Thursday's Reflection: Halloween Thoughts

Tomorrow night is Halloween, and I can finally open the big bag of candy I hid from myself in the pantry cupboard. I am actually quite proud of myself for not sneaking "just one." We will be at our daughter's house for their neighborhood chili supper and therefore, we will leave a big bowl of treats on our front step with a note to please, take one, and be considerate of other goblins. We have been told about a couple blocks in our neighborhood that go all out with decorations, and I hope the weather is warm enough for an investigative walk. I am not one, however, to go to Haunted Houses. I don't like being scared. 

This may seem like a big jump, but stay with me. Lately, I have been thinking about winter, and how this year I am not looking forward to it. I have always loved winter and not minded the snow and the cold. In fact, winter usually doesn't last long enough for me. In the past, winter has been a creative and deeply spiritual time for me, and the beauty of the bareness and white has inspired me.

I know where my lack of enthusiasm, even anxiety, comes from this year. The ghost of Christmas past is stalking me, and I am concerned about falling again. I broke my ankle at the end of March and it has been a long recovery, and, in fact, the bones have not yet fully healed. The orthopedist tells me at each visit that there has been more healing, but that complete mending takes a year. That means winter will be in full swing before my anniversary date. 

I know I am anxious, for I have mentioned how I almost dread the arrival of winter this year to several people. When I do that, I know it is time to sit with what is weighing on me. 

When I have admitted to my concern about winter this year the first response from others is to tell me to buy good boots. I appreciate that and will, for sure, make sure I have the right boots for our challenging conditions. After my fall a number of people quizzed me about how it happened in a way that made me feel I had done something wrong, had been negligent or reckless in some way and could have prevented the fall. Who knows, but I was wearing boots when I encountered the smoothest, slickest ice under the skim of snow,  and accidents do happen. 

I will take precautions this winter and be as smart as I can about what is the safest thing to do. I won't walk to my Monday evening class, which is several blocks away, on snowy and icy nights, but I don't want to fall prey to the kind of anxiety that will prevent me from driving to class, unless there are blizzard conditions present. That's the difference between being cautious and smart and being paralyzed. 

Here's what Harriet Lerner http://www.harrietlerner.com says in 

her book Fear and Other Uninvited Guests, Tackling the Anxiety, Fear, and Shame That Keep Us from Optimal Living and Loving:

          Usually, anxiety is a mean trickster. It signals you to

          pay attention, but it also turns your brain to oatmeal,

          narrows and rigidifies your focus, and obscures the

          real issues from view. Anxiety tricks you out of the

          "now" as you obsessively replay and regret the past

          and worry about the future. It tricks you into losing

          sight of your competence and your capacity for love,

          creativity, and joy. It tricks you into believing that

          you are lesser and smaller than you really are. Anxiety

          interferes with self-regard and self-respect, the 

          foundation on which all else rests. p. 54

Last winter was tough--it was unbearably cold and we had a ton of snow, which kept on falling, storm after storm, and winter seemed to drag on forever. The Farmer's Almanac says it is going to be another winter like last year's. Bummer! Last winter was challenging in other ways as well. I was living here and my husband was commuting between here and Madison on weekends. We sold our Madison house in January and had to manage that move. We, also started getting my Dad's house ready to sell, and all this was on top of lots of change and challenge the previous year as well. When I broke my ankle, I truly wonder what else could happen. My mind races back to all of that, and I feel anxiety move right in. 

I know that anxiety can be a signal to pay attention and can be protective and life-preserving, fear, also, can be debilitating. Lerner says, 

          

          The more you try to make fear go away (an impossible

          dream), rather than learning to function with it, the worse

          you will feel about yourself. You will mistakenly see

          yourself as a weak and impaired individual, rather than 

          as a strong, competent person… p. 55

How does this all relate to Halloween? Halloween is a chance to confront some of the fears lurking in our imagination. We have a chance to be brave, to go out in the dark where goblins and ghosts are around the corner. In our costumes, we can be in disguise and set aside our real world for a brief moment. Halloween isn't about who we have been or who we will be, but about answering the doorbell and seeing who is on the other side. "Trick or Treat."

Winter is inevitable. It will arrive as it always does, and I can't do anything about its length or the amount of snow or how low the temperatures plunge, but I can move forward bravely, remembering the love I have for winter's stillness and for the ways winter beckons me. This will be its own time, and my task is to open the door and respond to what is on the other side. 

An Invitation

What fears and anxieties do you have and how do you cope with them? I would love to know. 

Tuesday's Reflection: Discovering Your Own Magic

When I forwarded the picture of our grandson on his first day of school to a friend, she responded, "How did this happen?" I thought to myself, "It's magic." Well, of course, it isn't. He is growing day by day, and the years pass, and he is five years old, going on six, and he is ready for school. The way of the world.

But I like thinking of the magic involved in his transformation from his glorious entry into the world to confidently walking up the steps and through the doors to his kindergarten classroom. 

Magic and Transformation
Magic, after all,  involves transformation from one thing to another. 

