Influences

I most like to write about what I’ve been reading.  I like to place my reading within the context of my experience.  So here I’ll write about the writers who are most influencing my thinking.  This section will also serve as a record of my reading habits.

July 2010 Reading

Friday, 30 July 2010 12:05 Written by Lezlie Laws

1.  No Impact Man: the adventures of a guilty liberal who attempts to save the planet and the discoveries he makes about himself and our way of life in the process, by Colin Beavan

This is a fun and informative book.   Beavan makes a serious attempt to live eco-effectively, and in the process does some really funny things. 

Lots of good advice, lots of good humor, and enough research to convince any reader that the man is on to something.

This book is required reading for our incoming first-year students at Rollins, and I’ll be interested to see how they respond to it.  In the first part of the book, he really goes after our rampant consuming habits, and I think his points will hit home with our students.  They did with me.  “Waste fewer resources.  Waste less life.” That’s it in a nutshell.  Or, as the Danish are wont to say:  “less stuff, more life.”  It motivated me to purge my closets and put a moratorium on shopping.  And more!

Over and over he states:  “This life is so short and it will soon be over.  What will we use it for?”  He pushes the big questions:  “What is this life? What is it for?  What is its meaning?  How should we live?”  In my opinion, those questions alone are a good enough and big enough curriculum for a liberal arts college.

2.  Shambhala Sun, September, 2010.

This issue focused on a series of articles on meditation.  A good overview for my Yoga and Writing students.

3.  No Boundary:  Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth, by Ken Wilber.

This is the last book of my sabbatical, and what a perfect one on which to end my year of reading, writing, and reflecting.  Here Wilber offers the clearest, most cogent explanation of all the transpersonal therapies and disciplines and how they contribute to the discovery of the transcendent self.

Wilber’s sets about helping us grasp the full spectrum of human consciousness and awaken to our real nature and true condition, which is Big Mind, radiant being, full enlightenment.  He says in his introduction, “in the deepest or highest part of you, you embrace the All.”  He offers here methodologies for exploring the territory of “your own true selfless Self.”

In the last chapter, he says that the surrendering of resistance is the “opening of unity consciousness, the actualization of no boundary awareness,” and he explains so beautifully and clearly the myriad ways we resist realizing and accepting who we really are.  This year, I have struggled mightily with resistances of various forms and levels.  I think I have dropped some of those resistances, and come to realize a bit more of what is true about me and about existence.  It has been a big year for me, and Ken Wilber has been a good guide, and will continue to be.  I’m sure I will spend the rest of my life reading him, and I can only pray that I will be able to absorb a small portion of what this genius has offered in the way of mapping the human experience.

 

If I were asked that perennial question of interviewers--“If you were stranded on a desert island, what book would you want with you?”--I would answer the collected works of Ken Wilber.  Which is kind of cheating, isn’t it, because it makes up lots of books.  So pressed to name JUST ONE (nit-picker), I would choose No Boundary.  Read it and be transformed.

June Reading 2010

Wednesday, 30 June 2010 14:52 Written by Lezlie Laws

1.  Soul of a Dog:  Reflections on the Spirits of the Animals of Bedlam Farm,

                by Jon Katz

2.  Emergence:  The Shift from Ego to Essence, by Barbara Marx Hubbard

3.  That Bird Has My Wings, by Jarvis Jay masters (a memoir)

4.  Path to Love, by Depak Chopra

5.  Kaleidoscope:  ideas + projects to spark your creativity, by Suzanne Simanaitis

6.  Yoga Journal, August 2010

May 2010 Reading

Tuesday, 01 June 2010 14:35 Written by Lezlie Laws

1.  Yoga Journal, June 2010.

2.  Right Use of Will:  Healing and Evolving the Emotional Body

“Do not let another person tell you how you should be relating.  Instead, let that person express his or her feelings toward you.”

“Experiences come to try to bring the understandings necessary for you to evolve.”

“Express and release everything you can.”

3.  Tricycle, The Buddhist Review, Summer 2010

4.  Shambhala Sun:  Buddhism, Culture, Meditation, Life, July 2010

5.  Yoga Sutra, Patanjali

6.  Resistance, by Barry Lopes (fiction)

 

“I saw it as a life of ten thousand desperate distractions, no matter how calm and tidy my surfaces appeared.”

“I quit trying to know and began trying to be.”

“ . . . a friend cracked open the shell in which I had been content to see but never actually meet the world.”

Mahamudra

Sunday, 30 May 2010 14:34 Written by Lezlie Laws

In the Summer 2010 issue of Tricycle magazine, Ken McLeod does a wonderful teaching on the mahamudra, or “great seal.”  The mahamudra is the “seal” or sign that marks all of experience.

The mahamudra points to a way of experiencing the world, our lives, ourselves, that is free of struggle.  Whatever you are after in life, or however you choose to define the meaning of life, in the end, satisfaction comes down to how you actually experience the experience being alive.  What does it feel like to be in you?

Are you anxious?  struggling?  tender? reactionary? peaceful? composed? determined?  What are you actually experiencing in the mind and in the body:  moment by moment?  This is getting down to the essential nature of your life.

McLeod says “each of us had the possibility of finding a way to experience our lives free of struggle.  And one of the common features of all these different ways is a sense of extraordinary openness and groundlessness.”

