Skip to content

Tag: compassion

Life is certainly a rich tapestry isn’t it?  At least it is for me.  I’ve got some real stuff going on, both personally and of course, at a global level.  At the global level, I am feeling the angst, the dismay, the anguish and the anger of my fellow human beings.  I vacillate between wanting to go out in the world and do things, and realizing I can only do so much.  Every day for me I combat anger the likes of which I have not experienced since before getting sober, which has been over 33 years.  I combat spontaneous tears.  For the first time in over 33 years, I have a fear of people.  Dealing with this is a daily event, every day I must renew my faith.  I know what it feels like to live a fear free life, and quite frankly it is simply unacceptable to be experiencing a return of this kind of fear.  I know what I must do to replace that fear with faith; this is the ultimate in self care.  Not getting manicures and massages, although a massage is currently on my short term list of things to do.  But on this journey, I must remember that these kinds of feelings, the fear, the anger, the grief,  are normal given what is happening, even if they are not fun.  I must honor them, but not nourish them.  Instead, I must take a deeper dive into self care than I ever have before.  This means talking regularly to the person I have chosen to be my counselor to guide me through this uncharted territory. This means accepting offers of help.  It means loving the casseroles that people are bringing over.  That one is not difficult to do.  This means allowing loving people into my life, and eliminating hateful and unkind and ignorant people from it.  I’ve been doing a lot of rearranging on my Facebook page lately.  It means not feeling guilty that I simply do not have it in me at the moment to do more out in the world.  It means changing my thinking on a daily basis, using the spiritual practices of gratitude and affirmative prayer as I never have before.  I’ve been revisiting my book collection, and am rereading some old favorites that have always nourished me.
Yesterday I thanked one of Floyd’s doctors for quickly responding to a request we had made.  She told me not to thank her and I burst into tears.  Why would I not thank her?  I like this doc.  Others, not so much, but this one, I like.  I text her, she calls back within a half hour and our request is honored with one phone call.  She is Hindu, and has an approach to things that is part science and part spiritual, and I really identify with that.  She honors Floyd’s decisions regarding his medical care, and I love that.
Every day is a wild ride of witnessing people doing stupid shit and saying the most outlandish things.  Yesterday I heard a man proclaim, very loudly, that his daddy beat him regularly, sometimes with a belt and sometimes without one, and that he had learned respect because of it, and he was respectful now because of it.  Despite the fact that he was loudly proclaiming his respect in a very disrespectful way.  Sigh.  My anger came back.  The old me would have taken him on and told him to shut up in a physical way.  But that was my old life and this is my new life.  I do things differently now.   And I’m 65 years old and all of 5 feet tall.  I know my limits, and I also know that to engage in such dark behavior leads only to more dark behavior.  I inwardly acknowledged my anger and simply left the area.  Sometimes I bless those ignorant idiots.  But mostly I’m beyond even that now.  I leave them to their misery and move on.  The fact that almost daily there are opportunities to make a choice like that is a very good indicator of what is happening in society right now.  Then I did a wedding.  A sacred and beautiful thing, and I was left with the feelings of wonder and joy and gratitude that I get to participate in such important events in people’s lives.  And that horrible angry man was left behind to his own devices while I moved on to participate in and help create more beauty in life.
Every day I participate in wonderful new beginnings:  weddings are off the charts this year.  And I’ve taken to asking each of my wedding couples, “why now?”  And their response is always the same, no matter what the circumstances are, “it’s time.”  I believe that people want certainty in a very uncertain world, and for these couple, getting married is the way to achieve it.  Tomorrow I facilitate the last of a month long class I’ve been teaching, called “The Art of Uncertainty.”  Yes, there is an art to it.  And a beauty, and when we open up to uncertainty, we experience things we would never have experienced otherwise.  But I’m left thinking if there is such a thing as too much uncertainty?  Who knows?  What I know right now is that this time is populated with a roller coaster ride of emotions.  Daily I experience the kind of anger I haven’t experienced in a very long time.  Daily I cry. Daily I experience joy and gratitude and remember the peace that comes from faith and loving kindness.  Daily I even experience some joy.  Roller coaster.   I used to like those when I was a kid.  Go figure.  
What I know is that with the last class tomorrow, it will be the last class I teach for at least a few months.  What I know is that my interim ministry assignment will end on August 31, and I will not be accepting a new one for at least a few months.  What I know is that I need to spend some time at home with my dying husband.  People are beginning to refer to me as the care giver.  I hate that name.  And yet, because of what I do for a living, I know the important role that care givers play, and I know how important self care is for a care giver.  So I will continue on this self care journey.  
I once created a workshop on self care.  I presented it to ministers, who quite often are not the best examples of self care.  (This is a huge understatement by the way.)  I believe it was a success.  One lady showed up and complimented me.  She said, “if you had begun talking about manicures and massages I would have been out of here.”  No, self care is not about manicures and massages.  It is about self love. It is about self compassion.  It is about mindfulness.  It is about knowing one’s boundaries, and setting them and keeping them. 
So today I do the ultimate in self care, and I hope you do the same.

