Category Archives: mind

How to lose and find something with equanimity

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This past Saturday morning, I prepared to go to a weekend workshop, Harmonics of Healing, with Tom Best and Steve Daniel. (Tom is my long-time NLP trainer, whom I now assist at trainings, and Steve is a didgeridoo player and sound healer extraordinaire.) Held at the Tree of Life Sanctuary in Radiance south of Austin, I was planning to sleep over and packing my sleeping bag, ice chest, and the various items I’d need over the weekend.

I got everything loaded in my car. Ready to leave, I reached in my shoulder bag for my keys — and they weren’t there.

Searched bag. Searched front seat, floor, sides of passenger seat, all around driver’s seat. Checked ground between front door and car.

No keys.

Thought maybe I’d left them inside the house, now locked. Climbed in through a window and searched. No keys.

Perhaps because I was on my way to a workshop/retreat, I began observing myself. I realized that every time I lose something, it’s as if I’ve never lost anything before. I seethe with impatience and frustration and arrogance.

How dare those keys go missing right when I’m ready to leave?

Just that bit of self-awareness helped me slow down and realize that I’ve lost things many times before. This is not a new experience.  There is something familiar about this. The Native American tradition gave us Trickster. When items go missing, it’s Trickster, playing games.

My keys are hiding from me! How cute! How precocious of them! What a surprise!

From this perspective, losing my keys became very, very funny! I called Katie and told her my keys were hiding from me, and that I didn’t know when I’d be there. I was smiling as I called.

I also noticed that I had switched from mainland time to island time. Trickster feeds off pomposity and arrogance and loves to make people look like buffoons. Getting present instead of racing ahead mentally to the next thing is one of the best things to do.

I remembered a technique for lessening anxiety called Mind Juggling, and that is to toss a ball from hand to hand with my eyes gazing up. The activity and eye direction change one’s state. I got out a tennis ball and began tossing it from hand to hand, gazing up to where the wall meets the ceiling.

After a bit, I got an impulse to bring in some yoga props from the back seat of my car. I’d been intending to do that for a while. Why not now?

As I was removing yoga blocks, from the corner of my eye, I saw my keys on the ledge behind the seat. Just where I’d set them when I had loaded the car, cramming the ice chest in.

I had completely filtered that out from my memory.

Ahhhh. Game over. I win. Thank you, Trickster, for your lessons and the stretching I develop to meet the moment.

Keys in hand, I locked the house and went to my workshop/retreat, which was lovely.

When I got home Sunday evening, I unloaded the car and put things away. I made myself a cup of tea and was ready to sit down and check email.

Guess what? No laptop. And no keyboard, mouse, carrying case, DVD/VCR player, antique flute.

My house had been burglarized.

Stay tuned for more about loss.

Sukha and dukkha, expansion and contraction

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Sukha is a Sanskrit and Pali word often translated as “ease,” “happiness,” “pleasure,” or “bliss.”

In yoga, sukhasana is the Sanskrit for “easy pose,” which is simple cross-legged sitting.

Dukkha is a Sanskrit and Pali word often translated as “suffering.” The First Noble Truth of Buddhism: Life is suffering. Life is dukkha.

Wikipedia provides these meanings. Note the range, from mere discomfort to misery and anguish:

suffering, pain, discontent, unsatisfactoriness, unhappiness, sorrow, affliction, anxiety, dissatisfaction, discomfort, anguish, stress, misery, and frustration

Wikipedia’s entry on dukkha includes this on the etymology of the word:

Sargeant, et. al. (2009: p. 303) provides the etymology of the Sanskrit words sukha and dukkha:

It is perhaps amusing to note the etymology of the words sukha (pleasure, comfort, bliss) and dukkha (misery, unhappiness, pain). The ancient Aryans who brought the Sanskrit language to India were a nomadic, horse- and cattle-breeding people who travelled in horse- or ox-drawn vehicles. Su and dus are prefixes indicating good or bad. The word kha, in later Sanskrit meaning “sky,” “ether,” or “space,” was originally the word for “hole,” particularly an axle hole of one of the Aryan’s vehicles. Thus sukha … meant, originally, “having a good axle hole,” while dukkha meant “having a poor axle hole,” leading to discomfort.

Good space, bad space. Pleasure, pain. Sweetness, stress. Sukha, dukkha.

How about this word pair? Expansion, contraction.

These terms get the concept across in a less judgmental way, and they are keys to your energy map. Does something expand or contract you? Is your mind or heart expanding or contracting? Big mind, small mind, big heart, small heart. Expansion, contraction.