Remember the fairy tales. Straw into gold. Magic beans overnight becoming a beanstalk reaching far into the sky. The wave of a magic wand creating something that wasn't there only a moment ago. Pumpkins into coaches and white mice into horses to take Cinderella to the ball. Hocus pocus and Bippity-boppity boo! 

We are all magic-makers. 

When did you help turn someone's tears into laughter or cans of ingredients into a healthy, warming soup or when did you realize an acquaintance was becoming a friend? When did you find the missing keys or coast into the gas station on empty? When did you find just the right words to soothe someone's aching heart and when did you wake up in the morning with a clear answer to a troubling quandary?  

October as a Time of Magic
October is a wonderful time to think about the presence of magic

in your life. Yes, I know it is a natural cycle for the leaves to change colors and drop off the trees and for birds to begin their migration south and for squirrels to begin hoarding nuts for winter, but it all seems like magic to me. And is there anything more magical than pumpkins becoming Jack O'Lanterns and being lit up on front porches everywhere? How much more magical could it be than to put on a costume or a mask or a witch's hat and for a few short hours be someone else? Someone with magic powers. 

Discover Your Own Magic
Sarah Ban Breathnach in her bestseller of many years ago, Simple Abundance, A Daybook of Comfort and Joy http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3495853.Sarah_Ban_Breathnach says, "Isn't it magic what you're performing when you create an authentic lifestyle for yourself and for those you love? Aren't you shaping unseen forces with your creativity and soul crafts, bringing into the physical world through passion what has only existed in the spiritual realm? If you can do this unconsciously, how much more could you accomplish if you were fully aware of your powers?"


We deserve to re-discover the magic within ourselves. The magic that lives inside of us is the ability and desire to bring our sacred essence into its fullest expression--to be all we were created to be. 

We become aware of our powers by attending to spiritual practices that help us open our hearts. When we sit in the quiet of sacred space and ask the Divine to whisper reminders of the magic that is possible in our lives and when we open our eyes to the magic all around us, and when we are grateful for the magic of being alive, we embody magic ourselves. 

"Magic is what happens when you have encountered the Divine. It is the life-altering experience of connecting to the divinity that dwells within yourself and in the world." Phyllis Curott 

Your life is your magic. 

An Invitation
When and where have you experienced magic in your life? What spiritual practices enhance your awareness of magic in your life?  How has "magic" helped you connect to the Divine? I love the magic of a conversation and hope you will choose to comment on this post. 

Tuesday's Reflection: What are you going to be for Halloween?

Remember when deciding what you were going to be for Halloween was the most important decision in your life? Were you going to be a superhero or something more traditional, like a witch or princess or ghost? Did you have one of those creative Moms who could turn you into Peter Pan or a fire hydrant with a whirl of her sewing machine? My children were at a clear disadvantage in that department, having me for a Mom. I remember one year Kate was a mouse. We used sheets that I somehow stitched together and filled with wads of paper for fullness, and another year Geof was Goldy Gopher, the University of Minnesota mascot. I think I made the tail to go along with U of M sweatshirt and pants and a mask or maybe my talented sister made it for him. 

Halloween was a challenge for me, but that's not to say I haven't worn many masks, many costumes in my lifetime. How about you? 

The Costumes and Masks of Life
 I have worn costumes called student, mother, wife and daughter and friend, business owner, spiritual director, teacher, and writer. For the most part I have loved those roles, and they have represented true aspects of myself and the life I have been privileged to live. However, there have also been moments when I have questioned my own authenticity.

Sue Monk Kidd in When the Heart Waits, Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions says, "We become adept at playing games, wearing masks as if life were a masquerade party." p. 47.  She wonders, "Had my masks gotten stuck to my face?" p. 53. 

Emotional Masks
I have worn the mask of confidence when feeling little or no confidence in myself. I have worn the mask of contentment and ease when my heart was breaking inside. I have worn the hostess mask when I would have preferred to be completely alone. I have worn a mask of courage, when I have been scared, and the mask of adulthood when I have felt like a child. I have worn the mask of seeker when I have instead been lazy. I have worn the mask of anger when what I really felt was fear.  I have worn the mask of belief when I felt on shaky ground. 

To quote Carl Jung, "We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life." 


Beyond Costumes and Masks
Occasionally over the years we bumped into an identity crisis. Perhaps when our youngest child went off to kindergarten or when we faced an empty-nest or when we lost a job unexpectedly or a long-term relationship ended. Those raw times became doorways of discovery leading to our True Selves, or as Meister Eckhart identifies, "There is something in the soul which is only God." 

What in you is only God? 

How does our True Self radiate over and around the margins of the mask?

Who are you beyond masks, roles, work, skills, history, experiences and associations? 

If all my identifications -- "Bruce's wife, Kate and Geof's mother and Maren and Peter's GrandNan, Betty and Dick's daughter, a spiritual director, a teacher, a writer, a friend --were suddenly stripped away, and some day they will be, who would I be? Who am I?

This is the work of these years. The work for today. 

Today's Challenge and Opportunity
Many of our roles have already disappeared or at least are worn less frequently. Fewer costumes in the closet may make it easier to "embrace our new wisdom face as it emerges," says Angeles Arrien in The Second Half of Life, Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom. p. 45 or we may continue to mourn their loss, refusing to see they are two sizes too small or frayed around the collar. Send them to the resale shop. It's someone else's turn to use them wisely.    

