Spirituality, Therapy, and the Good Life

Need to feel centered, grounded, at peace? Take a few slow and deep and deliberate breaths and then watch the video above while continuing to breath slowly and gently. It is a meditation spoken by Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh accompanied by the chanting of Phap Niem and absolutely beautiful visuals. A feast for the eyes, ears, heart, and soul…

Last night I wateched a funny, touching, and oh so wise talk by Storyteller and researcher, Brene Brown, on vulnerability and what she describes as “living whole heartedly.”

Brene asks, “How do we learn to embrace our vulnerabilities and imperfections so that we can engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness? How do we cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection that we need to recognize that we are enough – that we are worthy of love, belonging, and joy?” And she observes, ““Our lives are a collection of stories – truths about who we are, what we believe, what we come from, how we struggle, and how we are strong. When we can let go of what people think, and own our story, we gain access to our worthiness – the feeling that we are enough just as we are, and that we are worthy of love and belonging.

If we spend a lifetime trying to distance ourselves from the parts of our lives that don’t fit with who we think we’re supposed to be, we stand outside of our story and have to hustle for our worthiness by constantly performing, perfecting, pleasing, and proving. Our sense of worthiness lives inside of our story. It’s time to walk into our experiences and to start living and loving with our whole hearts.”

Brene reminds us that each of our stories are filled with beauty, and strength and wisdom, as well as pain and loss and vulnerability, the quest in part becomes about honoring all of it, even the hard stuff, and loving the story still…

David Myers wrote, “We excel at making a living but often fail at making a life. We celebrate our prosperity but yearn for purpose. We cherish our freedoms but long for connection. In an age of plenty, we feel spiritual hunger.” He wrote those words during a time of economic prosperity, long before the economic peril we are experiencing now. Today, far fewer of us celebrate the prosperity he was referring to while still longing for connection and purpose.

Today I am haunted by the memory of a woman I saw in the grocery store last night. She looked tired to me, tired and unspeakably sad. She was turning over the hams, one after another, and she seemed to be noting the price of each one. Eventually she moved away from them, her shopping cart still empty. I am thinking right now of the far too many people who I picture wandering around the stores this holiday season, surrounded by plenty and taunted by all that they can’t have, can’t give…

Today far more of us worry about how we will make a living in order to support ourselves and those we love, when now more then ever it seems we need to consider how we might make lives we can more readily love…

Craig and Marc Kielburger, brothers and authors of “Me to We: Finding Meaning in a Material World” observe, “In the struggle to meet deadlines, impress clients, and advance through the ranks, it’s easy to become so focused on accomplishing specific tasks that we lose sight of how our actions impact our personal well-being, not to mention that of those around us. Many of us fall into a trap and work long hourrs because of a sense of responsibility to others, not being able to say no at work, or trying to provide ‘only the best’ for our family. We make these choices with good intentions, but in the end they are not the best for our family, or ourselves. We get sucked into a way of life that does not fulfill us.”

Our Christmas wish list’s are all too often filled with material goods that might stroke our egos or fill our time, but do very little to fulfill our souls. Now, more then ever, it’s time to ask new questions and create new lists.

Places to Visit:

http://www.saintnick.org/

http://www.buynothingchristmas.org/index.html

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_84/celebratingchrismas.html

My mother is tiny, fragile, and bald. From the moment I learned that she had lung cancer, it seems that the volume on my life has been turned up. It is a strange thing to feel with such immediacy the beat of a fierce and imperfect love in your heart along with the tight cold specter of death in your chest. The simplest things seem poignant and almost sacred – a gathering of birds, the soft, vulnerable, hairless top of an infant’s head, the memory of my mother’s hand reaching out for my own, an old song on the radio…

When the tiniest cracks make our most well protected surfaces vulnerable, the depth and mass of what begins to filter in can all too often threaten to overflow and perhaps even break out, break through, break us open….

Author and cancer survivor, Michael Dowd, asks readers of his blog, “Can we tell our own personal stories in a mythic sense, with a flourish? Can we find a way, in hindsight, to evoke gratitude even for the disasters in our lives?”

When I am enmeshed in the details of this particular chapter of my cstory, I am acutely and profoundly aware of the pain and the peril presently flowing through it. And yet, when I breathe deep, step back, and widen my lens, I am able to witness and absorb the beauty and the possibility (even now) that lives within it.

