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The Art of Being

April 5, 2015 //
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I woke gently this morning. I woke slowly. My consciousness unfolded in a lovely way, without anxiety or stress, or residual negative emotions left over from unremembered nightmares. I woke feeling very little pain, minimal stiffness, and feeling comfortable in my body. I woke feeling beautiful, well, and pleasantly sensuous, enjoying the sensations of skin against sheets, blankets, pillows, and the softness of the morning air. No headache. Heart soaring. Feeling inspired and eager to face the blank canvas on my easel – and metaphorically, the blank canvas of my day, and my future. I woke loving, and feeling loved, in the quiet solitude of comfortable surroundings, content and aware that love does not require proximity outside my own self-imposed attachments.

I woke to a quiet household. I contentedly made my coffee, contemplating what things I might get done today, and feeling artistically inspired – today is a good day to paint, and I’ve got a number of concepts sketched out that I am ready to make come alive, even some new notions this morning that I am eager to sketch and get started on. It is, in nearly every respect, an ideal day to paint. Currently, there is simply no room to do so. The space set aside for me to work has filled with another project, which has stalled temporarily due to real life happening, in spite of plans. On some other day, this could result in a lot of suppressed resentment festering in the background, and find me feeling unimportant, lacking in value, not well-cared for, and not understood.  Today is different. Sure, it’s frustrating, and I earnestly want to live in an environment that truly supports me creatively, one in which ensuring I can paint when I am moved to paint, write when I am moved to write, listen to the music I love, sing, dance, and simply be this specific human that I am, is among the highest priorities of the household day-to-day.  As with so many things, there are verbs involved, choices to make, and I am my own cartographer on this journey.

I am working on getting into a live/work space that really meets the needs I have at this point in my life; choices are made, verbs are verb-ing in an appropriate order, and at a reasonable rate of progress. In the meantime, rather than blow a lovely day feeling creatively frustrated, I am feeling strong, feeling creative, and feeling joyful now, with what is.  It’s a lovely morning. My coffee is hot and tasty. I feel inspired – and I am not limited to canvas and brush; I have all these lovely words, and ideas, and broad blue skies, endless paths to walk beneath them. It is a lovely Sunday to rise from the wreckage of my chaos and damage, and practice the beautiful Art of Being.

The humble dandelion stands out in a crowd; her strength unmistakable, her beauty her own.

The humble dandelion stands out in a crowd; her strength obvious, her beauty her own; it is no concern of hers that some see her as ‘a weed’.

Today is a good day to bring order to small corners of chaos. Today is a good day for good practices, and good self-care. Today is a good day to treat me well, and enjoy who I already am. Today is a good day for sketching, and laundry, and photographing the very first roses in my garden. Today is a good day to be, and to become, and to celebrate personal rebirth. Today is a good day to practice the Art of Being.

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Categories art and the artist, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Snapshots, Vignettes, Moments

April 1, 2015 //
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I’ve had so many lovely moments in life. Haven’t you, also? I find myself wondering occasionally how it is that the unpleasant ones so easily get the upper hand in my implicit memory, and biases over time. The ‘negative bias’ of our primate brains is kind of a big downer, isn’t it? The time taken to savor simple joys, sweet moments, pleasant happenstance, and all the bits and pieces of positive experience I enjoy day-to-day is very worthwhile; it helps shift my negative bias to a less negative place. Re-wiring, re-programming, and ‘correcting’ these sorts of things is arduous work, requiring considerable attention to details, and commitment to repetition and structured practices.  It’s the moments that follow all that practice that count so much; the result of the effort to practice my consciousness away from my negative bias isn’t always obvious… but sometimes it is obvious, indeed.

This morning I am enjoying a tasty latte, an unexpected treat made by my traveling partner’s loving hand first thing this morning, and I am considering future moments. I guess ‘daydreaming’ is another way to frame it up. I am contemplating experiences I know I enjoy, in the setting of simply enjoying my life, and letting that vision unfold a bit like a video. What does my life look like, without struggling, striving? With less background stress? With greater moment to moment acceptance, self-acceptance, and calm? If the details of my surroundings suit my taste, and meet my needs? If the colors, textures, and forms in my spaces were selected specifically to uplift, to nurture, and to evoke delight and wonder? To inspire me creatively and to foster creative work? What would my mornings be like? How would my days end? How would the trajectory of my experience change? Where would such a path take me?

Perspective is worth changing, and changing again.

Perspective is worth changing, and changing again.

