Over and over, I’ve been asked the same thing about my recent trip to Africa: what was the best part, the most important thing I learned, my biggest “aha”? The people, the animals, the landscape, the country, and the African STAR workshop enriched my life in so many ways. Did one thing stand out?
I puzzled over this, and then it hit me.
The biggest lesson for me was this–I went. I didn’t take the advice of the whiney chorus of nagging, nay-saying voices in my head intoning “NO-O-O-O. Don’t go. You shouldn’t do this,” somber as a criminal court judge handing down a life sentence without possibility of parole.
“You don’t have the time,” the clockwatcher crisply noted. “You don’t have the money,” begged the voice of lack, convinced it’s the only thing between me and a life spent living under a bridge with my worldly belongings in a shopping cart. “You didn’t plan this far enough in advance,” clucked the practical one as she studied the lists on her clipboard. “The long plane ride will wipe you out,” implored the hand-wringer that thinks danger and injury lurk around every corner. “Everyone will think it’s foolish/be jealous/won’t like you,” pleaded the approval-junkie that desperately wants to get along well with others.
Is she looking for approval?
I’d heard them all before, cautioning me not to seize other opportunities in my life. I’ve listened to their advice many times. This time, I realized they were just the voices of limiting thoughts that weren’t true. So I thanked them for their efforts. And I ignored them.
Oh my stomach still did loops when I gave the airline agent my credit card information. But I knew my feelings were coming from thoughts fueled by my Inner Nags. So I bought the ticket.
And I had a fantastic trip with absolutely no regrets. I was enchanted. I learned. I grew. I shared amazing sights and transformative insights with fabulous people. I had an adventure. It felt light and airy and magical and free. And it still does.
He doesn't seem to be worried about his future.
The Buddha taught that you can always know the sea because it always tastes of salt and you can always know enlightenment because it always tastes like freedom.
I can recall so many adventures that I’ve passed up because I chose to believe that chorus of hyper-cautious, sensible voices. This time I listened to the deeper, wiser voice inside me. “Go,” it whispered. “This is an opportunity of a lifetime. Don’t pass it up. Go.”
Recognizing and listening to that still, quiet voice of truth is the greatest lesson I learned. And it’s delicious. It tastes like freedom.
Do you ever say “yes” or “maybe” when you really want to say “no?” Or do you muddle your “no” with explanations, excuses, or apologies?
Consider these alternatives:
–I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me. But you know, I don’t know, I just don’t think it’s a good idea. I’m sorry. Please don’t be mad at me.
–No. I’m not ready to have sex with you.
How about these:
–I really don’t want you to use my car tonight because the last time you went out in it you stayed out until 4 am and you didn’t call me and I was so worried about you and I just don’t sleep when that happens.
–No, dear. You can’t borrow my car tonight.
Or these:
–I don’t know. I’m really tired, and I’m not sure how I’ll feel tonight. So, I’ll have to call you later.
–No, I’m not available tonight. Thank you for asking.
How about these options:
–You know, my credit card balances have really crept up and I have to get my washer fixed and go to the dentist and I don’t get paid for another two weeks. So, I don’t know, I’ll have to think about it.
–No, I can’t lend you money.
When we are not clear in our no’s we open the door to debate and argument. We set ourselves up for difficult relationships. We often agree to do things that conflict with our real desires and our core values.
And whether we reluctantly go along with something because our “no” was never clearly expressed, or we somehow wriggle out of it by offering up enough excuses, we never enjoy ourselves. Either we wind up doing something we didn’t want to do, or we’re exhausted by our guilt and the effort to get out of it.
One of the most empowering things we can do is to say “no” honestly, clearly, and cleanly. It gives us both inner strength and peace in our hearts.
There’s an ancient mango tree next to my cottage; it’s magnificent, with a thick, gnarled brown trunk and long glossy leaves. How many hurricanes it’s withstood is anybody’s guess. It’s been barren for at least 35 years, which is how long I’ve had this place. This year, inexplicably, it flowered, and then, magically, massive clusters of fruit appeared.
