And so, this drama, like all good dramas, has had its rising tensions, its abject miseries and hair-raising terrors, all of it building again and again into great, emotional crescendos!
There has been enormous pleasure ... subsiding into disappointment
Terrible pain resolving into peace
All of it so that a truly happy ending, now, might engender a divine Release
If you have suffered and are done
If you are exhausted
If you have lost, if you have won
If your pleasures have all run dry and if your pain has gone on
And on ...
Now is the time for the End of Your Story
Now is the time for your Happy Ending!
Now you know what does not work, and perhaps you have surrendered by degrees ...
Let it all go, my beautiful Friend!
What a Wild and Loving God birthed this Infinite Realm of Infinite Experience
In which we taste, touch, feel all forms of exquisite and banal suffering,
Until we discover a Light
This One
That has illuminated it all, always and
Which, as well,
Is World Without End
Monday, August 22, 2011
Monday, August 1, 2011
"Graceful Parenting" ... An Oxymoron?
Although not everyone is a fan of this blog's overall title: Mystical Mama, I find it suits me so well, and more and more so. I've thought of changing the name, but nothing brilliant, as an alternative, has occurred to me yet.
Mystical means "having a spiritual meaning or reality" (that's one definition) and Mama, well, a Mama is me. I am a Mama! My life is about kids, kids, kids: feeding them, dressing them, dropping them off, picking them up, arranging for childcare, cooking, cleaning, tidying, tidying, tidying, nagging, berating, playing and loving!
My husband and I have your average, garden variety, long-term (20+ years) relationship. We can be madly in love and ready to divorce, all in the same day. My mother lives with us, too, at this time. There is coming and going, laughter and arguing, irritation and gratitude, often futile attempts to "balance" it all.
It's a "normal" life and yet, the deep mysticism of it is also always there--a deepening of understanding ... understanding the true nature of life, dropping more and more of what's unnecessary in Thought, dropping the choking, restrictive garments of "me" and "mine." Finding, instead Silence, Stillness, Love ... and a great unfolding of Life in ways and avenues un-planned, unexpected, delightful.
Life! The greatest, mystical Mystery of all! (How is that we can barely see It sometimes, so preoccupied are we with our own "successes.")
Thought patterns from the past still sometimes intrude on my "parenting" and I am graced with the ability to see that I have been unfair, unkind, have lacked understanding. Oh, children! Your sweet, innocent souls must put up with so much from us, your crazy parents, with our limited understandings, worries, fears and concerns. And look what we have done with your lovely planet!
For the sake of children, let us begin to know Ourselves beyond the limiting thoughts and beliefs that have plagued every generation up until now. It has been for children that I have stayed the course with my non-profit for more than five years--through thick and thin, death and disaster--for children that I have worked so very hard, and for my own children that I have stopped working altogether from time to time.
Please join me, dear Readers, in the now global movement (with many names, really) to bring peace, clarity and loving intelligence to parents, so that parents can recognize all these in their children, Now.
This Friday, August 5, is my first radio show through the CSC on "Graceful Parenting." Tune in through the Internet at 10 am Pacific time, and call in! Go to this site to listen live, or find the archive a few days later: www.cscmediacenter.org.
Can we take responsibility now for everything? Especially within our absurdly priviliged lives in the West, lives in which food, water, shelter and survival are distant concerns ... Can we end the madness of me, more and mine, mine, mine? (And remember, I am talking about grown-ups, here, in whom such attitudes have real and tremendous impacts.)
Yes, my friends, yes we can. Perhaps the better question is: Will we?
Every day, more children are born and this "gentle rain of children*" serves to remind us of some innocence, some clarity and purity that resides within us all still ... Can we "grow up" along with our children, now?
Join me!
With Love,
Your Mystical Mama
*from Spiritual Parenting: A Guide to Understanding and Nurturing the Heart of Your Child, Hugh and Gayle Prather
Mystical means "having a spiritual meaning or reality" (that's one definition) and Mama, well, a Mama is me. I am a Mama! My life is about kids, kids, kids: feeding them, dressing them, dropping them off, picking them up, arranging for childcare, cooking, cleaning, tidying, tidying, tidying, nagging, berating, playing and loving!
My husband and I have your average, garden variety, long-term (20+ years) relationship. We can be madly in love and ready to divorce, all in the same day. My mother lives with us, too, at this time. There is coming and going, laughter and arguing, irritation and gratitude, often futile attempts to "balance" it all.
