The Spiritual Practice of Gratitude

So, this morning, I find myself having one of those imaginary conversations in my head...you know the kind.  You feel judged by someone, so in your head, you have these imaginary repartees.  “Well, if you feel so superior, how come you do such and such?  And why is it that when I do something, it’s wrong, but if you do it, it’s right?”  Blah blah blah.  We all do it from time to time.  We have imaginary arguments, in which of  course, we are always in the right!

So, this morning, after feeling the palpable judgment of a family member, because really, who knows how to judge us most and push our buttons more than a family member, right?  I found myself having these imaginary fights....and my energy became more angry and self-righteous.  And I caught myself!  Gasp!  I was imagining a conflict which may or may not really exist.  I’ve got to stop this right now. 

So, I did what I always do, when I find myself in such a negative state.  I shifted my consciousness to the practice of gratitude.  Now, some pessimists might tell you that this is pointless.  Maybe it is.  But I find that I’d rather focus my mind and energy on something uplifting rather than imaginary fights in my head, which can only lead to real-time arguments as long as I keep dwelling on the perceived injustices and rehashing my own self-righteous arguments over and over.  It’s bound to come out in the future if I keep hanging on to and replaying these same perceived offenses.  

So, what am I grateful for today?  I always start with the basics, things that are concrete are easier to remember.  I have a job, a roof over my head, a car to drive, and enough money to help others, too.  I am healthy.  I have amazing, kind, generous, compassionate, and creative friends.  I have deep friendships, the kind that have lasted decades, in spite of my own misjudgments and weaknesses.  I have a dog.  Well, my sister has a dog which has become my responsibility.  Dogs are great.  No judgment there.  Just unmerited affection....and the love of treats helps, too.  

I have gorgeous weather today!  Okay, I don’t HAVE it, but you know what I mean.  It’s a cool, beautiful morning! 

I have a guitar, a piano to play, a ukulele, a violin, access to music....I’m grateful for inspiring authors and books which challenge me to change my own bad habits.  I have the ability to change.  I’m thankful for my younger sister who helps keep me grounded and centered and still challenges me to continue to grow, to examine my own assumptions.

I’m thankful for the universe.  

I’m thankful for the way gratitude changes my perceptions and my expectations and my attitudes.  It changes my relationships to healthier states, because I stop focusing on what irritates me about them.  Instead, gratitude helps me focus on what I appreciate about my family.  

I’m going for a hike.  I will spend that time meditating on what I am grateful for today.  I know that by the time I return, I will be a changed person.  And that is the goal, isn’t it?  To engage in spiritual practice with the goal of being transformed, changed into something or someone more glorious than my current state, and to produce good fruit in keeping with my intentions.  

Finding beauty around us

I spent the morning looking for light and color.  I found this spider’s web covered in dew and glistening beside the squash blossom and green cherry tomatoes.

Looking for beauty in chaos

Then I saw this luminous morning glory.  It seems to glow from deep inside.  I was filled with wonder and awe.  

I could see how ancient people might have believed in faeries and spirits in plants.  It’s uncanny how brilliant the center is, it seems to burn brightly on its own. 

Creating and listening

Today, I’m listening to Michael Singer’s The Untethered Soul (2011) about spiritual awakening and letting go.  He discusses how we struggle with our inner fears, desires, and destructive relationship patterns. The book is insightful, exposing how our inner thoughts and our self-talk tend to control us.  Real spiritual growth comes when our inner self and our consciousness are united.  Chapter 8 is specifically about letting go of controlling everything around us and letting go of fear. 

I also make these short meditational videos as part of my creative process.  

I’m also practicing being creative.  I’ve tried to draw a still-life which brings me feelings of calm.  I have not tried drawing in years.  My perspective is all off, but perfection is not the point.  Just being creative is the practice, the discipline, & the goal. 

