Getting Through Tough Times with Positive Psychology

   During this journey through my mother's lung cancer I am relying heavily on the concepts of positive psychology to help us get through. In "Happiness: Lessons From a New Science," Richard Layard wrote, "cultivate the sense of awe and wonder, savour the things of today; and look about you with the same interest as if you were watching a movie or taking a photo.  Engage with the world and with the people around you.  In one sense, as Leo Tolstoy said, the most important person in the world is the one in front of you now."
   We leave before sunrise each week day morning to make it for mom's radiation treatment on time.  Yesterday, while pulling out of the drive way I noticed how incredibly beautiful the full moon looked hanging in the pre dawn sky.  I pointed it out to my mother and we stopped the car and savoured it.  Within a few moments I began to feel my breathing deepen and my body relax as I allowed myself to drift toward the pull of the moon.  We hadn't needed to venture into the wilderness, or even stroll through a park, all we had to do was to simply pause and look up to be connected with something vast and beautiful and transcendent.  I reached out and took my mother's hand and allowed myself to fully take in the blessing of it all....    

Love, Cancer, and Reclaiming Body and Soul

  

   For the past two weeks I've spent ten hour days at a major cancer center where I've been exposed to and touched by suffering, heartbreak, love and beauty on what often seems like a moment to moment basis. One moment I am sitting at a table of patients and artists beside a pale and exhausted looking teenager hooked up to an iv  who is working on an intricate and truly beautiful collage while completely ignoring the rest of us. On my other side is a fragile looking middle aged man with kind eyes who has dropped by the Arts in Medicine room before his chemo infusion.  When he begins to describe the puppy he is considering adopting and asks us what we think he should name her, the teenager looks up, takes us in for what seems like the first time, and suggests that he name the puppy, "Hope."

   The next day while sipping coffee in the radiation center waiting room I am joined by what is beginning to feel like a sisterhood of mostly bald headed women who huddle together for a few moments each morning to compare side effects, symptoms, laughter, and reassurances.  This capacity of shared trauma for so quickly fostering authenticity and intimacy is remarkable to me.

   That same afternoon while at the infusion center I notice a husband and wife sitting across from me and am struck by the fact that while the wife is the one receiving the chemo infusions, it's he who looks ill and absolutely terrified.  I smile at him reassuringly and He lifts a trembling hand to wave at me.  I very much doubt that this wan and stoop shouldered man has seen his thirtieth birthday yet.

   I see pain everywhere.  And I see love all around me.  And I see fear and courage and despair and hope.  This just may be the most terrible, beautiful, most real world I have ever landed in.  I've had several long and heart felt talks with complete strangers, and  ocassionally I ask them what they've discovered thus far that has surprised or encouraged them.  A common response to my question alludes to the acts of kindness cancer patients and their loves ones have experienced from strangers and how significant even the smallest gestures have felt to those who were feeling frightened and vulnerable.  "Maybe it is love that does the most healing," one breast cancer patient shared with me.

   In her book, "When the Heart Waits," Sue Monk Kidd observed that “…a split of the head from the heart is common in our culture. Along with this goes another painful splitting: the severing of our body from our soul. As we separate from our feelings, we tend to separate from our bodies as well.”  In this culture of cancer I have repeatedly heard stories that describe in one form or another a kind of reunion of body and soul.  They are never happy stories, instead they contain pain and suffering and fear, and yet, they are so often transformative.   Stories that begin with one person's abrupt and often savage introduction to a body that he or she had been living with for a life time and yet never known.  Dramas that present crisis and pathos and uncertainty, and encounters that cannot possibly be prepared for because they involve a confrontation with the wildness of one's very soul.  For days now I have sat saddened and spell bound by stories that throb with both pain and love and ultimately seem to lead to the 'awful grace' of a hard won and weary wisdom. 

Failure, Imagination and J.K. Rowling

I hear a great deal about fear and failure these days from both adolescents and adults who come to me for support, reassurance, direction and (gulp) wisdom. I think when appropriate I'll begin referring them to J.K. Reynold's wonderful address to Harvard Graduates where she shared..."So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive..."

Failure, while always painful and never welcomed, is often a pathway to possibilities that we seldom recognize in the beginning.

I encourage you to watch her speech and enjoy the opportunity to both laugh and be inspired...

He Was Me by Peter Reynolds

"He Was Me" by Peter Reynolds is a touching story aimed at those of us who have lost touch with the deeply buried and often forgotten child which lives within each of us.

Live Every Moment of Your Life

The above lecture is approximately one hour in length and is by a wonderful author and physician, Rachel Naomi Remen. She offers much wisdom and insight which each of us can benefit from.

Remen once observed, "Most people have come to prefer certain of life’s experiences and deny and reject others, unaware of the value of the hidden things that may come wrapped in plain and even ugly paper. In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all costs, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength or our greatness.”

At this particular time in my life I'm surrounded by suffering, suffering so deep and dark that I have sometimes felt buried by it, and at other times blinded by it. I certainly haven't welcomed a single moment of it. And yet, I am also as acutely aware as I've ever been of the kindness and compassion of strangers, the both fierce and gentle power of love, of compassion, of hope... I have witnessed again and again the profound magic that can be contained within a single moment.

I cannot embrace this teacher but I am trying very hard to stay open to the all too often painful lessons that I am being taught...

Letting Go

In dealing with my mother's cancer I am continuously reminded of the importance of taking one day at a time and letting go of as much of the 'small stuff' as possible. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and ubsurdities have crept in;forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsence."

I encourage her (and myself) to treat each new day as a gift - particularly those exquisitely precious ones that contain no doctor appointments, chemo infusions, or radiation treatments. What might we savor today?

The future of Spiritual Practice

I've not posted as often as I like to as we recently learned that my mother has lung cancer, and I'm in Florida to be with her through this process. Consequently for the time being my posts will probably be less frequent and shorter than usual.

I did want to share with you that a free teliseminar on the future of spiritual practice can be registered for at http://beyondawakeningseriteies.com/

You can also receive more information at the above website. Speakers
include but are not limited to: Ken Wilber, Barbara Max Hubbard,
Brother David Steindl-Rast, Ram Dass, Rick Hanson, and Andrew Cohen.

A small portion of the teliseminar description contains the following words, "How can a living spirituality enable human beings to create more enlightened responses to our common problems?

There is no more important conversation—or commitment to action—in the world today.

Join us as 27 of the most dynamic contemporary spiritual teachers engage in this series of dialogues. Each teacher will bring a distinct, profound, and catalytic perspective to the Big Conversation. Each has drunk deeply from the wisdom of the past, and is also embodying their wisdom in a new way, freshly attuned to the challenges of our moment."