Today’s Gift from the Labyrinth

I complicate things as soon as I get back inside but I do retain the gifts offered by my labyrinth walk this morning. I have been resisting walking and movement lately. I don’t know why. My inner critic ramps up her demands and judgments, but I dig ins with many ways of refusal So today, I decided to combine two of my practices of the quiet and walk our backyard labyrinth while I was saying my Sunday rosary. Sunday’s rosary is dedicated to the goodness and protection of Amy, my youngest grandchild. Each daughter, and their husband and my three grandchildren receive the blessings of Mary and the rosary on their designated weekday. Upon entering the labyrinth, I am in my second decade of the rosary and I notice very bright fresh yellow and white miniature daisies greeting me. Just one patch It is enough to lighten my mood and willingness to step further along the path. They remind me of the fun times I have with Amy and how proud she was to fix our breakfast yesterday of egg salad, of which she proclaimed she is the best at making. I like the self-confidence and image she has of herself at the tender age of seven.  All of this is gift to me. Soon the circular pattern of the paver bricks lead the way both to the center of the labyrinth and to the calming peace of acceptance of being right where I am on the path.  No hurry. No worry. Just a breathing time for my soul.

The labyrinth Tom and I created a few years ago is daily present for my sight. And even when I gaze upon it from my kitchen window, it reminds me of gratefulness and I don’t know how this happens. It just does. It reminds me of a Oneness, which I might not even be feeling at the time I look upon it, but that is its constant message to me. And grace.

Now, as I walk, I pray. Random thoughts pass through and like in the practice of Centering Prayer, I hold on to none of them. I just notice them and let them pass. This leads to further stillness. Some kind of knowingness arises within as I walk that I am at a loss of words to explain. But then I don’t need to explain this. I only need to walk it. I know I am on my way to the center.  The center represents that elusive thing I seem to “grab for” in my daily life….some kind of certainty, some kind of acceptance.

On the labyrinth this peace comes as I notice the blades of grass, as I listen to the birds, as I feel both the heat of the sun and the breeze, however slight on this day when the temperature and humidity are rising. What drops away?  The plans for the day, a lot of the complexity of what seems to be my makeup — both a blessing and a bit of a curse….they begin to get left behind, perhaps to return once this labyrinth journey is complete, perhaps not if I am lucky.

West Bend WI labyrinth I have not walked.

I  have a personal story connected to the labyrinth, having discovered it through Lauren Artress’s book, Walking a Sacred Path. I had no clue that somehow that labyrinth path would lead me to training with her and walking labyrinths in many marvelous places including Chartres France, facilitating retreats, walking with groups, walking alone, and at last partnering with Tom to build our own backyard labyrinth.

I think most of my walking experiences are somewhat commonplace. I rarely feel any profound “breakthrough” dramatic experiences while I am on the labyrinth, but I have witnessed it happening to others.  Journaling after a walk is a revealing time when you may not know how the flow of your pen or pencil is going to inform you. Perhaps an image flows onto the paper that you feel you are only co-creating with.  A simple walk to the center and then back out again.  Being present with the present.

Is it easier to listen on the labyrinth than it is in the rest of your life. One writer, Travis Scholl in his book Walking the Labyrinth, says that “underneath the surface….is a stillness…between everyday’s noise and walking it is finding the voice speaking in whispers underneath the whirlwinds of sound ” (in our lives).

I think that is true for me.  I see a tiny toad (or is it a frog, I don’t know) on the path on the way out.

As soon as I return to the house, I find the noise again…. in my head….in my peace turning to impatience….get my camera, take a photo of the daisies, find Ted Steven’s Animal Speak and see what he says about the meaning of frog,  finish two decades the rosary, blog,  fix left over pizza for lunch, continue your workshop preparation, oh yeah, write two thank you cards, and for goodness sake play with Zentangle today….noise, noise, noise.

Maybe I’ll take an evening walk on the labyrinth tonight and see how this day went.

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Hello God! You There?

When you place the call, God answers. This was my recent communication.

September 15, 2014
I am reading “They Speak By Silences” author listed as A Carthusian; and Surrender, a guide for prayer by Jacqueline Syrup Bergan & S. Marie Schwan; An article in AARP magazine (Aug-Sept) The Missing was a light bulb going off for me yesterday. Although it was an article focused on the loss suffered by the families of Flight 370, Vietnam MIA’s (still 1,500 listed), missing children and adults, it put a name to a condition I believe myself to be living…..AMBIGUOUS LOSS….. though fear is involved, it is more a gathering of many different emotions that are open to hit strongly at any given moment.

