Tag: flow

Slowing Down in Order to Get There

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“When feeling urgent, you must slow down.” – Mark Nepo

About 25 years ago, I had to travel to France for a business trip. The conference that I was presenting at was in Nice. I tacked on a few extra days to spend time in Paris before I met my colleagues in the south of France.

I enjoyed Paris immensely. When it came time to fly to Nice, I arrived at the airport on the afternoon of my scheduled flight to discover that there was a transportation strike and no flights were leaving.

My high-school French language skills weren’t all that good when I was actively taking classes and 15 years later, they sucked. So I was stuck in an airport ticket line trying to speak or understand enough French to find a solution. Needless to say, I wasn’t getting anywhere.

There was a young American woman behind me who was also scheduled to fly to Nice. Stymied by the French “je ne sais pas” answer to all our questions about when we could fly, we decided to rent a car and drive there.

Time has erased my memories of how we actually got the car. But that was the night that I learned that France is a bigger country than I thought. We drove all night long and arrived at 5am the next morning. I was completely wiped out. Two days later I gave my presentation and immediately threw up afterwards. It wasn’t anything serious – I just was completely spent.

I’d like to say that I learned a lesson about brute forcing solutions to my problems that night. I didn’t. But it was the first clue in a long list of situations from which I started to learn about the roadblocks in life. Sometimes when we’re aiming to get somewhere, trying harder isn’t the only way to do it.

I’ve come to appreciate the wisdom from poet Mark Nepo in The Book of Awakening:

“When feeling urgent, you must slow down.

I learned this, over and over, during the many crises of cancer. Unless someone is bleeding or can’t breathe, unless there is some true physical requirement to act swiftly, a sense of urgency is a terrible illusion, a trick that happens, again and again, because life inside our skin and outside our skin are forever different.”

The month of March often leaves me feeling urgent. It feels like a long stutter step on the transition to better days – or at least longer ones. This post is my reminder to slow down and just let it come.

(featured photo from Pexels)

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Steeping the Tea Leaves of Life

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“Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” – Roald Dahl

The other day the paper on the end of my tea bag string had just two words, “Live consciously.” As I sat and sipped my tea, I thought, “say more.”

Years ago, I read a passage in Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening that heightened my appreciation for tea.

“If we stop to truly consider it, making tea is a miraculous process. First, small leaves are gathered from plants that grow from unseen roots. Then boiling water is drained through the dried leaves. Finally, allowing the mixture to steep creates an elixir that, when digested, can be healing.

The whole process is a model for how to make inner use of our daily experience. For isn’t making tea the way we cipher through the events of our lives? Isn’t the work of sincerity to pour our deepest attention over the dried bits of our days? Isn’t patience the need to let the mixture of inner and outer brew until the lessons are fragrant and soothing on the throat? Isn’t it the heat of our sincerity that steams the lessons out of living? Isn’t it the heat of those lessons that makes us sip them slowly.”

Steeping my “live consciously” tea bag made me think of three miraculous events that happened in the last 4 weeks.

The first leaf

A few weeks ago, on the last morning we were staying at an AirBnB on Whidbey Island, I took Cooper, the dog, out to go potty. It was 5:30 in the morning and still dark enough to notice that the dome light on my car was turned on. Ugh, it must have been on for almost 24 hours since the kids and I went to the grocery store. I got the keys and tried to start the engine and it wouldn’t turn over. But the dashboard lights came on so I knew it wasn’t entirely dead.

I turned off the light, locked the doors, and went back in to meditate. I tried to dial down the worry about what I’d do if the car wouldn’t start while on vacation and away from the usual people I’d lean on. Check out wasn’t until 11am so I told myself not to fret about it until 10:30am. Instead, the kids and I packed up and went to the beach one last time.

When 10:30am came, I unlocked the doors, put the key into the ignition, prayed, and turned the key. The car started.

The second leaf

Miss O had been asking for weeks to go to the new Boba tea shop in our neighborhood. We tried once and it wasn’t open. Other times we had too much going on. Finally, on a Sunday in mid-April, we got there. Miss O carefully scanned the menu. Her taste palates are pretty selective. After much consideration, she ordered a strawberry chocolate Boba. She took one drink and didn’t like it. She wondered if we could get our money back and looked absolutely miserable. I reminded her that it’s okay to try new things and to not like them.

Mr. D had a raspberry lemon rooibos and was blissfully sucking his down without noticing his sister’s unhappiness. I was standing there pondering. I wanted her to be open to trying new things. But I also didn’t want to signal we could buy $7 teas until she liked one.

Then there was a moment when the shop cleared out, no one was waiting for a drink and there was an extra raspberry lemon rooibos on the bar. I asked the barista if we could pay for it. She said to just take it. Pure magical rescue from our misery!

The third leaf

Mr. D said a few times that he wanted to learn to become a ninja. He repeated this again on a Monday afternoon about three weeks ago when I picked him up from school. Miss O was also in the car. On a whim, we all were up for popping in to the Aikido dojo in our neighborhood to see if it would work.

We showed up right at the time of the class for kids, the sensei told us this class is for training to be a samurai, not a ninja and Mr. D was okay with that. She invited Mr. D and Miss O to join the class starting right at that moment, and they both loved it.

It was one of those moments where everything lined up like dominos. The least planning I’ve ever had to do for a great fit.

Here’s the tea I made from this

Living consciously for me means finding the magic in moments. The light touch that I can sense sometimes when I’m scared, confused, or need an easy win. It doesn’t mean that the dog doesn’t throw up, or I won’t break and spill the glass of water right before I’m supposed to lead a webinar. But it gives me a glimpse of a wider view in which I can find the current to flow with.

