Getting Back to Zero

Sometimes life can feel like such a challenge. Trying to make enough money in a high inflation/high unemployment economy, keeping up with all the things you have to get done, navigating partner issues, aging parents concerns, or being broadsided by a new disturbing health issue. And if, for the moment, you have all these areas under control, there's always global warming, war in Afghanistan, corporate control of the government and a banking system that's run off with everyone's retirement funds. Add to this those nagging existential questions like: Am I making the best of my life? Am I achieving my life's purpose? Have I made a difference? It's a recipe for despair.

What to do? Escape into a movie, a Jane Austin novel, a computer game? Unfortunately, such refuge is short lived. Once the book is shut or credits roll the demons of worry are back at their post.

A friend of mine who had been away on spiritual retreat for two weeks, complained that his blissful equanimity wore off in a matter of days. How can we get back to that delicious peacefulness? How can it be sustained over time? How can we be more like those spiritual masters we read about in books -- accepting of whatever comes along? How do we get back to ZERO? Nothingness. Empty. The void. Spiritual bliss. The fool in the tarot deck blithely walking off the cliff confident in the protection of the universe.

It can feel like two separate realities vying for our attention: the reality of everyday concerns as described above, and the reality of the spirit. The reality of the spirit, open-heart, aware, compassionate, content. The spirit tells us that all is as it should be. Whatever happens it will be alright. Trust yourself, trust life. but watch out for the ego. It is the ego or rather the negative self, nafs -- as my Sufi teacher calls it, that puts a negative mental twist on all our physical experience and creates the suffering and fear. It's a matter of where you put your mind, how you interpret things.

Ok, when I am in my higher self, when I'm just back from three weeks at Sufi camp, that all makes sense.  But what about now? This moment?

Ahh! NOW. Eckhart Tolle would tells us that "NOW" is the answer. Enter the now, the present moment and suffering ceases. No past or future to concern us, only the delicious tranquility and detachment of moment to moment. In the moment, I am fed, warm, comfortable, the sun is shining, the fragrance of lemon blossoms wafts on the breeze. I am writing with ease.

Alright, this moment works, but have you ever tried to get into the moment, to meditate, to shift your mind in the midst of a mental tirade? It is amazing how violent and tenacious emotions can be. I have fought with my mind, tried to stop its awful thought loops hoping to shift into the NOW. Trying and fighting are, I assure you, not the answer. They only make the demons, the nafs, bigger.

Through much trial and error, I have found a few tools that can help me out of this situation. First, it is important to remember that spirituality is a process not a state. Like an airplane heading for it's destination, we are always making adjustments to get back on course. So don't waste any time beating yourself up for not being in the NOW, now.

Second, spiritual beings though we may be, we inhabit physical bodies which have their own needs, programing, energy fields and chemistry. Bliss is a whole lot easier when you are feeding your body good food. It is no accident that at my Sufi summer camp we eat very plain, simple foods -- lots of rice and vegetable and very little at that. Not eating, i.e. fasting, can really bliss you out, if you can get past the first days of hunger. There is lot of debates out there about the list of "good foods." Certainly don't believe the advertising hype of packaged food giants. Michael Pollan's book, In Defense of Food, as an excellent place to get some perspective on the food issue.

I actually eat a very wholesome diet -- all organic, no red meat, a lot of fruit and vegetable, super blue green algae smoothies. However, I also indulge in treats and that is my downfall. Chocolate is particularly dangerous for me as are most refined sugars. They both make me more emotional, more prone to impatience, frustration and meltdowns. Astrologically, I'm already wired with a short fuse, i.e. Scorpio rising. Sugar and chocolate are like playing with matches. I've been off chocolate lately and it helps. Sugar is another story, hence the need for the rest of these strategies.

