Your Humanity is Divine

The sound of the organ trails off into the hollow spaces of the church. The preacher trudges to the pulpit as if he is walking death row. His mind is elsewhere. He is going through the motions. In the front row there is a whistling sound as an older man turns up his hearing aid. He’s not sure it’s worth the effort. A couple entices their young child to sit quietly with crayons and scrap paper. When the child makes a sound, they say in unison, “Hush! We’re in church.” In the row behind them, the CEO of the local bank leafs aimlessly through his hymnal as he wonders what will be left of his branch after the financial storm. Twice in the last month he has contemplated suicide.

A college sophomore, home for the weekend and dragged to church by her parents, sits with her chin in her hands wondering how she will endure the next 30 minutes. A teenage girl runs her hand over her pregnant stomach and gazes at the organ pipes. No one yet knows that she’s full of new life. A middle aged man, who has been waiting for his old-school father to die before coming out about his sexuality, stares blankly at his program then places it under his knee. After settling into the pulpit, the preacher begins shuffling through his notes like a deck of cards. He peers over his bifocals at his sleepy congregation. They look as absent as he feels. He wonders if there’s any point. He inhales, sighs deeply, and begins anyway.

Church is often far removed from the reality of human existence. It is like an out of body experience. You put on your church face; leave your human face at home. You leave your body at home. You leave your humanity in the car. You leave your questions at the door. You leave your deepest desires and fears on the rack with your coat. This is backwards. Church should be a place where you celebrate all of your humanity. Your humanity is God’s child, learning and growing and realizing all your wondrous connections. It is part of the spiritual journey, and not to be minimized. Your humanity is one of the ways that God stays anonymous in the world.

There is a church signboard that reads, “Lying in bed shouting Oh God doesn’t constitute going to church”. It’s intended to guilt people into going to church. I think that’s bass ackwards. If going to church led people to shout “O God, life is such joy. O God humanity is beautiful. O God it’s good to be alive” more often, then you wouldn’t be able to keep people away from church.

Life is amazing, and you have the awesome privilege of participating. Your humanity is not just a good and beautiful thing. It is part of your experience of God, or Spirit, or the Unseen Order or whatever words you use to describe the mysterious beauty that sources your life. Embrace your humanity. Forgive your imperfections. Honor your sexuality. Celebrate your relationships. Appreciate your body. All of your humanity is a gateway to your experience of divine beauty. Dive into life, and offer your unique humanity in service of the Great Love that fills the universe.

Ps. In response to regular requests for support from people who feel they are in "recovery" from religion, I have created a packet of Soulseeds Affirmations called "Spiritual Freedom". Please check it out. Its hot off the press.

Blues Clues about Pain and Suffering

When I woke up this morning, I had an incredible vision of multitudes of people finding strength of spirit that overcomes obstacles and transcends pain and suffering. I imagined people finding the liberating power of perseverance and discovering a strength they didn’t know they had.

Each August I spend time looking at issues of wellness, and it seems that at this time I always have some quirky injury just in time for me to speak from personal experience. It’s my labor of love. This year is no exception. I took the family to an indoor water park up in Boyne a few weeks back. I forgot my age and went indoor surfing. I made such a spectacle of myself, tumbling all over the place that they had to stop the water to get me off. I then had to take the walk of shame through the crowd of snickering 12 year old boys and pretend I was fine. Once I was clear of view, I surrendered to the pain of my left foot that had been twisted in the fall.

Two days later, and back home, I took myself off to the Emergency Room to make sure I hadn’t broken anything in my foot. As I waited in one cubicle with my sore foot a woman was wheeled in next to me amidst high drama. She was traumatized and barely coherent as she told nurses and police her story. She had been abused and drugged by her husband, rescued by a friend and brought to the ER. It was a heartbreaking story, and in the context of this poor woman’s situation my sore foot started to feel quite trivial. I felt like quietly leaving and saying, “Give this woman all your attention. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. I have another foot.”

Pain and suffering is so relative isn’t it? It’s like the saying, “I used to complain because I had flat feet until I met a man with no feet.” As I reflect on the various aches and pains in my arms and legs, I think about the Australian man (Nick Vujicic) who was born without arms or legs. He travels the world motivating young people to live with gratitude and passion and to transcend any physical limitations. He finds humor and inspiration in his situation. The world needs more of his attitude.

You will be glad to know that there is nothing broken in my foot, but I have prepared these thoughts on pain through gritted teeth. Of course my small pain is nothing compared to what many people experience chronically and on a daily basis. I want to offer some inspiration to those with chronic pain, and those with occasional pain to honestly express your pain but not to let it own you.

Here is my thought. We’ve been given a bum steer when it comes to pain and suffering. We find ourselves caught in the middle between a religion that overemphasizes suffering, and a society that is in denial about pain. Let me explain.

Christianity- No Pain, No Gain

Many of us grew up with a version of Christianity that taught that without Jesus’ suffering, we would never be saved from the judgment of God. We were told, “It should have been us.” It’s an oppressive thought isn’t it? This view of Jesus’ death led to a worldview that said, “Someone has to pay” and “No pain no gain.” It’s the basis of the Protestant work ethic. Suffer for Jesus. The more pain you experience in this world, the more reward you will get in the next world.