Doing Nearly Nothing

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“Recognize what is simple. Keep what is essential.” – Lao Tzu

I spent some time this past weekend sitting on the porch of an AirBnB cabin on Whidbey Island doing nothing. Well, I was drinking tea so not technically nothing. I was going to say maybe more accurately, I was just doing that one thing so I wasn’t multi-tasking. But I was eating popcorn along with the tea so perhaps that is multi-tasking.

Okay, maybe we can agree I was doing nearly nothing. I was sitting on the porch with my tea and popcorn not doing anything else. I didn’t have my laptop open or my phone within reach. My kids were off at a playground with a friend, so it was just me and Cooper the dog, looking at the bay.

I knew the next thing I needed to do to get ready for dinner but I hadn’t moved yet. I was trying to extend the moment of doing nearly nothing for as long as possible. I found this to be extremely difficult – to drop the should and the oughts and just sit.

It reminded me of the question of whether finding inner peace will ruin our ability to get things done. I have both heard and thought myself, if I wasn’t so ________________, I wouldn’t be nearly as productive. Fill in the blank with ambitious, anxious, efficient, motivated, OCD or whatever else suits you. Sometimes it seems to me, with Buddhism especially, if I let it all go, what’s going to be left?

I live by a lot of rules that help me get stuff done. Rules like:

  • No tv after the kids go to bed.
  • If you notice something needs to be done, do it now. And really, with two kids, a dog, a cat, a job and a house – how hard is it to notice something that needs to be done?
  • If you pick something up, put it away properly so you only handle it once. This includes emails and work tasks.
  • Go to bed by 10:30 so you can get up by 5:30 to get sacred time and do it all again.

My structures help me but also limit me. They keep my head down so that I don’t notice other things.  When I let them go, even for just a short while, I’m happier because my head’s up.

In the few moments when I’ve been able to experience something akin to inner peace, here’s what I’ve noticed: that I’m able to float peacefully along with the stream instead of trying to constantly generate my own power. That the biggest effort is quieting the should and oughts in my head and then everything else flows rather nicely.

I’m so grateful I was able to practice doing nearly nothing this weekend. I need to do it more.

Going With the Flow

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“If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place.” – Lao Tzu

I’ve noticed something interesting with Mr. D. If presented with a household choice like what to watch for our tv show time before bed, he will insist in a vociferous way that might be spectacularly specific to being 3 ½-year-old and all the certainty that goes with it, that it needs to be the option HE wants. But if the tv is already on and tuned to something that is appealing to the younger set, he will more often than not, just meld into watching it.

As I witness this, I recognize this same trait in myself. When I’m presented with a choice, I find it necessary to make it MY choice and am involved with it in a very discerning and egoic way that is likely to result in anger or disappointment if I don’t get it the way I want. But if something just happens, I can adapt to whatever it is without my thought or much bother.

Case in point – I was going out to dinner this past weekend with a group of people I’d rounded up after I remembered that it’s okay for me to sometimes get a babysitter and have grown-up time. When it came to picking the restaurant, one of my friends suggested one and I looked at the menu and thought, “Oh, this doesn’t sound like what I want to eat for MY night out.” I suggested something else that was nearby and that was fine with everyone.

But had I gone to a friends’ house and they served me the food that was on the menu I objected to, I likely would have eaten it, or not, without much thought. I would have been grateful for the warmth, company, and work that they put into it.

Which makes me wonder how I can cultivate that flexibility so I’m more in the flow of life. Because when it comes down to it, I do better when I admit that steering the big picture of life is beyond my pay grade. Then I can save my energy for just “being” with life and not trying to bend it to my will. Sometimes what is served up by the Universe is the usual banality and routine. But sometimes I’m surprised by joy and delight in things like the other day when in the middle of a busy day, I answered the phone, and it was a friend who I hadn’t spoken to in five or six years just calling to say “hi.”

And that’s what I try to do for Mr. D as well. Sometimes he has the unfortunate experience of having to go along with the boring chores of family life. But when he’s flexible and going with the flow, I try to surprise him now and again with an activity like a bouncy house that is beyond what he would have thought to have ask for – just to plant the seed that when we let go of control, sometimes the result is being open to what is beyond our limited expectations.

I’m not sure if the reminder is for my son or myself, but hopefully it works for both.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Universal Timing

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“Many of us have been running for all our lives. Practice stopping.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

When I returned from my business trip three weeks ago, my nanny had left the extra garage door opener on the counter. I saw it and somewhere in the mix of putting things back where they belonged, I misplaced it.

Normally I’d spend hours looking for it. Because my default in life is doing. I’d much rather be driving action than just waiting for things to appear. I’m not good at being. Or unsolved mysteries.

But I don’t really need that extra remote. Sure, it helps when we go biking. However I think the practice of just being is worth the hassle.

It seems silly to make an object lesson out of the extra garage door remote but for me it’s all about the feeling underneath the drive to push. I have a million examples of things I want to steamroll with action instead of finding the flow of when the time is right: responses about the new work project, for my friend to return from her trip so we can talk, for fall to come before I put away the outdoor rug, to know what’s worth writing about instead of just what’s top of mind and on and on.

I spend a lot of time working and willing to happen. This will not be one of them. The more that I can put things in that category, the better I get at feeling the Universal timing. With more experience, I start to appreciate The Flow of Life.

So I resolved not to look for the garage door remote. Yesterday as I was preparing my kids to go a playground, I had a feeling I was going to find it. Sure enough, it was in the backpack of playground supplies – sitting right on the top. I laughed in appreciation and understood it was waiting for me to swallow my lesson to learn to go with the flow and stop forcing action.

Do you have a preference between doing or being? Do you practice the other?