For Emergencies Only?

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awareness, beauty, clarity, compassion, contemplation, courage, creativity, gratitude, joy, life, meditation, spirituality, writing

image credit: www.insightmeditation.org.nz

A conversation with a dear friend yesterday, reminded of this piece I wrote over three years ago. I needed to re-read it, so thought it might have value for you too – enjoy 🙂

At the moment I meditate like I take vitamin C – in emergencies only. OK, I’ve used that word lightly, but it’s true. I find myself caught in the habit of using the preventative as cure, which works to an extent, but prevention is better. My mother once told me of a tradition where you paid your doctor every month – unless you were ill. That was the month you didn’t pay, because you doctor had not done their job well enough. Now THAT would revolutionize the NHS (our beloved National Health Service here in the UK, which itself is becoming rather sick due to government spending cuts…).

There was a time, not so long past, when I had a very regular and treasured spiritual practice. I would meditate daily for an hour, with days off being a rare exception. And there was a time, not so long past, when my diet was more balanced, when I was more aware of what my body needed and where it could get it. I didn’t need vitamin supplements

Before beginning to teach on this one month intensive English Language Course, I felt a sore throat coming and my left ear had begun to complain with an inner pain that hinted at possible infection. I bought vitamin C supplements and slept for the afternoon. I was lucky, and whatever had threatened to pay me a visit decided not to stick around. I felt well the next day. I was grateful to my body, but it made me think.

This weekend I noticed my ‘being VS doing’ scale was feeling overwhelmingly tipped in doing’s favour, so I went to our Sanctuary here. This is a dedicated silent room, with a candle in the centre and chairs arranged in circles. I went into Sanctuary with the intention of catching up on some ‘being’ time.

Oh sweetheart, it doesn’t work like that. The vegetables I’m growing can’t be drowned in water one day and left thirsty for the next three. Little and often. My children’s novel won’t get written if I wait for those times when I have a whole weekend free. Little and often. My soul will not find its way closer to God if I think I can make up for regular daily practice by sitting with great intensity and purpose for, oh, a whole hour. My mind is like a well composted garden bed; it grows weeds with as much success as flowers and veg.  If I weed it every day, the flowers will thrive. If I leave it too long, the weeds will have taken much of the nourishment for themselves, not to mention they’ll have grown tall and thick enough to hide the flowers completely. Weeds are powerful, believe me, I played tug of war with nettle roots recently and it was a closer run thing that I’d like to admit.

As I was weeding, liberating the spent daffodil bulbs from their cages of ground elder and nettle roots, my compassion began to grow for those thoughts, that light, that love and creativity that is missing out on my attention and energy, because the weeds of ‘To Do’ and ‘obligation’ have been allowed to grow out of control. When they reach this point of overwhelm, it’s already too late for ‘little and often’, and ‘one thing at a time’ must be engaged instead. To manage the overwhelm I have to focus on one task at a time, in order to be fed by the satisfaction of seeing something completed before digging for the energy to focus on the next.

I did spend a few precious moments with our sweet peas though, checking on their progress. When I saw how the delicate, finger like tendrils had perfectly and neatly curled themselves around the string of the rough frame I’d created for them, I was mesmerized. How do they know where the string is? How do they know they must wrap, and climb, and stretch towards the sun in order to flower and thrive? How many years, hundreds, thousands, of evolution has it taken to create this plant with such precision and perfection that it follows some divine inner instruction with such grace and lack of effort that we barely notice how clever it is?

How do I come to such a place of busyness that I believe I can catch up on my journey towards greater wakefulness by having a single hour of silence?

Writing this has brought me to humour, which has brought me to a more peaceful place, which has brought me to a willingness to accept what I already know – I have to give conscious attention to the important things ‘little and often’ or the unimportant things will grow to hide what really matters, and it will take much more time and effort to re-reveal those true priorities again.

