July 2014 Audio Meditation

Watching a video of a talk from, I think, a Science and Nonduality Conference, a concept caught my attention and got me to thinking about the power of creativity and unexpected discoveries.  In this talk, the presenter described the process of  “emergence”, where nature is able to bring things together and create completely unanticipated results, outcomes we wouldn’t be able to conger up from the original elements involved.  The example he gave that stuck with me is how, when nature brings together two inert elements—say, two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen—there is no way any of us would expect that combination to create a liquid, water.  For me, this is a powerful and inspiring example of Nature’s intelligence and of the creative, living context in which we live. Read More “704th Week: The Concept of Emergence—Expect Miracles”

A couple of weekends ago, I took a walk across Central Park to say hello to the office I had for 33 years. It lives on the corner of 90^th and Central Park West in New York City, and for all those years I was able to look at trees in Central Park every day, all day long. That office and I had many powerful experiences together over those years and as I walked back across the park a practice came to mind that I spoke into the phone as an email and sent to myself to work on later. The process of creating that practice reminded me that for all the years I walked across Central Park each weekday morning, I often had my most creative inspirations during those walks.

A couple of days later, when I settled in to write up the practice, I discovered that it had disappeared into the mysterious realm of “where did that email I spent so much time creating go”? The email I sent to myself is nowhere to be found. No amount of searching has revealed it. So, that practice is lost somewhere in cyberspace and seems no longer to be in my head, either.

What this brought into my awareness was the importance of recognizing when there’s nothing to do but to go with the flow of what’s unfolding. And so, what arises from my experience is this practice that I’m sharing with you right now. Since I realized the email was gone, gone, gone, I’ve been having to accept that what I had wanted to share is no more, so I can now engage the practice of letting go of preconceived expectations and, instead, being present to what is.

I continue to resonate with the passing of Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh and the powerful teachings he brought to the world via his practices of mindfulness, of constantly returning to the present moment, and of his acknowledgment and acceptance of the complexities of our inherent and inescapable wholeness as human beings.

For quite a while now, I’ve focused on wholeness and self-acceptance as being central to a sense of well-being, supporting clients (and myself!) to acknowledge and accept aspects of themselves that aren’t what Buddhists would call “skillful”. I encourage clients (and myself here, as well) to also acknowledge and accept the aspects of themselves that are gifts to their well-being and quality of life. This acknowledgement can sometimes be even more difficult than looking at what we experience as negative in ourselves.

From Thich Nhat Hanh: Your mind is like a piece of land planted with many different kinds of seeds: seeds of joy, peace, mindfulness, understanding, love, and more; seeds of craving, anger, fear, hate, forgetfulness, and more. These wholesome and unwholesome seeds are always there, sleeping in the soil of your mind. The quality of your life depends on the seeds you water. If you plant tomato seeds in your gardens, tomatoes will grow. Just so, if you water a seed of peace in your mind, peace will grow. When the seeds of happiness in you are watered, you will become happy. When the seed of anger in you is watered, you will become angry. The seeds that are watered frequently are those that will grow strong.

For this week’s practice, I invite you to notice what seeds of your wholeness you regularly water. Notice which seeds/aspects of your wholeness you feed. Where do you place your attention? What’s your style of expressing yourself with your self-talk and in your relationship to the world around you? Bringing awareness to this kind of practice offers the possibility of choice. If you discover that you water seeds that bring distress, disappointment, or other forms of painful suffering, notice what it’s like to shift your attention to something that is soothing, comforting, beautiful, or in some other way nourishing to you. This doesn’t mean to ignore feelings that need attention and validation. Instead, it’s more about how many of us have developed automatic ways of focusing our attention on watering “seeds” that lead to unhappiness or suffering.