Rhythm of Numbness as a diagnostic

We often find ourselves in a rhythm of numbness as we go through our routine activities. If we take a few moments to recognize and investigate this rhythm of numbness in our routine activities, it can help us to recognize where we practice this same rhythm of numbness in larger aspects of our lives.

Recognizing a rhythm of numbness can be used as a diagnostic tool.

A rhythm of numbness can rob us of enjoyment of the things that we used to love doing. When we acknowledge this we have stepped into truthfulness.

“The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep.” Rumi

A rhythm of numbness indicates that something no longer feeds our souls. It is either time to dig in deeper or let go. It could be a relationship, way of thinking, relationship, activity or hobby, a belief about yourself. If it no longer serves us to believe that we are ultimately unlovable, why have we chosen to continually to abandon love?

If we recognize a rhythm of numbness and bring our awareness to it but the enjoyment is not forthcoming, it is time to ask some hard questions. We have to be prepared to practice truthfulness to get to this point. In truthfulness, we must be ready to practice resolve. Letting go of bad habits that have become ingrained rhythmically take some digging out. The work is hard but the relief afterward is worth it.

Where in your life could a rhythm of numbness be an indication that something no longer serves you?

Blessing: May you practice truthfulness this week by letting go of the things that no longer serve you.

Cultivating Compassion: ACTION

If I could wish for one thing right now, it is that the world was a safer, more peaceful and better place. It’s population – I wish – would find that place inside them of deep compassion – have the ability and desire to delve into our deepest range of compassionate motion.

Compassion seeks work. It is not a passive by-stander. It seeks out those who are different than us.

It sees “the other”

Compassion hears “the other”

Compassion believes “the other”

Compassion watches what is happening not because it is unafraid. It knows that ignoring the pain of the world does not make it go away.

It matters that we see the pain that happens in the world.

It is easy to snuggle into our own comfort. But laying around all day never made us stronger. In a society that wants strong and flexible bodies, we neglect our inner lives to our own shame.

Why do the religious seem no better at practicing deep compassion than those who never darken a church, temple or mosque?

The religious have neglected to grow their compassion muscle. They think it is enough to believe the right thing or give the right amount or say the right things. Do you find your emotions are inept when you sit with someone else’s pain? Do you feel you have been ill equipped? Do you repeat what you’ve heard another say to you even though your rolled your eyes on the inside when you heard it? I can only guess that religious leaders are unable or afraid to teach people how to cultivate compassion. It might not be important enough. I suspect, our own religious leaders don’t know how to connect with those who are “the other.”

They haven’t tried and have no experience. Now it is necessary that they do and lead us all.

The time for tolerance is over.

We practice tolerating those who are different than us and we pat ourselves on the back. We must embrace those who are different than us. We must reach out, reach across to “the other.”

“The other” who is another religion or is non-religious or too religious

“The other” who voted for another candidate or didn’t vote at all

“The other” who makes a different income

“The other” who lives in a different country

“The other” who has piercing or tattoos or doesn’t

“The other” whose skin is darker or lighter

“The other” who’s first language is not English or who doesn’t speak at all

“If we’re going to create the world we want our children to inhabit, we’re going to have to find ways to hold more complexity peaceably and probably uncomfortably just to soften what is possible between us. We need to be ready to let others surprise us, let them repent, offer forgiveness and ask hard questions of our own place in this moment.” Glen Beck, “On Being” with Krista Tippet

Cultivating Compassion: Compassion BELIEVES

True compassion goes beyond believing the pain of stories that are like yours. Compassion choses to believe those stories that are unlike yours. Compassion believes the unbelievable.

Some of the pain we hear about is unfathomable. We don’t believe it because it has not happened in our world. It is not part of our story. We try to make sense of our world. We try to make sense of their injustice by filling in our own experience with what we cannot comprehend.

I find this no truer than in the story of Philando Castile. A police officer shot Philando after he disclosed having a firearm. Some of can believe it and shake our heads in a mix of sorrow and anger. The rest of us cannot understand how a police office could shoot an unarmed man for no reason. Our desire to make sense of the senseles senseless and sometime our fear drive us. To reconcile the story with our disbelief we say:

“He must’ve done something wrong . . .

“Did he move too fast . . .

“Was he was belligerent?

“He must’ve threatened the cop.

“Maybe he . . . “

He was a black man and we have been conditioned to believe certain things about races other than our own.

We have not tried hard enough to believe what is different from our experience.

We have convinced ourselves that our skepticism makes us stronger, better people. We will brand ourselves gullible when we find out it was all made up. ”The other” fabricated it to take advantage of us because we are weak.

The contrary is true. The work to hear and believe those who have an experience different from our own makes us stronger. The more you open yourself to a different understanding of someone else’s pain, the more range of motion you create. It is hard work, messy work. Life is messy and people are messy. Get yourself dirty expanding your range of compassionate motion. You will strengthen your own inner self.

This generosity of belief builds a stronger inner self.

