I gravitate towards “Icy”. How about you?

Go see Lev’s website.

Well, I’ve put my money where my mouth is. After many posts advising you (our readers) to expand your comforts zones, I’ve broken through a huge barrier in mine: I cut my hair.

Each of us must determine our own path. While a haircut might seem pretty mundane, it was a hurdle I never thought I’d clear in killing my ego. My childhood awkward phase was aggravated by an unfortunate bowl cut after which my mother resorted to getting my ears pierced to tip off the grocery clerk that I was not her son. The kids at school called me Edward because I looked like a boy. It was terrible. Once my hair finally grew out, I clung to it for dear life. My femininity and beauty were all wrapped up in having long hair. My appearance was the sum of my parts, my hair being one of the greatest contributors to that total. In my case, insecurity bred vanity; I never thought I’d cut my hair.

In the last few weeks, I realized how attached I’ve been to my hair. So attached that the mere thought of getting my hair cut short brought on the rumblings of an anxiety attack. I could hardly entertain the thought of a haircut, let alone actually go through with it. I decided enough was enough. I was being held hostage by my hair. Time for a haircut.

Laura accompanied me to the salon yesterday. She was very helpful in keeping my calm and not letting me get wrapped up in imagining how ugly and horrible I would look. Once the stylist chopped off the long part (twelve inches!) I started to relax. The ball was rolling and it was too late to stop it.

I’m so happy I cut my hair. I feel lighter in more ways that one. My hair is gone and I didn’t transform into a boy or an asexual child! I can be pretty, not just have pretty hair. This may seem frivolous, but sometimes we cling to the little things because they’re easier to dismiss. When I told people I was getting my haircut as part of my personal growth, many of them thought it was strange. They said, “It doesn’t matter if your hair is long or short, so why cut it?” I cut it because it mattered tremendously to me. My long hair was like a security blanket. It was like a badge of feminine honor (my hair is longer than your hair, I win). It had to go. If only all ego slaying was as simple as a haircut.

I challenge you to take a look at the little attachments you have and break them (I’d never wear…… I always buy……. My hair will always be……). Those small external attachments can be difficult to break because they directly affect how we are perceived by others. Passersby will probably not notice your latest meditation breakthrough, but dye your hair green and they’ll stare. It’s easy to say that appearances are impermanent when someone else’s appearance is in question.

How could I expect to reach spiritual maturity if I couldn’t even stomach a haircut? What attachments are holding you back?

Our little CtU family has had some shake-ups recently. Both Laura and I will be heading off to graduate school in a few months, leaving our beloved apartment and San Francisco behind us. It’s been a tumultuous year, but we’ve been together through everything. It’s kind of scary for us to think about going our separate ways. We’re getting used to the idea slowly and with the advent of spring, it seems there’s no better time for rebirth and renewal. Maybe that’s why I was so struck by today’s reading in 365 Tao by Deng Ming-Dao:

A solitary crane
In winter snow
Needs no jewels.

A single crane standing unconcerned in the falling snow is the very image of independence. It nees no one, it is secure in its environment, and it is capable of going through life alone. Its independence stems from self-sufficiency.

It needs no clothing, no building, no wealth, no status. It is content, even glorious in its naked identity. So too with ourselves: There is no need for dazzling clothes, an impressive career, an awesome temple, nor a bejeweled master. What we want is something far beyond such externals.

What facets of your personality are encumbrances? What personal aspects prevent you from being independent? These are the areas that will define your self-cultivation, for you must strive to stand alone. This doesn’t mean that you won’t ever join with others, but you will do so as an individual who will cooperate just as much as is necessary. In this way you will never be lost in a group, and you will never fear being alone.

If we live like the crane, our true essence will arise in us from the Source. By understanding and observing the encumbrances in our personalities, they lose their power. The Tao, the Universe, runs through each of us and guides our lives. By standing still, unafraid, embracing our true identities, the light of the Universe will shine forth. There is nothing to fear, I am everything and everything is me: all one.

Yesterday I spent some time with an old friend who just got back from an 11 day meditation retreat in Thailand. She learned about the Three Poisons and was explaining them to me. I found the metaphors of the three poisons an effective way to look at my behavior.

