Every July, I spend each morning watching the Tour de France in the comfort of my living room. The years where Lance Armstrong and his teams of road warriors dominated the Tour were as exciting as sports competition can get. The sweeping views from the various mountain points, the brutal ascents, the sometimes ruinous descents, the sheer beauty of man and machine in motion on the flats and in the time trials never grow dull. But it is the way the character of each man was and is stripped away that is most fascinating.
This year is extraordinary. Armstrong races on the strongest team with Alberto Contador leading the pack after the 17th stage. I have been amused by the commentary during each day’s events as the attention turns away from the greatest bicyclist ever to the pursuing front runners—the amazing Schleck brothers, David Wiggins, etc. Counting Armstrong out, the commentators tend to dismiss him until he pulls off one seemingly effortless feat after another, then the previous asides comes off as inane. He reveals a man who knows how to put his considerable power and experience in service to his team while riding for something larger than himself. As a result, he proves himself to be the team leader, indeed the Tour leader, no matter where he ends up in the standings (2nd until today’s 4rth place overall, and 5th place finish.)
What dark parts of himself did he come up against to become the extraordinary human being he is his today? Maybe when he was chasing the-most-ever Tour de France wins, he was chasing his own mortality, defeating the cancer that could have consumed him? He maxed out each day as if it were his last—and like all great physical warriors, if his last proved to be on the field of battle, what greater honor. Those were the victories of a man among men who make themselves Kings, which he most surely did. But to compete as he does now for something greater than himself does him greater honor still. He continues to be the most interesting competitor to watch. He isn’t running from or to anything, but generating his life from a deep place of inner stillness even as he continues to put himself through one of the most excruciating tests of physical endurance.
He has become a spiritual warrior. He has crossed over into the realm of the High King, who knows that to be the leader of leaders means you choose to put yourself in service to others. In all he says and does, he reveals his Self—his support of his team and competitors, his dedication to the cancer survivors and those desperately ill with the disease. His great capacity for love and compassion is expressed in how he is being in “the doing” of the Tour. Viva la difference.
Whoever wins this year’s Tour de France, what Lance has made of himself and what he has created will sustain and light the way for those who come after him—in Sport, in Contribution and in Humanity. Onward to Paris….
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Healing Depression: My thoughts are not Me
Three weeks ago I began a 40 day meditation ritual lead by Sai Maa, a spiritual leader who now lives in Crestone, CO. Each morning I log onto the internet site and listen to her questions and instructions for the day. I sometimes listen to it again or at the end of the day. Each day I am invited to examine more deeply and compassionately all the ways my mind/ego enthrall me in pain and suffering. The Buddha said that life is suffering. And, a wise friend has said, God did not put us here to suffer. Though in the grip of pain and anxiety, it is difficult for me to be with that I am choosing to suffer, so strong is my ego’s fight for survival.
Sai Maa asks me to have an honest confrontation with the dark side, embrace all that it is so that the ego is freed up to serve my Life rather than kill it off. This reminds me of one of M. Scott Peck’s observations that “even the Darkness only wants to be loved.” And if I can realize this, soften and embrace this rejected part of my humanity, I will be awake and at peace.
What thoughts, situations and/or actions have me identify with suffering and separateness rather than wholeness and unity? Mostly, very young conversations of thinking I am bad and wrong because I DID something bad and wrong. Or the abandoned child, who surely would die without the care of others, and hijacks my adult self who has had the capacities for many years now to care and nurture herself. These thoughtforms, as Eckhart Tolle and others have called them, seem overwhelming at times. And when I fail to recognize that such thoughts are just that, and not all of me or who I really am, the heaviness of depression suppresses my vitality and life occurs through a grey veil. The ego allows me to survive at the expense of aliveness. It tricks me into believing that I have no power and that I am a victim.
The mind, the most miraculous tool of human consciousness, has fooled itself into believing it is the master—the sorcerer’s apprentice believing he is the sorcerer (the Source). So, how to uncover the lie (the beLIEf) and live from awareness and compassion? Just by asking the questions, because the answers are already present in the questions. Practice asking and answering, listening for what’s true. Sit with “I don’t know,” “I’m scared” or whatever else the ego throws in the way—acknowledge them then set them aside. Invite a real relationship with Self. The automaticity of negative thinking will not be interrupted easily, but it can be done. I have spent many hours training my ego—it will take many more hours of practicing consciousness to train it differently.
