Tag Archives: compassion

Storm rips up the sky

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Yesterday I worked on my Dress Up show. While sitting in my studio painting, I could see the sky severed by light. The thunder was shaking the very air around me. It was fierce and fearful.
The rain that deluged the earth at the end of the firing of weaponry through the sky was a release. My garden today is more alert and responsive. The birds are singing again
However, last night in the dark I could hear a bird calling outside my window. Never before has a bird called out in the darkness. Strange and confused signals in the natural patterns.
The day has been a virtual write off. First my neighbour called early in the morning in error, then a friend stopped by. It is the consequence of my life pattern of going to sleep after 2 am. When will I reconnect to the rhythms of the “normal” world?
It feels rather useless to become too focus on pattern shifts when it is mere days before I have bunion surgery. The haze of painkillers and recovery sleep will soon overtake me.
Later, I tell myself. Later you can readjust.
So today, I cleaned up files on the computer and placed pictures in their clearly named folders. I sourced out a printer for my up coming class for UBC-O Continuing studies.

paintings of my guides on the wall behind


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I have had to come off of some of my daily pills to prepare for the surgery and I think that may be having an impact.
Tamie Williams did a magnificent job of editing the interview she did for me on Shaw. I watched the short segment several times and was surprised. First of all, I still look very, very sad. The grief of heart break is taking so long to clear.
Watching the segment, I came to understand why women use hair spray. My hair is whispy and wild. The back of my head looks like I have never combed it. I am thinking it is time for botox. It was a sunny bright day, but my forehead looks waded up like paper in a fist. What is with that?
So I guess the theme for today is about self judgment. The expectations, the tendency to not deal with oneself with compassion, the need for gentle self love. Yes. I think that is today’s theme.

Stand in the sunshine and smile

Which Way Up the Mountain?

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Recent events where people I see as friends or care for have caused me pain through their comments or actions have served to further my practice and so I work my way through the sadness.

Try to stay calm

Try to stay calm

There are many ways to higher ground, we are taught. No one path is singularly correct. But what they all have in common is the pushing against gravity. Leaving the primrose path, walking at stressful angles, breaking a sweat. The difficulty with Buddhism is that it asks of you that you “Step back from yourself to have a clear mind.”

How much easier it is for me to react when those I would befriend goad me to reaction. How much easier it is for me to blame, to re-victimize myself than to observe both the mindset of the other and my own weak and needy responses. The habit of criticism. The habit of judgment. Those I have honed to a fine point.

Thoughts circle seduce

Thoughts circle seduce

Both personally and societally we are encouraged to think in competitive terms. “The Universe is like a pie and when anyone gets a slice… it is less for you.”.. we are taught.

Games on the internet help us to practice habits of anger, retribution and competitiveness. Television shows feed back to us that the world is a dark and dangerous place. We are schooled to believe that we are all trapped in a “big brother” house of existence and that there is always scheming.

Where I am emotionally and spiritually at this time is trying to forgive myself. Each time someone goads me, or lays out a competitive scenario, I see myself engaging and giving the script power through my reactions. I observe my attempts to be superior so that I don’t feel inferior. So much of my energy is wasted in Dukka. So much of my time is involved in going back over the past. I actually envision myself as a primitive being, raking over the coals of a dead fire looking for the shards of what I have lost in the blaze. Ruminating, rerunning the script, rewatching the video of someone unskilled attempting to create a surface out of me to project their own games. I comply. I am drawn in.

flowers are able to take us to another dimension of happiness

flowers are able to take us to another dimension of happiness

It is almost like the proverbial emotional elevator, only the elevator has an attendant wearing the beautifully vibrant white gloves… motioning aboard so that I can go up… and be elated or go down to depression. “We are now at the floor of poor me apparel, ” the operator tells me.

The best I am able to do at this point in my development is practice. I practice observing myself.

I am pleased that I allow myself to feel the full sting when an event occurs which is sudden, surprising and upsetting. However, at least now I can see how all interactions are …interactions. Being happy and content is catching.

The energy is catching. So my desire to live more consciously and more fully is about coming back to self. The questions: “Who is thinking this thought”, “Who is living this moment” are powerful.

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symbols, icons to remind us to be peacefully loving

symbols, icons to remind us to be peacefully loving

What I big, fat capital I want….. I see myself grasping, attaching like a four year old running to every object in the room and picking it up. I want. I need. I must have. They don’t like me. What did I do wrong? Why can’t she treat me kindly. Why is life so unfair. Why do I have to suffer? I am an innocent..

Now I see with this amazingly highly honed practice of focusing on desire, self and ego, I am able to be justified. I am able to be righteous. I am able to go out into the competitive jungle, armed and ready for a thousand losses.

Practice is Perfect. What I am trying to teach who ever is writing this, who ever is thinking this, is that I am evolving.

My desire to control others, to be a “good” girl and not break rules, to be liked by everyone, is (I have come to realize) actually ego.

Wayne Dyer has said, “What other people think of me is not my business.” I love this statement. On my steep and faulty climb up the mountain… I use it as a stick to lean upon.

How does one protect self, act in a loving way toward self and still be compassionate? I hazard a guess that it is by realizing that the world of competition, envy and judgment is a created world. To remember that hurt people hurt people and that we are ALL hurt, helps with finding compassion. Even turned inward to oneself who is a perfectionist. I am where I am right now and it is one frickin big mountain. I can hear myself breathing.

Five Precepts

Buddhists are encouraged to follow five precepts,

These are the Five concepts.

  1. I will not hurt a person or animal that is alive.
  2. I will not take something if it was not given to me.
  3. I will not have sex in a way that is harmful.
  4. I will not lie or say things that hurt people.
  5. I will not take intoxicants, like alcohol or drugs

This is the path I am huffing up….so bloody steep. But practice is perfect.

What is Valuable? Kelowna fire!

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When people flee their homes in the face of destructive fire, the wall of wind and flame attacking, what do they take? They take first that which is alive. The cat or dog that climbs into their laps and offers warmth, closeness and the trust of dependency. They gather their children, their loved ones and head for safety.

grand daughter's delight

grand daughter

And they take the past. As they open the door to the car, they take that which keeps the doorway to the past open. Currently, that can mean a computer with the scanned images of babies. For me, baby pictures of my mother, grandmother, my children and grandchildren. These are all a reminder that we share an experience of dependency, of realtive innocence. We all were once at the mercy of others.

It helps me to be forebearing of my forebearers. It helps me to remember my own callousness and love toward my babies. It helps to get perspective on the chain of hope and dysfunction which comprise our family history.

reaching us from the past

reaching us from the past

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Next, the question of living in a Kafkaesque world demands attention. Does anyone embrace the opportunity to deal with bureacracy? The passport, insurance policies, governmental forms are like garlic to keep the vampires of civil servants away. The sucking out of time, energy, money from our lives while we hold on the phone or stand in line is to be avoided at all cost.

There are those whose plunge into chaos elicits the desire to take as many objects as they can. Interestingly enough it is these very people, whose gift is accumulation, who will replace every item within months. Things are like a nest for some. We stuff them around us much like a child who has toys and a plethora of pillows on all sides as a wall of defense against the world.

As my husband points out, in ancient Sumeria people worried about giving enough grain to the king. There have always been worries and grief around valuables.

The most important thing to do during a crisis that means loss is to focus. Save those things which remind us why we are here. Save the symbols of love because they help us to remember. Remember to be compassionate and to love.