What I learned by 70 years of age.

What it took me until I was 70 years old to learn:
#1 If you put it back where you keep it you will save 2 years of searching over a lifetime.
#2 If you stay in the now and not be in the future planning, or in the past rummaging through garbage you won’t slice into you hand or trip downstairs.
#3 When you have an appointment don’t just write Julia on the calendar. When the day comes you will have no fucking idea who Julia is.
#4 If you save all of your errands for one day, it will save you money. Suddenly shopping and running around will just exhaust you and you will go home with only what is necessary for immediate survival.
#5 The best gift for another person is something he or she has been denying themselves.
#6 Flowers in your house are a survival necessity. They release feel good hormones and fantasy stories.
#7. You will never have the carefully made list you wrote down to go shopping actually on your person, so give up on that one. Just grab strange things you have been desiring and go home.
# 8 Having a clean car is only important if you are picking up a celebrity at the airport.
#9 Getting into or out of any new environment needs as much focus as getting out of a space shuttle. Drop down into the body, pay attention, scan for danger and obstacles. It is the transitions where the broken bones, lost cell phones and left behind coats happen.
#10 The best thing to say in every single circumstance is nothing. God gave you a face, eyes and nice teeth. Smile sweetly.
#11 Always prepare for the apocalypse. There is never too much stored toilet paper, dried beans, cash in an envelope, water in the attic, printer cartridges and paper for the next 3 months, incense for clearing energy when the world ends, (or to prevent the end).
#12. If you can afford plastic surgery get a skin pocket done so you always know where your cell phone is.
# 13 If you don’t answer your cell phone or pick up your messages you will avoid those pesky appointments you did not want to make anyway. (Who the hell is Julia and why does North Dakota call me 5 times a day?)
# 14 Don’t care. Undertake the practice of NOT giving a flip. Until something comes at my house like a bulldozer, I pay no attention to it.
#15. Exceptions are: do sign petitions that push for social justice, do speak out for the weak, young, poor and unprotected constantly. It does make a difference if you are annoying the crap out of politicians.
#16. Speak the truth to beauty. Saying, “I love your scarf to a random woman in a grocery store,” allows her to stop and tell you she bought it on her trip to Italy. Her face lights up. She has happy chemicals releasing in her body. I call it giving a “bump up.”
It is social cocaine.
#17 The only thing that matters in health care is sleep. If you did not sleep deeply with Rem every night you are running on empty. You are like someone getting off of a 20 hour plane trip. Everything you think is just stupid. Get sleep and the whole world is better.
#18 Don’t put the fuzzy red towel in with the rest of the laundry. And if it shed the first time, don’t do it ten more times just to make sure.
#19 If it didn’t fit when you bought it, it will torture you and suck the joy our of your life. Be comfortable.
#20 If it didn’t make YOU look gorgeous, don’t buy it. Nothing is worse than having your clothing upstage you.
#21 Meet the challenge when it first appears. Run toward it like a Viking storming a village. Waiting only allows it to get bigger, more horrifying and weakens us.
#22 You cannot know who you are. That is absolute bullshit. Who you are is like a strobe light image. Now you are this, now that, now something else. Allow yourself to follow your joy and grow the hell up, why don’t you.
I am 80 in August and while I sat in the kindergarden desk with my knees not fitting under it for so long, I finally am learning some things.
Love yourself constantly. Coming to earth was the craziest decision we ever made. We are Navy Seals, Red Berets, our own brain surgeons and tough as nails. We are as tough as nails, baby. Don’t you ever forget that.

The Seer

We are like a strobe light. At times, we shine brightly. We are clear in our thinking. We do not stumble on our own feet, catch our toes on the edge of the coffee table leg, slide in error misjudging that last step. At times, we are masterful and calm.

We are periodically like ancient masters of the sea who could navigate by the stars a world unmapped, hazardous and wildly unpredictable. But only in moments, or months at a time.

The lesson always returns. The universe keeps track of what we are here to learn. We will be walking ankle deep in frustration afraid to slip on the slick surface of the unaddressed issue, the downhill slide of ego or error.

The human mind thinks of “success” of “achieving a goal” and it is what handicaps us in our growth the most. We are constantly growing, shape shifting, becoming. Upon occasion, we may take a deep breath and say to ourselves, “I have got it now.”

let go

It is a source of great humour for people with deep spiritual practice.

