Spirituality, Therapy, and the Good Life

For the past two weeks I’ve spent ten hour days at a major cancer center where I’ve been exposed to and touched by suffering, heartbreak, love and beauty on what often seems like a moment to moment basis. One minute I’m sitting at a table of patients and artists beside a pale and exhausted looking teenager hooked up to an iv  who is working on an intricate and truly beautiful collage while completely ignoring the rest of us. On my other side is a fragile looking middle aged man with kind eyes who has dropped by the Arts in Medicine room before his chemo infusion.  When he begins to describe the puppy he is considering adopting and asks us what we think he should name her, the teenager looks up, takes us in for what seems like the first time, and suggests that he name the puppy, “Hope.”

The next day while sipping coffee in the radiation center waiting room I am joined by what is beginning to feel like a sisterhood of mostly bald headed women who huddle together for a few moments each morning to compare side effects, symptoms, laughter, and reassurances.  This capacity of shared trauma for so quickly fostering authenticity and intimacy is remarkable to me.

That same afternoon while at the infusion center I notice a husband and wife sitting across from me and am struck by the fact that while the wife is the one receiving the chemo infusions, it’s he who looks ill and absolutely terrified.  I smile at him reassuringly and He lifts a trembling hand to wave at me.  I very much doubt that this wan and stoop shouldered man has seen his thirtieth birthday yet.

I see pain everywhere.  And I see love all around me.  And I see fear and courage and despair and hope.  This just may be the most terrible, beautiful, most real world I have ever landed in.  I’ve had several long and heart felt talks with complete strangers, and  ocassionally I ask them what they’ve discovered thus far that has surprised or encouraged them.  A common response to my question alludes to the acts of kindness cancer patients and their loves ones have experienced from strangers and how significant even the smallest gestures have felt to those who were feeling frightened and vulnerable.  “Maybe it is love that does the most healing,” one breast cancer patient shared with me.

In her book, “When the Heart Waits,” Sue Monk Kidd observed that “…a split of the head from the heart is common in our culture. Along with this goes another painful splitting: the severing of our body from our soul. As we separate from our feelings, we tend to separate from our bodies as well.”  In this culture of cancer I have repeatedly heard stories that describe in one form or another a kind of reunion of body and soul.  They are never happy stories, instead they contain pain and suffering and fear, and yet, they are so often transformative.   Stories that begin with one person’s abrupt and often savage introduction to a body that he or she had been living with for a life time and yet never known.  Dramas that present crisis and pathos and uncertainty, and encounters that cannot possibly be prepared for because they involve a confrontation with the wildness of one’s very soul.  For days now I have sat saddened and spell bound by stories that throb with both pain and love and ultimately seem to lead to the ‘awful grace’ of a hard won and weary wisdom.

I hear a great deal about fear and failure these days from both adolescents and adults who come to me for support, reassurance, direction and (gulp) wisdom. I think when appropriate I’ll begin referring them to J.K. Reynold’s wonderful address to Harvard Graduates where she shared…”So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive…”

Failure, while always painful and never welcomed, is often a pathway to possibilities that we seldom recognize in the beginning.

I encourage you to watch her speech and enjoy the opportunity to both laugh and be inspired…

“He Was Me” by Peter Reynolds is a touching story aimed at those of us who have lost touch with the deeply buried and often forgotten child which lives within each of us.

The above lecture is approximately one hour in length and is by a wonderful author and physician, Rachel Naomi Remen. She offers much wisdom and insight which each of us can benefit from.

Remen once observed, “Most people have come to prefer certain of life’s experiences and deny and reject others, unaware of the value of the hidden things that may come wrapped in plain and even ugly paper. In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all costs, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength or our greatness.”

At this particular time in my life I’m surrounded by suffering, suffering so deep and dark that I have sometimes felt buried by it, and at other times blinded by it. I certainly haven’t welcomed a single moment of it. And yet, I am also as acutely aware as I’ve ever been of the kindness and compassion of strangers, the both fierce and gentle power of love, of compassion, of hope… I have witnessed again and again the profound magic that can be contained within a single moment.

I cannot embrace this teacher but I am trying very hard to stay open to the all too often painful lessons that I am being taught…

In dealing with my mother’s cancer I am continuously reminded of the importance of taking one day at a time and letting go of as much of the ‘small stuff’ as possible. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and ubsurdities have crept in;forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsence.”

I encourage her (and myself) to treat each new day as a gift – particularly those exquisitely precious ones that contain no doctor appointments, chemo infusions, or radiation treatments. What might we savor today?

I’ve not posted as often as I like to as we recently learned that my mother has lung cancer, and I’m in Florida to be with her through this process. Consequently for the time being my posts will probably be less frequent and shorter than usual.

I did want to share with you that a free teliseminar on the future of spiritual practice can be registered for at http://beyondawakeningseriteies.com/

You can also receive more information at the above website. Speakers
include but are not limited to: Ken Wilber, Barbara Max Hubbard,
Brother David Steindl-Rast, Ram Dass, Rick Hanson, and Andrew Cohen.