Published on
On this Memorial Day, it is rainy and cloudy and windy outside my home. Most likely snowing at the higher elevations. My cat is vacillating between climbing on me, purring and snuggling, and looking for trouble. He is still very kitten-ish, but beginning to show signs of adulthood with increasing times of purr-in-the-lap snuggles. I am preparing for two upcoming talks and a workshop. And basking in the glow of a great time of fellowship last night. I am now hosting a once a month pot luck in our new home, a practice I used to do when I lived at Tahoe, and last night about 15-20 people showed up with all sorts of wonderful things to eat. And we talked. We indulged in that ancient practice of breaking bread together. There is something magic that happens when we do that. Some sort of bonding, a creation of good relationship. We have only one thing in common, and many things not in common. Yet we break bread together and get along just fine. And I had a chance to practice something new in an interaction with someone. Instead of digging in my heels, claiming my rightness and judging the wrongness of the other person, I took some time to practice what I’ve been preaching for almost two years now. I’ve been preaching that we need a new way to communicate, a way that does not claim a side but instead seeks to find the common ground. A way that does not blame but instead seeks to find a solution to a problem. A way that does not make one of us wrong and one of us right, but instead seeks to find a compassionate way of viewing why the other person might have said or done what they did. I purposely sought all that. I fought through the layers of self righteousness and ego seeking rightness and superiority and anger that makes me feel powerful, but only for a little while before it turns into sickness. And I went deeper, into compassion and a common ground. And discovered that common ground. Turns out the other person wants the same thing I do: inclusion. No exclusion. And together we found a way to implement it. And this brings me to the explanation of my meme, because you know I just can’t post a meme without an explanation, right? One of my upcoming talks is about a deeper sort of prayer, the sort that gets things done. The powerful sort of prayer that all the great sages of the world used to heal, change conditions, and make life bearable. This goes way beyond a beseeching to an outside entity. This is the kind that changes our own minds. This is the kind of prayer that does indeed have the power to move mountains. This is the kind of prayer that has the power to eliminate all the sad, dismaying, hateful, judgmental shit that is going on in this world, and to replace it with love, compassion and hope. And it begins with each of us. It begins when we approach prayer with openmindedness and willingness to have our own minds be changed. To move from our own judgement and rightness and anger and into a way of being that embodies compassionate acceptance, a seeking of common ground and a releasing of that anger. I dream of living in a world that works for everyone. I happen to think it is possible. But only if we change our ways. And it begins inside each and every one of us, with a way of living that embodies a prayer that we be open and compassionate. Become what you wish to see and experience, and you will have learned the secret of powerful prayer.

