I'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT DEATH...

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

...about life. And sacrifice.

More than likely, on this tenth year anniversary of 9/11, I am not the only one doing so.

I remember being in New York City after the terrorist attack, seeing Fire Stations in the Tribeca area bearing the tributes to those first responders: public servants who might have thought twice about what they were rushing toward, but did it anyway.

Two of my cousins - in high school when I was born - became firemen. Later, one moved to Alaska and became a police officer, not on horseback or in a squad car, but in a single engine plane. He flew his beat. Coming home from work one day, he flew into a freakish snow storm not forecast and unusual for that time of the year. His plane went down and he was killed. Bobby was larger than life to me - a beautiful man who was a body-builder, a mountain man born in the Rockies and happier in the wilderness than in civilization, a man who died doing what he loved. There is a kind of peace in that for me.

One definition of "sacrifice" is the surrender or loss of something in order to gain an objective.

This morning, I read the story of an off-duty NYC fire fighter, who, while driving to play golf, saw the first plane hit the Tower. He turned around and drove toward the city, but unable to get through the Tunnel by car, he abandoned his vehicle and ran through the Tunnel to the Towers. He lost his life that day ten years ago. I think about all those who went into that hell as others were trying to get away from it as fast as they could. (His family established the Tunnel to Towers 5K race in his honor and millions of dollars have been raised for those in need...a wonderful remembrance of this man.)

Giving your life because your job may require it is the ultimate sacrifice, but I have been reminded over the years that sacrifices are made daily for those we love. My friend, Kenny, loved his family. When his architectural firm fell on hard times, he moved to Los Angeles, leaving his wife and two kids in Dallas, in order to take a lesser position so he could feed his family and send his kids to college. He didn't want to leave, but he sacrificed his needs for those of his family. Men (and now women in the military) have been forced to do this through the ages.

Which brings me to Karlis. He was on the Russian plane that crashed into the Volga River on Wednesday. He was on that plane, with the rest of his hockey team, because he made the choice to leave his expectant wife and two daughters in the States in order to sign a player's contract that would insure the financial safety of a family he loved. This has been an ugly week.

But life goes on...

...as it should.

I think about my own death. Of course, I can laugh at the Woody Allen line: "I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens." I don't want to die; I'll hate missing out on the things that will happen after I'm gone! In reality, I don't want to be forgotten, but would I want my daughter's life to stop just because mine had? Absolutely not.

Memory is not always accurate...we may forget some of the details, embellish others, have selective recall about certain events and people in our lives. Every person that has truly been a part of our experience here has left an imprint on us. They are carried with us into everything we experience as we go forward. The term "washboard abs" always makes me think of my friend Kenny, because he had them and he knew I loved them! People who met Karlis briefly through the business I am a part of have emailed condolences not only to me and my partner, but for us to pass along to his family...he was such a good man and they were struck by the force of his goodness. Those things do not die in us because the person was taken away from us.

I have been thinking about death...

...about life and sacrifice.

But mostly, about remembrance: a sacred act.

KISS YOUR BABIES...

...AND TELL SOMEONE YOU LOVE THEM, because life is short.

Life might be likened to a spider's web: intricate, delicate, beautiful, strong, complex, whimsical...

...able to be destroyed by the flick of the wrist.

We get so caught up in our daily routines we often forget that our time here is not a given, to paraphrase Alicia Keys. There are no guarantees. What we do have is this moment in time. What we do with it has the potential to be so meaningful, so loving, so compassionate, so REAL...

...or so ugly, hurtful, mean-spirited.

If what you said right now was going to be the last words you uttered, what would you want them to be? If what you experienced with the person in front of you was going to be the last thing they experienced, what would you want that to be?

"Every day here is a gift".

Rest in peace, Karlis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kārlis_Skrastiņš

WELL, MAYBE NOT EXACTLY...

My blogs are usually personal, reflecting some troubling aspect of a life lesson that I am attempting to get a handle on.

Many times I have said that there is no unique human experience and many readers have commented that they felt I was reading their minds when I wrote about what I was grappling with. But I was wrong about that.

More specifically, I should have said there is no unique human emotion. We all experience anger, sadness, love, fear...we may or may not share an experience that creates that emotion in us.

I remember being in a department store with my three year-old daughter. I was buying a lipstick or something and when I turned around, Kelsey was not in sight. Nowhere. I called her name. No response. She had been right beside me, but I couldn't find her. I started to feel a rising panic as I made small but every widening circles from the make-up counter in search of her. This went on for several minutes - maybe only seconds in reality - as I began to imagine the worst: my child had been taken. I began to get physically ill, praying that she was safe, trying to decide if now was the moment I called store security. And then, there she was, right in front of me, as though she had been there all the time.

