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Visualize Yourself Surrounded by Support

Posted on July 30, 2010 by Lauren Rosenfeld

Sometimes when we are faced with a problem, we feel alone. We feel overwhelmed. Weak. Vulnerable.

Imagine yourself in a field — a broad grassy field. You are sitting cross legged. Face to face eye to eye with your problem. The air is cold. The sky is gray. The wind is thrashing at your hair.

Imagine yourself surrounded by a circle of friends

Suddenly you find that you are joined. People you love — people from your past, people from your present. Spiritual teachers who you have loved or read about in books. Historical figures you admire come and begin to join hands in a circle around you.

As each person arrives, the wind begins to subside a little. The clouds begin to break up. The sun begins to shine through. The air warms. And as the environment begins to change, your problem begins to transform. It becomes more meek. More humble. Less threatening. Until you begin to see some vulnerability in it. You see that it only pretends to be big. It is actually quite small. It begins to shrink. To fade.

Surrounded by your beloved community, the sun shining and warming your skin, a gentle breeze moving the grass, you reach across and tell your problem, “I am sorry I saw you as a threat. I see now you need my strength. I forgive and release you.” As you say these words, your problem transforms into something new. What is that for you?

And you turn and thank your beloved community for their support in this transformation.

They smile, hug you, and leave. But they are always available to you whenever you need them.

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How To Be Curious: Do you know what’s in your neighbor’s garage?

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Lauren

A couple of weeks ago, my children and I were visiting my brother and sister-in-law in Ohio. In the afternoon of our second day, my two daughters and I decided we would go for a walk. As we wandered the unfamiliar landscape we passed house after house with garages. One-car garages. Two-car garages. It may not seem like such a big deal, except that in our neighborhood, there are no garages. Everyone parks in their driveway or on the street. So these architectural appendages presented a strange sort of curiosity for my girls.

After a couple of blocks, my oldest daughter wondered aloud: “A lot of these houses have cars parked in the driveway just outside the garage. So why isn’t the car parked in the garage?” I began to list the possibilities for her: there could be another car in the garage. Or maybe a workshop. Or maybe storage. Could be a ping-pong table. But the bottom line is: we don’t know. We can guess what’s behind any of those doors, but when it comes right down to it, we have no idea. And chances are that if we made a guess, we’d be wrong.

If you don't know what's in someone's garage, how can you know what's in their heart?

The only way to really find out would be to ask. To go right up to the front door and say, “Listen, I’m very curious to know what’s in your garage.”

My daughter told me that would be a very odd thing to ask.

Yes. It would, I admitted. You would need to be friends with them first. They would need to trust you. They would have to invite you in. They’d need to know that you meant them no harm. That you didn’t aim to steal something you had no business touching. Your curiosity would need to be genuine. You might want to know if they needed help in their garage. Unpacking or sorting or cleaning out dark corners.

So, if you don’t know what’s in someone’s garage, how in the world can you know what’s in their heart?

We cannot approach the heart of another with brazen certainty. We can only approach them with genuine curiosity and perhaps even a compassionate desire to help. We may help them find something that is missing. We may help them uncover something they forgot was there.

I was recently listening to a talk by Thich Nhat Hanh in which he said that there is nothing more simple or mundane than a speck of dust. We think we know very well what a speck of dust is. It couldn’t be more obvious. But scientists can not really unravel what exactly is in a speck of dust. First, we cannot be sure upon observance where the dust came from. And even a speck of dust is constituted of atoms, protons, and electrons. In fact, the deeper you look into a speck of dust, the more mysterious it becomes. So, if we can’t truly know what a speck of dust is, how can we know a whole human being. There is something essentially mysterious, something essentially unknowable about everything we think we know.

I am not saying that you need to make friends with every person you meet and become their confidant. I do not think that we need to go peeking into the dark recesses of every human heart we encounter. Not every question requires an answer. Sometimes our curiosity can lead should lead us to the one very clear understanding of which we can be certain: We don’t really know.

