On a spiritual path

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Hapiheart photo with boatIn Portland, the economic difficulty seems miles away from Hawthorne Street. It’s mid-day Saturday, sidewalks bustle with suburban tourists, shoppers, and gawkers. Panhandlers, the dreadlocks variety, hold signs with reefer stained fingers asking for change. I’m just on the hunt for a kitchen sponge. I try giving change to a Streets Roots guy, but come up short. I carry on, defeated. The only sponge I could track down turned out to be a lemon-shaped haute couture with rippled green soft scrubs.

Miles away in a North Portland neighborhood a giant field lies in wait of new homes. What used to be a wild overgrown blight is now a heap of upturned earth. A path of gravel paves the way for surveyors. Nobody’s there today, they’re probably walking around Hawthorne. Nearby kids ride scruffy bicycles. They eye me like an intruder. Their houses are small and old and squeezed between new skinny ones. I make a clean getaway, but I wonder how long before these families can longer afford to live on this up and coming block.

On the way back I take a detour down Denver. Freshly painted and sparkling storefronts welcome a reborn main street. The tourists are few but locals have come out of the woodwork. They’re milling about cafes, a new library post, a happening tavern, and an antique shop, each glistening and ready to face the next decade. I want to stop and grab an espresso at Posies, but duty calls me home to Alberta Street.

When I pull up, two young men, strangers, gab besides a strange truck. They’re not from around here. I suspect they’re talking business. Three new houses, built to look like old Cape Cods, just finished last month a block away. Maybe they’re working out a deal. Across the street from the new homes land is being bulldozed for a bunch more. In this century old neighborhood, the value of property is still being realized. I’m just happy my small house is worth more than I owe.

I wonder about the rise of panhandlers. You see them at every off ramp stoplight or stop sign. You see them near every grocery story. You see them on the train, bus, sidewalk, waterfront. Sometimes they’re on their cell phones or trading cash with other panhandlers. Are they paying each other a wage? The other day I strolled along the seawall near downtown just after lunch time. Over half the people were homeless teens, looking ready to pick a fight. I avoided them and walked faster. And faster. I worked up quite a sweat. I walked all the way, across two bridges, along both riversides. When did the river become so over-run with hopeless wanderers? Are we spending more on new streetcar tracks than we are on parks and open spaces? When you take the train to the waterfront, will the journey reward you? I guess it depends on what you’re hoping to find.

A friend reminded me the other day that we’re all on a spiritual path. The ups and downs, the homeless and spoiled, all of us trek along with the option to uncover something more real. I like how Byron Katie puts it: Is that true? When I see more darkness than light, I try to call up this point of view. We’re on a spiritual path. What we think we see may not be true. That’s when I look a little deeper.

Occupy your heart

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I may be an optimist. For me effecting change change that’s healthy isn’t about anger, exactly. The change we embrace best translates the bad stuff, or the what’s wrong or not working, into something positive. Doing so takes courage and it takes heart.

Yoga is a great example. I love yoga but I resist going to class. Why? Because there is pain involved. And it eats about two hours of my day. However, when I go, the world is a better place for it. I smile on the way home, walking my neighborhood and smelling the air, each breath a drink of water. The glow doesn’t just last for an hour or two. It stays with me for days. It opens body, mind and spirit to new possibilities and inner peace.

To start a practice and stick with it demands a deep desire for change. I go to yoga now, to a class that I know is going to “kick my butt”, because I really, really want to feel better. Sometimes during class I wish I’d stayed home. It’s tough. I push through it. I breathe more deeply. I keep going. Joy fills me up. Then, I thank all goodness I made it through.

Occupying change feels more approachable when we find the rhythm. Cadence, music and movement–and color–run on genius. The sinewy connective tissues are melodies, notes gliding like acrobats swinging their parabolic transitions. Nature tells us of ecosystems, the reliance of every single organism on the other. Sudden disruption to the balance signals catastrophe. A new biosphere emerges–but not for tens or hundreds of years.

Nature models an uncompromising elegance. Its way is harsh and solemn, sublime and spectacular. Some worship the majesty. Others avoid it’s rough exterior. I find it a profound teacher. Where else can we learn the value of gravity than on the side of a mountain, boot strapped and wind in our face? We could turn back but we carry on. We push through it. One step at a time.

At the top, we see why.

Empower yourself with color

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Color and shapes make a place, but what if those shades and forms are gray or faded flat lines? With the full moon this week night, energy is shifting fast in this new exciting year of 2012, a year the Mayans claimed would end time. My estimation is that this ending marks a new beginning and it’s as much personal as physical.
 
