Composure

Looking upon a lake up in the Beartooths.

Composure apparently means "calmness or repose especially of mind, bearing or appearance". Well, at least that's what Merriam Webster says. I am still trying to draw my own meaning, especially since it is being sorely tested of late.

Is Shunryu Suzuki Roshi correct when he says that "composure" is "to find composure in the face that everything changes"? It feels that way these days.

"Composure" can also mean "putting one's mind together" but is different than "equanimity" which means "with even mind."

Semantics aside, what I know is that I'm trying to regain my composure in the face of great change. Change so deep that I don't know if I will ever be the same again.

These days, I find myself gazing out and trying to see what's now before me given what is now behind me.

Sitting by my tree at Holland Lake, February 2007.

Heron Dance #248

The latest from Rob MacIver...seemed fitting for what I'm feeling right now.

A New Dawn

One spring morning sixteen years ago, at a time of great turmoil in my life,
I saw the sun rise up over a marsh at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.

As the sun rose, and the subtle hues of the marsh turned soft pastel—
Blue and red and yellow and green and brown, all shifting—
And the sun shone brighter and brighter,
The colors turned sepia for a few seconds.

A Great Blue Heron rose up from the edge of the marsh.
A large bird, a mythic bird, its wings obscuring and being obscured
By the sun and the sun bouncing off the water behind.
I knew my life would change, and that I would live before long
In a much larger world, a brighter world, than my world then,
which was one of Wall Street, business and despair.

That larger world was always there,
But that sunrise and that bird brought it into my life and my heart.
For a second, what I thought I knew, I didn’t know
And what I didn’t know, I knew.

***

There's been so much dramatic change in my life this past week that I don't know what to make of it. What I do know though is that my life is changing course. I'm not sure where I'm headed now, but I know I will find my way. I always have.

New thoughts from others

Lover of books that I am, I could not resist giving you all some treasured quotes from Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson, which I just finished reading and which focuses on the importance of education for women.

"After attending a conference of development experts in Bangladesh, Mortenson decided CAI schools should educate students only up through the fifth grade and focus on increasing the enrollment of girls. 'Once you educate boys, they tend to leave the villages and go search for work in the cities,' Mortenson explains. 'But the girls stay home, become leaders in the community, and pass on what they've learned. If you really want to change a culture, to empower women, improve basic hygiene and health care, and fight high rates of infant mortality, the answer is to educate girls" (p. 209).

"'If the Taliban is gone, why do you still wear the burkha?' Bergman asked. 'I'm a conservative lady, ' Uzra said, 'and it suits me. Also, I feel safer in it. In fact, I insist that all my lady teachers wear the burkha in the bazaar. We don't want to give anyone an excuse to interfere with our girls' studies.' 'But don't you feel, I don't know, oppressed, having to look out through that little slit?' Bergman, an emancipated woman from San Francisco, asked. Uzra smiled broadly for the first time since Mortensen met her, and as she freed herself from her burkha, he was struck by how beautiful she still was at fifty despite the hardships she'd endured. 'We women of Afghanistan see the light through education, ' Uzra replied. 'Not through this or that hole in a piece of cloth.'" (p. 289)

"Jahan took a breath and composed herself. 'When I was a little sort of girl and I would see a gentleman or a lady with good, clean clothes I would run away and hide my face. But after I graduated from the Korphe School, I felt a big change in my life. I felt I was clear and clean and could go before anybody and discuss anything. And now that I am already in Skardu, I feel that anything is possible. I don't want to be just a health worker. I want to be such a woman that I can start a hospital and be an executive, and look over all the health problems of all the women in the Braldu. I want to become a very famous woman of this area...I want to be a...'Superlady,' she said, grinning defiantly, daring anyone, any man, to tell her she couldn't."

***

I remain convinced that education is the best way to stand on your own two feet and face the world. I applaud Mortensen and his work. Kudos to you!

