Category Archives: Open Heart

#Reverb12: Day 7

2 Replies

reverb12

There’s one prompt from today’s group that I feel like even if I haven’t answered it directly, I’ve answered around it, so close to it, making lists of the highlights of my year, talking about what I didn’t want to forget, that I don’t feel like doing it again. It’s this: “7 Minutes: Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2012 in 7 minutes. Set an alarm for 7 minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2012. (Author: Patty Digh, with an extra 2 minutes from me [the Linar Studio]!)”

What’s the one thing you want to take with you into 2013?

This prompt is from Kat at I Saw You Dancing. Her summary of this first week of Reverb 12, her own answers to the prompts she’s been offering, the event she’s hosting, is really beautiful. You should read it if you get the chance.

The one thing I want to take with me into 2013 is my open heart. After so many years of keeping it locked up tight, trying to protect it from harm, I had it broken open, twice in a row. First I lost my Obi, and six months later, my friend Kelly. It was a painful and stark reminder of impermanence, that there are no guarantees, that I didn’t have time to waste. I decided to honor their loss, their lives by finally, really and fully living mine.

I had been sleepwalking, hiding, suffering, faking my way through my days, through my whole life, confused and afraid. That hurt, the loss, those traumas woke me up. The process started three years ago, but it wasn’t really until this year that I adopted the change as a way of being, determined that I was never going back. I don’t want to go back into my cocoon. I used to believe that it kept me safe, but it was a stinky, cluttered, lonely mess of a place.

Giving

The full prompt is: “The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.” (David Viscott) What is your gift to give?

First of all, this reveals the origins of the quote on the picture I shared the other day. Someone had posted it on Facebook, and I loved it so much, I had to make something with it, but I had trouble finding who to attribute the quote to, (a few places even credited Pablo Picasso), so in the end I didn’t. Now we know: David Viscott.

mypurposeMy gift is reminding people of their basic nature–awake, wise, and compassionate–and encouraging them to embody it. Reality, the world, all of it is workable. Anything that needs fixing, anyone who needs help, we can be the someone to do so (even if the life we are saving is our own), we have the power, the means to make things better, to ease suffering in the world. We will struggle, but we are not alone, we are not lost. No matter where we are, no matter how bad things have gotten, we can start again.

I won’t sugar coat it, don’t pretend that nothing is sad or broken or irritating or upsetting or difficult. I’m not lying, or making up a story with a happy ending to make it easier to fall asleep. Hope is just as problematic as fear. I am sharing what is real and true: life is beautiful and brutal, tender and terrible. As Pema Chödrön says, “None of us is okay and all of us are fine.”

I encourage and inspire people to keep their hearts open. No matter how much it hurts, or how hard, we have to show up, soften to what is, stay in our seats, in our bodies, on our path. There is joy to be found, love to be given. Even in the worst moments, we can take a breath, experience freedom, offer kindness and feel at ease.

Feast

The full prompt: Hopefully you’ve had more than one spectacular meal in 2012, but what is the first that comes to mind? Were you surrounded by family at the dining room table? Sitting on a bench by the lake? Bring us there.

The feast I experienced this year was a month of eating while we were in Waldport, Oregon. Fresh seafood. Marionberries, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, lettuce, cucumbers, and carrots from the Farmer’s Market.

farmersmarkethaulMaple bars, Bear Claws stuffed with marionberry filling (*swoon*), cookies, and other luscious goodies from the Depoe Baykery. It was a really, really good thing we were walking so many miles on the beach every day.

depoebaykeryMy mom and aunt visited for a few days, and we ate very well. The full breakfast, spaghetti dinner, and venison stew were some of my favorites. At dinner one night with a group of my aunts and uncles, we were all stuffed from pasta, so full we could barely eat another bite but there was strawberry shortcake, so we were making the best of it, and at the same time, we were talking about food, other meals we remembered, special recipes (my grandma’s orange marmalade was referenced). I looked around the table with love and said “You know how I know y’all are my people? We are all stuffed, but still managing to eat dessert, and at the same time, we are still talking about food.”

