The essence of life is that it's challenging… From an awakened perspective, trying to tie up all the loose ends and finally get it together is death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience. There is something aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride. — Pema Chödrön

This relates directly to the previous day's teaching for me. This passge is related explictly to mortificatio where she says: "To live is to be willing to die over and over again."

I have clued into this aggression I have toward life lately and it feels like violence to me. I don't expecially like violence, especially not toward my own life and my own self!

I know that identity revision is not easy; the ego, the small self likes to hold on to the reigns tightly. But I pray everyday to identify more with the Self and less with the ego, and of course that involves shadow-work. The part of my shadow that has demanded attention lately is the eternal child — the puella eternis.

Most of my external life is marked with signs of maturity: I don't live on someone else's dime, my affairs are not a shambles, I can be trusted. However, it only goes to a point and then it is limited by the machinations of a spoiled inner child. You'll have to trust me on this one; I look like I have it all together but I don't.

I have given up hope that I will get it all together, but there is danger for me in over-correcting and letting things fall apart. My shadow-child would love to throw all caution to the wind, to eat and spend and play without any regard for future consequences. She stamps her feet, crosses her arms and whines, "But I deserve it!", "But I want it!", and "But I don't want to work!"

She doesn't like peace or quiet. She doesn't enjoy smooth-sailing. She enjoys obession and imagination, flights of fancy and fantasy unspoiled by reality. She wants to say what she likes, and believe in magic and hope that someone will come bail her out when it all backfires. She's the least gracious brat you'll meet and is only generous when it suits her to see herself that way.

Until she gets what she needs to become un-spoiled, my inner parents have their hands full managing her hijinks. They don't  even have time to work on their own relationship. Perhaps they need help with their parenting as well.

Gretel is my hero right now. When she and Hansel got kicked out of the family house and sent into the forest to die, she faced fact and dealt with the situation. She realized very quickly that things like parents, candies and nice old ladies were no longer to be trusted. And when she benefits from this new, maturer identity (by gaining the treasures of the slain witch)  she reunites with her parents and shares the boon.

I need to find a way to make it through the forest and out the other side. The witch must die.

Oooowheeeee, have I been working his one! In Applied Alchemy class we have been investigating the operation of mortificatio and I have been wondering what I have to let die.

I figured out it was hope: hope that I'll ever get my resources and my purpose aligned… hope that I'll ever use my time, energy and money completely wisely… hope that I'll behave perfectly.

I have been aligned with the hoping, rather than the doing. I have resisted allowing things to be the way they are, and caught myself in a a relationship with a fixed state of things -- and not as I'd like them to be. In the process I have judged myself, condemned and fated myself to this relationship.

I have to let that stabilizing hope die in order for any movement to happen, for the potential for change to exist. It's ironic, for there to be any chance of it improving, I have to give up hope that it will.

Mythically speaking, I have to go into the forest risking darkness and death in order to have hope of living.

…doing simply everyday things like working, walking outside, talking with people, bathing, using the toilet, and eating, is actually all that we need to be fully awake, fully alive, fully human… Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted, and inspired way.
— Pema Chodron

I listened to another talk by Pema the other day and she says some really helpful things like maitri being a feeling of warmth for the moment, not looking for alternatives to the moment.

I realize how much I have been craving the gentleness and kindness that I so easily give to others. I was reminded by a friend that one can give that oneself as well. I feel my heart uncontract when I remember that.

One of the members of the e-course wrote:

I heard this in yoga class today: "Your body is the little child of your spirit." So much of self-love and self-loathing have to do with the body.

This is also true for me. The physical level is the most basic level of manifestation. I feel I have to work to improve my management of it — and not out of anger or denegration, too.

It was nice, not earth-shaking, but nice. I did reflect on who my benefactors are: my teachers, my friends, my housemate. It's the ones I have most contact with who do me the most good. That's very nice to know.

The practice reminded me of a mindfulness practice I do with my Ehren Tool war cup. I drink tea out of it most days, often while listening to the morning news. I do my best to remain mindful while I drink of the horrors going on in war-torn areas like Iraq. I pray that soldiers and civilians might be spared having to kill someone or to see someone killed or maimed. It really helps me deal with the total injustice of the injuries to bodies and psyches that are done in my name as an American.

Tody the practice is to mentally offer the first three bites of a meal to, respectively, "our teachers, our benefactors, and those in need" in order to "gather the virtues of devotion, gratitude, and kindness."