A New Perspective

Sitting within a petrified redwood tree in Yellowstone (June 2007)

Things have been very challenging as of late, and I feel lost and confused. Still, I was reminded tonight that sometimes you need to rise above your situation in order to see clearly.


Thanks, CJ. I needed that.

Brady

Meet Brady.

This photo was taken in the midst of a serious belly rub (hence Brady's goofy look) and I include it here because it just makes me giggle out loud. There's something special about this animal. Without expecting it, Brady has become one of my greatest spiritual teachers, delivering messages to me in a rhythm punctuated by perfect comedic timing.

He makes learning effortless, and it's only later that I realize just how deep the lessons really are.

I mean, look at that face! How can you spend time analyzing the lesson when you're caught up in a fit of giggles?

He's a perfectly packaged little Zen being who lives only in the present moment. Yoda, watch out!

A New Earth...A Powerful Awakening

I'm thinking about awakening tonight and what that really means for me and for each one of us. This idea has been following me around for the last few months, leaving me with the subtle feeling that I'm getting very close to making some sort of breakthrough. I don't really know what this is about just yet but my gut tells me that it has something to do with completing a lesson and moving towards a new level of awareness.

As many of you know, the past four years have been a whirlwind roller coaster ride that has brought as much happiness (Montana) as it has sadness and frustration (Princeton, the Ph.D. and my current work).

Throughout my childhood and into my early adulthood, I would wake up each morning and say, "Okay, universe, my life is yours. Do with me what you need to. Put me where you need me. I'm ready to serve." And, the most magical things would happen when I lived like that - I got scholarships to Ivy League schools, job offers without applying anywhere, free hair cuts/color, etc... It was amazing and magical. My family joked that it was as if I had a direct phone line to God.

The reason why I believe this level of flow happened for me (and why I believe it can happen to others) is that in all I trusted what was happening in the moment, was grateful for the outcome before I knew it, and had faith that I would land where I was needed.

Then Princeton happened.

I was accepted with a full tuition scholarship and given a generous living stipend, money for language classes, overseas travel, a camera, etc... It was like hitting the academic jackpot...something to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars just to sit and learn AND I didn't have to pay a dime. The doors to the school opened so fast and it felt so right that I just walked through them, trusting that Princeton was where I was needed and that all would be right as rain.

But, it wasn't.

It was hellish. I had trouble with my advisor, my romantic relationship was crumbling, my studies suffered, and I couldn't seem to do anything right, much less pass a language exam (took me three time to pass both my Italian and German exams) and in my second year, it felt like I was being pushed from the program even though I was well-liked and in excellent standing. It didn't make sense. In fact, it still doesn't. I have no idea what those two years were about -- and I chose to leave with my soul intact rather than prostitute myself for a degree which felt hostile and required me to jump through more hoops than I was willing.

The thing is that when Princeton began to fall apart and grew hostile, I wanted to sit down with the universe/God and say, "What?!!! You bring me here and now you're pushing me to leave??? What is this all about?" This shook my faith and my very identity to the core because I had engineered my whole life to reach the Ph.D. and there I was, at the very best program in the country, on a full-ride, barely into my studies and it felt like I was being asked to leave.

I talked to a spiritual director about this once, and he said to me, "Oh, I see. Did you ask God if you were supposed to receive your Ph.D. there?"

Right.

Looking back, I think I can make out some of it: leaving Princeton forced me to reconsider my life's path; it brought me to Montana where I met people who changed my life; the pain I felt at the University led me to start a Socrates Cafe at Princeton's public library and I'm happy to report that it's still thriving; the success there led me to start them in two other cities (Missoula, MT and McLean, VA) and both cafes are still going strong; leaving Princeton has allowed me to teach more students and I came away from Hiram College and the University of Montana, Missoula knowing some of the most dear, kindhearted, REAL people I have ever known.

In many ways, my life is much better post-Princeton than it was pre-Princeton.

Still, I haven't made peace with that decision and since then, I just feel like I'm drifting. This idea that I would become a college professor didn't feel right for a while -- only now is it beginning to blossom within me again.

