This is something that came naturally...something that simply had to happen. This summer I had a 3 week space between camp courses I was attending - and no idea what was coming to me.
My mom passed away on March 10 after a long fight with cancer - she was given months and she lasted 3 years. She was proud of that, and I recall her saying to me often - that when it was "her time" she was not going to go willingly. She didn't. She loved life, people, experiences - my mom truly was filled with the spirit of love for everything. It was really quite remarkable.
Her death was as beautiful as it could have been - she took her last breath gazing into my fathers eyes while he cradled her telling her how much he loved her - while I gave her a foot massage and my sister stood at her side. She departed as she had lived - surrounded by love.
I returned home - the grief had not quite set in - the situation at my home continued to escalate its hostility and discomfort. I lived, and had been living in a toxic environment - a home without love....
late one night - on the chat a friend of mine asked me what my summer plans were - she was driving across Canada to the maritimes and wondered if I would join her. The timing was amazing - the dates fell right between the 2 camps I was attending. I asked if I could bring my mom - it entered my heart that I would like to bring her with me - she had never been to the maritimes either and at times we had talked about that.
After ending the chat a divine idea entered my heart - to scatter her ashes from the Pacific Ocean (Tofino) to the Atlantic Ocean (Moncton). Every beautiful place or place of memory involving my mom would receive 3 small handfuls of her scattered to the breezes. I would also be videoing each scattering to assemble a dvd for my dad and sister.
So with the first of my 2 camps ended - my partnership ended - i set off to begin my journey across Canada and back.
The following entries will be made from the road as I find the places to do them.
Thanks for reading - all the best,
Tee
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Self Help in Ancient Greece and Rome
Normally I don't publish the writing of others - as I truly love writing my own - in this instance though - This article resonated so deeply I really wanted you to have the opportunity to read it in its entirety.
It expresses many of the traits of the Enlightened Warrior - and also shines a healthy light on self-help, coaching, and its ties to philosophy.
To see this story with its related links on the guardian.co.uk site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/04/self-help-burkeman
The worst that could happen? Bring it on, says Oliver Burkeman
Oliver Burkeman
Saturday July 4 2009
The Guardian
The ancient Romans and Greeks made no distinction between philosophy, therapy and self-help. "Philosophy's power to blunt the blows of circumstance is beyond belief," observed Seneca the Stoic; the very aim of philosophy, he argued, was "the state of happiness". Today, with philosophers confined to academia, we've come to think of therapy as being for troubled people and self-help for slightly flaky people - as if minimizing sad emotions and maximizing happy ones wasn't the most universal of all challenges. It's hard to imagine what Seneca might have felt about a world in which philosophers don't seek happiness, and those seeking happiness read Deepak Chopra. Or, rather, it isn't: he'd have been stoical about it, one assumes. But you take my point.
I've enthused here before about another Stoic, Epictetus, and his insight that emotions are responses not to reality but to thoughts about reality - a perspective now deeply embedded in approaches both wise (cognitive therapy) and unwise (The Secret). But Seneca's Letters From A Stoic goes further. Essentially, it's a training manual for answering - really answering - one question: What's the worst that could happen? The author Tim Ferriss, a Seneca fan, calls this "negative visualization": responding to anxiety, for example, not by trying to persuade oneself that all will be well, but by fleshing out, in detail, the worst-case scenario.
This works partly because rendering fears specific, rather than nebulous, will always make them more manageable. But it also works simply by drawing attention to the fact that fearful thoughts about the future are just that: thoughts. And it doesn't only apply to fear, but also to the unhappiness that comes from not having what you want. Since it isn't external reality that determines emotions, Seneca might say, you're wrong to imagine that the perfect relationship, job or house would make you happy. What's making you unhappy is the belief that you need them in order to be happy. The way to be happy is to drop that thought.
This can sound like a recipe for withdrawal from the world, and it doesn't help that Seneca did, in fact, spend much of his life in seclusion. If things "out there" don't bring happiness, and if any crappy circumstance can be made tolerable by mental training, why seek love, nurture friendships, strive for achievements, fight injustice or create art? Why not just extinguish your appetite for that stuff instead?
This is how some people interpret Buddhism, too. But extinguishing desires and fears doesn't work - which, presumably, is why a fair proportion of people one meets who proudly declare they've become Buddhists seem so tightly wound.
