already home but still with errands to run

"Already Home" c. 2008 Miz Annie

7.5" x 10" mixed media collage w/ art papers,
magazine cutouts, & laser print on recycled pasteboard.
AEDM for Nov. 10.

"Spiritual practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better,” teaches Pema Chödrön. “It is,” she says, “about befriending who we are already.”

I am a huge Chödrön fan; I have a much-loved copy of When Things Fall Apart that I keep at the ready for when.... well...when things fall apart. And they seem to do so fairly often these days. One of the biggest lessons that Chödrön shares is that we rob ourselves of so much of our own lives, our own human experience, by disassociating from anything that falls into the spectrum of what we've learned to label as "bad." In other words, when we start to feel that a moment in time is horrible, painful, unbearable, even just frustrating, irritating, or mildly unpleasant -- we want to run. We don't want to experience those feelings so we throw everything else out with that bathwater. And each unpleasant moment we discard is a moment that will never come again. You might read that and think, "Well, good riddance to it!" as though our particular emotional state is all that exists in that moment of time. How egotistical! Are we that self-centered that we can imagine that those moments are all disposable, because they happen to be moments in which we are irritated? (or pained, or lonely, or __________ fill in the blank)

I admit that I am often very bad at this "being in the present" stuff. Yup. So many of my present moments lately are ones in which I'm in physical pain and sometimes all I can muster up is that everything else can go to hell. But I'm working on it. I'm working on remembering that each moment contains far more than my fleeting emotional state, or my fleeting physical state. It contains millions of people engaged in millions of activities and thoughts. Wars are being fought, songs are being sung, babies are crying or laughing or sleeping, and my dog is chewing a slipper. The moon is nearly full, the leaves are rustling in the wind, the neighbor is showing off his shiny new truck. So much is happening! And it will never happen exactly like this ever again! Sometimes my own spiritual practice consists of little more than the prayer "Please allow me to get out of my own damned way." Once I can do that, there's a little more room for the rest of the world to enter my consciousness. So that is why Chödrön says that the present moment is our greatest teacher; if we can manage to allow ourselves to just be in each moment regardless of whether we've labelled it "good" or "bad," and don't get caught up too much in reacting to it, we can let go of a lot of what we have come to feel as "suffering."

And again, just because I'm writing about it doesn't mean I consider myself remotely good at it. I most certainly am not.(1) I am particularly prone to living not from this moment but from some future moment when things are really going to kick ass! "I will sooooo be a better person," I think, "when my back doesn't hurt." I won't be so crabby (or irritated, or angry, or stressed out...) when I get a new job. Or when I win the lotto. Or when X, Y, or Z happens. I forget to look at all the other things that are going on in the current moment, and what I can do to move forward. Send another resume, ask for help with the housework, take the dogs for a walk to the store and buy a lottery ticket. It never fails that in the act of simply moving forward from that moment, instead of becoming the feeling of dissatisfaction and embodying it, I have honored not only my Self, but also that previously unbearable, seemingly disposable moment. Simply by allowing myself to be in it. By using it as a metaphorical home base and venturing out its front door.

Begin where you are; work where you are;
the hour which you are now wasting,
dreaming of some far off success
may be crowded with grand possibilities.

~ Orison Swett Marden ~

____________________________________________________

(1) I suspect that the Buddha himself wasn't that good at it, or he would not have had to leave his wife and children and go sit under a big tree to "discover" enlightenment. But that's a topic for another blog. ;-)

I found that quote

The "self help guru" I mentioned in yesterday's blog was actually Stephen Covey and the quote I was thinking of came from his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, which is actually much warmer and readable than its business seminar-sounding title might imply.

Covey tells the story of a conversation he had at one of his workshops, during which a man came up to him and said, "[...] My wife and I just don't have the same feelings for each other that we used to have. I guess I just don't love her anymore, and she doesn't love me. What can I do?"

"The feeling isn't there anymore?" Covey inquired.

"That's right," the man reaffirmed, "And we have three children we're really concerned about. What do you suggest?"

"Love her," Covey replied.