There is no grabbing the brass ring in your hand as you whirl around the merry-go-round. There is no “bing of the bell” as you swing the heavy mallet to drive yourself up to the top of it all.

We are simply pilgrims climbing the next hill side to stand and see that yet another, higher path awaits our legs to climb. Our legs get stronger, more sturdy with each new highland.

The difficulty of judging where we are in life is that we are nowhere. We are always nowhere. We live in a pulse of on/off. It is never still, this life, this decade, this day. It is a swirl of energy that we are constantly trying to ride.

To believe that we can achieve perfection, a 100% grade as a student, a pass out of the class room in order to frolic in a near by park is an error in understanding.

Yes, there will be picnics, sunshine, times of calm water on the sea. But these moments are not a sign that we are a good person, a perfect culmination of ourselves. School is not over. To mistake a period of good luck or of peaceful days as a reward for our special achievements is naive.

love is the way

In addition, we have the ego sitting in a golden throne over-seeing our lives and trying to keep us from challenges. Its voice is constant and annoying.

“Don’t try. Don’t risk it. Don’t grow. You are not sufficient. You are damaged and weak.”

It will always murmur fear to us.

We are on journey without a map. We are spelunking without a head lamp. We are swimming up to our necks in the water of lessons and frequently don’t know which way is the shore.

It is up to us to notice how the challenges are making us stronger. It is up to us to stop and thank the lessons for helping us become more of who we were born to be. We are the seer. We are the wise student. Always, always thank the lesson.

 

Hallucinating Reality

I wake up with my new Russian Blue cat pushed against my legs. Day after day of dense ponderous rain has been falling. All of us welcomed it. The numerous fires breaking out every summer have begun early. They began in April and seered right through to May. Just a week ago we were choked by the brown-gray sky and warned against the evil of outside.

The rain appeared like a blessing that comes from a genii. It was instant. It was within the parameters of what the seeker of a miracle had asked for. But, as always with hope and fate and dread there was that twist, the sting of literally getting what was wished for.

My new thrift store shoes priced in the world of heavy-edged commerce at over $100 were red and sparkling on my feet soaked to the gunnels by the pooling rainwater. As I determinedly made my way to “accomplish” the purchase of items on my list, I was stopped twice by other women who were also wearing Italian-brand shoes.  We stood facing one another showing off our shoes and delighting in our “tribe” of niche consumers.

As my hair became rivulets to channel the heavy rain, I thought about how much my life had been about a rhythm of collapse in the face of opposition and then arising to heroically push forward.

as above, so below
as within, so without

The failed hip, the fear of death lurking outside my door, constant pain. The angels of hope kept showing up to grab me under each armpit and stand me on my feet.

Just before the smoke appeared to threaten our lungs, Tod, my companion cat became anxious and twitchy. He could feel it coming. He was restless and unsettled. Jumping from one viewing place to another, he had all senses alert.

And once the rain came, both he and I relaxed into a deep, long sleep.

“When will my life begin for real,” my ego asks me. “When will I achieve my goals and stand strong and triumphant?”

And then I remind myself that after 78 years of life, I should know by now, it is not a single track run for a prize life.

The struggle is always in the physicality of existence. I torture myself with phrases like “When will you be what you want to be?” I lash myself with the whips of familial and societal expectations.

Nobody tells a five-year-old that simply rising to a challenge; simply loving and caring for the body; simply having a consistently compassionate reaction to others is achieving something. Nobody hangs a gold medal on the chest of an individual who resists the mass hallucination spun out spell-casting of reality.

It is like pushing through bars of a prison, this life.

And as I wake up with Tod, the cat laying on my left leg with his legs wrapped around my calf, I hear him purr.

And as I wake up still alive and held by my body with no pain, I know that pushing myself into satisfying some installed craving by my ancestors, my society has once again been avoided. I am focused on living peacefully. That is a life beyond the insanity of hallucinated chaos.

I watch my thoughts and my actions and I see how skilled I am becoming at dismissing the siren’s call asking me to run my life based on fear and phobia.

Yesterday, I thought, “You have been so closed down, you have forgotten to look at a flower.”