You may think you know the heart of the person who cuts you off in traffic. The cashier who won’t make eye contact with you. The neighbor who yells at her children. The teacher who is overly critical of his students. You may think you know these people very well.

But do you know what’s in their garage?

Posted in be compassionate, be openhearted, be openminded, be present | Comments Off

How To Be Real: Be Present to Life’s Sweetness

Posted on July 7, 2010 by Lauren

I have a bad habit of knitting my brow when I am lost in thought.

One day, a few years ago, I was sitting and watching my son playing Legos in the living room. I was gazing absently at his play, but my mind was lost in some tangled problem I was trying to unravel. He stopped and fixed me with a worried look. “What’s wrong?” I asked him. “Are you angry at me?” he asked. I was taken aback by his question, “Of course not,” I answered, “Why would I be angry at you?” “Well, you look like you’re angry at me.” He had good reason to think I might be. I was looking right in his direction with a scowl on my face. But I wasn’t really looking at him. I was looking at my problems. And I had made my problems so real, so vivid, that they made it impossible for me to see what was right before my eyes.

My thinking had clouded my vision of the moment. Here was my wonderful, bright, loving child — playing and enjoying life. But what my expression was responding to was a thought in my head. The thought became more real to me than the reality in front of my eyes. It became so real that my facial muscles were physically responding with anger.

How often do we overlook what’s right in front of us because we are preoccupied with anger, worry, resentment, or bitterness. And what’s a terrible shame is that we are surrendering that moment to our preoccupation. Our sweet moments will become bitter moments if we allow our bitter thoughts to overtake us.

We need to learn to dispel our bitter preoccupations so that we can truly savor our sweet moments so sweetness can find a home in our hearts and expand.

Watch this video to find out more:

Posted in be delighted, be grateful, be happy, be present, Videos | 1 Comment

How to Be Aware: Take note of what goes right

Posted on July 1, 2010 by Lauren

“So, how was your day?”

It’s a question my husband James and I have asked of one another every evening for seventeen years. I am sure it is a question that’s asked millions of times every day. Spouses and partners ask one another as they cook their evening meals. Friends check in with each other. Parents ask their kids when they are grabbing a snack at the end of the school day.

be grateful for the water flowing in your house

Water flowing? That went right!

And here’s what I am guessing. 90% of the time, the answer to that question is what went wrong that day. Things like: “Traffic was horrible.” “My client wouldn’t return my emails.” “You wouldn’t believe the line in the grocery store.” “The check didn’t arrive in the mail like they promised.”

But why? Of the thousands of things that happen in a day, why do we always let these small irritations become the events that define how our day went?

I really think it’s because when things are going well – when the traffic is moving, the client is returning emails, we move right to the front of the line at the grocery store, the copy machine is cranking out copies, and the check arrives at the appointed time – when life is flowing just as it should we tend not to notice. We are in a state of flow and nothing in our body alerts us to flow. But as soon as something goes wrong, we feel the jolt of the machinery grinding to a halt. And it really does have that sense of physical sensation. When things go wrong, from the trivial to the traumatic, we can feel it in our bodies. The tension, the tightness in the chest, the vague feelings of nausea – these all set up a mind body connection that make these moments memorable. So when our friends, our spouses, or our family members ask us how the day went, the first think that occurs to us is what went wrong. It’s not that these events were the most important moments in our day, it’s just that they the things our bodies have told us to remember.

And the cure? Take note of what’s flowing. Make a conscious practice of when things go right and tune into the much more subtle sensations of flow. I’m not talking about feelings of deep pleasure (which have a similar way of establishing a mind-body connection), I am talking about feelings of just-fine-as-they-are. Take mental note of when things go right by literally saying to yourself, “That went right.” When you uncap a pen and the ink flows: That went right. When you turn the key in the ignition in the car and it starts: That went right. When you wake up without a fever: That went right. When you turn on the tap and water flows out: That went right. Tune in to the sensations of ease that accompany “That went right.” They are much more subtle that chest pain and nausea, but they are there (in fact one of the reasons meditation is such a wonderful tool is that we learn to identify feelings of ease and flow while we are in repose so that we can identify them during the day while we are active!)