Reverb12: Day One

10 Replies

reverb12Looking through all the Day One Reverb posts, I came up with a set of prompts I’m going to answer in this post. This has been such an interesting process already–reflecting and making lists and answering questions, considering where I’ve been, contemplating what might happen next. Ever since I turned 45, only a few weeks ago, I’ve had this lingering sense of curiosity and contentment.

Where did you start the year, 2012?

Here’s one place where my blog and journals come in really handy. I can look up the date, December 1st, and see just what I said, know what I was thinking. My blog post from a year ago was titled, Being Clear, Being Open, Saving Myself and Saving the World, and in it I said, “For me, giving in to my impulse, my aspiration to create, to discover and share what truth is for me, is the only way I know to save myself, and maybe help save the world.”

It was really interesting to see how even a year ago, I was struggling with having enough time to do everything I wanted, my paid work and my heart’s work, my living and my loving. I still struggle with the same, but I have much more clarity about what I want, about what living an authentic life, being healthy and whole looks like.

The first line of my morning pages from that same day was, “2011 is almost over.” I went on, after some complaints about an ongoing family struggle, to say “Compassionate visionaries have to exist,” (imagining myself as one), and to explain why:

We have to see what is possible, inspire, move people who will change the world… Art may not save the world, but artists who are alive and following the path of art might just save it, or at least have a small part in it… Art might not save the world, but it can soothe it, inspire it, open its heart, and it most certainly will save the artist.

art by hugh macleod

art by hugh macleod, from that blog post one year ago

Did I try anything new in 2012?

It’s pretty simple really, I showed up. I kept my heart open. I did things that I normally would have been too afraid to do because of a lack of confidence, because I was embarrassed or ashamed or felt unworthy or didn’t think I could do it perfectly, (and doing things perfectly used to be really, really important to me). In 2012, I risked failure, I took a chance that I might look foolish or make a mistake, that people might not like me. I trusted and loved myself anyway, most of the time. I tried.

Where, how am I starting 2013?

Confident, in the way that the brilliant Susan Piver describes it, “the willingness to be as ridiculous, luminous, intelligent, and kind as you really are, without embarrassment.”

As I am. Just me, right where I am and as I am, reality and love embodied.

Open-hearted. Life is beautiful and brutal, tender and terrible. There is also basic goodness, an innate wisdom, kindness, and wakefulness, everything is workable. Knowing this, I am going to show up with an open heart, no matter how hard it is, and no matter how much it might hurt.

What was last year’s word? How did it play out?

retreatbuddhalilac

When I initially picked this word, I imagined it would mean rest, balance, practice, and transformation. I thought I would be removed from the irritation and distraction of life, that I would be away and protected, that I would experience ease and peace. This is how I envisioned the year, and holy wow was I wrong.

Yes there was practice, intense process and devotion that left me broken open, raw, exhausted, and sometimes completely confused and afraid. I encountered strong emotions, intense realizations, and deep struggle. I committed myself, studied with many teachers, read wise and sacred texts, extended concentrated effort and attention.

There was also transformation. I am not the same, and yet I am more myself. I know who I am, and I honor that as often and as ardently as I am able. I am done with denying, hiding, feeling ashamed of this brilliant mess that is me. I realize that the only thing I have to offer, my only power is my essential nature.

Balance and rest, not so much. After all the retreats I’ve done, how wrecked I always feel after, I’m not sure how I forgot that this was the nature of retreat, that in choosing that as my word, my theme for the year, this was what I was inviting.

What is this year’s word?

freedomthanksgivingcrow

I was so sure I knew what this year’s word would be: simplicity. I’ve been thinking and writing about it for weeks, was so certain. It seemed so right, so perfect, just what I needed for the coming year.

But then something magic happened as I was working on this post. I was making the above image, a picture I took from my front porch on Thanksgiving morning, where the crow flying across the sky was a happy accident. I added the word “simplicity” and it just didn’t look right. Font after font, different colors and sizes and weights and placement, and it still looked off, wrong somehow.

I started considering the qualities of the word. Freedom and ease came immediately to mind. Freedom. Hmmm. There was something about that, so I tried it with the image: perfect. That’s my word. Freedom: simplicity, space, ease, surrender, clarity. “The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint; liberty, independence; the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved; being physically unrestricted and able to move easily; self-determination, open, opportunity, play, joy.” I like how that sounds. No, actually I love how that sounds.