Sai Maa asks me to have an honest confrontation with the dark side, embrace all that it is so that the ego is freed up to serve my Life rather than kill it off. This reminds me of one of M. Scott Peck’s observations that “even the Darkness only wants to be loved.” And if I can realize this, soften and embrace this rejected part of my humanity, I will be awake and at peace.
What thoughts, situations and/or actions have me identify with suffering and separateness rather than wholeness and unity? Mostly, very young conversations of thinking I am bad and wrong because I DID something bad and wrong. Or the abandoned child, who surely would die without the care of others, and hijacks my adult self who has had the capacities for many years now to care and nurture herself. These thoughtforms, as Eckhart Tolle and others have called them, seem overwhelming at times. And when I fail to recognize that such thoughts are just that, and not all of me or who I really am, the heaviness of depression suppresses my vitality and life occurs through a grey veil. The ego allows me to survive at the expense of aliveness. It tricks me into believing that I have no power and that I am a victim.
The mind, the most miraculous tool of human consciousness, has fooled itself into believing it is the master—the sorcerer’s apprentice believing he is the sorcerer (the Source). So, how to uncover the lie (the beLIEf) and live from awareness and compassion? Just by asking the questions, because the answers are already present in the questions. Practice asking and answering, listening for what’s true. Sit with “I don’t know,” “I’m scared” or whatever else the ego throws in the way—acknowledge them then set them aside. Invite a real relationship with Self. The automaticity of negative thinking will not be interrupted easily, but it can be done. I have spent many hours training my ego—it will take many more hours of practicing consciousness to train it differently.
Monday, May 25, 2009
On Theodore Roethke's Birthday: Manic Mysticism
From the site: The Poetry Foundation National broadcasts of The Writer's Almanac are supported by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine for over 90 years.
It's the birthday of poet and professor Theodore Roethke, (books by this author) born in Saginaw, Michigan (1908). He grew up in the Saginaw Valley, a descendent of German immigrants on both sides of his family. He was "thin, undersized, and sickly as a boy, obviously intelligent but shy and diffident as well," according to biographer Allan Seager.
His father owned a wholesale flower company. Roethke grew up surrounded by 25 acres of cultivated flowers — about a quarter million feet of which were covered by glass. Roethke later said, "[Greenhouses] were to me, I realize now, both heaven and hell, a kind of tropics created in the savage climate of Michigan, where austere German-Americans turned their love of order and their terrifying efficiency into something truly beautiful. It was a universe, several worlds, which, even as a child, one worried about, and struggled to keep alive."
Roethke was passionate about teaching. He called teaching "one of the few sacred relationships left in a crass secular world." And he once wrote in his journal: "The teaching of poetry requires fanaticism." Roethke had bipolar disorder, and he tended to be manic rather than depressed. He was hospitalized for mania on several occasions. His mental breakdowns were accompanied, he recounted, by intense mystical experiences.
When he had his first manic episode, in 1935, he was a professor at Michigan State College in East Lansing. In the days before he was hospitalized, he went out into the woods and danced in circles, trying to cultivate the "Dionysian frenzy" that Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about. Roethke wrote in his journals, "I can project myself easier into a flower than a person." And, "I change into vegetables. First, a squash, then a turnip. … I become a cabbage, ready for the cleaver, the close knives." And he wrote,"I knew how it felt to be a tree, a blade of grass, even a rabbit." Also in his journal, he wrote, "I wish I could photosynthesize."
His manic episodes, in which he'd go days without sleeping, usually appeared to be connected to his childhood memories, and were often sparked by experiences in the forest. "Root Cellar" is believed to be written when Roethke was manic. He wrote:
Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
He felt that his mental health condition was a boon for him as a poet, that his manic thinking and manic energy helped him to be inspired and productive, and he likened himself to other poets who were considered "mad" — such as William Blake, John Clare, and Christopher Smart.
Theodore Roethke had a heart attack while he was swimming in his friends' pool on Bainbridge Island, Washington, at the edge of Puget Sound. Shortly after he died, the owners of the house, who were friends of his, filled in the pool and made it into a Zen rock garden to memorialize him.
Roethke wrote:
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®
The Writer's Almanac is produced by Prairie Home Productions and presented by American Public Media.
It's the birthday of poet and professor Theodore Roethke, (books by this author) born in Saginaw, Michigan (1908). He grew up in the Saginaw Valley, a descendent of German immigrants on both sides of his family. He was "thin, undersized, and sickly as a boy, obviously intelligent but shy and diffident as well," according to biographer Allan Seager.
