awesome details

The advice not to lose the forest for the trees general a good one because the big picture frames our perspective and reminds us not to get lost in minutiae. This is especially practical advice when trying to get something accomplished.  Yet, you may miss out on some hidden jewels.

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Contemplating nature's details can be a deeply meditative activity. I am always amazed at the intricate and delicate details of my orchid blossoms. Nature creates such incredible complexity on such a micro level, it's awe inspiring. It's also easy to pass by without noticing it. The first picture above just shows an abundance of phalaenopsis orchids, too many to look at the details.  But get down on your knees - so to speak - and the colors alone of the orchid center are spectacular. Orange, crimson red, lime green, and lemon yellow set against a porcelain white background. And how about the shapes, tiny as they are? So elaborate, so intricate. How about the two wispy filigreed extensions, that start out white and end in a curled yellow spiral? Or the yellow and red striped part in the throat of the orchid? Or the orange pad (is it the stigmatic surface?) with the red dots in the very center?   And did you notice the see through holes the petal shapes are creating? Or the interesting shape of the lip, the protruding part the insect would land on?

            Ultimately the names of the parts don't matter at all. It is about the experience of savoring the exquisite details and colors inside the otherwise so sculpturally white orchid that gives me such pleasure when I walk past the flower that I need to stop every time and tell it how beautiful, how perfect it is.

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            Of course you can contemplate other shapes in nature and be awed - moss for example, or crystals, or a butterfly's wings. There is endless beauty, perfection and intricacy to be found all around. Each one merits its own attention.

on respecting nature

Hearing bear stories and seeing one up close are two different things. A few days ago I observed a bear out of my office window, playing with a log, meandering along the tree line, trying to get down from the cliff behind our house, then deciding it was too steep, and slowly disappearing back into the woods. Today, I took a - brief - lunchtime walk and saw what I presume was the same bear, slowly crossing the road in the not-so-distant distance. I was in awe and treaded back, hence the brevity of the walk.             Even the Native Americans respect the bear because it is so powerful and can be fickle. It behooves us to respect nature, to bow in reverence before its grandeur, power, unpredictability, and force, whether nature comes in animal, plant, weather or geological form. It seems to me that we as a culture

have unlearned to work with it, alongside it, leaving it alone when need be, and not walking all over it with disrespect and hubris. When we live away from nature we tend to see nature as something different from us, something we can use and exploit.

But are we not nature, too?

passion for the cause

       "If you want money because you're a good doctor, that's good. But if you are a doctor because you want money, that will kill a lot of persons," the filmmaker, author and all-round artist Alejandro Jodorowsky said in a recent Chronogram interview.    They say that the money will come if you follow your passion. But many of us are in job situations we don't care about, are indifferent about, even hate.   Many others, and I am one of them, hold two jobs - the money making one (which I actually quite like), and the creative passionate one (which I like even more and would love to do more of). Those of us in creative fields such as writing, making music, painting or acting have a bit of a harder time earning an honest living in a culture that is lopsidedly in favor of the money making and business aspect of occupations.  But where would we be without art and creativity?  It's the soul of life.

As an employer I realize how important proper casting is. It is just as much my responsibility to correctly interpret a candidate's abilities, character and knack for the job they are applying for, as it should be the candidate's responsibility to be as open and honest as possible about themselves. If an employee compromises his/her values or passion for money (ahh, it's just a job, I can pursue my passion on the week-end), it comes out in broad daylight very quickly.

When week-end is all you are dreaming about all week long, maybe it's time to realign with your true self and figure out a way to do more of what you love to do.

the science delusion

I just started to read biologist, author and international speaker Rupert Sheldrake's 2012 book Science Set Free, or as it is called in the UK The Science Delusion, the better title in my mind. To me it is always refreshing when scientists begin to see the light, err ...spirit, in things.   Sheldrake's bone to pick is that many scientists believe that science knows already everything there is to know and that only the details need to be filled in. This limiting belief leaves no room for true inquiry, instead defining upfront what may or may not be researched. His main criticism of science is that it operates within a dogmatic self-perpetuating system that accepts results within the expected belief norms, but ignores or explains away results that are out of the norm, and will not entertain research into areas our culture currently tags as "non-scientific." True science, he says, should be able to forge ahead with an open mind and consider all options. In this case, the whole crux of the debate is of course whether nature is intelligent or not, or whether clinging to the atheist thought system that reduces us all to robotic machines is really all there is. Cell biologist Bruce Lipton is another one who risked his reputation in 2005 when he published his Biology of Belief. He, too, has become a wildly popular international speaker on the inherent intelligence of all life and the fabulous implications that recognition brings with it.

Both books are great mind openers from great scientists to set us free from our stale materialistic dogma.

playing in heart land

When I play, which I don't do often enough (although I consider some of my cooking time play time), I am truly in the moment. Young children play all the time. That's what they do. It's their job. They learn by osmosis, through playful imitation of the adult world. Playing leaves the left side of the brain, the rational-analytical side, out of the equation, and stays in right-brain mode. Play is creativity and spontaneity, not calculated analysis. Games like chess or poker or truly competitive sports are not play because they are about left brain strategy, which involves thinking in words.

