for me. I eschew vulnerability in the same breath that I advocate an open mind and open heart; however, I do know “strength does not come from a bubble of safety” (Chödrön).

My bubble burst within the first few minutes of listening to Pema Chödrön, and my tears streamed right along with the video; Chödrön is quite a wit so my tears were from laughter as well as from the pain of recognition. It was a great way to fall apart, actually.

Nothing has changed and everything has changed. I am still dealing with a significant lupus flare and adjusting my life accordingly; as always, diet, meditation, and yoga figure prominently. For me, it is not a matter of being less but a matter of being more, just as I am, which is new.

If I avoid the discomfort that is part of being alive, I am living in a bubble. Bubbles burst; it is their nature. If I open to both the pleasure and the pain of life, I am vulnerable but strength resides in accepting that things fall apart and come together. It is the nature of existence.

*****

Thursday Tidbits are weekly posts that offer choice bits of information to celebrate our oneness with one another through our unique perspectives. It is how we connect, how we have always connected but in the 21st century, the connection is a global one.

Thursday Tidbits: Like Water Through Rock

Posted on May 16, 2013June 20, 2019 by KM Huber in Inspiration, Spirituality, Thursday Tidbits

This week’s Thursday Tidbits post considers the open mind, essential to mindfulness and perhaps “the gentlest thing in the whole world” as Byron Katie maintains. Not surprisingly, that which is gentle may also be the most powerful for the open mind, in its awareness, accepts what is.

Acceptance may be the power behind the gentleness of the open mind: “Ultimately the truth flows into it and through it, like water through rock” (A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony With the Way Things Are, Byron Katie). Undoubtedly, accepting some truths may seem like water flowing through rock yet imagine the power of that possibility.

The power of the open mind seems similar to Tonglen, a Buddhist teaching often translated as “sending and taking.” Tonglen “refers to being willing to take in the pain and suffering of ourselves and others and to send out happiness to us all” (Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You).

What we take in, we send out in a gentle flow if “…we drop the storyline that goes along with the pain and feel the underlying energy” (Pema Chödrön). In many ways, the open mind is “the bottom line” stripped of judgments and labels, the stuff of storylines.

It is not easy to drop storylines, not easy to resist being pulled in one direction or the other– it is much easier to react–but in the open mind of Tonglen, we stay with the energy that is stirring us. No matter how long or short our stay, in choosing response over reaction, we keep our options open.

In remaining open, we find the way for any truth to flow through us–some consider this courage—we appreciate the gentle persistence of water flowing through rock for it is not how long it may take but that it is undertaken at all. That is the power of being gentle.

The open mind is where paradoxes thrive and similes “like water through rock” describe the world of infinite possibilities for what has never been a moment’s thought may be the next moment’s reality.

On a personal note, beginning tomorrow I am attending a three-day, online Pema Chödrön retreat as an accompaniment to a lupus flare that is worthy of water flowing through rock.

The Chödrön retreat is “The Marks of Existence,” exploring impermanence, egolessness, suffering, and peace. More information is available from the Omega Institute.

Also, this past week I found three other blogs that seemed related to what this post considers the open mind. I enjoyed each post for entirely different reasons.

Functional Wellness: The Body-Mind Connection is written by a medical doctor and is a thorough, practical discussion of our mind-body’s “one bidirectional system.” This is one of the most succinct, mind-body articles I have found and includes excellent resources.

Things I have been thinking about lately offers Theodore Roethke’s poem, “The Waking,” a poem of paradox and as the analysis excerpts reveal, a great deal more.

Daily Dose of Vitamin S opens us to an everyday possibility often overlooked and a vitamin well-worth a daily dose, at least.

Finally, this week’s video features excerpts from author David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon University. It is called “This is Water: Reimagining Everyday Life.” It is nine minutes long but just may help you get through the next nine minutes you find yourself stuck in the everyday.

Video from KarmaTube

The Color of Water

Posted on May 12, 2013May 11, 2013 by KM Huber in Inspiration, Spirituality

Ever wonder about the color of water? Water “…takes on the image of the entire world without ever losing its essential clearness,” whether it is a drop in an ocean, a mountain stream, or a rain puddle. (Mark Nepo).

In any given moment, the color of water is steel-gray, sky-blue, moss-green or dirt-brown for water easily embraces the colors of any obstacle anywhere, as the nature of water is movement, while its essence remains ever clear.

Washing over stones, roaring over a cliff to drop thousands of feet, or raining in torrents, it is the nature of water to take on any landscape for as long as necessary, even eons to fill a desert basin as a great salt lake. The nature of water is transparency for no one color ever stays, and no one outcome is preferred.

Like the nature of water we must “…embrace everything clearly without imposing who we are and without losing who we are” (Mark Nepo). It is the nature of human compassion to take on any event completely, no matter its color, but only for as long as necessary.

“The highest good is like water.
Water gives life to the ten thousand
things and does not strive.”

~Lao Tsu~

It is not so easy for us to take on the color of any experience for our nature is not the nature of water, even if our bodies are more water than tissue and bone.

