Give love, get love, give love, get love. Photo courtesy digital art http://bit.ly/iHE9B8

Happy Valentine’s Day to me! Happy Valentine’s Day to me! This is my new deal: Radical self-love. Extreme self-nurture. I believe our true nature is joy. Doesn’t the delight of a sunrise, a baby’s smile, a hug, a beautiful work of art, a job well-done, a sincere compliment given or received, a gorgeous rose, doesn’t that feel more real and true than trouble and tragedy?

Maybe you’ll disagree. To which I say, yes, we’re hard-wired as a species to feel the depths of trouble. To worry, stress, fret, weep and grieve. And even to wallow. (Then there’s the whole thing about meanness and cruelty, to which I can only say, hurt people hurt people.) It was, after all, the scaredy-cat cave people who survived the saber-tooth tiger to reproduce and send their genes down to us. The cave guy who went along not paying attention, lla-di-da, well, he got eaten, right?

However. When I settle down into quiet, sitting or lying very still, listening to my breath, using one technique or another (focusing on breath; listening to guided imageries; repeating a good word like “peace” or a phrase like “thy will be done”; saying the 23rd Psalm or the Lord’s Prayer or the Serenity Prayer), when I do that, once in awhile I get down to what I experience as a really deep, subtle tickle. A quiet little deep laughing. A kind of inner vibration that says, “This is who you are! Sing! Dance! Rejoice! Relish and enjoy! This is your truth, your strength, your only reality! This is who you are!

And I believe that still, small, happy voice. I know people whose meditations are so radical they feel they’re one with God. I’m not there yet.

But I know one day I will be. So, to clear the path, I act as if I’m there, and I greet myself with kind thoughts and treat myself with compassionate actions. That way, I have a really nice day, and clear the way for the love I feel for YOU to come right, straight through.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you! Happy Valentine’s Day to you! May you receive joy and the roots of joy.

Credit where credit is due: I recently heard the term radical self-love from my new friend Ann Thomas, a spiritual life coach and author of 101 Affirmations for Radical Self-Love.  I met her at a woman’s networking meeting where she positively glowed with the truth of her book’s message. Learn more about Ann’s work at Evolvinggoddess.com.

The extreme self-nurture notion came to me while listening to a share from a different friend who was leading another support group aimed at healing the love-deprived among us. She chooses to remain anonymous, but the message is potent just the same. Thanks, M! You know who you are!

There’s so very much to love about this modern life. But there are also so many noises and distractions, interruptions and obstacles to peace of mind. Honestly, I don’t know why my higher power speaks to me so quietly, but there it is–the oft-mentioned, seldom heard, still, small voice I need to be listening for all the time. I was saying something of the sort to a friend this morning, and she sent me this:

O friends, listen to the promptings of your heart.
For truth makes itself known
in Sacred Silent Spaces.
Your soul is nurtured in quietude and with prayer, ever awaiting seed sown by the Spirit in fertile heart-soil.
When the distractions of the noisy world separate us from the Source,
our souls wither;
we forget our purpose:
to express our unique gifts of love,
to blossom in beauty.
O, let us pause in our busy lives;
and let us take gentle moments of being in the silence,
to listen for the Beloved’s voice, to know love’s companioning Presence. nan merrill

Merrill founded Friends of Silence in Detroit in 1987 to encourage what the poet Rumi called the deep listening. Amazing. I signed up and on. Tons of beautiful writings on their site.

Reinvention time–and I’m talking to a lot of people. I need to vent,

They also serve who stand and listen. Only.

bounce ideas, chew things over. Experimenting with a new support group has shown me a lot about what does and does not work these conversations. I really, really hate it when people I have just met start telling me at great length what to do. I feel disrespected and not heard. Suddenly the conversation is all about the “teacher” and not a two-way thing. Thinking about this, I decided I’d offer a few ideas about giving advice:

1. DON’T. It’s tempting to tell people what to do. But to a lot of us that feels like fixing, and we’re not broken. Maybe we just want you to listen and be there with us.