While you're working on your diet, no easy assignment if you have been programed like most of us to go for the worst foods when under stress, you could try out some other body-directed strategies. I find talking a nice walk in nature very helpful to the stressed mind. A forest trail with minimal traffic sounds works best. Beaches with their sound cancelling surf are also excellent. But when I only have a short window of time, a park or neighborhood with lovely gardens will do. Cemeteries are also amazingly serene.

When you don't have much time, which for most of us is a chronic issue, deep, conscious breathing can bring quick results. Focus on the breath going through all the various organs or chakras of your body. Feel the sensation of the breath in you lungs. Imagine it coming in through your head and flowing out through your feet. If your mind wanders, try holding your breath for several counts between inhales and exhales. Lack of oxygen really focuses the mind.

If I am dealing with a particularly persistent mental loop or my emotions are all over the map, I find that stimulating the middle of my forehead just above the brow can work wonders. Perhaps this works because it is just in front of the cerebrum, the part of the brain that handles thought and action. By stimulating this area, I imagine that I am pulling my attention away from the brain stem, the place that is activated by survival and fear. Look at my blog, Happiness in the Brain for a brief description of the three brain areas and how they involve different aspects of our life.

The following techniques are all excellent for shifting a negative mind loop. They are not just about stimulating the forehead, but it's there:

    1.    Pranayama, specifically Nadi Sodhana: A yoga breath practice of alternate nostril breathing. Essentially, you hold both sides of your nose with the thumb and ring finger to alternate breathing through one nostril and then the other. The pointer finger and middle finger are curled into your palm with knuckles press into brow and lower forehead. The sensation of these two finger touching at the spot of the third eye, together with the periodic lack of breath from the alternate breathing help to stop thoughts and bringing attention into the moment.

    2.    TAT: is an energy therapy. Here the thumb and ring finger are placed at the inner corners of the eyes and the pointer finger touches the middle of the forehead. At the same time the other hand is holding the back of the head right at the brain stem. Perhaps it is transferring the energy of the higher mind to the lower. This technique includes some very useful thought repetitions, in addition to the physical stimulation, that are very effective in transforming negative thoughts.

    3.    The Healing Code Book technique. I must confess, I never read the book. A friend who did read the book shared the hand sequences with me. They blew my mind. Literally. Instant empty. A flash trip to Sufi camp. I have added my own positive mental reprogramming with each gesture. You can try them out or get the book for the original instructions. Here's my version:

• Cup both your hands so all the fingers are together and pointing forward.

1. Point both of your cupped hands at the middle of your forehead about 1-2 inches away.  Feel the energy coming off your fingers. Feel it in your head. Transform any negative thoughts into positive ones, e.g. I don't know how I can keep living like this. Into "Each day I have the strength I need  and each day that strength grows stronger.
2. Hold your hands over your heart with fingers just touching your sternal notch (throat). Feel the warmth of your hands on your chest. Imagine all the love in the universe, all the love you have ever received from parents, friends and lovers, all the love of your ancestors from deep into the past coming into your heart.
3. Point your cupped hands on either side of your jaw about 2-3 inches away and a little behind the hinge of your jaw. Feel the energy coming from you hands into your jaw. Imagine all the negative thoughts and judgments being sucked out of your mouth by you hands. Allow your jaw to relax. Imagine all thoughts melting in your mouth until there are no more thoughts.
4.  Point your cupped hands on either side of you temples, just 1 inch behind. Feel the energy coming into your head from your finger tips. Imagine that your fingers are filling your head with soft, gentle, expansive bliss. And this bliss crowds out all thoughts, all concerns, all sadness. There is only this soft, comfy blanket of bliss.

• Do the whole sequence three times if possible. Stay as long as you need in each phase of the cycle.

Feeling any better?


Additional strategies for getting to Zero: listening to soothing music, meditating, chanting, reading spiritual books, and writing blogs about spiritual matters. Ahhhhh.