Happy inner gardening folks🙂

  //www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/oct/19/gardens-sweet-peas

 

Stories

Tags

contemplation, courage, creativity, poem, poetry, spirituality, truth

I serve your story hunger

let you feast on a character

that looks like me

sounds like me

and behaves in all kinds of

reasonable and predictable ways

or bad ways (with a lower case b)

that make you laugh

and graze my polished veneer

just enough to draw blood

and make me real

***

I’ll breathe yours in

and respond in kind

from a choice of genre

with stories of bravery and strength

fallability and shame

of friendship and loyalty

of love

of pain

that turn us into Aesop’s animals

one dimentioned and unthreatening

***

these are the stories

grown potent in their maturity

to be opened and shared

without risk or fear

for I know them

I distilled them

into pure magic

***

and I’ll pour them freely

with gesture and song

make them so alive

you’ll never know their lies

are mere beautiful smoke screens

in which truth asphyxiates

as the swirls and turns draw

a new map

with your willing collusion

for you don’t really want

to know who I am

***

for the truth of you

lies in the same direction

***

so we get lost together

in familiar landscapes

as truth’s sirens sing from rocks

on unknown shores

and we wave our mock map in the air

as proof

that we know better

than to listen

Playing with Purpose Part 2 (and poem!)

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awareness, compassion, contemplation, creativity, dreams, inspiration, life, poem, poetry, purpose, service, truth, writing

image credit: http://theeasiersofterway.com/2012/10/daily-thought-101112-thich-nhat-hanh/

Thich Nhat Hanh tells a story about asking some children, “What is the purpose of eating breakfast?” The first kid answers, “To get energy for the day,” but another child says, “The purpose of eating breakfast is to eat breakfast.”

http://everydaygurus.com/2013/05/25/the-purpose-of-life-is-to-live/

I find watching aspects of nature fearlessly, proudly and patiently growing into their purpose is a great teaching for me, so here’s poem on that topic, which I wrote while on retreat a couple of months ago.

I met a young apple tree

in the chill bright of pre-spring

i only knew that’s what it was

because it had a label

without which I’d have been forgiven

for thinking it was a forgotten walking stick

upright and strong

though perhaps unusually knobbly

as the weeks went by

we met several times

and I witnessed with wonder

the transformation of the bulbous knobs

into the white pink softness

of new life

sprung as if from dry death itself

with unrepentant joy

and unhurried patience

for the softness birthed mere tantalizing millimeters

in the weeks that followed

and so I learned to slow down

until I breathed, and noticed

and I let my skin tell me

it was being touched by the sun

and drank it all in to feed my own ripening

 

So that was the lesson from an apple tree, and here is what I wrote more recently based on the exercise I mentioned yesterday. This time I chose to go with, ‘the most important thing life has taught me about why I’m here is…that it changes.:

I’ve had so many passionate purposes in my life, some I identified with deeply and held with great dedication and sincerity, and oh so tightly. Now I find myself without one single, overriding, all consuming ‘purpose’, and I really miss it and I notice and acknowledge this as life’s invitation to let go, for my purpose, my passion changes, at least certainly outwardly, and there is great value in digging deeper to find those elements of my reason for being that do not change, and yet, I seek and seek and, though I feel like I must be close enough to touch them, I reach out and…there’s nothing there, just life, living, responding, inter-being, and interweaving just as the elements, and more, came together to create this me that I am now.

So where to go from here? I need to let go of my need to find an expressible, definable purpose that’s impressive, visible, meaningful and positive. The purpose of my life is to live, and if I can, to reach that level of acceptance of my own humbleness and simplicity, then perhaps I will recognise just what a complex, creative and magical being I at essence am. A flower being a flower, an apple tree being an apple tree, me being me. Perhaps it’s really that simple.

 

Any more thoughts friends? This purpose topic is a biggie, no?

Playing with Purpose

Tags

awareness, compassion, contemplation, creativity, dreams, inspiration, life, purpose, service, truth, writing

The question of ‘Purpose’ has been tickling me remorselessly for at least a year,, and I had an interesting experience this week when I wrote on this topic with a group I was guiding. I compared what I had written to my response to the exact same exercise well over a year ago, and the difference was, well – huge!

Let me first share the exercise. Begin by spontaneously completing the following four sentences with whatever thought springs to mind. Try not to over-think or edit what arises.

