way of beauty – Lisa Z. Lindahl

February 14, 2016

Self Compassion

Is it possible to have compassion for oneself?

If we understand compassion as the ability to experience another’s pain, how would it be possible to have compassion for oneself? Don’t we just, well, have our own pain and suffering? How is the notion of compassion for ourselves relevant?

Somehow it is. Somehow it must be so. It may not seem logical, but if you’ve been reading this blog for a time you know that on the Way of Beauty, reason and logic are often outranked by the alchemical and magical forces.

And alchemy is essential in healing. It is the changing of the metaphorical lead into gold, illness into wellness. How we approach, hold, and release our own suffering is key to the quality of our lives. Need I remind any of us, there is no such thing as a life without some sort and degree of suffering?

My goal for one recent year was “Be kind to yourself, Lisa!” What did I mean? I meant, in pop parlance, to give myself a break. In Way of Beauty terms I meant to have compassion for myself. Too often our harshest critic is ourselves:

Only got a B+ on that exam? Shame!

Just because you had surgery last month and have been doing PT three times a week is no excuse for being behind on the month’s sales’ stats! Get with it!

Isn’t that baby fat gone yet ?! I brought the baby home two weeks ago!

The divorce was a year ago! Stop talking about it! Those 20 years are in the past!

You get the picture… too often our expectations of ourselves hold little compassion, no allowance for any suffering, any expression of the pain, for any margin of error, let alone honoring the authenticity of that suffering, the recognition of the need for a necessary and healing process of grieving, hurting.

We hold our suffering at bay, not allowing it in, feeling it, allowing it to be real, true. I might spin off here into the need and illusions of perfectionism, but that is for later. Now we are addressing being compassionate towards ourselves, understanding and forgiving of ourselves as we go forward doing the best that we can with the information and the tools at hand under the circumstances we have created for ourselves – with the helpful knowledge that nothing is static. Life and we are evolving.

Recognize your suffering: don’t let it rule you – either by assiduously ignoring it or by placing it on the throne and becoming its servant; wallowing is not healing either. A quick aside: Self-pity is not the same as self-compassion. There is a world of difference — that’s why there are different words. Pitying someone or yourself is not a constructive act. In our times a connotation of contempt has grown around the action of pity/pitying someone that is absent in other words that seek to address describing feeling with others.

As a teen-ager I remember my mother admonishing my moody 14-ish self: “Stop feeling so sorry for yourself!” My older sister would taunt: “What’s with the pity party?” So I was taught it was not only selfish and unattractive behavior, but also I learned that it got me no where: it was unproductive. Hmmm. How is it some adults have somehow missed that day at “How to Be A Grown Up” school?

But I digress.

Perhaps most importantly, endeavor not to disassociate from your pain. Ironically, through compassion for yourself you will learn that it is not an other, that “bad back” or (from my repertoire:) “stupid seizure disorder”. It is you, part of you. There is no “it” and “me.” When feeling compassion for yourself – feeling your own pain and suffering – speak of “we.”

“Oh dear, my broken heart, what must we do to get through to the other side of this!?”

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY TO US!

August 9, 2015

Ageless Wisdom Practices

Supporting Practices for The Way of Beauty

At the risk of sharing “platitudes as insights” as one journalist put it recently, there are three Beauty Practices that are old chestnuts, as my mother used to say. They have been in the culture for a very long time, and certainly have not been identified as “Beauty Practices,” though indeed they are, as they contribute to True Beauty unfailingly. These practices, human activities, whatever we choose to name them have endured through many civilizations and cultures because of their beneficial effect on the human body, mind and spirit — and consequently on our planet (not hyperbole). I have come to understand these as supporting and basic to the other practices of the Way of Beauty.

I bet you know them:

1) Practice “The Golden Rule”

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Really, such common sense.

2) Be still

Whether it is meditation, time in prayer or simply sitting quietly in a spot that resonates with you…find time each day to be still. It is amazing what comes in, or what is resolved, or repaired when serene time/space is made available.

3) Be active

Whole libraries could be filled with books written about the myriad ways in which an active body is beneficial to mind, body and spirit. No need to re-iterate here. I believe that the body is the temple of the soul, and so must be cared for and maintained as such. Not always a simple task as we age, BTW.

So these are the supportive and basic three. In “The Way of Beauty” book more is said about how they specifically support and align with True Beauty, creating greater harmony.

And a little reminder — to myself as well — these are practices. I shall point out, as we sometimes forget: there is no “end state” of any of these activities, though some yogis might argue with me. These are ways of being. And as none of us (except me & thee, perhaps) are perfect, they are rarely static or constant. I fall short a great deal, currently in the keeping my body active department. But I do practice at it. I do my best to practice the Golden Rule. Being still is far easier; noticing beauty does that for me. Practice, practice, practice.

Oh, and have fun doing so.

June 21, 2015

Sweet Solstice Greetings with a bit o’ Summer Beauty

I love the cycle of summer..

… in the kitchen and the art studio

Spectacular summer skies

the

light!

May 10, 2015

Harmonic Relationships

Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone. ~ Margaret J. Wheatley

I hope by now it is clear that choosing to follow a path of True Beauty is in great part about noticing, cultivating and sustaining Beauty, an integral form of harmonious relationships. Becoming a Practitioner of True Beauty!