I’ve been fascinated with the idea of ritual tea ceremonies, like Japanese tea ceremony.  I’d love to visit the Japanese gardens in Portland, Oregon again...or even the Huntington Gardens here in SoCal.  I’m a member of the Huntington, but with the quarantine, few members are allowed in.  And I’m on a waiting list to visit the gardens again.  But I’m really looking forward to getting back to the Japanese and Chinese gardens as soon as possible.  

The traditional Chinese music on Wednesdays has been discontinued for now, but anyone who has heard the beautiful strains of the erhu or other stringed instruments there will agree that it is a pleasant way to spend a day.  

The original reason and inspiration for Happy Snowflake Dance

I love poetry.   This poem by George Santayana says so much.  It still moves me.  In a world of chaos and political and social turmoil, in a landscape of global pandemics, in a world of economic uncertainty, it can be overwhelming and challenging to hold fast to truth, to mercy, to compassion, to love, to hope, to faith, to our shared humanity.  But I find inspiration in this rhyme. 

There may be chaos still around the world 

There may be chaos still around the world, 

This little world that in my thinking lies; 

For mine own bosom is the paradise 

Where all my life's fair visions are unfurled. 

Within my nature's shell I slumber curled, 

Unmindful of the changing outer skies, 

Where now, perchance, some new-born Eros flies, 

Or some old Cronos from his throne is hurled.

I heed them not; or if the subtle night 

Haunt me with deities I never saw, 

I soon mine eyelid's drowsy curtain draw 

To hide their myriad faces from my sight. 

They threat in vain; the whirlwind cannot awe 

A happy snow-flake dancing in the flaw. 

~George Santayana

In the midst of it all, I remain a happy snowflake dancing in the flaw.  

Thank you

As part of my morning walking meditation, I took the time to stop, admire the view, and write my gratitude for today.  My prayer of gratitude may not change my circumstances, but it changes me (to very loosely paraphrase CS Lewis' famous quote on prayer). 

Thank you for the ability to evolve, adapt, change, transform, to not stay the same forever. Thank you that who I am now is not necessarily who or how I will be for the rest of my life. 

Thank you for wisdom from on high, for humble teachers, for heart-opening conversations, for the deeper questions and small revelations. 

Thank you for Rumi, Rilke, L'Engle, Tolle, Kierkegaard, and others who pointed to ways to find you. You are the Creator who is hidden in all, you are in all, yet we cannot always see you. 

Thank you for this sacred game of hide and seek. You promised that if we would seek you, we would find you. Thank you for revealing yourself in a flower. Transformation is your modus operandi. Thank you that I still have time to change.

Letter to my sister

Madeleine L'Engle quote

I've been thinking about our conversation the other day. In my own pursuit of "what to do next", I've been trying to follow beauty, joy, love, and peace. As part of that, I've been reading what many great Christians have said about faith and art. CS Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, & Madeleine L'Engle were incredibly articulate critical thinkers and Christian apologists. As I read this passage from L'Engle's Icons of the True essay, I kept thinking of you.

From the book, Walking on Water: Reflections in Faith and Art, her essay called, "Icons of the True" (1980), 

Madeleine writes:

"If I'd read these words of Rilke's during the long years of rejection they might have helped, because I could have answered the question in the affirmative:

'You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way, Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you to write (______________ insert your own passion here, replace the word "write" with your own deep abiding desire, fill in the blank); find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write.This above all—ask yourself in the stillest hour of the night: Must I write?

Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must," then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and testimony to it.'

That is from Letters to a Young Poet, and surely Rilke speaks to all of us who struggle with a vocation of words."

Note: Rainier Maria Rilke was a beloved German poet.

L'Engle was writing this specifically to talk about her own vocation as a writer. You must ask yourself, "What is it that I am deeply driven to do?What brings me joy when I do, so that it doesn't even feel like work? What do I feel the urge to create?"

I believe this is the first step in a fulfilling life. I am asking myself these same questions.

This week, I am reading everything that helps me focus on writing and creating my own aesthetic (that's a personal philosophy of art).