I can tell you what that sick fear feels like. I share that emotion with the mother who has had a child taken from a playground or her front yard. Our human experience was not the same, but our initial gut reaction was exactly the same...disbelief, terror, a sickness in the pit of the stomach that cannot be described in words.

There is no unique human emotion. The experiences that create these emotions are what create "our story" as Byron Katie calls our life. The experience is the landscape of our life and that terrain varies from individual to individual. The visceral reaction is the underpinning that connects us in our humanity, just as the earth's crust has a structural foundation upon which mountains, valleys, prairie lands, and the seas rest.

I was lucky. My child was safe, unharmed, probably not even aware of what had happened in that store those few moments. Do I know what the other mother went through as hours grew into days or weeks? Well, not exactly, and yet we are sisters.

A SELF-FULLFILLING PROPHECY?

I believe that many of us would be happier and more productive if we could learn to turn our minds off!

What? Blasphemy. Heresy. No, truth.

Proof of this can be found in the number of best selling books that coax, teach, exhort us to do just that:

"Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life"

by Martin E. P Seligman, Ph.D.

"Stillness Speaks" by Eckhart Tolle

"Loving What Is" by Byron Katie with Stephen Mitchell

"The Brain That Changes Itself" by Norman Diodge, M.D.

"Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of happiness, Love and Wisdom"

by Hanson, Ph.D., and Mendius, M.D.

Modern research on the brain has centered around the concept of neuroplasticity: Neuroplasticity is a non-specific neuroscience term referring to the ability of the brain and nervous system in all species to change structurally and functionally as a result of input from the environment.

This concept of neuroplasticity opens the door to the idea that - with some effort on our part - we can change the way we think, change how our brain works, change the mind that controls and structures our view of the world and our place in that world.

Hallelujah and zip-a-dee-do-dah!

As Doidge writes, our thoughts can change the structure and function of our brains, even into old age. We have heard of the 'power of positive thinking', but there is now scientific credibility that moves this concept from the area of self-help into the science section of your favorite book store.

Here is my concern: if, as Byron Katie writes, the root cause of suffering is identification with our thoughts, with the 'stories' that are continuously running through our minds like a bad "Groundhog Day", can the cycle be broken?

On a personal level, this is a constant struggle for me. I have had success with thoughts of gratitude, with nipping a fearful thought in the bud, so to speak. Conversely, I can do a number on myself! The only cure is a relentless attention to what I think...giving myself permission to not believe every thought that runs through my head...knowing that change is possible...fiercely claiming happiness as my right and my purpose. This requires, in part, a faith that 'what is' is what is supposed to be and making peace with that without delegating responsibility for myself to some other entity.

U. S. Anderson wrote "Three Magic Words", another book about changing how we think. He speaks of The Mental Diet. This is a wonderful thirty-day exercise anyone can do and isn't your health and happiness worth an investment of the next thirty days? The answer to that question is yes!

Here are the steps in Anderson's Mental Diet:

1. For two days, record all negative thought.

2. For thirty days, first reject all negative thought. (Trudy Evans, C. H., teaches her students and clients to say "Cancel, cancel, cancel" whenever one comes into the mind.)

3. Entertain only positive thoughts of good and abundance.

4. Engage in a daily period of thought control through breathing exercises. (The Navy Seals use breath control as one part of a four-part program to move the brain away from problem solving via the amygdala to use of the frontal lobe.)

5. Meditate every day.

Are we self-fullfilling prophecies? We can be!

"Until you become a master of your thinking, you will never become master of your fate." U. S. Anderson

TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE

We can't see it, but we can sure feel it!

Negative energy.

There are several ways in which we can protect ourselves from the effects of being around people who emit this type of energy: we can simply steer clear of them...we can wear a clove of garlic underneath our shirts...we can meditate before we know we are going to be with them, surrounding ourselves with that universal "white light" as a protective measure...we can bless the divine in them and offer an affirmation for joy and positive energy in their lives.

We can also become engulfed in the turmoil they carry with them.

But what good does that do them or us? When we are vulnerable, either because we are tired or have not properly fed or exercised ourselves, we are more susceptible to being dragged down by a negative person.

Studies show that most of the time, energy emanating from a positive, happy person can actually change the energy in a room full of fifty people; positive energy is that strong! There are, however, some folks who can drag a happy person down to their unhappy level, albeit unconsciously.

Emotion is contagious.