2. ASK PERMISSION. Okay, so you’ve got some really, really good ideas. You’ve been through this. A conversation is supposed to go two ways. Fine. So ask, “Can I offer a suggestion?” Then wait and listen for the answer. Watch the body language. A lot of people have trouble saying no. Your intuition will tell you. If you get a verbal no, or sense a non-verbal one, respect the response.

3.  ASK OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS. We all have our answers within, and someone listening carefully and asking leading questions will help pull the answer out. If you sense vagueness in a certain area,  invite clarification. If you’re genuinely interested, the questions will come and the results will be far more powerful than any solutions you could have come up with on your own.

4. TAKE MY ADVICE ON ADVICE-GIVING. Seriously. Really. I’m just trying to help. I only want what’s best for you… 🙂

My friend Karen and I used to call each other “Bubbelina,” our own construction based on the Yiddish “bubbela,” a term of endearment. Karen’s not on the earthly plane any longer, but she is with us in spirit. To honor her, and the kindness, humor and compassion with which she greeted each day, I’ve taken to thinking of everyone I meet as a bubbelina, a dear one.

Loss has been an in-your-face theme for many of my bubbelinas, and to you all especially I offer prayers of healing and hope. Part of grief, I think, can be to feel lonely and isolated. Perhaps that’s also part of the human condition in general. Yet separation is an illusion. We are all here together, interdependent, connected, needing one another. It can be hard to own the need, yet reaching out to help and be helped is so very powerful, consoling and healing.

The gift of heartache is a softened, open heart. And the gift of a softened, open heart is the joy of joining together in spirit. Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, just for today. And please bring  a smile to the hearts of all my bubbelinas, old friends, new friends, friends I haven’t met yet. Amen.

Plant seed. Water. Weed. Wait. Boom, bloom!

You’ve heard of Build-A-Bear? I’m offering Invent-a-Prayer. It goes like this. You’re chugging along, lower than whale poop. You’re exercising, meditating, staying out of unhealthy foods, etc, cuz you’ve had a number of losses, the latest of which was your job, and you need to keep on keepin’ on. Dig your way out and so on.

Did I mention you’re so far down you’re forgetting what up looks like and you don’t even care that you’re kind of of whiney and self-pitying? So you’re trudging along, and you throw in some teeny-tiny meditations because that’s all you can sit still for. And you talk to a few select folks who have more tolerance for you than you have for yourself.

Then, weeks and weeks in, bingo! A prayer begins to pray itself. This is the one that came to me yesterday morning: Bless my gifts to your service. Then along comes, Bless my heart to your service. Then, today, Bless my work to your service.

Well bless my soul! Someone once said that spiritual experiences are accidents and it’s our job to make ourselves accident-prone. See?
All that trudging along, and along comes my very own perfect little out-of-work mantra-prayer.

Result: I’ve done—and noted on my little list of what’s-so-great-about-Gay—some cool things today to bring messages of healing and hope to people just like me who are suffering, mostly just by listening and being present. And my heart is full.

Answers don't come only in words.

So I go to my shrink and tell him all my woes. Loss. Grief. Sorrow. Separation from God. Desolation. He says, “You need to exercise 30 minutes every day.” I say, “I know, I know. But we really need to get down into it. Sorrow! Grief! War! Desolation! Loss!” He says, “I don’t want you up in your head. I tell all my patients they should exercise 30 minutes every day.”

We went about five rounds like this. When the going gets tough, I always want to figure it out. But that’s the paralysis of analysis. That’s giving my brain total dominion over the rest of me. That’s ignoring body and soul. Brain is a good tool, a bad master.

So I decided to try it. Guess what? He was right. Some of the answers to the craziness of 21st century life, and life in general, are stored in my body. And all of them will be channeled through my soul. I’ll have no access if the mental chatter isn’t slowed down.

So for right now I’m playing an old spirit circle drumming tape and moving the bod. Then a 1/2 hour walk. I’m planning to do this every day. What could it hurt? And, frankly, I get a little tired of the chatter in my head. Time to try something else.

