Focused Pine Cone Meditation

my meditation alter

Since the Life Extension Conference I've been practicing meditation more regularly.  The type I've been doing has been pretty active on watching the breath and staying very focused on that without exploring much mind chatter.

Today I did something different, I know that I have a few things that I'm focusing on that are challenging and I wanted to sit with them more specifically.  I was drawn to the pine cone on my alter as a symbol of nascent possibilities.  

I held the pine cone in my seated position and it felt really refreshing to have something in my hands to draw my attention.  I closed my eyes and started to explore some areas that I've found challenging -- which, though I don't want to get into here, mainly have to do with resisting being self-expressed in a couple areas.

As I drew by thoughts out from the last few days, I could see my mind drifting around and I could ask myself how these thoughts were related to the pine cone.

I thought of birth -- maybe challenges can be viewed as something that can be birthed through.  Uncomfortable, challenging, and scary -- I imagined a newborn not liking the sensations of being pushed through the canal into a completely new world.   That said, without this first challenge, nothing greater would be known. 

Babies do not resist this process, there is no scrambling to get back in.  They're soft and pliable and accept the push that is given.  When I look at my challenges a big thing that I can see is a scrambling to move away from the contraction.  I spoke yesterday about how my inner five year old just wanted to stomp on the floor and have a temper tantrum because the challenge was too confronting, too hard, and something that I've tried at many many times and not succeeded at.  It's all resistance and fight.

I wondered what challenges would be like if I did not resist them, if I let the contractions move over me.  Surely the process would be uncomfortable however worthwhile in the end.  It seems to me that if I don't face them now, that they will just keep coming up until a bigger push comes along.  The choice is to go through it or bury it for later.

Carl Jung continues to pop up for me, "That which you resist, persists."  And I can see that I've been resisting not only going through these challenges but experiencing the emotions that go along with them. 

I thought of what it would be like to go from having challenges with resistance to moments of "isn't that fascinating" with curiosity and wonder to life's contractions.  I think that going head on with the latter would be wonderful, and I know that I'm much closer to really knowing that going through the challenge is what's most important right now...maybe the step after that is to cultivate challenges into fascinating moments.

Stimulus Response

While taking a walk with James, and our friend Jason, it dawned on me that maybe I can start to extinguish my fear of spiders (or really anything) by being conscious of my physical reaction to it.  And then choosing to do something about it.  Currently, my reaction looks something like this:

• A spider is detected
• Shivers run down my spine 
• Shivers extends into my limbs
• Reactive thoughts then occur like "gross, AHHHH..."
• Cycle repeats when thinking about the incident

With my new method I'm trying something like this:

• A spider is detected
• I start to feel shivers
• I stop the shivers and attempt to keep looking at the spider while controlling my physical response (and sometimes I try to think of something I like while looking at the spider...yay bunnies!)
• Thoughts then occur like "ok, it's still gross" but it's more like an observation than a reaction (I'd like to get to a place where I'm more neutral than "it's still gross" but it's a work in progress).
• I also notice that I don't tend to perseverate on the spider after that.

 James and I found a while back that if we were both getting bogged down by something tough to talk about we'd tend to find ourselves moving into a fetal position.  We've both found that when we call each other on this and then work to getting out of the position (standing right up, taking a walk, etc.) that it helps to change the mood dramatically.  So, why not do this with spiders too ;).

This all seems pretty obvious from when I was learning about extinguishing fears in psych class however I don't recall much attention being placed on consciously lessening the physical response.  Yay mindfulness!

~Danielle

Decompression 2010

"A plane is a bad place for an all-out sleep, but a good place to begin rest and recovery from the trip to the faraway places you've been, a decompression chamber between Here and There. Though a plane is not the ideal place really to think, to reassess or reevaluate things, it is a great place to have the illusion of doing so, and often the illusion will suffice." - Shana Alexander

Decompression is setting in pretty strong as I sit at Barefoot Coffee in Santa Clara.  It's actually one of the nicer places I've been lately that has reminded me a bit of Burning Man with its outdoor beat up couch, displayed art, and beautifully crafted latte foam (I only wish this coffee shop were in a neighborhood instead of a strip mall). 

A few of my friends have posted long and detail oriented posts about their experience, which I have thoroughly enjoyed reading...though that type of writing I find to be quite daunting...so I'll do my takeaways here.