In his book The Tipping Point, author Malcolm Gladwell writes that "Emotion goes inside-out. Emotional contagion, though, suggests that the opposite is also true. If I can make you smile, I can make you happy. If I can make you frown, I can make you sad. Emotion, in this sense, goes outside-in."

Some of us are very good at expressing our emotions and feelings. This makes us much more emotionally 'contagious' than those who are not good at this expression. Psychologists call good expressers "senders." They would, in medical terms, be called carriers. There is a second group of people who are very susceptible to these senders or carriers.

Howard Friedman, a psychologist at the University of California, Riverside, developed the Affective Communication Test, which measures the ability to send emotion, to be contagious. In tests Friedman conducted with those who scored well on the test and those who didn't, he found that low-scorers ended up - in just a few minutes, without a word being spoken - picking up on the moods of the high-scorers. Gladwell writes, "If the charismatic person started out depressed, and the inexpressive person started out happy, by the end of the two minutes the inexpressive person was depressed as well. But it didn't work the other way. Only the charismatic person could infect the other people in the room with his or her emotions."

Emotion can progess much like a disease!

How, then, do we protect ourselves from the disease of negative energy? Obviously, be a charismatic person...be a carrier, a "sender." But what if charisma is not our forte?

I think we serve ourselves well if we are in tune with who we are and what our core values are. Someone firmly rooted in their sense of self is not easily swayed from what grounds them. Additionally, if we know where our emotional weak links are, we are better able to protect those weak areas while we work to build a better foundation upon which to stand. I have written before about Rick Hanson's book, Budda's Brain. As the book jacket reads, "Buddha's Brain draws on the latest research to show how to stimulate and strengthen your brain for more fulfilling relationships, a deeper spiritual life, and a greater sense of inner confidence and worth. You'll learn how to activate the brain states of calm, joy, and compassion instead of worry, sorrow, and anger." All the better to withstand the negative energy around you.

Practically, understand that you are allowed to set boundaries; people are only allowed the access you give them. Being a loving, caring person does not mean that you are required to let anyone walk over or through you in order to have their needs met. Do not invite negative energy in by being too accessible to those who have it. You are 'a people', too!

Know that it is perfectly okay for you to have a good day when even those closest to you are not. I came to realize one of my most freeing life lessons when my daughter was in high school: it was alright for me to be happy even when she was miserable. One morning, she left for school almost in tears from something unresolved in her social life from the night before. I was so very wrapped up in her (no boundaries) that I worried for her, about her and was miserable for the both of us all day. When she came home from school, she was fine...just fine...and I had made myself a pathetic wreck of a person all day.

As always, I come back to cultivating a sense of humor about life. Delicious ironies abound. Perhaps this is divine intelligence having a good time...God enjoying a joke like the rest of us!

There are many things in life that are serious, but taking oneself too seriously is pomposity. Allowing a person with negative energy to take over your emotional life is taking things way too seriously. Lighten up and laugh!

Know who you are. Have boundaries in place. Choose happiness. Change your brain, if called for. Avoid, affirm, meditate, or pray, but leave the garlic for that relaxing, home cooked meal you are planning!

THINK ON THIS

When the subject of meditation comes to mind, many picture the cartoon with the turbaned swami, in lotus position, sitting at the entrance of a cave on a mountain top. If not this image, perhaps one of tie-died, alternative lifestyle proponents...or those not willing to live in the here and now...or slackers...or Yanni fans.

Meditate, as defined in the dictionary, is to think intently and at length; to reflect deeply on a subject. This may be for spiritual purposes.

Would it surprise you to know that meditation is a practice which can actually change the way your mind works in order to achieve health and wellness, higher levels of performance, minimize or eradicate certain medical conditions, and create joy?

In "The Practical Neuroscience of Buddha's Brain" by Rick Hanson, PhD., Dr. Hanson writes:

'Meditation increases gray matter in brain regions that handle attention,

compassion, and empathy. It also helps a variety of medical conditions,

strengthens the immune system, and improves psychological functioning.'

Wow. Maybe those New Age goof-bugs are on to something!

The medical conditions that have been shown to improve upon entering into the practice of meditation are...allergies...anxiety...asthma...binge eating...cancer...depression...fatigue...heart conditions...high blood pressure...pain...sleep irregularities...substance abuse.

Even the June 2011 issue of "Health" magazine calls meditation "The single best All-Natural Painkiller". In a study at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, meditation reduced pain by 40 percent as compared with morphine, which only reduced the same pain by 25 percent. Robert Coghill, PhD, associate professor of neurobiology said subjects used the "focused attention" technique in dealing with the effects of a pain-inducing heating device used in the controlled study. (Health.com)

So - as the joke goes - Don't just do something...sit there!