A few weeks ago, its mangoes began falling. I sampled one, but it was tasteless. The fruit drops day and night, thudding on the roof and plopping to the ground, but I’ve ignored it, except to gather it up from time to time and bury it, to keep it from attracting insects. I have two other trees providing fruit, so I gave it no further thought, except at midnight whenever a hard, green mango smacks onto the roof and rolls to the ground.
As I cleaned up the fruit this morning, I spotted a couple of really pretty, golden specimens. Curious, I took them in to sample, and they were an extraordinary surprise–sweet, tender, and delicious.
I think the tree is telling me that we can always regenerate, sweeten, and offer the best of ourselves to the world. And that sometimes, our assumptions may not be true, even when we think we’ve investigated them.
Aren’t those messages we can always take to heart? No matter how many times we’ve told ourselves we couldn’t do something, no matter how many times our creative mind seemed barren, no matter how many times we’ve failed to seize the opportunities that come to us, we can always regenerate and bloom and sweeten. And even when we’ve told ourselves the same old story, over and over, we can look inside again, and find liberating new truth.
The mango tree is just outside my bedroom window, and late at night, as I’m drifting off to sleep, I hear it out there, releasing it’s sweet golden offerings. I hear them rustling through the palm fronds as they descend, then landing in the thick jungle of vines below. Each time I hear it, I remember all of the regeneration and opportunity and sweetness and truth in the world. And that whether I pay attention or not, they’re there–delicious surprises, just waiting for me to notice.
2. Creativity is associated with positive emotions such as happiness, joy, and love. Contrary to popular myth, the negative emotions of fear, sadness, and anxiety stifle creativity. Don’t believe it? Read this.
3. It’s useful. When you need to solve a problem, you have more options to choose from if you can access creative solutions.
4. It helps you access all of you. Creativity uses both right brain, wholisitc and image based brain processes as well as left brain, logical, verbal, sequential thinking.
5. It requires you to take risks, which develops courage and confidence, and courage and confidence are handy things to have.
6. It develops efficiency. When you are comfortable thinking outside the box, you can get to new solutions more easily.
7. It encourages you to experience “flow,” where you are so fully immersed in what you are doing, that you effortlessly lose your sense of time.
Sometimes I forget that I’m a joy dieter and have total responsibility for my thoughts and feelings. In fact, sometimes I hear stressful voices in my head, and I don’t go to Truth, I don’t become my own Compassionate Witness, I don’t find the painful story I am telling myself and substitute a story that allows me to feel better. Nope, sometimes I have imaginary conversations, even entire debates, with people who aren’t there. And sucker myself into believing every scary, mean, outrageous, guilt-producing thing they tell me. Oh, I do it way less than I used to, but sometimes, something will just creep right under my skin, lodge itself like a fat splinter, and I forget I’m on the joy diet. And, I’ll justify, defend, argue, wheedle, hedge, barter, bandy, and split hairs with a figment of my imagination. And feel awful.
It helps to realize I’m not the only one who does this. In Bird by Bird, Ann Lamott outlines a method of quieting her mind when she converses with imaginary foes:
“Close your eyes and get quiet for a minute, until the chatter starts up. Then isolate one of the voices and imagine the person speaking as a mouse. Pick it up by the tail and drop into a mason jar. Then isolate another voice, pick it up by the tail, drop it in the jar. And so on. Drop in any high-maintenance parental units, drop in any contractors, lawyers, colleagues, children, anyone who is whining in your head. Then put the lid on, and watch all these mouse people clawing at the glass, jabbering away, trying to make you feel like shit because you won’t do what they want—won’t give them more money, won’t be more successful, won’t see them more often. Then imagine that there is a volume-control button on the bottle. Turn it all the way up for a minute, and listen to the stream of angry, neglected, guilt-mongering voices. Then turn it all the way down and watch the frantic mice lunge at the glass, trying to get to you. Leave it down, and get back to your [work].
A writer friend of mine suggests opening the jar and shooting them all in the head. But I think he’s a little angry, and I’m sure nothing like this would ever occur to you.”
I suppose we should add this method to our stillness reportoire.