See if this scenario resonates for some of you. I’m at my chiropractor with a bad back. I’ve been adjusted and pressure points have been applied. I stand up after the session and feel great. I begin to stretch and twist. I turn one way and then the other. I lean forward and lean back. The chiropractor says to me, “What are you doing?” I say, “I’m looking for the pain.”

Looking for the pain? I twist myself into a pretzel shape in search of a pain that has just been removed. Do I need pain to feel truly alive? Do I need to suffer to purge myself of guilt for not being perfect?

We are told that only one who is perfect can pay the price. The cross becomes a symbol of innocent suffering to satisfy the impossible demands of a judging sky God. If I’m not suffering enough, I will go out and search for pain to remind myself that I am guilty and rotten to the core. It’s a philosophy that says, “I limp therefore I am.”

There’s another way, and in my opinion it’s a more empowering way to live. Let this thought sink deep into your psyche because you have to combat many years of “no pain no gain” thinking. Every beautiful thing in the world, every meaningful moment, every act of kindness, every gratitude, every expression of love- you helped to create all of it. You are a part of God, a co-creator of life. You search for pain and drama because you’ve forgotten who you are, and it’s no wonder when for so long you have been told that you are separate from God.

You don’t have to suffer to appease God. You don’t need to be forgiven. You just need to remember who you are. You don’t have to suffer to find the embrace of the God of your understanding. This God is as close as your next breath, as you breathe in joy and breathe out peace. This was always the case. You just forget from time to time. This is not to say that suffering and pain don’t serve a purpose in your life. They most certainly do. It’s just that suffering and pain are not preconditions of grace. You are alive. Your life is an original blessing. You are accepted as you are.

Masking Pain

While the traditional religious response encourages an unhealthy attachment to pain, our modern culture has created the very opposite problem. While our religious traditions continue to teach the necessity of pain, modern science is busy masking pain. Whether it’s a head ache, a heart ache or a foot ache, we have created a way to mask pain so that we can live in denial. When it comes to pain, we have a new mantra, “If you can afford it, you can deny it.”

There a new drug in development that will attempt to eradicate all pain. It is using research gained from people who “suffer” the rare condition of being unable to feel pain. I say suffer because what seems like a blessing is in reality a life threatening condition. One child with this condition died on his birthday when he jumped off the roof of his house showing off to his friends. Another child had a broken jaw and no one knew until she developed a fever from the infection. So I’m curious to know where a wonder pill that eradicates pain would leave us without the essential warning signs of pain.

This is a trivial example, but this past Monday my foot was really sore. I hadn’t taken any pain medication or anti inflammatories at this point. I was suffering silently for Jesus- well fairly silently (just ask my family). I thought I could keep working as long as I had my foot elevated. The pain kept getting worse until I could no longer ignore it. I surrendered to pain’s wisdom, stopped work and completely rested.

Pain is part of your body’s sacred wisdom. Listen to her. She could be telling you to take it easy, or slow down or maybe to seek professional help. These are some of pain’s immediate messages. Pain also offers important spiritual lessons about perspective. Pain teaches you about change and impermanence and reminds you not to take your health for granted. Pain reminds you that at certain points in life you simply have to surrender to the great unknown, let go and let yourself heal.

Pain is important. It’s not necessary to suffer to prove anything, but pain is an important teacher. So a healthy response to pain is somewhere in between religion’s overemphasis on pain and modern society’s denial of pain. Pain is not a problem to be solved as much as it’s an experience to be explored.

Blues Clues

Lets turn to the blues for some more clues. The lesson from blues music is that it’s better to express it than suppress it. If you’re feeling it, turn it into a song or a poem or a nameless groan. Did you know that blues music is biblical? There are loads of examples in the Hebrew Psalms of people singing the blues. Then there is the classic blues lines of all time from Jesus on the cross – “My God my God why have you forsaken me?”

The point of expressing misery is not to wallow in self pity but to liberate the pain. There’s something therapeutic about telling it how it is, letting it all out. There’s an amazing release from expressing emotions. It’s as if you are creating a tolerable distance between yourself and the pain. You hold it apart from yourself, as if to say “this pain is not going to own me. I am not a victim of pain. I can manage pain and learn from it and it will NOT break me.” Once you have separated the pain from yourself, even for a time, you can take a larger perspective and remind yourself that you have survived times like this before and you will do it again. Claim your own strength.

When you sing the blues, you gain the perspective that pain is a relative experience. You remind yourself that you can have other experiences and emotions alongside pain. Pain doesn’t control you. There is a big difference between pain and suffering. When you suffer you are always in pain. When you are in pain, you aren’t necessarily suffering. You can manage pain without adding to the drama by catastrophizing or comparing your fortunes. So much suffering comes from wishing reality were different. Singing the blues helps you to accept what is, learn from it, and liberate it.

Pain and Growth

There is a classic old Jewish story called the Sorrow Tree. The world became filled with complaints and moaning. People began comparing their misery and sadness. They became convinced that their pain was undeserved and more traumatic than anyone else’s pain. Each person was trying to sing the blues louder than everyone else. It was desperate and woeful. So God created a Sorrow Tree. People were invited to come to the Sorrow Tree and exchange their woes. Each person packed up their troubles in an old kit bag and hung them on a branch of the Sorrow Tree. They then took someone else’s bag of troubles- one that looked lighter and more manageable. At first this seemed like a great idea. But over time each person ended up going back to their own troubles. Better the sorrow you know. It turned out to be almost impossible to deal with someone else’s pain. Their pain was for them, and yours is for you.