Today, I intend to spend time appreciating the miracle of a flower continuing to burst forth in beauty in the midst of cold, killer smoke and heavy beating rain. How heroic is the lilac, the daisy, the iris. We are like that. We are blossoming. We must congratulate ourselves.

 

Spring is an expectation

Outside my window rain, rain, rain day after day the gray clouds are wrung out by wind and pushed high over the surrounding mountain ridges. A daffodil or two has survived the tourist deer touring through our neighbourhood. They used to feed on Knox Mountain but now with climate disruption, they come in family groups to treat our carefully planted gardens like a salad bar in a buffet. I cannot be angry with the eight in my yard today. Their ribs are prominent and signal malnutrition. Their world no longer supports them.

I have sprayed deterrent. I placed silver pin wheels to spin confusion and trigger the hesitancy of fear in their faces as they bend their heads to nibble down the burgeoning bulbs to the ground with one delicate bite after another.

The days play with us. The flirtation can come on in a moment with the clouds parting to allow sun to leak out and sometimes even allow escaping warmth. Just as quickly the clouds are blown back to cover the sky. The only variation is how high they hang. At times, they are layered across the tops of the surrounding mountains. At others they are low enough to form a backdrop to the black drama of branches in neighbour’s trees.

Next to the door are coats for protection against the shifting climates. The light weight one has been worn a few times but stays on the hook attesting to the optimism with which I face the two steps down into the outside world. My triple-layered, hooded blizzard coat hangs next to the lighter choice. Too many times I have opened the door to weak sunshine and had the whip of stinging wind slap me.

At least…. I keep thinking. Back East the maps have eliptical circles showing where the weather is to be feared either now or in the near future. ‘Guerilla hail’ is falling to create an attack likened to warfare on those who move along the sidewalk or rush to the car for shelter.

At least our houses are not being ripped up by the angry Gods of Valhalla to punish humankind.

And there are the occasional surviving bright yellow golden daffodills standing tall but with the petals closed around the heart. Volunteering in my garden bed out back, I found early snow glories. I pinched the tiny blue flowers off between my fingernails and placed them in a miniature clay pot I held with two tight fingers.

They sit now in front of the Buddha in the window reminding me that sometimes the subtle signs are a cause for optimism. At least…. I keep thinking.

 

Time and Intention are the enemy of Unexpected gifts.

The day began hesitantly. First, the hot water run in the bathtub for the washing of hair and stretching of limbs was intended. The screen addiction’s blue light trance caught my mind. After going through the email and seeing possibilities; chaotic offers of peace; warnings that this class or video or lesson would become cannibalistic and eat itself out of existence any moment; the lost losers wailing in the valley of abandonment and those indecipherable messages from some long dead language from another planet I am by now too tired to try to decipher. I delete, delete, delete. Next, I must remove the dead bodies from the field and leave my trash as pristine as I found it.
I push back the cleaning, laundry and prep for new incoming guests in order to get into the tub before the thought of a hot bath had totally dissolved.
I wash my hair while listening to Jason Stephenson soothe affirmation towards me like a lover with his warm breath. “I am blossoming,” I repeat out loud as I soap up my head and dunk it beneath the water line. “I am at peace in the world,” I repeat as I smooth the conditioner through my increasingly longer locks. “I am supported by the universe,” I chant towards the bathroom ceiling as I douse my head with repeatedly used water.
After the ritual of cleansing, I go to the bed to breathe along with Wim Hoff. Almost immediately I feel prickles of energy along my flesh and inside my body. I feel like my cells are drinking tiny cappuccino cups of delicious caffeine liquid. I push against my capacity for breath and expand it more and more. I float in a sea of thoughts, plans, visions, voices, and intentions. All of the shards of half-seen things break off from their mooring and I watch them fly past me as I release them with my breath, through the ceiling into the field of what is.
After dressing, I dress the bed and address the new cat.
I walk out onto the lawn barefoot to feel the day all over me from foot to face. I say, “Hello birdies.” I always say, ” Hello birdies, ” when they sing. It seems only right.
The rituals of morning end up being the rituals of day because I have detached myself from time now. I justify it to my ego by reminding that cranky critic that I started my first job at 8. Now, 70 years later I chose to not be chained at the ankles by time. I am barefoot on the lawn. The birds sing. What will happen will happen.
Finally, I understand I do not need to have an opinion about everything that happens. Finally, I understand I do not need to have an opinion about every blade of grass, every leaf, and every passing being on my sidewalk.
This. This is now. My hair is washed, the room is ready for the next guest. I feel at home in myself.
May be an image of chess
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How do we understand ourselves?