"I told you, the feeling just isn't there anymore."

"Love her."

"You don't understand. The feeling of love isn't there."

"Then love her. If the feeling isn't there, that's a good reason to love her."

"But how do you love when you don't love?"

"My friend, love is a verb. Love -- the feeling -- is a fruit of the love the verb. So love her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?"

Covey goes on to admonish Hollywood for giving us all the deluded idea that love is a feeling and not a verb; we've all come to expect other people to induce in us some nirvanic feeling of bliss when in actuality that feeling comes as a result of loving someone (loving, as in the action word. the VERB.) He also offers a quote by M. Scott Peck:

"The desire to love is not love itself love... Love is an act of will -- namely an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love. No matter how much we may think we are loving, if we are in fact not loving, it is because we have chosen not to love and therefore do not love despite our good intentions. On the other hand, whenever we do actually exert ourselves in the cause of spiritual growth, it is because we have chosen to do so. The choice to love has been made."

"Live Reverently"
2.5" x 3.5" ACEO c. 2008 Miz Annie
AEDM for Nov. 9, '08 & one for the Yogi Tea Tag series

mixed media collage on recycled pasteboard with magazine cutouts, glitter hearts and Yogi Tea tag.

today's piece is for Caitlin

"Hope is the thing"
c. 2008 miz annie

7.25" x 10.5" mixed media collage w/art paper, magazine cutouts, photograph, & JoJo feathers on recycled pasteboard. In case you can't read my handwriting, the quote is from Emily Dickinson:

"Hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul,
and sings the song without words,
and never stops at all."

with love to Caitlin.

XO

Locksmith

Yesterday I had planned to finish a sewing project and count that as my AEDM piece. My sewing machine, however, would have none of it. I adjusted and readjusted all the tension knobs, re-threaded and messed with it and still, I kept getting tight stitches on top and a looping tangled mess underneath. After ripping out countless seams, I was ready to throw the machine out in my yard. Fortunately, I can barely lift the thing at the moment so I contemplated asking a volunteer to do the "Singer Fling" for me. Then I realized if I was going to go to the trouble of soliciting a volunteer for that I could just as easily solicit a knowledgable sewing person to help me adjust the damn machine. I did the only thing sensible at that point: emailed my mom.

Meanwhile, using my frustration as fuel, I went ahead and made something else. I rather like it.

"The Locksmith Befriends the Snake" c. 2008 miz annie
(12.5" x 14.5" including frame)

This is a mixed media assemblage on some cool corrugated stuff that came as packing material for some item I can't now recall. I sidestepped the glue wrinkling issue by only using it on the edges of the paper elements and sewing the found objects right through the base cardboard. The frame is an old vintage piece someone tried to strip the paint off of at one point; I like the shabby chic "distressed" look they left when they gave up on it.

Later I remembered some words on transforming anger from a book on which I'd just finished writing a paper:

"While aggressive energy at its most primitive levels can become destructive, in its more evolved form it becomes creative power. Many spiritual leaders have warned against despising or deprecating aggression, pointing to the consequent dangers of helplessness and resignation. Rama Krishna, for example, used to narrate the story of an incredibly fierce and venomous snake. One day this snake met a sage and, overpowered by the latter's gentleness, lost its ferocity. The sage advised it to stop hurting people, and the snake resolved to live a life of innocence, without harming anyone.

"But as soon as the people in a nearby village realized that the snake wasn't dangerous anymore, they started to throw stones at it, to drag it by the tail and tease it in innumerable ways. The snake was having a very hard time. Luckily, the sage passed by the place again, and after seeing how badly battered the snake was and listening to its complaints, he simply said, "My friend, I told you to stop hurting people -- I didn't tell you never to hiss at them and scare them away." Rama Krishna concludes, "There is no harm in 'hissing ' at wicked men and at your enemies, showing that you can protect yourself and know how to resist evil. Only you must be careful not to pour your venom into the blood of your enemy. Resist not evil by causing evil in return."

(from Piero Ferrucci's What We May Be, c. 2001 Tarcher/Penguin