FEEDING THE WOLF, REBUILDING THE ALTAR

There is an old Native American tale.  An old man is talking to his grandson about good and bad things in the world.  He tells the child that all people have the ability and the choice to have good or bad behavior.  “We all have a great fight going on within us.  It is a terrible fight to the death between two wolves.  One wolf carries the energies of anger, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, guilt, inactivity, hatred and arrogance.  The other wolf  embodies hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, faith, love, peace and  joy.  The same fight goes on within every human, and sometimes it lasts for a whole lifetime."

The boy considered this for a while and then asked the grandfather, “How  does a person know which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee man simply said “It depends on which wolf you feed.”

Which wolf do we feed?  How do we translate this idea into our daily lives.  I was reading something recently that seems to resonate to this idea.  It was about ALTARS.  We were asked to identify and explore the idea that within our own value system we can SEE WHAT WE PLACE ON OUR OWN ALTARS.   Our own metaphorical altar.  The altar then is the way we value or nourish things within us.  Much like the wolves in the story above.

We can call the altar BEAUTY, FINANCIAL SECURITY, SICKNESS, REVENGE, RESENTMENTS, FRIENDSHIP, CLEANLINESS, CREATIVITY, INTELLECT….to name a few.

The exercise today is to ask yourself what wolves you are feeding?  Where do you place your energy?  What occupies your mental spaces?  Is it self centered, altruistic, intellectual, spiritual, emotional, physical… really take a moment and ask yourself for YESTERDAY how many minutes or hours did you put in the above categories.   It might surprise you.  Make the above list into your own.  List the categories that you did  give time to. 

Now spend a moment and imagine that those things are all on your altar.  See them as words or images or actual things that represent what you nourished yesterday?  Take a good look and then consider if this is what you really want in your space.

Know that you can refurnish, rework, rebuild, move, paint, destroy, or begin again with a new space for nourishing yourself.  You can change which wolf you are feeding. 

But know that you can only do that if you spend time looking at what is there.

SIT WITH YOUR ALTAR.  ADD SOMETHING NEW TODAY.  TAKE SOMETHING AWAY.  

Blessings to you and your family of wolves.  Have a great Saturday.  Misty

BREAK MY HEART. OH BREAK IT AGAIN,...

"Break my heart. Oh, break it again, so I can love more fully."

-Rumi

There is something comforting about this idea.  That the heartache we experience prepares us for a deeper connection, meaning or experience of life.  

In this season of holidays, families, weather and darkness it is good to remember that things are not what we expect or even want.  They are imperfect and messy sometimes, perhaps sad or confusing.  This is OK.  I like the image of falling down in soft snow.  Not what we expect to do.  We look silly, we get snow everywhere, but we are OK.  We can laugh about it.

There is a quote from the movie Moonstruck, with Cher and Nicolas Cage where he says:  “I’m in love with you.  I love you.  Not like they told you love is, and I didn’t know this either, but love don’t make things nice.  It ruins everything.  It breaks your heart.  It makes things a mess.  We aren’t here to make things perfect.  Snowflakes are perfect.  Stars are perfect.  Not us.   Not us.  We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts.  The only thing that is here is you and me.”

This might be a good movie to watch this season.  Nothing turns out the way people are expecting.  The fiancé asks a woman to marry her, but then cannot.  A husband cheats on his wife but she finds a way to forgive him and two people who shouldn’t love each other, do.  And the old man, walks the dogs and howls at the moon..  Sounds like a normal family to me.  Relax.  Laugh.  Break your heart, break it again, so you can love more fully.  Happy December to you.  

Today I am blessed.  Today you are blessed.  Today is a wonderful day.   Misty

I PROMISE TO WITNESS

Why do you think people marry?  This was the question that Susan Sarandan asked of the private eye that she had hired to follow her husband in the movie Shall We Dance.

He said “romance?”

She then gave one of the most succinct and unvarnished views that I had ever heard.  Most people marry to have the other person fulfill their needs.  There are huge expectations of behavior, many not conscious.

