It's probable that our conscious minds, the part we each so readily take to be 'me', is but a tiny sliver of light floating on a darker, more inscrutable background.Deep in this mysterious substrate lie a host of automatic processes - monitoring, regulating, pulsing, analysing, stimulating, suppressing. We don't have to do anything to make our hearts beat faster when we're excited or scared. And breathing, while amenable to control by the conscious mind, just gets on with itself when we're not looking.Alongside the complex but more automatic processes are parts of us - equally hidden from our direct experience - with immense intelligence, capable of making sense, following through on goals and plans, directing us, holding us back, moving us forward. As Timothy D Wilson says in his book on this subject, we are in many ways strangers to ourselves, easily mistaking the reasons we do what we do and needing to pay careful attention - watching and observing ourselves as we would another person - if we are to have a chance of understanding our motives, preferences, habits and the mysterious movements of our minds and bodies.All of this has particularly been on my mind in recent weeks during which the original intent of this project - a daily practice of writing and publishing on meaningful topics - has been so difficult to bring about. I've never consciously, purposefully given up on the idea but have found my mind and body in something of a revolt against it, holding me back, turning me away. Rather than pushing through (which is sometimes the most helpful thing to do with practices that are important in our lives) I have been treating this inner part as respectfully as I can, as if it has wisdom only dimly available to my conscious mind. In the space that's emerged I have taken up other practices, of which daily swimming seems the most important and which has been an enormous gift which I will write about another time.Today, for the first time this summer, I returned to open water swimming at the ponds on London's Hampstead Heath. As I slipped into the water, something shifted profoundly within me. A returning sense of contact with the world, a realisation again of how indivisibly I am of the world rather than separate from it. There among the ducks and the dragonflies, with my hands invisible before me in the murky darkness, I found out again that I am not alone. And in the midst of this array of life, an enormous gratitude, a surging wish to be of service, and joy at the prospect of writing again.And wonder at this mysterious something we human beings are, that can be awakened in surprising ways, or put to sleep, by the simple day-to-day choices and practices by which we live our lives.
Photo Credit: Matt From London Flickr via Compfight cc
If you were parachuted into your life from outside - into your life and body as it is today - you might start to see what's there through new eyes.Perhaps you'd be more immediately grateful for the people around you, for the love, support and attention they bring you that you had to do nothing to earn. And perhaps you'd see the difficulties in your life for what they are - difficulties to be worked with, rather than confirmations of your inadequacy.Enormous possibilities and freedom to act might come from inhabiting this world in which you're both supported and have problems towards which you can bring the fulness of your mind, body and heart.Being parachuted into your life might put an end to self-pity, because you'd come to see how the body you inhabit has been training, practicing all these years building skills, strength and an understanding of the life it's been living and the difficulties it's been facing. Maybe you'd see that you are precisely the one best equipped to deal with the detail and intricacy of this particular life. And perhaps you'd discover a way to look honestly at your situation and the resolve to deal with it, step by patient step.Maybe if you were parachuted into your very own life, you'd understand that everything that has happened to you - so far - is not a shameful failure but the exact preparation you need for living today, tomorrow, and for the years to come.
Life is too precious, and too important for us to believe the stories of our own unworthiness, to plead that we have a special kind of suffering unknown to anyone else, to wallow in shame at our incompleteness, our falling short, our confusion, our lostness.Yes, let's feel it all, but let's not take it to be the only truth about our situation. Because life is too short for us to wait until we feel better before we begin.Let's allow ourselves to look at life with childlike eyes that see again the wonder in things, and that live it all, fiercely and passionately. Let's learn to drop our defences, to give it all away, and use our experiences, all of our joys and all of our sorrows, as a channel for aliveness.Life is too short, too precious, and too important for us to waste our time doing anything else.
There are enough people afraid, yelling, paralysed, spinning, panicked in the world already, and it's not helping us. Right now what's called for is the capacity to be grounded, to see with as much clarity as we can muster, to take the world and its changes with the equanimity that comes from knowing that change is the way of the world, and to bring as much virtue to the world as we can.It's always been the case that the world, and everyone in it, benefits when we can find courage, truthfulness, compassion, kindness, service, justice, mercy, creativity, gratitude, patience, integrity, fierceness of purpose, commitment and the like. Let's please, do what we can to cultivate that in one another and in ourselves, rather than those qualities that dehumanise us or isolate us from one another.Right now I'm taking up the practice of reading less news and more poetry*. I'm finding in this a deeply renewed capacity to engage. So much of what's passing for news at the moment is in any case fevered speculation, and reading more of it numbs me (with fear or denial). Exercise is helping enormously. Meditation. Long hugs with people I love. Giving up the fantasy that I can control what happens. And doing the thing I'm here to do - writing and teaching.It seems to me that if ever there was a time to start committing ourselves to what we're really here to do (rather than what someone else told us to do, or what we imagined would get us liked or give us status) it's now. With as much sincerity and integrity as we can find.Let's get to it.*I found this suggestion in the wonderful work of 
Some resources for these days in which the world looks so uncertain.(1) How we can respond to the US election resultA fabulous, wise 30 minute talk by Norman Fischer at Everyday Zen, which is actually part 7 of a series called 'Training in Compassion' but stands alone beautifully. What Norman has to say is both a reminder of our capacity to respond and a call to hope in that capacity right when we're least sure what to do.
