Prompts for the Promptless – KM Huber's Blog

Thursday Tidbits: Digging Deep for “Meraki”

Posted on March 21, 2013 by KM Huber in Consciousness, Lupus, Oneness, Thursday Tidbits

This week’s Thursday Tidbits considers meraki, a modern Greek word for that “extra something” we add to whatever we’re doing, no matter the task. Usually intangible and often inexplicable, meraki helps us immerse ourselves into whatever is at hand. We dig deep for meraki.

Over the last few weeks, I have had to reinvent my diet, in fact my entire daily way of being. Thanks to Prompts for the Promptless, I now have a word for it, meraki, which actually is often associated with cooking, that hard to identify ingredient or quality so essential to adapting to life.

Although I thought I was on a Slow Boat to Fitness, it seems it was not my boat at all. Last November, I began supplementing my diet with a few legumes, bread made from brown rice, and a few fruits. I was able to tolerate the extra carbohydrates but steadily the inflammation increased as did the discomfort. Only apples are still allowed.

At first, I thought it was the yoga so I modified my practice yet eventually, I had to stop. I continued with my walking but as the inflammation and discomfort increased, my distance lessened. Yet, after five months, I finally had a meraki moment.

Did I gain weight? Yes one day and no the next and then yes again, the usual roller coaster that has been my experience with the inflammation from degenerative arthritis and lupus. Overall, my weight did not change, which I attribute to the doshas of Ayurveda, of which I am kapha, mostly. Ayurveda eased me into my meraki moment regarding my food.

The ancient art of Ayurveda is not concerned with classifying carbohydrates, proteins, and fats but concentrates on the six tastes found in food: the hot tastes of pungent, sour, and salty; the cold tastes of bitter, astringent, and sweet. Those tastes carry different messages to the body and it reacts accordingly. Ayurveda is so much more than that but I am just beginning.

For me, Ayurveda provides a way to practice my meraki with maitri or loving-kindness as I let go of a diet that I enjoyed but did not provide my body the fuel it must have to fight inflammation and support my joints. I was looking outside myself for answers that were always within me:

“If you look for the truth outside yourself,
It gets farther and farther away.
Today walking alone, I meet it everywhere I step.
It is the same as me, yet I am not it.
Only if you understand it in this way
Will you merge with the way things are.” ~ Tung-Shan ~

Meraki helps me listen to my body rather than sending it commands to which it cannot comply because it does not have the energy. A return to yoga is actually relieving some of the discomfort in my joints, and the walking is easier.

With meraki, which always involves one’s enthusiasm for life, I have added daily trips to the delightful blog, Zen flash, an online temple offering daily posts of solitary images and transcendent lines. It is a part of my morning meditation practice but I also visit at other times to remember:

“Everyday life

is not divorced from

the Eternal State.

~~Sri Ramana Maharshi

In the spirit of Zen flash, this week’s video offers Schumann’s Opus 15 as a moment of merkai from me to you.

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: The Wu Wei In All of Us

Posted on March 14, 2013August 21, 2014 by KM Huber in Thursday Tidbits

This week’s Thursday Tidbits post considers Taoism’s “wu wei,” literally translated as non-doing or non action. Reaching for the good that is in all of us—listening to our heart over our head—is innate in us, as is the risk of opening ourselves to the world. In addition, wu wei is the current prompt in rarasaur’s delightful series, Prompts for the Promptless. Here is rarasaur’s description of the essence of wu wei:

“Wu wei, or non-doing, is a Taoist practice involving letting one’s action follow the simple and spontaneous course of nature rather than interfering with the harmonious working of universal law by imposing arbitrary and artificial forms. In other words, it is the action of non-action.”

I had not considered wu wei for this week’s Thursday Tidbits until I read rarasaur’s prompt, yet wu wei encompasses the heart of the three posts I chose from dailygood.org. In considerably different ways, each is a story of the open heart, the voice of instinct.

