Living Your Life

In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his or her life and for ‘finding themselves’.  If they persist in shifting their responsibility to someone else, they fail to find out the meaning of their own existence.

-Thomas Merton

 

Living your own life is not as easy as it sounds and finding yourself can be like looking for buried treasure.  It involves walking down quite a few false trails, digging a lot of holes, and moving tons of dirt.  I have been walking, digging, and moving quite a bit of dirt for a very long time now and I’m a little weary.  However, this is a task that only I can do for myself.  I cannot outsource it.  No one else can walk my path, dig my holes, or move my dirt.  For as long as there’s been people, individuals have wondered “what is life and what does it mean”?  For the last month or so I have been watching the television show Cosmos.  It is the story of the universe from a scientific point of view.  I can’t decide if I am  blown away by the magnificence of the galaxies, the star systems, the complexity of outer space and beyond, or if I now feel totally insignificant in the great scheme of life.  When the world as we know it has taken billions of years to form, does it really matter if I came to work today?  In cosmic time am I just a miniscule, sub-atomic particle in the continued evolution of all that life is or do I really matter?  On a similar vein, a few months ago a friend shared his thoughts that within a few generations most of us will be completely forgotten, even by our descendants.  We are all star dust and to dust we shall return.  What do we do in our current configuration?  How do we find ourselves and the meaning of our current existence?  Let me quickly admit that I don’t really know or I would have already done it.  I don’t know if my life matters or not.  What I do know is that I am a consciousness aware of itself.  As a living being with a consciousness, I am motivated to move and grow and expand myself.  My senses take in data and react appropriately or at least as programmed.  Like a machine that evolves into artificial intelligence, I evolve into whatever I become.  Along the way I rub shoulders with other beings, I form relationships, I experience happiness, and, if lucky, I feel loved and worthwhile to everyone and everything around me.  I become one with my world.  No one else can do any of this for me although they may walk a similar path and be going in the same direction.  Ultimately we are all on our own although life may give companions on the journey.  These thoughts are almost too heavy even for me.  I’m glad the weekend is here and I’ll be spending it with my granddaughter.  Tomorrow we will go to the movies and visit the Land of Oz.  O my!  I think I just realized the meaning of life.              

Doing What You Love

Today I am teaching the first of four sessions on the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator.  I am looking forward to it because psychology, and especially the study of personality types, is something that I am passionate about.  I first discovered the Myers-Briggs when I was in my thirties and working as a Lay Minister.  I was taking a course on Spiritual Direction when they gave us a lengthy version of the Myers-Briggs assessment.  This first awareness of my personality type was a true awakening experience for me.  For the first time in my life I started to make sense to myself and over time I also began to understand other people and how we all see life differently.  Since that moment I have been on a continuous journey of self-awareness.  I am sure there are people who are dreading my class today because attendance is mandatory for them and they may care less about the subject matter.  These people are my target audience and by the end of the class I hoped they feel enlightened.  There is not a lot in the workplace that truly excites me.  What does excite me is when I have the rare opportunity to do something I love and which I feel I do well.  Today’s subject matter is something I know a lot about and teaching is something I really enjoy.  It is a rare day when I don’t encounter people who are just trying to get through the day.  I am often one of them.  I think a big part of that struggle is a lack of passion for what one is doing.  If a person can find their passion and have opportunities to express it, they will be a happy person.  More often than not most people get stuck in a job that truly feels like work.  If you find your passion, and especially if you can get paid for it, you will never work another day in your life.  Work is not work if you love what you are doing.    

Quieting The Mind

I’ve read many books about meditation.  Over the years I have tried to spend time each day just being quiet and still.  Way back in the 70’s I studied Transcendental Meditation.  It was introduced into the United States by a Hindu monk named Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.  Later in the 80’s I learned a Christian version of meditation called “Centering Prayer”.  Both of these types of meditation are very similar in their technique.  They basically involve the use of a mantra or prayer word in coordination with your breath.  They don’t require total silence or isolation but it is important not to be disturbed while you are doing them.  Typically these types of meditation would be done for about 20 minutes twice a day.  The biggest obstacle to meditation is your own mind.  Most of us have over active minds.  We have what the Buddhists call “monkey minds”.  Imagine a tree full of monkeys.  They’re making all kinds of noise and chatter while jumping from limb to limb.  Our minds are often like a tree full of monkey’s.  No one can turn off their mind.  However, certain types of meditation, especially one’s that use a mantra or prayer word, can help us control our thoughts somewhat or at least learn to let them go.  These types of meditation also help us to feel a sense of calm in our bodies.  The mantra or prayer word acts like an anchor.  Our minds could be compared to a busy river where there is lots of activity on the surface.  When we let our thoughts run rampant, it’s like we are on the river.  When we sit still and use a mantra or prayer word, it acts like an anchor that brings us down to the bottom of the river where everything is calm.  When we realize that we are thinking and floating back to the top of the river, our mantra or prayer word can anchor us and bring us back to our inner stillness at the bottom of the river.  When you can live your life with this inner stillness, you are what some would call “a centered person”.      

