The Secret Imagination: Part II

In the recent edition of Yoga Journal, Sally Kempton writes:

Imagination – our ability to create images not available to the sensory system – is arguably our greatest faculty for evolving human consciousness. In order to transform ourselves and our world, we need to be able to leap out of the familiar and into the unknown. … the imagination can help us begin to replace our internal patterns, especially the ones that keep us limited and stuck. If we can reimagine our sense of who we are, we can change our experience of life. If you can imagine yourself, say, free of suffering, you’ve taken the first step toward that freedom.

Later in the article she connects our internal imagination with external acts, pointing out that:

If you’re spending time during your day imagining yourself as filled with compassion, it doesn’t take you long to notice that you speak to people differently and even treat yourself with much more subtlety and kindness.

So yesterday, for “shits and giggles” as a favorite person used to say – (I won’t go into the images that comes into my head when I hear that phrase – don’t want to sully your imagine and bring about the wrong kind of transformation!) – I “tried” “The Secret.” Caveat – I have avoided the book and movie or any other description of this completely – I only followed the vague idea I heard from my therapist – who was also skeptical, but did wonder what would happen if I tried it.

Item #567 you can do when you don’t have a job: Experiment with New Agey psycho- hijinks (next week, Tarot cards and a colonic cleansing).

I performed a kind of meditative visualization exercise and wrote down five things I wanted to happen that day. They were:

1. To be told “I love you” by a certain someone

2. For someone to offer a job or job interview

3. For sandalwood perfume oil to reappear in my life

4. To have a stranger flirt with me (reassure my ego!)

5. For someone from my past to warmly contact me and inquire as to how I am doing

The Results

Now, here’s the funny thing. Basically, all of these items “came true” or came to fruition – but before you get excited about the possibility of a magic recipe, let’s recall the insights from Kempton, summarized above – the act of the imagination in the mind can have force and expression in the body, transferring from the world of ideas to the world of actuality a wish, a possibility, a desire.

Example: The basketball player envisions the perfect slam dunk before the game, and her chances of actually performing that slam dunk “in real life” go up immensely.

So here’s basically how it went down.

1. I arranged coffee with the certain someone and though I had no expectations, the love was indeed reciprocated.

2. From the networking I’ve been doing through Facebook, a person I hardly know connected me to others I don’t know, and it looks like at least one of them will need me for work.

3. I went online and ordered the sandalwood.

4. I went out to a social gathering; someone flirted with me.

5. I spent a large part of the day beefing up my Linked In profile by writing recommendations for past colleagues, and indeed, someone from my past did warmly email me, as a result.

So, we’re not talking about mystical alchemy here. We’re talking about how writing down the things I wanted from the day in a positive manner – as in, I wasn’t thinking “here’s my goals to accomplish,” which would have pressured me with onerous tasks, but rather “here’s what I want, deep down inside, but who knows” – provoked me to take steps that made the things I desired occur. I wasn’t really focused on the outcomes I had listed. I just acted out of desire – to connect, to be near a loved one, to smell better.

This isn’t magic or rocket science. It’s kind of the principle of the book Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow – ridiculous, but really when you engage in what you love and desire, when you – yes, here I go again! Joseph Campbell alert! – follow that stinkin’ bliss, but not for the accomplishment or the reward but for the love of the thing in itself – then you truly enter into the kind of fruitful relationship with yourself and your work/art/relationships that allows you to be fully present and ultimately fully satisfied.

One of those paradoxical laws that is so simple and hard, it must be true.

So, no: I’m not a “The Secret” convert. But this experiment did underscore for me

• the importance of giving so that you can receive – without expectations;
• doing what you love out of love;
• and sometimes, when you want something – well, you can go online and order it.

Notes on Desire

I have to address desire – it gets such a bad rap with religion – it causes suffering, etc. But you have to add a dash of Rumi to your Buddha, I believe, to round out your understanding of desire in the context of spiritual awareness:

Let yourself be silently drawn

by the stronger pull of what you really love.

Rumi

For Rumi, love and desire pull us to the Love with a capital L – the rapture of union with the All. When we are following our heart’s arrow of true desire, our path, when we are doing the things we love to do and loving the people we love and embracing the identity that feels right – when we are honoring our deepest self – then we are, simultaneously, honoring and celebrating the whole, the larger truths.

True love, I have found, requires sacrifice of the selfish, ego-driven love.

True faith requires the sacrifice of the illusion of control.

