From Chaos to Clarity

Writing is a way to discover what is really important to you and how you think about what is important.  For that reason, I write frequently in journals and in blogs not only as a way to discern what is going on inside, but also because in writing I have found a way to have a confidant who doesn’t correct, complain or criticize. When writing, I have the experience of being truly listened too, a luxury that so many people never get to enjoy.

When I write, I can go for it, without restricting time usage or range of topics covered. Whether I write in a notebook or on my smart device or a loose piece of paper, the exercise has the effect of funneling my diffuse and disorganized thoughts into something more solid: words on a page where they are temporarily frozen and can be observed leisurely and compassionately.

Intensely Intimate

Writing in a private journal is intensely intimate and because it is, I don’t have to worry about all the things I worried about in school such as my handwriting (which was unusually untidy when I was a child,) grammar (which in a bilingual household borrowed a bit of each language for a thorough and comical mix-up of word order and metaphors,) and the red pen of correction.

Blogging is a modern form of journaling, except that it is in front of the web-eyes of the whole world. It changes the dynamic when you go public with your musings. For me it pushes me to think through the chaos of my first draft to come to a little more clarity before pushing the ‘post’ button. In the act of rethinking an article I’m nudged into better organization, and with a second and third read through I frequently discover more clarity for me and most likely the reader experience is improved too.

First Unruly Draft

My process of moving from chaos to clarity starts with writing the first unruly draft. I let myself vent onto paper or screen, if that seems needed at the time. I write as fast and as untidily as I want to. Sometimes I write about something that saddens me and I write without editing, concern for sentence structure, being nice or writing with clarity. That comes in the next step.

Then, I give myself a break from the writing experience and come back to my chaotic first draft with cup of tea and a fresh notebook and I rewrite the original article as if it is meant for public consumption. I write it as if it will be read on the evening news. The idea I have in mind while doing this is to get the language as clear as possible.

I like to do this second step with pen and paper, because handwriting slows down my mental process and demands a commitment to the word written on the paper. It’s not like an electronic document in which words can be cut and paste and rearranged quickly and rapidly. On paper, if I am not careful and mindful with the process I can end up with a lot of scratches and untidiness. And often I do. Necessitating a third writing out of the article I’m working on.

Try it for yourself. 

Write about something important to you. Tell the story of it on paper in a fast flurry of words and ideas. Let it rest for a while and come back to it with more paper and your favorite pen and go about re-creating it for public consumption. It is literally impossible, in my opinion, to write something and not learn a thing about yourself.

“I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart.”
Anne Frank

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Serving The World: Attach, Detach, Sigh

Learning about how serving the world can be a spiritual practice was made easier when I encountered these four helpful shifts in awareness:

From Doing To Being
From Attachment to Nonattachment
From Obligation to Love
From Duality to Oneness

The first, the shift from doing to being, represents a change in focus from being task oriented towards being mindful of the attitude with which I approach my service.  Someone coined the phrase “never move faster than the speed of love,” which to me describes the attitude I aspire to when service.  When I am tasked oriented, I can sometimes be rough with people, and leave an unpleasant emotional wake behind me.  I’m learning to focus on how I am being while I am doing what I am doing.

The second, the shift from attachment to non attachment, reminds me that I want to get to a place in mind where I don’t let disappointment degrade my engagement.  A paraphrase of what Krisha said to Arjuna when asked what kind of people he favored might be: those who are neither buoyed up by praise or cast down by criticism are loved by me.

The third, a shift from obligation to love, prompts me to acknowledge that some things in life are not pleasant, and yet we have to do them anyway, and invites me to discover whether I can engage in the unpleasant activity with my focus on love.  I am trying to not let my aversion to discomfort stop me from being open heartedly engaged in serving the world.

Finally, the shift from duality to oneness, to me is about the realization that although it appears that I’m doing something for someone else when I’m serving, it is also true that I’m doing it for myself, or the self of me that lives in all beings.

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Lean Into Suffering and Act

Sometimes I think the best contribution would be for me to work towards the cleanest consciousness I can when I think of helping solve the troubles in the world.  What I mean is doing the work that leads towards dropping, as much as possible, enemy images, ideas of ‘us and them’ or ideas of better than or less than.  These are the ideas that get in my way of helping cleanly.

On one hand contributing with a clean consciousness is a great way to avoid bringing my own messiness to the task of helping where help is needed.  On the other hand, there is the possibility of becoming so detached, that I don’t care enough to do something to help when help is indicated.

I recall reading Theresa of Avila’s writing about this topic of serving the world and enjoying her advice to lean into the suffering, to identify with the pain and struggle of the people involved so that we can be stimulated into action.  That is my paraphrase of what I remember from the reading.  I remember too the idea in her writing that it is our connection to the suffering of the world that draws us to action, and it is also, she wrote, how Divinity uses us. 