Think of your life as a tree. Your tree is made up of all your unique life experience, including the joys and sorrows. You can’t live anyone else life, and no one can lives yours. If you cut off the pain and pretend it’s not part of the tree, you might damage the whole tree. Your life is one piece. It has its seasons, leaves rise and fall. Honor it all and wear it all loosely for it is all changing all the time. In every one of your sadness’s and pains lies the seed of new possibility.

If you are living with chronic pain, as hard it is, express it and let it be one part (but not all) of the fabric of your life. It gives you your determination in so many other areas of life. It unlocks incredible creativity and strength. If you living with the pain of loss, as heart wrenching as it is, it is now part of the fabric of who you are. You are stronger for the experience and you have new compassion for suffering. Your pain is preparing you for some greater work in the world.

Beyond comparisons and perceived injustice, your life has its own beautiful seasons. Your experience has made you who you are, and your pain has given you a strength and compassion that you didn’t know you had. You cannot be broken.

So what are the blues clues in your life? What is pain preparing you for in the world?

I honor your unique and specific journey. I honor your sadness and your joys. I respect the growth, the courage, and the strength that is growing in you in every moment and through every experience.

From the place in me that can overcome any obstacle, from a limp to a loss, I honor the place in you which is stronger than pain, and greater than any sadness. Namaste.

Resources
Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow by Elizabeth Lesser

The Air in There

How much is air worth? I ran a church in downtown Auckland, New Zealand, that discovered an answer to this question. Local law allowed one building to sell its air space to another building that wanted to grow upwards. (Transferable Development Rights) This was curious enough, but it got even curiouser when we started to value the air. Air became low hanging fruit for over eager city terrace owners and churches with heritage restrictions. The more people who tried to sell their air, the less it was worth. As soon as air became a commodity, its value decreased. By the time we sold some of our last parcels of air, it was worth virtually nothing.

The truth is that air is priceless. How do you put a price on the source of life? The average person inhales 3,000 gallons of air each day. The air you breathe is a major factor in your wellbeing. The second leading cause of death for children under the age of four is air pollution. According to recent studies, breathing issues such as asthma increase the risk of suicide and the suicide rate in the general population increases when air pollution worsens.

On the positive side, air and breath have healing qualities. Studies of people suffering from painful conditions such as Fibromyalgia show that slow breathing reduces pain as well as lessening anxiety and nervous tension. Slow and deep breathing increases the capacity to feel emotions other than pain; it reduces the fight/flight response, and allows us to move from powerlessness to proactive choices.

Air is life force and breathing is a deeply spiritual act. Your breath is your source of life, and it also connects you to the Source of all life. Most ancient cultures use the same word for air, breath, life and spirit. The creation story in Genesis says that the world was created with words, and the essence of words is breath. Genesis says that "God took the dust of the earth and formed the human body, and breathed into human nostrils the Breath of Life, and humans became living souls."

The Hebrew word for air is “ruach.” It a breathy word, and sounds like what it is. The word ruach means breath, as in what we inhale and exhale, but it is also the atmosphere. It's the source or breath of life, and it's the quality of life. The ancient Greek word for spirit or breath is “pneuma”, as in pneumatic, and it expresses spirit, the breath of God. The German word “Atman” describes the life giving Source within breath. The energy of life within breath is also called chi or prana.

People who have spent time in meditation and other breathing exercises (from all traditions and no particular tradition) report that breathing is both ordinary and also miraculous. As the Sufi Master Hazrat Inayat Kahn writes: "The healing power of Christ, the miraculous power of Moses, the charm of Krishna, and the inspiration of the Buddha--all these were attained by breath."

With your breath, you connect to an energy that is infinite and inspirational. When you pay attention and notice that breath continues without your help, you learn to surrender to the grace of life. When you add mindfulness to this miracle, you participate in your own healing with the Source of life. I began a daily breathing practice a year ago, and now it doesn’t feel like my day has even begun without some breathing routines. The regular practice of conscious breathing reduces stress, and lowers blood pressure and cholesterol levels. It aides in the healing of emotional blocks, and any number of unconscious fears and anxieties. When every one of your body’s 75 trillion cells breathes slowly and harmoniously, you live with incredible wellbeing.

The original life force that sustained your body in the womb is still available to you. It wants to restore your body right now. All you need to do is give it permission to heal and begin breathing consciously.

Breath is a unifying force, both within and around you. The breath that is in you today was in another yesterday. You are breathing the same atoms and molecules that your ancestors breathed many centuries ago. Feel the flow of inspiration. Breath reminds you that you don’t have to seek peace, you just have to surrender to it. Your life has the ease and freedom of breath itself. Your breath is the gateway to your essence as a spiritual being who co-creates reality.

Breathe in and say, “The power of life is within me.” Breathe out and say, “The grace of life surrounds me.”

Repeat often, “I am filled with healing power.”

Soulseeds has created an amazing breathing resource. Our Mindful Breathing e-Packet is a series of inspirational affirmations that include breathing practices put together by a yoga instructor. They are practical and can be used by people with no experience and people with great experience. Check it out. Go down to E-Packets and select Mindful Breathing from the drop down menu.