But that's not what Seneca meant, and not, as far as I can discern, what Buddhists mean, either. Stoicism can be just as easily seen as a way to participate more fully in the world, to plunge in more deeply precisely because one has sapped it of any absolute power to dictate one's emotional state. In Buddhist terms, it's the subtle difference between detachment and non-attachment. "Detachment implies a sense of withdrawal," the meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein says in an interview on the philosophy/spirituality website meaningoflife.tv. (And if you've never visited that fascinating site, please don't, unless you've got nothing pressing to do for the next month or so.) "Non-attachment simply implies not holding on."
oliver.burkeman@guardian.co.uk
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2009
It expresses many of the traits of the Enlightened Warrior - and also shines a healthy light on self-help, coaching, and its ties to philosophy.
To see this story with its related links on the guardian.co.uk site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/04/self-help-burkeman
The worst that could happen? Bring it on, says Oliver Burkeman
Oliver Burkeman
Saturday July 4 2009
The Guardian
The ancient Romans and Greeks made no distinction between philosophy, therapy and self-help. "Philosophy's power to blunt the blows of circumstance is beyond belief," observed Seneca the Stoic; the very aim of philosophy, he argued, was "the state of happiness". Today, with philosophers confined to academia, we've come to think of therapy as being for troubled people and self-help for slightly flaky people - as if minimizing sad emotions and maximizing happy ones wasn't the most universal of all challenges. It's hard to imagine what Seneca might have felt about a world in which philosophers don't seek happiness, and those seeking happiness read Deepak Chopra. Or, rather, it isn't: he'd have been stoical about it, one assumes. But you take my point.
I've enthused here before about another Stoic, Epictetus, and his insight that emotions are responses not to reality but to thoughts about reality - a perspective now deeply embedded in approaches both wise (cognitive therapy) and unwise (The Secret). But Seneca's Letters From A Stoic goes further. Essentially, it's a training manual for answering - really answering - one question: What's the worst that could happen? The author Tim Ferriss, a Seneca fan, calls this "negative visualization": responding to anxiety, for example, not by trying to persuade oneself that all will be well, but by fleshing out, in detail, the worst-case scenario.
This works partly because rendering fears specific, rather than nebulous, will always make them more manageable. But it also works simply by drawing attention to the fact that fearful thoughts about the future are just that: thoughts. And it doesn't only apply to fear, but also to the unhappiness that comes from not having what you want. Since it isn't external reality that determines emotions, Seneca might say, you're wrong to imagine that the perfect relationship, job or house would make you happy. What's making you unhappy is the belief that you need them in order to be happy. The way to be happy is to drop that thought.
This can sound like a recipe for withdrawal from the world, and it doesn't help that Seneca did, in fact, spend much of his life in seclusion. If things "out there" don't bring happiness, and if any crappy circumstance can be made tolerable by mental training, why seek love, nurture friendships, strive for achievements, fight injustice or create art? Why not just extinguish your appetite for that stuff instead?
This is how some people interpret Buddhism, too. But extinguishing desires and fears doesn't work - which, presumably, is why a fair proportion of people one meets who proudly declare they've become Buddhists seem so tightly wound.
But that's not what Seneca meant, and not, as far as I can discern, what Buddhists mean, either. Stoicism can be just as easily seen as a way to participate more fully in the world, to plunge in more deeply precisely because one has sapped it of any absolute power to dictate one's emotional state. In Buddhist terms, it's the subtle difference between detachment and non-attachment. "Detachment implies a sense of withdrawal," the meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein says in an interview on the philosophy/spirituality website meaningoflife.tv. (And if you've never visited that fascinating site, please don't, unless you've got nothing pressing to do for the next month or so.) "Non-attachment simply implies not holding on."
oliver.burkeman@guardian.co.uk
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2009
Friday, July 3, 2009
Joy and Sorrow
Kahlil Gibran said
"We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them".
All of the great teachings unanimously emphasize that all the peace, wisdom, and joy in the universe are already within us; we don't have to gain, develop, or attain them.
We're like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight. We don't need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds, and sky; we merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we really are -- as soon as we quit pretending we're small or unholy.
Everything we experience in our life we bring to ourselves - each joy and each sorrow in our life comes to us to expand our wisdom and bring us closer to our true nature. Joy and Sorrow are each worthy of our embrace and our gratitude.
Have an amazing and wonderful day!
"We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them".
All of the great teachings unanimously emphasize that all the peace, wisdom, and joy in the universe are already within us; we don't have to gain, develop, or attain them.We're like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight. We don't need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds, and sky; we merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we really are -- as soon as we quit pretending we're small or unholy.
Everything we experience in our life we bring to ourselves - each joy and each sorrow in our life comes to us to expand our wisdom and bring us closer to our true nature. Joy and Sorrow are each worthy of our embrace and our gratitude.
Have an amazing and wonderful day!
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