One of the fastest routes to a fresh start is with a color makeover. Like animate objects, color emits energy. Its frequencies intermingle with your personal energy circuit and can affect your physical and emotional wellbeing. For those of us in the Northern hemisphere, gray is a constant companion during winter months. But wherever you are, being intentional about the colors you choose is a great way to inspire your power.
 
Start with the chakra rainbow. The chakra system is our most basic, primal guide to colors and their energetic meanings. For example, it’s no accident that the color red, which most cultures associate with control and strength, also corrrensponds with our root, or base, chakra, the seat of our personal power. As you move up the spectrum to orange and yellow you’ll see how color begins to paint your moods, sex drive, and confidence. Rise up to the heart, where green, which blends warm and cool colors, intones that delicious feeling of balance and compassion. Moving further still, blue and violet incite our desire to communicatate and think with clarity. At the rainbow’s top end, indigo hovers our crown, connecting us with our spiritual, enlightened self.
 
So how do you apply just the colors you need to spark mind and body wellbeing? First take stock of how you’re feeling and where you feel drained. Do you have a headache? Is your chest tight? Do you have knots in your tummy? If mind, heart, and stomach feel stuck, consider wearing an outfit that wraps you with these corresponding shades. Violet, green and yellow clothing could be the perfect color antidote.
 
For added sparkle, sprinkle in colorful jewelry and accessories, like scarves, hair ties, belts, socks, and shoes to complete the color prescription. 

Try a color makeover on for size and see!

What Is Poetry?

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Some writers write poems. Others, delirium, journals, crumbs of aches and antipathies and occasional ecstasies. Others “can’t” write. I am on the fence with: won’t out of laziness and fogged in. I do have the call, but my resistance shuns diving in to its fanged jaw. Why fangs? What hazy vampire-stoked hallucinogen am I under?

Fear is the constant companion of those who delay leaps into life’s mystery.

I read poems, some, most, these days and I am moved to average. Not that they are bad, whatever that is. But they, most, are like b-roll of something deeper and far more grandiose than what’s been delivered. Carving rough sensation into words that double as messengers is nothing short of working magic. It’s not easy and it takes blind belief and a deft hand.

I’m not the master. I’m an idealist. But when I read something good, it’s like a sucker punch in the gut. It comes unexpected and plows in, deflates my lungs, leaves a bruise. It’s haunting. I think of it a night. My dreams layer its nuance with pink or orange or sea foam. The affect is like truth serum on an empty stomach. Filters shed, slough off, peel like snake skin. I am changed and brand new. My world view might alters, in gigantic to minuscule ways.

When you observe beauty, this happens to you. You know it in your body. Your mind is like a slot machine electrified with a jackpot. Everything changes.

But most poetry — and art and film — doesn’t spark this kind of revelation. It is often more of a transcendence or catharsis, if even, for the maker. And that in itself is a private beauty. When art goes public, aims at an audience, seeks praise, however, I’d like a wake -up call. Send me sharper points, toothier edges, grating and gorgeous wisdom. Kick me and lift me out of this daily stupor.

In our shared collective unconscious, ought not my journey of transformation also be yours, somehow, somewhere in the dark, at night, in a dream, waking or sleeping? We all return to ourselves eventually. Poetry is like this. It’s birthing and dying. It’s tsunamis and bliss. Ineffective poetry, not so much.

A Few Things

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A few goes a long way, if you’re a gaggle of squawking geese or sprig of rosemary. A few carries weight in the right places. It was the number of pages (ergo, four) of the first continuously published newspaper (The Boston News-Letter, starting in 1704) in the American colonies. It was also the amount of days I offered to let an acquaintance slash friend crash at my house before finding a real place to live. He pushed the edges of few to half a dozen. I had a revelation.

Few is not as abstract as it sounds. In contextually small reference points, few is more than two and less than ten. In my mind, it’s generally fewer than half a dozen. Yet it also might sum up incremental aggregates, like a few decimals, a few years, a few tens.

In fact, two tens is the few dollars The New York Times will soon charge to access its online content, after readers reach an undisclosed threshold. Stories, journalistic coverage, conspicuously free in much of the digital space, is increasingly (again) wielding a price tag. The business of news is resurrecting itself. Consumers already dole out to access otherwise free content via their new iPad and Kindle. Smart phone applications, some free but most a few bucks a shot, carve new revenue streams daily.

This clever survival tactic may also signal victory for bloggers. Most heavily read content today is either headline (freely accessible somewhere) or social (freely found in blogs and social media). As brands, bloggers, content hawkers and everyday citizens syndicate and build readership, they can use tools like those offered by iSites to make an app for that. People rejoice.

We must remember, too, that few is also the number of corporations that own media. Big media that is. The media that charges thousands for a single advertisement. The media that buys out and pushes over small independent media when they feel threatened.