We learn from every single experience of our lives and each time I look back over the landscape of my own life – over my own mythic story – I am reminded again and again of how much I have learned of purpose and meaning, resiliency and strength, and of love and light from sharing and daring the dark…

This year as Thanksgiving approaches I am more aware than ever of the importance of practicing gratitude and thought it might be helpful to share some particularly good resources on the why’s and how’s of cultivating gratitude starting with a 4 minute youtube video clip of Robert Emmons, author of “Thanks! How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier.”

Other resources I’m particularly appreciative of include:

Gratefulness Org

I Am Thankful

Spirituality Practice’s collection of pages on gratitude

Yesterday I was sent the following quote by Melody Beattie, “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity… It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” I am working to tap into the enormous potential contained within a sustained gratitude practice.

In the process of developing a psychoeducational course entitled, “The Art and Science of Happiness” I was referred to the first episode of a new reality show entitled, “Making Australia Happy” http://makingaustraliahappy.abc.net.au/episodes.php?watch=1 which is based on a research project that yielded impressive and hopeful results. The website introduces the project with the following:

” The experiment begins in Marrickville, the heart of an area recently identified by Deakin University’s annual wellbeing index as one of the unhappiest in Australia. As we meet the eight volunteers, we learn that their happiness levels are way below the national average. The team of experts has just eight weeks to change the volunteers’ scores, and their lives.

How will socially phobic Cade cope with the challenge of connecting with strangers at the local mall? Can mindfulness really help stressed-out real estate agent, Tony? Will gratitude help father-of-four, Stephen, strike that elusive work-life balance? How can the youngest of the volunteers, Ben, benefit from writing his own eulogy?

Science claims that happiness is easily within our reach, but how will these scientifically validated techniques play out in the lives of ordinary Australians? The results are more than startling.”

You can watch the first episode by following the program link above.

   Harper Collins promotes Gail Sheehy’s new book, “Passages in Caregiving: Turning Chaos into Confidence” by pointing out the following: “Forty-four million Americans care for an ill or elderly person in their homes. Yet until now, there has not been a single resource they can turn to for direction, support, and inspiration to cope with this bewildering and complex new role. Adapting the appealing format of her phenomenal bestseller Passages, Sheehy identifies the nine crucial stages of caregiving and offers insight for adapting and successfully navigating each. With empathy and intelligence, backed by formidable research, and interspersed with the poignant story of her own experience, Passages in Caregiving addresses the needs of this enormous and growing group and is sure to become the touchstone for this challenging yet deeply rewarding period in our life journey.”
  
   During an interview on the Today show Gail describes eight “turnings around the  labyrinth of caregiving” which are:

1. Shock and mobilization (“where time speeds up and you are working off adrenaline day and night… Your emotions run wild. You may wake to the first light of morning in a sweat, convinced you never slept.”)

2. The New Normal (” You are living with a new uncertainty, and you are not going back to the old normal.”)

3.  Boomerang (“Everything has settled down into a new normal routine…You’re handling it, thinking OK, I can do this. And suddenly, BOOMERANG! A new crisis erupts.”)

4. Playing God  (“By now you’ve become a seasoned caregiver.  You’re good at it… People say you are heroic, and you are beginning to believe it. You are Playing God.”)

5. I can’t do this anymore!  (“…one day, a year or two or three later, you break into tears, totally fatigued. Same thing the next day. You’ve given up so much. You’re cracking.”)

6. Coming back  (“This is the crucial turning. It now becomes clear that your loved one is not going to get well and will become more and more dependent and needy. You are approaching the center of the labyrinth… You may touch the depths of despair. …it is here that caregivers…begin the effort of coming back to life.”)

7. The in-between stage (“This is a momentous turning point for those who care for the chronically ill. Your loved one cannot be cured…but he or she is not ready to die—and may live on for years.”

8. The long good-bye (“This is the last turning. No one can answer your most burning question. How long? Inevitably, there will be times when you see your loved one suffering that you will likely feel: Why can’t you die? …Then, of course, you’ll feel guilty for thinking such a thing.”)

   As one of those forty-four million caregivers and as a fan of Sheehy, I’m looking forward to reading her book.