Buddhist thought is based on epistemology, that is, how do we experience things?  And if we can find a practice, a way of being, that allows us to be peaceful about our immediate experience, it seems we really can drop much of our suffering.

 

              Mahamudra (The Great Seal)

The most future I’m going to let myself have is tonight.

I put my head on this pillow and say my prayers.

I smell the clean sheets and stretch my long legs across the bed.

I turn to the window and see the moon suspended in the live oak.

It inches its way across bare branches, and light diminishes;

        my mind churns, yearnings rise.

I want to anticipate tomorrow’s meeting, fix next week’s dilemma,

luxuriate in a litany of hopes.

But I won't.  I have deleted the future.

It no longer serves.

For now, I rest in this groundless, empty dark.

The steamy pressure of this southern night is enough future for one tiny soul.

Lean in to the Difficulty

Friday, 07 May 2010 12:38 Written by Lezlie Laws

I thought sabbatical year was going to be a year of pleasure and ease, relaxation and spaciousness.  Those are words I have used a lot in the last few years.  They have seemingly been my goals—pleasure, ease, relaxation, and spaciousness.  These have seemed to be the antidote to a lifetime of hurry and striving and focus and effort.  So I thought this year would be a sort of trial run for retirement.  Try out a new lifestyle and see if it fits, if it works for me at this stage of life.  But as I’ve said elsewhere, things haven’t gone the way I planned.  That’s an understatement.  This year has been quite a struggle, on many levels.  With the body, the book, the heart, the self, the plans, goals, and intentions.  One event after another has thrown me into chaos, shifted the very ground under my feet, tested my endurance.  I would have to be an idiot not to notice the problems.  Though I’m trying not to see them as problems, but rather as wake-up calls.

    So recently I’ve been re-reading Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart, most specifically the chapter called “Three Methods for Working with Chaos.”    In it she explains that there are three traditional methods for relating “directly with difficult circumstances as a path of awakening and joy.”   The first one is to stop struggling with what occurs and face it head on for what it is.  Be with it.  Accept it.  Stop demonizing it.  The second method is using poison as medicine.  Instead of trying to get rid of a difficulty--be it pain, conflict, disappointment--just breathe it in.  Accept it as a part of you and have compassion for it.  Connect with it fully instead of running out of the room.  Lean in to the difficulty.  “Everything that occurs is not only usable and workable but is actually the path itself.  We can use everything that happens to us as the means for waking up.”  The third method for working with chaos is to “regard whatever arises as the manifestation of awakened energy.”  Most of the time we look at problems as mistakes or we blame ourselves for having done the wrong thing.  But according to Chodron, our chaos is actually a pointer toward what is real, what is true.  Leaning into the difficulty pushes us to a whole new level of interacting with our experience.  We look at it directly to see what it can reveal.  We don’t turn away.

   I’m sure I have not explained those three methods very well, for they all seem much like the same thing to me.  The idea is:  don’t run from difficulty.  Be fully in it with compassion.  Stop fighting what is.  And use the event as a way to see yourself more clearly and move forward.  I think this last part is what she means by “awakened energy.”  The event, propels us to a new space where insight, wisdom, openness reside. 

     These are big lessons in life, for sure.  But I’m also seeing how they are also big lessons for the writer.  Difficulties abound in any writer’s practice.  We face hard places in the writing and convince ourselves we just can’t fix it.   Resistance to the piece builds, or we wrestle with a section that won’t bend to our wishes.  We feel anxiety and frustration rise.  We complain to friends about our problem.  We get mad for not being able to figure out how to maneuver a tough place.  We fall back on the old story of not being good enough to do this. It’s amazing how hard we can be on ourselves, harder than we would ever be on a fellow writer.  Eventually, we can get to a point where we just feel like we’re in a big fight with someone we love and we can’t make it right. 

     When this happens to me, I remind myself to just stop struggling with the writing and show myself a little compassion.  I try to give myself a little space, just a bit of ease, and to try to accept the moment just as it is.  I say, Look, here is your old tendency to fight with your writing.  Maybe you need to take a break.  Maybe you need a Snickers bar.  Maybe you need to ease up a bit and trust emergence.

     Same thing when those feelings of inadequacy come up, as they are sure to do.  I’m not smart enough to do this.  I’m not talented enough to do this.   My work isn’t good enough. Why did I even presume to think I could pull this off? At these moments of false belief, Chodron says breathe the doubt in.  Connect with it fully.  Then breathe it out, “sending out a sense of big space.”  Instead of rushing to find someone who will disabuse you of silly notions about yourself, she advises moving toward the difficulty rather than backing away.  Say this, Oh, here you are again, my old friend self-doubt.  Come on in and tell me why you’ve come today.  Don’t ignore it.  Don’t run away from it.  The much-applauded Barry Lopez has refused to runaway in the face of his own self doubt.  Speaking just last week on Bill Moyers’ last program he said, “When I sit down to write, if I’m not confused and really afraid, I know I’m not going to be very good.”  And then, confused and afraid, he writes anyway!   So  when things get tough in the writing, face the dragon and ask him what he wants.   Instead of doing battle with him, make him a pb&j sandwich.  I’m pretty sure you’ll get a different result when you sit down to write.

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