I hope this is as helpful and insightful for you as it is for me. 

Epiphany, the phoenix rises

Epiphany is to see clearly, to see the light.  

(Video: I Can See Clearly Now, my own arrangement on piano) 

Somewhere on DayCreek Boulevard yesterday, I had an epiphany. It was a truth I was on the tip of grasping, you know what I mean. It's just there on the edge of your consciousness, you can almost recognize it. It was nearly in my grasp, when a well-intentioned friend texted me. I was distracted momentarily. I felt I was so close to grasping this beauty, this otherworldliness. In that ephemeral moment, I had felt as though I was enough. I could do anything. I felt grace wash over me, but in a heartbeat, it was gone.

How do I live that truth? How do I find it again and hold on to it?

Somehow this truth made me feel as though I were taller, graceful, beautiful. My head held high, my chin up, my shoulders back, I felt as though the world was open to me. I did not feel short and fat. I felt light. Like I was light and grace.

I guess it's a bit like when you're walking with your head held high, you don't see as much dog poop on the sidewalk. Your mind is set on heavenly things. You see the beauty all around you. You acknowledge the dog poop is there, but you don't fixate on it or let it spoil your mood or get sidetracked from the beauty by cursing the careless dog owners who let their pooches deficate wherever... Your eyes are on the prize, the beauty around you and the feeling that you are somehow a part of that beauty. You belong to it, too.

Returning to that same spot today, I thought maybe I could recapture that split-second moment of "aha" and "aaaah, I think I get it now". It was a blurry, on the edge of almost getting a glimpse of eternity, tiny fraction of a moment of pure expectancy, hope, wonder, bliss, calm, delight and joy all rolled into one.

Something my priest said during the online service yesterday triggered it...how we hear a truth, we know it, but it doesn't register. Then suddenly, we "see" it, the light comes on, epiphany. We suddenly grasp the truth we knew deep inside all along.

One of these truths was mentioned in the communion prayer: "We come before you now with hearts you have fed all our lives with the promise that you have given yourself for us." Something deep inside resonated with this and responded with a "yes, that's it! The Creator of the universe has always taken care of me. I'm going to be alright. I have everything I need." And my head went up, my shoulders went back, I stood up straight and tall, and felt powerful. Not in the "I'm more powerful than you" kind of way, but in the "yes, I can do anything" kind of way.

This does not mean that I don't have struggles. To be human IS to struggle. But it also means that we have these "aha" moments where we glimpse beauty, truth.

So this morning, I found myself wanting to relive that ephemeral epiphany... to feel again that sense of security and assurance and enoughness and power. But it was elusive. I reached the same spot. I searched my mind for what it was that I had sensed in this place. What was it that I was on the edge of grasping? Another friend texted. Drat it! It was on the tip of my consciousness. I shut off the distracting messages. I took a deep breath, & relaxed my shoulders. It was gone. But I remembered how my head felt to be lifted high, how tall I felt with my shoulders back. I walked on. It wasn't the same, but then I saw a friendly face as I walked on. I didn't know the man, but his sweet smile was enough to restore courage to my heart, hope in finding another glimpse of the eternal, and joy in the beauty of another human's soul.

Maybe sometimes we have to "fake it till we make it." Not that I'm encouraging false pretensions or being deceptive. No, it is more like a spiritual practice. We practice to become better at whatever art we are pursuing: piano, painting, writing, tai chi, whatever... I want to be better at recognizing beauty and truths. I want to be better at rising from the ashes and being reborn, like the mythical phoenix. So I practice. I say to myself the mantra my old Buddhist priest taught me: "Breathing in, I smile to my heart. Breathing out, I smile to my lips. Breathing in, I smile to my soul. Breathing out, I smile to my eyes."