I have already eaten two meals without practicing this, and I tend to snarf down my meals. Maybe this will slow me down some. It seems strange to offer the bites and then to eat them! "Here this is for you, no, it's really mine! yum!" But I can get the dedication aspect of it, so I will approach it that way. More later after dinner...

Unfortunately, the Spirituality with Children e-course wasn't doing it for me. I don't have children (cat-children don't count!) and I couldn't really tap into the material very well. So I am going back to the Pema Chodron course that I joined part of the way through and practicing some of the ones I missed.

Now, to set an intention and a slogan. I have two intentions: one is to complete the spiritual practice requirement for my MA program, second is to further my learning about how to look at my own "stuff" compassionately without making it worse by making myself wrong.

I am to choose a lojong from the list. (According to Chodron, the lojongs remind us that "we can use everything we encounter in our lives — pleasant or painful — to awaken genuine, uncontrived compassion.") I choose this one:

Rest in the nature of alaya, the essence.
(5) There is a resting place, a starting place that you can always return to. You can always bring your mind back home and rest right here, right now, in present, unbiased awareness.

This is very important to remind myself. I can orbit out on long trips of self-abasement and "not-enough". I can get very insistent about changes happening now. It's vitally important that I return to center, return to calm and receptive.

So here I go... wish me luck.

This one is about forgetting to keep track of the passage of time. I wrote today in the forum:

I was reminded of this kind of unstructured playtime when playing Barbies with my niece a few years ago. I had completely forgotten how that feels to lose yourself like that!

I am studying art and often have to fit my creative time into my busy schedule. I really have to make myself lose track of time in order to be in the right mindset for art!

It's true; I have to make myself let go of what came before and what came after in order to"go there" and do the artwork. This seems unique to adulthood.

Someday I would like to be working with kids and/or adolescents. I wonder by then, they'll have still have that sense of "timeless ocean" available in their busy lives? Perhaps that can be part of my work: to remind them — or to teach them — how to go there.

I have to say I am a little stumped on this one. I don't think I know how to notice anyone's spirituality. I do know that children are more likely to believe in non-rational occurrences.

When I think of my own childhood, I have very few memories of spiritual experiences. I do remember a certain incident where I felt the power of Grace.

Perhaps I am looking for some big, huge connection to the eternal when something like the following story (posted on the forum) is so more instructive:

A little girl got home from visiting her friend later than her mother had expected. When her mother asked the reason for the delay, the child said, "I was helping Jane. Her doll broke." The mother asked, "Did you help her fix it?" The child said, "No, I helped her cry."

Maybe it's the best of humanity that I should be looking for.

You are in charge of your own attitude.
This one has been an important lesson for me, and as one of my nieces is beginning her teen years, I see how important it is at that age.

"Don't keep score" runs a close second: turn the other cheek, be generous and kind without expecting reward, because it's its own reward. This kind of attitude is very difficult to hang onto in our eye-for-an-eye world. A word of encouragement from an adult could help prevent a child from letting it go.

Today we were to pick a theme or a slogan from a list. I picked two above.

The first is so important to become a person who is comfortable with your own power, and to not become a victim. You may not be responsible for the weather, or the war but you have control over your response.

The second is so important for not racking up indictments against a world that seems unfair. I know that teens especially have a keen sense of injustice, let them learn how not to use it against their fellow humans so that they can be strong and present enough to make change where needed.

I past some children today who were so happy and joyful just to be running down a hallway. Their giggles were infectious and I laughed, too. I could see relief in their eyes that I didn't tell them to be quiet or frown them down. It occurred to me that as we contemplate what to teach children about how to live life, let's make sure that we mirror to them what is wonderful about them and the way the encounter life! It can only help make a better world, I imagine.

Posted on Jul. 9, 2007 - 1:12 PM

I have always fancied that I might serve as a godparent as well, in the traditional sense: someone in the tribe that you go to with spiritual questions. I am working on becoming the kind of person who would fit that bill so I may be of service in that way.

Today is the first day of the new S&P course.  I am touched by all the people in the course who say they want to enjoy their children more, want to be less serious and express their own inner child more. I was really touched by the woman who wrote that her adult children didn't seem to be interested in connecting with her anymore. Oh, man, that must be tough. I'm not a mom, just an aunt, and it would hurt me terribly if one of my nieces didn't seem interested knowing me when they grew up!

I wrote the paragraph at the top about being an aunt. It's a lot of fun, but I do take it very seriously. I figure I am sort of parental back-up -- a semi-parental figure with less at stake, an independent opinion, a role model from/of a different world. I think one day I will ask each of my nieces directly about their sense of their spirit/soul, until then, I am working it out for myself and finding out where a practice can take you.