• Leading a Camp - This year at Burning Man I co-lead Future Camp.  It was interesting to see my involvement go from "eh" to "I'm on it!" as the weeks progressed towards our adventure.  I found that leading gave me an interesting social edge that I really enjoyed.  I'm not much for jumping into group conversations, and being a lead meant that people would come up and ask me questions so that I got some one-on-one time with them and also felt helpful in the process.  It has probably been the best larger social setting I've been in in a while without feeling drained...I think having a role really helped me to socialize.

• Stomach/Posture - For the last few years I've been having stomach cramping that I think stems from storing tough emotions there.  I went to a Heart of Now workshop and was able to explore the stomach thing a little bit more with people who I don't know.  What I found was that I should be balancing out doing external work on it (massage, yoga, etc.) with internal work (listening for the feelings that come up and attempting release).  It seems obvious, but something about talking to these new folk helped it to solidify in my brain a bit more.  From thinking about my stomach, I've also been noticing how much my posture affects the relaxation of my stomach.  I'm noticing that I tend to hunch and round in, which increases pressure on an already vulnerable spot.  For the last week I've been sitting up straight, chest open, and that seems to help a lot.

• Noise pollution - Future Camp had the misfortune of locating right next to a super secret bass camp that was not so secret after Wednesday when they started playing techno music with so much bass that one could feel their eardrums shake.  A friend appropriately coined this experience as "Bass Rape."  This noise pollution caused a lot of stress on our camp and even made people ill to the point of needing to leave our camp.  There was no relief for much of 4 straight days, even after negotiating with them.  Eventually Nevada law enforcement was called in because the camp had assaulted some campers who asked them to turn it down for their well being (all this said, this is extremely rare at Burning Man and would not deter me from going again...we'll be reporting more to the organization).  One thing that all the noise pollution brought me was some introspection on the noise in my life.  It was really apparent after returning to the grid with over 150 emails waiting to be sorted.  Many of them junk...so I spent a lot of time unsubscribing to mailing lists and products that I just don't need in my face daily.  I've also started to attempt cutting down on my email time by checking and responding to email only twice a day...so far so good.

• Displays of appreciation/attraction/connection - One thing that I really enjoyed was the level of connection with people in general.  Sometimes day to day I do not enjoy the attention that I get especially from people finding me attractive...the vibe feels more that someone would like to get something from me and it's very uncomfortable.  At Burning Man the attention felt more like appreciation or recognition.  When someone would compliment me or give a hug (or kiss on the cheek...those were fun!) the feeling was one of gratitude and like the person wanted to share something with me, an offering.  I wish more of this happened in the "real" world.  I also found this to be true with gifting on the playa.  I received some really beautiful gifts that were given with a level of authenticity that I haven't seen in a long time.  It was really easy to receive these gifts since there was no implication that I would then offer something out of responsibility or guilt.

• Bliss - This was probably my favorite art piece of the week.  I'm now kicking myself that I never saw her at night. 

       

• Relationship - Burning Man was great for my relationship with James.  There are pages dedicated to how Burning Man can really test a relationship and I can see how that can definitely be true.  However, for us it's always been really great.  This year, James went out a week before me, so we were apart for a full week without any communication.  It was interesting to what would come up for me during that time and to see that any fears I had about us being apart and out of communication for that week were quickly eased when we did see each other.  James and I worked really well together at camp all week, did a lot of outings together and spent some time apart as well.  It was really really nice to have a week without other things needing attention so that we could connect more. 

Unexpected Outcomes

This was the speech I wrote for the 8th grade promotion.  Liked it enough to post here:

As some of you may know, I love a good quote.  They keep me grounded and give me perspective whenever I get caught up in the thoroughfare of day to day life. 

When I thought of our community, a Buckminster Fuller quote popped out at me, “There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes.”

There are many times in life when we hope for a certain conclusion.  We build up expectations, sometimes only to find that a situation, a feeling, or a thought has changed. If we can keep open to changes, new perspectives, and these unexpected outcomes, we can view life as a place where we’re always growing.

Our 8th grade class has been a grand experiment.  Many of these students have come to Innovations from well established schools.  Places that have janitors, typical report cards, traditional parent/teacher conferences, principals with normal hair, and even a cafeteria.  However, you all, students, families, and teachers, being explorers...were looking for something different, you were willing to experiment.