For every one thing that goes wrong, there are hundreds that go right. When we don’t take note of them, we are missing out on the greater portion of our lives.

Now, granted, if someone asks you how your day went and you report, “My pen worked and my car started and water came out of the tap and I didn’t have the slightest fever,” they may look at you like you are a bit crazy.

So you might try saying, “My day went very well.”

And you’ll mean it.

Posted in be attuned, be grateful, be happy | Comments Off

Be Mindful: Do the dishes just to do the dishes

Posted on June 24, 2010 by Lauren

“Washing the dishes is at the same time a means and an end; that is, not only do we do the dishes in order to have clean dishes, we also do the dishes just to do the dishes, to live fully in each moment while washing them.”

– Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh

It was a typical night after dinner. The meal was finished and conversations about the day began to trail off. Time to clean up.

Our four children cleared their plates. Then they rinsed and stacked their dishes in the dishwasher. As they made their way up to bed, I finished rinsing the last of the dishes, pots, and pans, distractedly thinking about my plans for the following day.

washing the dishes just to wash the dishes

We can wash the dishes just to wash the dishes

When the last dish was rinsed and stacked, I put the dishwashing detergent in the little detergent compartment, snapped its lid shut, closed the door to the dishwasher and listened for click that indicates the door is locked and the dishes are ready to run.

Then I pressed the start button.

Nothing.

I figured that I had probably not shut the door to the washer tightly enough. So I opened the door and shut it again. Hard.

Pressed the button again. Not a sound.

Then I did what any reasonable person would do. I pressed the button repeatedly. Opened the door. Slammed it shut. And then mashed the button again as hard as I could.

Nada.

Taking a deep breath, I knew what I must do. Something I hadn’t done in quite a while. I filled the sink with soapy water and began to unload the dishes from the dishwasher and back into the sink. Tomorrow, I thought as I angrily scrubbed each dish and glass, I will call someone to repair this blasted thing.

Well, it turned out that my work schedule was not so accommodating. There just wasn’t a window of opportunity to pick up the phone that day. So the day passed without a call to a repair technician and that evening I found myself back at the sink with soapy water and a sponge. Tomorrow, I promised myself, I will definitely call someone to repair this blasted thing.

The next day came and went. And the day after that. And the day after that.

And then something remarkable happened. I began to enjoy washing the dishes. I liked the sound of the water running. I enjoyed the warmth of the water, the feel of the bubbles, the smoothness of the dishes under my hands.

You see, when the dishwasher was working, I was just rinsing the dishes so I could get the dishes into the machine. So I could press the start button. So I could get on with the next activity. Every part of the process was just a stepping stone to the next. I was doing the dishes just to get the dishes over and done with.

But when the dishwasher broke, I learned to wash the dishes just to wash the dishes. I found that dish washing time is an opportunity to slow down and enjoy the moment. It’s a time to slow down my movements and enjoy sights, sounds, and sensations. I also found that it’s a good time for the family to be together. To work together. To enjoy one another’s company for a few more precious moments before the day comes to a close.

For a month I enjoyed the simple pleasure of a sink full of warm, soapy water and the deep quiet that ensued when I was engaged with it. Then one day, a circuit blew that supplied electricity to the microwave and the stove. I called an electrician who quickly and ably replaced a switch that had blown in the wall.

“Anything else?” he asked as he turned the screw driver one last time.

I hesitated.

“Well, the dishwasher hasn’t been working for about a month,” I admitted. I took a breath, somewhere in my heart hoping that he would recommend a repair whose astronomical price would make it necessary for me to continue to wash the dishes for another year or so.

