Gifts

May 2, 2008 at 3:50 pm (beauty, gifts, inner voice, inspiration, personal growth)
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Today I received one of the greatest gifts of my life. My daughter, Colleen, who is 20 years old and a student at Rutgers University, has discovered one of her gifts and let her voice come forth. She has never had a voice lesson and she has never really shared her singing with us. Her older sister, Kate, sent me a link to music which she was quietly publishing on the Internet

left: Collleen right: Kate

How grateful I am to see my child manifest a gift that is hers, uniquely.

My father is undergoing heart surgery today and this is a link to a song that Colleen dedicates to him.

Angel

Here is more of Colleen’s music.

Each of us has a gift or gifts which live deeply within us. More often then not, we don’t honor them. One of my gifts is that of words, and most of my life I ignored it. I didn’t think it was a way to make a living. I didn’t think I was good enough. I minimized its importance.

Whether you can earn a living with your gift, or where you stack up against others doesn’t really matter, does it?

A gift is our deepest self manifesting itself in the world. When we use our gifts we are truly alive and present. It is joyous to do so. It is joyous to witness others.

Let us celebrate the beauty that lives in each of us.

in gratefulness, abundance, and peace,

pete

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The Lord Is In Me

April 30, 2008 at 7:24 pm (beauty, heart, inner journey, inner life, inspiration, journey, love, poetry)
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I love the mystic poetry of Kabir. I particularly like this translation of his poem…

The Lord Is In Me

The Lord is in me, and the Lord is in you,

As life is hidden in every seed

So rubble your pride, my friend,

And look for Him within you.


When I sit in the heart of His world

A million suns blaze with light,

A burning blue sea spreads across the sky,

Life’s turmoil falls quiet,

All the stains of suffering wash away.

Listen to the unstruck bells and drums!

Love is here; plunge into its rapture!

Rains pour down without water;

Rivers are streams of light.

How could I ever express

How blessed I feel

To revel in such vast ecstasy

In my own body?

This is the music

Of soul and soul meeting,

Of the forgetting of all grief.

This is the music

That transcends all coming and going.

Kabir

pete

1 Comments

My Dad

April 21, 2008 at 4:37 pm (heart, inner journey, inspiration, love, personal growth, unconditional love)
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This week I am going to visit my dad. He lives in Florida and is scheduled for open heart surgery. Because of his poor health there is a significant chance that he may not survive. My dad has been a gigantic part of my life. Not heroic; but gigantic. He spent much of his life addicted to alcohol.

The influence of his addiction helped form the foundation of who I am today. As I grew up I developed powerful and useful personality adaptations, all of which helped me survive; all of which had significant downsides to them.

I grew up sensitive and intuitive. I had to be. If dad was in a ‘mood’ he was to be avoided at all costs because making the wrong move could wake the dragon. The positive side of my sensitivity and intuitiveness has helped me read situations well and make adjustments to other people…but the negative side was that I often avoided confrontations and shut down my own feelings.

I became very reflective and independent, spending a lot of time on my own, and spending as much time as I could out of the house and away from him. I read tons of books, I wrote terrible poetry, I spent huge amounts of time at the basketball courts. When I left home for college, I made my own way and rarely came home.

There was a lot of upside to this. I became a good basketball player and was recruited to play in college. I eventually went on to be an English teacher and in addition to blogging, I have written a novel and am in the midst of a second one.

The downside of this reflective and independent streak was that intimacy was difficult for me. I was afraid to trust my partners in relationships. I needed to be in control, for that seemed to be the safest place to be in a relationship. I wouldn’t get hurt if I were in control… at least I thought I wouldn’t. No wonder after getting married in my 20’s I was divorced within 18 months.

My dad was the ‘villain’ in my life story and I was the heroic victim. I was mad at him for years…even as I sought his approval. For years I wished that my childhood could have been different, that I would have had a loving and supportive father. That instead of dreading my father coming home after work, that I had a dad that I looked forward to seeing.I went through years where I healed many parts of me that were broken and eventually found myself able to forgive him.

And now, in the last decade, I have learned to open my heart. I have learned to love the person that I am and that has enabled me to love him, unconditionally…without the need for apologies nor the need for me to forgive him. He doesn’t need my forgiveness.

Whatever suffering I felt years ago is gone. It no longer defines me. In a strange way it was a gift to me. My spirit and my soul have grown tremendously because of him. I never thought I’d say this; but I wouldn’t have changed anything on this journey.

So now I sit on edge of a huge transition. This man, my father…this gigantic figure in my life, may be leaving forever. He is so much a part of me and I am so lucky to have him in my life.