Mastering Life

In the film Julie and Julia, we are provide with an interesting contrast between the story of Julia Child’s start in the cooking profession and blogger Julie Powell’s one year challenge to cook every recipe in Child’s first cookbook. Child, married to a career diplomat and living in Paris, begins her adventure by seeking to engage her mind and time doing something she loves – eating good food. Julie seeks to prove her worth to herself and her friends, also by doing something she loves -- writing and cooking. It takes Child over seven years to write her famous book and many more to get it published. I found this reassuring given the ten plus years I have spent producing my film series. Julie becomes a stunning success after only a year. I felt dismissive.

Clearly, I have some judgments about Julie that bare examination. Julie was motivated by EGO, the desire to prove herself to her friends. She piggybacked on the work of another and she was an overnight success (ok, over-year success)! Child, in contrast, was motivated by her sheer love for food, was amazingly courageous in bucking gender stereotypes and praise-worthy for her many years of perseverance in writing and publishing her book. She was also played by actor, Meryl Streep, and thus irresistible. Reexamining my judgments I realized that neither woman is better than the other and both have something to teach us about life mastery.

1. Ego: How many of us are not first motivated by a desire to prove ourselves to others. The lesson from both women is to select something that we love to do. Julie shares her struggles with her ego -- her insecurity, her disappointments, her self-absorption and the near destruction of her marriage. We can identify and learn from her missteps and forgive ourselves as we can forgive her. Child, on the other hand, shows us how to stand up for our work, to resist compromising for the sake of acceptance (i.e. being published). Is this ego or not-ego? Was she so full of herself and her book that she couldn’t make the requested changes? Or was it love of her work and those who helped her that would not allow it? She won in the ends. Her book was published in its entirety. So we are grateful she resisted and can learn something about defending the integrity of our own creations.

2. Piggybacking: What artist does not learn from the work of other? It is where inspiration and ideas are birthed. Can any one look at their own creations and truly say they owe nothing to any one else? It is impossible. Of course there are limits. When is it piggybacking, when is it plagiarism, and when is it copyright infringement? It can be a confusing line that, rest assured, our copyright industry protects and expands with vigor. Julie was piggybacking on Child’s work. Child was piggybacking on her teachers. They piggybacked on those they learned from and so on and so forth back to that first caveman who discovered cooking over fire. Each one put something of themselves in the new creation that makes it truly unique. Of course sometimes they don’t, but we’ll let the courts decide.

3. Instant Success. Why degrade instant success? Struggling for years has nothing to recommend for itself. It is simply a belief one clings to in the long years of uncertainty and disappointment. “Got to put in the time!” It is a belief that can undermine us and hold us back right along with thoughts about being unworthy, not good enough and undeserving. Instead of dissing Julie for her relatively quick success, we should be celebrating her and trying to copy her. Of course there is also a lot of serendipity and luck, not to mention good connections involved in achieving what we traditionally think of as success, i.e., fame and fortune. Perhaps we should reconsider the meaning of success.

When it comes to the end of our lives, what will we remember as being most important? In a blog post at Inspiration and Chai we are told of five regrets that recur among the dying: failing to live a life true to one’s self rather than fulfilling the expectations of others, working too hard, not expressing one’s feelings, losing track of friend, and not being happy. Might a truly successful life be better gauged by how few of these regrets we have in our final hours? So, how are you doing?

Hierophant and the Ego

The hierophant card of the Tarot was the subject of a recent discussion I had with a friend, a Sufi dance teacher. She said she always draws a blank when it appears in a reading. Historically, the card refers to a traditional religious leader. It certainly did not fit with any idea she had of herself or her dance work.

A student of hers, an anthropologist, offered an intriguing interpretation of the card: the hierophant as the giver of blessings or benedictions. Benediction, in old sense of the word, suggests a dual motion of ascending prayers and descending blessings. Up and down, up and down between heaven and earth, a lot like breathing, only a celestial breathing. The hierophant, in this view, is the instrument or intermediary of the heavenly blessing or heavenly breath. While a much more dynamic vision of the card, I had some reservations. Below are my musings as addressed to my friend (with editing).