What makes play play is its state of mindfulness, which is absent of words. The younger children are, the more they exist in this state, not thinking about what they ate for breakfast or what they will play this afternoon. Martha Beck wrote in Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: "the way to cope with the increasing complexity of the wild new world is to play more." Her enlightened advice for dropping into the mindful world of play is to leave the words out - by the way, that's exactly where meditation is headed. "Words are the language of the mind, emotions are the language of the heart," a fellow grad schooler said to me in that regard. Drop the words, drop your beingness down down down - until you reach your heart. Here words don't exist. Words separate, words tag, they have their role, but we spend most of our time in word land and not enough in heart land.

Let's go on a journey to heart land and play.

balancing act

        Each yoga session is different for me.Some days I'm more flexible than others.Some days I balance better than others.The flexibility has more to do with the time of day - stiffer in the early morning, more flexible as the day goes by and I move my body more.The balancing ability, on the other hand, has everything to do with my state of mind, how balanced I am internally, how focused I am.Some days, when I try to do tree pose I can only get my leg to ankle height, and still I wobble and have to put my toe down periodically.Other days, as if by magic, I get my leg all the way up to rest against my thigh and I stand in suspended stillness.

The more scattered or agitated I am, and the less balanced my state of mind, the more difficult the balancing poses are.The more calm my state of mind, the better those poses work.  Most important, I find, is to let go of straining or willing myself to get somewhere.Instead, I pick a neutral focal point in mid-distance, maybe a nail on the wall or a light switch, and use this to keep focused on the pose instead of watching my thoughts galloping through my head.  The less I strive to create a perfect tree pose and simply follow wherever my body takes me, the better.Then it becomes like a meditation in action.

effortless perfection

On this sunny morning I heard a bird chirping away in a nearby tree while I was getting ready - how beautiful after a long winter of silence. I find that there is nothing more pure and clear than the bright voice of a song bird - effortless perfection. I didn't know what kind of a bird I was listening to, and it didn't really matter. Besides, words often utterly fail to describe an experience. They tend to be insufficient and cumbersome.  That moment was an exquisite experience, no words needed.

deeply experiencing

After a long winter indoors it feels so good to be outside, open your arms wide in exuberance, and breathe in the fresh moist spring air in big gulps. Ahhhhhh.........Smelling the air is a thrilling experience, just like digging into the dirt and feeling the soil crumble in your hands, touching the tender spring flowers and shoots that are coming up out of the ground, seeing the fresh spring colors emerging, and listening to the gentle breeze whooshing in the trees.

What we don't usually realize is that all of these sensations occur simultaneously. What a much deeper experience to pause and take all of these impressions in together, the way they actually occur.  When you are fully in that moment with nature it becomes an overwhelmingly complex, almost dizzying meditation. How does that moment feel then?

On the other hand, when we dissect a moment's experience into the different names we give it - hearing the breeze, smelling the fresh air, feeling the tender shoots, seeing the fresh colors - we experience these sensations consecutively.   The separation occurs because we put the sensations into words, which inherently happen consecutively, and because we think about them. We can't simultaneously think about three different sensations that happen at the same time. Impossible. But we can experience them if we become still, get the words out of the way, and just BE. Just being makes you shift from seeing the world in consecutive flat segments, to a complex holographic whole.

make it special

Splurging is only splurging, and treating myself is only a treat if I don't do it all the time. Otherwise it's excess, or habit, or addiction. When you treat yourself for every little excuse, whether it's with shopping or eating sweets or something else, it's no longer special. And then it's no longer fun. You only feel special when it's really special. I believe that it's important to splurge and treat yourself every once in a while, constantly being a miser is miserable. My daughter's special reward for a good math test used to be a sweet afternoon treat with a cup of rich hot chocolate at our wonderful French pâtisserie. But then she got to be very good at math, and we went to the pâtisserie very often, and then it wasn't special anymore. So we had to redefine those rewards.  Meat used to be special, hence the traditional Sunday roast. If you have meat every day, and lots, it quickly becomes an unhealthy addiction.  Going out for dinner is special. Yet, if you do it all the time it loses it's luster. We went to a Broadway show this past week-end. That was very special. As a matter of fact, it was my daughter's first Broadway show, that's how rarely we do it. And it felt like a real splurge.

Make it special, and make it rare. It will sparkle a lot more.

deep listening

Deep anything is about doing whatever you are doing more thoughtfully, more mindfully, focused on the task, not thinking about the past nor the future. You can practice Deep Living, Deep Speaking, Deep Playing or Deep Walking. It's like a doing meditation or a mindfulness practice. Deep Listening is listening to your partner with an ear to her story, her needs, her feelings. When you listen to someone deeply you hear where they come from, you open your heart to them, you respond to their needs. Here an example of listening and responding shallowly: You: "I just twisted my ankle." Me: "Oh no. You know, that happened to me last winter, and I went to the doctor, and the doctor....blablabla." In this case I am not tuning into what you just said, instead following my own narrative. This is Shallow Listening, something we all do all the time.

Here an attempt at listening and responding deeply: You: "I just twisted my ankle."  Me: "Oh no, that must have hurt. What happened? (pause to let you respond)  Is there anything I can do for you?"

The difference is a shift from the me perspective to the we perspective.  Deep Listening tunes 100% into your partner.  It really deepens relationships.