If the only thing standing between you and the life you envision as most enjoyable for you is your own choices… do you change the choices you are making? Does the answer to that question change if the question is not about what you enjoy, but is more about what supports and nurtures your growth and emotional wellness, and meets your needs over time? It does for me; this troubles me because it implies that I place less value and priority on my own desires and satisfaction in life than I do on others, unwilling to make choices in my own favor unless it comes down to basic needs. It’s not a comfortable understanding of my decision-making, and feels out of alignment with my values, and it’s important to know this about myself; I can’t easily change what I don’t recognize as needing change.

I’m not mired in frustration or feeling heartbroken. It’s a lovely quiet morning. I am smiling and enjoying this time, engaged in this moment, enjoying something I love that meets many needs. This is simply a pleasant morning to contemplate developing a higher level of overall life satisfaction through better choices, more skillful quality of life decision-making about my own needs as an individual, and how best to do that without undercutting the needs and desires of the people who share the experience of life and love with me. A morning to consider consideration, and to contemplate balance, while I sip on my coffee.

I smile as I realize how far I have come that I am so comfortable even thinking about putting myself first in my own experience; it wasn’t so long ago that I would have found that quite difficult, even in thought, and closer to ‘impossible’ than ‘uncomfortable’.

Today is a good day to enjoy myself with a smile – exactly as I am. Today is a good day to enjoy each moment with a beginner’s mind, open to the possibilities, and accepting of change. Today is a good day for The Four Agreements. Today is a good day to change my world.

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Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Perspective, Spring, The Big 5

Filters and Lenses

March 31, 2015 //
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Do I see what I see through honest eyes, or is it filtered through my experience, and my own limited awareness and understanding?

Do I see what I see through honest eyes, or is it filtered through my experience, and my own limited awareness and understanding?

I woke this morning to the sound of an audible ‘click’. I often do, but don’t know what the sound is caused by. Perhaps a door elsewhere, or the timer on my aquarium, or some other commonplace occurrence that I simply haven’t placed or clearly identified – because I am asleep when I hear it. This particular morning, when I woke, my emotional world careened around within myself in an almost dizzying way; residual emotions from dreams colliding with in-the-moment reactions to sensations and awaking, leftover random moments of emotion from earlier hours – or days – left piled up in the unswept corners of my consciousness, stirred together, mixed and shaken, as I wake up. It is far too easy to take this bit of ’emotional seasickness’ personally, first thing in the morning, and more than one otherwise lovely morning has been wrecked by emotions that got the best of me – even though I had no idea why I actually felt the way I did.

This morning I am playing a quiet game of ‘being my own best friend’ and sipping my coffee and hanging out with me, unconcerned that my emotions feel unsettled, uninterested in exploring them further, and choosing instead to relax with me for a while, and enjoy some of the very cool things about this woman who I am.

I find myself thinking about a very fancy camera I had once had – long before the age of the digital camera, and back when analog film drove the decisions about how many pictures I could reasonably afford to take, and to get interesting effects, or special shots, I lugged around a camera bag full of filters and lenses. It’s an interesting metaphor. Even in our thinking, we use ‘filters’ and ‘lenses’ to sort through what we see, and to determine how we understand it. More than once I’ve messed with my own head, and caused myself a lot of needless suffering, because my perspective (a filter, right?) or awareness (a lens?) were not well-suited to the experience of the moment.

I don’t really know where it takes this metaphor, but when I take pictures these days, they are most often available light shots, free of effects or ‘fun’ filters; I want most to capture the quality of light – of life – in a moment, just as it is. This, I find, is also a very nice way to treat my own heart – although less simple, once I have stepped from metaphor to action, sometimes. This morning the time taken to get my balance, and my bearings, and secure emotional footing before rushing off to face the day seems like a nice way to start a new day.

Today is a good day to view things through a different filter, and through a cleaner lens. Today is a good day to enjoy who I already am, in this moment right now, and see where the day takes me. Today is a good day for love and lovers – and a bigger picture.

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Categories Brain Injury, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Big 5, Words

Today Is Unlike Any Other

March 30, 2015 //
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Moments lack permanence.

Moments lack permanence.

Today is unlike any other day, because it is uniquely always ‘now’; it is today. Yesterday is among so many other past days.  They queue up in an orderly fashion, following rules of time and the passage of time; yesterday has become memory, lacking in substance. Tomorrow, too, is without substance, stretching infinitely ahead with the rest of future events, lacking even the ‘reality’ of memory, of having once been… Tomorrow is only a thought of things to come, and perhaps a bit of planning built on what isn’t yet happening at all, and may not, ever.