The three poisons are:

Greed (represented by the rooster)

Anger or Hatred (represented by the snake)

Ignorance or Delusion (represented by the pig)

These three concepts are thought of as the roots of unwholesome karma.

“In Buddhist teachings, greed, hatred, and delusion are known, for good reason, as the three poisons, the three unwholesome roots, and the three fires. These metaphors suggest how dangerous afflictive thoughts and emotions can be if they are not understood and transformed… The poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion are a byproduct of ignorance—ignorance of our true nature, the awakened heart of wisdom and compassion. Arising out of our ignorance, these poisonous states of mind then motivate nonvirtuous and unskillful thoughts, speech, and actions, which cause all manner of suffering and unhappiness for ourselves and others.” Naljor Dharma Service

1. Greed: Refers to selfishness, misplaced desire, attachment, and grasping for happiness and satisfaction outside of yourself. Greed is a burning desire, an unquenchable thirst, craving, and lust; you want the objects of our desire to provide you with lasting satisfaction in order to feel fulfilled, whole, and complete. The poison of greed creates an inner hunger so that you are always striving towards an unattainable goal. You mistakenly believe happiness is dependent upon that goal, but once you attain it, you get no lasting satisfaction.
2. Anger or Hatred: Refers to aversion and repulsion toward unpleasant people, circumstances, and even toward your own uncomfortable feelings. With aversion, you habitually resist, deny, and avoid unpleasant feelings, circumstances, and people you do not like. You want everything to be pleasant, comfortable, and satisfying all the time. This behavior simply reinforces the perception of duality and separation. Hatred or anger thrusts you into a vicious cycle of always finding conflict and enemies everywhere around you. You can also create conflict within yourself when you have an aversion to your own uncomfortable feelings. With hatred and aversion, you deny, resist, and push away your own inner feelings of fear, hurt, loneliness, and so forth, treating these feelings like an internal enemy.
3. Ignorance or Delusion: Refers to dullness, bewilderment, and misperception; your wrong views of reality.Delusion is the misperception of the way the world works; your inability to understand the nature of things exactly as they are, free of perceptual distortions. Influenced by delusion, you are not in harmony with yourself, others, or with life; you are not living in accordance with Dharma. Affected by the poison of delusion, which arises from ignorance of your true nature, you do not understand the interdependent and impermanent nature of life. Thus, you are constantly looking outside of ourselves for happiness, satisfaction, and solutions to our problems. This outward searching creates even more frustration, anger, and delusion. Naljor Dharma Service

It is generally understood that each of us has a tendency to practice one of the poisons more often than the others. Spend a minute to contemplate which of the poisions you have a tendency towards. It was relatively clear to me that I have a tendency towards anger or hatred. I have a rather inward directed version of this particular poison. I aver my uncomfortable feelings and direct my discontent inwards.

There are specific practices that are geared towards combating each of these poisons.

The practice to overcome greed: Learn to practice selflessness, generosity and detachment. If you are strongly experiencing the greed poison, contemplate the impermanence of the object you desire. Practice charitable giving; give your time and material possessions. You can practice giving away those things you would most like to hold onto. You can also practice acts of selfless service and charity, offering care and assistance to others in any way you can, free of all desire for recognition or compensation. The problems associated with greed and attachment only arise when you mistakenly believe and act as if the source of our happiness is outside of yourself.
The practice to overcome anger: Learn to cultivate loving-kindness, compassion, patience, and forgiveness. Here you learn to openly embrace the entire spectrum of your experiences without hatred or aversion. Practice meeting unpleasant both experiences in the outer world with patience, kindness, forgiveness, and compassion and your own unpleasant feelings in the same way. Your feelings of loneliness, hurt, doubt, fear, insecurity, inadequacy, depression all require your openness and loving-kindness. Soften your defenses, open your heart, and let go of hatred, aversion, and denial.
Practice to overcome ignorance: Cultivate wisdom, insight, and right understanding. Learning to experience reality exactly as it is, without the distortions of your self-centered desires, fears, and expectations, you free yourself from delusion. Deeply sensing and acting in harmony with the ever-changing nature of this world—realizing that all living beings are inseparably related and that lasting happiness does not come from anything external—you free yourself from delusion. As you develop a clear understanding that positive, wholesome actions that bring happiness and the negative, unwholesome actions that bring suffering, you cultivate the wisdom that counteracts delusion and ignorance.