His father owned a wholesale flower company. Roethke grew up surrounded by 25 acres of cultivated flowers — about a quarter million feet of which were covered by glass. Roethke later said, "[Greenhouses] were to me, I realize now, both heaven and hell, a kind of tropics created in the savage climate of Michigan, where austere German-Americans turned their love of order and their terrifying efficiency into something truly beautiful. It was a universe, several worlds, which, even as a child, one worried about, and struggled to keep alive."
Roethke was passionate about teaching. He called teaching "one of the few sacred relationships left in a crass secular world." And he once wrote in his journal: "The teaching of poetry requires fanaticism." Roethke had bipolar disorder, and he tended to be manic rather than depressed. He was hospitalized for mania on several occasions. His mental breakdowns were accompanied, he recounted, by intense mystical experiences.
When he had his first manic episode, in 1935, he was a professor at Michigan State College in East Lansing. In the days before he was hospitalized, he went out into the woods and danced in circles, trying to cultivate the "Dionysian frenzy" that Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about. Roethke wrote in his journals, "I can project myself easier into a flower than a person." And, "I change into vegetables. First, a squash, then a turnip. … I become a cabbage, ready for the cleaver, the close knives." And he wrote,"I knew how it felt to be a tree, a blade of grass, even a rabbit." Also in his journal, he wrote, "I wish I could photosynthesize."
His manic episodes, in which he'd go days without sleeping, usually appeared to be connected to his childhood memories, and were often sparked by experiences in the forest. "Root Cellar" is believed to be written when Roethke was manic. He wrote:
Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
He felt that his mental health condition was a boon for him as a poet, that his manic thinking and manic energy helped him to be inspired and productive, and he likened himself to other poets who were considered "mad" — such as William Blake, John Clare, and Christopher Smart.
Theodore Roethke had a heart attack while he was swimming in his friends' pool on Bainbridge Island, Washington, at the edge of Puget Sound. Shortly after he died, the owners of the house, who were friends of his, filled in the pool and made it into a Zen rock garden to memorialize him.
Roethke wrote:
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®
The Writer's Almanac is produced by Prairie Home Productions and presented by American Public Media.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Toys for the manic mind: Facebook and Twitter
Now that I’ve joined Twitter, I’m wondering what twittering is all about. My dad’s generation would view it as self-serving sound bites (watch me! Dr. Phil….) or inane commentary from people they don’t know, or care to. Though I’m enjoying following the opposition (Karl Rove’s a scream) and getting a taste of people’s lives who are really up to something (Lance Armstrong, Maria Shriver and even Karl Rove albeit, in my book, in the wrong direction….)
So, if I flip this into opportunity and a possibility for something, what would it be? How could the technology drive my commitment to altering the conversation for mental health, and in a self-serving way further the aims of my book, Struck by Lightning: Mental Health Conditions and Spiritual Awakening?
Playing the connectivity game, even a trivial or superficial connection is better than none. I go back to the metaphor of the fungus that grows in a 50-mile radius, of which the heads are the only visible part. If we are the heads, who constrained by our bodies, have forgotten our essential oneness, then twitter is an active representation of us waking up to that spiritual reality. What will be possible for the planet when 6 billion people are following and followed by 6 billion people? What would be possible if every person were following and being followed by 1 million people?
As I’ve found on Facebook, six degrees of separation are two or three. For three weeks in the Fall, I was one step away from the President as Rahm Emmanuel’s Facebook friend. I sent him everything I could think of for his minions to read about Mental Health. Even if it wasn’t read, the energy shifts in the sending.
So, if I flip this into opportunity and a possibility for something, what would it be? How could the technology drive my commitment to altering the conversation for mental health, and in a self-serving way further the aims of my book, Struck by Lightning: Mental Health Conditions and Spiritual Awakening?
Playing the connectivity game, even a trivial or superficial connection is better than none. I go back to the metaphor of the fungus that grows in a 50-mile radius, of which the heads are the only visible part. If we are the heads, who constrained by our bodies, have forgotten our essential oneness, then twitter is an active representation of us waking up to that spiritual reality. What will be possible for the planet when 6 billion people are following and followed by 6 billion people? What would be possible if every person were following and being followed by 1 million people?