We are concerned with the image we present to the world—it may or may not reflect our true nature—often, it is an image thoughtfully prepared so it is somewhat opaque, designed to reflect certain colors in certain situations. It is how we survive in the larger current of human nature.

It is easier to remain within the current of human nature, whether or not that is who we actually are, for we are not water changing the landscape, unaffected by changes, yet the nature of water is a compassionate one.

The nature of water, its constancy to the flow that is all life—regardless of change–reveals we are more than any image we reflect or action that we take. In each moment there is the opportunity not to strive but to seek the essence of our heart, the source of our compassion.

Unlike the nature of water, we are not always aware or completely present in our lives. We are not free from extraordinary or ordinary obstacles but the color of water teaches us not to stay the color of those obstacles but ultimately, to run true and clear to who we are in the current of human nature.

“Beneath the clouds, water desires only to flow, and beneath our tensions and problems, the human spirit wants only to embrace and soften” (Mark Nepo).

Perhaps the color of water is compassion reflecting as the colors of the day.

Thursday Tidbits: The Art of Peace

Posted on May 9, 2013June 19, 2014 by KM Huber in Inspiration, Oneness, Spirituality, Thursday Tidbits

This week’s Thursday Tidbits is the Bloggers for Peace monthly post, specifically the art of peace. The art of peace begins within ourselves and radiates outward into every relationship we have, in particular those relationships that for one reason or another are askew or gone awry.

To renew a relationship begins with intention, although to re-open our heart is often difficult. That is why the art of peace begins within, for when we are at peace with ourselves is when we re-connect to serve all.

In order to start, Pema Chödrön maintains it is not such a great effort to once again establish a relationship that serves, if we will just consider that a commitment we once made is now broken.

It means we have to let go of the story we’ve been telling ourselves–the why, the what, the how, or who– and just acknowledge “…that we hardened our heart and closed our mind, that we shut someone out. And then we can retake our vow. On the spot—or as a daily practice—we can reaffirm our intention to keep the door open to all sentient beings for the rest of our life” (Pema Chödrön).

Everyday life, no matter how we approach it, is a practice that requires patience, especially when we do not seem to notice any progress within ourselves or within the world.

There are four emotions that never involve the ego—compassion, gratitude, joy, and love—these four ways have many other names including the four agreements of Don Miguel Ruiz that ask us to be “impeccable” in our speech, not to take whatever occurs personally, to be present in all we do so we are not assuming anything about anyone for when we are present, we are doing the best we can.

The art of peace is available to us in every moment we have for each moment is free from any attachment to what has been or what might be. That we affirm our intention to be the best we can be and live with true compassion for ourselves and others in every moment is what keeps peace always within our grasp. It begins with being present.

“That’s the training of the spiritual warrior, the training of cultivating courage and empathy, the training of cultivating love. It would be impossible to count the number of beings in the world who are hurting, but still we aspire to not give up on any of them and to do whatever we can to alleviate their pain” (Pema Chödrön).

In alleviating that pain we must remember the key to the art of peace: the idea of serving rather than helping or fixing anyone or anything. It is only in serving that we view ourselves and our connection to all life as whole, not broken or weak.

When we are clear in our intention of serving, we are open to what is available for all of us. The art of peace is a celebration of the diversity that makes up the whole, an acknowledgment that uniqueness is necessary for completeness.

Here are links to other Bloggers for Peace and their consideration of the art of peace:

Kozo Hattori: Art Thou Peaceful

Bodhisattva In Training: The Art of Peace

Grandma Lin: May Post for Peace

The Seeker: Peace is Like a River

Caron Dann: Recreationist Theory

Card Castles in the Sky: Float Upward

One of my favorite combinations of the art of lyrics, music, and painting is this well-known video featuring the music and lyrics of Don McLean and Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings.

Being Present in Healing

Posted on May 5, 2013May 4, 2013 by KM Huber in Consciousness, Inspiration, Lupus, Spirituality

My recent trip to the American West was, among other things, a test of the holistic approach to disease that I have followed for the last 33 months. My approach is perhaps best described within Deepak Chopra’s definition of quantum healing:

“…the ability of one mode of consciousness (the mind) to spontaneously correct the mistakes in another mode of consciousness (the body). It is a completely self-enclosed process” (Quantum Healing).

Essentially, this mind-body consciousness is a type of “intelligence” (Chopra’s term) attempting to restore balance in a body that is diseased. It was this “intelligence” that made sense to me when I first read Chopra’s book in the early 1990s and again in 2010 when I removed myself from medical care.

Undoubtedly, it takes a certain amount of desperation and frustration to walk away from medical science, which is not a route that Chopra, a medical physician, advocates. Rather, he argues that medical science can be a viable partner in working with the innate intelligence of the mind-body connection, with the following caveat:

“A man-made drug is a stranger in a land where everyone else is blood kin. It can never share the knowledge that everyone else was born with” (Quantum Healing). In other words, every cell in our body has a kind of intelligence with specific tasks and abilities. All cells in the body work together, ever adjusting to what is occurring.