I have been practicing loving-kindness regularly and am absolutely amazed at how well it works for me. I encourage you to contemplate the three poisons to see what insights you can personally glean from them.

Much of what I wrote was paraphrased from Naljor Dharma Service

Yikes. I felt a little nauseous just writing the title of this post, but since this issue has been coming up for me lately, it seems like I should write about it. To preface: I’m white.

For the first time in my life, I am having extensive contact with black people on a consistent basis in my work (I’m a counselor at a group home for foster youth). It has raised a lot of interesting issues for me:

1. I have an aversion to noticing that we are of different races. My brain seems to try to block it out.
2. I watch what I say and dread any race related conversation.
3. I feel the tension in rooms when white people don’t speak openly even about issues that are unrelated to race because they are afraid they could be turned into racial issues.
4. There are certain issues I don’t want to bring up because I don’t feel like it is my place to comment. For example, I don’t know how to raise my concerns about the kids calling each other “nigga”.
5. I get extremely annoyed listening to recurring diatribes about white privilege and patriarchy.

These are just a few issues that have been coming up in the last couple of weeks. What I think is most interesting is that I don’t say anything about my concerns for fear of offending one of my black coworkers. Generally, I prefer to remove myself from the situation, rather than have to express any thought or concern that relates to race in even the smallest way. This reaction has me wondering if the same forces are at work in society at large. Despite the advancements of civil rights, most people live fairly racially segregated lives. It seems easy to proclaim tolerance and understanding from afar.

Furthermore, I have never felt this uncomfortable when I’ve spent time with people of other races one-on-one or in more racially mixed settings. In those instances I have always felt that I could raise questions and have an open dialog about race. I think one of the reasons I feel differently now is that I am working in the foster care system with people (black and white) who buy into a “Progressive” agenda in which racial oppression is a primary issue. It feels like many people in this field of work are hypersensitive to issues of race which has a chilling effect on dialog in general. I constantly worry that I will use an incorrect term or ask unintentionally offensive question and be accused of racism. By keeping my concerns to myself, I find myself getting angry and resentful. Not exactly ideal conditions for increased understanding.

So what to do? I’m working on my own sensitivity as well as working up the courage to bring up my concerns at work. When uncomfortable incidents happen, I want to use them as opportunities for dialog, to get my questions answered, rather than just run away to avoid discomfort. I truly believe that an open, candid approach to these issues will be beneficial to all parties involved and will bring us closer together. I hope that we can have an open conversation about race, in which everyone feels safe to speak up and have questions answered.

In early December I went on a five day mindfulness- meditation retreat. It was a silent retreat at an idyllic retreat center. Because I was far way from from the noise and bustle of everyday life, I was able to relax deeply, confront anxiety and fear and reach some profound levels of awareness, bliss and peace. While I still plan to blog about this retreat, I don’t think it’s an experience that many people can relate to. “It’s great you got to sit on a cushion for 14 hours a day, I won’t be doing that any time soon,” is a common reaction. However, my recent trip from New Hampshire back home to San Francisco is just the kind of hassle-y nightmarish day we’ve all had and a perfect example of how to use mindfulness in your everyday life.

The day started off badly, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Then I had complications getting to the airport (that New Hampshire primary traffic really caused a back-up) and car sickness from all the windy roads and stop-and-go movement. Reeeealy late, I ran into the airport, filled with anxiety. Well my flight was three hours delayed (when are flights to O’Hare not delayed?) and I certainly would miss my connection. Luckily I got booked through Dulles and on to SF. I was scheduled to get back home at midnight (only an hour and half later than expected). Not surprisingly the six hour Dulles to SF flight was also delayed (they didn’t seem to have a reason). We finally boarded, but all was not well. Little “Caroline” sitting next to me was not amused with the delays. She started screeching, not in that baby-ish scared/sad way, but in the “I’m hella pissed and am going to shriek until my vocal cords are destroyed” way. It was loud. She has a promising career in the extreme metal scene. She also has stamina. I had several options at this point:

1. Try to ignore it and focus intensely on something else (which includes ignoring the frustration that accompanies the sound)
2. Feel frustrated, annoyed and angry. Feel (with the surging emotions, coursing through the body) why this has not been a good day and how airplanes are horrible.
3. Focus on thinking, try to forget about the negative feelings that accompany the sound. Remember why babies are horrible. Wonder why people have them. Go on a thought-tirade
4. Pay attention to the noise.

Option four is what I eventually chose and is simply another way of saying “practice mindfulness of sound.” The way this works is:

1. Stop what you are doing
2. Notice the sound.
3. Be interested in the sound
4. Listen fully to the sound.
5. Notice all the intricacies of the sound

After you have spent some time with the sound, then move on to noticing what reactions the sound is creating in you. Do you feel annoyed? Angry? Upset? Are you creating stories around the sound? Have your thoughts spun in a million directions? Perhaps you’ve decided that Caroline has a bad mother. The mother doesn’t know what she is doing. Maybe you have condemned her for bringing a child on board at all. (She should have known better!). Maybe you’re now thinking about your own parents and their foibles. Try to locate a spot or spots in your body where you feel the reaction to the sound. Are you clenching your jaw? Do you feel an overall tightness? Keep returning to the sound itself when you feel yourself distracted or overwhelmed. Caroline’s screeching is your home base (like the breath in meditation). Keep returning to that sound and noticing your reactions.

This worked quite well for me and the flight itself turned out to be fine. I was amazed at how much my annoyance at Caroline diminished when I practiced mindfulness of sound. However, you might not have that experience when practicing mindfulness of sound. It could happen where you actually feel more or worse when you pay attention– but this is part of the practice. What ever you pay attention to could feel stronger, weaker or stay the same. Try not to be attached to the outcome, but merely interested in what’s happening.

Just as a note, I didn’t merely get to go home after this… When I tried to get a shuttle home, a guy decided he didn’t like how the driver was handling his luggage and called the cops. Dealing with three cop cars and a lot of yelling took a while. Then I got stuck on a different shuttle and the folks didn’t know which hotel they were going to. So we drove all the way to San Francisco and then had to drive all the way back to the airport until we finally found their hotel. It was late, could even be called morning, when I crawled into bed. So, apologies if this post is a bit rambly.

The other night Laura and I had finished our last Netflix (Eastern Promises, we recommend it.) so we decided to play a super fun and exciting game of “What would you rather?”

After exhausting the obvious (be eaten by a shark or a tiger?) and the silly (become the Little Mermaid or Princess Jasmine?) we actually came upon some questions that illuminated key differences in our personalities and issues for us to work on. We found that we agreed on most scenarios until it came to issues of appearance vs. intellect.

In my case, I generally chose to improve my appearance and presentation (looks, speaking skills) over my intellect. I think this is because I often feel misunderstood and fear that people don’t recognize my intelligence. While I’m confident that I’m smart, I worry that people don’t take me seriously and I have to prove my intelligence constantly. In my mind, becoming smarter would be useless because I feel that my current intelligence is underutilized and unrecognized. In the game I consistently chose good looks and gifts of expression because I saw them as tools to channel or augment my intelligence. This aspect of my personality was clearly shown in our game and it’s something I’m actively working on.

Overall, Laura and I found the game to be a lighthearted way to compare our personalities and gain new insights.

Here are a few questions to try:

1. Would you rather be a mathematical genius or have a perfect physical appearance?
2. If you could speak any language fluently, which would you pick and why?
3. Would you rather be a phenomenal painter or dancer?
4. If you could change into any mammal at will, what would you pick?
5. Would you rather be a fantastic public speaker or writer?
6. If you could gain the cumulative knowledge of any one culture, which would you pick?
7. If you could be the protege of any person, living or dead, whose would you be?

And so on. Add yours to the comments.

