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Days of Awe

Can I start with dreams of spring to inspire days of awe? Cherry blossom tea is brings reflection.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

I have had to take off my rose-coloured glasses. I am languishing. Decisions are being made that will affect me and I can’t do anything about it. I can put one foot in front of the other and deal with the consequences of other’s decisions. And I need a purpose injection.

Then this poem came through my inbox, I paused:

The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day — blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time,
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

This poem reminds me that I have the ability to infuse grace into my world. I am languishing because I am just going through the motions without a lot of emotion or interest. I can keep busy and that busyness is devoid of meaning. My busy life has kept me awe-deficient.

I am here to change that. I am reminding myself that I choose how I show up in the world and I want to experience what Einstein called the most beautiful thing by practicing awe.

Awe is when life grants us the chance to think differently and deeper about itself, so that we are not left squandering its gift by languishing it away.

The benefit for me to practice awe, as science suggests, is to increase my life satisfaction, have a sense of time slowing down or stopping, and feeling interconnected with others. I want that, especially today.

Today, I am practicing awe. Not the trivial awe of “Wow, I found ten bucks in my pocket!” but the real awe that is “ an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful…”

Today, my awe practice is an easy way to start. I want to infuse awe into my day and appointments today kept me languishing. Instead of waiting to start tomorrow, I set aside five minutes after breakfast to watch a awe-inspiring video. The video when given all my attention on full screen mode gives a sense of vastness in the world and puts into perspective my small place in it. It expands my sense of wonder.

Give it a try:

Taking time out of my routine to experience awe lifts me out of the usual day-to-day concerns and connects me to something larger.

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A Good Night Means A Good Morning

These headlines keep showing up in my inbox:

 

And now I will see more as Google tracks my searches.

For years, I have been establishing a morning routine. I am a morning person. I like mornings. I start my mornings with a solid Awake tea.

My morning starts at 4:35 (so I can feel like I have already hit the snooze) and I head straight for the gym. I am home at 6:10. I get the dogs leashed and meet my friends at the corner for an hour walk. I am back between 7:20 and 7:30. Then it is shower, breakfast, meditate, journal, plan my day and get started.

In order for my morning to go smoothly, and I don’t feel like I need a nap at 9 o’clock in the morning, my morning routine has to start the night before. If I don’t get to bed on time, I don’t get up. If I don’t fall asleep quickly enough, or stay asleep all night, I don’t get up. I generally only miss my workout. The dogs get me up whether I like it or not. A poor night sleep doesn’t set me day up well even if it started an hour and a half later.

I am a good sleeper, normally. We are starting to learn about sleep and its patterns:

Most of us know that getting a good night’s sleep is important, but too few of us actually make those eight or so hours between the sheets a priority. For many of us with sleep debt, we’ve forgotten what “being really, truly rested” feels like.

To further complicate matters, stimulants like coffee and energy drinks, alarm clocks, and external lights — including those from electronic devices — interferes with our “circadian rhythm” or natural sleep/wake cycle.

Sleep needs vary across ages and are especially impacted by lifestyle and health. To determine how much sleep you need, it’s important to assess not only where you fall on the “sleep needs spectrum,” but also to examine what lifestyle factors are affecting the quality and quantity of your sleep such as work schedules and stress.

To get the sleep you need, you must look at the big picture. (Sleep Foundation)

Generally, a good evening routine means getting everything done so that I am in bed on time and have a chance to read myself sleepy.

 

I don’t feel sleep deprived with the sleep I get, but I am paying attention to what I do in the evening to ensure I get the best sleep possible. As a mother, a business woman, and a wife, getting myself ready for sleep means that everyone else is ready too. The kitchen is clean. Lunches are prepared. Emails are answered.

Smarter people suggest that to get the best sleep you need to start thinking about sleep at about 2 in the afternoon, when you are to stop drinking caffeine. I have set my caffeine cut of at about dinner time. I like an afternoon tea. Experiment with what works for you, if caffeine is a problem.

Screens should be turned off 2 hours before bed. I text my children who are away from home around 9:30 to hear how their day went and to say good night. And I set my phone alarm to get me up in the morning quietly. I am not an obsessive screen watcher, so the few minutes of screen time doesn’t seem to affect my night. What time do you need to shut down?

My goal is lights out by 10:30. And when that works, my morning works.

To get your morning routine working, set up your evening routine for a good night sleep.