* When I was a child, I believed I was here to…

* As a teenager, I believed I was here to…

* As an adult, I believe I am here to…

* The most important thing life has taught me about why I’m here is…

You then simply choose one of those sentences and write, for about ten minutes, to expand on that thought/theme.

The first time I did this, about 18 months ago I think, I chose the first – as a child – and this is what I wrote:

It was from quite a young age, say about eleven, that I decided I was here to change things. I looked at the world much as I looked at myself, something of value but that could be improved. My heart was raw, passionate and open. I heard of suffering and I wanted to be the one to bring it to an end. I thought I was here to make other people’s lives better, and something in that innocent power of youth believed sincerely that I could.

I remember having seen a television program about children in the UK living in poverty. I wrote to the Prime Minister, asking him to do something about it, asking why, how was this possible? I believed I was here to ask questions. I took nothing for granted, took nobody’s word for it. If I didn’t agree, I’d ask further questions to try to get to the bottom of things. I was, I am, a digger.

I believed I was here to share the abundance I’d been born into, with apparently no reason beyond life’s mysterious pot luck. I felt the weight of my good fortune and believed life had given me a mission, a responsibility I enjoyed and took seriously and addressed with all my heart. The responsibility to make the world a better place for my having been in it.

I didn’t know how I was going to do that, and my early loves of acting, horse riding and writing were ways of cultivating and sharing passion and joy, but I didn’t consciously see those activities as contribution. They were my fun, but they weren’t why I was here. Whatever that was, it had to be much. much more important and much more serious than fun…

 

I’ll share part two – the more recent piece, plus a poem – tomorrow. In the meantime, if you have any wisdom or experience to feed into my exploration of this topic of Purpose…please do!

May your life be blessed with meaning

May your days be filled with fun

May you welcome in equal measure

both the rain clouds and the sun…

Sing your heart out…

Tags

compassion, contemplation, courage, creativity, earth, gifts, gratitude, heart, love, nature, poetry, singing

One of the most challenging aspects of spending three weeks in silence was not being able to sing. As a deep seated contentment and spontaneous joy grew in me I wanted to sing it out, share it, spread it. I sang plenty in my head of course, but I couldn’t give it voice out loud. Yesterday, I took a walk alone to the river near our house, and I sang to the flow as I’ve been known to before. There was nobody around, just birds and trees, and the roar of the river was a beautiful backing singer. I sang and I sang, for over half an hour, finding my voice again, arriving here again, giving thanks again for all the gifts of what has been and what is now…gently opening to welcoming what will be. And as I sang, a poem came…

I sang to the river

while the warmth of the sun

sat in the small of my back

like the steady hand

of a trusted friend

neither pushing me forward

nor allowing me to fall

comforting

encouraging

and as the sun moved

I felt the cool of the shade

and moved myself

to realign with the light

and together

we sang and shone

and the river flowed on

 

And here is another poem written during my retreat:

I asked my heart

‘Can you learn to love?’

she smiled and replied

“Can a bird learn to sing?

Does the sky learn to rain?

Stop trying to teach me

and sit –

be my student a while.”

I read this post by one of my favourite bloggers this morning. For anyone who believes in the power of the heart, this may just make you believe even more:-)

http://bringingupbuddhas.com/2014/03/11/hearts-on-fire/

 

Loving Kindness

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awareness, compassion, contemplation, kindness, loving kindness, meditation, metta, poetry, retreat, spirituality

“May you be safe and protected

May you be healthy and whole

May you be peaceful and kind

May you be happy and free”

I arrived back in Scotland yesterday after a three week silent retreat in Newton Abbott, England. It is strange re-connecting with my computer, mobile phone and coffee (!) after three weeks without, and I intend to take my time to reacquaint myself gently, but I wanted to share with you, my friends, that I am back.

The four phrases that open this post are my chosen phrases for the practice known as loving kindness or metta. I have been repeating these phrases around four times a day, while sitting in silent meditation for 45 minutes and visualising different people (including myself), since I began my retreat on February 16th and, me being me, a poem has resulted which I’d like to share with you. I will share more poems and reflections from my retreat soon, but for now…Enjoy:-)

With much love and warm blessings,

Harula xxxxxxxxx

There’s a web of well-being

spun from the purest

rays of love

that extends from every being

to every other

into limitless expansion

infinitely strong

and unfathomably delicate

unquestionably real

and utterly intangible

will you let it hold you?

will you contribute

consciously

your own love to that web

that all beings may know

the end of suffering

and rest in the home

of interbeing?