Despite that Considering The Universe blog has had a marked lack of recent activity, it doesn’t follow that it’s creators have stopped “considering” recently– in fact we’ve done quite a lot of considering and are psyched to start blogging about it all.

During the holidays I had the pleasure of attending an Anthroposophy meeting where we practiced Goethean Conversation.

Anthroposophy is a spiritual philosophy (to quote Wikepedia) that is based on the writings and teachings of Rudolph Steiner. Steiner is a philosopher and spiritualist who describes an objective and intellectually knowable spirit realm. He wrote and taught methods (like inner cultivation and meditation) which allow a student to directly access and experience this spiritual world. We’re quite interested in Steiner here at CtU and recommend his teachings.

At the meeting I met several people who regularly interact in this realm and “see” spiritual beings and realms. While I didn’t get a chance to ask them much about their experiences, I did talk briefly to one woman. She said she found her connection to this higher realm quite beneficial but that her purpose in life was to learn other lessons, lessons unrrelated to her gift of spiritual “seeing.”

During the meeting we followed a procedure for speaking based on the article, The Art of Goethean Conversation, we had all read about the importance of ritualized speech.

In her article, Marjorie Spock (who is Dr. Spock’s sister) writes about the purpose of ritualized speech:

[Goethean conversation's purpose] is to call forth a fullness of spiritual life, not to stage displays of intellectual fireworks…Instead, they strive to enter the sunward realm of living thoughts where a thinker uses all of himself as a tool of knowledge, where, in the manner of his thinking, he takes part as a creative spirit in the ongoing process of the cosmos…

Lesser types of interchange never do this: they remain mere mentalizing, speculation, argument, a recounting of experience, an offering of opinion, a reporting. At their worst, a mindless associative rambling…While most of these lesser forms of exchange can be made to serve useful purposes, the fact that they remain on this side of the threshold condemns them to spiritual barrenness.

 

She describes how speech brings us closer to spiritual realms:

True conversations have another power. As the participants strive to enter the world of living thoughts together, each attunes his intuitive perception to the theme. He does so in the special atmosphere engendered by approaching the threshold of the spiritual world, a mood of supernatural attentive listening, of the most receptive openness to the life of thought into which he and his companions are now entering.

 

She goes on to describe more in depth reasons for why and how this use of speech is so powerful. While we had some success using ritualized speech during the Anthroposophy meeting and it certainly was an intriguing exercise, I don’t know that it “worked” as meaningfully as Majorie or Goethe envisioned during this particular meeting. However, the concepts around speech that Majorie touches on are particularly relevant and important and I have had experiences where ritualized speech creates a powerful atmosphere.

I could write many essays about the importance of speech, but for now briefly consider the following. “Right Speech” is regarded as the hardest part of the Buddhist Eight fold path, in fact the Buddha was said to have spent most of his past lives working on “Right Speech.” Just think about what you spend most of your waking hours doing, if not thinking. Probably speaking, or writing. Even when we are listening, we are evaluating what we hear and crafting our responses. Even thoughts can often be viewed as part of speech. I wrote an article about the importance of silence here, that just briefly describes an important spiritual practice found in almost all world religions. It makes sense to me then, that ritualized speech or using speech in a particular manner could powerfully influence our relationship to the spiritual world. Prayer, religious chants, benedictions, incantations and even singing are all methods of the major religions that use speech to bring us closer to God.

Even if we didn’t create a perfectly compelling spiritual atmosphere using the Goethean Converstation format during the Anthroposophy meeting, we did use speech in a different (a more sacred) manner. This practice became a powerful example to illustrate how often we use speech mindlessly, without noticing the power it actually has.

I’m temping today. Temping is fun because I get to observe the office activities, while remaining detached. This morning a drama was unfolding. I think we can learn something from it.

One of the upper managers bursts into the office this morning, in a very bad mood. He starts ranting to his co-workers about an incident at the gym this morning. Apparently, he took up a little more than one parking space, crowding into another space. He was sleepy when he parked so it was not his fault, he says. When he came out of the gym, there was a note left on his car; its author threatened to damage the car if it ever took up more than one space again. The manager was furious, “How dare he! Everyone makes mistakes!” He had a plan though. The note was written on the back of an invoice for a fancy car dealership here in San Francisco. Although the author was careful to remove his name and address, he left the bar-code. The office manager knows someone who works at this particular dealership. He spent the morning plotting to find the identity of the person who wrote the note so he could contact them and tell them he knows who they are.