He walked over to the dishwasher and stood for a moment. Then he eyed a switch on the backsplash above it. it. “What does this switch control?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. I’d played with the switch before and had never seen a light indoors or outdoors so much as flicker when I touched it. I figured it was some artifact an old circuit that had long ago been disconnected.

The electrician flipped the switch and then pushed that same button on the dishwasher that a month before I had pushed repeatedly in panic.

The lights on the dishwasher’s front panel glowed green. HMMMMMMMMMMMM, it hummed contentedly.

The electrician shrugged. “No charge,” he said grinning. My face turned red about as quickly as those buttons glowed green.

Later that night our family excitedly loaded their dishes back into their old, trusty friend. We all joked about the switch, where the electrician — in a fit of good humor before he departed — had adhered a label that in bold capital letters announced: DISHWASHER.

But something inside me was already missing those quiet mindful moments when I did the dishes just to do the dishes.

Posted in be attuned, be calm, be happy, be light, be present, be relaxed | 3 Comments

How To Be Understanding: Comforting your consuming emotions

Posted on June 23, 2010 by Lauren

We all have the experience with being afflicted by the ravages of consuming emotions: Guilt. Envy. Bitterness. Worry. Despair. These are the emotions that feed on the goodness of our hearts, bit by bit taking from the heart’s abundant energy. These emotions eat away at us, but they are never satisfied. Never nourished. Whatever energy they take from us, they always want more. And they give nothing in return.

the doorway to your heart welcome life's imperfection

We can open the door to our hearts and welcome Life's imperfection and unpredictability with confidence and joy

We can look at these emotions as parasitic pests. We can try and push these emotions away. We can try to deny them. We can try to lock them away in the recesses of our hearts where they will never see the light of day. But in our desperate hours, they will come knocking. And if we do not know how to take care of them, they will eat away at us until we feel we have no goodness left inside.

So how do we take care of these emotions? By showing them the patience and understanding that we would a misguided friend. The friend who, no matter how hard they try to help us, always ends up making matters worse. We can have compassion for them. We can show them understanding.

You see, all of these emotions want the best for us. They want us to be happy. They want us to be free. And if we understand their intentions, we can thank them for their trouble and send them on their way.

To our misguided friend, Guilt, we might say: “Hello Guilt. Thank you for showing up. I know you want me to be a better person. You believe that if I were a more perfect human being, I would be spared any unhappiness. But Guilt, there is no such thing as a perfect human being. I can be happy and imperfect. So thank you for your concern, but I am happy just as I am: an imperfect being who tries their best.”

To our hungry friend, Envy, we could say: “Hello Envy. Yes. I see that other people who have more than me appear to be happy. But I do not think that happiness dwells in material possessions. How can that be? Happiness is something I can create within myself. And by the way, I am not so sure that the people you believe to be happier than me are really deeply happy. I am sure they have similar problems to me. Maybe even larger. Anyway, there is no such thing as perfect happiness. So no material thing can grant me perfect happiness.

To our tired friend, Bitterness, we might say, “Hello Bitterness. I know you are trying to protect me from disappointment by telling me that life is hard. Of course it makes sense. If I expect everyone and everything to let me down, how can I possibly be disappointed when they do? If I am bitter, I’ll no longer feel the sting of disappointment. But I will also stop feeling the delight of being surprised. I’ll stop feeling the joy of amazement. I am certain that I will be disappointed. That’s okay. I would rather feel occasional disappointment than feeling nothing at all.

To our overly vigilant friend, Worry, we could offer, “Hello Worry. I see that you are concerned that I might experience pain. So you are trying to warn me that pain is coming to get me. But don’t you see, Worry, that pain is a part of life? You can’t prevent it. Your incessant warnings are not keeping me safe. You are actually creating pain by constantly needling me with your stories about the terrible things that might happen. Worry, you want me to be free from suffering, but your torment is the thing that is causing me suffering. I do not need your help right now, thank you for trying though. I know you want me to be safe and happy.”