Ron said, “One person can’t feel all that at once, they’d explode.” “Just because you’ve got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn’t mean we all have,” said Hermione nastily, picking up her quill again.” Rowling, J.K., Order of the Phoenix, 187-189

What would happen if you stepped out of what you find believable and comfortable? What we all spent time to seek, listen and believe someone else’s story of pain?

We are all looking to populate the world with better, stronger people. You are the only one you have control over.

Cultivating Compassion: Seeds of Empathy

Compassion reaches beyond to foster understanding and fellow feeling with a stranger.
Compassion grows beyond those you love and plants seeds of empathy for “the Other.”

It’s much simpler to have empathy, to cry with, those you love who suffer rather than those you don’t know. Ask me to suffer with someone I disagree with or who annoys me? Forget it. Why would I?

Cultivating compassion, fostering empathy changes your world.

It’s easy to ignore the suffering of people we disagree with. They became that “other” person way over there far from my belief system. “They are nothing like me. We have nothing in common!” We both have joy; we both experience suffering.

Life is so much simpler to ignore the suffering of “the other,” it’s saner even. We misunderstand the vastness of life when we fail to heed the words of Louise Gluck in her poem, April. 

“Understand grief is distributed between you, among all your kind”. 

We put up our mental walls and grow our imaginary hedgerows between us and “the Other.” 

It keeps us safe. We reduce “the Other” to descriptions, labels, people groups, and even a number. You can trim the bushes and peer over the hedge to try to understand; the true seed of compassion begs a watering with the tears of empathy.

Empathy for those you love is really just love. We like people and the next natural step is to feel with them. We celebrate with them. We mourn with them. True empathy sprouts only when you cultivate it in the hard soil of “the Other.”

Part of the problem may be that we have put so much emphasis on the importance of Belief. If you believe too differently from me, woah, back up. What is belief? Is it something you can see? 

Sometimes. Maybe in some actions.

Sorry but some of those beliefs aren’t worth the mental energy that we use to prop them up.

To change the world we must start with one common belief. We must believe that the humane treatment of people is necessary for us to live in peace in this world.

Despite our political or religious affiliation, if our action is cold and only self-serving, how much value is our belief? Should I put up my hedgerow or trim it? Should I try to understand you and shed a tear when you suffer?

Some people think “thoughts and prayers” during turmoil are like an empty truck of supplies driven into a war zone. Worse than useless.

On the ground, yes.

CARING MATTERS.

Our spiritual deficit comes at the cost of confusing prayer with action. Prayer has never changed circumstances. Prayer only changes the PRAY-ER, not the situation. It doesn’t drop magic fairy dust and undo damage done. If you equate prayer with change of THINGS, you are superstitious (which is another blog post). God didn’t come to change things or circumstances, he came to change PEOPLE.

I’m sorry if that hurts. Prayer is not magic. However, that’s not the question.

Do you want the world to change? Start with yourself. Cultivate fellow feeling for those a world away from you. Water the seeds of empathy for the Other with whom you disagree. If you don’t start with the change before you, your world will never change. If your world doesn’t change, our will stay the same or worse.

It’s math, folks. Not magic.

COMPASSION GOES BEYOND: to the other

Waves rise under a floating lotus leaf. My heart is moved to touch you. – Toshiyori Minamoto

Compassion goes beyond sympathy. we can describe sympathy as pity, affinity or fellow feeling.
Fellow feeling is easy for people you know, people you see on a regular basis. Theses are people you know or know through someone else. This is your circle. Suffering happens to others outside your circle.

Compassion goes beyond to others. It cultivates fellow feeling with people you only hear about through the news. Grow fellow feeling for those displaced by flooding in Houston. Grow affinity for Syrians seeking refuge in Europe and the Rohingya facing persecution in Myanmar.

How do you cultivate sympathy for others? Read their stories. Hear everything they have to say without judgement. Stop thoughts of what you would have done. Stop questions about what could have been done. Instead, listen and hear. Work to understand the loss. Is it loss of security? Life? Hope? Material items? Food and shelter? Loved ones?

It is essential to grow your compassion. Caring about what is going on in the world won’t change the world initially. Your ability to develop care and compassion changes YOU first. Your ability to care for those you love will deepen as you develop sympathy for the “other” outside of your experience.  

Growing your sense of fellow feeling positions you to change your world.

Spend a few minutes in quiet reflection. Look at a map of the affected area or a picture from a news article. Believe that it is important to care first, even if you can’t do anything. Allow this time of quiet reflection to foster sympathy.

Balance is not anti-intensity


Where I work we focus on not using nots.
But the double negative is NOT the same: Balance is intensity.

Or is it?

but how you carry it –
books, bricks, grief –
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it…

Have you noticed…

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled –
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,


a love 
to which there is no reply?

“Heavy” by Mary Oliver

Balance is intensity juxtaposed against rest and peace. Sitting on the couch is contrasted against jumping out of the plane FINALLY!!!

