Posts Tagged: Radical kindness

Goodbye Cruel World

Goodbye, Cruel World. These words came drifting into my mind while I was walking the beaches of the impossibly beautiful Oregon Coast last weekend. The rhythms of the ocean have a way of opening my inner ear to wisdom, so I didn’t take this lightly.   Goodbye cruel world? Since I wasn’t in a suicidal frame of mind, I didn’t go there.  I also didn’t take it to mean anything about the lives that have come and gone by way of water.

Goodbye, cruel world?  Why these words? Then I had a tiny epiphany. A momentary glimpse of how, even in the expansiveness and generosity of nature, I can lose the beauty of the world around me by listening to my inner narrator. I can so easily contract into a shrunken world inside when I’m triggered by feelings, glued stickily in place with supporting thoughts and evidence.

When I fall into that spell, I’ve said goodbye to the real world around me and hello to a cruel world of self-judgement and lies. Goodbye cruel world. Can I say goodbye to the cruel world that shows up when I believe my inner dictator and discover a kinder one?

When I haven’t shrunk the heaven I live in to fit a smaller belief system (like the one that says I’m not good enough, smart enough, enough enough), there’s never enough of anything around me to fill me up. Least of all the sugar or salty foods I usually begin to crave for comfort or relief.

But when I’m not in the thrall of my inner limiting loops, I’m there for it. All of it. The beauty and the poignancy of the real world. I have said goodbye to the cruel world inside and said hello to something else. To the heaven of wind, rainbows and human connection. And also hello to the challenges of financial ups and downs, failing health, troubled family members.

The more I’ve questioned my feelings/beliefs, the more I see the beauty even in these situations. I may not like it all the time, but I have moments when I see the perfection of the current “disaster.” Or I trust that I just can’t see it yet…and maybe I will. But if I don’t, I figure I’m probably missing something, and I give it up to the mysterious way of things.

I’d rather leave the cruel world behind and live in a kinder one, even if I don’t always see the goodness in the situation at first glance. Hello, real world!

What things have appeared in your life that seemed unkind but turned out later to be kind?

A Personal Prescription for Happiness

I love a good fight. Whether I’m “fighting traffic, fighting the Battle of the Bulge, or having a disagreement (aka “fight”) with my husband, I know that somewhere in there is my “prescription for happiness,” as Byron Katie describes what happens when you turn a painful belief around and discover what’s there that you might have been missing.

He should be more sensitive? Once I can really see how that deep belief causes suffering in my life, really close-up and personal, the little slights and unkindness it creates, I’m more than ready to let go.

Subtracting Insult from Injury

Instead of adding insult to injury, I’ve been learning to subtract. Three weeks ago I broke my collarbone in the middle of the night on Day 2 of a long-anticipated tropical vacation with my husband. I slid on some slippery Mexican tile and catapulted down three steps to land on my collar bone. At three a.m. on a Sunday morning. The story of How I Spent My Vacation starts with that event, with riding a ferry from the island to a hospital and harnessing myself into a splint for the next two weeks.

Help Me to Believe the Truth about Myself, No Matter How Beautiful It Is

This is the prayer we used to close my woman’s circle for the past 11 years. I had learned from the Sufis, but it was written by Marina Widerhehr. Last week was the group’s last circle. We shared “popcorn shapshots,” images of the precious and not-so-precious moments that have united us: the weddings, funerals, illnesses. The laughter and tears.

Since then I’ve noticed my own popcorn images: photos of me in the full bloom of my twenties and thirties. In the radiance of my forties and fifties. I noticed that only when I look at the snapshots from this distance am I able to see the beauty that I was. When I was younger my mind was way to full of the mosquito beliefs brought to me by my inner spin doctor. You’re too fat. Your eyes are too close together. Teeth too big. In a nutshell, There’s something wrong with me.

“The Sun in Drag” on a Rainy Day

As the rains set in here those of us who live in the Willamette valley know that we’re in for a long haul of (mostly) soggy weather. Unless I forget what I love about it, I begin to fight with this reality. For some time I’ve kept a list to remind me of the subtle beauties of the coming season. A partial list: subtle mists on the hills, rhythms on my roof, quiet time to dream, cozy evenings tucked in warm flannel.

When I forget these “favorite things,” there’s always poetry. One of my favorites for the season is from Hafiz, a 14th Century Persian poet. He reminds me of the source of sun, lest I forget. We’re all just the sun in drag.

Tolerating Peace

I’m learning to tolerate peace. I’m shocked as I see myself writing that, which takes me right out of peace. You see, my identity is so wrapped up in being a Peacemaker that it’s a Giant Step to admit that peace very often in my inner life has often been missing.

I’ve been a Peacenik my entire adult life. My credentials are impeccable. I became an anti-war activist when I discovered the realities of the Vietnam war. I organized an anti-nuke installation using little tree-farming cones to demonstrate insane levels of nuclear warheads in the early 80’s.

When the Outside Messes with the Inside

I was just so proud of myself a month or two ago. I was fairly convinced that I’d figured out the major puzzles of my life. Or at least one major puzzle, the tendency to put stuff in my mouth when I wasn’t hungry.
I honestly believed that attending Geneen Roth’s residential retreat and living the Women Food & God Way had brought such a bolt of enlightenment that I would never eat compulsively again.
That was before I started moving everything out of half of my house for a long-anticipated remodel. Before I began traveling and celebrating the freedom of summer. Before I started working on a book project, or at least before I experienced my favorite procrastination technique.

“If you lived in your heart you’d be home now.”

This is my newest favorite bumper sticker. It says in so few words what I often take longer to articulate.
I’m in the midst of a radical home remodel now. My home is a haven for me, under normal circumstances, and the intention of the project is to make it MORE of a haven. Or maybe a heaven. But in the meantime….it’s feeling more like a hell, with pounding and sawing while I’m living and seeing clients in the Oasis. They seem to feel it as an oasis from their lives, but I’ve been having some trouble experiencing that.

The Cafe at the End of the Search

I’ve spent a whole lot of my life in a search for truth, beauty, goodness, The Way. Much of what has motivated me has been from that deep longing that propels each of us to connect with the sacred in life.

No regrets. But lately I’ve been thinking of calling off the search. Because it feels like peace. (What better reason would there be?) When I’m craving something to eat, drink or do that will fill a hole, I’m usually believing that my current state isn’t okay.