And finally, to our friend, Despair — the most powerful of these emotions, the one most convincing in their loud insistence that life is meaningless and there is no point in trying, we might gently tell it, “Despair, I see that you want me to stop investing my vital energy into my life. You must truly know how inherently precious that energy is. You have spoken at length with Worry and Bitterness, and you have concluded that no matter what I do, it will amount to nothing. You don’t want me to spend my time and energy on Life if Life gives me nothing in return. But don’t you see Despair, Life is always offering me kindnesses. Life is always offering me beauty. You say these don’t matter. You say these are too small to compensate me for my trouble. You say that the gift of a smile or a drifting cloud or a kind word will never be enough to sustain me. But you are wrong, Despair. These are gifts of infinite importance. I wish you could see that.”

We can smile to these emotions. We can offer them the solace of understanding. After all, they are stronger than they are. We are wiser. We can see the error of their thinking. And we can say, “No thank you” to their overzealous and misguided attempts to protect us from Life itself. We have the ability to accept Life, in its unpredictability and in its imperfection. We can do this with strength and with confidence. We can open our hearts to the unpredictability and the imperfection. We can welcome it. Yes, we will be certain to experience pain. But we will also certainly experience great joy.

Posted in be calm, be compassionate, be courageous, be healing, be loving, be openhearted, be relaxed, be wise | 1 Comment

How To Be Responsible: Punctuate Your Life

Posted on June 21, 2010 by Lauren

The other day, James and I boarded an Airstream trailer parked at a curb in downtown Asheville. The trailer is traveling around the country interviewing regular folks like us, and collecting stories about “a-ha moments.”

When our interview was over, the interviewer asked me to explain what an “a-ha moment” meant to me.

This is what I thought:

Life deserves punctuation. It's your job to put it in place.

Sometimes life gets unclear. Murky. Difficult to decipher. Like a run-on sentence, the longer it goes without punctuation, the less clear it becomes. As one idea runs into the next, meaning becomes diluted, the context is blurred, and ultimately, we walk away shaking our heads wondering, “What the heck was that all about?” Having an a-ha moment is like putting an exclamation point into that sentence. Life becomes not only meaningful, but declaration of life’s meaning. That exclamation point not only gives meaning to that moment, but meaning to everything that came before and after it.

But honestly, how many exclamation points can we expect to have in a lifetime? And just as our English teachers preached to us when we got a little carried away with the use of exclamation points in our essays, if you overuse them, everything starts seeming less important, not more.

So life not only needs exclamation points. It needs other punctuation too. Decisive periods that mark distinctions. Reflective commas that give us time to pause and breath. Instructive colons that point to what’s most important. Mysterious ellipsis that leave us wondering what’s next.

We have so many opportunities to find ways to make sense of our lives. As amazing and memorable those exclamation point, bolt-out-of-the-blue, a-ha moments are, we don’t need to wait for them to feel that are lives are meaningful.

With proper punctuation, our lives become like a fascinating story that fills us with a sense of wonder. It makes sense. It has deep meaning. It gives us pause for reflecton. And ultimately it leaves us wanting to turn the page to see what’s next.

Life deserves good punctuation. You’re the writer of your story. It’s your job to put it in place.

Posted in be attuned, be focused, be visionary, be wise, be yourself | 1 Comment

How To Be Transformative: Turn your troubles into treasure

Posted on June 17, 2010 by Lauren

Our troubles are like compost. From all outward appearances, they’re unsightly and smelly. We’d like to shove them away into a dark place where we’ll never have to look at them again. But just as compost will yield rich soil if we are willing to let it be — if we are willing to care for it — our troubles will yield a rich meaningful experience of life if we are willing to compassionately transform them.

Posted in be blessed, be grateful, be happy, be healing, be present, be visionary, be wise, Videos | Comments Off

How to Be Wise: Time is like money, be careful where you invest it.

Posted on June 16, 2010 by Lauren

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. – Annie Dillard

Time is like currency. It’s a precious commodity in limited supply. So we need to be careful how we spend it.

The meter is running. How will you spend your time?