Psychologist Pauline Boss says “Ambiguous loss triggers a kind of stressful, unresolved emotional state distinct from traditional grief. ..resistant to usual therapeutic treatment (don’t have $$ for treatment now anyway) instead the path to healing involves negotiation an uneasy rapprochement with the unanswered questions that such a loss leaves in its wake. “Grief therapy doesn’t work because there is nothing wrong with the person, there is something wrong with the situation itself.

I would not go so far as to say there is nothing wrong with me, BUT I do feel the reality of living in the WAKE of personal challenging circumstances , and constantly discerning between what I must surrender to and the courage to change the things I can change, which seem so very few at this time.

Then I call upon my higher self to manifest, live in faith and continue my life one step at a time; I can cycle anger, despair, confusion, craziness, at any time of any day; I do not know when they will assail me and at times overcome me. I do all this with acknowledging my responsibility in all of it and consciously trying to knock out any traces of blame.

And my life looks from the outside looking in that “nothing much is going on here.”

I feel I am in constant negotiation, daily, with the terms of my life.

GOD’S ANSWER came on Tues. September 16 at 11:16 am in the
Twenty Four Hours AA Meditation Book:

(This looks just like my journal that I pasted the following answer in).
Sept. 9 Meditation of the Day:

“In God’s strength you conquer life. Your conquering power is the grace of God. There can be no complete failure with God. Do you want to make the best of your life? (yes) Then live as near as possible to God, the Master and Giver of All Life.

Your reward for depending upon God’s strength will be sure. Sometimes the reward will be renewed power to face life. (yesterday, I was in great need of this renewed power, I could not feel my own), sometimes wrong thinking overcome
( great struggle here yesterday and trying to quiet the wrong thinking, oh woe is me, what will become of us?), sometime people brought to a new way of living. (What is this new way, when you are doing the best you can?).

Whatever success comes will not be all your own doing, but largely the working out of the grace of God.”

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It Might Not Be About the Cushion

“True meditation practice becomes how you live your life, not how well you sit on a cushion.” That is the conclusion of author, Barbara Stahura in her article “Changing the World, One Brain at a Time” in the May 2012 edition of Science of Mind magazine.

Asserting that that the practice of Mindfulness has the power to heal us emotionally and physically and thus changing the world individually and collectively, Stahura sites the present scientific and medical research findings that point to empirical proof that contemplative practices actually produce healthy physiological changes in the body —  and specifically in the mind and brain of a person.

The Dalai Lama is one of the world’s best known meditators. He is also a life long student of science. He has explored environmental crisis, human rights and neuroscience with his curious and brilliant mind.

Neuroscience research is in its infancy but the Dalai Lama has been involved in a series of dialogues with leading researchers in neuroscience, medicine and psychology since 1989.

His purpose is to serve humanity through the promotion of awareness.  One of his aims is to try to bring to people’s awareness the correlation that medical science is finding between positive mental states and greater health and well-being.

In the 1950’s, the promotion of exercise was not even in the daily mindset of people, for the greater part like it is today. Maybe the black and white television advent of Jack LaLanne and his message began to change that as we sweated in our living rooms while he performed on the sultry island beach.

It is likely that within fifty years, the same thing will happen with meditation. People will come to see it as mental exercise.

The most recent dialogue occurred in 2005, co-sponsored by The Mind and Life Institute, John Hopkins School of Medicine and Georgetown University Medical School.  One of the researchers present in these dialogues is Jon Kabat-Zinn, a pioneer in neuroscience and the clinical uses of meditation.

A transcript of the entire 2005 conference, with intriguing research findings, is included in his book, “The Mind’s Own Physician.” He believes inquiry into both the mind and meditation will continue to open the door on the real nature of the mind and the ways in which training in mindfulness can change the physical brain and also the ways the roles of the mind affect our overall health.

Kabat-Zinn allows that the word “meditation” can be a loaded word for many, who do not want to bring a spiritual connotation to the practice. He states this is not a barrier.  Meditation, he says, is about the cultivation of attention and awareness with an openhearted and non-judgmental attitude.

This, I note, is the same thing that Barbara Marx Hubbard, is describing in the process of Emergence — which she calls going from (and beyond Ego, where all judgment lies) to Essence, where the True Self in peace and grandeur is — and you do this in regular quiet time in your “inner sanctuary.” There you will learn and be all you need to be — and you can bring this gift of your Essence into your world of experience from your time of communion and union in the quiet.

Now, I can see that as changing the world, one person at a time — starting with myself. That seems to be just the exact way it is happening, not only for me but for many others.

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