This is not easy stuff to maintain, master. But it is getting to the heart of where the imagination and reality meet. Through our desire we create a vision of true love and faith that changes us and leads us into the experience and presence of truth.

Desire withers the heart.

The Master observes the world

but trusts his inner vision.

He allows things to come and go.

His heart is as open as the sky. [Tao te Ching, 12]

I guess I think that perhaps desire leads to delight or suffering depending upon its root and its object.

If we want only for the happiness of our small egos, no matter the suffering of others, no matter the well-being of the world, then that is when we are full of the desire that ruins us, for we are falsely seeing our Self as separate from the world, and we are placing its importance above that of others. If we desire to control, to go against things as they are, we are setting ourselves up to battle the whole of which we are apart, and we will suffer.

But if our desire includes the happiness and well-being of the world, includes caring for the suffering of others as well as our own, if our sense of compassion and love places our individual selves within the proper context of the whole, then our desire is divinely inspired.

A good example is romantic love. The ego-driven desire wants the beloved to fill the self, to love the self, to complete and satisfy the needs and wants of the self. The self likes the way the beloved’s attention feels.

But true love views the beloved for who he or she is, and desires that person’s happiness, whatever the cost to the self.

See the world as your self.

Have faith in the way things are.

Love the world as your self;

then you can care for all things. [Tao te Ching, 13]

If we love our neighbors as ourselves, then we can find the right balance. If we lose a lover, but he or she is happy, we can accept the reality of the loss and our sadness – but we can also delight in his or her happiness. This happiness can remove the sting of loss and is the way to true peace.

The Secret Imagination: Part I

So, it’s probably no secret that I’m not a fan of The Secret. I never did think Jesus was giving Christians parking spaces, and not because I didn’t think he couldn’t be bothered, but because I don’t think prayer is like a vending machine – you don’t put in the right amount to get the candy you requested. Prayer is more like entering a connection, a holy space. You’re not ordering from a menu.

And the thing about getting prayers answered, or wishes answered, or your intentions fulfilled is that, whether sponsored by an intelligent deity or not, the universe doesn’t work in one-to-one correspondence with our desires.

If Einstein had prayed never to make a mistake during his experiments, he never would have hit upon the revelations that rocked our world.

And if I got everything I ever wanted, would I really get everything I ever wanted?

I personally don’t believe that things happen for a reason, but I do know that things happen or don’t happen, and what matters isn’t that what we wanted to happen didn’t or vice versa but that we learn from the happenings, learn to adapt, adjust, and move.

If God doesn’t grant the parking space we wanted, we might blame ourselves (I didn’t pray hard enough! Not enough faith!) or we might blame God (He just doesn’t care!) or we could also think, Maybe I’m supposed to be parked five miles from the shopping mall entrance. Or Wow, this gives me an opportunity to take a walk and watch the clouds, or breathe, or count cool license plates.

The problem with Prayer by Mail Order and The Secret stuff is that it’s all basically surface-level demands that is essentially self-centered, and not in the good kind of centered in the self way, either.

I prefer to think in the Taoist sense of letting go of both hope and fear and staying grounded in the reality of the present. What is the present presenting to me? And how will I act and respond? It’s much more practical and useful to take the parking space that comes and use it to your advantage than it is to try to psychically force energy or a god to get the parking space you want.

All of that said, I do believe in the power of prayer and of the imagination. But I’ll save that for next time. Stay tuned!

Wild Animals

I live near the river. I guess that’s why this summer I’ve seen, in my front and backyard, a deer, a family of grey foxes, a possible skunk, a tiny snake (and yes, I made someone else get rid of it) and last night a -

barking possum?

I was standing on my back porch, admiring the mist against the black shapes of the mountains, when all of a sudden this large, hairy, chunk of a thing came barreling around the corner, leaped onto my porch, caused us both to yelp.

Then it ran a few feet away and started barking at me – like a seal with a sore throat – as if I were the intruder (well, historically speaking, I am).

What the heck was it?

The person with the best ideas wins a special Into the Park t-shirt! (Though if you’ve ever seen one of my handmade t-shirts, you might want to lose this one.)

And while I’m asking, if a tiny grey snake dies on your back porch, do you need to worry about mama snake showing up?

Actually, I have to say that the way my friend gently took the little snake, invited all the children to touch it, and then congratulated it on a beautiful life and buried it with the failed sunflowers was much better than my stay-three-feet away approach.

She taught the kids to be fearless and kind; I taught them to be squeamish and ridiculous.

I’m working on it.

