Your Moment of Zen

So I haven’t been able to sleep lately and one of the things that came to mind last night while not sleeping was Apocalypse Now, namely the scene where one soldier on the boat trip has been killed and a soldier cradles his lost comrade as the corpse on its back in the water, the soldier gently rocking his lost friend back and forth until gently releasing him and the corpse floats for a moment and then disappears under the dark water. The image is reminiscent of the Death of Ophelia by Sir John Everett Millais, and I was always taken by the beauty with which the body drifted off to its grave. I was thinking of that while I couldn’t sleep and thinking that there are things in my life that it’s time to let go of. As a new year begins we look to jettison things that we don’t want to carry with us any longer and this image reminds me that the transition can be gentle and beautiful. We may have carried these behaviors or beliefs for a long time, they may have been very valuable to us at one point and now it may be time to let them go.  These things were once important to us or we wouldn’t have held them for so long nor held them so dear. Give them a fitting and gentle end as you would a comrade, lover or sister or friend. 

Your moment of Zen

Your Moment of Zen

So I thank my friend for taking me to an AA meeting with him, admittedly I am a distant friend of Bill but a friend none the less. One of the things that I took from my time in AA meetings was the importance of honesty maybe not even so much with other people but with yourself. It never gets easier to tell the truth. It’s always out there just waiting for you and the harder you run the more you bump into its inevitability. If there is one thing in life that I would say I have learned the importance of it’s, tell the truth and to tell it faster. You can’t avoid it and while it may not set you free it will make you whole. As I read this I am struck by the similarity in wording to St. Augustine’s description of his conversion, It was always there and he could run but he could not hide, but then if God is truth then telling the truth would only bring us closer to God,  but that’s food for another

moment of Zen.

 

Your Moment of Zen

So I sit at work, listening to crazy music and this came to my mind. Really, you are the only one in your mind, psychosis aside, the only person telling you what to do and who you are is you.  I’ll cut to the chase. The only person running your life is you. The only person truly in your head is you. All you need to set yourself free is the will and the tools. I have a certain comfort with the world tools as it almost makes me think of a Norman Rockwell painting of people building a house- that image and word are wrong. Reach inside yourself and grasp the weapons of change. There are things inside of you that don’t want to let go but you have the ability to change them and you have the weapons.  This isn’t a weekend DYI project, this is war and you deserve a victory. The truth is within you- it is you- and it is within your grasp. The only person holding you back is you. Go; bring yourself into the world, the world needs you and its waiting for you.

Your moment of Zen

Your moment of Zen

So that image has always stuck with me, going to my grandmother’s house and my brother daring me to step into her bedroom to look at the picture on the wall of the sacred heart of Jesus. I don’t know why that fascinated us but then what really makes sense to an adult looking back at 6 and a half. I can still see that image in my mind right now and what I remember most is the glowing light around the graphically rendered heart. I think of that today because I want you to know that you are surrounded by light, that you are a creature of the light. Take this moment and say this affirmation, may the light that surrounds me now shine through me. You are surrounded by light; you are protected by the light. The light is within you because you are the light.

Your moment of zen.

Your Moment of Zen

So it was with a measure of surprise to see the report in the BBC that Amy Winehouse’s death was given a “verdict of death by misadventure” so that charges would not be pressed. I got to thinking about the phrase and thought how sad that misadventure would be linked to death. It seems to me like misadventure would be a good thing and something that we should be looking for in our life.  I felt the same way when I heard that skylarking would no longer be a cause for dismissal from the navy. If working with an intolerable lack of seriousness is not appropriate in the navy then I don’t know where it would be appropriate.  In Max Andersons “High Tor” Mio responds to a request to be serious with the line, “things are serious enough, why set out to make them more so?”

Perhaps skylarking and misadventure are our best responses to the seriousness of this world.

Your moment of Zen.

Your Moment of Zen

So  I have a friend who is a Franciscan monk and we were talking once over a glass of wine, as we often did and should do again, and we were talking about the Mass and how he hates to say, Mass has ended, go in Peace at the end of the Mass. (This is traditionally said at the end of every catholic mass). When I asked him why that was, he said that in his mind the mass is our time to be in touch with our greater power and that is a dialogue that has no beginning and no end. We may step away from the conversation, we may not listen or even doubt that anyone is listening or that there is even a conversation going on at all, but it is always there. There is always a force for good in the universe and it is always there for us. We may not always like what it has to say or even want to hear it - it is always there and we are always in communion with it because it is within us. So stop and take a moment to acknowledge that if nothing else there is something amazing in this world that keeps us going and that we are a part of it as it is a part of us.

Your moment of Zen.

So for the longest time Renoir really pissed me off. Not personally but I was always bothered by the way that his art seems so soft, pastel-ly and (to my mind) not worth the attention that he was getting.  I thought that there were more interesting people out there; Delacroix, Rouault- hell, Bosh was downright cool but Renoir- really?

Some years later it came out that Van Gogh (they now believe) had a psychological or neurological disorder so that he actually saw things the way he painted them. He was painting the world as he knew it. It brought me back to Renoir and it makes me think perhaps he was painting what he saw, what was true for him. I made it a lot harder to be pissed at him and in a way began to let me find the beauty in his work. Perhaps those people who we can’t yet see the beauty in their work are actually seeing the world differently than we do.  They are living in the world that they see and that may be very different then ours. It’s important to have your own world view but then it’s also important to realize that others have theirs too.

Your moment of Zen.

so, I was thinking of the journey that is this life while packing my briefcase for the day today. It made me think  of packing for a journey and how you often bring things that you don’t need or that you leave along the way. I remember a tour I did once where I brought used paperback books that I would leave in my hotel room for someone after I finished them. It makes me think of other things we jettison as we go along. At some point we may be done with our need to be right, our need to keep our true self hidden from the world or our need to hold on to shame. Maybe later we can let go of our anger or our belief that we are less then we really are. I hope that like all those paperback books, we let go of what we need to before we find that our soul’s journey can go on without this body of ours. 

Your moment of Zen

 

Your Moment of Zen

So, I feel badly that I don’t remember his real name. I always referred to him as Telemundo because his name was a train wreck of vowels and consonants that I could never remember. He was my yoga instructor and a good guy. I was thinking of the ark of our friendship. He got married and opened his own yoga studio. After about six months he had lost his studio and was getting divorced from his wife. I felt badly for him and than I thought perhaps that’s what his journey is in this life. Perhaps that is what his soul needs to experience this time around to help him learn what he needs to learn.  Not that one shouldn’t have compassion but rather then feel sorry for him perhaps that is what he needed to find his wholeness. Maybe it is true that by our stripes we are healed and that the only thing that we have in this life that is truly our own is our journey, bumps and all.

Your moment of Zen.

 

Your Moment of Zen

So it caused quite as stir by the time I was done but it had the desired effect and was what was needed. You see it occurred  to me that we were getting caught in a trap of being too short sided a sort of recency bias –giving too much credit to the most recent experience,  that we began to believe that the way things are is the way that they will always be.  So I got up and drew a line around the room at about three feet from the floor and parallel to it. I drew the horizon around the room to remind us that there is always something more out there, that there is always more on the way.  We need the horizon in our lives to give us a place for the Calvary to come to our aid, to frame the sunrise and sunset and to remind us that there is always more out there, always something new on the way. Take up a marker and draw your horizon, it’s not the end of your world but the beginning of discovering it.

Your moment of Zen