The mind/brain is a powerful combination, but as I have written before, the mind is not always our friend. Often it actually gets in the way of our achievement and happiness. Richard Dawkins, author of "The Selfish Gene", talks about 'memes', which are self-replicating ideas, usually of a negative nature. Dr. Hanson, in "Buddha's Brain", writes that the mind is wired to go to a negative and hang onto it, constantly seeing every life event through the lens of that negative image. Both authors believe that this 'self-replication' entrenches that negative thought, giving it greater power over us each time it runs the circuit through our brain.

Meditation can redirect this mind game.

"We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conception and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin." Alan Watt.

But suspend thinking for what?

Meditation is the art of going within.

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens." Carl Jung

Traditional religion and the Esoterics teach that the "creator" gives us an inner wisdom, holy spirit, higher intelligence, subconscious mind - whatever you want to call it. This knowing presence always serves as a guide to where we want to go and via the most direct route. All we have to do is to be quiet long enough to hear that wisdom we hold within and then act on it.

Make no mistake. Meditation is a practice. It is not always easy to meditate. It is a life-long pursuit of a state that Osho calls "no-mind" - the ability to be a mirror, to watch the world, our thoughts, pass through us without attachment of emotion or an expectation of outcome.

"Meditation is at its most potent when you have no expectation, when you're open to everything and when you maintain an attitude of naive fascination." Paul Wilson in "The Quiet"

How to start if you have never tried to meditate? Going back to the "focused attention" tecnhique: Close your eyes, breathe through your nose, and concentrate on the air coming in and going out. Feel the warm air on your upper lip as you exhale. If your 'mind' wanders, let it. Tell it you will come back to that in a bit and redirect your attention to the breath on your lip. The more you practice, the better it works!

"He who breathes deepest lives most." Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Legacy Performance and Integrated Wellness Center hosts Guided Meditations each month. We know the power of thought...Step 3 in the Legacy Wellness Program: Begin to think. We use meditation as a tool for Goal Setting, Performance Training, Life-Living! Check our monthly calendar for times. (Monday, May 23rd. at 7:00 PM is the next one!)

CREATING A REFUGE

I am reading "Buddha's Brain", written by Rick Hanson, PhD and neuropsychologist.

Wow, I say WOW!

What an easy to read explanation of how the brain works...the scientific and neurological explanation of why we reinforce disempowering meme structures that take us farther and farther away from what we truly want, which is happiness, love, and peace of mind.

The chapter I read last night talked about one's haven or refuge...and asked if the reader had one and what it was. The author talked about a place, person, concept or activity, as examples, that represented safety and a sense of calmness when we engaged with that place, person or thing.

This totally rocked my boat because my first response was that I did not have such a thing in my life. And that started me throwing what he calls 'second darts' at myself This is the very act of buying into an old thought pattern that is usually false, and definitely serves only to create pain or sadness, becoming a more entrained thought pattern each time one calls it up. This sets one up for the next opportunity to throw that same miserable 'dart'...oh, poor me: I've moved around my whole life, I ended a long marriage and am alone, my daughter is healthy and independent...I have no safe place, no one to depend upon...yada, yada, yada.

I started to really look at my life. Really look at my life. I used a bit of Byron Katie, asking myself the four questions...

...is it true that I have no safe haven?

...is it absolutely true that I have no safe haven?

...how would I feel if I didn't believe this?

...and, then, the turn-around, which is always the truth-seeking missile in the process!

Question 1: it is true that I live alone, have no extended family, and choose not to rely upon my only child.

Question 2: nothing can be absolutely true. I have spent the last twenty years creating a home and a yard that is soothing, comforting, lovely to look at, comfortable to be in, and feels safe from harm. This is as true for me now as it was when I was married and living in this same house.

Question 3: if I didn't feel alone, without a safety net, how would I feel? Well, I would dance in the moonlight, feel light as a zephyr, revel in the deliciousness of life, have a happy, open heart!

Question 4: the turnaround? No one is responsible for my safety, my peace of mind, my joy, my lovingness, my life, but me. If I don't feel safe, have a place of refuge where I can cleanse myself from the world, it is no one's fault but my own. Period. The world doesn't owe me anything. No person in this world owes me anything. I owe myself everything!

So what did I gain from this exercise? Clarity. Insight. Joy - a small little pattern broken, which starts to create a positive mental construct I can use on the next 'dart'. Power. A feeling of calm and a sense of myself as the master of my circumstances.

The buck stops here!