Journal

Here are the daily questions, thoughts, provocations that get batted around in Lezlie-land:  sometimes wacky, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes shamefully self-indulgent.  Hey! It’s a journal!

Writing and Karma

Monday, 07 September 2009 21:56 Written by Lezlie Laws

    

     Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist Peter Carlson takes exception to the notion of the universe “conspiring” to bring lessons to individuals.  This is a notion that is firmly set in New Age thinking—that there is some force “out there” pulling together exactly the circumstances needed to push us to new understandings of ourselves.  People say, “Isn’t it amazing how the universe brings us exactly what we need in order to grow or change?”   I say this all the time as a way of recognizing some mysterious connections that seem to form out of my experience, and push me where I might otherwise not go.  The perfect book will come along to clarify an idea I’m grappling with.  A lover will challenge me to face the shadow side of my personality, the one I was barely aware of.  A comment from a friend will reveal an insensitivity I practice.  Lessons abound, it seems.  Eckhart Tolle says, “Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.” 

     But Carlson says it isn’t so much that there’s a “force” out there arranging things for my benefit as much as my own brain constructing meaning around the experiences that are before me.  Our consciousness selects events, dynamics, gestures that accumulate around issues we need to address. 

     Whether this mysterious serendipity works from the outside or the inside, I’m grateful for it, because it happens to me a lot.  And once again, I find myself beginning my response our reading this month with:  The universe has brought me the very essay I needed to read today.   My last writing about The Wise Heart was a long letter to two close friends, and I have not posted it out of respect for the privacy of the two recipients of the writing.  Suffice it to say that Chapter 16, “Suffering and Letting Go,” was a profound chapter to me, and came to me at precisely the moment I was attempting to organize the ideas of a long and intense conversation that the three of us had had. 

     This week, with Chapter 17, I once again find clarity in the words of Kornfield, and solace in the face of a slightly challenging turn of events with regard to a writing that “went awry.”  The substance of my writing, and the particular circumstance out of which it emerged, are not really pertinent here; rather, what interests me is the ways in which our words can miss the mark—no matter how carefully we try to compose them.  It’s an old tale, of course, and anyone who takes words seriously has grappled with the challenge of expressing exactly what you think you’re trying to say.  Notice all the qualifications there.  It’s so damn hard to write exactly what you think you’re thinking.  The avenues of error are multitudinous!

      On the other hand, we also know that writing is a generative act.  Most of the time, I figure out what I’m trying to say in the act of writing.  So given the slipperiness of my own understanding of my words, it’s no surprise that those words would engender a number of interpretations by other readers.  Books and books have been written on this topic, and I’m not really interested in exploring the communication triangle here.  But when you actually experience the surprise of having your words miss their mark, the communicative act becomes intensely personal.

     And then comes Kornfield and his chapter on karma, “The Compassion of the Heart:  Intention and Karma.”  Karma, he says, is the result of our intention.  And further, he says, “The most effective way to direct our karma is to clarify our motivation and set an intention.”  Intention and motivation are the roots of karma.

      I read this chapter just as I was feeling anxious that my words had caused someone else pain or discomfort.   This was not my intention at all!  So what is a writer to do?  Practice, Kornfield would say.  “We must practice wise speech, non-contentiousness, generosity, and compassion over and over again, in trivial and important situations alike.”  The Buddha said that practicing right speech means asking ourselves three questions:  1)  Is it true?   2)  Is it kind?  3) Is it necessary or useful?  If you can’t say yes to all three, it might be best to refrain from speaking lest you demonstrate a lack of compassion.

    When I speak to a friend, I want to speak with generosity and compassion.  Knowing how to speak the truth and simultaneously encompass those qualities is a challenge to all who take up the Buddhist path.  The practice that Kornfield offers at the end of this chapter is indeed a case of the universe conspiring to bring me exactly what I need at this very moment (sorry Peter Carlson!):  “. . .bring the highest possible intentions to each act.  Notice if they contain the elements of compassion for others and for yourself.  Notice if they are wise and courageous.”  Such a practice creates the karmic path upon which I  walk.

Shame

Thursday, 20 August 2009 19:21 Written by Lezlie Laws

In group in Tuesday, Marcie asked us to think about shame.  Specifically, when we were shamed in our childhood.  Initially, I thought this issue didn’t pertain to me.  I could think of no instance of shame in my youth.  (She wanted us to focus on early years.)  I have many memories of being confused, or sad, or uncertain, but I couldn’t think of an instance of shame.  The word has little charge for me.  So, I sat back to let the group discussion continue, thinking this was a topic for others to deal with.

     And for sure, shame arose in the group for several members.  Some had been sexually abused.  Others had been emotionally berated.  There was plenty of strong material in the room, and so therapy proceeded.

