Experience

Life is experience.

Experience is the opportunity to interact with life.
We choose how we interact with the experience.

Opportunity:

[  Waking up each day
[  Being hungry
[  Hearing
[  Seeing
[  Tasting
[  Touching
[  Smelling

There are many ways to interact with opportunity. Our history, how we were raised and how we interacted with past opportunities will impact how we interact in the present.

Dash taught me this simple truth.

Dash came into our lives on December 21^st, 2012. I asked for him to come, I needed him. Who he would be, what he would look like or how he would get to me, I left this for opportunity to figure out.

And it happened in perfect timing. Everything lined up to come to a result that was satisfactory to all involved. There was no money, bargaining or negotiating involved. It came about through the choices made with the opportunities that arose.

Dash is perfect for me. He is just what I wanted and exactly what I need.

This is what I have learned in the short time I've interacted with him.
 
[  Love, period.
[  Stretch upon waking. Move out of bed and stretch some more.
[  Walk.
[  Walk more.
[  Walk as much as you can.

 v  Interact with everything along the way.

 v  Enjoy it.

 v  Be excited by it.

 v  View it as new each time.

[  Drink and eat when needed.
[  Rest and sleep when needed.
[  There really is nothing to do. Remember, we create the “to do” list.
[  Interact with opportunity as soon as it arrives.
[  Rest and sleep in between the opportunities.
[  Show excitement towards what we love.
[  Be consistent with love.
[  The most important opportunity is companionship.
[  All opportunity in its time and quantity.
[  Be patient and trust.
[  Hold no attachment.
[  Be unconditional.
[  Hold no expectations.
[  Love on instinct, trust it.
[  Fully use senses; sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste.
[  Be aware of surroundings.
 v  There may be an opportunity waiting for attention.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tis the season....

When we speak

By Mark Nepo

I have only now realized that something endless has broken ground in me, and I have no choice but to live and love until it grows me like a tree.

===

I met an old man at a gathering, and when everyone went on their way, he leaned into the hushed space between us and talked to me as if we were trees.

Scratching his chin, he said, "We start out thin and green and each time the sky grows dark, we think we will break, but the downpour makes us grow, though never straight, always twisting for the light, and strangely, the more we reach above the earth, the deeper something in us fingers its way down, and it is this-our unseen fingers reaching for the core- that keeps us from blowing away. Now there is no more running and very little swaying, and up till now, there have been many languages, though none that could be heard, just a creak at dawn and a moan at night, and sooner or later, we are brought down. It doesn't matter how. We are undone. But stacked we burn, and here the poetry rises from us, leaving wisdom in the ash."

Tis the season………

By Barbara Monahan

There are many of us who suffer throughout the year and the holidays bring that suffering to the forefront because the core to this celebration is about sharing life.

I am late with the holiday prep this year.  The pause I have experienced with not jumping right into the busyness has allowed me to see that life is not in all that we do but in who we are in all that we do.

I am reminded, after reading Mark’s story above, of a time before my children were born. They did not exist at all. Then after 9 months of pregnancy they entered life. We stood in the nursery staring at our first son the day we brought him home from the hospital and asked ourselves, “ok, now what do we do?” And I thought to myself how amazing it is that just a few days ago he was not here. He could not be touched, held or fed. Poof! Here he is!!!

Recently, after a lifetime of only knowing my parents as being here among us, poof, they are gone. Never knowing a time without them, they are now nowhere to be found. Memories of my experience with them remains and is what shaped me.

Our experiences and how we move through them is what matters in life and each experience is our legacy = leaving wisdom in the ash.

Life happens for the living

I find Mark's writing below to be very helpful when working to understand life events.


I experienced three deaths in a 6 month period last year. My mom died in June after a battle with cancer. My Aunt in July and my Dad in December.
Whatever you are facing, I hope you can find some comfort in his words. BAM




-----------------------------
The book of awakening, June 3rd
By Mark Nepo
The buffalo fed on the buffalo grass that was fertilized by their own droppings. This grass had deep roots bound to the earth and was resistant to drought. ~David Peat

Try as we will, we cannot escape the making of mistakes. But fortunately, the ever -humbling cycle of growing strong roots comes from eating what grows from our own humanity. Like the buffalo, we are nourished by what sprouts from our own broken trail. What we trample and leave behind fertilizes what will feed us. No one is exempt.

A pipe falls on a dancer’s leg and the dancer must reinvent herself, while the worker who dropped it is driven to volunteer with crippled veterans. A dear friend discovers small bulbous tumors and his tulips begin to speak, and when he dies, his nurse begins a garden. Things come apart and join sometimes faster than we can cope. But we evolve in spite of our limitations and though we break and make mistakes, we are always mysteriously more than what is broken. Indeed, we somehow grow from the soil of our mistakes. And often in the process, the things we refuse to let go of are somehow forced from our grip.

I have been broken and have failed so many times that my sense of identity has sprouted and peeled like and onion. But because of this, I have lived more than my share of lives and feel both young and old at once, with a sudden heart that cries just to meet the air. Now, on the other side of all I’ve suffered so far, everything, from the quick song of birds to the peace trapped inside a fresh brook’s gurgle, is rare and uncertain. Now I want to stand naked before every wind; and though I’m still frightened I will break, I somehow know it’s all a part – even the fright- of the rhythm of being alive.