Mind Over Body

Today I am going to explain the difference between being young and being my age.  When you are young your body is in charge.  It wants to do all kinds of wild and crazy things that someone my age can no longer do.  When you are young your mind is just along for the ride.  Your body wants to do something that is probably not a good thing.  Your mind is going “Are you sure you should do this”?  More often than not, the body wins and you do something stupid.  When you are my age your body doesn’t want to do anything.  By the time you are my age all those stupid things you did in your youth are catching up with you.  My mind never says “Are you sure you want to do this”?  My mind is saying “YOU REALLY NEED TO DO THIS”!  When the alarm goes off my body wants to stay in bed but my mind is saying “You need to get up now.  It’s a work day”.  When my body wants coffee and a donut on my break, my mind says, “Don’t even think about it.  You need to go and walk as many laps as you can around the office.  In my youth I wanted to stay out late, howl at the moon, and be crazy.  Forget sleep.  Now that I am in my 60’s I can barely stay away until it’s bedtime.  I very rarely go out on a Friday night to party with my friends.  After a week of work, my body says, “There’s no way, Dude”!  I enjoyed my youth and I survived it.  Getting older, however, is not all bad.  I like my age.  I like my slower pace.  Yes, I do miss the energy of youth but I also enjoy the contentment of being older.  My body is still putting up quite a fight with my mind but more often than not, the mind wins now.     

Live In Each Season As It Passes

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each”.

-Henry David Thoreau

 

Recently I have been in a few conversations about people, how they act, their attitudes about life, and how so many of us see the same things so differently.  I quickly get worn out by negative and pessimistic people who always see the worst of everything.  Drama Kings and Queens often have the same effect on me.  These people are chronically unhappy and nothing ever seems to give them joy.  I am an optimist.  I see the glass as not only half full but often overflowing.  A pessimist once told me that an optimist is a person out of touch with reality.  If your reality is always negative, pessimistic, and full of drama, then I hope to always be out of touch with it.  I know that a lot of life is just trying to survive but that doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyed.  The above quote by Thoreau is a very good definition of Zen.  Living in the season means being one with it.  Whatever the season, it is full of life.  Breathe in life.  Drink life.  Taste it’s fruits.  Let the goodness of life permeate your bones.  Life does change but that is not necessarily good or bad.  Life just is.  Our opinions of life are based on personal judgments which can be terribly skewed.  Thinking that life is always either good or bad is dualistic thinking.  Life is both good and bad.  The Zen way, the contemplative way, is to not judge it but to simply be present to it.  Often, joy happens when we least expect it. 

 

If you’ve never read Walden Pond by Henry David Thoreau, I highly recommend it.

 

The Road Not Taken

“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something…your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life”.

-Steve Jobs

 

Steve Jobs changed the world.  He would be my hero if all he did was invent the iPod.  I have always been reflective and introspective.  It’s part of my nature.  However, I don’t dwell in the past and I am not in mourning over its passing.  However, I do sometimes re-live great memories in my mind.  Much of the time my life does not make sense to me while I am living it.  It is when I look back at previous events or people who crossed my path, that I can begin to make sense of the present moment.  I can see now when things that felt like failures were really successes and they made me who I am today.  I agree with Steve Jobs that it is only in retrospect that we can connect the dots of our life.  Life never goes in a straight line.  My personal blog is called “Stumbling along the Spiritual Path”.  The use of the word “stumbling” was very intentional.  The path of my life has gone in many directions.  My path has sometimes seemed overgrown with weeds.  It has gone up and down and all around.  Sometimes I could not tell if I was going North, South, East, or West.  A few times when I wasn’t paying attention I got wacked in the eye with a tree branch.  Many times I have stumbled and occasionally I have fallen down.  This convoluted path, however, has been my path.  It has taken me through some pretty interesting and unique experiences.  It has brought me to where I am today and has also made me who I am today.  These thoughts make me think of a favorite poem by Robert Frost. 

 

The Road Not Taken

 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

 

The Greatest Education Is Your Own Life

My daily thoughts are syndicated in the spirituality section of a website called “Before It’s News”.  Sometimes I get emails front people who either like what I have written or they disagree with me.  One person wrote to me and said, “I don’t want this crap.  I want the news”!  Yesterday I received an email from a woman who disagreed with some of my thoughts are education.  I had basically written that education gives your knowledge but life gives you wisdom.  Her point of view, and one that I would agree with, is that much of our formal education is useless knowledge that does little to prepare us for real life.  As someone who has lived real life for 63 years I am not sure there is anything that can prepare us for everything that life throws at us.  As I have gotten older and the work force has gotten younger I have often felt like a teacher of Life 101 rather than a supervisor.  I started off in life as ignorant as anyone.  For example, I got married when I was 23 years old and I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into.  After nearly 40 years of marriage and family life I am a little smarter.  Some people think I am wise.  Any wisdom I have acquired has been learned through my own ignorance, mistakes, and the rare occasion where I get something right.  In other words, wisdom does not come easily.  The woman who wrote to me last night also mentioned how little information most of us are given to deal with the basic realities of life, i.e., how to manage your money, how to make informed decisions, how to avoid stupid mistakes, how to prepare for a career, how to plan ahead, and other similar demands of life.  My wife and I were blessed with good parents who raised us well.  I have always had mentors who helped me understand what is important in life.  Acquired spirituality from study and experience has been a firm foundation for my life.  Mystics have often said “Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom”.  This knowledge, found through introspection, is part of the process of growing up and acquiring maturity.  All of life is a classroom.  Everyone around you is a teacher.  Some teachers should be followed and others avoided.  Learn from life.  Surround yourself with wise and intelligent people who will help you find your way.  Think before you act.  The greatest education is your own life.