As I practiced this morning, I was struck by a different "truth". It was more of a question. Why do I postpone my transformation? Why would I or anyone put off an amazing metamorphosis?  Again, it is as though I were on the edge of something great. I know it is within my grasp if I just continue my spiritual and physical practice. Why do I hold myself back? What do I have to lose except fear, inhibition, soul-sucking disappointment? No. No more regrets. No more lying dead in the ashes.  It’s time to be reborn! To rise again from the ashes.  I'm jumping into this new transitional phase of my life and I'm coming out the other side a transfigured being. 

Eckhart Tolle (A New Earth, 2006) talks about this transformation as an awakening of consciousness. He compares it to the metamorphosis of carbon through intense heat and immense pressure into a diamond. Or the opening of a flower. Or the formation of a crystal. What we are now is not necessarily the statement of who/what we will be for the rest of our lives.

And that makes me think of the amazing work of bell hooks... her research on storytelling and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves is powerful. What kind of narratives are continually running in my head? "I can't,” or “it's never going to happen,” or "it's impossible,” or "I can never ...”

We know that what we tell ourselves can become self-fulfilling prophecy. So, I'm intentionally changing the narrative in my head. I don't want to wake up ten years from now and be the same me, with the same issues and struggles. I want to be a transformed-into-a-butterfly-me, the just-getting-into-my-best-self me. No regrets. I'm not going back to the habits that got me here. This is my season to plant new habits, seeds of change, and at the right time, I'll reap a harvest of grace and beauty!

So, what's holding you back? How do you find beauty? How do you pursue your best self?  

Toward a Spiritual Aesthetic

What I'm reading this week that inspires me, as I work toward my own philosophy of art, my own aesthetic:  (some of these are like old friends which I revisit many times over, year after year).

• A New Earth- Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle (2005, Penguin Group)
• The Weight of Glory: And Other Adresses by C. S. Lewis (rev. 1980, Harper Collins Pub.)
• Walk in Love- Episcopal Beliefs & Practices (2018, Forward Movement)
• Icons of the True from Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L'Engle (1980, Crosswicks)
• Myth: A flight to reality by Thomas Howard, from The Christian Imagination: Essays on Literature and the Arts (1981, Baker Book House Co.)

Many of the above essays may found reprinted in my old college text book, Encounters: Connecting, Creating, Composing by Epperson, Givens, Gray, & Hall (1994, Kendall/ Hunt Publishing).  This thoughtful college text book asks provoking questions and gives a rich selection of readings with themes from ecology, community, responsibility to self and others, spiritual authenticity, moral perspective, individuality, and relationships.  

One of the most heart-opening essays is written by Leslie Marmon Silko; Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination.  This insightful essay looks into sacred ecology, the interconnectedness of all things, and Hopi spirituality which realizes the riches of relationship with all beings (pp. 588-599, Encounters, 1994).

In defining my own aesthetic, I rely heavily on the writings of Sayers, Lewis, l'Engle, Howard, and others.  I also look to the poetry of Rilke, Frost, Dickinson, and Elizabeth Barret Browning as a kind of compass to inspiration.  

What I hope comes from all this pondering is an aesthetic which will guide my own work in creativity.  For me, beauty, joy, and peace are intrinsically woven into this idea of art. No, maybe not peace, though that might be a byproduct of interaction with art.  Instead of peace, maybe I should say truth.  By truth, I mean those universal truths that we sometimes stumble upon, those “aha” moments when we finally recognize something that was there all along.  I use the term "art" in a very broad sense.  For me, art is what we call this creative process.  And maybe that is getting to the heart of it.... Art, for me, is about deeper connection, to my own inner landscape, to the Creator, to the universe, to other humans, to other beings, to transcendence, to truth.  It might include visual arts like cinematography, sculpting, painting, etc.  It also includes written arts such as literature and poetry, lyrics, music, and composing.   Art encompasses theater, cinema, drama, comedy, and performance art.  It might include artisanal cuisine, event planning, gardening and landscaping.  This is not an all-inclusive list.  It barely scratches the surface of our creative expression.  But what it gets at is a profound interaction between artist and participant.  I do not say "audience," because that implies a kind of passive response to art.  No, art is something which Sayers calls incarnational and triune.  I'll talk more about this idea in the future.