As I’ve found on Facebook, six degrees of separation are two or three. For three weeks in the Fall, I was one step away from the President as Rahm Emmanuel’s Facebook friend. I sent him everything I could think of for his minions to read about Mental Health. Even if it wasn’t read, the energy shifts in the sending.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Connections: In Flow
This capacity to make leaps between apparently unrelated ideas is the penultimate ability of our brains. The “aha” moments occur when we have brought our attention and mastery to something for a sustained period, and then in a flash, something unrelated sparks an insight. Sir Isaac Newton and the apple. In the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, breakthrough moments occur in “flow”—those periods when the mind is so engaged that time ceases. Usually, a day passes with fits and starts, and there is a sense of time passing. A day in flow stops time, or it seems mere minutes. And the moment of epiphany is like holding “infinity in the palm of your hand,/And eternity in an hour.” It could be argued that the breakthrough mind is the controlled version of the bipolar mind.
The bipolar mind is the breakthrough mind on speed. It is struck by insight overload, and experiences connections so quickly that they cannot be spoken, expressed, or explained quickly enough. The bipolar brain is trying to translate an experience of the infinite and Eternal into finite space and time—like wrestling fog into a box. Flow without control.
What are the neurological containers that focus flow but breakdown in overflow? Research there could lead to the most useful breakthrough treatments. My take on the persistence of bipolar and depression in the gene pool is simply that it is useful on a species scale, even as it can be devastating on a personal one. After all, nature is not interested in the lemmings who go over the cliff, only the ones who remain. And the ones who can totter at the very edge, and bring themselves back to tell the tale? Well, that’s what we’re here for….
The bipolar mind is the breakthrough mind on speed. It is struck by insight overload, and experiences connections so quickly that they cannot be spoken, expressed, or explained quickly enough. The bipolar brain is trying to translate an experience of the infinite and Eternal into finite space and time—like wrestling fog into a box. Flow without control.
What are the neurological containers that focus flow but breakdown in overflow? Research there could lead to the most useful breakthrough treatments. My take on the persistence of bipolar and depression in the gene pool is simply that it is useful on a species scale, even as it can be devastating on a personal one. After all, nature is not interested in the lemmings who go over the cliff, only the ones who remain. And the ones who can totter at the very edge, and bring themselves back to tell the tale? Well, that’s what we’re here for….
Connections: From Google to Shakespeare
I spent an infuriating hour the other night trying to access this blog to make my new post. I discovered that, despite the misdirections by Google—if I truly couldn’t find answers on “Help,” or sign in I could email “contact us,” only there wasn’t an actual access to emailing “contact us” anywhere on any menu on any page to which the site directed me. I was in a technological mobius loop. Locked out of my blog which I could tantalizingly visit, become a follower of, but never truly inhabit since the “I” who visited was not recognized as the “I” who created. I’m sure my unwanted adventure could be the genesis of some post-existential, computer/philosophy jock’s dissertation, and I am grateful I am not him/her. I faced down this phantom tollbooth which created near despair on my part, until I managed to send my unrecognized login address an email that enabled me to create a new password to my old account that I had been told didn’t exist. Ah, the Buddha path of internet apps and the blogosphere….
Now that I have nearly forgiven google’s software designers, I find myself considering the creative/bipolar capacity to spin threads of connectivity between seemingly unrelated material. I remember enjoying James Burke’s astounding “Connections” and the entire world of non-fiction thread-following it birthed, from Devil and the White City to Germ, Guns and Steel. The fiction of this non-fiction remains my most favorite to read, since it most closely resembles the way we make fiction of our own experience. The curious case for Serendipity in the history of Man and our individual lives. The meanings that have no meaning except we “see” them there.
“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” If the Judeo-Christian tradition views the Bible as the revealed Word of “God” then Shakespeare is the revealed Word of Man. Of all the great historical figures, artists and statesmen, generals and agitators, enlightened ones and ombudsmen, Shakespeare’s is the mind, body and life I would want to inhabit. Anything there is to be said, known or revealed about what it is to be human can be found in one or more of his plays or poems. To be the penultimate poet of the penultimate age of the English language; to have the penultimate creative life and a Man’s life in one of the great ages in the West to be a man (Creativity! Science! Exploration! Colonization! Empire!) in service to the penultimate Queen—aye, there’s the rub.
In service to a Queen, who so famously said “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king….” And used both to great effect. In a room with Ahmenhotep, Alexander the Great, Atilla the Hun, Genghis Khan, her father, the Sun King, Peter and Catherine the Great, Zhu Yuanzhang—the first Ming Emperor—all would have been hard-pressed to hold their own against the cunning intelligence, ferocity, and political savvy of the Tudor’s last monarch. She may have been born to the role, but she paid for her greatness in blood from her woman’s heart.
And there you have it—a little spinning of connectivity of my own.