Works for me.

Grounding, facing fear, Reiki with cats

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Fear

I woke up today and decided to give myself Reiki before I even got out of bed.

This transition from a full-time serious stressful but secure job to a state of limbo — and eventual return to school to study integrative medicine — has included some moments of feeling fear in my gut.

So much is uncertain — when will my house sell? Will I get what I’m asking? Should I go back to work, and if so, when, doing what, working full-time or part-time, or cobbling together several different income streams? Will my plans to buy a vintage trailer to make my new home come to fruition?

That feeling of fear in my gut is old conditioning. I am aware of the situation. There is no emergency. I don’t enjoy the feeling, and I don’t get that it’s helping me in any way.

I intend to explore my fear. Instead of tapping it away, I can inquire within:

  • What am I thinking when it arises?
  • What unconscious beliefs am I holding that I can bring to light, review, and consciously decide to keep, modify, or put up on the dusty shelf in the Museum of Old Beliefs?
  • Can I sponsor a dialog to build empathy, communication, and congruency between my head, heart, and gut?
  • Can I dive into the fear with awareness?
  • Can I breathe into it?
  • Can I go beneath it to discover the essence?

Reiki

Back to doing Reiki in bed. My cat kept wanting to lie on me, like he just couldn’t get close enough. I did Reiki on him first.

My preparation for the session (see yesterday’s post) really energized my feet. I did my session, noticing that my body received energy from my hands strongly at my second chakra, the location of fear, the center of gut intelligence.

Being Grounded

Then I got up, made tea, sat down at the computer, and read an email from Bill Hornback:

Please tell me what “grounded” means to you – I’m doing a little research project for work, where they don’t understand this concept. Thanks!

I emailed Bill this:

Bill–

Grounding used to be a more intellectual concept for me that meant someone was practical, i.e., grounded in reality instead of head up in the clouds.
Now I get that those are metaphors for an actual state of existence.
My acupuncturist gave me some foot exercises to open up the meridians in my feet (so many start or end in the feet), and after a few days, I felt like I was walking around with big balls of light/energy on my feet, like huge houseshoes! I FEEL the energetic connection between my feet and the earth. It’s like magnetism. It’s like every step I take, I’m dancing with the planet.
Hope this helps. I’m blogging about this today!
Mary Ann Reynolds
Yoga Teacher and NLP Coach
512-507-4184
blog: zafureport.wordpress.com
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ~ Howard Thurman

My current wisdom is that I need to take some precious, precious time to work on myself. Doing Reiki self-treatments at this time is pure genius, if I do say so myself.

The work will come, and I will clearly recognize the work that’s right for me, and I will be truly ready to greet it when it does.

The house will sell to loving new owners at good value for us both.

I will land on my feet in a new smaller abode to make my home.

And all will be well, and all will be well, and all will be well.

What key question do you ask yourself?

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For many years, I didn’t really work on taking care of my health and wasn’t very aware of my body. My identity resided more in my head than in my heart or my body.

Then I was in a car accident. That started me on the healing path.

The healing path has led me so many places! Massage, chiropractic of many types, Rolfing, yoga, Pilates, Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, diet and supplementation, cranio-sacral therapy, regular therapy, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, traditional Chinese medicine, meditation, Zen, and I’m sure I’m leaving out some good stuff.

About 5 years ago, I got tested for food sensitivities, and as a result, I cleaned up my diet. Most unexpectedly, I felt a whole lot better.

Hindsight tells me that I probably have been gluten-sensitive for most of my life, and getting wheat out of my diet made the biggest difference in how I felt from day to day than anything else I’ve ever done — and that’s saying a lot.

The difference in how I felt pointed me to the realization that I truly had no idea how good it was possible for me to feel. I don’t mean feeling good in a hedonistic sense. I mean basically experiencing myself as healthy, happy, whole, resourceful, alive, alert, intelligent, present, competent, able, capable, loving, compassionate, strong.

That became my key question: How good is it possible for me to feel?

Of course, there’s no answer to that! Who could possibly know? That doesn’t mean it’s not a great question!

The question began to influence my choices. For instance, f I had a choice between eating something that I knew would probably make me feel not-so-great, the question gave me more motivation not to eat it.

The question helped me stick with the program.

Other people have key questions. “How perfect is this?” is one. ” “Which choice brings the most joy?” is another.

Do you have a key question that guides your choices? If so, I would love to know what it is.

