All the most powerful and wondrous things of living and being human cause language to falter and stumble short. The ways of the heart are not a language at all, but a territory. A place, wild and untamed where we find our home in each other and reside, sometimes like beasts and sometimes like flowers.
Enumerations that try to pull back the veil on love are feeble attempts to list mysteries. But, we should do it for each other, nonetheless, to remember what lasts and remember how the happiness of love is had in moments and short fits.
Outside of those moments, we have remembrances to help us map our way back to what is real. What is us.
It includes a number of practices from different religions to show examples of each branch. The roots represent the two may intentions of the contemplative practices found worldwide: Communication and connection; and awareness. Both are essential for transformation and progressing in maturity.
The main branches include:
Activist
Relational
Movement
Ritual/Cyclical
Stillness
Generative
Creative
Your specific tradition may include examples for each branch. For me, plenty was lacking in what I knew of my tradition in its modern form. It wasn’t until I dug a lot further into history and the whole spectrum of practice, did I see the depth therein and find new opportunities to enrich my soul and increase my felt connection to God and others.
If you’re searching for something in your daily spiritual practices and want to add a new sort of richness, see what you can add from a branch you haven’t climbed yet.
I’m reading the book by Brennan Manning called, “The Wisdom of Tenderness”.
Here is a gem I read today on page 107 and that I found really potent.
Brennan Manning died last year, and he is probably best known for writing the Ragamuffin Gospel. He accumulated a lot of wisdom through life, but it didn’t come cheap. Poor choices, wrong turns, and hard lessons molded him into a person of great compassion and grace–a sage for the poor in spirit and those smart enough to listen. Many sought him out for his wisdom.
When Manning came into recovery as an alcoholic he learned a buzzword from AA (Alcoholics Anonymous). They use it as a way to create greater awareness in a person who is vulnerable to slipping back into alcohol abuse.
• They stay on the lookout for four qualities that make them susceptible to relapse and are encouraged to seek help when they identify them occurring in their life. Before they take a sip they look for the signs and call for backup.
H.A.L.T.
H – Hungry (not just for food, but a longing in general)
A – Angry (or stressed, or frustrated)
L – Lonely (or rejected, or left out)
T – Tired (often tired from helping others or being otherwise overcommitted)
People in AA have to rely on each other to find support and avoid the demon booze. People in AA need to cultivate an awareness of their vulnerabilities to avoid a slide into dangerous, even life-threatening, behavior. But, don’t we all need help in the same sorts of ways? We engage in all sorts of bad habits from over eating, to binge tv watching, trolling on Facebook, eating a pint of ice cream out of the box, to watching or reading licentious content, to pill popping....or whatever…it’s probably very different for each person.
Sometimes we don’t even realize our feelings or how we are trying to soothe our selves.
Let’s develop the awareness to halt and seek help when we get run down, over-extended, or when we find ourselves feeling in some way hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. It can be the escape route from trouble, bad choices. It is awareness at the heart of any meaningful transformation or spiritual growth.
Will you be able to know to H.A.L.T. before trouble?
I’ll post other tidbits as I find them. Enjoy the book for yourself if you can. You can get it used for pocket change.
“Critical thinking without hope is cynicism. Hope without critical thinking is naïveté.” – Maria Popova
There is a balancing act for those of us with a creative spirit and a thoughtful disposition. We totter between hope and cynicism. This is the ongoing waltz, or slam dance.
Hope, without an anchor, leads to some inflated expectations that are soon slapped down by reality or disappointment.
But, in those disappointments, we can become wounded or hardened and grow an exoskeleton of cynicism.
Proverbs 17:22
A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
The truth is, I don’t understand life that well. (Not suffering or joy. Both are weird to me, still.) All the pat answers fail desperately, as it is their nature to do. And so, when this happens a few routes remain:
1. You can shut you eyes and re-double your efforts. (You’ve molted but you want to stick the feathers back on.)
2. You can live with uncertainty. This works well for a time, if you can handle it, but in truth, no one is stagnant. This is merely a stage, not a destination, or place of solace and rest. This disposition gives way to a kind of state disenchantment or resignation, and sometimes a tart cynicism. It is the stone in the shoe of hope.
• Or, one can start over, but never in the same place.
3. You can become a contemplative (a mystic, a sage, or a seeker) and this means that you’ve let some things go, but you are still fervent on all the major points. Here, you have freedom from cynicism. You haven’t let the bitterness or the indefinite way of things beat you into a sad lump.
I’m not sure where you stand, but you stand somewhere.
Managing a wine tasting room is a great job for a writer because, when it’s not too busy, you can become a kind of social scientist: observing people and trying to see why humans do what we do.
You can even allow your curiosity to navigate some of the deeper questions about the human experience.
One recent observation:
The “poison apple” of the smart phone has changed how we do things alone–eating, drinking, or traveling, in particular.
FACT: People rarely come to taste wine by themselves (at our place).
That may seem obvious. Wine tends to bring people together, right? Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that people only rarely come alone.
But it IS strange.
Think about it like this:
Shopping for food or clothes alone isn’t considered weird and people tasting wine are really just shopping for wine.
The only difference perhaps are presumptions, previous experiences, or maybe subterranean social exceptions.
• Feeling low…solo
When people visit the tasting room alone, I can usually sense their social discomfort. They might suddenly offer me a reason why they are alone this time or they might neurotically use their phone to look busy or connected.
The alternative, of course, would be to interact with and absorb the environment they are truly in or look for ways to subvert social fear through some modicum of meaningful interaction: friendliness, conversation, inquisitiveness, for starters. So terrifying is the prospect of looking lonely at a winery, that many solo customers barely experience it at all.
• Confronting fear
This observation got me to thinking of ways I try to numb or avoid these fears or points of discomfort in myself and in my life. What am I missing that I shouldn’t be. The default is to use technology to connect, but at what cost?
When I interviewed Rolf Potts, famed travel-writer and best-selling author, he talked about his own wrestling with the seduction of “not being where he was” by engaging with technology. One of the most memorable things he said was this:
“When you travel alone you are forced to confront your own loneliness and boredom, and interact with your surroundings in ways you can’t [when you’re] with a companion.”
We miss our chances for new experiences with the advent of constant so-called “connectedness”, don’t we?
The habit forms quickly. Only thoughtfulness will heal this malady.
(Here’s the video. He covers that bit around min 2:40.)
Do you question how you use technology and confront what it might be stealing from you?
Encountering our loneliness more deeply could create epiphanic moments of self-discovery and new insights into what we fear and what makes us each unique.
Maybe it’s time to do something alone to test your social fears, deepen your healthy sense of self, and develop a new sense of social, and even spiritual, courage and strength.
Maybe leave your phone is the car for the 30 min you shop, eat out, or exercise. Good things could happen.
If you like what you’ve read, consider getting my in-depth but consice weekly correspondence, starting soon. Learn about it here.
There is a balancing act for those of us with a creative spirit and a thoughtful disposition. We totter between hope and cynicism. This is the ongoing waltz, or slam dance. 