Here is her answer:  "Because we need a witness to our lives.  There’s a billion people on the planet…what does one life mean?  But in a marriage, you are promising to care about everything… the good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things…all of it, all the time, every day.  You are saying ‘your life will not go unnoticed, because I will notice it.  Your life will not go unwitnessed, because I will be your witness’".

If we were able to bring this idea to the process of dating and looking at our long-term spouses, I suspect there would be less divorce and certainly less disappointments and less of a drive to turn your mate into someone of which you approve. What if we thought of marriage as the building of a safe enough container so that each person would be supported in their journey to self.  One in which we agree and promise to witness and notice each other.  

What if you looked at a possible mate and said…Could I spend the rest of my life witnessing and noticing this person?  Could I make it safe enough for them to become who they need to?  Could I take good enough care of myself so that I would have the energy and stability to  be that noticed and witness?  Can I create safety in this relationship?  Am I mature enough and well balanced enough to pay attention to another living being in a loving way?  Can I keep my selfishness to a minimum?  Can I use my support system to fill up my own basket so that I have things to bring into the container of the marriage?  Am I brave enough to work at my own path and struggle with my own demons and not blame my partner for my own obstacles and fears?  Am I whole enough to care for another person enough to witness their life without judgement and notice who they are on a daily basis?

             Maybe these are the new questions.  

Notice how the shift is to what I can bring to the party, not how they are going to make my life wonderful.

Have a grateful holiday week and "Be careful out there English."  from the movie…………wait for it……..WITNESS

TO WHOM/WHAT AM I BOUND?

To Commune: to confer, consult, converse, a mental or spiritual exchange, sharing, holding in common, community, fellowship, honoring social contracts, communication…

What is the social contract?  What have I contracted to do or be by being human in a democratic republic, this planetary realm?  What have I taken this life to do or become?  How do I learn this?  How do I express this?

In one of my favorite movies of last year, “The Cloud Atlas” explorations of reincarnation and responsibility are put to narrative form.  One is afforded the opportunity to see six or seven character interacting with one another over lifetimes, cultures and sexual identities.  It is not the neatened up version of karma.. If I do bad, bad things will happen to me, but more the idea that our energies commune, and there is ritual in communion among us.

One character, Somni-451 is asked about her philosophy following some choices she made with her life that will have fatal consequences.  In part she answers

 “Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb we are bound to others, past and present.  By each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”  

In this she refers to the collective future of us all.  An interesting idea don’t you think? My karma, so to speak is the world's karma.  Check out the film.  Don't try to follow each character so much as let the life of all the people in the movie wash over you as a whole.

What if all sentient beings, right now, in this moment knew that the next 10 things they did would greatly impact the future of our planet, our culture, our children and children’s children? How would it change the world?

What if we each know right now.. this next thing, and the thousand that follow will bring us all forward into communion with our future…possibly our future selves, but surely our communal future?  What if we knew that?

 Just for today.. try to hold that consciousness.  Just for today, or even the next hour.

Peace.  Inner peace is great.  Outer peace is nice too.  More soon,  Misty

A MAN STANDS UP DURING SUPPER

Sometimes a Man Stands Up During Supper

Sometimes a man stand up during supper

and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,

because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,

dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,

so that his children have to go far out into the world

toward the same church, which he forgot.

Ranier Maria Rilke

Here is a meditation for you..  Consider the characters above and ruminate, write, and contemplate who in you family most resonates to this story.  Did your family or you “keep on walking” or did you or they “remain in the house and die there”? Also what is your “church of the East”?  How do you relate to this church.  If you feel called to stay with this idea, write about it and would like to share with me, email me at bmwmft@aol.com

          Blessings for your week.  Misty

HUNTER MOON

Did you all enjoy the full moon last Friday?   The lunar display, the fields of rolled-in pumpkins and the cascade of holidays to follow, put us all in mind of this seasonal shift.  Apples are harvested, made into cider and the sunflowers, long in the summer light create shadow along their rows.

 

There can be a satisfaction and pleasure in this reaping and gathering.