The measure of a man is a function of the methodology of assessment. When I put my feet on the floor next to my bed to push myself up into the day, I already begin the egoic interview. It is like being hired to fill the position of “self”.

How am I doing? I will inquire. How did you do yesterday? What have you achieved? What actions held virtue and which were simply a weak wristed attempt to burn up time?

All of these questions are the Ego’s job to assess how well I am protecting myself from mortality. “If you are not careful, “my bodyguard explains, “there will be trouble ahead.”

I have learned to treat this prodding and poking as no more than having an incredibly irritating four-year-old as a constant companion, I visualize this annoying brat as handing me calipers and tape measures to assess my success or failure as a human being.

However, I have gotten very practiced in refusing to fall for the attempt to make me feel weak and unsteady. My bodyguard wants to keep its job.

through the fire

My mind in this last year has become better and better at selecting my own, very personal criteria for living a life. The questions are so simple. “Did you sleep well? Did you feed yourself with foods that are supportive of your health? Did you learn something? Have you been loving and kind in your interactions with others?”

It makes life so much simpler when I refuse to appraise my value as a human being from outside criteria. My life is not a performance. I am not playing to an audience and hoping for applause. I have learned to drop envy and comparison. Those do nothing for my contentment with this present moment.

I am more childlike after 13 months of my exodus from public life. Each moment, each hour has a unique aspect to it. I see the white lilies bloom in the window against a backdrop of white, newly fallen snow. I find a recipe for soup I have had for years and enjoy preparing it for myself. My neighbour walks by knowing I am behind the drawn diaphanous curtains in my living room spending this day as I spend all days laying down with my leg elevated and she waves knowing I can see her.

stillness

It is like coming off of a drug, this year. I have had all of my toys, my trivial distractions removed and it is just me and my ego now. And the only way around the babbling repetitive negativity of that conversation is to choose to be at peace. And so I do.

Sannyasa: The Fourth Chapter of Life

Awareness of the movements, chapters, seasons, and acts of life are distinctly different when viewed from a distance of age.

The contained existence in my childhood through grade school to high school was controlled, enforced, and structured. Those who lived before me had stories, egregores, and trauma-marked cells that surfaced in my own biological blueprint. That era, the abraiding of intersecting cultures wearing away to a single smooth surface of belief, I see as almost cult-like. We believed what we were taught to believe.

at 4 years old

My arrival on the earth was the year that WW II ceased. I shot out into a time of rabid hunger for growth. The depression reduced choices for my grandparents and in the childhood of my own parents. But NOW we were like the starving crowds let loose in a field of food. The norm was for us to gorge ourselves.

We paid close attention to what our neighbors had newly purchased. The fins on our cars grew to sci-fi proportions. We were propelled into competitive hedonism. My father bought the first TV set in our neighborhood. There was a cache´, an undisputable sense of status that a family could achieve instantaneously.

One could move ahead of the pack. One could be the house that people pointed to as they drove past. The Thunderbird in the driveway; the TV antenna reaching out beyond the roof to outer space; the books lining the bookshelf on hypnosis, self-improvement, some with bright pictures of modernist houses insistently and rebelliously sleek; the lounge chair covered in orange fabric in the living room that was impossible to sit upon no matter how one contorted the body, all signaled patriotic dedication to consumerism.

And so as I moved through my life, I watched the carefully cultivating craving. If only…. if only I could get good grades. If only I could graduate from university. If only I could earn a master’s. If only I could find a husband, a house, and have children. Always, always moving toward a goal whose dopamine hit of pleasure disappeared as soon as it was achieved. It was decades of crawling through the sand to arrive at a mirage.

I watched as the cultural imprint caused people to balloon from an average size of 6 to size 16. I watched as the slavish pursuit of power, pleasure, and fame became currency.

what did I buy?