 "Embracing our wisdom face, we can meet the challenge with which the eighth-century Buddhist Sage Hui-Neng is reputed to have confronted his disciples: 'Show me the face you had before even your parents were born.'" (Arrien, p. 51)

So how do we do this? This is the time to fully engage your spiritual practices. This is the time to know the part of you that is "only God." This is the time to get a bit uncomfortable and ask yourself what roles, masks and costumes you are having a hard time releasing. This is a time to "stop performing, pretending, and hiding to sustain our false identities and cultivated masks," (Arrien, p.48) and instead, "to be someone who is fully alive, a courageous explorer and adventurer who is willing to discover the true face that lies beneath family conditioning and cultural imprinting." (Arrien, p. 47). 

Open yourself to a time of moving beyond what you have always done and whom you've always been. 

This is a time of deepening. 

An Invitation
Share the masks and costumes you are leaving behind and what you are discovering about your true essence. Angeles Arrien suggests stretching yourself in order to learn something new about yourself everyday. I would love to know about those discoveries and adventures. 

Your October Meditation: Halloween and Other Fears

The first Thursday of each month I will offer you a meditation to use during that month. Here is the meditation for October. 

If you are afraid of something, you give it power.
                                        Moroccan Proverb

October is the month of ghosts and goblins. This is the month in which being scared is supposed to be fun, and opportunities to scare someone else are expected.  

I remember my toddler daughter or son holding on to my pant leg when I answered the door on Halloween night. I would move forward with the big graniteware bowl overflowing with candy in my arms, and Kate perhaps in her Wonder Woman pajamas or Geof in his Superman ones would peek around the door. They wanted to see what or who was on the front porch, but did they really? They were fearful, but also, fascinated and attracted to the realm of the scary at the same time. I think they knew real people, perhaps even people they knew, were behind the vampire mask or underneath the flowing white sheet, but at the moment they wanted to experience it from a safe distance. 

The next year, however, they started talking about Halloween costumes in the summer and eventually, they were the ones ringing the doorbell and dashing off to the next house laughing and teasing each other about "being so scared!" 

What happened to their fear? When did the fear become something to conquer? How did they know that being scared need not prevent them from moving forward? 

Fear and You
What about you? When have you been afraid? What have you done to conquer that fear? And was it worth it? 

At some time or another we are all afraid. After all, the human condition is scary. The question is, however, what do we do with the fear we experience? Is it possible to replace fear with faith? What would that look like in your life? 

A Meditation on the Role of Fear In Your Life
I invite you to sit in a quiet place and close your eyes, lightly, not tightly. Take a couple deep cleansing breaths and allow your body to relax into slow, even breathing. 

In this quiet, sacred, and safe place you create for yourself, invite a memory of when you were afraid as a child to appear. That memory is in the distance, outside of your safe place. 

Note the feelings you experienced then without feeling them now. That was then, this is now. You are safe, and there is no need to relive any fear you experienced as a child. Instead, that long ago fear can be your teacher. 

If you feel your body tense, especially in your shoulders, hands, or belly, remember to breathe deeply and fully and remember you are in a sacred and safe place. Remember, too, that you can open your eyes whenever you choose. 

As you continue to breathe steadily and evenly, look at the fear. If that fear is no longer in your life, how did you conquer it? How did conquering that fear teach you to respond to other fears in your life?

As you continue to breathe steadily and evenly, ask your heart to open to the possibility of releasing any fear that has room in your life now. What would that feel like? Be with that awareness and the feelings that surround the desire to live life with less fear. 

What do you need to move beyond and through fear? Imagine yourself with the courage to unlearn fears and the ability to seek help.  Imagine trusting your own inner wisdom. Open to these possibilities. 

Once again, take a couple deep cleansing, breaths and open your eyes, feeling safe and free. 

Take a few minutes to note, perhaps in a journal or by whispering to yourself, what you felt or learned during this brief time of meditation. What will you now bring into your life? 

A Blessing
May you trust your inner courage and wisdom. 

May fears be your teacher and lead you to a life in which you achieve your highest vision of yourself. 

May you feel surrounded by a spirit of growth and mindfulness, recognizing fear as a basic human emotion, which can lead us to the miracle of faith and love. 

Resources For Further Exploration
1.      Radical Acceptance, Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach, Ph.D, especially chapter seven, "Opening Our Heart in the Face of Fear." 

2.      The Right Questions, Ten Essential Questions to Guide You to an Extraordinary Life by Debbie Ford, especially chapter twelve, "Is This an Act of Faith or Is It an Act of Fear?"

3.      Healing Through the Dark Emotions, The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair by Miriam Greenspan, especially chapter seven "From Fear to Joy."

4.      Fear and Other Uninvited Guests, Tackling the Anxiety, Fear, and Shame That Keep us from Optimal Living and Loving by Harriet Lerner, Ph.D.  

An Invitation
I welcome your thoughts about the role of fears in your life and also your comments about the meditation.