Tag: Spirituality

March Madness Zen

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

I used to be a sports fan.

My father had been a star athlete in high school, and his coulda-woulda-beens came out in the form of teaching me the games as we watched on our black-and-white TV, then the color TV, then cable. Because of him, I could spot a foul before the whistle blew and confidently yell at the screen when the refs so obviously got it wrong.

He taught me basketball, baseball, and football. With those transferrable skills, I picked up on hockey, golf, tennis, and soccer with relative ease.

Then, at some point in my early 30s, I stopped watching all of it. It didn’t happen all at once. I started to become concerned about the potential brain injuries in football. I became increasingly sensitive to the angry atmospheres of basketball arenas and hockey rinks. I began to see championships as exercises in futility followed immediately by the 0-0 record reset. What was the point? So, gradually, I stepped away from sports completely.

I blamed my spiritual journey. A world of win-loss competitiveness didn’t seem compatible with non-duality. And the inability to endure the vitriol of a live game atmosphere seemed to share DNA with the hours I had accumulated spent in meditation. I had evolved, and athletics were clearly happening on the level of base materialism.

Then the world started to fall apart. One Trump term, a worldwide pandemic, a second Trump term, a direct attack on DEI, a gross lack of compassion, an entire generation of social security recipients facing a fear they never imagined, . . . the list is endless, it seems. I can’t hide under a rock and ignore it, but my sanity can’t take a steady drip of horrible news. I can’t meditate 24 hours a day, but I also can’t survive engaging in life in continually demoralizing ways.

And then I turned on a basketball game.

For a couple of hours, I focused solely on the Memphis Grizzlies. The understanding of the game instilled in me by my father returned with gusto. Most importantly, I was 100% PRESENT. I was in the moment. The very brass ring I reached for in meditation was the free gift of sportsball.

So I’ve filled out not one, but four NCAA tournament brackets — two each for the women’s and the men’s tournaments. I’m taking my wife to her first live NBA game in a couple of weeks. I’m a proud supporter of the basketball, baseball, and softball teams at the community college where I work. And I’m already excited about Vandy football this fall.

I am once again a sports fan. Who meditates. A double-header.

The Hoarder’s House

~ Deb ~ 4 Comments

There is a Goddess who lives in my Essence, the landlord of my heart. She offers communion, grace, peace, and mercy, and I want those gifts more than anything. 

More than anything? Yes, more than anything.  I know that I know that I know this is true.

But the goddess sits on a small stool in a corner, present but quiet, infinite but cramped, shoulders hunched over, arms wrapped around her knees,

Is this enlightenment?  The Divine lives within. I know it. I recognize her. There she is.  Her presence is undeniable. I have this awareness.

I visit her often. I sit with her, offer her food, pray to her, sing for her, chant her name, light a candle so she can see, light incense to give her pleasure. But she just sits there, patiently, as if she has all the time in the world. She doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t seem to be upset. She sometimes even smiles at my offering. But, mostly, she just sits. 

I, however, am impatient.  I get frustrated. I get angry. I abandon my prayers and chants. They start to feel futile. I leave her alone for long stretches of time.   If she is just going to sit there, I’ve got better things to do. 

When I come back, (I always come back) she is there, on the stool.  

I throw up my hands.  “What do you want from me?” 

“I want to dance with you,” she says.

“I’m ready!  Let’s dance, for heaven’s sake!”

“Look.”  She motions around the space of my heart. 

It’s as if her single word turned on the lights. I see boxes piled high, thousands of them, floor to ceiling, stacks and stacks.  How is it I never noticed there is hardly room to walk?  

“What is all this?” I ask. 

Again she says, “Look,” more softly this time.  

The boxes are labeled.  Work. Relationship. Past relationships. Political Ideology. Upcoming Vacation. Expectations. Pride. Hurt feelings. Things I love. Things I hate. Traffic. Money. 

The largest boxes have the most specific labels.  The Sense of Rejection When Not Cast in That Play.  Guilt About the Girl in Tenth Grade When You Sided With Her Bullies. Victimhood about Never Being Paid What You’re Worth.  Family Dynamics since the Pandemic.  And one just called: First marriage. 

I turn to the goddess.  “These are . . .”

She nods.  “Attachments.” 

I sigh out loud and figure I might as well get started, so I roll up my sleeves and open the first box.  When the goddess stands, I’m so startled that I stop and look at her. 

“What are you doing?” She asks. 

“Figuring out what needs to go and what needs to stay.” 

“It all must go.”  

“All of it?  But I might need this Work box, and I want to keep the Upcoming Vacation box, for sure.” 

The Goddess sits back on the stool and rests her elbows on her knees, chin in her hands.  The look on her face says it all.  There will be no dancing today.  