We are not yet into the time of bears, and hibernation.  Instead, we dance by the cave entrance making silhouettes behind the bonfire, moving to the sounds made when wood and stone are beat together forming the music of the celebration.  

Some of the earliest images we have found, set down by humans are cave markings, and many depict this festival of ritual accomplishment and pleasure.  


A moment of acknowledging  our survival  for yet another year.  We have outwitted the predators of summer.  We have provided food for the winter and we have the companionship of the tribe.

The metaphors are in abundance.  The dances are as varied as the cultures and people who wiggle and move to the inner and outer sounds. Look around you and take them in. If we do this, we can see the beginnings of theater and many art forms.  





We have a need to ACT, then we have a need to REST, then we have a need to CELEBRATE, and then to SHARE these moments with our clan.

Allow your eyes to wash again over these images and take a moment to reflect on your accomplishments of the year.  And friend, make this list without criticism of what you did not do.  That is for the spring.  Now we are watching the sparkle of a live fire and the rising bits of ember.  As our hands encircle our bowls of food and drink, we also swallow the images of the celebrations.  It, as well as the food, will carry us through the darkness to come.

Once a year, I ask anyone who enjoys this site to hit SHARE so it will go on your FB wall or share it with one other person.  Ask one person to join us by the fire of community.  Thank you for that.  Misty

FINDING THE INNER PUPPY

 Even dogs meditate....

take a minute and find the inner puppy..

FURTHER THOUGHTS ON HAPPINESS

My most visited blog piece is one called ENTIRELY AND STUBBORNLY HAPPY.  We seem to all seek the state of happiness..  It is a journey that can be a fool’s errand if we believe that it exists outside of us as a place, an event, or a particular person.  Sometimes people seek therapy with the goal of being happy 100% of the time.   Mostly this is not the balanced quest of working on our attitudes and energies, but one of negating our other emotional experiences.  We don’t want to feel the sadness, loss, fear or anger, so we try and blot it out with a coat of cheeriness.  Of course this doesn’t work well, because these feelings lie just behind the paint job of emotion and continually bleed into our experience.  The best way to not feel so much of these harder emotions is to acknowledge them, experience them.  Only then are they free to move on.  But this is old news.  I have written a few times on this subject and I wanted to take it a bit further today.

 

I was watching an interview with the writer Margaret Atwood.  Charlie Rose asked her if she was happy.  She paused and then said. “You ask if I am happy, and happiness comes from doing something that interests you, so yes, I am happy”.   This statement took me in a number of directions.  In her case she was talking about her work as a writer.  It draws her interest.  She is pulled into the work by some innate or learned fascination with a process.  It made me think of all the people who don’t love their jobs.  Have you ever really taken stock of how many people do not find happiness in their work.  I mean I know work is work because we depend on the income from it to sustain our lives, and of course sometimes we all just want to go to the beach,  but beyond this many many people do not find their work of interest to them other than the financial gain.  This makes sense if you are new to the work world and don’t yet know what might really draw you in. But if you have gotten past thirty and have worked for 10 or 15 years and still have not honed in on a work path that brings you some happiness, it is perhaps time to sideline yourself for a moment and reconsider.  It is so easy to get caught in the treadmill of chasing money.  There is rarely joy down that road.  Where you need to look is in the direction of INTEREST.

As I heard her words about happiness and interest, I found myself drifting into a kind a meditation.  I could feel myself moving along a line that was making me feel happy.  So here I was interested in her words and as my interest increased, as I focused more on their meaning, I was , in  point of fact, happy.  Now  my unerstanding deepened.  I have previously said that happiness is a  choice.  It is not the sunset but our own inner permission and interpretation of such a thing that allows the rising of that sense of delight.  Now I can see that it is the allowing of our own curiosity about something that takes us there.  More simply said it is the INTEREST that we allow to come forward that propels unto into joy.   Thank you Margaret Atwood and Charlie Rose.  I needed that.

If our lives do not INTEREST us, then we cannot be happy.