While relationship begins first between you and you — being the most authentic self you can be as discussed last week — the next most important and primary relationship is between you and the “Other,” or really a series of “others” whose main characteristic is that they are perceived as external of the “I.” While there is the Other of our immediate environment our first “other of flesh” is, most probably our birth family, then the family chosen and created beyond that. Thirdly are all the relationships one chooses to create just between folks and other species — pets and, say, houseplants. (I am currently in deep mourning for my 20+ year old Jade plant that is seriously ailing. I cannot admit it’s dying.)

Though all of the above may seem obvious, looking at the status of today’s families, community health, ecology and abused and abandoned animals — it isn’t. We only have to look around to see the growing anomie* in our culture.

*Anomie is the disorientation and alienation that arises in a society as a result of the erosion of its moral and social codes. People feel isolated and alone, without a supportive social or guiding framework.

True Beauty is the antidote for anomie.

Relationship is a word that has been so overused in our culture today. Perhaps because truly meaningful relationships are too scarce for too many. For instance have you noticed we now have “Relationship Brokers” in place of customer service departments in many businesses now? Too funny. Or sad.

So what is relationship really about? Hoo-boy! So many books, lectures, TV shows, gurus have gone on about this very subject! But there is actually science behind/about relationship. I’ll try to put it into non-science speak.

Relationship is about attraction and resonance. Being attracting, attracted and resonating with an other –only to find upon entering into the dance of relationship that one-plus-one equals not two, but three — and we are not talking about Baby, here!

The attraction of the two has created something bigger than the separate single units apart: the “field of attraction.” This field is the observable energy created by and between the two. Gravity is a field of attraction. I could say, quite literally, that the Moon fell for the Earth. I like that. The pull you feel towards someone is a real, energetic, observable thing.

Plato wrote about it, Shakespeare dramatized it, and virtually every culture has tradition and mythology around it; many worldwide believe that it is “love that makes the world go ’round.”

So while those millions of books have been written and therapies have been developed to help create and sustain healthy and happy relationships, at day’s (and experts’) end harmony in relationship relies upon the care and maintenance of that field. And that all boils down to “importances.” What is your order of importances? To what and where do you give time, energy and attention? How much to oneself, to the job, the sport, the maintenance of possessions, and to the journey of others around us? On what do you focus?

Ditto to the above for the Other who is creating that field of attraction with you.

And, then, just to complicate matters: can we accept the care, love and concern of an other flowing to us? We often hear of the joys of giving. But how many of us are uncomfortable with receiving? How is it to be the subject of another’s focus? Is it hard to simply say “Thank You” when someone does a thoughtful thing or pays one a compliment?

Finally, how do we communicate? How effective are both at expressing as well as listening? Effective communication is the key to authentic relationship, and successful, harmonic relationship itself is key to living a life of Beauty.

Personal relationships are not irrelevant or extra-curricular. They are a central expression of Harmony, of a life of True Beauty. In formally entering, i.e. consciously choosing a relationship with another human being we are entering the dance and mystery of the Universe itself.

Note, however, it is a core premise of the Way of Beauty that, in fact, all is in relationship. Not just human-to-human. Or man to dog. Or human to earth. All is in relationship, all the time. Being in conscious relationship, therefore, is a tall order.

To practice harmonic relationship:

1) Know that you are in relationship with all, all the time. Your energy effects the energy field of that and those around you.

2) Notice your order of importances. This is a big clue to your own attractions and resonances, if you need a clue… and often we do!

3) Focus on that which you want to include in your life and see more of in the world. If, conversely, you focus on the negative, it is the negative that will occupy your environment.

4) Communicate. You are in relationship. Duh!

5) Really, just follow all the Beauty practices as well as you can. The Way of Beauty is about increasing Harmony, the happy state of relationship.

“Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others’ activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others. ~HH Dalai Lama

football team, circa 1923

October 19, 2014

Shifting Paradigms

How did we get to the point we are at today in our modern western civilization? How did greed, corruption and selfishness become so prevalent? How did our lives get so busy, our frustrations so many, and our sense of contentment and achievement so hard won?

We live in an atmosphere charged with the expectancy of change. We are in a time period which some purport to be the end of the earth’s geological Cenozoic era. Some culture-watchers, cosmologists and theologians believe the era in which we are living needs to be the period for forging a whole new paradigm; that the old operational ideas have outlived their usefulness, en masse, and are now just causing harm. The evidence of this is becoming increasingly apparent.

The shifting consciousness around humanity’s place on the planet and our use of its resources is a prime example of this perceptual shift. Certainly, there have been recent events that support this hypothesis.

When people talk about “shifting the paradigm” I take this to mean changing the “standard operating procedure” as it relates to those cultural norms that have evolved, particularly since the advent of the industrial revolution.

This work can be contributed to by anyone, I believe, through independent, personal action. Creating cultural change through personal responsibility that manifests in ones actions. It is the old “pebble in the water creating ripples” motif. Moving Beauty out of the abstract and back into the realm of the concrete, where it actually resides, is key to a successful cultural and values shift.

To this end I propose evolving a 21^st century applied philosophy of Beauty: “The Way of Beauty.” This Way introduces “The 18 Practices of Beauty.” These are primarily guidelines on what to explore and what to do (practice) to evoke, nurture and support beauty-full choices in the everyday living arts to better heal ourselves and our spiritual and physical environments — and through these individual actions and choices — eventually our very culture.

It has become critical now at this juncture that the term “Beauty” be reclaimed, and its concept be understood at a far deeper, truer level to be embraced and revered by humankind.

We must move from giving only lip-service born of abstract philosophical theory (“Truth, Beauty, and Goodness”) into behavioral practices born of value shifts based in a new, emergent paradigm.

Passageway - photo by Lisa Z. Lindahl — Passageway