Parenting and Letting Go

I find myself reflective as I prepare to farewell my 15 year old son. He leaves today for a two week adventure to Vietnam to visit his uncle and work in a disabled orphanage. I’m a lot more nervous than he is apparently. How do you say goodbye to your own flesh and blood and send them to the other side of the planet? Maybe this is practice for sending him off to college or to war or to something even larger and more frightening.

My mind wanders through sixteen years of intimate connection. No wonder it’s hard to let go.

I took my minor role in his birth very seriously. Not sure exactly what I could do to help the situation, I whispered calm thoughts about breathing until Meg reached out and pulled me close in a headlock. She squeezed tight and didn’t let go for 12 hours. I could neither breathe, nor speak. That seemed better for both of us. Two weeks later in the chiropractor’s office, I reflected on the experience. Expectant fathers, it is my best advice that you should never make any reference to pain or light headedness while in the delivery room. Suck it up, and keep quiet. Your role is that of a sponge or a cushion or punching bag as the case my be. Maybe I will play a similar role at the airport today.

I had the honor of cutting the cord. Now that was a heart stopping thing to do. It was hard to believe the nurse who said that it wouldn’t hurt either mother or child. I mean it was part of both of them. How could it not hurt? It made me a little squeamish. I asked if we could just leave them attached. It seemed safer, and would certainly make trips to Vietnam much less likely. From the moment that cord was cut, I began learning the delicate balance between holding on and letting go.

Words can’t accurately describe the elation of partnering the creation of new life. It gave me some small insight into some of the mysteries of life including a profound appreciation for the Source of Life, by any name. It also began preparing me for today among many other days as a giant stride towards independence for father and son.

Now I reflect on the single cell I contributed to the miracle of new life, a cell so small that it can’t be seen with the naked eye, and the nucleus in the center of the cell that contained the DNA even smaller. And yet when unraveled the DNA of this single cell, unwound and uncoiled, would stretch to over six feet long. Now as I look eye to six foot high eye with my son, I am looking eye to eye with the miracle of life. In my case, I’m looking at a six foot bundle of creative potential with the world at his feet. Or else I lower my gaze to my second, and I see a five foot bundle of gentle compassion who holds the world in his heart. Then I lower my gaze still further to my four foot miracle of sweetness with my heart wrapped around her finger.

If I took all the DNA from all the 50 trillion cells in my son’s body, and unraveled and uncoiled it, it would stretch to the moon and back multiple times. It’s no accident that this is also the amount that I love him. To the moon and back…. multiple times and well beyond Vietnam.

I am connected to my son at a cellular level and that puts everything in perspective. I can let go for two weeks knowing that neither distance nor time can change the bond we have. I am related at the most intimate level, and letting go will always be relative. We are connected no matter what.

In the words of Ecclesiastes, ‘A three-fold cord is not easily broken.” A single cord is easily broken. A double cord is strong. A threefold cord is hard to break. If you look closely at an image of DNA, it looks like twisted, looping cords. It’s a long intertwined cord that connects you to life, to your children, to your ancestors, at a cellular level. How incredible! I am connected to my son to the smallest detail and out to the largest perspective.

As I practice letting go of my son, I learn something profound about the nature of life. It’s a constant push and pull with attachment. It’s also true of my spirituality. Long ago I cut the cord that tied me to any religious beliefs that keep my dependent on an angry, judging God. I released myself from needing to conform to the expectations of any creed or church and opted instead for the liberated journey of authenticity. I craft my own spiritual path and cut the ties to any beliefs that weaken or suppress me. I am a spiritual being immersed in a human adventure and so is my son. I have nothing to prove and nothing to fear and nor does he.

As spirit fills my life from the inside out, I learn more and more every day about letting go. You know what I’m talking about. Your five year old son wants to use the restroom by himself for the first time. You stand at the door talking to him the whole time. Your thirteen year old daughter wants to go on her first date alone with a boy. She’s getting embarrassed about being seen in public with her parents. You are torn between her desire for independence and your understanding of sixteen year old boys. So you send her off with a cell phone GPS tracker and wait by the front door in a rocking chair. Your eighteen year old son wants to join the military. Your twenty year old daughter wants to get married. Your adult children want to move across the other side of the world, taking your grandchildren with them. Now you see why you need to practice this whole letting go business. You have to prepare yourself for life’s big surrenders.

It’s hard, but the alternative is much harder. The freedom of letting go is that you feel lighter, you move more easily, you have less baggage and you discover that most of what you let go comes back to you in some other form anyway if you are open. I will let go of my son today and he will come back in two weeks a different person. He continues his journey towards independence, and so do I. Now wish me luck as I head to the aiport.

Ps, Please stop by Soulseeds where I do most of my blogging and post many affirmations, parenting and inner peace resources.

The Power of Gratitude for Wellness

Two men shared a hospital room, both very sick. One man was near the window and the other man had to stay flat on his back in his bed away from the window. They struck up a friendship and talked for hours on end. The man near the window would describe the scene out of the window in great detail–the colors, the children playing, couples walking by, the city skyline. One day he even described a passing parade. The man away from the window loved the descriptions, and cherished every word he heard from his friend.