In the William Blake tarot deck, the hierophant is called Religion. It recognizes the human need for spirituality and warns against the rationalization or codification of spirit through organized systems of religion. Blake had no great love for organized religion. In the Sufi work (according to the work of Sufi Master, Adnan Sarhan), the dance must always come from the moment. As long as you stay in the moment, the energy of spirit flows. The hierophant card can be seen as a warning against "the ego,” the ever lurking enemy of the moment. As soon as one thinks of oneself as "something special," i.e. “religious leader,” the moment vanishes into intellect and ego.

It can be dangerous to see oneself as a mediator or intermediary between your students and heaven. It is really a very traditional view -- that ordinary people cannot connect to the sacred or divine except through the intercession of a priest or spiritual leader. People do not need a mediator because heaven is inside, not outside and above. We do not need an intermediary to the divine because we all are part of the divine.

When a teacher is in the flow of spirit and students are in the vicinity of that energy, their own spirits are entrained. That is the dynamic of the Sufi work as I understand it. When in the moment, one vibrates at a higher frequency. That vibration stimulates or induces a similar vibration in the others. Like plucking a guitar string, the near-by strings also begin to vibrate. The stronger your vibration, the greater the effect. Eventually the students learn to vibrate on their own and thus access their own spirit. Of course the vibration is always stronger when surrounded by the vibration of others flowing in the moment. This is doubly true when near to someone strong in the practice of being in the moment.

The trick and warning of the hierophant is to be a teacher and yet not fall prey to the ego of teacher. Yes, all of the things you must do as teacher are true, like holding the space and making people feel safe and stepping in and taking action when someone falls out of the space, or disrupts the space. So it is necessary to acknowledge your self as a leader or teacher. At the same time, it is heady to be in the front, having people attending to your every word and action. The ego lurks.

In a way we are all teachers. We teach each other important lessons every time we come together (as in The Celestine Prophecy). Being conscious of being teacher is essential, but in an active way, in the verb sense of "I am teaching" as opposed to "I am THE TEACHER." As teacher, which in itself is an active noun, one enters the energy field of teacher, which included space holding and wide attention. Teaching in this way can bring you into another level of consciousness. You attention is alert, you are totally focused and aware, but the focus is outward or, perhaps to put it better, your “inside” expands to encompass the outer boundaries of your group. The group becomes your body and you are the brain or maybe the heart of that body. There can be no thought of the future or past. You must be totally in the moment, feeling through every sense and responding to each moment through intuition or what Adnan calls “intelligence.”

When I am facilitating a grief group or doing a screening/discussion of my films, I connect with the essence of the goddess Demeter -- mother goddess, all encompassing, watchful, loving, insuring her children are safe and growing. When I think of her, I connect to the love part of teaching. As long as I am in that love and in the doing, I can keep the ego trap of the hierophant at bay.

The Art of Being Present

At a screening of my film, Caring for Dying: the art of being present, there was a discussion on, well, the art of being present. When asked how one goes about "being present," the people in my audience had no ready answers. Yet, when I asked them to take a moment and check in with themselves, they quietly closed their eyes and looked inside. Perhaps they thought I was asking for something more esoteric. But no, being present is as simple as checking in with your self. Take a moment to look inside, feel your body, observe your feelings.

The problem is, we forget to do it. We don’t check in. We’re too busy, too worried, too uncomfortable and maybe too afraid. Afraid? Yes, I think so. Ever notice how uncomfortable people are with long silences or with having too much time on their hands? Don’t you take a book or magazine along when you expect to wait somewhere? We are afraid to look inside, afraid of what we might find, of what we are really feeling. That we really hate what we are doing, or we’ve screwed up or wasted our lives, or we are bored with our partner, tired of our children, unsure where we’re headed and we’re angry, pissed, sad, or just plain unhappy. Whoa, let’s not go there! Turn on the TV, call someone on your cell phone, clean the refrigerator. The irony is that there is really no fear in the present. There is no judgment, no shame, no blame. There is just -- presence. However (and there always is a however) to get there you might have to tamp down a lot of negative mind-noise first, a lot of internal ugly, judgmental monologue.