     It was later in the evening, I think, before I realized that there is an arena around which I hold shame.   And, ironically, I have been struggling with it all week long.  I had written in an earlier blog post that I was feeling very anxious this week as my colleagues return to work and the new semester begins at Rollins.  This time of year is normally very busy for me.  Getting classes underway.  Attending meetings.  Advising students.  So many things have to be done to get the term going.  But this term, I’m at home while all the busyness of the new semester is taking place a mile from my house.  I’m released from those duties, free to write and to think and to read.  It’s a glorious opportunity afforded full professors every seven years at Rollins. 

     But have I been feeling glorious?  Well, yes and no.  Yes in that I’m loving being alone.  I’m happy to have the time and the energy to work on my writing.  I’m delighted to be able to focus on my practice with rigor and regularity.  So yes, I am thrilled to be on this sabbatical.  So why, then, the anxiety?  Why, then, the doubt about what I’m doing?  Why then the lack of focus, the difficulty in concentrating, the sense that I’m not doing enough.  There it is:  that’s it exactly:  I’m not doing enough.  I’m not measuring up.  I’m not going to be able to produce. 

  So where does that come from, I ask myself, and I don’t have to think very long to figure it out.  When I was growing up, my father would come home from work on Saturday’s at noon for lunch.  All of us kids were to be at the table at noon to be with him.  And when we began eating, he would usually begin the table talk with, “So, Lezlie, what have you produced today?”  Nine chances out of ten, I’d just rolled out of bed minutes before his car hit the driveway.  I hadn’t produced anything.  Or, if I had been up, I’d been dawdling, or daydreaming, or reading.   I don’t know what I did with my time, but I’m sure it wasn’t productive in the eyes of a driven businessman.  My Dad’s mantra was “produce, produce, produce.”  His mission was to make money and that meant build buildings, run companies, keep things going, make things happen, motivate people, create work.  And though I never remember him teaching me “how” to do any of those things, I do remember him asking me many, many times if I had done anything worthwhile with my time since he last saw me.  The question “what have you accomplished?” was always in the air.    

     Although I never would have used the word shame, I do think that what I felt when he approached me was essentially shame.  I did not measure up.  And worse, I didn’t quite know how to measure up.  It was a very helpless feeling.  I desperately  wanted to please, I just didn’t quite know how.  (This might also be the cause of a long series of nightmares I used to have about having to do something or the world would come to an end—literally!  But I didn’t know what it was I was supposed to do!)

     So, fast forward to 2009.  Lezlie has spent a career being busy, focused, disciplined, hardworking, striving to accomplish things.  And now, by some miracle of time, circumstance and good fortune, she is free to relax, to move slowly, to dawdle, to plan, to think things through, to let life unfold in the most casual way.  Is it any wonder that I would feel anxious when put into this situation?  It’s that old Saturday  lunchtime shame rearing its head again.

Eliminating Clutter

Monday, 17 August 2009 19:19 Written by Lezlie Laws

They say eliminating clutter clears a path for new and better things to come.
Today I found the beginning of that path when I moved the printer
and discovered a pile of papers I’d thought important.  
A name of an accountant to do my tax return.  He’s in my bike club.  
A movie I want to rent.  Post cards to halt junk mail.  
A picture of a former lover.  I review of a book to order.
Did I order it?  I can’t remember.
I shoved the whole lot into the trash.

I check email and see yet another remnant from a recently ended love affair.  
He sends pictures of our last evening together.  We are ecstatic,  
flushed from an afternoon making love in a shabby-chic room of a beach hotel.
On our way to a late dinner, the clerk at the front desk offered to take our picture.  
She thought we were newlyweds.
I delete them all.

This desk where I write is a mess, even though I’ve spent thousands on furniture
and organizational items to clear space.  Clear a space for what?  
For poems of loss?  For emails of regret?  For explanations of what went wrong?  
For yearnings for lasting love?  Where is the space for that?
I wove them all into the braids of my hair.

Get the Message

Friday, 17 July 2009 13:38 Written by Lezlie Laws

Isn’t it amazing how the universe provides us with the very lessons we need at the very moment we need them?  Take the chapter  we’re studying this month in The Wise Heart—“Beyond Hatred to a Non-Contentious Heart.”  Recently, I have been the recipient of a great deal of hatred from another person.  It has been a shocking and disturbing experience, on many levels.  But thanks to my practice and to the instruction I’m getting on Buddhist psychology, I am able to watch this outpouring of anger from a friend with amazing equanimity.  The reason is what Kornfield teaches us in this chapter:  “Aversion and anger almost always arise as a direct reaction to a threatening or painful situation. . . . A fearful situation turns to anger when we can’t admit we are afraid.”

So I look at this person who is so deeply angry and frustrated with me and know that he is resisting experience, i.e., his own fear.  He is resorting to deeply conditioned reactive behavior that he adopted when he first encountered fear, anxiety, or insecurity.  And that behavior allows him to believe that the cause of his unhappiness is outside of himself. He is assuming that “I” am the reason things have gone wrong for him, when in fact “I” am the reason things have gone wrong (or right) only for myself.  The experience he has with me is only a drama designed to direct him to the drama within himself, a message to help him heal himself, his fear, his sense of abandonment, his loss of security.  I see him so angry, so fuming with disappointment, so willing to cast all goodness aside.  I see this, of course, because I, too, have fumed in the same way.  But no longer.  Kornfield quotes a famous Zen saying:  “If you understand—tings are just as they are.  If you do not understand—things are just as they are.”  Ha!