It's a "normal" life and yet, the deep mysticism of it is also always there--a deepening of understanding ... understanding the true nature of life, dropping more and more of what's unnecessary in Thought, dropping the choking, restrictive garments of "me" and "mine." Finding, instead Silence, Stillness, Love ... and a great unfolding of Life in ways and avenues un-planned, unexpected, delightful.
Life! The greatest, mystical Mystery of all! (How is that we can barely see It sometimes, so preoccupied are we with our own "successes.")
Thought patterns from the past still sometimes intrude on my "parenting" and I am graced with the ability to see that I have been unfair, unkind, have lacked understanding. Oh, children! Your sweet, innocent souls must put up with so much from us, your crazy parents, with our limited understandings, worries, fears and concerns. And look what we have done with your lovely planet!
For the sake of children, let us begin to know Ourselves beyond the limiting thoughts and beliefs that have plagued every generation up until now. It has been for children that I have stayed the course with my non-profit for more than five years--through thick and thin, death and disaster--for children that I have worked so very hard, and for my own children that I have stopped working altogether from time to time.
Please join me, dear Readers, in the now global movement (with many names, really) to bring peace, clarity and loving intelligence to parents, so that parents can recognize all these in their children, Now.
This Friday, August 5, is my first radio show through the CSC on "Graceful Parenting." Tune in through the Internet at 10 am Pacific time, and call in! Go to this site to listen live, or find the archive a few days later: www.cscmediacenter.org.
Can we take responsibility now for everything? Especially within our absurdly priviliged lives in the West, lives in which food, water, shelter and survival are distant concerns ... Can we end the madness of me, more and mine, mine, mine? (And remember, I am talking about grown-ups, here, in whom such attitudes have real and tremendous impacts.)
Yes, my friends, yes we can. Perhaps the better question is: Will we?
Every day, more children are born and this "gentle rain of children*" serves to remind us of some innocence, some clarity and purity that resides within us all still ... Can we "grow up" along with our children, now?
Join me!
With Love,
Your Mystical Mama
*from Spiritual Parenting: A Guide to Understanding and Nurturing the Heart of Your Child, Hugh and Gayle Prather
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Just Stop!
The truth of who you are is utterly simple. It is closer than your thoughts, closer than your heartbeat, closer than your breath.
If you believe your thoughts to be real, if you follow your thoughts as the basis of reality, you will continually overlook what is closer, what has been calling you throughout time, saying,
"You are here! You are home!"
...
This is a time of the ordinary awakening. This means you.
--From The Diamond in Your Pocket, Gangaji
Thought is not reality, yet it is through Thought that our realities are created.
--From The Missing Link, Sydney Banks
Can there be simple awareness of what's going on, without making something of it? ... All seeing matters. Not just seeing feelings, but seeing their total interconnectedness with thought.
... It happens, when there is pure seeing, there is wisdom.
--From The Light of Discovery, Toni Packer
If you believe your thoughts to be real, if you follow your thoughts as the basis of reality, you will continually overlook what is closer, what has been calling you throughout time, saying,
"You are here! You are home!"
...
This is a time of the ordinary awakening. This means you.
--From The Diamond in Your Pocket, Gangaji
Thought is not reality, yet it is through Thought that our realities are created.
--From The Missing Link, Sydney Banks
Can there be simple awareness of what's going on, without making something of it? ... All seeing matters. Not just seeing feelings, but seeing their total interconnectedness with thought.
... It happens, when there is pure seeing, there is wisdom.
--From The Light of Discovery, Toni Packer
Mirror in the Sky, What is Love?
We drove to Yosemite, strained, bickering--husband and I--and over the dry, surreal 152, a thousand thoughts, like all these dry, twisted, lonely Oaks, dotting the hillside, running, running, running alongside the car.
In Yosemite, we found silent majesty, amazing grace, happy children, cool waters ... it was Almost Independence Day (thank you, Van Morrison.)
Silence.
The mystery of endless stars.
During the ride home, once again, strain and tension. Now husband is in a hurry, I am not--who is deciding directions? Who trusts who to get us home? Who is overly worried? Who is being most obnoxious?
Then, Explosion! ... (from husband)
Explosion! ... (from wife, that's me)
Mind whirls into how to fix this, what we should talk about, what is the underlying issue here, guilt & remorse, whose fault and why?
Then, there was the invitation to Stop! ... Husband not talking to me anyway. Guilt, remorse, second thoughts, disastrous future-thinking ...
Who cares???
Just stop!
And we are back over the 152, and the gnarled, money-green oaks look so much more beautiful than before. It is hot. It is Independence Day. We have been to Heaven and back. We have been to Hell and back.