 

Here are some recommended resources (talks, books, guided meditations…) if you’d like to know more about loving kindness/metta:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lovingkindness-Revolutionary-Happiness-Shambhala-classics/dp/157062903X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394540211&sr=8-1&keywords=salzberg+lovingkindness

http://gaia.dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/9988/

http://www.jackkornfield.com/2011/02/meditation-on-lovingkindness/

 

Being in the flow…

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awareness, contemplation, creativity, flow, gifts, gratitude, imagination, inspiration, life, trust, writing

I held a creative writing session yesterday afternoon, and one of the exercises was to write about being in the flow – either describing the feeling, or describing a specific experience when you felt yourself to be ‘in the zone’. I was a little surprised by my own response (written without over thinking it, just allowing my pen to do its revealing work…), so I thought I’d share it with you. AND of course I’d love to hear about your own thoughts/experiences in the comments…

 

It frightens me more than it used to, because it’s not been happening as frequently as it used to – when life, the Divine, God takes over and I get myself out of the way enough for magic and grace to flow freely through me. It’s electric, like I’m supercharged and I don’t always know how to be with all that energy. It makes me feel invincible, like everything I do, say or touch is blessed and responds to me with pure love and perfection.

It seems to just occur, spontaneously, although there are things I can do to encourage the flow to visit me; writing, meditating, singing, time spent alone just being, and giving myself permission  to respond to my own joy in each and every moment without questioning whether it serves or if I have time or if it’s a productive use of myself or my skills – there are no what ifs in the flow!

So I guess it’s also about trust, trusting my intuition, my connection, and trusting the source of that – whatever name you want to give it. I’m not always as trusting as I’d like to be, certainly not always of myself and my own willingness and ability to be guided. That said, and here’s reason to laugh, every time this clarity visits me the outcome turns out for the best, even it’s not always the most comfortable or pain free option in the short term. So why not trust it?!

I don’t believe in being ‘tested’ by God, that’s way too cruel an intention for one so loving, like some kind of spiritual Ofsted life inspector?! No, God doesn’t test, but he or she or it does ‘stretch’ me, does generously offer me, heart and soul, the experiences I need to grow into the person I choose to be.

 

So, how is it for you?

Dear Beloved

Tags

compassion, contemplation, creativity, gifts, gratitude, love, meditation, prayer, service, spirituality

I wrote this prayer this morning as a result of 21 evenings spending 15 minutes in silent contemplation just before sleeping, just being with the question of forgiving myself. I would write down the thoughts that came, beginning each sentence with, ‘I forgive myself for…’

This morning, on waking, I wanted to pull those thoughts together into a single prayer that I could use. This is what I wrote:

Dear Beloved,

May I accept who I am with joy and gratitude. Though I may dream of being someone more, better, different, you have made me who I am. May I trust you had your reasons:-)

May I forgive the suffering I have caused, and that I feel myself, for both guilt and blame are poisons, not antidotes. May I use my understanding of suffering and its causes to create less of it.

May I transform my fears into an inner fire that powers me through and beyond my limitations, and banish the illusory outer fire that fences me in and threatens to burn. Let faith sooth and inspire.

May I use the gifts you have given me wholly and wisely, instead of asking for others, and labeling my own too easy, too boring, too unhelpful to the world. These labels just show that I’ve not fully explored or understood my gifts yet. Let me do so now, with your guidance, that your light may shine its way, through me, to wherever its needed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My January 5…2014

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awareness, books, contemplation, gifts, gratitude, inspiration, joy, life, love, reading, words, writing

I wrote in a post in January 2013 that one of my New Year Personal Promises was to commit to a balanced book diet…

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/have-you-read-your-five-a-month/