Eckart Tolle, the guru of the "present" and author of The New Earth and The Power of the Now, calls that mean, negative internal voice “the ego.” This is not the positive ego of “self esteem” fame, but closer to that “Whew, that guy’s got one big ego!” kind of ego. And, while we’re pointing a finger, be aware that we all have big egos, only they rarely make us feel big and important. Mostly they tear us down. And if they do build us up, tomorrow it will be down. Bet you that guy with the “big ego” is constantly being blasted by his, that’s why he’s so desperate to convince you and everyone else what a hotshot he is.

I like Tolle’s use of the term “ego” because it is the same word my Sufi teacher uses to refer to the “negative self.” -- the self that tries to sabotage all my efforts to hang out with my spiritual self. I already know a lot about this ego self. It’s what makes us worry about how we appear to others or how we measure up to some internalized value system of achievement. It is the voice that makes us uneasy and stressed. A low level hum of disquiet, “What did I forget?” “Please don’t let me screw this up!” “Oh God, I can’t believe I did that!” We run from this voice by staying busy, watching TV, drinking, eating or doing drugs -- anything to numb or dull the voice. But it never really goes away. It’s always in the background nipping at our heels.

The only real escape from the ego is to see it for what it is, to name it, recognize it and in doing so, to enter the moment. It’s my ego that’s making me feel bummed about the funding grant I didn't get for my film (that I didn’t have a snowballs chance in hell of getting any way.) Hi, Ego! Sounds easy. It is and it’s not. The ego is very strong, wily, willful beast that will not give up without a fight. The ego wants to be in control. I like this idea of an ego beast. The ego as something separate from ourselves. Years ago when I was working on my Ph.D thesis and getting booted out of my first teaching job I drew a picture of this snarling monster riding on my back. This was long before Sufi or Eckhart Tolle. I already knew inside what the ego was. I just didn't know how to get rid of it. I didn't know about the present.

Staying in the present takes concentration and discipline. The ego is always there slipping in thoughts about the past or future, worrisome thoughts about what you should really be doing or what you forgot to do. Each time the ego throws in these thoughts you have to pull away, stop the train and return to the emptiness of no thought. That is basically the essence of meditation. Of course it’s difficult to focus on nothing, so typically you focus on something like the breath or a mantra or a visual image. It takes practice. It takes the will to do it especially when you're feeling awful and would rather eat some ice cream.

There are other doors to the present – really any activity that puts you wholly in the moment of here and now, will do. Playing a musical instrument can do it. Dancing does it for me as long as I can stay away from the thought that other people are looking at me and maybe I should change what I’m doing because I’ve been doing the same stupid move for the last ten minutes. Opps, just lost my footing. Mountain climbers enjoy this focus because a momentary lapse could mean death. Nothing like a strong motivator. Unfortunately, we can’t run off to the mountain every time we need to check in with our self. And we really should do that a lot -- every time we feel stressed, or stuck or anxious or sad. Because those are all signs of ego intrusion. That’s why I like using the breath. It’s so portable.

The Breath is always there. Waiting for the bus? Breathe in, watch where the breath goes. Stumped on the next sentence for your funding proposal? Send the breath to various parts of the body. Notice how each area of the body feels. Had an argument with your partner? Play with the breath. Breathe in for five counts, hold for five counts, breathe out for five counts, hold for five counts and repeat. Lots you can do with your breath. Breathe until the mind empties and the heart and stomach feel calm. Enjoy the peace.

One more suggestion -- keep reading books, watching movies, talking to friends, writing blogs that encourage and remind you to stay present.