Belmont Park

One of my favorite parks this summer has been Belmont – especially yesterday, when it was utterly deserted.

Unlike Pen Park, which seems constantly crawling with kids, or Greenleaf, which seems better maintained and more shady, Belmont’s been kind of empty and crumbly. There’s giant holes in the blue spongy flooring of the sprinkler; several times the sprinkler hasn’t been working – sometimes just a trickle.

While sometimes I like a busy playground, sometimes I like the spacious feeling of a quiet park.

Another Plug for Happiness

Running on the trail last night, I thought of another really good reason for why seeking your personal happiness is in fact of great benefit to the rest of the world: Because we’re all infectious. What we’re infectious with – happiness or misery – is the question. Which are you spreading?

When you come across really evil individuals, all you have to do is peek into their childhood file to find the root cause – some kind of mistreatment or lack of love from a parent or other caretaker.

But then you take that parent and you look in their childhood file, and you find the same thing. And it goes back and back and back…

When children go unloved, they grow up to be parents who unlove, and the cycle continues.

And when you’re feeling happy, fulfilled, abundant, it spills over, it’s easy to share, you feel free, and the more you give, the more you have.

So, if you didn’t get what you needed as a kid, your assignment is to fix yourself and find some happiness. Ok?

Do what you love, follow your bliss, open your heart, seek and you shall find.

Ok, easier said than done, but you know, my point is that I think some of us might find it easier to be miserable, because:

• it’s habitual, comfortable

• we’re more focused on being good or appropriate or responsible

• we’ve been trained to make others happy, but not ourselves
• we don’t feel we have permission to do what it would take to be happy (selfish!)

• finding happiness requires risk and facing some things that are really hard
• loving yourself is a challenge, and it’s often easier to conscript someone else to do it for you

And my point is, it’s not just about you. It truly is your responsibility to take care of yourself. Find your happiness! Let your light shine – the world needs us to do this. Children need to see us adults being happy, so they will see it’s possible, and okay. We need to be happy for each other, because then we are open and giving and sweet to each other.

Feel free to insert “compassionate” or “peaceful” for “happy” if that makes it seem less silly.

But whatever you do, feel free -

Have Courage

oh me of little faith, at least
you have a little – it’s something
to start with, a blue flame
you dreamt of, sprouting from
the center of your hand. It
may not warm you, but it will
warn you to take cover, by
flickering. The wick will burn
a little, but your skin is
thickening. No, there is no
torch leading you through this
wilderness, the dark desert
nights have only the moon
making the rounds, nursing
your wounds. You must move
forward and let this small fire
of your own desire illuminate
the path you are making. It
will have to be enough to
guide yourself, taking the risk
that you will never get to
the end of your wandering.

Oh, keep your hand
open, feed your faith
with your breath, go
into the blankness, and feel it
with all of your heart,
with all of your fear,
with all of your might.

Death Will Ease Your Suffering (no, really, it will!)

I’ve been experiencing a great deal of grief, sadness, and loss lately, and sometimes, the loneliness feels intense.

It was pointed out to me that I seem to want others to fix it for me, comfort me, soothe my misery.

And yes, I have to say that as I walking today, exposing myself to sun, hoping to walk out the sadness, I realized that I do so want someone – my estranged mother, my dead father, my friends, anyone – to wrap themselves around me and tell me I am loved, and it will be okay.

Of course, the desire is understandable. But it is desire, and you know what that does to you, of course. And I’m trying to learn to comfort myself.

It’s not so easy.

I wandered into a cemetery – I was ambling, walking down dead end streets, not exactly lost but I couldn’t tell you where I was, exactly – one of those patches of grass and stone that feel like some kind of abandoned city with no historical texts to tell you what happened. Names and dates, but no storyline. Just a lot of silence.

My heart felt swollen, tender, like an injured foot.

I thought about dying (go figure).

And then it dawned on me, there among the ruins, that when I die, I won’t have these awful feelings anymore.

Oddly, like nothing else, the thought calmed me.

Not because I want to die – truly not looking forward to it, kind of angry about it, but that’s a whole other story – but because this suffering is indeed going to end, and life, even with this intensely acute suffering, is much preferable to feeling nothing at all.

This isn’t some earth-shattering revelation – but I truly felt it, not just as an abstract consideration, but as a solid reality.

the goddess Kali

Hope, you know, hasn’t been really possible. I can’t hope that I’ll ever have a family again, with love and comfort; even if I get it, it will go away again. Everything dies, changes. So hope has not been a comfort.