The practice for such delusional behavior will sound familiar by now.  When we become triggered by an event or a person, first we “recognize in our bodies the rigidity of aggression, the pain of rage, the contraction of fear.  We become intimate with our frustration, anger, and blame.”  Then, “we learn the difference between reaction and response.”  This, of course, is the tricky part—learning the difference between reaction and response.  But that’s what the practice is all about.  Mindfulness offers us that wee bit of space that occurs between the event and the reaction to the event.  It gives us a way to remember the spaciousness we have access to always.  It reconnects us to our authentic selves and to right action.  I wish in my last interaction with my angry friend I could have paused, taken a deep breath, pulled from my deep resource of wisdom.  I cannot change the way he reacts, but I can change the way I respond to pain of the world.
     The Buddha said, “If others speak against you, do not be angry, for that will prevent your own inner freedom.  Learn to bear their harsh words patiently until they cease.”  This is my practice.  Along with compassion for all of us who suffer because we’ve killed the messenger and failed to get the message.

Annual "State-of-the-Household" Letter

Monday, 29 June 2009 14:06 Written by Lezlie Laws

June 15, 2009

Hello to friends near and far!                               

Before another week of my precious sabbatical slips by, I sit down to write you and give you my annual “state-of-the-household” report.  As some of you know, on May 1 I began a fifteen-month sabbatical from my regular teaching duties at Rollins College.  For fifteen months (I’m still blown away by writing that) I am free to write, to think, to do research, to explore new ideas, to seek new horizons.  It is an exciting
--and daunting--experience.  How to begin?  How to organize my days to be productive?  How to avoid simply practicing retirement—and huge temptation.

Well, to begin with, I’m actually giving myself a little time to practice retirement.  One month to be exact.  No sense in rushing into things, right?  So for the month of May I got organized.  House projects, yard projects, medical exams, over-due entertaining, etc.  I took care of all those things I put off during the school year.  And then, I made four tidy little piles of materials that I’ll need to do the actual projects of the sabbatical.  One is a book of writing prompts and photography.  One is an article on using yoga and meditation in conjunction with the teaching of writing.  One is a grant I want to write for using reflective practices to reduce anxiety for first-year college students.  And the last project is reading and preparing a new course for the fall of 2010 on dogs in literature.  (That’s dogs as in canine friends, not dogs as in men I’ve dated.)  These materials are stacked neatly on my office floor, just waiting for me to plunge in.  I seem to be waiting too.   Maybe this afternoon. . . .

But here’s the thing.  Those are the “official” projects of the sabbatical.  Those are the things I described in my proposal when I applied for the full-year sabbatical, projects that had to be academically worthy enough to release me from other duties for a whole year.  And at the end of the year, my Dean will expect to see results. She’ll want to see a book, an article or workshop, a course design, and a successful grant.  Then, when I return to work, she’ll want me to put all that stuff into action in some way that benefits Rollins College.  Makes sense.  They’re investing a lot of money in me this year, and they’ll want a return.  I think I can deliver.
   Oh, and one other related project that I’ll be working on all year:  that’s my blog.  My new website is now live (www.lezlielaws.com), and you’ll find there six categories that I’ll be writing about as the year goes along. I will chronicle the ups and downs, challenges and joys of living a life undirected by any other person or institution.  Check in on me every once in a while and see how I’m doing.

But here’s the other thing.  None of these cool projects is the real purpose of this sabbatical.  They are all interesting projects, and I will plug away at them as the months go by.  They’ll be fun to work on, and I’ll be happy to see the finished
products.  And I really will have something new and interesting to add to my teaching experience when I return in August of 2010 (I just love writing that!).
      But in terms of my real intentions for this wonderful gift of fifteen months of white space, these academic goals come way down the list of priorities.   The real project this year is me.  As I approach completion of my sixty-second year on this planet, my interest in self-improvement and personal transformation is as strong as it was forty years ago.  And I see these next fourteen months as an opportunity to live at a different pace (more leisurely in some ways, more revved up in others), to examine where I’ve been, and to bring new intention to where I want to go.  
     If I let my Midwestern conservatism flare up too much, I can get real guilty about that last sentence.  I know very well that few people on the face of this earth have the luxury of living this kind of life, of exploring their potential to live with purpose and passion in ever more fulfilling ways.   It is, I hope, everyone’s birthright to live this way, but alas we still consider this way of life a luxury.  Unfortunately, we have not evolved as a species enough to know how to make that happen for each and every person on the planet.  For that very reason, I do not take this gift of time and space lightly.  I am one of the lucky ones, and I am tremulous with gratitude every day for the opportunities and the good fortune I enjoy.  So, having said that, and hopefully absolving myself of any taint of solipsism, here’s the real focus of this sabbatical.

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