***

This afternoon, I came across Eckart Tolle's A New Earth, which seemed to find me exactly when I needed it most. The best thing about this book is that Oprah has chosen it as a book club book which means that all of us can go to her website or to ITunes and download the classes (each 1.5 hours long) for FREE. I watched the first class tonight, and it felt like Tolle was speaking directly to me.

He said that we need to ask life what our purpose here on Earth is AND we need to make ourselves still in order to hear the answer. He said that at one point in his life, he felt compelled to move to the West Coast and write a book there. He had no idea what the book would be about and he didn't know anyone ON the West Coast. Still, he trusted that small voice and took himself out there, knowing and TRUSTING that this impulse would provide answers to his question of "why?". Once he was there, he said he made himself still for days -- quieting his mind and his thoughts -- until one day, the book started coming to him. He also realized that to bring this book to life, he needed the West Coast's energy to nurture the ideas within him.

The result was, of course, A New Earth.

He also said that we have to ask ourselves two questions:

1. Am I ready to be still? (He said there are people who may need to suffer a little bit longer before they're reading to stop chattering and start listening.)

2. What is my relationship with the present moment? (Am I in it or am I thinking about other things? Am I enjoying my shower or am I already "at the office"?)

Furthermore, he said that what you resist, persists.

It is this last comment which felt like it was being directed right at me. Obviously, I must be resisting something in order to have all this persistent chaos in my life. What am I not making peace with? What is preventing me from having the life I know is within my grasp?

Is it karma? Am I working off an old cycle?

Is it fear? Fear of the unknown? Failure? Unacceptance?

Is it ego? Tolle says that you'll know a desire is ego driven if you finally get it and it does not satisfy you.

OR am I exactly where I need to be? Am I here, in this job, with these people because they need me the most right now? Am I called to act as a light in the darkness there? To smile when no one else does? To bring life to stagnation? To help others regain their souls?

I think this is why this past week was a good one for me at work BECAUSE I felt like I was really making a difference -- bringing problems to the attention of management, reaching out to those who are suffering or being persecuted, changing the way the environment there feels by showing up and demanding that it change. I think that this is why I can't seem to leave my job. Why the doors here opened up so quickly and why I feel compelled to stay just a tad longer. I can't name it but this year feels very important to me in this way.

I dislike that it takes me from things which feel important elsewhere but I know that, at most, it will only require another year to finish this...to be present there. I can't explain it. Just because I may have given up on the universe doesn't mean that it has given up on me. Maybe, even when I was unaware of it, I kept saying my prayer and the universe responded in turn.

Hm. It's certainly a theory and it's comforting. In the meantime, I choose to make peace with whatever I'm resisting. I choose to expand and advance past what I don't understand right now.

I think the difference now is that I trust it will happen.

I am in the process of believing it already is.

Sticking It Out

This from a recent Heron Dance:

Heron Dance #240

So much of what really matters in life comes with sticking with it and allowing things to come at their own pace. You stick with what really matters through the dark days, and light comes again. The things you stick with through the winter are the things that are most important in your life. Sticking with those things offers a rich experience of life.

***

I feel like I've been in the winter for a very long time. I know spring is just around the corner and that what I'm doing now will bear fruit in the future; however, it comes at great cost to my own personal happiness.

I also feel that this job is teaching me something powerful -- I'm becoming a better thinker and writer and I am gaining empathy for others where I work. These lessons will help me become a better teacher, Ph.D. candidate and healer in the near future. In fact, I almost feel like I could use another year in my work environment before I launch myself back in a Ph.D. program because of the training and practice I'm getting.

Still, on days like today, I want to leave this all behind for the wilds of Montana. I took this job to finish something I started long ago and within a year I should be able to walk away with that lesson completed. Still, does this internal knowing mean I should stick with it? Or should I eschew everything and move to a town which feeds me?

I'm really not sure.