Like so many Irish fathers and sons, including his own father, there were some epic battles fought during our lives. But when I sit with my own son; when on occasion I corner him, give him a hug, and tell him I love him… ( to his consternation, after all he is 16)…I know that the cycle is broken.

I have learned to love…in large part throught the journey that my father and I have taken together.

His spirit will always be with me.

pete

11 Comments

Spiritual Growth and Work

April 16, 2008 at 12:41 am (Uncategorized)

What is the connection between our spiritual growth and our work? Most people keep them separate. It’s pretty common to feel that work is work and the spiritual stuff shouldn’t be mixed in with our professional lives. A contrary view of what it is to be a working professional and an effective leader is emerging.

Aren’t we most fulfilled when our life’s purpose and our work are aligned?

Robert Frost says it brilliantly in the last stanza of “Two Tramps in Mudtime”

My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes.

Aren’t leaders most effective when they inspire those around them to their best work?

Inspiring others isn’t something that comes from authority. Authority produces compliance. Inspiration is not something that we can fake or think through with our minds. It is the ability to access the deepest parts of ourselves; and in so doing touch the hearts, as well as the minds, of those around us. Accessing the peace of the heart, speaking from that sacred place, and touching the hearts of others is what makes great leaders. It is a spiritual journey that we take for ourselves and those we serve.

Aren’t we most effective when we can stay grounded and present during chaotic events at work?

This is more than just ’staying calm’, it is the ability to let our purpose guide us, to be totally present to what is happening, and to take appropriate action. The deeper we feel our purpose at work the easier it is to navigate chaos. Our purpose is our GPS system. The more we can stay present in the midst of chaos and not let our minds run away into judgments or worry, or thinking in general; the more we can see the situation clearly and the better the chances we will act appropriately.

If we connect with people and we are truly present with them, aren’t we more apt to build trust with them?

Being present means not thinking about what we are going to say next, nor is it having silent judgments about what they are saying, “That’s not right.” “That’s naive.” “That’s a great idea.” It is listening, actively and openly. Training our minds to be present is the underlying concept of meditation, a deeply spiritual endeavor

Perhaps the workplace is the best place for us to engage our spiritual selves. The connection between our spiritual journeys and the effectiveness of our work lives is impossible to sever. We may think we can compartmentalize our spirit from our work, but over time the artificial barriers break down. After all, we can’t help being who we are.

Aren’t we most effective and most fulfilled when we are fully human…even at work?

pete

7 Comments

A New Earth Class 5: The Pain Body

April 6, 2008 at 4:26 pm (Uncategorized)

Here are three highlights from the last class that I thought were exceptional.

In the first clip Eckhart Tolle explores the idea that when the mind gets anxious and fearful the body reacts as if something was really happening. The body reacts by producing the emotions and contractions that it would if it were in the midst of a real situation.

In the second clip, Tolle tells the story of the ‘Duck with a Human Mind’. Two ducks get into a ’spat’ on a pond; since they don’t have egoic minds, getting over the incident is easy. What happens if it is two humans having the ’spat’?

In the final clip, Tolle speaks about two monks, one who carries a girl across muddy patch and sets her down and one who carries the incident in his mind for hours as they walk.

pete

2 Comments

Kelly

April 2, 2008 at 5:06 pm (awakening, heart, inspiration, journey, mistakes, personal growth, teacher, transformation)

Note: This was cross posted on the Ed Tech Journeys blog.Kelly was a timid soul. She was a 7th grader in my English class more than 30 years ago. She sat silently in the front row over in the corner. None of the kids talked to her. She was a loner.I was a first year teacher, full of enthusiasm and the raw energy of inexperience. The homework assignment for that week was to write a composition on a family pet.

After they settled into their desks, I started moving from student to student pointing out things in their papers that I thought were important. My focus was on the mechanics of the writing because most of the kids’ grammar, punctuation, and spelling was horrid.

I leaned over Kelly’s desk and looked down at her paper. I started pointing out the mechanical errors in her composition.

“Here”, I said pointing to the paper, “This is a sentence fragment. It has no verb.”

I pointed to another part of her composition and began to correct another mistake when suddenly, on the paper next to my fingertip, a teardrop fell. It smeared the blue ink. Before I understood what was happening another teardrop splattered on her paper. Her head was down and she was crying silently.

A wave of awareness washed over me. Her composition was about her pet dog, who she loved very much, and who had recently passed away. In it, she was sharing her sense of loss and hurt with me. I had completely ignored her message and had only criticized the structure and punctuation.

Another tear fell, and another; I felt like a jerk. I placed my hand on her back and patted her, as if that could take away the hurt feelings and sadness.

Kelly’s tears taught me a lesson that I will never forget,

We are human beings first.