Honestly, few could be the number of years we have until media deconstructs yet again. Wikileaks, Huffington Post, Gawker, Bloomberg, Mashable, Facebook, and many others deliver chewy bits of hard-hitting updates. News, exposé, call it what you will. It’s content and content is the currency of “now”. How it’s monetized I suspect will take a bit more creative engineering than charging a few bucks to read more about the war in Afghanistan or the latest on healthcare reform.

At its dawn, radio (and TV) media fought for freedom from fees. It was a public service, many argued — like libraries and public restrooms and city parks. Today media still channels world updates, cultural phenomena and the human predicament. It just offers a plethora more voices. Tracking trustworthy, quality content in this sea of everything is a formidable task. Its discovery might yet be worth a few pennies. Yet, if the wealth of nations is measured in good ideas, this one may warrant a few more.

Stories Unending

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No matter what we do, we tell stories. Our voice and body speak a language we can’t own. It’s a DNA thing; we are what biology and kidology spoke. We are products of programming – from organic order to parental plying to headline harbingering.

But lurking deep within is a primordial core, like the David, buried in a mountain of word washing. We can’t help but outwardly be who external factors sculpted. Inwardly, a sheepish, confused child squeaks for attention. How do we recover the sword from stone, our inner sanctum truth from the dull inferno of technology and bipolar stain?

Spicy headlines and sexy innuendo sell newspapers and turn random comments into national buzz. Sometimes it’s the space between the words that says what’s really going on, even it defies the meaning. This is why celebrity bashing on international stages pulls clicks and shares at record numbers for weeks – these empty, embellished pills are Xanax laced opiates to the self-loathing of meaningless drudgery. Media foam with zealot-obsessed focus on such vampiric sound bites.

In murder mysteries, it’s the chase that makes the story. In life, it’s the not much different. The story is why we get up, and it’s what exhausts and puts us to bed. At the same time, an inner calling tells of timeless truth that lingers just beyond the periphery. If the mind was Dukkha, or the Matrix, or Hell, then beyond the mind is a great ocean of peace and pleasure. A pleasure so deep, it defies sin. That’s a story I am after.

‘Be’ Is a Verb

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tree_wind_cropWhenever someone tells you to be more innovative, more creative, or more influential, beware. Listen like a doctor. Look for signs of nerosis and take no prisoners.

The fact is, talk is cheap. Illusions of grandeur, cloaked in “be more” ambiguations, really are smoke and mirrors. People in today’s digital communications playground blog about being more of this and that, but are they actually “being” anything? Where creativity is concerned, if you need to say it then you missed the boat about two paragraphs back. No, “10 steps to better being” is not the way to creative revelation.

Back to Basics

Let’s put our cards on the table. “Be” is a verb. Saying it won’t win you any prizes. To get it done, you’ve got to climb inside the word and feel its muscles. Let go of your fear and separation — it’s no good here. Dive in the water and feel the icy shock of river rushing your skin. Do not think you need to be more of anything. Do not think the water is cold and brutally exhilarating. Be that fish gliding and thrashing survival.

Then you might make a discovery. Like how to twist 140 Twitter characters into a marketing campaign. Or what the business integration point of YouTube is. Or why MySpace today is the domain of musicians and young-preneurs whereas just four small years ago it was the Web’s social capital.

When business leaders talk about being more, better, greater, they talk in numbers. The glass is half empty or half full. Predictions were off by 20. Profits are up but revenue is down. Then go for more. More innovations and more creativity will improve our margins. More people, more prospects, more wins will increase our bottom line. That’s when they, eyebrow slightly askew, look to you to deliver a creative moment.

Creativity Unveiled

Like “beingness,” creativity is an action word. It can’t be quantified or harnessed or calculated. As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says, creativity is a flow we enter psychically and emotionally in which time stops and our synapses fire and focus. It takes us over the edge of reason, to the wellspring something cosmic.

From Hawaii to Nirvana

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Recently I had the pleasure celebrating a very big birthday on the island of Kauai. It was magic. If you’ve been there you know what I mean.

Giant palms trees, deep-red rock, jade green Waimea Canyon. Snorkeling with Butterflyfish, Moorish Idols, Picasso Triggerfish, Parrotfish. The names alone inspire dreams. On my last snorkel day, it was late afternoon and the sun was setting. A friend and I snorkeled off a reef close to shore in very deep water. Two young men kept us company in their large red kayak. Below the surface, I watched a gorgeous giant Green Sea Turtles glide through silt mottled salt water. Then, I released a bag of bread crumbs. Within minutes hungry Triggerfish rushed to my side nearly eating out of my hand.