After several days of this conversation the man by the window passed peacefully in his sleep. The other man asked to be moved to the window bed, excited to see all the amazing sights that he had heard described. He slowly propped himself up on his elbow to look out the window. He was surprised to see that he faced a blank wall. He called the nurse in and told her what had happened. She said, “Well you should know that this man was blind. He couldn’t even see the wall. Perhaps he was just trying to lift your spirits.”

The man by the window had an incredible perspective, a vision well beyond eye sight. His window on the world was optimism and gratitude. In his mind he saw only beauty and he shared it with his friend. Gratitude is the gift of perspective. It doesn’t depend on circumstances or good fortune. It is the gift of being able to choose where you place your focus. The man by the hospital window is a wonderful reminder that wellness has less to do with your physical condition than it does with your perspective. Gratitude gave him wellness to the end of his life and meant that he left the world with an open mind, a big heart and a contented spirit.

What’s your window onto the world? Your mission should you choose to accept it is to see the world through the window of gratitude. If you truly recognized the miracle of being alive, you would walk around with your jaw constantly dropped, your hands on your head and crying out, “OH MY GOODNESS.” Life is amazing and you have the privilege of participating.

You are surrounded by incredible beauty and filled with amazing strength. Soak in the power of gratitude. Choose something right now to be grateful for. Choose anything. Choose one thing. Give thanks for being alive. Thank your heart for beating without having to even think about it. Show gratitude to your perspective that is able to see the miracles that surround you. And if you are a pessimist, give thanks for your ability to choose to be worried and give thanks for your active imagination. Give thanks for any one thing. Then give thanks for your ability to be thankful. One becomes two, the list grows quickly and spreads and very soon you have created a whole chain reaction of gratitude.

Gratitude – What goes Around Comes Around

What happens if you choose not to accept the gratitude mission? I heard a Hindu spiritual teacher asked the question, “What is the worst karma a person can experience on earth? What is the greatest difficulty, the harshest circumstances?”

You would think he might have said poverty or illness or depression. He said, “The worst karma is to be ungrateful. If you suffer from ingratitude then it won’t matter what goodness and miracles exist in your life, you won’t be capable of receiving them. In contrast, if you are grateful then even in the most challenging of circumstances, you will be able to recognize the many gifts that you are receiving all the time.”

Either way, it’s a choice, and either way it comes back to you. I’m not talking about karma as a cycle of reward and punishment. I’m talking about the reality that if you fill your mind gratitude you will dwell in a world of appreciation, and if you fill your mind with problems and negativity, you shouldn’t be surprised to live in a problematic and negative world. The world is as you see it. There is no punishment for choosing not to be grateful. The only consequence is tainting your own experience of life.

We have incredible ability to find problems and anxiety, don’t we? Sometimes the miracles are staring us in the face and we still find a negative angle. A grandmother is walking with her 5-year-old grandson on the beach, when suddenly a wave comes and drags the boy out to sea. The grandmother looks up to the sky, shakes her fist and says, “God, this is unacceptable, unbearable. You cannot take an innocent child.” And just as those words come out of her mouth, another wave comes and brings the child smiling back at her feet. She picks up the child in her arms, looks up to the sky and says, “My grandson had a hat! Where is his hat?”

Life is incredible miracle and we find the one thing that isn’t perfect. We complain about the inconvenience of losing internet for a few minutes because we’ve forgotten the privilege of being alive at a time in history when we can send a message to someone across the world instantaneously by pressing a button. We complain about credit card interest rates because we’ve forgotten that only thirty years ago when you ran out of money you stopped buying things.

Catch yourself when you start complaining. When you hear yourself moaning about the weather or how much work you have or how inconvenient this is or how boring that is, remind yourself that you get to partake in the miracle and gift of being alive and everything is amazing. Watch your whole outlook on life change, and your whole experience of life improve.

Gratitude improves your life because it breeds other positive virtues and joys. Gratitude’s children include optimism, generosity and kindness. Her cousins include abundance, joy and contentment. Gratitude was always there, just waiting for your attention. Once you find her, you unlock all sorts of other delights.

Gratitude – It’s Good for your Health

Maybe best of all, gratitude is good for your health. In particular it’s good for your immune system. The immune system prevents disease from entering your body and kills disease if it enters your body. Immunity is your body’s protection, and studies now show that gratitude strengthens your immune system.

This seems to work in both large and small ways. In other words if you have an overall optimism about life its good for your health. But if your overall orientation is more pessimistic, your immune system is strengthened by smaller episodes of optimism. In one particular study, law students were tested at periodic intervals during the year. As the students went through classes, exams and internship interviews, their optimism levels rose and fell. So did the strength of their immunity. When optimism went up, so did the immune response. When optimism dropped, the immune system weakened.

Does this mean that you should deny your anxieties and health issues? No. Denial is both a river in Egypt and also a sure way to suppress problems. This is very bad for your health. There is a big difference between denying a problem and refusing to allow your health issue to control your life. There is also a big difference between passively waiting for a miracle and actively doing what you can about your health and then letting go of the outcomes.