Walking among tall oaks in London's Hyde Park, my thoughts turn towards the end of things. Leaves are falling, their curled crisp edges crunching beneath my boots. There are still many trees clothed in green. The end of this will come soon, I can see, leaving the dark shape of curling branches clear against the sky.One day, each of these trees, too, will be gone.It is a relief to know that this is how it is. That things come to an end. Quite naturally. Quite ordinarily. And that it is true for us too.How many mornings I have awoken with such deep lonely sadness at all this. That I will lose myself. That I will lose all of my faculties. That I will lose everyone I love, and they will lose all this too. That all this has already begun.But here, among the trees, I am gladdened. Losing it all is not my fate alone. It is not a gross unfairness visited upon me. It is not something I always need to mourn. It is the way of life, and always has been. It is the condition of humanity, and always will be.I am joined in this path by every living thing that has ever existed, and every living thing that will exist. I am unified with all of life, indivisible from it.Yes, deep sadness at how all of this ends has its place, reminding me how I long to live and how much there is to lose. But equally appropriate is joy, and wonder, exhilaration and radical amazement that any of this is happening. That I get to take part. That I am, for now, here.My heart quickens and my eyes widen at the beauty and fragility of life, at its preciousness, at how fleeting it is. I see that there is no time to waste. There is so much to do, so much I can do. Whatever contribution I am here to make, now is the time. Every moment until now has been preparation for this. Every moment to come, however many or few, calls with the promise and possibility of participation in life's grand, beautiful, tragic, surprising, endlessly creative unfolding.It is time, as it always is, to begin.
There's no doubt that I wish it hadn't happened this way.I wish we hadn't voted to leave the European Union; that the public debate had not been so filled with fear, and lies, and near-lies, and evasions; that we did not live in a society sliding into such deep and despairing inequality. I wish that there were less mistrust, suspicion, and denigration of the other in others, and of the other in ourselves. I wish we were not stepping out of institutions and structures that keep us in relationship with others, that require mutuality and compromise and, most of all, talking together. I wish we'd found a way of working out what to do that was more generous and expressed bigger commitments than only trying to get what we want.I wish I felt more confident and less afraid than I do today.But I'm also discovering that the part of me that is afraid doesn't only become so about political upheaval and all of its unknown consequences. It's afraid when projects I initiate don't go so well, when others get angry or bring conflict my way, when it looks like I'm not getting loved in the way it expects, and when there's a risk I may get shamed or embarrassed. It's afraid when I lose my umbrella, when I forget an appointment, when I'm running late, and when I've sent an email that might upset someone. It wishes, beyond anything else, to be able to control the world so that nothing bad can ever happen.When I engage with the world by trying to control it, my fear so easily becomes terror because it's a patently impossible project. I lose contact with my own resourcefulness. I lose contact with the support and generosity of others. I quickly forget myself and my capacity to contribute. I feel alone and helpless. I spin. I know many people feel like this today however they voted in yesterday's referendum.I also know that when I give up trying to control that which can't be controlled, so much more becomes possible. My fear right-sizes itself. I get to see that while there are things to be afraid of there are also reasons for hope - in our own capacity, in the capacity of others, in the relationships we make - that are quite distinct from how things turn out. I see that there are things to be done. Listening and speaking, holding and thinking and inventing and contributing. And I see the possibility that this situation, however it turns out to be, and however tricky, has the possibility of bringing out from us the generosity and compassion and wisdom that's always possible for us human beings.And for all these reasons, while I am afraid I am also hopeful, and seeing what I can do to treat the many obstacles ahead as part of the path.
Exhale - put out into the world; create; teach; make; organise; ship; change things; get it done.Inhale - draw in from the world; learn; rest; wonder; study; gather; change yourself; replenish.What's your balance of inhale to exhale?Are you, like most of us, living a life where exhale is a given and inhale considered a luxury, self-indulgent?What comes from a life in which breathing out smothers breathing in?And what quality of exhale is even possible when we live this way?
It's easy to feel sure that who I am is the inner experience I have of myself. To imagine that I am my thoughts, my values, my opinions, what I believe to be true, what I care about. And, consequently, that to change who I am - to grow, or develop, or address my difficulties - I only need to change my mind.It makes intuitive sense to think this way, firstly because of course we are each uniquely privileged observers of this particular, own-most inner aspect of ourselves that we call mind. And, secondly, we've been conditioned by our culture and its strong background of