The inherent intelligence within the mind-body connection is one that medical science has yet to duplicate but it does not mean that medical science cannot assist us in our healing. It can and does–for many. Regardless, awareness of the mind-body intelligence can change our lives just as being aware that every decision we make and every thought we attach to affects our physical body directly and immediately.

That is where stress starts, and with increased stress comes imbalance, and when the imbalance is great enough, there is disease and yes, sometimes irreparable damage. The state of disease for anyone is unique but also may be integral to the individual’s purpose as Anita Moorjani suggests:

“The reasons for…illness lie in [our] personal journey and are probably related to [our] individual purpose. I can now see that my disease was part of why I’m here, and whether I chose to live or die, I wouldn’t be any less magnificent” (Dying to be Me).

Disease as a state of health is how one has lived and continues to live. Just as lupus is not cancer—although in both the body is under attack and in both the autoimmune system plays a major role—directing disease is as unique to the individual as is the optimal level of health outcome.

What that outcome is and how long it may take is just as individualistic as is the degree of recovery. At the very least, an awareness of the inherent intelligence of the mind-body connection provides an alternative to dealing with disease. At the very most, it can change drastically the course of a disease.

“The reason why not everyone manages to take the healing process as far as they can go is that we differ drastically in our ability to mobilize it” (Chopra).

My experience with “incurable” disease is limited to lupus and Sjogren’s Syndrome, the current names for the disease that has been present in my body for at least 35 years. Some medical experts have told me autoimmune disease has been present since childhood. As I am now a sexagenarian, that’s a long time.

My last rheumatologist told me, “There’s just so much wrong with you and it’s been going on for so long.” That is probably still true for that rheumatologist and the entourage of doctors “on my case” but it was not true for me.

I was seriously ill, and I knew it, but I believe “when we get in touch with that infinite place within us–where we are Whole–then illness can’t remain in the body” (Dying to be Me). My intention is not to be smug or simplistic–nor am I speaking of mere positive thinking–my awareness of the inherent intelligence within my body-mind connection opened me to how I live as well as how I have lived. It gave me a place to begin some 33 months ago, and for me, it has meant drastic changes.

My life does not resemble the life I once knew, nor will it ever. It is not a life free of disease—not yet and maybe never will be–but it is a life aware of the possibilities in each moment I have. It is a life lived from within, and only now do I see the world as it really is, moment by moment, the only reality I ever have.

Thursday Tidbits: Unhooking the Pain

Posted on April 18, 2013April 18, 2013 by KM Huber in Inspiration, Oneness, Spirituality, Thursday Tidbits

This week’s Thursday Tidbits considers “shenpa…the all-worked-up feeling of…getting hooked on a negative emotion” such as pain (Pema Chödrön). In order to unhook ourselves from shenpa, we must give our full attention to our pain and that includes physical discomfort as well. We must immerse ourselves in our pain in order to release it.

KMHuberImage; oneness; St. Mark's Refuge FL — KMHuberImage

In giving our full attention to our pain, we open up to the experience of it and not the drama or storyline we have told ourselves about our pain. Our storyline is what hooks us until we sit down in the middle of what is hurting us, forsaking its interpretation for its reality.

Anyone who has ever experienced chronic pain—physical, emotional or both–knows that this kind of shenpa can easily become the only story we ever live. Yet, when we give chronic pain our full attention, we change the idea of our pain. We are no longer content to live its story.

Unhooking ourselves from shenpa does not mean that we will be completely pain-free but it does mean we give our full attention to living the lives we have as the beings we are. Being in our pain completely is where all healing begins.

KMHunerImage; McCord Park; Tallahassee — KMHuberImage

Essential to all life is water, and it has more than one form, yet it is either flowing or frozen. Mark Nepo suggests that how we deal with our pain resembles the form water takes. “For when trees fall into the ice, the river shatters. But when a large limb falls into the flowing water, the river embraces the weight and floats around it” (Book of Awakening).

If we view our pain as ice, jagged and hard, we risk living shattered lives of fear and worry, holding our shenpa close. But if we give our pain our full attention and release it branch by branch into the river of life, it becomes a burden we can bear.

We release the idea of our pain and experience it as is, moment by moment, within our flow in our own time. “Once given full attention, you will come back—one drop at a time— into the tide of the living” (Nepo).

Like the river’s path, our lives wend in ways we never imagine. It is life’s way, and pain is only one part, although it can last a lifetime. It is up to us whether pain remains sharp or a bubble in our daily flow.

KMHuberImage; McCord Park; Tallahassee; Florida — KMHuberImage

We have to show up for every moment of our lives, pain or no, giving our full attention to life, trusting that we will absorb our pain and not be shattered by it.

For the people of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, for the people of West and the state of Texas, we open ourselves to each and every one of you—victims and family members—for as long as it takes to absorb the pain. There is no limit on your courage or on our love.

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