Gratitude and Circumstances

I will never forget a funny moment when I was helping in a soup kitchen. It was a breakfast for homeless people and took place in the church hall. Hundreds of local people gathered around sunday school tables clutching their plastic spoons and plates waiting for a serving of baked beans. People from the church served the breakfast. One of the church people always said grace before the meal. On this day I was standing next to a particularly scruffy homeless man. He muttered under his breath while grace was being said. The grace went something like this, “Dear God, you are so good and loving. We thank you for the bounteous and good gifts that you have bestowed upon us.” The homeless guy next to me said under his breath but loud enough for all to hear, “Yeah, real good.” I actually laughed out loud which didn’t go down well.

Was the homeless man being ungrateful, or was the church man in denial? Maybe a little of both.

Being grateful is not about denying reality. Gratitude doesn’t even measure blessings or compare fortunes with others. Gratitude takes a larger perspective than circumstances which are always changing anyway. Gratitude is a response to life itself. It begins as a recognition that life is grace, which means that it has no concept of reward or punishment. Things don’t happen because you deserve them nor because you are entitled to them. Gratitude is about your relationship with life.

When you live in grace you don’t expect everything to turn out well for you. You simply surrender to someone, something or some process larger than yourself that has its own direction and flow. There is more to life than your current circumstances and understanding. You stay open and watchful for beauty and meaning.

Gratitude is a quality that goes beyond optimism and pessimism. A pessimist says the glass is half empty. An optimist says the glass is half full. The grateful person says the glass is twice as large as it needs to be. There’s always more.

So what do you do with your struggles and challenges? Give thanks for growth and perspective. You have found inner strength to persevere. You have learnt to hold lightly to outcomes and to cherish every moment you are alive. Elie Weisel, a survivor of the Holocaust said that “no one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.”

You have proven that circumstances can shake you but not alter your ability to believe in yourself and to remain open. Gratitude is not about saying that tragedy is good, not is it even in a hurry to find the hidden meaning in suffering. Gratitude is the ability to acknowledge the way you feel, to name it for what it is and know that all things change. You surrender and accept that life is more miraculous than your current understanding. This surrender brings peace, and you give thanks for the peace.

Gratitude has found the right balance between holding on and letting go. You make the most of what comes into your life and the least of what goes out of your life. All is as it needs to be for now. You have the perspective to be delayed at an airport and appreciate the extra reading time. You have the presence of mind to enjoy the internet outage as it gives you some respite from screen time.

Freeze Frame Gratitude

The story is told about the verse in the Hebrew text the Talmud about giving thanks as much for the bad days as the good. Some students asked their Rabbi how this is possible. The Rabbi said, “Go to Anapol. There you will find a Rabbi who will give you the answer.” The students found themselves in the poorest street of the city. There, crowded between two small houses was a tiny shack. Inside they found the Rabbi sitting at a bare table.

“Welcome, strangers!” he said. “Please pardon me for not getting up; I have hurt my leg. Would you like food? I have some bread. And there is water!”

“No. We have come only to ask you a question. Our Rabbi told us you might help us understand: Why do our sages tell us to thank God as much for the bad days as for the good?”

He laughed. “Me? I have no idea why the Rabbi sent you to me.” He shook his head in puzzlement. “You see, I have never had a bad day. Every day of my life has been filled with miracles.”

It’s all about perspective. Every day of your life is filled with miracles. Shift your perspective and enjoy the gift of gratitude.Think of a moment of incredible peace and contentment. Freeze frame the picture in your mind. Let it come back to you at difficult times as a reminder of what is possible.

Everyday look for moments you can freeze frame. Ask yourself these questions-

What has surprised me?

What has touched me?

What has inspired me?

Dwell in the gratitude that grows out of an open mind, a large heart and a contented spirit, and you will know incredible wellness. Namaste.

For Further Reflection

What are you feeling particularly grateful for at the moment?
What has surprised you today?
What has touched you today?
What has inspired you today?

Books and Resources
Instructions on Gratitude by David Steindl-Rast

The summary of Segerstrom and Sephton’s 2010 research on optimism and immune system in law students: http://tinyurl.com/29qbncn

Making Peace with What is

Prayer isn’t what it used to be, but I still pray in my own way.

I have decided that prayer is not about getting what I want. Half the time, I don’t know what I really want. I’m not even sure that prayer is about getting what I seek. Too often, I’m like a hamster on a wheel chasing my tail; and then wondering why I’m coughing up fur balls. I’m sure that prayer is not about getting what I deserve. Desert may come at the end of a meal, but justice is the illusion of an end point in a circle. Nothing is final. So I don’t want to be distracted by my insatiable desire for answers and outcomes.

Prayer is something other than a list of needs, wants or pleas. Prayer is a process of making peace with what is and preparing myself to be the change I wish to see in my life and the world. Prayer is about attracting “like” to “like”. The more I grow to understand myself, the more I understand what I am attracting into my life. It becomes clear what is serving me, and filling my life with joy. I seek more of that by BEING more of that, and it finds me because it IS me. What I want, what I need, and who I am, become one.

Joan Borysenko puts it like this -

“The connection between what we hope for and our own self is a field of infinite power and potential that can open doors that seemed to be closed, or were invisible to start with. What we seek also seeks us.”

With this view of prayer, walls turn into doors, hurdles turn into spring boards and crises turn into opportunities. Roses still have thorns. Joints still age and creak. Jobs are still lost. Relationships still end in tears. Pain is deep. The challenges don’t rock your inner peace. You deal with the challenge, and keep moving towards the light.

