Gracias a La Vida

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Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me sound and the alphabet.
With them the words that I think and declare:
“Mother,” “Friend,” “Brother” and the light shining.
The route of the soul from which comes love.

- Violetta Parra

 

How to Be Free of Resentment

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This thought occurred to me 2 days ago, and it’s been goading me to write itself down.  So here it is:

“I can either feel resentful, or grateful.”  

What got me thinking that thought the other morning was looking at our backyard and starting to slip into the usual feelings of overwhelm and irritation.  

I wasn’t seeing the lovely rolling views or the budding lilacs, I wasn’t inhaling the sweetness of the air or hearing the wild improv of birdsong echoing through the tree tops.  

Nope, I saw an overwhelming morass of overgrown garden and dandelions reseeding themselves by the trillion. 

 I felt  resentful that I don’t have the time, the staff, the equipment or the ambition to conquer the chaos, and don’t have the energy reserves or the pride to be out there whacking weeds, transplanting, sweating, fertilizing, mulching.  

The morning was already turning sour and it wasn’t yet 7 a.m.  

That’s just not the way to live a life you’re going to look back on with joy.

But the truth is, I can’t look at a thing that’s bothering me and feel grateful.  It’s contrary to the laws of spiritual physics.  

However, I can look at something else.  That’s the trick.

The only way out of feeling the sticky, sucking sensation of resentment toward anything or anyone - spouse, self, offspring, house, parents, job, colleagues, God, nature, boss, manufacturers, products, restaurant servers - is to feel appreciative about some little thing that IS working.  

Because more is working than isn’t.  Otherwise this world would have imploded long ago.   

So I think the power is in realizing that you’re starting to feel resentful, and making the decision that it doesn’t feel very good.  

That tiny decision is magic, because it forces your brain to cast around for something that does feel good, look good, smell good...  

The only solvent for resentment is looking for something to feel grateful about.  

It frees us from the bonds of negative thought and opens the heart to wonder.       
 

Mum

Baby

Yesterday was my mum’s birthday.  I still love her.  She would be 94 now, if she had stayed. 

 I think of her all the time and my sense is that she’s right here, occupying the space between breaths.

She’s more vibrant to me now, in what they call ‘death’, than she was in her last years of living.  

I couldn’t feel her soul then.  All I felt was guilty all the time that I wasn’t doing enough for her, even though we were adjusting our lives to fit around her, house her and care for her frail little body.

She never asked to be fitted around, but I was determined to do everything not to feel regret or guilt  after she died.  

So I danced crazy circles between her life and mine, trying to keep her here as long as possible. And trying to ensure that when I looked back, I would feel like a good person.  

When Mum’s exit finally came, I realized in one transparent, transfiguring moment, that she had only stayed so long because I couldn’t bear to let her go.

It was at least a year before I could feel her. She glimmered just beyond my field of vision, between sips of tea, and I felt her hands in the warm rays of sunlight that touched my back when I walked through the meadows.  

The part of her that still exists is older than the first atoms this universe birthed, and radiant with love.

 

A Few Observations about Formulating Ideas

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We are all idea factories.  We make stuff up all day long regarding how our environment could be better, how we want to feel, what we want to eat, how we want to be treated, what we want to explore in life, and how we want to express ourselves. 

Some days the ideas seem stuck or don't feel good.  I had one of those days yesterday. 

So this morning I wrote down a bunch of suggestions to help myself with formulating ideas.  Please feel free to add your own thoughts.

 

  • No idea is ever static, or done, so every idea is merely a starting point for more ideas.
  • Ideas are like music: never really finished and always evolving.
  • Ideas like to be teased and cajoled into being.  They prefer not to be squirted out under pressure like extruded plastic.
  • Sometimes, however, a deadline is the best invitation to ideas.  It depends on you, your mood, how rested you are, and whether you get more playful under pressure, or turn into a cramped, tense, crabby, hunched cyclops.
  • Sometimes music playing in the background is enough to keep the mental space playful and effervescent.
  • Sometimes a change in lighting or a freshly cleaned desk does the trick of making your ideas want to gambol naked in the sunlight.
  • Playing at ideas is always more productive than 'working on ideas'.  The creative faeries of the universe answer the call of play, not work.
  • I'd always rather play than work, so I should be freakishly good at this.

 

 

The Magic of Focusing

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After a few months of malaise this summer I figured out something new; I'm unhappy when I'm unfocused.

The only times I've suffered in my life are times when I've been unfocused.

But focusing cures everything. It feels delicious. There is no time. Huge realizations occur.  Vast productivity results.

An unfocused human is a distressed soul. A focused human is a genius creator.

And we all have an enormous buffet from which to choose what to focus on; whether we decide to complain or rejoice, we're rich in prospects.

I'm beginning to understand the subject of focusing in ways I never did before. (Disclosure: I believe that we can create anything we set our focus upon, whether it's health, relationships, money, adventure or a state of mind.)

We all have different reasons for focusing. Give me something that HAS to be done in an hour and it ignites all of the power of my focusing ability.  I love the feeling of intense focus so much that I leave things to the last possible moment before a deadline. I like the drama of HAVING to focus. But it's always a little painful because failure presses on me keenly when I leave so little time to complete a project.  Could the process be less stressful?

It could be.  I could develop a habit of deliberately focusing to an extreme degree, without any time pressure at all.

I can CHOOSE to focus, rather than waiting till I absolutely have to focus.

I'm predicting that if I train myself to focus on purpose rather than out of necessity, I'll derive more balance, vigor and satisfaction from my projects.

To start my journey toward creating focus in measured, scheduled bursts, I'm using a 'mind aid' program on my iPhone.  It's called AmbiScience Brain Power (Cost: 99 cents).  It produces binaural beats to sychronize the two hemispheres of my brain.  Sounds freaky, I know.  But I first started experimenting with binaural meditation about a year ago and it makes it very easy to alter my thinking patterns. 

AmbiScience Brain Power (a MacWorld review of it here) has settings for Focus, Meditation, Relaxation, Sleep and Deep Sleep. I've used it primarily for meditating, so now I'm dialing up 'Focus' to see if I can train myself to focus without deadlines.

I'll let you now how I do.  If you try it too, maybe you could let me know.  We're all in this together.

Update 11/24/09  I'm really benefitting from working with the focus setting in AmbiScience Brain Power, along with a couple of other binaural programs by Immrama Institute (http://www.immrama.org/)

Update 11/25/09 A much more (ahem) focused discussion of how lack of focus causes depression - from CouchsurfingOri

About

Mag Ruffman is figuring out life with a little help from the beautiful, quirky and magnificent minds on the web.