Today, our striving for clout on social media is like showing a membership card to an exclusive club. I am acceptable to myself because I have masses of friends, masses of followers, a new dress, and a new achievement. But I also watch as the fleeting moments of the new sign of personal value fade away. It is like having an entry card to a club that disappears in the hand. It was once in my grasp. But now it is gone. That sense of being special so we can be considered normal haunts us.

I worked 70 to 80-hour weeks for decades in the hopes that I could be recognized as a valid human being. It was a caucus race as in Alice in Wonderland. Quickly run to nowhere so you can stay in place. This was my period in life when I was in hot pursuit.

But now, now I am in Sannyasa. In Hindu lore, this is the period of time past 70.

Everything and nothing

In Eastern society, it is believed that everything is already in existence. Art is already complete and it is only up to the artist to remove the unnecessary. And that is the explanation for this time of life.

We grow weary of the accumulation; the caucus race; the unfocused blind pursuit of goals that do not serve our souls. Instead of a list to accomplish, we now have the wisdom to discard the unrolling scroll of itemized effort in the day. It becomes easier to say, “Does this decision, this effort, or this action make me a better person?”

We are now able to discard the trivial as unsatisfying. The imprinting of my culture, because of when I was born was to run on a track of acquisition of things, of pleasures, of status bijoux objects.

And now, in this last stage of life, it is easier for us to understand ourselves. We no longer pay attention to what the culture requires of us. We drive through the images, the ideas, and the demands like a car plows through the rain. The water just rolls off. And we begin to divest ourselves of all the burdens that we were told were treasures to be held close. We free ourselves.

We understand that an accomplishment can be just to sit in the now and feel the wind passing over us. We watch the clouds so carefully that we can see they are moving.

We are doing something. We are learning to control the mind. We are learning to be inner-focused, to be at peace, and to keep our flame of compassion for others alight. We are finally beginning to understand our purpose. It is the time for that.

Oh What Fragile Beasts We Humans Be

The illusion of toughness gets in the way of self-care. I often think of how my understanding of my “margin for error” has just been insanely optimistic. At 78 years of age, I have learned that we never know what is spilled milk and what is an irretrievable error.

self

learning the self

The car passing on ice cutting off a semi flips and only through the skill and intent of the professional driver do we survive spinnimg around, smashing multiple times into the guard rail, and sitting finally still and shocked in the totaled car. How many times previously had the driver next to me made that move with impunity? But this time could have been ‘the exit.’

The last straw, the last exit from disaster, the minor blithe ignorance of the howling voices of the carnivorous wolves in the forest is something we simply don’t understand. We are so disconnected from our mortality that we are like children.

My family narrative was that we were tough. My father and mother could take countless risks with their lives and their children’s lives because we were of sturdy stock. Two times I had pneumonia and because we were inordinately stoic, I was left at home with a tray of soup after getting a penicillin shot.

The message was: “Don’t be a wimp.”

My mother was enfeebled by double pneumonia when I was 14 and refused to be admitted to hospital. I was kept home to keep her alive. Even though she worked in a hospital, or simply because she served as a nurse in the hospital, she distrusted the germ-infested atmosphere.

And so we were praised for not crying; taking our shots without holding a breath; enduring small bone fractures without medical care and our very strength in never asking for help was a badge to be worn proudly.

But it was worn inside the clothing next to the heart. One never bragged about being a stalwart and resolute soul. That would be a sign of weakness.

For most of my life, I have been like a driver who has been given a new car. It is fancy and technologically complex and I have never been sure how to read the gauges.

I soldiered on through pneumonia without an adult in attendance. I healed angrily inflicted bruises quietly under clothing. I went to work every day for five years with bowel cancer that was undetected. I did not know how to advocate for myself and so I assumed the exhaustion was my mistake and I was unable to ask for tests from my doctor.

My learning has been slow and sloppy. My ego was puffed up and gruff when I saw other people whining on about hunger or cold, or disappointments. I was taught our family was superior. We did not need to be babied.

The family egregore was built around me like a walled castle. We were special because we were not special.

I remember as a teenager reading about a man who lost his legs in an explosion and crawled for an hour to help. I thought to myself, “I could do that.” I was 15.