Jumping off the train, or the joy of being wrong

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It’s been 10 years since I jumped off the train, and my life hasn’t been the same since. It’s been so.much.better.

Ten years ago, I had just moved from Dallas to back to Austin to a new job. I was very wound up about some choices that someone close to me had made, choices that were terrible, with dire consequences, in my opinion.

My friend with whom I was staying followed a spiritual teacher called Prasad. I went with her that day to one of his satsangs.

I wasn’t sure what to think of him — a long-haired American dude with a Hindu name, dressed in white, sitting on a carpeted platform with flowers, answering questions as if he was a guru.

He looked like a hippie putting on airs to me. I was silent during the satsang, observing.

But Prasad said something about “jumping off the train,” meant in the sense of shifting into a more authentic way of being. “Jumping off the train” was a nice metaphor. It stuck in my mind.

That night, which was the night before I was to start my new job, I laid awake, mind whirling with anxiety and anger about what this person had done and what I believed the consequences would be.

I could not fall asleep. The clock slowly crept past midnight into the wee hours as I lay awake, monkey mind going a hundred miles per hour.

I knew how important the first day at a new job is. I wanted to make a good impression, not be bleary-eyed and tired.

That part of me was really annoyed that I was letting this worry get to me so much. That part was self-centered.  That part remembered “jumping off the train” and decided I had nothing to lose by trying it.

I imagined myself on the top of a train speeding through the darkness. The train was my train of thoughts and emotions. Monkey mind on speed.

Crouching atop the train like an action hero, I could feel the cold air and the wind generated by the train’s speed.

I began to think about jumping off. What would happen to me if I did? Could I die?

Yes, definitely I could die from jumping off the train!

I did it anyway. I flung myself off the train, somersaulting into the air.

And what happened was this: Nothing happened. Literally. Nothing happened.

I found myself experiencing dark, silent stillness. I didn’t land. I didn’t die. And in that nothing was a blessed, blessed relief. Peace. Peace of mind. At last.

I slept like a baby the rest of the night and felt rested my first day on the new job.

I later recognized that jumping off the train was an experience of ego death. What died was my self-important belief that I had to worry and suffer because someone I loved made what I thought was a dire mistake.

I began to accept the situation and recognize for the first time in my life that worry doesn’t do a thing for anyone, especially the worrier. I found ways to love that person without losing sleep, without taking their choices personally, without suffering but with compassion. For both of us.

I have since noticed that when one experiences ego death, humility accompanies it. Humility and humus come from the same root in Latin. It is grounding to experience humility, and it brings grace.

Ego death. Believe me, we spend a lot of energy fearing and avoiding it. And when it happens, grace follows.

How else can I be wrong and find grace?

Leaving a job, embracing the unknown

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How much change do you need or seek?

I need a certain amount of change in my life, and I’ve worked in an environment for the last six years where people often stay in the same job for decades.

I gave two weeks’ notice at my job on Monday.

I once worked at the same place for eight years, although that job involved promotions, various managers, and several reorganizations. In my current job, I have done the same thing for the same manager for six years. I’ve liked working with her. She hasn’t been perfect, but I’ve felt comfortable with her supervising my work. She’s a literate technologist, and I appreciate her. Now she’s retiring, and I’ve come to see it is also the best time for me to leave.

Even though giving up a secure job brings insecurity, I feel strongly that I did the right thing anyway! I feel exhilarated and insecure, free and scared and adventurous.

I’m excited about the new opportunities I have — to work in a health food store, to work in a garden center, to spend more time with my granddaughter, to catch up on my reading, to devote more time to improving my blogging, maybe travel a bit, take some workshops that intrigue me.

To rediscover my own biorhythms instead of those artificially imposed by an employer’s needs — yippee!

And of course as I’ve mentioned before here, I’m selling my house, planning to downsize into a vintage trailer, and have been accepted into the Academy of Oriental Medicine of Austin with a summer start date.

I am witnessing doors open — like being asked if I’d be interested in teaching an “old men’s” yoga class!

I notice a kind of shedding that accompanies leaving this job. My mind feels sharper and more resourceful. I feel more alive.

I am not who I was six years ago. Dang, but I have done a lot of yoga since then, substituted for my teacher, and finally trained as a teacher.

I’ve taken two levels of NLP training and presented on NLP topics, with plans to do more and some coaching again.

I finally read all the Carlos Castaneda books and discovered some great poets and took up the pennywhistle.

I’ve traveled to Maui twice and discovered West Texas.