But the trip was by no means perfect. Changeable skies brought dramatic downpours, high winds, and sudden rain swells that caught us unprepared. By contrast, we enjoyed lush warm temperatures, sunny days, and plenty of panoramic views. The highlight for me was riding next to a troupe of playful spinner dolphins as we toured primeval Na Pali coast by Zodiac sea raft. The ride was bumpier than smacking boulders down a steep grade. But for a a few minutes, with dolphins at my side, I forgot the pain in my rear and drank in the majestic, mysterious ephemera. And I laughed.

This was my Nirvana moment. I was completely in love with these dolphins. My heart swam with them, right then and there in that chilly monstrous ocean. Their bliss became mine and their freedom a totem for my soul. I was unafraid of everything. I wanted to jump in the water and swim beside them, with them and of them. Separation and the idea of fear evaporated. My spirit flew.

Getting from Hawaii to Nirvana is a journey. Not every step you take feels blissful. In fact, I characterize it this way: Hawaii is as turbulent as our hearts. Like life, being in the moment, cracking open blocks of fear and letting in the playfulness of dolphins is a path to joy. Like Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, Peace Is Every Step. Some days that feels more true than others.

The Joy of Story

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Friends, coworkers, heck the whole world now, is obsessed with arcing content into fame online. Blog fever and social media are partially to blame. True, we get most of our news, glam tips, and health research from the Web. So in this digital reality, shouldn’t we also expect to publish anecdotes of our own that could change lives, perhaps some person’s we’ve never even met?

Looking to the classics, elements of story closely align with life, death and the struggle to exist. Oral tradition forged meaning within communities through old fashioned conversation and mythic education. The Odyssey, an epic Greek poem written in dactylic hexameter, was first read aloud or sung. Many Native American and Aboriginal stories, also shared out loud, are snapshots of a tribe’s morality, ethics, and right behavior.

Though it’s tempting to deify the past, I suspect ego entered their social fabric, too. How well a story is told probably earned points and political leverage. Some things absolutely stay the same. But the difference now seems to be that we’ve aggravated the arc – and the joy – of simple story telling.

Perhaps “joy story” void is due in part to an over-saturated marketplace. With content playing king to marketing campaigns, it’s no surprise that some content serves to titillate rather than truly engage our deeper sense of social inter-connectedness, pain, and hunger for meaning. While story is as alluring now as it has always been, today it’s more fractal fast-food fodder and less mind-altering, soul-stirring message. Sociologists, what’s up with that?

For actual, lasting Joy of Story, we need a seat in the circle. First, we need a circle. With iPhones aside, let’s chant into dream space together and re-enact the myth of slaying a dragon or staving off famine. In this story, the beast might be our failure to find joy in pixels and famine the utter isolation of empty texting.

I talk about wisdom keepers a lot. I like how The Moth, Ignite and Ted keep the art of storytelling and wisdom sharing alive. This is digital content democracy – good stuff and new communities unite. Blogs also give us a way to keep the art of story thriving. As we blog, we become wisdom keepers, too.

Waiting for something good to happen

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Funny how much time we spend awaiting the next good thing. We add up hours planning trips to Hawaii, preparing fancy dinners, and trimming Christmas trees just so. These moments of prepping futures are like raindrops in the wind. They are lush and wet, vital with energy, yet as soon as destiny arrives, they flail and fall into the great mystery of timelessness.

There is a lot of talk these days about happiness. What does it look like. Where does it live. Who’s got it and how can I get some more. Scientific research now graphs a clear line between quality of life, health and happiness. It turns out that enjoying good, positive, even challenging relationships boosts our capacity for pleasure. In his book, Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert combines science and case studies to show how a healthy social life can equal a healthy inner and outer one, too. The book’s a best seller, of course. Not only that, it was recently turned into a documentary and featured on PBS’ This Emotional Life.

Top that with popular blog and book The Happiness Project and the now classic tour de force Eat, Pray, Love, and our collective hunger for awakening rears its head. These books are externalizations of a shared internal quest for joy and meaning. We all have the Joy — deep down or riding the surface — but somewhere along the way, for many of us, it slips between our fingers.

Popular psychology and spiritual thought are full of step-by-step ways to get happy. In all things, we want a recipe for joy and contentment. While not ‘desiring’ per se, anything in particular, except perhaps the pleasure of not desiring anything at all, Buddhism offers a path called the Middle Way. In his book, The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama answers questions that remind us Westerners that the way to all good things is within us. It is the Source. It’s not about traveling the world to find it — although some find it this way. It is about going deep and cultivating connection with our divine essence.

Over sixty years ago, Viktor Frankl portrayed happiness as the art of survival amid terror. His historic book, Man’s Search for Meaning, models the undaunted power of the human spirit, and how, by changing our thinking, we can change our reality. Frankl may have been waiting for something good to happen — his freedom and the end of war. But he was waiting by taking each moment as a breath of new life and finding magic and beauty in the ugliest of places.