With money we try to be smart consumers. We work hard to earn it and we know that when we cash our paycheck, we have only so much to spend. We choose to give our precious earnings to businesses whose products we like. We can choose to give our money to businesses who are doing good in the world. Spending our money is more that a simple exchange of cash for goods. If we spend wisely, we are investing in the future. We want our money to go out there and do good in the world. Naturally we can do the opposite: we can throw away our money on things that don’t matter. Things that just create more clutter in our homes. Things that eat up space and make it impossible to find the precious objects in your home that really matter. You can do business with hucksters and charlatans, who will take you money and make waste of it.

Our time is the same. We don’t have endless amounts of it. All those precious minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years add up quickly. So we need to have an awareness of what we are spending it on.

Each moment you spend being patient, being kind, being thoughtful, being grateful, and being generous is a wise investment. You are “doing business” with emotions that are making the world a better place. The time you give to these emotions enhances your life and the lives of others. And in the end, these are emotions that pay off fantastic dividends. Investing in these emotions creates emotional wealth. And you go on to create wealth for generations that will follow.

And just as with money, we can squander our time on emotions that are destructive: bitterness, self-righteousness, guilt, worry. Minute by minute, we are losing our lives to emotions that suck up our energy but are incapable of giving anything back.

You have just twenty-four hours in a day. Perhaps eighteen of those are waking hours. That’s 1080 minutes. 64800 seconds.

The clock is ticking. The meter is running. On what will you spend your time?

Posted in be attuned, be focused, be invested, be wise, be yourself | 2 Comments

How To Be Compassionate: Use Your Imagination

Posted on June 16, 2010 by Lauren

I wish I knew

What it’s like to be

A splinter, a bee.

A song, a sea.

A tree, a shoe.

A bird that’s new.

I wish I knew

What it’s like to be you.

– By my daughter Tamar, at age 7

When I was a child, I experienced an awakening moment. My mother had revealed to me that before my oldest brother had been born, she had had a miscarriage. That revelation set my mind spinning:

If my mother had given birth to that child, would I have existed? Would my oldest brother have been the middle child? And my middle brother the youngest? Or would I have been my middle brother? Would I still be me? Or would I be him? Or might I have been born as someone else entirely. To a different family. In a different place in a different time. Who would I be then?

What if you were born another person? Who would you be then?

It was that last thought, the thought that I might have been anyone, that truly left me stunned. I began looking at other people differently. Everyone I passed I thought, “I could have been that person as easily as I came to be me.” I imagined myself with different parents. In a different part of the world. Growing up speaking another language. Learning from different books. Playing different games. Perhaps I might have grown up hungry. Or frightened. Or lonely. Would I still be entirely myself? The same happy, self-assured, playful child? Or would I be different? Would experience make me into someone else?

I felt something for other people that I had never really known before. Each person I passed, I thought, “That could have been me.” And I knew this possibility to not just be a figment my imagination. But a deep truth. I knew in my heart that any of one us could have been any other of us.

Ah-ha moments can’t live forever. I am an adult now with many responsiblities. I often move through life quickly and thoughtlessly — and my imagination is tucked away where it will not interfere. I do not look at every individual I pass in the street and wonder as I did when I was a child if I might have been that person. My mind is often racing with the details of life. And in that racing about, people become objects. Obstacles. I forget that childhood realization. And I suffer because it. I cause others to suffer as well.

But there are times, too, that my imagination comes back to that original state of wonder, and my compassion is awakened with it. I am open to the flow of life. And I can create happiness in others.

The Buddha is famously quoted as saying, “If you see yourself in others, then whom can you harm?” I do not believe that the Buddha is saying that we should witness that others are like us. That they are similar to us. I think he is saying something deeper. That others are us. And we are them.

Any one of us could have been any other of us. And with minds awakened to imagination and hearts awakened to compassion, we can see this very clearly.

Posted in be compassionate, be loving, be openminded, be yourself | Comments Off

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