There is much more going on in our classrooms than grammar and spelling. We, as educators, have more influence than we can possibly know.

Sweet Kelly, I wonder where she is today? I wonder if she knows what an impact she has had on my life? I wonder if she remembers those tears, as I do, thirty years later?

pete

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A New Earth Class 4: Being Present in Traffic

March 31, 2008 at 2:13 pm (A New Earth, Class 4, Eckhart Tolle, Oprah, awakening, inner journey, personal growth, presence, transformation)

In the last class, Eckhart Tolle invited us to look at the daily problems and challenges we face as opportunities to practice being present rather than being dragged into a mood of negativity. He uses the example of being caught in a traffic jam. We can either get angry and frustrated, or we can drop into a practice that has us become more present. Our outward situation doesn’t change; but our mood does.

This example is one with which most of us are familiar and it encompasses so much of what Eckhart Tolle has been exploring.

What is, Is. Complaining about it is not helpful nor effective. Our emotions can cloud our judgment.

Accept the situation for what it is, even if we don’t like it. “I am stuck in traffic.”

We can take steps to extricate ourselves from the situation; but we do it without the emotion of “This shouldn’t be happening to me.”

In the case of being stuck in traffic, we can deliberately choose to practice being present. It’s is a great opportunity to be still.

I find these concrete examples very helpful.

pete

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A New Earth Class 4: Creating Space

March 27, 2008 at 7:35 pm (A New Earth, Class 4, Eckhart Tolle, Oprah, attention, creating space, inner journey, personal growth)

I found Class 4 to be the most interesting of the series so far. Eckhart Tolle recommends to a caller that does a lot of centering, breathing, and presence work at home; but doesn’t sustain it when he is criticized be his boss; that the caller incorporate stillness and presence all through his day, not just at home.

In another part of the conversation, Tolle tells the story of a Zen master watching an archer try to win a contest. Because he wants to win so much he is drained of his power.

This is particularly interesting to me because I have always been driven to succeed. This has entailed a lot of stress and anxiety which I believe has taken away from my performance in the moment.

So one of the key messages from Monday night is that we can create tiny spaces for stillness and presence at work, or wherever we happen to be; and these spaces grow over time.

The other message is to be in the moment. Plan if we have to; but when we begin to execute the plan we must be totally in the present, or as athletes say, “In the Zone”. If we are thinking ahead or worrying, it takes away from our performance.

pete

3 Comments

A New Earth Class 3: The Mirror

March 21, 2008 at 7:17 pm (A New Earth, Class 3, Eckhart Tolle, Oprah, awakening, inner journey, mistakes, unconditional love)

I was touched by the discussion of Eckhart Tolle’s quote:

“What you react to in another, you strengthen in yourself.”

When I first encountered this way of looking at things, I thought it was silly. If I am upset with you because you aren’t reliable, how does that reflect back to me? How can you say that I am unreliable? With the help of stillness, I began to see parts of myself where I sometimes do not follow up, and I am unreliable.

Somehow, the more I sit with this, the more it rings true for me.

So, when I get impatient with people who seem very structured and attached to their views of the world; the suggestion from Tolle is to use this as a mirror to see if this structure and desire for control lives in me. Once again, I see that it does. I’ve always striven to be in charge and for almost my whole professional life I have been the ‘boss’.

What a great tool to use to see ourselves in a new way. Tolle says that the strength of our reaction is an indication of how much the behavior may live in us.

The next time I feel a surge of negative judgment, I will use it to trigger some inward reflection; for I believe it is a mirror of something that is going on…in me.

pete

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A New Earth Class 3: Complaining

March 19, 2008 at 4:16 pm (A New Earth, Class 3, Oprah, awakening, conflict, ego, inner life, judgment)

One of the interesting points that was explored in this week’s class was the idea that there are two ways to complain. When we complain with our ego we bring emotion and judgments to the complaint. We personalize it. This is generally not effective because it causes the person to whom we are targeting the complaint to get defensive.

Does this mean that we can never speak up to change something that isn’t producing the results we want? No, it simply means that we state the “what is” of the situation or behavior, without our ego involved.

We can complain to the waiter that “MY SOUP IS COLD!” in frustration and indignation (our ego at work); or we can state to the waiter that “My soup is cold. Please take this back and bring me hot soup.” without the emotion.

I remember telling one of my subordinates who was not performing up to my standards that I did not trust them. The person completely lost their temper and began shouting at me. I see now that my ego was at work creating an ‘I’m better than you drama’.

I would have been much more successful if I had stated the behaviors and actions of this person that were not up to my standards, nor the organizations. I might have gotten some ‘pushback’; but not the ‘over the top’ emotional reaction that ensued.

pete

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