Theresa of Avila’s advice is in contrast to what some metaphysical teachers recommend, which is to be careful to not identify with the mindset of suffering so as not to take on the associated consciousness.  Ernest Holmes wrote “You may have all the sympathy in the world for one who is in need, but don’t personally identify yourself with it, don’t take it on.”  Either point of view, in my opinion, is fine, as long as it results in action.  Only I can know when I’m hiding behind my spirituality as a way of avoiding engaging in the world.

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Malala On My Mind

I’ve got Malala Yousafzai on my mind, the 16 year-old Pakistani woman who was shot in the head for taking a stand for educating women and girls. Her address at the United Nations recently got me to thinking about great acts of service to humanity. I am still thinking about the Hot Shots who perished in the recent fires, and about the work of Navy Seal Eric Greitens who after returning from Iraq in 2007, donated his combat pay to establish The Mission Continues, a nonprofit organization that encourages veterans to serve in communities across America and thereby help connect them with a sense of contribution, community and purpose.

My thought connects to other great contributors, like Former President Nelson Mandela who when he emerged from so many years of incarceration, emerged as a hero, not only for his own nation but for oppressed people all over the globe. And, who for his steadfast saying yes to human rights, is known as ‘father’ in his own country, like Mahatma Gandhi was known in India. President Mandela initiated the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights atrocities and give a voice to those who suffered, and there by starting the mending of generations of injustices.

Mahatma Gandhi and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. both mobilized huge numbers of people before there were cell phones and social media to assist them. I’m thinking of Mahatma Gandhi’s refusal to bend to the injustices of his time and his defiance of the British ruling that Indian nationals were not to produce their own salt, but instead purchase the salt from the British government. It was in the 30’s I believe, that he led the famed march, some 250 miles from his home to the ocean, to get salt. Upon arrival the mass of people following him discovered the salt beds had already been destroyed. Nevertheless, he bent his knee to touch what salt remained and in so doing broke the law and change the course of Indian and British history.

I’m thinking of Dr. King’s Nobel Peace Prize for standing up for racial equality through nonviolent means, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom he received, and the Congressional Gold Medal, and the Federal holiday in his honor and the 100’s of streets named after him and the memorial statue on the National Mall and how his name is known across the world as a symbol of service to humanity. Testimonies to the love and respect his legacy commands.

When Malala addressed the United Nations, the teenager said that she was not against anyone and neither was she there to speak against the Taliban or any other terrorist group, but instead to speak up for the right to education of every child. Those words struck a chord of recognition in me. I thought of the words of American philosopher, Ernest Holmes, who in his last public address at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California said “Find me one person who is for something and against nothing, who is redeemed enough not to condemn others out of the burden of his soul, and I will find another savior…another exalted human being.”

Heros, all of them, giving me hope and inspiring me, every time I think of them, to live a less self-centered life. And they are strongly on my mind today.

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The Power of Meditation: rearrange inside and out

One of the stories I like to tell about my journey of waking up to the power of meditation is that of relocating from one continent to another and discovering that after a very short while I recreated the an unpleasant dynamic with a supervisor that I was aiming to leave behind.  

I was hopeful that with a new start, in a new work environment, and in a new culture, a new me would emerge.  In part, that was accurate, however, a lot of the personality quirks that caused me trouble in my previous work environment surfaced quickly and presented the same stumbling blocks they had before.

When in college I tended to let my living environment get untidy till eventually I would become frustrated and sufficiently distracted by the disorder that it got in the way of my ability to study.  Rearranging the furniture can bring a new, fresh look to a familiar room, it's true, and I would rearrange things from time to time in a flurry of tidy-up-inspiration.  In short order, the space would begin to deteriorate as I left draws open, put items where they didn't belong, forgot to empty trash and all the other practices I was accustomed to.  Something in my attitude had to change before I set in place the new practices that would nurture a supportive, even inspiring environment.

Later, in spiritual studies I learned that the attitude shift is sometimes referred to as a change in consciousness, or a change in mind or awareness.  From that type of inner change, outer changes seem to flow without force of effort, and seem to have longer life span. I discovered that making those changes in awareness was less an act of affirmation than it was as a result of introspection and slowing down enough to witness the way things are in mind.  For me, shifts in attitude came more easily and more frequently when I learned how to sit in quietness and observe my inner life.

When my living environment gets chaotic now, I both tidy it up, rearrange the furniture and I take time to sit in quiet wittiness of what is going on inside.

The Power of Meditation is available for pre-order at Amazon and Barnes and Noble 

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