An Astounding Act of High School Sportsmanship is about a high school basketball game in El Paso, TX. Although the video is no longer available, the words revealing the thoughts of the young basketball player will open your heart. It’s a wu wei reminder that every day we have an opportunity to let another person shine, to realize it is the other person’s light that is necessary, and our role is to make that happen. In this case, the game’s outcome was not in jeopardy for this moment was not about the game. It was about knowing whose turn it is and rising to the occasion.

The second story opens with: “It says something about where we’ve come as a society that the simple act of fixing something that’s broken is considered a revolutionary act. Yet here we are” at The Repair Café. The Café originated in the Netherlands in 2010 and is slowly but steadily gaining global awareness. It is a decide-for-yourself café where people can learn how to fix items or have items fixed. They can have a coffee or read a do-it-yourself book to learn how to or wait for an item to be fixed.

The Café is a place to work with stuff—recognizing what comprises it and how it works—it is a place to hone inner resources as well, passing skills from one generation to another. It is the wu wei of sharing who we are and what we have with one another in respect for the resources of the planet.

Finally, there is the poignant story of Susan Spencer-Wendel who wrote Until I Say Goodbye, a book based on her year of living with joy. She used her iPhone to write her 89,000 word book as she only had the use of her right thumb.

Her herculean effort is consistent with her comment regarding her diagnosis of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease): [I was] “equally grateful for a life of perfect health and determined to face it with bravery.” Hers is the way of the wu wei warrior, brave in her acceptance of what is and ever seeking all that it may give her.

Wu wei is the way of the open heart, immersing ourselves into what is without trying to control the outcome. It is acceptance. Wu wei is not something we pursue but a reminder that our natural state is to open ourselves to all that we are so we may be:

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom” (Elizabeth Appell).

This week’s video features the Indigo Girls’ “Galileo,” a man who risked a lifetime for truth.

Thursday Tidbits: the 11th Possibility

Posted on February 28, 2013 by KM Huber in Consciousness, Thursday Tidbits

This week’s Thursday Tidbits considers the 11^th possibility as defined on rarasaur’s wonderful blog series, Prompts for the Promptless. The series is not just for bloggers but for anyone who wants to stretch and flex the mind. To me, that is where the 11^th possibility resides:

“The 11th Possibility is the idea that, regardless of data to the contrary, something unexpected and outside the realm of ordinary thought is always potentially around the corner” (rarasaur).

Perhaps the 11^th possibility is the heartbeat of curiosity, comfortable in the uncertainty that a nine out of ten result is lost in the light of the one time it is a glimpse into the unknown. We are startled into complete attention, our creativity sparked, for we see in way we did not, which makes all the difference.

Consider Albert Einstein’s thoughts on a human being in contrast to how we might consider being human:

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us ‘the universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of consciousness.

KMHuberImage, Waverly Pond, Florida — KMHuberImage

“This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening the circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty” (Einstein).

In that regard, what if we eagerly anticipate the 11^th possibility–the idea that the unknown and uncertain might occur–rather than relying on the ten probabilities that precede it? Clearly, I am mixing math and probability with mere musing but the 11^th possibility is so like Randall Jarrell’s sick child crying out, “all that I’ve never thought of think of me,” and so I do.

Perhaps my favorite illustration of the 11^th possibility is the story of the monarch butterfly that caught a ride with Southwest Airlines. True to its own timetable, the monarch butterfly overslept in its New York state cocoon and missed the insect group flight to Texas. Thanks to a woman who simply asked an airline if it would transport a butterfly to Texas, the butterfly caught a ride to San Antonio.

“It is a grand gesture, to be sure, ushering that lonely insect back on its way — but If the gentle flap of a single butterfly’s wings can shape the weather, then perhaps the kindness shown towards saving one butterfly’s life could change the course of history for the better” (Daily Good.org)

Regardless, with a little help from each other, the uncertainty of the unknown is a mere 11^th possibility. Imagine that.

This week’s video features Joe Cocker singing his rather famous reminder of our connection to one another.