I hate being unemployed. I like a regular paycheck. Who doesn’t?

I can choose to freak out, or sink into the love nature provides me...

But the last few weeks I’ve been overcome with fear and dread. I want to believe that the universe will provide. Really I do. But it’s easier to believe that when there’s money being dropped into my bank account on a regular basis than when I have to wake up every day and create my own path. So I’ve been praying a lot, formally and informally. Meditating as much as I can manage, though it’s awfully hard to sit still when a little voice inside is pushing me to run around trying to fix my situation. And I’ve been suiting up and showing up for whatever offers, interviews and opportunities I can cull from all my sources.

But the fear just stayed with me, a demon following me everywhere, feeding me doom and gloom at every turn. Last night on a whim I pulled Natalie Goldberg’s book Writing Down the Bones off my shelf. On page 2 she quotes a friend who says, “Trust in love and it will take you where you need to go.” Then Goldberg amends it to, “Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.”

This version of “Do what you love and the money will follow” got into my head. So to pull myself out of the fear-induced doldrums, I started to remember, and feel into, what I love. For me it’s all about human connections and sharing the gifts of healing and hope. And for today, I feel the power and truth there. I still don’t like being unemployed. But I’m not going to live in the half-empty of not having a regular job. Rather, I’ll let myself give and receive the love of my higher power as I go about my daily tasks, and trust the process.

Going through the day scared isn’t useful or necessary. Fear and anxiety, someone once told me, are not income-producing activities. Following the leadings of my inner guides is the only place to live. I just have to stay in the day, do the next right thing and trust that I will be provided for. I don’t trust easily, but I’ve had miracles in the past from embracing this method.  And for today, I’m willing to believe that love, not just as a feeling but as a way of living, will continue to keep me where I need to be.

Joblessness has its advantages. When I can set aside for a time the alarming lack of income, there is (or was) the spaciousness of a summer morning in the backyard gazebo meditating, reading, journaling and talking quietly on the phone to soul siblings. But then there are the days, and nights, of bleakness and desolation. Will I ever be restored to what I consider my proper place in contribution/income flow? Are the random connections and creations I make here and there sufficient? Is it really true that the universe will provide, that abundance is mine to claim?

It’s been a long, hard day. My only comfort, frankly, has been certainty that discomfort and groundlessness must be accepted for sanity’s sake. And so I bumble along, counting my blessings, including all those people who, in so many ways, make it known that they wish me well. And I remind myself that the antidote to self-pity is helping another. The tricky part is to do that without abandoning myself.

I miss my friend Karen, who died in June 2011, desperately. When that soreness comes on strong, I invoke the feeling of warmth, joy and acceptance I had when I was in her presence, and try to open up my cells to receive that love as real this very moment. I often do this at night, then  go to sleep intent on dreaming my way into a new day where I can begin anew. As long as I stay present to the downs as well as the ups, as long as I stay real, parts of my life may not make much sense to me. But it will be the best it can be. And who knows? I may wake up tomorrow in a blessed state of grace.

Chainsaws are dangerous. But properly used, they sure get the job done.

You don’t have to be afraid. It just seems that way sometimes, from old habits of thinking, brain circuitry hard-wired by trauma, or the mistaken idea that if we just keep ourselves clenched and contracted against assaults, incursions and intrusions, we’ll be protected from them.

Some fear is necessary, of course. It warns us. It’s a message from our Inner Protector to be alert and aware and ready to take corrective action. Maybe we need to set a boundary for a toxic person, speed up when a truck comes bearing down on us on the highway, or grab the handrail so we don’t stumble on the stairs. But that’s fear of the moment, specific and clearly connected to something actually happening in the here and now.

What’s deadly is unreasonable fear, the anxiety that is not based in here-and-now facts. It’s taken me all of my adult life to acquire some skills that help me feel less afraid, less hampered by anxieties and worries, and—this is key—more alive. Here’s a quick list of what I’ve learned:

1. You can run but you can’t hide. Using food, alcohol, drugs, gambling, shopping, etc, to run away from yourself and your feelings is only mildly and temporarily successful at best. What’s eating you will keep eating you even when you push it down and pretend it’s not there.