What I'm listening to this week: I compiled an eclectic playlist of iTunes.  I call it Sacred Ecology & Aesthetics, ranging from Michael Jackson's Earth Song to Michael Gungor's Beautiful Things to Vivaldi's Four Seasons to Tibetan meditation music to Naturescape sounds to Eva Cassidy's What a Wonderful World and Fields of Gold  (from Live at Blue's Alley), plus many more.  My guiding principle in selection?  Pick music that makes me feel joy or peace or beauty or a sense of transcendence.   

 I also have been listening to Sounds True meditational videos, like Eckhart Tolle's talk about our inner awakenings. 

What I'm exploring this week in creativity:  I started expressing my own sense of inner beauty and joy in tiny little music videos on iMovie.  I find piano music I wish to play, then practice and play around with it until I find my own version of the music.  I lay a sound track, then add my own videos and photos.  I'm just creating something that I find joy in. I'm a barely functional piano player, in fact, you probably couldn't actually say I'm a pianist, as I am such a novice.  But I find joy in trying to play the piano, so  I keep practicing.  I'm just having fun creating something.  I hope others find it inspirational, but even if they don't, I'm enjoying being creative, trying to express beauty in some small way.

I've also been in the recording studio, laying down vocal tracks on collaborative music projects with our little church's praise band.  It feels good to get back into recording!  

And I've picked up the ukulele, thanks to my younger sister's encouragement.  I've been learning new songs on the ukulele and the guitar, as part of my creative expression.  The driving impetus:  finding joy and beauty and following my bliss!  

What I'm doing as spiritual discipline: This week, I’m embracing the physical and spiritual discipline of fasting.  I’m embracing both water fasting (no food) and OMAD (One Meal A Day).  I can already feel better mental clarity and focus.  And by Day 2, I no longer feel hunger.  That is not to say that I’m not tempted to eat, but I recognize that my desire to eat is often driven by boredom or habit, rather than true hunger.  I’m embracing this fast for a number of reasons, which I will not bore you with.  And yes, after a few days, I monitor my vital statistics like blood glucose levels and ketones.  The truly wonderful byproduct(s) of fasting for me are the mental clarity and incredible physical energy I get from it. I need even less sleep when I am fasting.  My body feels completely energized. So, yay for fasting! 

What I'm doing to improve my relationships: adapting to the external world from the inner world-

I'm being much more intentional in my relationships with family which have been highly dysfunctional and reactive.  Thus, Eckhart Tolle's book revisited.  In A New Earth, Tolle explains how we are constantly reacting to others, instead of functioning from a center of transcendence or consciousness.  I've seen my relationships devolve into a kind of action/reaction/reaction to reaction, unhealthy dynamic.  I cannot control others or how they perceive me, but I can control my reactions.  I can "be the change I want to see."  I can stop reacting negatively.  I can breathe.  And rethink my attitudes.  

So, I'm being much more intentional in how I speak with my family members.  I'm choosing to be positive in the face of negativity, rather than reacting negatively to the perceived negativity and bitterness of others.  

I keep reminding myself, life is a pilgrimage, a process.  One step at a time.  No one else can change my relationships.  Only I can change my interactions with others.  Family can get into ruts, constantly pushing each others’ buttons, reacting to each other....it can be debilitating.  But today, I choose to BE peace, to BE joy, to BE the beauty and grace I want to experience in others.  

What’s your philosophy of art (aesthetic)?  What inspires your creativity?  What deep inner motivation guides your creative processes?  What are you doing to develop your own sense of joy, of greater connection? 

I hope you find the courage to listen to your own inner voice, to follow your bliss, to express that pure joy in some way.  

Cheers,

Gigi