The Liberated Life Project offers inspiration for
personal and collective liberation.
Find your guide to the best of the LLP right here.
[ssba_hide]
6 Ways to Shine — No Matter What
Photo by Manish Bansal/Flickr Creative Commons
I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness
the astonishing light of your own being.
– Hafiz
_____________
I believe that all of us have a natural brilliance that is yearning to come out and be expressed in the daily activities of our lives – our work, our creativity, our relationships, our play, our worship – and to be seen by others. Seen not in a superficial, attention-getting way, but in the most authentic way possible.
True Confessions
Lucy filling in for me during my period of being a meditation slacker
A few days ago, I made a big confession to a friend.
I came out with the dirty truth: I hadn’t meditated in almost three weeks. Yep, me, the Buddhist chaplain, the creator of the Liberated Life Project and impassioned advocate for an awakened life. No time logged on the meditation cushion for days, going on weeks.
My friend let out a gasp. “Oh, I feel so relieved to hear you say that!” she said.
So perhaps I am doing a public service here by coming clean and saying yes, it’s true – even the most dedicated dharma-heads get lazy sometimes.
Here’s what I’ve noticed over these couple of weeks. I’ve been all over the map, literally. I’ve been on a couple of trips for business, and so one excuse I’ve made is that it’s hard to meditate when I’m traveling. (But not impossible by any means – that’s just me making excuses.)
And I’ve been all over the map, metaphorically. My thoughts have been more scattered, I’ve been more emotionally reactive, and in general just feeling funky. The little bit of discipline that I have (not much!) has completely evaporated away over these past few weeks, just like the puddles of rain that disappear quickly in the high, dry desert of northern New Mexico where I live. I’ve been going on cookie and ice cream binges, and you may have noticed that I haven’t written a post on this blog for weeks either.
It got to the point where the more I realized how long I had gone without meditating–and also how long I’ve gone without writing something here on the blog–the more distressed I felt. And yet that distress turned into even more avoidance. Maybe you can relate to this?
In short, I’ve been a mess. A blessed mess, perhaps, but a mess nonetheless.
Now, it’s not like meditation is a magic bullet. You will hear me say that again and again. And sometimes meditation makes things ‘worse’ before they get ‘better,’ if only because when we finally slow down and stop, it’s amazing the stuff that comes up that we have spent so much time running away from.
But a consistent meditation practice grounds us in a place of stability, at the same time that it helps us to relax into the groundlessness that is so often a fact of life. This can only be a good thing.
There are, of course, all the physiological and psychological benefits of meditation that have gotten a lot of press. Beyond that, there are the spiritual gifts that come through, unique to each of us, as we give ourselves to a practice that wears down our ego at the same time that it opens up our heart.
And if we keep that heart wide open, we will ‘get’ how intimately linked we are to all other creations on this planet of ours. And some kind of deep caring gets generated from that place. Whoa, as Keanu would say.
After making my confession to my friend the other day, I vowed aloud to her, “I’m making a promise to get back on the cushion again.” And I did, almost immediately after that conversation. It was only an 8-minute sitting period in my little home meditation space, but it felt good. And now I am writing this post for you and for myself — and while it was hard to get it going, now that it’s rolling, this too feels good. It may not have been the longest meditation session, and this is most definitely not the most beautiful blog post, but it’s something. And that is everything.
So if you’re anything like me and you’ve dropped away from a meditation practice for a while, or if you’ve had intentions to start but haven’t gotten around to it, please – don’t worry. Don’t feel guilty. Just stop all that self-berating, right now. Please.
Take this opportunity, right here, right now, to do the simplest possible thing for your good and for the world’s good. Sit your butt down and just breathe. Just begin. Or begin again. I’ll be right there with you.
___________
I’d love to stay in touch with you! When you sign up for my mailing list, you’ll receive my monthly newsletter with reflections on life and liberation, as well as my e-book, “9 Keys to a Liberated Life.”
How to Fall in Love with Your Work
Work… we spend most of our waking hours doing it. Shouldn’t it be something we just LOVE?
Sadly, that is not the case for most of us.
The question I’ve most passionately explored all my life is: ‘How can I create work that I love?’ I’ve poured everything I’ve learned about that question into an e-course called “Fall in Love with Your Work.” This October 2014, I’m offering an updated and expanded two-month group version of the course and I’d love to have you join me in that journey!
To celebrate the opening of registration for the course, I’m re-posting an article I originally wrote in 2012 that many people have loved. I think it will help you understand how close this topic is to my heart.