2. Living without running away is painful, possible and ultimately more rewarding than you can imagine.  But you have to hang in there through sorrow and desolation as well as fear. You may have to look at some ugly stuff.

3. Fear is just a feeling. Feelings are not facts. They’re a kind of energy. They will flow through us like electricity through a wire if we don’t grab onto them, work them up, stress about  them or make them our pets. Feelings are not dangerous; resisting them is. As the peer-to-pear self-help group Recovery, Inc. teaches, feelings will rise and fall of their own accord if we don’t attach danger to them.

4. We have to stay grounded in the present. It is impossible to overstate the importance of this. I connect with my senses when I feel a fear hijack coming on. Mindfulness meditation, where you sit quietly and keep coming back to your breath when your mind runs away with you, is great training for this.

5. The pros are there to help. I’ve been in therapy pretty much all my adult life. A good therapist is a thing of joy forever. Ditto a good spiritual counselor or director. Mental and spiritual health have to be our priority or nothing else will work.

6. The body knows. Exercise, massage, just dancing in the kitchen, these all move the energy out and around. Self-care isn’t just nice; it’s mandatory, as vital as showing up for work, not biting off the kids’ heads or paying bills.

7. Love is the answer. When we bring ourselves back to a felt-sense that we are loved, fear vanishes. I have to make this choice hundreds of times some days. When the demons are about to attack, I think of a person or situation where I felt loved, and I bring back not so much the mind memory as the actual feeling in my body. I go to that place and try to revel in the goodness that’s much truer than any terrifying tale the inner saboteur is trying to tell me.

8. Miracles are everywhere. When we look for them, when we come back to our sense of wonder at creation, we connect with the Infinite, which has all our answers.

Years ago a dear friend and co-worker came in one morning and came unraveled. “This weekend,” she said, “I realized I have never, ever felt safe. Ever.” Sadly, that’s lots of folks’ story, these days more than ever. So many fractured souls! Money, illness, war, conflict, confusion. Family of origin issues. Current family estrangements. Loss, betrayal, heartbreak.

But miracles are possible if we keep ourselves in fit spiritual condition, whatever that means to you. Here’s my most recent miracle. It’s very earthbound, but with profound spiritual implications:

I’ve always been a very tense driver. I had an accident as a teen that scared and shamed me to death, and then didn’t get my license until I was 33 when suburban family living absolutely demanded it. But I have avoided highway driving, and driving to strange places, like the plague.

Until last Tuesday. I had to both get on a mega highway AND find my way somewhere strange. The only way out, as they say, was through. Nobody could do this for me. Life demanded it. And guess what? I found that: ALL THE FEAR HAD LIFTED. GONE. POOF! DRIVING WAS JUST DRIVING. FEAR WAS JUST A WARNING. IF THERE’S TRUCK ON YOUR TAIL, TAKE ACTION. THAT’S IT. PERIOD.

I got where I was going and called my husband and two friends to announce this amazing development. Then reflected on its genesis: Decades of stubborn attention to learning how to live in the moment, unmedicated but with lovingkindness, has yielded this amazing result. We’re talking therapy, 12-step programs, Recovery, Incorporated. Hours and hours on on the telephone with friends. Hours and hours more face to face hashing and thrashing things out. Prayer. Meditation. Exercise. Eating right. Etc., etc. All of the above.

Chance, they say, favors the prepared mind. And centeredness, where you don’t lose yourself no matter what, I would add, favors the prepared soul. I can’t force myself to be braver than I am, in any given moment. I’m over being cruel to myself that way. We all have limits. But I sure can do a whole lot to lay the groundwork. And, trust me, it begins with humble adherence to self-compassion and self-nurture. Where it will end, nobody knows. But the road does seem to be getting a little smoother.