Now that I have nearly forgiven google’s software designers, I find myself considering the creative/bipolar capacity to spin threads of connectivity between seemingly unrelated material. I remember enjoying James Burke’s astounding “Connections” and the entire world of non-fiction thread-following it birthed, from Devil and the White City to Germ, Guns and Steel. The fiction of this non-fiction remains my most favorite to read, since it most closely resembles the way we make fiction of our own experience. The curious case for Serendipity in the history of Man and our individual lives. The meanings that have no meaning except we “see” them there.
“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” If the Judeo-Christian tradition views the Bible as the revealed Word of “God” then Shakespeare is the revealed Word of Man. Of all the great historical figures, artists and statesmen, generals and agitators, enlightened ones and ombudsmen, Shakespeare’s is the mind, body and life I would want to inhabit. Anything there is to be said, known or revealed about what it is to be human can be found in one or more of his plays or poems. To be the penultimate poet of the penultimate age of the English language; to have the penultimate creative life and a Man’s life in one of the great ages in the West to be a man (Creativity! Science! Exploration! Colonization! Empire!) in service to the penultimate Queen—aye, there’s the rub.
In service to a Queen, who so famously said “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king….” And used both to great effect. In a room with Ahmenhotep, Alexander the Great, Atilla the Hun, Genghis Khan, her father, the Sun King, Peter and Catherine the Great, Zhu Yuanzhang—the first Ming Emperor—all would have been hard-pressed to hold their own against the cunning intelligence, ferocity, and political savvy of the Tudor’s last monarch. She may have been born to the role, but she paid for her greatness in blood from her woman’s heart.
And there you have it—a little spinning of connectivity of my own.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Among the Believers
Last Sunday, I accompanied my daughter to church. Her father is Catholic, and wants her to have first communion. When she came home last October saying, “Mummy, doesn’t my Sunday school teacher realize this is all mythology?” (she studied the Greeks last year) I wasn’t concerned that she was going to become a holy roller anytime soon. Listening to the liturgy is familiar. I was brought up Episcopalian (famously, “Catholic light” according to Robin Williams) and the service is the same. Though in both modern language editions, I sorely miss the poetry of the King James Bible and Book of Common Prayer. And though I can no longer recite the Nicene Creed with conviction—believing as I do that there are many doors into the same room—I appreciate the sense of fellowship and a community centered on the spiritual life.
What inspired me that day was the priest’s homily. This is a family-oriented congregation, and amidst the background of murmurings and baby gurgles, the general restlessness of the youngest parishioners, the Father gamely delivered a simple and thoughtful commentary on God’s covenant of Love. I thought about the story of Jesus that has come down to us, whitewashed and manipulated as it was for political purposes at the Council of Nicea, and even though he represents Realization (like the Buddha’s Enlightenment) and is to some divine, his humanity could not be entirely erased. His anger at the moneylenders in the temple comes to mind, his weeping, as well as his doubt upon the cross. I have always found it sad that, unlike the stories of the Buddha, we do not have anecdotes of Jesus’ youth and early manhood. Like Athena, he springs full-grown, at the height of his rhetorical and spiritual powers. I have always hankered for the Jesus who LAUGHED, and made others laugh as well.
That aside, I was moved by the priest’s gentle reminders of this covenant of Love in the everyday—the smile from a stranger, a friend’s hug, a sharp noise, a simple tune, the sun in the trees, or rain on the grass—the signs are all around us if we only take time to breathe, listen and see with open hearts.
What inspired me that day was the priest’s homily. This is a family-oriented congregation, and amidst the background of murmurings and baby gurgles, the general restlessness of the youngest parishioners, the Father gamely delivered a simple and thoughtful commentary on God’s covenant of Love. I thought about the story of Jesus that has come down to us, whitewashed and manipulated as it was for political purposes at the Council of Nicea, and even though he represents Realization (like the Buddha’s Enlightenment) and is to some divine, his humanity could not be entirely erased. His anger at the moneylenders in the temple comes to mind, his weeping, as well as his doubt upon the cross. I have always found it sad that, unlike the stories of the Buddha, we do not have anecdotes of Jesus’ youth and early manhood. Like Athena, he springs full-grown, at the height of his rhetorical and spiritual powers. I have always hankered for the Jesus who LAUGHED, and made others laugh as well.
That aside, I was moved by the priest’s gentle reminders of this covenant of Love in the everyday—the smile from a stranger, a friend’s hug, a sharp noise, a simple tune, the sun in the trees, or rain on the grass—the signs are all around us if we only take time to breathe, listen and see with open hearts.
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