I managed to record five months of reading; a Novel, memoir, non-fiction, a children’s novel and a book of poetry, and then life and busyness and laziness rudely interrupted. The concept originated from a reminder that we need intellectual/emotional soul food as much as we need our physical five a day of fresh fruit and veg. Sadly, there are many people not getting that, and food banks here in the UK are now having to prepare what they call ‘kettle boxes’ for those who aren’t able to afford to heat their food on a stove, or even ‘cold boxes’ for those who don’t even have the means to boil the kettle.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/20/food-bank-kettle-boxes-trussell-trust

So I still have a dream of bringing food and books together, maybe preparing ‘five a month’ book parcels for those who come to the food banks to take away with them, or even to be distributed at the Job Centre. I believe what we face is not a financial crisis, but a crisis of consciousness manifesting as the most shocking inequality. It’s the cause not the symptom that must be addressed, and reading, accessing other worlds, other thoughts, other ways of perceiving ourselves and the world has the potential to sooth this sickness at its root.

So off my soap box and onto my bookshelf…

Novel: The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker

This beautiful novel was a recommendation from a dear friend, and one I pass on to you with every cell in my being that believes in true love and has yet to experience, but aspires to live, the kind of love described in this novel; at once so passionate and real and yet so deep and beyond form it lives outside the limits of place and time. It’s both gut wrenchingly sad and soul achingly wise.

Children’s Book: The Summer Gang by Cornelia Funke

I picked this up from the library a couple of days ago as part of some ‘research’, more about that another time. The author is of course better known for the Inkheart series, but I loved this book too. Set very much in this world (with no hint of fantasy) and making me laugh out loud with the very first two sentences – now that’s how to write! Here they are, and let me know if you laugh too:-)

‘It was a wonderful day, as warm and soft as chicken feathers. Unfortunately, it was also a Monday…’

Great characters, a humorous voice, and Cornelia just does ‘baddies’ so well, including every day regular real life ones…

Non-Fiction: Gorgeous Gifts (Ecocrafts) published by Kingfisher

Being a huge fan of crafting and saving the planet – well, whaddya know, this book is the all in one! From candle holders made of old jars and left over nail polish, to sweet wrapper stained glass windows, the creativity is oozing from every page,  making my hands itch to get messy, and turning my every other spoken sentence into, ‘No! Don’t throw that awaaaay!!!’

Memoir: Nature’s Child by John Lister-Kaye

This was more research, which turned into instant fandom. Not only does this man write superbly (so well in fact that I didn’t mind having to dig out my dictionary for a couple of words – they were perfect and precise, not mere attempts at showing of vocabulary). He’s a naturalist, living in the Scottish Highlands, and this book documents his adventures with his daughter from when she was about 6 until she’s turned 12, taking in everything from snakes, moths and polar bears to seals, fossils and beavers. The descriptions of the nature kingdom in all its glory are 3D Technicolor surround sound vivid, and the emotional connection of the author’s voice to the nature he describes comes through with great sincerity and heart.

Poetry: The Space Between Rain by Eileen Carney Hulme

The only one I haven’t yet read, but I loved the title and the cover and didn’t want to read a poet I’d already heard of so…I’ll let you know later what I think of this. She’s a local (Scottish) poet, decorated with a plethora of literary prizes and, when I searched for this cover image I also found…a picture of her at the Universal Hall! Our local community Arts venue!!! So, could this be one of those books that proves to be the first footsteps on the path of a new adventure, creative exchange etc ad infinitum. I feel the fingers of fate tapping on my shoulder…will I walk through that mysterious looking door?

Bye for now dear friends, happy healthy reading, and if you have any thoughts or recommendations please do share them in the comments; tell me about books in any of these categories that changed your life…or at the least your perception of it:-)

Beauty – triple tanka

Tags

beauty, contemplation, creativity, gifts, gratitude, poem, poetry, Tanka

Beauty is…? I ask

silently you look around

then you nod and smile

looking at me directly

I understand and blush

*************

Sure, the eye can see

but it’s only one witness

to life’s true beauty

close your eyes for a moment

bow to the beauty within

**************

Birdsong before dawn

promises beauty hiding

beneath a dark sky

I won’t believe in ugly –

the sun hasn’t risen yet

The beautiful photos were taken by my Dad. Yes, this is where I live!!! I know – any jealousy is immediately forgiven, how could you help yourself after all:-)