Published on


I believe life was meant to be enjoyed.  You know that phrase in the Bible, where it says to be as a child?  I take that to heart.  No, I am not speaking of hanging on to immaturity.  I am speaking of enjoying life as children do.  They move through their days in awe and wonder and joy.  Sometimes I look at my life and the awe almost brings me to my knees.  I move through the day and appreciate the beauty of whatever is surrounding me.  I feel joy that I can do the things I like to do. A friend told me I could have fun inside a paper bag, and I can.  That is joy.  I have the ability to find the joy in anything because I have cultivated that joy.  But sometimes finding the joy becomes a bit difficult, and that’s what this post is about.  It’s about the reasons why you might also be finding it difficult to find the joy, and what to do about it. 
I know why it is difficult for me right now to feel the joy.  Let me see if I can explain it to you.  It has to do with a phenomenon called group consciousness.  This phenomenon states that since we are all connected, part of a great whole, the trend of our thinking will affect others, and their thinking will affect us.  I learned about this phenomenon while studying a spiritual and philosophical way of life called New Thought, which developed by this very phenomenon of group consciousness back in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  All of a sudden people in separate parts of the world were all speaking and writing about the same concepts without ever connecting with each other. One of the concepts those early New Thought pioneers were speaking and writing about is Oneness.  They were convinced that we are all connected on very deep levels, part of a great One.  Ernest Holmes was one of those pioneers and created a New Thought teaching called Science of Mind.  It is one of several, and it just happens to be the one I follow and teach.  Ernest Holmes is the one who came up with the term group consciousness, but he isn’t the only one who has studied, and strived to prove, the concept.  Science has proved it.  I will never forget the excitement I felt when I took my first quantum physics class in grad school and discovered that what Holmes had been saying had been proven true by science.
Quantum physics is one of those sciences and they have proven it in repeated experiments.  If you don’t believe me, look up the observer effect.
Another item of proof:  you may have heard of the hundredth monkey effect.   Way back in the 1950s some scientists did a study and discovered that if a certain learned behavior reached 100 monkeys, all of a sudden that behavior jumped across the water and monkeys on nearby islands, who never had physical contact with the first group of monkeys, began doing the same behavior.
One more, this one from an author named Terry Patten, in his book called a New Republic of the Heart:  “The popularity of ideas like the “tipping point” or the hundredth-monkey stories are not simply tall tales. As already mentioned, Ken Wilber has pointed to the claim, rooted in the historical evidence of the late 1700s and the American Revolution, that when 10 percent of the population grows into a genuinely higher structure of consciousness, the nature of public agreements and power exchanges can be restructured according to a higher set of (postmonarchical, constitutional, democratic, meritocratic, free-enterprise) rules.”
Unfortunately, that phenomenon works both ways, higher consciousness and lower consciousness.  If 10% of the population is living a lower state of consciousness, guess what?  We are going to experience evidence of that.  Such evidence looks like anger, judgement, close mindedness, rigidity, polarity.
I believe we in America are in a lower state of consciousness right now, and those of us who are aware of such things and believe in group consciousness feel it.  
It may feel like grief.  I’m sure you’ve felt grief before.  All those things you feel when you experience a loss.  Things that Elizabeth Kubler Ross identified as stages of grief:  Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.  I know I’ve felt all of these in the last couple of years.  I bounce around these feelings like one of those giant beach balls being tossed about by people who don’t seem to care where the ball lands or what, or who, it bounces off of.  
Now, you may be thinking that this all sounds sort of victimy.  To be subject to the consciousness of the populace?  Yep, victim.  Fortunately, we are at choice as to how to respond to this.  We can choose not to buy into the polarity, the judgement, the rigidity, the anger and the close mindedness.  
If you are anything like me, you might wake up some mornings just feeling wrong.  No apparent reason for it.  Just wrong.  There is a reason, it’s the group consciousness.  Here’s where we can, and should, choose differently. 
I believe we have a responsibility to choose differently.  Because to give in to the group consciousness means to accept the shit that is going on, and that I will not do.  And neither should you.  If you believe that life is meant to be lived in joy, then you will also take responsibility for being one of the hundred monkeys.  Or one of the 10%.  Do not buy into the group consciousness.  Refuse to live from a base of fear.  Instead contemplate what it could be like, feel like, to live a life based in love.  Refuse to wrap yourself in a cocoon of suspicion.  Instead, realize that all that suspicion simply shuts out any possibility of joyful living, and strive to be vulnerable.  Yes, I said vulnerable.  There is a way to be vulnerable without opening ourselves up to harm.  The vulnerability I’m speaking of is a sort of open mindedness.  A willingness to explore a different way to be, so as to experience a better life.   Refuse to judge, condemn, belittle.  Instead cultivate compassion for yourself and others.  Deny the sadness that you feel and replace it with happiness.  Refuse to judge anyone, for anything.  Refuse to shame other people.  Refuse to claim a side.  Refuse to be angry.  Refuse to be close minded.  Instead, cultivate compassion.  Nurture open mindedness.  Actively pursue an attitude of gratitude.  Explore different ways of communicating so that you can have healthy conversations with people who think differently than you do.
If enough of us do these things, we can and will change the world.  

Published on

Let's face it:  there is a LOT of shit going on in the world these days.  It's global, regional, local and in your face.  At least it is that way for me.  Every day I log on to find some asinine thing done by some politician, or another instance of racism, misogyny or hatred, or another weather related disaster of epic proportions.  Then my phone begins to chime with text messages and phone calls:  another client having a crisis, a friend diagnosed with a life threatening illness, another with a drug addicted child.  How much more can we take?

Unfortunately, no one knows the answer to that.  I certainly don't.  But I do have some helpful hints to handle it all.

Here are some symptoms which may indicate crisis fatigue:  lack of energy, sadness, anxiety, lack of motivation, anger...lots of it, or a feeling that you just want to hide under the covers until it all goes away.

Hiding under the covers may help for a little while, but it doesn't really work for a long term solution, and it doesn't look like the politicians are going to grow up anytime soon.  The weather related disasters just seem to keep on coming.  I don't know that racism and misogyny will ever go away.

What are we to do?

Here are some things that might help:

  1. Acknowledge the feelings.  Denying them isn't going to help.  Stuffing them doesn't help.  You can acknowledge them without acting on them.
  2. Talk about it with someone who won't try and fix you but will just listen with compassion.  You don't need fixing, but talking helps.  We are only as sick as our secrets, so don't keep this shit secret.
  3. Be of service.  Donate or volunteer.
  4. Stay in the present moment.  Don't project into the future and don't fret about the past.
  5. Take care of yourself. Make sure you eat right, rest plenty, and let yourself cry if that is what wants to happen.
  6. Enjoy the simple things in life, and be grateful for them.  Hug your loved ones, pet your critters, or a neighbor's critters.  Bake cookies.

And finally, remember that we are all in this together.  You are not alone.