Some further thoughts about stillness, culled from my personal experience as a failed meditator:
You can put your attention on your breath, and notice how the breath comes in and out, without your doing anything. Just leave your attention on the breath, and without trying to change it, simply follow it in and out.
During a walking meditation, notice the people and objects you pass and give them simple names—dog, flower, bench, airplane, bus. Don’t go to descriptive names, like beautiful flower or stinky bus. Just simple one-word names. I suppose this would work if you were sitting, as well, and looking around your room.
Sometimes, I will repeat a line from a poem to myself over and over, my homegrown, English language version of a “mantra.” Here are couple of examples I use:
From Rumi: “When the ocean comes to you as a lover, marry it!” From the Tao te Ching: “Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear?” When I’m walking, I might repeat, “wait till the water is clear,” over and over. From Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem”: “Forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
Some days, I simply can’t do any of it, no matter what technique I use. I daydream, over and over. I bring myself back, only to daydream again, within nanoseconds. But I find that just the 15 minutes or so away from busyness, phones, emails, other people, is refreshing, even if I’m not achieving much in the way of “doing Nothing.”
On those days, I remind myself of a profound piece of advice given to me by a number of brilliant mentors—“I am willing to suck at this.” That’s how the light gets in.
A full week of doing nothing every single day. I look forward to it now–a respite from a busy life. Today, after hours of talking and listening, silence was delicious. I’ve discovered that I like doing nothing best when walking.
Yesterday, I referred to the John Lennon song, “Across the Universe.” Today, I realized the main line of the song, repeated a dozen times, is this: “Nothing’s gonna change my world.”
Last night, to leave my thoughts behind, I took a small walk, but not so far that I worried about becoming bear food. Away from the lights of the cabins, I flipped my flashlight off. Overhead, billions of stars peeked through scattered clouds. The only sounds were those of intermittent specks of rain falling on nearby leaves.
Thoughts let go almost effortlessly, perhaps for the first time ever. As I left to return to our cabin, words from “the most poetic lyric” John Lennon said he ever wrote, popped into my head: “Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup they slither while pass, they slip their way across the universe.”
I also love this line: thoughts “meander like a restless wind inside a letter box.”
This year, for its fiftieth anniversary, NASA beamed this song into deep space, towards the star Polaris, 431 light years from earth. This was the very first time a song has ever been transmitted into deep space. Was I hearing those words last night from way up there, across the universe?
The internet is everywhere, including the main office at this lovely off the grid hot springs I’m visiting this weekend. Somewhere in the San Luis Valley in south central Colorado, I walked on a mountain trail late last night. As I practiced letting go of thought, I realized that I was perhaps too far from the small enclave of tents and cabins to be heard if a bear or a mountain lion wanted a midnight snack. Already challenged from the altitude and the steep walk, my heart thundered with colorful visions of my dramatic demise.
I remembered Byron Katie’s words when she talked about being robbed at gunpoint. Are you going to live your last few moments on earth in fear, or are you going to enjoy them? Exhilarated, I decided that, since I so rarely have the opportunity to be in such darkness, such quiet, such isolation, that I would not spend this time afraid. If I am going to be eaten tonight, I’ll enjoy every step until then.
Today the waterfall technique soothed me. My thoughts about my son’s traffic ticket are challenging my peace. I walked today, using the waterfall, and the rhythm of my steps reminded me of how, as a teenager, I loved to use my sewing machine. Something about the soft, rhythmical clacking was soothing in those tumultuous times.
I am off for a last minute weekend with a friend, at a rustic hot springs deep in the Colorado Mountains. I have no idea if the internet exists there. I will post if I can, otherwise, you’ll get three posts on Monday.
Do you ever say “yes” or “maybe” when you really want to say “no?” Or do you muddle your “no” with explanations, excuses, or apologies?
There’s an ancient mango tree next to my cottage; it’s magnificent, with a thick, gnarled brown trunk and long glossy leaves. How many hurricanes it’s withstood is anybody’s guess. It’s been barren for at least 35 years, which is how long I’ve had this place. This year, inexplicably, it flowered, and then, magically, massive clusters of fruit appeared.
1. It’s fun.