As we can see, pettiness begets pettiness, stooping ever lower. Someone allowed a poorly parked car to ruin their day. In retaliation, they attempted to ruin the day of the car’s owner. The car’s owner not only allowed his day to be ruined, but plotted further retaliation. I can only imagine that this nonsense will continue to spiral to ever more ridiculous depths.

Last night Laura and I watched Earth, a film about the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan. Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs were locked in a cycle of revenge that led to former friends and neighbors killing each other. While this morning’s antics were mostly just silly, revenge can have disastrous consequences when it escalates.

Haven’t we all felt like this? We are feeling bad so we want others to feel bad as well, preferably whomever we decide is the source of our bad feelings.

How might this situation been handled differently? The note’s author could have shrugged off the bad parking job and been on his way. The manager could have laughed off the note instead of letting it make him as angry as whoever wrote it. The friend at the dealership could refuse to participate in the manager’s childish vendetta.

If we can’t let tiny things like these go in our personal lives, why do we expect our leaders to behave any differently? We are quick to criticize politicians’ petty feuds and military retaliation, but too often we display the same behavior ourselves. No one can make you angry, you choose to become angry. Once angry, you can choose to lash out at the world and try to spread your negativity. How can we expect anyone, including the government, not to engage in vengeful actions if we do ourselves?

There’s some memey post (apparently originating at Evolving Times) now circulating through the personal growth blogosphere asking: What would you do with an extra 36 hours of free time each week? Now, I appreciate Edward’s motivation for the post: work less and enjoy life more a la Timothy Ferriss. My problem is the assumption that we are all too busy too enjoy life. We don’t need more time in each day, we need to understand our beliefs and myths about time better.

Does this sound like someone you know:

“I’d love to learn Spanish, I’m just so busy. Hey, did you see Entourage last night?”

The term “busy” is another way of focusing our choices away from ourselves. By saying “I’m too busy” we are not using our personal power to determine what we do and when.  Every moment of every day, I have a choice to continue doing whatever I’m doing or do something else. This is precisely what Scott H Young talked about in his insightful post about time. Time is a relative construct, really we are always in now. When you’re deliberate in your actions, you can find yourself doing exactly what you want to be doing every moment. Time cannot be wasted; time is only this moment. As Scott says:

Time is not a resource. It is completely inside your mind. You can’t experience time, only right now. You simply have memories of the past and projections of the future that leads you to suspect time exists. It is your focus on these concepts of time, which don’t appear through the senses, that make it real.

Even if you look beyond this abstract perspective, time is not a resource. Twenty-four hours will pass in the day no matter what you do. You can’t store or collect time, nor can you grasp it in this moment.

When we say we “wasted time”, what we mean is that we remember certain moments in the past as being unfulfilling. No activity is objectively fulfilling or unfulfilling. I choose how I spend my time; I choose to be fulfilled or not. This feeling of being unfulfilled comes from a lack of presence in the now. Scott explains:

If your time is being invested in pursuits that lack quality, you will feel deprived even if the amount of time is unchanged.

The first way to increase quality of the now, is simply to look for it…When you stop planning, projecting and remembering and focus only on what is happening right now, worry dissolves. The oasis is beneath your feet, the desert was just too distracting.

The second way to increase quality deals with the method of interacting with the world. Become deliberate in what you do. This could be seen as a parallel to the first suggestion. Focusing on the now is mostly blocking out thoughts through effort. Whereas, doing in the now is task oriented.

Every minute is free time. We are free to do anything we choose every moment. There is no reason to wish for more time because the only time you’ll ever have is now. If you wish you were doing something else right now, do it. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’d have to sit in a field of daisies all day. Sometimes I like going to the grocery store or the post office because I like getting things done. When we recognize that every moment is a choice, these things don’t seem like chores. If we increase the quality of our every moment through deliberate intent, life will seem less hectic and more fulfilling.