And it is all O.K.
And the radio played: I took my love and I took it down. I climbed a mountain and turned around ...
In Yosemite, we found silent majesty, amazing grace, happy children, cool waters ... it was Almost Independence Day (thank you, Van Morrison.)
Silence.
The mystery of endless stars.
During the ride home, once again, strain and tension. Now husband is in a hurry, I am not--who is deciding directions? Who trusts who to get us home? Who is overly worried? Who is being most obnoxious?
Then, Explosion! ... (from husband)
Explosion! ... (from wife, that's me)
Mind whirls into how to fix this, what we should talk about, what is the underlying issue here, guilt & remorse, whose fault and why?
Then, there was the invitation to Stop! ... Husband not talking to me anyway. Guilt, remorse, second thoughts, disastrous future-thinking ...
Who cares???
Just stop!
And we are back over the 152, and the gnarled, money-green oaks look so much more beautiful than before. It is hot. It is Independence Day. We have been to Heaven and back. We have been to Hell and back.
And it is all O.K.
And the radio played: I took my love and I took it down. I climbed a mountain and turned around ...
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Understanding Thought
and Finding Emotional Health and Immunity from Stress
Dear Friends: I wrote this for an on-line newsletter at the request of an organization that asked me to give a talk on "immunity from stress." I thought it might be helpful to re-post it here. I find this kind of strict, self-help-y writing a bit dry, actually. But I think, and hope, the content might be useful for you and yours.
“Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” --William Shakespeare.
For decades, researchers have shown that “stress” impacts physical health. To date, doctors, therapists, and the media have generally defined stress as a traumatic experience: a divorce, or breakup, the death of someone close, a health or financial crisis or other “major” life event most would interpret as negative.
In my work of two decades, however, learning and then teaching people in a range of settings (from young people in juvenile hall and adult inmates to teachers and organizational executives) the role that Thought—as a creative, causal principle—has in creating emotional reality, my conclusion is much different. Life circumstances have impact, of course, but it is the way we think about such circumstances that creates “stress,” or even well-being, in the face of life’s events.
One young woman I know, who was a student of the “3 Principles” I teach, and then became a teacher herself, has lived with advanced multiple sclerosis for several years. She has difficulty walking and climbing stairs, and must be helped eating, because of her tremors. At a retreat she attended with us at Mount Madonna Center, she described her condition as “a gift” that had opened her to new worlds of learning. “I am one of the luckiest people in the world,” she said.
Dr. Peter Ubel, a University of Michigan researcher and author of “You’re Stronger Than You Think,” found that people who had gone through “stressful events” in their lives, had lost both their legs, or undergone complete colonostopies, for example, were actually just as happy as their healthy counterparts with more “normal” lives.
Studies by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel-prize winning psychologist, showed that what society thinks of as “positive” circumstances, such as wealth and its perceived freedom, or power, has almost no effect on happiness and well-being, after people escape from poverty.
How people think, and what they think: how much gratitude they feel (no matter what their lives look like) and how much they engage in thoughts and feelings of love and generosity are the causal factors for emotional resiliency and well-being.
I experienced a miscarriage during my first pregnancy, after I got married. I was sad for some time, of course. But by understanding the role Thought played in my life, I had no inclination to “carry thinking” about the miscarriage into my future, or to interpret the event as especially negative.
Seeing Thought is a wonderful opportunity for all of us to gain emotional health and immunity from stress, because the truth is that we are not our thoughts. The truth is also that life will continuously throw apparent “problems” our way—death, illness, wayward children, conflict, difficult family members.
We do not even need to resolve our problems to become happy and emotionally strong. Rather, our very perceptions of such “problems” constitutes the mental “soup,” or consciousness, we live in. When we perceive problems as difficult and un-resolvable, for instance, our thoughts create feelings of hopelessness and despair—mental “stress” that ignites a chemical cascade throughout our bodies, and ultimately (and of course!) impacts physical health.
When we create a more objective relationship to Thought, as the great spiritual teachings of the world have taught, we see that peace of mind and well-being exist within us already, at our core, regardless of what we are going through. Indeed, peace of mind helps us navigate life’s obstacles with wisdom, grace and clarity. Or rather, finding peace of mind allows us to appreciate Life, the flow and dance of Life, no matter what we are going through.
With Love,
Your Mystical Mama
P.S. An important note: although our thinking impacts our physicality (of course!), do not let this fact be an added judgment on yourself. We are all human and suffer through many unhappy thoughts and physical states. It is so lovely to get off our own cases! Do you know what I mean? ... Of course you do!