I pray for strength and receive challenges that make me strong.
I pray for wisdom and receive experience that makes me wise.

I pray for freedom and receive perspective that makes me free.
I pray for outcomes and receive creativity that turns endings into new beginnings.
I pray for healing and receive peace to deal with pain.


Civil rights lead, Howard Thurman, described prayer as an inward journey across an interior sea to an island. In the center of the island stands a temple and inside the temple burns a flame. That’s where prayers go.

That makes sense to me. If my prayers go anywhere they go straight back into the flame of my own divine abundance. The answers are all there. Nothing was lacking to begin with. All prayers lead to peace. The tormented and often egoic dance with prayer has its purpose. It’s like a vision board. I put it all out there in whatever form I can manage and see what emerges.

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote about this in Eat Pray Love-
"Prayer is a relationship; half the job is mine. If I want transformation, but can't even be bothered to articulate what, exactly, I'm aiming for, how will it ever occur? Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well- considered intention. If you don't have this, all your pleas and desires are boneless, floppy, inert; they swirl at your feet in a cold fog and never lift."

I’m falling to my knees as I type. How liberating to surrender to the infinite power that opens doors that I hadn’t even seen. What I seek finds me. Here it is now swirling at my feet. From my knees, it’s all too clear to see.

Ps- Make sure you check out the awesome inner peace resources at Soulseeds
An e-retreat to increase your inner peace and unlock your spiritual potential,
Inner peace affirmations, choose E-Packet, drop down to Inner peace

The Healing Power of Listening

I grew up an Anglican, aka Episcopalian in the United States, where the service has a regular pattern and ritual. The style of service is sometimes referred to as “bells and smells” which is a lighthearted way of describing the multi-sensory experience. Certain sounds are cues to do certain things. For example, if you hear the organ you stand, if you hear a bell ring you immediately do a sign of the cross on your chest and if you hear the preacher say “in conclusion” you immediately wake up. It is a very moving and spiritual experience for many people. To some it can also feel a little like Pavlov’s dog, sacred salivating, a conditioned response without much mindfulness.

One of the common phrases you hear in an Anglican church is when the minister says, “Peace be with you.” And the people respond, “And also with you.” So there was an old priest who really struggled with all the new technology. He was set up with a lapel microphone for the first time during a service. He was fumbling around with it, tapping it and inadvertently turning it off and on. As he got more and more frustrated, he called out “there’s something wrong with this microphone.” All the people replied on cue, “And also with you.”

I’m speaking about listening today, listening to yourself, listening to others, and listening to the earth. When you listen deeply you get beyond the conditioned responses to hear what is truly being said. This sort of listening has healing power.

Conversations with God

Do you have conversations with God? Lily Tomlin said, “Why is it that if you talk to God, you are praying but if God talks to you, you are insane?” Maybe you miss the simplicity of prayer the way it used to be. Maybe you crave to be understood and guided by something greater than yourself. We all long to be listened to, whether it’s a friend, a doctor or a divinity. Communicating with the God or Higher Power of your understanding is a very sane thing to do. It just might take some different forms than you imagine.

Let me suggest a way to think about listening that will connect you to the spiritual, no matter whether you have an understanding of God or not. Let’s call it spiritual listening.

What is spiritual listening? Spiritual listening is when you get beyond the surface noise to a deeper connection with yourself, with others and with life itself. It’s a deep attunement to the energy around you. Have you ever noticed that listen is an anagram of silent? They share common letters and they share a common theme. When you are still and silent, you hear things that you hadn’t noticed. Wendell Berry described it as dancing “to a music so subtle and vast that no one hears it except in fragments.” So subtle and vast! Spiritual listening is hearing the subtle in the vast and the vast in the subtle.

Everything in the universe has its own sound, even if we can’t hear it. Our human hearing puts us in the middle. The sound coming from the planets is too low for us to hear. It is cosmic bass, The sound of the atom is to high for us to hear. It is cosmic treble. Sound wise we are in between the micro world of the universe as a whole, and the macro world of the atom, the vast and the subtle.

It’s like putting your ear to a shell and hearing the Ocean. Human consciousness has the imagination to hear all the sounds of life echoed in all other sounds, as if to remind you that nothing is really separate. You might hear the vastness of the ocean in a small shell, or else you might feel the subtlety of an emotion like wonder in a full orchestral symphony.

Where does spiritual listening arise? It seems to include but go well beyond the ears. Spiritual listening begins with awareness of reality exactly as it is before the noise crowds it out. It’s beyond the ears and beyond the five senses. Maybe it’s the sixth sense, or the third ear if there is such a thing. It’s the witness within you that notices you hearing and connects you to intuitive wisdom.

Listening to Yourself

One of the things that gets in the way of listening to your own body is routine. We so often live our lives like Pavlov’s dog. You hear the alarm clock and wake up, hear the start of the 7am news and eat breakfast, hear the musical fountain and go to bed. Your body never gets a chance to tell you when it’s hungry or tired. You’ve drowned out its wise alarms with routine. It’s no wonder that when it comes to serious conditions or problems in the body, you miss the body’s cues. Your body is used to being ignored. By the time you go to the doctor, treatment is more difficult than it had to be.