These young explorers have created classroom rules, faced their peers in class council, greeted each other daily in Morning Meeting, come to me when they are not satisfied with the way they have handled a situation, developed strong friendships, challenged their teachers in positive ways, and have made our community bigger and brighter for every twist and turn.

We’ve come here with a mission, to live powerful lives through self-expression, compassionate connection, and purposeful learning.  I see them being self-expressed when they come in wearing colorful makeup, bright hair do’s, wearing Rastafarian hats, and speaking their minds on today’s issues.  They compassionately connect with each other when they make mistakes and can hear each other without blame or guilt.  Solar ovens, the Sacramento Trip, Roller Coaster physics, and analyzing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, are just some examples of purposeful learning.  I’ve seen the parents living our mission as well, when they come in and contribute to our community and voice their thoughts even when they are nervous.

For me, the mission of IA has been an experiment and the students especially have surpassed what I thought a public school could look like. I know that your future has many beautiful adventures ahead. Bring that sense of self that you have graciously shown us here to your future high school and other endeavors.

I wish you all the best to come and many unexpected outcomes.

Mind the Gap

I just finished reading Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now" and found some of the distinctions in the book to be very powerful and insightful.  Like many books on development, I found it a bit repetitive, however, here are the gems for me:

Clock Time vs. Psychological Time

• Clock Time = Now in physical space and in real time requests/actions.
• Psychological Time = In the future/past.  Generally manifests as worry/anxiety for me.

I found this distinction very helpful in catching myself spending a lot of time worrying about something rather than doing something about it.

Situations vs. Problems

• Situations = Now.  Choice is to accept or take action.
• Problems = In the mind, usually bound to psychological time.

One point being made was that situations do occur that are not pleasant for us.  Life does happen, we step on bees, feel pain, etc.  And, we have the choice to work with situations and/or make them into problems.  I could take action on having stepped on a bee and be done with it.  Or, I could unconsciously build up that moment into a fear for the future and start spinning out of control whenever I see a bee.  The problem occurs when one's mind starts spinning without consciousness (defined as being able to step into the gap and watch the mind's talk). 

Reactions are your test of being/consciousness:

You will be taken over by a reaction, which ultimately is always some form of fear, and pulled into deep unconsciousness.  Those challenges are your tests.  Only the way in which you deal with them will show you and others where you are at as far as your state of consciousness is concerned, not how long you can sit with your eyes closes or what visions you see.

...Once a mind pattern, an emotion, or a reaction is there, accept it. You were not conscious enough to have a choice in the matter.

This isn't saying that you're not responsible for your reactions. In that particular moment you could not step into the gap, or even perceive that you could.  Oops...welcome to being human.

It's like walking down the street and stepping into a divot in the sidewalk.  Had you seen it, you would have chosen differently.  But you didn't.  You can accept what happened and in that acceptance get present to those divots (to hopefully mind the gap next time), or you can get in resistance about it and have guilt, "shoulds,"  and probably some blame to spice up the mix.

I'd love to hear about your practice for minding the gap and how, when you don't, you care for those divots.

Ahoy, there be new ahead!

It's interesting to be stepping back into this space again, after three years.  I see livejournal as too much of a random spattering of old history and facebook is for quick minimal connection, so here I am.

I lot has happened in the last three years and what's present for me now is that new is on the horizon.

Teresa G. and I were talking a few weeks ago at a coffee shop and I said something about how I'm not so much of a risk taker to a new suitor of hers.  She smiled and chuckled, her eyes and mouth both saying something to the effect of that we're not physical risk takers but we shake up our lives.

I'm both nervous and excited about some new quakes, predominantly, moving to the Bay Area and taking six months to focus on renewing my energies and interests.

As part of this focus, I've been journaling in a new way.  Write in the future as if it already happened:

This evening I arrived at Fusion 2011 (personal growth retreat).  It was so good to see the faces of last year and hear that those that couldn't make it were off adventuring.  I shared with everyone how relaxed I've been feeling.  My six months of renewal were amazing.  I took art classes, started an amazing garden, and began learning Portuguese for James' and my trip to Brazil.  I went back to educational consulting and am loving it.  Working with kids and families feels so good.  Speaking of family, I've been skyping with my brother and sister and getting to know them better.  I even visited my sister in Chicago.  It's been a wonderful year since the last fusion.

  I wonder...what's new for you?

Danielle