__________________
The author and Roshi Joan Halifax on ordination day (photo by Mitsue Nagase)
(March 2012)
Last week, in a beautiful ceremony that took place at Upaya Zen Center here in Santa Fe where I live, I was ordained as a Buddhist chaplain by my longtime friend, colleague, and root teacher Roshi Joan Halifax.
This milestone marked the end point of a two-year journey in chaplaincy training but the beginning of yet another new phase of my life. A number of you have asked me to share what this means and what I plan to do with this new title.
The short answer is, I really don’t know.
The longer answer is embedded in the way I think about livelihood and what it means to create liberated work in these times in which we live.
“Buddhist chaplain” is one in a long line of identities and job titles that I’ve held over my lifetime. I’m not alone in this. On average, a U.S. worker has been in his or her current job 4.4 years, a dramatic drop from the the 1970s when it wasn’t unusual for people to have careers 15 or 20 years long. (See this article in Fast Company magazine for more on this phenomenon.)
Studies now indicate that over our lifetime, each of us will hold somewhere between 10 to 11 jobs. My particular spread goes like this, working backwards from the present:
- Buddhist chaplain
- Freelance writer and editor
- Organizational consultant
- Magazine editor
- Communications director
- Nonprofit Executive Director
- Research Director
- Anthropologist
- Bookseller
- Mental Health Counselor
- Music Therapist
- Administrative assistant
- Alfalfa sprout picker
- Kentucky Fried Chicken counterperson
And I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few jobs.
How in the world do I make sense out of that list? Without a big view, I could look at it and think, wow, what the hell am I doing with my life? I’m all over the map… how could I possibly leave a legacy with a mash-up like that?
When I fall into the trap of comparing myself to others whom I perceive as having more stability and focus, I feel that I’ve skimmed the surface of too many occupations, that I’ve not stayed with anything long enough to be an “expert.”
A more positive way to frame this is what fellow blogger Emilie Wapnick calls being a “multi-potentialite.” I like what Fast Company says about creating careers in the 21st century –it’s less about the job title and more about the life mission that we’ve discerned for ourselves.
The myriad jobs that I have had are all really manifestations of one thing – a deep desire to help people discover and connect. (Though I’m not sure how the alfalfa sprout job would fit…)
It took me a long time to unearth that intention. Only in the last few years have I been conscious of it and tried to craft my work in alignment with that intention. Before that, my career trajectory was hit or miss. A good clue that there was a ‘miss’ was when I found myself in jobs that held no passion for me and felt adrift in my life.
This latest title, Buddhist chaplain, is a bit of a mystery to me—in a good way.
My Buddhist path has been precious to me for almost 20 years now. And I’ve long had a desire to be of service (though it’s taken a long time to sort that out from unhealthy co-dependency).
So two years ago when I had the opportunity to take the Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Program, I felt it would help me to deepen my understanding of both streams – dharma and service.
I didn’t have a goal to find a job as a Buddhist chaplain at the end of the training and I still don’t. Rather, I see it as a vehicle for continuing to express that core intention: helping people to discover and connect. In this case, it means helping people to discover the resilience and spark that is deep inside of them, and supporting them to connect with others who will see and value them for who they truly are. I try to do that in all my work, whether I’m editing an article for someone or guiding an organization through a change process. I feel that this blog is a creative expression of that intention as well. So in a way, I get to show up as a Buddhist chaplain right here on the Liberated Life Project.
The way I see it, creating a liberation-based livelihood means that you are consciously connecting your intention to your work.
Contrary to what you may read on other blogs, this doesn’t require that you be self-employed (though in my experience that helps), nor does it guarantee that you will receive a lot of money for what you do (though it’s certainly possible). It does mean that you are not stumbling along blindly from one job to another (or one project to another if you are self-employed) without a sense of cohesion or meaning or, worse yet, in a job that is in opposition to your deepest held values.
Liberation-based livelihood means that in every moment, you are able to return to your core intention and see how what you are doing for work is in some way an expression of that intention.
During our week of chaplaincy training, we were graced by a virtual visit from Ram Dass. During our evening Skype call, he shared this piece of wisdom in relation to the idea of ‘helping’ and ‘chaplaincy’ — “Identify with the soul, not the role.”
I can’t think of a better way to say it.
________________
If you’re interested in learning how to create liberation-based livelihood in your life, please check out Fall in Love with Your Work. Registration will close on Sept 29.