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Broken Promises

The industrial age materialized a great promise. It promised domination over nature, material abundance, unlimited happiness and unimpeded freedom. New forms of energy — steam, electric, nuclear — were substituted for human, manual energy. As the computer pushes aside the need for the human mind, we could see our way to unlimited production and unlimited consumption. (Fromm)

Sipping Youth berry/ Orange Blossom tea, I wonder…is that reality? Expecting infinite resources from a finite planet seems a little obtuse.

The industrial age has indeed failed to fulfill its Great Promise, and ever growing numbers of people are becoming aware that:

*unrestricted satisfaction of all desires is not conducive to well-being, nor is it the way to happiness or even maximum pleasure.

*the dream of being independent masters of our lives ended when we began awakening to the fact that we have all become cogs in the bureaucratic machine, with our thoughts, feelings and tastes manipulated by government and industry and mass communications that they control.

*economic progress has remained restricted to the rich nations and the gap between rich and poor nations has ever widened

*technical progress itself has created ecological dangers…which may put an end to all civilization and possibly to all life. (Fromm)

These sentiments are echoed in many tomes. Michael Beckwith, in Spiritual Liberation, calls it the “tyranny of trends” that hijack our standard of success and “convince individuals what their life’s purpose should be.” Michael Ray from The Highest Goal believes “the most powerful obstacles to living in resonance with the highest goal come from the media, our schools, our parents and friends — our society. All of them tell us to chase a successful life that will be admired by others.”

Although many “enlightened” tell us to follow our bliss, or march to our own beat, the “tyranny of trends” is very compelling. We want to find our own path but the siren’s call is too strong. We need a better way to change our route.

For me, and maybe for you too,, that way was to adopt a new language for goal setting and dream building. The popular practice of setting S.M.A.R.T. goals keeps us focused on attainment. We express our desire in terms of getting some timely measurable objective. We set income goals. We set weight loss goals. We set a deadline. We measure our progress. We attain our goal. We pump our fist in the air and experience the moment of elation before we realize that we have to do it all over again.

Or we don’t reach that brass ring and we sit down. What is all that striving for? Science has told us that the happiness we feel when we achieve some goal is a short-lived peak experience. We quickly revert to our happiness set point.

What if the goal was not a set point, but a destination. Like arriving somewhere, like Disneyland, and we have the opportunity to explore and enjoy who we have become because you made it. We can measure success because we now have choice. For example, instead of having a goal to be debt-free consider embodying the life of someone for whom money doesn’t dictate their choices. For me, someone who doesn’t have to think about money when making choices is someone who makes smart money decisions, pays their bill on time and has money to exchange for great experiences. When I stand in that place, I am likely debt-free and I am enjoying what I am doing and who I am being, the destination.

What is your destination? Instead of labelling our goals as reaching a peak, label it as a place to go where we can now enjoy the view rather than always looking to the next mountain.

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The Colour of Compassion

Sipping blueberry lemonade tea on a sunny afternoon has me reflecting on the colour of compassion. The tea is not the purple hue of blueberries, nor is it the bright sunshine of lemons. It is somewhere in between. That in between is where compassion might lie.

Timber Hawkeye in Buddhist Boot Camp likes gray. We don’t live in a black and white world:

“When you’re not standing at either end, but hanging out in the middle instead, nothing can offend you.

Compassion and deep understanding towards others are significantly easier to access when nobody is far away from where you are.” (pg. 81)

Timber stands firmly in the middle ground. That does not mean that we need to be accepting of what is harmful. Having a moral code can help us define what is harmful and…

“you don’t have to agree with, only learn to live peacefully with, other people’s freedom of choice…No matter how certain we are of our version of the truth, we must humbly accept the possibility that someone who believes the exact opposite could also be right (according to their time, place and circumstance). This is the key to forgiveness, patience, and understanding.

That said, tolerance does NOT mean accepting what is harmful. Often times the lesson we are to learn is when to say “no,” the right time to walk away, and when to remove ourselves from the very cause of anguish. After all, we are the ones who create the environment we live in. (pg 65)”

Imagine if we create an environment of patience, compassion and understanding in our little corner of the world. And your neighbour creates their little plot of altruism. Our community would become little plots of peace that would leak on to one another. Is that too much to ask? Just fix up your little plot of peace and I will worry about mine.

Then we would…

“Never judge anyone for the choices that they make, and always remember that the opposite of what you know is also true. Every other person’s perspective on reality is as valid as your own, no matter how certain you are that what you are doing is the “right thing,” you must humbly accept the possibility that even someone doing the exact opposite might be doing the “right thing” as well.

Everything is subject to time, place, and circumstance. There are not “shoulds” in compassionate thinking.” (pg 136)

What is the colour of your compassion?