I’ve been in and out of relationship a couple of times.

I’ve been a support for my daughter while she’s gone to nursing school.

I’ve been an integral part of my granddaughter’s life.

I’ve worked hard on several health issues with a lot of success.

I’ve made some friends at work and gotten kudos for my work.

And of course, I started meditating and started this blog.

Really, I cannot count all the changes I’ve made while working in this same steady job. The job has made it possible for me to grow and change, and now it seems I’ve outgrown the job.

I’ve come to accept that truly, life is change, that change is the key characteristic of life. I walk towards it now.

Downsizing, simplifying

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Haven’t posted much lately because I have been getting my house ready to sell. There’s been yard work to do outside — pruning and sifting compost — and weeding through stuff inside that I’ve accumulated over 10 years.

I’m ready to downsize and radically simplify my life.

A few friends came over on Sunday and took art, furniture, and more. Lots of stuff went out to the curb for the city’s bulky item pickup, and most of it got picked over by resourceful scavengers long before the city trucks appeared today.

A big pile by the front door, gathered this evening, is waiting for my daughter to see if there’s anything she wants. The rest will go to Goodwill.

I love Goodwill.

This letting go feels so good! Like the more stuff I give away or sell, the  more space (and freedom) I feel in my life. I feel my energy brightening up.

Funny that I didn’t notice stuff weighing me down, holding me back, keeping me stuck — until all of a sudden I felt compelled to simplify.

A good question to bring into my life when it comes to material goods is, “Do I really, really need this?”

I’ve pared back on possessions a couple of times before. Moving is always a good occasion for it. But this time I will have even less stuff accompanying me into my new life.

Because really, how many teacups — with saucers — does one woman really need?

12 states of attention

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Update: This post was originally written in 2010, and it’s now 2023. Some things have changed. I’ve met and taken several trainings with Nelson. He’s a crusty, lovable curmudgeon and very, very smart.

You can find Nelson’s archived Navaching website here.

You can get a new or used copy of his book The Structure of Delight on Amazon.