A small portion of the teliseminar description contains the following words, “How can a living spirituality enable human beings to create more enlightened responses to our common problems?

There is no more important conversation—or commitment to action—in the world today.

Join us as 27 of the most dynamic contemporary spiritual teachers engage in this series of dialogues. Each teacher will bring a distinct, profound, and catalytic perspective to the Big Conversation. Each has drunk deeply from the wisdom of the past, and is also embodying their wisdom in a new way, freshly attuned to the challenges of our moment.”

Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Richhttp://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=sageplace&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=1844078949&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

During the past year I’ve witnessed a number of families, couples, and individuals struggling to survive and or recover from the continuing economic storm. In all too many instances I’ve found myself comforting and supporting people who have lost their jobs, have had their standard of living substantially reduced, and who have lost their homes in some cases. A national survey conducted in 2009 found that “Individuals who are unemployed are four times as likely as those with jobs to report symptoms consistent with severe mental illness. Americans who experienced involuntary changes in their employment status, such as pay cuts or reduced hours, also are twice as likely to have these symptoms, even though they are employed full time…”

The lives of millions of Americans have been disrupted and “the unknown ‘next chapter’ seems the scariest of all” laments a middle aged professional who has been unemployed now for well over a year.

While it’s all too true that the begining of these ‘next’ life chapters have all been highly distressing and anxiety provoking, I’ve been touched and encouraged as I’ve observed the unfolding of some very special’next chapters’ – chapters that have led to loss in terms of reduced material wealth and yet have yielded significant personal growth and greater overall mental health.

Until recently our global economy produced more wealth than at any time in history and yet overall levels of happiness failed to rise, while the use of antidepressants increased substantially. Tragically, it appears that our material prosperity came at all too high a cost to the planet, her inhabitants, and to future generations.

Author of “Prosperity Without Growth,” Tim Jackson, connects the economic crash to a world view that led to far too many of us “Spending money we don’t have, on things that we don’t need, to make impressions that don’t last, on people we don’t care about,” and encourages us to use this current economic crisis to dramatically shift our value systems and engage in life styles that promote far greater well-being and true prosperity. In a review of his book, EarthScan: Publishing for a Sustainable Future
affirmed, “The book opens up dialogue on the most urgent task of our times—the challenge of a new prosperity encompassing our ability to flourish as human beings—within the ecological limits of a finite planet.”

As a therapist and grandmother, I am grateful to those who are offering us healthy alternatives to a currently toxic economic system.

I’ve been tremendously impressed by a social movement that has been identified as “voluntary simplicity” and have altered my own life as I’ve continued to learn from it. Author of “Voluntary Simplicity” and one of the most respected leaders of the movement, Duane Elgin, describes voluntary simplicity as “living in a way what is outwardly simple and inwardly rich. This way of life embraces frugality of consumption, a strong sense of environmental urgency, a desire to return to living and working environments which are of a more human scale, and an intention to realize our higher human potential — both psychological and spiritual — in community with others…”

Following are some links to a few voluntary simplicity resources.

Simple Living Net
Choosing Voluntary Simplicity
Mother Earth News
Take Back Your Time

“Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.” Paul Bowles

Being mindful is about being fully present to the moment and to the miracles that surround us. There’s been a tremendous amount of research recently affirming the effectiveness of engaging in mindfulness practices, particularly mindfulness meditation. There are also some excellent resources available online. I thought I would include a few of them here:

The Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA offers a very nice introduction to mindfulness meditation as well as online guided meditations that you can listen to and practice.

The Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy website provides information regarding a promising form of therapy particularly in the treatment of depression called mindfulness based cognitive therapy.

Mindfulnessorg.au offers helpful information, instructions, and techniques.

While the practice of mindfulness is no panecea, nor is it for everybody, if you haven’t explored it at all, it might be a good time to do so.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=sageplace&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0738213888&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

In an article published on the CBS website, Dr. Stephen Ilardi, the author of The Depression Cure, discused common behaviors that people engage in (or fail to engage in) that can make depression worse. They include:

Lack of exercise
Not enough omega 3 fats as well as too much sugar and simple carbs in your diet.
Insufficient sunlight exposure and not enough vitamin D
Poor sleep habits
Not spending enough time with friends and family
Spending too much time ruminating about what’s wrong in your life
Not spending enough time with optimistic happy people and or too much time with negative people.
Failing to reach out for help and support

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=sageplace&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=1878682202&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr There’s been a great deal of research demonstrating that smiling offers significant benefits to our mental and physical health.

Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh suggests a smiling meditation that I’ve found to be extremely useful. It goes like this:

“Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment
I know this is a wonderful moment.”

It’s important of course that you smile and hold that smile for a few moments as you recite the above. You may also want to try the inner smile meditation

Following is a link to an article that addresses the benefits of smiling as well as a three minute youtube video that deals with smiling.

Stay Healthy. Live Longer. Stay Married. Smile.