You see, no one ever told me that as snakes shed skin, as trees snap bark, the human heart peels, crying when forced open, singing when loved open. Now I understand that whatever keeps us from burning truth as food, whatever tricks the heart into thinking we can hide in the open, whatever makes us look everywhere but in the core, this is the smoke that drives us from what is living. And whatever keeps us coming back, coming up, whatever makes us build a home out of straw, out of heartache, out of nothing, whatever ignites us to see again for the very first time, this is the bluish flame that keeps the Earth grinding to the sun

Friday Inspiration

Just trust yourself, then you all know how to live. ~Goethe

Let there be light by Mark Nepo

When Edison was discovering the light bulb, he first engaged in a process of envisioning how an unseeable current of energy could be harnessed and turned into light. Like most of is the vision came first. Once he understood what came to him, it took quite some time to find the precise material that would work as a filament in the bulb itself.

Later, when asked if he ever grew discouraged or thought he was wasting his time, Edison said no, he learned something important each time he tried. He learned that there was another material not to be used.

The lessons here are very telling and transferable, especially to how we seek our calling in the world and to how we seek out love. To be willing to envision what we need is powerful and real, and just as crucial is the confidence of spirit to know that it will work, even though we haven't found where we belong or whom to love yet. Equally as vital is the perseverance in trying to find precisely what will work.

But perhaps the most inspiring part of Edison's journey is how he didn't view his many attempts as any type of failure on his part, but rather as an inevitable part of the process of discovery.

---------------------

What is your vision?

Use your confidence and curiosity to bring it to life ~ let there be light!

The power of symbols

The power of symbols

By Mark Neppo

If you truly hold a stone, you can feel the mountain it came from.

A caveman picking berries was cornered by a wild and now extinct creature, and when he was spared by the snap of a tree limb that scared the beast off, he took a piece of the fallen bough as a good luck charm. And so the story of symbols began.

People have always saved scraps of their experience to help remind them of the forces of life that can’t always be seen. Filled with the timeless rhythm of the ocean, we pocket a shell and carry it thousands of miles to know that presence of ocean when we are hours from the sea. It is why we treasure certain songs, why we save ticket stubs and dries out flowers.

Symbols are living mirrors of the deepest understandings that have no words. I know of two friends who made it through Vietnam. They were rehabilitated in Italy, and before coming home, they split a copper lire, each holding dear the other’s half, as if it were the break of heart forever left in that godforsaken jungle.

We ask the smallest items of everyday life to carry unbearable meaning for us, and the dearest ones work like Aladdin’s lamp. All we have to do is rub them slowly, and feelings and times long gone come and live again, or basic truths hard to keep in view return.

As a boy, I remember visiting my grandfather’s house. He had a milk-white bowl filled with M&M’s. It was a simple magical treasure to me. No matter how often I reached on tiptoe, it never emptied. It has been thirty years since he died, and now when depressed, I hold that milk-white bowl in my lap and eat a few M&M’s.

And I feel better. This isn’t illusion or escapism, but rather using the milk-white bowl filled with M&M’s as a living symbol that can call into my moment of sadness a deeper sense of plentitude and generosity that is always there, but not always accessible.

This is the proper use of symbols, not to coldly represent ideas, but to call into being all that lives in us and about us. They help us bear witness to the painful mystery of living, and whether a crucifix, a small weeping Buddha, or a broken shell from a long-forgotten sea, they help us bear the days.

Recall a special moment in growing up.

Meditate on the feeling of that moment until the scene comes into view.

Slowly feel your way about this special moment and focus on a detail – a certain chair or smell of lilac or a rainy piece of glass.

With reverence, lift up this detail as a living symbol of all this special moment means to you.

The next time you feel less than, bring yourself in contact with this very personal symbol.

Let it open you to gifts you don’t always remember.

_____________________________________________

From BAM

Before my mother died, I asked if a rose could be our symbol.

She looked at me, touched my cheek and said, "everything will be alright".

When life is tough, I see the roses. She is there in this symbol saying, "everything will be alright".

Droplet

I realized yesterday that each of us has the chance/opportunity to be a droplet in life. A droplet is the beginning of the ripple effect.

What if we used this as our view in each moment of our day. What changes?


My examples:
Interviewing / hiring college students for an accounting internships in my department.
Coaching people in transition. Helping them find their way.
Being present for someone I love during a difficult time.

All of these experiences came about through a choice to say yes to each of them.

We get bombarded by voice mail, email, text, im, fb, linkedin,......... At the office I call colleagues dropping by pop ins. Or someone stopping by to visit at home. A snail mail letter or card. Each a chance at being a droplet.

I reconnected with a Controller I worked with in my first job out of college. She was a droplet for me through her encouragement, advice and living example of a successful professional, mother, wife. This was over 20 years ago and I will remember our time together forever.

Being a droplet is meaningful and inspiring.

What are your droplet experiences?
Who has been a droplet for you?

Drive the speed limit

This post is interactive because it requires you to to drive the speed limit to understand what is being taught.

Drive the speed limit the next time you are in your car and then come back to read the rest of this post.





Driving the speed limit can be a challenge and uncomfortable. At the least it feels different.

Let's apply this concept to how we move through life. At what speed do you go through your day? What is your speed limit?

I am definitely a 60 mph girl. I hit the ground running. My brain wakes up in seconds (similar to the BMW 0 to 60 timehttp://www.0-60times.com/bmw.asp)

Doing the "drive the speed limit" excercise every time I am in my car is enabling me to transfer the slower pace feeling into my day by giving me a sense of what it feels like to move slower.
And just as I check if I am doing the speed limit while driving, I am checking in on how fast I am moving through my day.

I put a 1,000 piece puzzle outside our pod (office shared by many) at work with a sign " it is important to take breaks throughout the day". This helps me remember to slow down just as speed limit signs guide us with safe driving speeds.

Give this a try. What signs can you use to help keep you moving at a slower pace in your day?