If you’re a fan of Nelson Zink and in particular his work on peripheral vision and nightwalking, you might be interested in attending a nightwalking training in Taos, New Mexico, with Katie Raver. Details here.

~~~

My most recent post, Refining Awareness, includes some instructions about using your vision to focus down to the pixel level, and then to open your vision and let everything come into your field of vision.

These activities are based on a set of exercises called the 12 states of attention that I learned about and practiced and taught, so that now I seem to have internalized them enough that I don’t consciously think about it.

The three main senses we use are seeing, hearing, and feeling, or visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. NLP 101.

Each of these senses can be experienced externally and internally. For example, I can see the computer in front of me, and I can close my eyes and remember the image or imagine the computer morphing into a piano. That’s Visual External and Visual Internal (remembered and constructed).

You can further expand your sensory acuity by practicing using each sense as broadly and as narrowly as possible. Hence, look at a pixel, then let everything come in. Those states are Visual External Narrow (VEN) and Visual External Broad (VEB).

You can do this with hearing as well. You can focus on one sound in your environment (or in your memory or imagination), and you can focus on all the sounds.

Same with kinesthetic awareness. Internal, external, narrow, broad.

A man I’ve never met but who has been a teacher for me came up with the 12 states of attention. His name is Nelson Zink, and he’s got a pretty amazing website, Navaching. Click here to read about the 12 states of attention. He’s got a lot to say and says it well. (And check out his other pages. It’s pretty fascinating. I also do nightwalking. And read his book, The Structure of Delight.)

The point is that through our conditioning, most of us come to favor some states and neglect others. If you enjoy having more resources, you can practice these states and gain awareness skills. You never have to be bored again, and you will reach more of your potential!

So when I meditate and do a body scan, I may bring to awareness my skin, starting with my head and slowly going down my body to my foot, bringing each area into awareness (Kinesthetic External Narrow).

Or I may attend to how my head, chest, and belly feel (Kinesthetic Internal Somewhere-Between-Narrow-and-Broad).

When I do whole body awareness, I am using the Kinesthetic Internal/External Broad state of attention, including my energy field.

(The convention is that the skin is the boundary between external and internal for the kinesthetic sense. But because my energy body radiates through my skin, my skin is a permeable boundary, and I’m sensing internally and externally at the same time.)

The kinesthetic sense may actually be a lot of senses, including balance, knowing where my foot is in space, temperature, tactile, muscular, and so on. Emotions are usually classified as kinesthetic as well, since we feel them in the body.

Anyway.

Wisdom is a broad state, no matter whether we’re seeing the big picture, hearing the cosmic OM, or feeling connected to Source. Big Mind is a broad state, and that’s a skill gained from meditation.

Check out Zink’s website and practice the exercises given, if you like. It will bring you gifts of knowing yourself and experiencing more of your full potential.

Writing a new chapter in my life

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Just finished 6 weeks of cleansing and flushing my body of parasites and toxins and nasty old stuff that needs to go.

Now it feels ripe to do the same for my worldly goods.

I’m downsizing. Selling my East Austin house where I’ve lived for the past 10 years, making some big changes.

I’m hoping to buy a used vintage trailer in good shape and wanting to find a nice place to put it — on someone’s big lot or country acreage not too far out.

The trailer parks on Barton Springs Road would also be a good location, if I can get in there.

Or perhaps I’ll rent a trailer first and see how I like it.

Releasing, shedding, letting go, removing, reducing, downsizing, lightening up… I have too much stuff. I’m so ready for clean, spare, minimal. I could have so much more free time to do things I love.

So much to do… Prune the branch that hangs too low in front of the house, obscuring the view. Clear the entry path. Clean the house and make it ready for prospective buyers. Take stuff to Habitat and Goodwill and Half Price Books. Sell stuff on Craigslist. Maybe even sell the house on Craigslist!

I’m feeling my way through this, flying by the seat of my pants. Wanting to find a good neighbor for Bruce, someone who will honor the house and remodel, not tear it down and build ugly.

This house has been good to me, and it’s time to move on. I’m preparing for finishing my work at my current job sometime mid-2011. I’ve committed to stay through the session. Hopefully the last day of May will be my last day there.

And… I’ve been accepted into AOMA (acupuncture school). I deferred my entrance until next July, so I can do all this stuff at a pace I can handle.

I’m not 100% sure it’s right for me, but it sure feels like I’m moving in the right direction, and nothing else I’ve found resonates so much with me. Oriental medicine feels right, and it’s daunting. Three and a half years of eastern and western medicine is pretty intense, and it’s been years since I’ve been in school. But how fascinating, exotic, and practical. It will definitely keep my left and right brain hemispheres working!

In many ways, these changes are a side effect of meditation. Questions arise: How am I not living my right life? What is my right life? What do I love to do so much that I would do it for free (and making a living at it is icing on the cake)?

Words, images, dreams, realizations arise. The answers I’ve found so far are: doing/teaching/learning yoga, learning about the subtle body’s energies, learning to think like a Daoist, helping others and myself on the path toward health and enlightenment, being of joyous service. And writing.

I hope you’ll wish me good luck and lend me your support.

Emptiness in fullness

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Just because it’s been awhile since I posted about how my meditation practice is going, and that’s the main reason for this blog, here’s an update.

A few weeks ago, something happened that I wrote about in a post, Sitting, Yoga, Oh, Yeah, and Breakthroughs. I experienced something new to me in meditation. Read the post if you like.

That experience felt familiar. Associations popped up about being a young child and having to take a nap (so our mother could take a nap) and lying on my bed awake, aware but not identified with myself.

I had that experience then. Several times. So present, peaceful, open, and unattached! Empty, and yet somehow sparkling with aliveness.

I have yearned for this state to recur.

I’ve tried to figure out how I got there, and all I can say is it seems to have something to do with perspective, like those figure-ground drawings where you see either an old woman or a young woman. You can train yourself to see both.

Or it has something to do with what’s known in NLP as “chunk size.” We all have a preferred chunk size. There’s an expansion into new awareness going on here. Maybe it’s what Buddhism calls “Big Mind.”

Or both of these are happening at the same time. Or something entirely different. Small Mind likes to have something to do!

Anyway, I have no skill with this! I found the state effortlessly and luckily, and then another state arose. And I haven’t returned, either with effort or without, so far.

So after a bit, I just gave up the desire. It will happen again when it happens. Or not.

Much of my experience of whole body awareness has become about experiencing fullness. Adyashanti spoke about this last night in his first satsang in Austin, saying his meditation teacher called it “the fullest emptiness you’ll ever experience.” (That was a very nice event. I hope he returns.)

I don’t know if it’s the fullest emptiness I’ll ever experience, but I recognize experiencing fullness in emptiness. It’s a presence, a way of being, and it seems to be at or near the core of my being. And it doesn’t seem to have boundaries. And awareness of it strengthens it.

And it’s good! Or, rather, it’s goodness!