It’s an interesting experiment to spend a day without knowing the time. Just eat when you are hungry, stop eating when you are full and sleep when you are tired. Learn to hear the signals from your body. When you have a twitch in your eye, you probably need some extra sleep. When you have heart palpitations, you probably need a vacation. When you’ve lost all feeling on one side, you probably need to get to the Emergency Room. Learn to listen to your body. It is wise beyond its years. If you feel sore, your body may be telling you to take a day off working out. If you feel heavy and slow, your body may be telling you to eat lots of raw and healthy foods. Routine often sets you at odds with your body. Have a mindful routine, but don’t be trapped in your routine like Pavlov’s dog. Listen beyond the routine to what your body is really telling you.

Did you know that you listen at a rate of 125-250 words per minute, but think at a rate of 1000-3000 words per minute? This means that for each word you listen to, you are thinking ten other words. This is a problem. Your thoughts are often getting in the way of your listening. You hear through a grid of self criticism and judgment. You hear a doctor say, “There’s something wrong with your kidney” and you think to yourself, “and also with me.” From a spiritual perspective you are so much more than the parts of your body. Wellness is not the absence of disease and pain, but the presence of all that makes like whole and fulfilling. The one who witnesses you hearing sounds and taking in messages reminds you of your unchanging divine wholeness that goes beyond any disease or limitation.

Listening to Others

Most of us, even the shiest and most introverted people, long to be listened to. It has healing power. When you open your heart to another person, drop all judgments and assumptions, give up trying to solve or fix problems and just be there, you become a healing presence.

Too often our words and solutions are so laden with our own assumptions and judgments that we aren’t listening at all. Someone’s words trigger a memory of our own or an idea of our own. We head off on our own tangent rather than following the lead of the person we’re with. You would think that silent listening would be the easiest thing in the world, but apparently not.

I heard a beautiful story about a conference the Dalai Lama was speaking at. The man hosting the event was sitting to the right of the Dalai Lama. His 20 year old daughter asked the question, “Why do we get the angriest with the people we love the most?” His Holiness was so present to the situation that he didn’t answer the question. He simply invited the woman to come to the front. He took her by the hand, and then he took the hand of the man, her father, on his right. He stood in silence for several minutes holding both of their hands. They described a feeling of warmth running through their bodies. It turned out that the man had a problem with anger, with regular outbursts of irrational rage. He was so transformed by this experience that he was able to get his anger under control from this time forward.

When someone is speaking to you, give your undivided attention. Listen with all of you: listen with all your body and listen with your heart. Pay attention so completely that everything else disappears. Don’t just listen to the worlds. Listen to their body, to the sound of their voice, to the silence between the words. When you are completely present, you hear more than words. You hear feelings that can’t even be put in words. As you listen deeply you become a healer for yourself and others.

Listening to the Earth

As well as listening to yourself and to others, learn to listen to the earth. For she too has wisdom and healing power. Mary Oliver wrote the poem “The Summer Day”.

Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Do you remember the incredible stories of animals surviving the Sri Lankan Tsunami in 2004? It seems that they heard the vibration waves under the earth that arrived hours before the Tsunami itself. They instinctively ran away from the vibrations which led them to higher ground. Animals certainly have some sense abilities that people don’t have, but our senses are more acute than we realize. We drown out these cues of danger with the distraction and noise of our inner drama, and fail to listen.

Listening to the earth would save humans from some of the danger of natural disasters. It would also help us to get the ecological problems in perspective. Back in June, 60 days into the Gulf Coast oil disaster, The Louisiana Senate passed a resolution for a day of prayer. They called on the people of Louisiana to pray for divine intervention because mere mortals had failed to solve the problem. They were basically listening for a miracle as a last resort. As comedian Jon Stewart said, “The oil is under a mile of sea and 2 1/2 miles of solid sediment earth. I think God has done enough to prevent these spills.”

The earth has spoken loud and clear. So much healing would come to the earth if we humans learned to listen to her chesty cough and give her a break. If we listened to her patterns rather than using her for our routines, the earth would rejuvenate.

Whether its your body, another person or the earth, the message is the same. Listen to what’s on the inside.

Let me end with a fun story that captures the power of listening. A small boy was obsessed with his new drums. He played all day and loved every moment of it. He would not be quiet, no matter what anyone else said or did. As you can imagine, this created quite a problem for neighbors. Various people were called in by neighbors and asked to do something about the child.

The first adviser told the boy that he would ruin his eardrums if he continued to make so much noise. This reasoning was unconvincing to the child. He didn’t care about the future. The second told him that drum beating was a sacred activity and should be carried out only on special occasions. He didn’t buy that either. The third offered the neighbors plugs for their ears; the fourth gave the boy a book; the fifth gave the neighbors books that described a method of controlling anger. Like all placebos, each of these remedies worked for a short while, but none worked for very long. Eventually, a wise person looked at the situation, handed the boy a hammer and chisel, and looked at the neighbors while he said, “I wonder what is INSIDE the drum?”

Listen to what is happening inside, and you will create a path of healing for yourself and others. Namaste.

For Further Reflection

Do you have conversations with the God of your understanding?
In what ways do you think that listening is spiritual?
What is your body telling you?
What is the earth telling all of us?

Books and Resources
Listening Below the Noise; A Meditation on the Practice of Silence by Anne D. LeClaire