Really, we’ve only got ‘now’, ‘today’, to work with in any practical way. We can apologize for past events – there’s a lot of that going on, day-to-day, among well-meaning people. We can make promises or plans for the future – some of us crave more of that than others. Some of us see-saw between past hurts and a future more distant from those. Some of us balance delicately between past joys and a future that feels more uncertain. Perhaps we all do some of both?

I find it easy to look past today without intending to. The outcome is generally that I have less ability to affect my future willfully, and less perspective on a past I can’t change.

Today tends always to have the potential for action, for change, for the moment to bring will and choice together with a verb or two…neither yesterday nor tomorrow afford us that chance. I guess the puzzle is how best to learn from all those yesterdays, to plan a tomorrow in which I thrive – and to do so in a way that provides me an opportunity to take action today to bring me closer to where I most want to be…but to also do so without striving, or attachment.

Life’s lessons about attachment, specifically, are brutally difficult – at least for me, at least today. Oh, there are easy moments of clear vision and contentment, confident that the path ahead of me is paved, mapped, and free of obstacles. That, too, is an illusion. It is as illusory as the more difficult moments when it feels like I am wading knee deep in chaos and damage, in the darkness, with my eyes closed, banging my shins and stubbing my toes on a real life that is only to happy to keep moving the fucking furniture around or changing the rules.

This too will pass. Change, unavoidably, is. What will become of me? Whatever I make of me. And what of love? Well…love will attend to its own affairs if I attend skillfully to mine. Love, too, simply is. The challenge there is holding love’s flame within, trusting that the heart’s pilot light can’t really be blown out so easily. A friend recently wrote some beautiful words about love I am still finding relevant in this moment.

Today is a good day for perspective. Today is a good day to practice good practices, and good processes, and to trust incremental change over time. Today is a good day to take care of my heart with the same tenderness I would give to anyone else. Change is. Change always is – and it is always ‘today’. Today I’ll make the most of that.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Spring, The Big 5, Words

Biscuits

March 29, 2015 //
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This morning biscuits are a metaphor. I haven’t made any, I’m just thinking about them. Fresh hot homemade biscuits right from the oven on a lazy spring Sunday morning, served with sweet cream butter, homemade fruit preserves of some kind or another – or several – maybe some lemon curd, and Devonshire cream – and plenty of coffee, or tea, sounds like just about the perfect morning munch, or lovely bite of brunch a bit later, or excellent accompaniment to a good lunch salad… I’m just saying; I like biscuits. (American biscuits… so… scones.)

Home made scones.

Home made scones.

How are biscuits a metaphor? Simply that there is nothing fancy about a biscuit, even the recipe itself is easy. Flour, shortening, liquid, mixed in the correct ratio, spooned onto a pan if you’re not up for rolling and cutting, and then baked – but the results are extraordinary when the ingredients are in the correct ratio, the steps followed in order, and the progress of the baking attended to mindfully.

Sometimes we take what is easy and make it harder. I’m not sure why, but I know I do, and have, and likely will again in the future.

I’ve got stacks of cookbooks, and a lot of biscuit recipes. Some of the recipes start things off by taking those simple ingredients and directing me toward very complicated steps. Some of the recipes are a simple tweak of the basic concept, but result in something very different at the end.

A biscuit done well can be the foundation of something amazing - like a grown up take on a breakfast 'ice cream sandwich'.

A biscuit done well can be the foundation of something amazing – like a grown up take on a breakfast ‘ice cream sandwich’.

The poorest pantry likely has the ingredients for biscuits; flour of some kind, water or milk, some sort of shortening, a leavening ingredient. Biscuits can be made simply, or with far fancier ingredients – they’re still biscuits, and the sort of thing that tends to be very available. Affordable luxury? A small investment in effort, a commitment to a good recipe, and having simple staple ingredients on hand can result in luxury, comfort, and contentment in the hardest times.

Everyone has tough times. In the toughest times, I’ve still been able to make biscuits. I’m trying to say something… about life, about love, about hard times…about the simple basics that we can get by on, when we make the choice to do so. Still choices, still verbs involved – but the list of ingredients may be quite simple indeed. (Check your pantry – are you well stocked on emotional staples?)

Today is a good day to do well on what is at hand. Today is a good day to follow a good recipe. Today is a good day to enjoy the simple pleasures that I know I can count on. Today is a good day to change my world.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring
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