Balance is a harmonious rhythm

• Laughter filled joy, somber grief
• Quiet, heavy metal
• Fireside chat, screaming at a sports event
• Spice market, seaside
• Sweat dreanchimg workout, gentle stretches
• Requited love, love unanswered

So, practice balance by resting in the heart pounding leap and enthusiastically sitting by the fire all “hugged up.”

Balance not sameness

Balance is not about evenness nor is it monotone. Balance allows for magic making.

Balance does mean leaving the NEED for intensity. In the holiday season, we want to feel this deep end of belonging with family and firiends. However, if we haven’t sought it throughout the year, the attempt at any particular holiday time results  in emptiness.

When I was a child I always felt Christmas as a sad time. This is a confession I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone. I was raised in a “Christian” home; I couldn’t tell people I hated Christmas. But I hated it. Most people who know my adult self are aware that Christmas isn’t my favorite holiday, mostly because my adult self doesn’t pretend. My six-year-old-self spent most of her time in fantasy. What was one more?

I can’t tell you why I didn’t like it but I remember getting to December 26th every year feeling an overwhelming sense of “let down”.

We’ve constructed our holidays (with their lights and gifts and hymns and mantras) as this magical time. If we haven’t sought magic the previous months then the magic we intensely seek at the holidays sputters and falls flat.

Real magic occurs inside of balanced rhythm. One example is how artist (i.e. Magician) Michael Grab balances rocks.

 CLICK for images of Michael Grab

• Seek love, cultivate friendship, express sexual longing every damn day.
• Give little gifts randomly to those you love and even those you just like.
• Light the world with your smile at every opportunity.

Use the holidays (Valentines, Christmas, Hanukah, New Years, etc.) as a check-in time, a reminder and refocusing not a time to double down to make up for the hours you missed the 364 days prior. If you believe the Hollywood message that you get bonus universal points for “being in the spirit” maybe you should spend the next year reading classics from every country and continent and unplug your TV.

A rhythmic balancing act becomes a magic that fills our waking depths. If we practice with a rhythm of consistency, then it may just fill our dreams too.

Gratitude: Leave it

Maybe I have no room for gratitude.

There are so many things that fill our lives.

• Work
• Relationships
• Attitudes 
• Dreams
• Workouts
• Religion 

AND

STUFF

Some of the things listed above have become mere stuff to us and we haven’t even noticed.
I recently broke off a friendship. I didn’t want to but I needed to. Some days I still fill a deep sense of grief. Maybe it was necessary for both of us I don’t know. I was starting to feel like “stuff.” 

I can’t say if that perception is true. I had opened my soul up to be seen in this friendship. I realized that I wouldn’t have been able to SEE in the same way I had already begun to uncover myself so that I coul be known – this was shattering. I tried to deny it, pretend it wasn’t a big deal. I could back down, right?

The truth was, I just felt like another thing in this friend’s life, stuff among more stuff. Not really seen, or known. Liked, yes. Valued, I think so. But the fullness that comes from seeing and being seen wasn’t there.

If I hadn’t left, the stagnation caused by a lack of reciprocal intimacy would have turned the friendship into just another thing taking up space in my life.

I HAD to leave it.

It was HARD. I’m stubborn. I kept having hope. 

What do you have to leave behind to experience more gratitude?

It might be something you mistake for a virtue like friendship or a dream. It might be hope.

What IS Gratitude?

Since the end of September I have been asking myself this question. Before I can get to the answer I have had to peel away everything gratitude is not.

I have been on this 130 day kick of exploring gratitude – which I started about mid September and will end sometime around Thanksgiving.  I’ve been meditating on it, asking myself questions about it and really trying to unpack it because  gratitude is really hard for me to practice because I don’t think I understand it. So to allow my heart to be consumed with gratitude, I decided to really try to figure out what it is so that I can know whether I’m practicing gratitude or something else. Gratitude may have some elements of the characteristics below and these things may imbue gratitude, they are not gratitude itself.

Gratitude is not

• Enjoyment
• Grinning and bearing it
• Saying “Thank you”
• Contentment 
• Appreciation 
• Seeing the good
• Being positive

It may involve these things, but the more I meditate and talk to people about gratitude, I have begun to realize that gratitude is so much deeper than what we tend to think.

Gratitude IS a practice, not merely an attitude or way of seeing the world.

How do you experience gratitude, not just relish an exquisite moment, but really notice deep cold, still water that is gratitude? How do you repeat that practice?

Rhythm of numbness, iii

When we find ourselves engaging in activities and we notice a rhythm of numbness or even restlessness, that is an opportunity to practice truthfulness.

Sometimes this rhythm of numbness shows up in making excuses. We make excuses to not do the things we love doing.

“You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep.” Rumi

It is living a lie to refuse to allow ourselves to do the things we love to do. It is a lie not to allow ourselves to enjoy the things that bring us joy.

Where do you make excuses to avoid doing what you enjoy?

Blessing: May you practice truthfulness this week by allowing yourself to do what you enjoy doing.