The years have taught me to fall in love with my body as if it was my baby. If the body is hungry, I feed it. If my body is tired, I lay down. If my body is in pain, I cry out and ask for help. It has taken me decades to leave behind the ancestral trauma that made our family members feel ‘special’ because we lacked empathy for ourselves.

tough people

And always, always, always I talk lovingly to my body now. I thank it for warning me when I have drawn the last straw. The body knows far more than my mind can ever understand. It knows far more than my subconscious, my ego can ever know. It knows how to survive and thrive.

I am growing into myself, at last.

 

Learning to Let it Go

I was sitting on the deck today and the sun burned through the clouds in a miraculous halo of heat. On the line, yellow sheets were lined up sailing somewhere new. They were Sailing away from the thoughts, sweat, unseen microbes caught in their folds. The wind did it all. It cleared the last week’s memory from my four shades of yellow sheets.

Closing my eyes, I could see an image I had just captured to the left of me. Two pots of snapdragon plants were far apart and yet their flowers leaned into one another. Were they conversing? Were they drawn to one another? Is there a secret language called Snapdragon?

I am as you find me

As I usually do when I am checking in, I felt around in my brain/mind subconscious for the rolled up scroll of drama words. I visualize a hand, a giant hand like Alice’s when she grew suddenly large in the room.

“What is here?” I asked myself.

Nothing but wind, the sheets billowing ritual of cleansing, the snapdragons chatting with one another.

“What should I do?” I asked myself.

My history of work addiction causes a reaction like that of a former alcoholic walking past a bar and smelling the seduction of destruction.

The answer was clear: “Nothing.”

The day will bring me suggestions, hints, nudges, to let me know which activities are arising.

It is no longer about a drag race on a crowded street with the pedal grinding down into the floor board. I have washed and hung the sheets without the presence of planning, pushing, the surge of energizing adrenalin. Now, I correct my former blog for no previously established intention.

I think to myself, “You are like a child just exploring the world. You pick up a rock and pile it on a larger rock without a plan.”

I think to myself, “I think I am going to enjoy watching you explore what calls to you. This will be fun.”

Always alert

What can COVID teach us?

I was thinking today about perceived reality (again and again). For many, there has never been the sense of waiting for something ‘out there’ growing and coming closer. For many, their lives have been predictable, safe, and they believed that their survival was due to their own merit. “I did this” was a shared delusion.

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And then there are others who have known this current sense of the ominous wait, this sense of fate, the out of my control formation of some new future.
There are those who lived through the depression and knew food scarcity. My mother’s family had six children and owned 2 pairs of shoes for their offspring. Daily, everything changed as they used up their resources and had to adapt for survival.
I remember clearly sheltering at home when school was done as I watched polio spread in my home town. The pool, the movie theatre, the parks were all dangerous. I lost friends. People were deformed for life or laying in an iron lung. It was out there… the unimagined threat. It could not be controlled. And so we waited. We were careful.
As a schoolchild, we heard the school PA go on and at the yelling out of the word “flash” at random times during the day, we huddled under our metal and wood desks. Across the river was a major port. We were told, when the bombs were dropped, it would be close to us. And so we waited and ducked.
One day at noon, I walked into the vast school cafeteria and it was dead silent. We were eating lunch with dry mouths. The Cuban missile crises was underway. A teacher told me it would all happen within 15 minutes. The missiles would be released to cripple the country in which I lived. The missiles would seek out the important ports and melt the area flat. Hundreds of us sat at the tables with our knees pressed against the underside of the table tops. We remember the flash training. We ate our lunch waiting to die.
When a group of people have had an unthreatened existence there is imprinting within them. They begin to think that it is through some merit of their own that they are healthy, that they can predict their own future. And the wounding it leaves on their psyches is that it destroys their compassion. They no longer understand “the greater good.”
They have never experienced the moments of ominous waiting for something that is formulating in the moments of hung time.
Covid is bringing us back to that feeling. We suddenly see that through no fault of our own, we could cease living or for some, even worse, be the one who carries death to others around us through our actions.
We are experiencing what all of those who have lived on the face of the earth have experienced in what we call “uncertain times.” Attacking tribes, sudden famines, plagues, homeless masses of people dislodged and migrant, economic disasters are all the same experience. We are thrown out into an unpredictable world. We see that it is not our own merit that protects us and gives us a good life. We see with stark outlines that it is our ability to react to the inevitable onslaughts as a united group that is, finally, our only protection.
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