Dear Friends: I wrote this for an on-line newsletter at the request of an organization that asked me to give a talk on "immunity from stress." I thought it might be helpful to re-post it here. I find this kind of strict, self-help-y writing a bit dry, actually. But I think, and hope, the content might be useful for you and yours.
“Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” --William Shakespeare.
For decades, researchers have shown that “stress” impacts physical health. To date, doctors, therapists, and the media have generally defined stress as a traumatic experience: a divorce, or breakup, the death of someone close, a health or financial crisis or other “major” life event most would interpret as negative.
In my work of two decades, however, learning and then teaching people in a range of settings (from young people in juvenile hall and adult inmates to teachers and organizational executives) the role that Thought—as a creative, causal principle—has in creating emotional reality, my conclusion is much different. Life circumstances have impact, of course, but it is the way we think about such circumstances that creates “stress,” or even well-being, in the face of life’s events.
One young woman I know, who was a student of the “3 Principles” I teach, and then became a teacher herself, has lived with advanced multiple sclerosis for several years. She has difficulty walking and climbing stairs, and must be helped eating, because of her tremors. At a retreat she attended with us at Mount Madonna Center, she described her condition as “a gift” that had opened her to new worlds of learning. “I am one of the luckiest people in the world,” she said.
Dr. Peter Ubel, a University of Michigan researcher and author of “You’re Stronger Than You Think,” found that people who had gone through “stressful events” in their lives, had lost both their legs, or undergone complete colonostopies, for example, were actually just as happy as their healthy counterparts with more “normal” lives.
Studies by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel-prize winning psychologist, showed that what society thinks of as “positive” circumstances, such as wealth and its perceived freedom, or power, has almost no effect on happiness and well-being, after people escape from poverty.
How people think, and what they think: how much gratitude they feel (no matter what their lives look like) and how much they engage in thoughts and feelings of love and generosity are the causal factors for emotional resiliency and well-being.
I experienced a miscarriage during my first pregnancy, after I got married. I was sad for some time, of course. But by understanding the role Thought played in my life, I had no inclination to “carry thinking” about the miscarriage into my future, or to interpret the event as especially negative.
Seeing Thought is a wonderful opportunity for all of us to gain emotional health and immunity from stress, because the truth is that we are not our thoughts. The truth is also that life will continuously throw apparent “problems” our way—death, illness, wayward children, conflict, difficult family members.
We do not even need to resolve our problems to become happy and emotionally strong. Rather, our very perceptions of such “problems” constitutes the mental “soup,” or consciousness, we live in. When we perceive problems as difficult and un-resolvable, for instance, our thoughts create feelings of hopelessness and despair—mental “stress” that ignites a chemical cascade throughout our bodies, and ultimately (and of course!) impacts physical health.
When we create a more objective relationship to Thought, as the great spiritual teachings of the world have taught, we see that peace of mind and well-being exist within us already, at our core, regardless of what we are going through. Indeed, peace of mind helps us navigate life’s obstacles with wisdom, grace and clarity. Or rather, finding peace of mind allows us to appreciate Life, the flow and dance of Life, no matter what we are going through.
With Love,
Your Mystical Mama
P.S. An important note: although our thinking impacts our physicality (of course!), do not let this fact be an added judgment on yourself. We are all human and suffer through many unhappy thoughts and physical states. It is so lovely to get off our own cases! Do you know what I mean? ... Of course you do!
Sunday, May 29, 2011
The Final Word
Let us cease
this endless talk
of enlightenment!
It is giving me
a small headache.
Let us pour a lovely cup of tea
instead
and talk about your garden
my Friend
and how it grows!
We will set a place
for God
and maybe,
if we discover enough love and laughter
He will
show up
(unless He
is busy
with more critical
cases
of true woe.)
this endless talk
of enlightenment!
It is giving me
a small headache.
Let us pour a lovely cup of tea
instead
and talk about your garden
my Friend
and how it grows!
We will set a place
for God
and maybe,
if we discover enough love and laughter
He will
show up
(unless He
is busy
with more critical
cases
of true woe.)
Pome from Silence
I watched the cloud
Dissolve
as a
Thing ...
Into
No Thing
the Free Sky!
Just like Truth
here
and then gone ...
The Absolute
a moving target
always, always, always
dissolving into
Sky.
What a gorgeous entertainment!
Dissolve
as a
Thing ...
Into
No Thing
the Free Sky!
Just like Truth
here
and then gone ...
The Absolute
a moving target
always, always, always
dissolving into
Sky.
What a gorgeous entertainment!
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