“C’mon,” I plead.  “Surely you can’t expect me to get rid of all of this.  This is my entire life. This is my story.  This is who I am.  Some of these boxes hold great loves, achievements, happy memories, great times to come.” 

“None of that is here.  These boxes hold the ropes that connect you to the memories, hopes, desires, expectations, likes, and dislikes regarding what is on the labels.  And the ropes have to go.”

“What about this one?” I pick up a huge box labeled Spiritual Journey.  “Surely this one gets to stay.” 

The Goddess chuckles.  “That one especially needs to go. Listen carefully. You’re not releasing the journey; you’re releasing your attachment to the journey.  Don’t you see? No exceptions.  Not one attachment can remain.” 

“Not one?” I ask. 

The Goddess stands again and walks to me.  She puts her hands on my face, like a mother to a child, and whispers, “Do you want to dance with me?” 

The power of her touch surges through my being.  In that instant, I know that giving her the space to move freely through my essence is worth more than all of these boxes a million times over.  I know it is my greatest desire to make my heart her home.  And I know that the path to peace is found in complete surrender.  

“I want nothing but to dance with you,”  I say. 

The Goddess smiles.  “Turn around.”  

I turn and look.  Emptiness.  Beautiful emptiness.  I feel light and empty and full, so very full of love and joy and peace.  I lost nothing.  I gained everything.  And for the first time, I know what freedom is.  

I turn back around.  The Goddess is already dancing, her golden white dress shimmering in the uncovered light of my surrendered heart.  

Beginner’s Mind

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment 
Spring cleaning has me 
in the darkest corner 
of the sunroom with a
stick in hand, wrapping 
old webs around the far end
like drab cotton candy.

The spiders staked
their claim last fall,
orb-weavers, I think. I 
didn’t get too close,
and nights were longer and
cooler and spent indoors,
so I let them have the corner. 

When I reclaim it on a warm May
day, the abandoned webs cling 
listlessly to wall and screen
and bench and reach as if alive for
the oar I offer from a far shore. 

The weaver of the orb
mustn’t mind rebuilding her home. 
It seems to be the point, to start
again from the beginning.  

The cardinal builds a new 
nest every year, sometimes 
even twice.  
Moles burrow constantly and
don’t use the same tunnel again.

The hostas in my front yard disappear
completely each winter and always 
come back, from a tiny green peek 
through the dirt to a maturity even
grander than before, fueled by
energy both fresh and remembered. 

Everything starts over.  Life
is not always added to. 
It is sometimes
begun anew.

The Whole Self

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment

Over the past few months, I’ve dropped some weight — about 30 pounds now from my highest point. And 30 pounds is a lot. For perspective, a jug of milk weighs about 8.6 pounds. So if you could pick up approximately three-and-a-half gallons of milk, that’s how much weight I’ve lost. My knees and my heart and my belt all are quite happy about this.

So is my spirit.

Now, let’s get one thing clear right from the start. This isn’t some kind of body-shaming, finger-wagging, skinny=sacred kind of post. We don’t play that. This is about Deb.

And it’s about that diagram above. Notice that the triquetra isn’t divided into body-mind-spirit as is usually done. Instead, the human triad is body-mind-emotions, and all of that is contained within the spirit — our sacred essence that is, ultimately, the I AM that I AM and YOU ARE.

Our Sacred Self is unchanging. It wasn’t born and will not die. It is Infinite Joy, Boundless Love, Perfect Peace. So how could a few pounds here or there have any impact?

We pay attention to our physical, emotional, and mental health not because the Spirit suffers if we don’t, but because our ability to clearly connect with our higher Self can be inhibited. We remove layers of distraction, layers of attachments so we may become awake to and aware of our true Self.

This is why yoga includes asanas, the postures that are merely a part and that many in the West believe are the whole of yoga. If you’ve ever wiggled and squirmed through meditation because your body felt uncomfortable, it may be because you didn’t stretch and prepare the body for its role in attaining sacred stillness.

My weight loss began slowly and wasn’t initially connected to this understanding. As the months passed, I added a daily yoga practice to my newly focused attention on what I ate. Despite my Aries tendency to DO ALL THE THINGS RIGHT NOW, I discovered that ten minutes a day, every day, is better than an hour once a week which soon is dreaded and eventually falls by the wayside. My ten-minute asana practice is followed by a five-minute silent meditation. Just five minutes. (Note: I meditate at other times of the day and sometimes for longer, but that’s of no importance — five minutes is fine.)

My body has become an important part of my spiritual practice. I am responding to it as it needs and in the best way I can for me. I take care of it so that when I need it to be still, it listens. Your response to your body may look completely different. In fact, I would say it absolutely should. But I encourage you to start somewhere. Start small. Really small. Small and big are irrelevant to Spirit.

Remember that the most important part, the only part that matters, in fact, is the Oneness with Divine Presence. Anything that serves this alignment is a sacred practice.

Even calorie counting.