As Pema Chodron says:

If we’re willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be
exterminated, then we can have  the courage to relax with the
groundlessness of our situation.  This is the first step on the path.

My problem has been that I’ve been getting lost in the groundlessness, sinking in the quicksands of my despair.

But death has been a rope out – and lead me to remember Kali. Years ago when I first started reading about Tantra and goddesses, I had a hard time understanding the rituals surrounding worship of the goddess Kali, who is alternately the most fierce and the most loving of deities. Some Tantric practices involve digging up corpses; Kali is often portrayed having sex with the body of her dead husband, Shiva.

There’s this odd mix of comfort and utter destruction mixed into this figure, and I didn’t quite get it. She’s a mother goddess – but she represents the absolute dissolution of all things?

But I get it now. When we face death, we see life with a precision and clarity that provides the sustenance of reality, truth, — and comfort.

To confront or accept death… is to realize a mode of being that can delight and revel in the play of the gods. To accept one’s mortality is to be able to let go, to be able to sing, dance, and shout. Kali is Mother to her devotees not because she protects them from the way things really are but because she reveals to them their mortality and thus releases them to act fully and freely, releases them from the incredible, binding web of “adult” pretense, practicality, and rationality [from exoticindia]

As I walked home, I smelled the rosemary from someone’s garden, saw the brilliant clouds, tasted sun, hurt but alive, and glad to be so.

Damaged Hearts

I saw a girl today with a t-shirt on that read, in big letters, “I HAVE A DAMAGED HEART.” There was the obligatory broken heart illustrating, but otherwise, the shirt was so … un-ironic. Honest. Sincere. Like a diabetic alert bracelet. It made me want to run up and hug her – very gently.

I kind of wanted one, and I kind of thought, Who doesn’t?

But sometimes it’s hard for us to remember to treat each other with care. We jostle around like boxers, we bump like bumper cars, we flick people off and we curse and we rant and we sneer, not because we’re evil, but because we learn a cultural norm of presenting hardened exteriors and then defending against those of others.

We’re conditioned for battle.

Certainly, we’re not as militaristic in our fashion or as routinized in our behaviors as some real and imagined societies – but if we compare even the most benign of our social interactions with those of some others, you’ll find that we Americans (with variations by class and subculture and region, of course) do have a cowboy/hardcore Puritan toughness going on.

I’m suddenly thinking about those Cuddle Parties I read about a few years ago that started to be the rage in bigger cities like D.C. You know – parties where adults could – cuddle, nonsexually. Have kind, physical touch.

I mean – gross. But on the other hand, how telling, that someone had to invent a party to experience human affection.

I have to confess, it was someone else pointing out the contrast between the Touch Ration of two  separate church congregations that got me noticing this rampant lack. The one church we visited was all hugs and pats and warmth; the other is kind in a remote, reserved, abstract kind of way.

And maybe I should be glad that there’s a variety of places to attend, so someone who doesn’t want to be hugged can have a place to go. But I feel like that guarded aloofness denotes a coldness I find in a lot of places, and that feels defensive and abrasive…

Infants fail to thrive when they don’t receive physical nurturing. Does a culture also fail to thrive if it doesn’t support individuals embracing each other, openly and easily?

Reach out and touch someone.

Let Go, Let Taoism

I heard a person say the other day a phrase familiar to me from my Christian past: “Let go and Let God.”

Immediately I thought about the Taoist concept of wu-wei, not-doing, which means that you don’t work against the flow, but move with it. You let go of trying to force things – you let the universe do its thing.

It’s not often I feel like Christianity and Taoism share concepts, but when it comes to Christ admonishing his followers not to worry, because God dresses the flowers in the field and feeds the sparrow,  I think Lao-Tze would nod his head. “God” or “Tao,” here, refers to this mysterious and yet totally natural and mundane aliveness – Dylan Thomas’ green life force – that doesn’t die when one of us dies, that doesn’t stop. We can worry or not worry, but the storm will come, the sun will shine, the ozone layer will diminish, babies will be born, people will die. We can have a temper tantrum about it, or we can accept it, and enjoy it while we’re here. We have that choice. When you see yourself as living within the whole, whether you picture that whole as being the hand of a benevolent deity or not, you see yourself, I believe, in the right perspective. Worry becomes irrelevant. Your relationship to the whole matters more than whether you get your way about a small particular or not.

Which reminds me of this paradoxical quote:

What you do is of little significance, but it is very important that you do it.
-M.K. Gandhi

And I will bow to the flow and let this post go right here.