Thoughts on Freedom from Thailand

Posted by Maia Duerr on 8:37 am in World We Live In | 0 comments

Until we are all free, none of us are free.

~Emma Lazarus
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Since July 4, I’ve been on the road, in the air, on the rails, and on the water.

My epic journey began from Lamy, New Mexico on the afternoon of Independence Day (which I prefer to think of as Interdependence Day). My dear friends Gina and Jami saw me off at the Amtrak train station in tiny Lamy. By the next morning, I was in Pasadena, California, to spend a couple of days with my mom and dad.

Then on July 7, I boarded a plane to Bangkok, and have been here in Thailand since July 9. I spent a couple of days in huge Bangkok (which felt like Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and New Orleans all rolled into one city), trying to find my way around. That was pretty much a futile effort. When I realized that I simply surrendered, found the Chao Phraya river that runs through the city, and enjoyed hopping on and off bus boats and eating delectable food. Then I headed to the quieter northern part of the country.

My main purpose in coming to Thailand is to teach a workshop on socially engaged Buddhism at the International Women’s Partnership for Peace and Justice, a wonderful center located just north of Chiang Mai. I came here two years ago and wrote this piece about Ouyporn Khuankaew, a remarkable woman who is one of IWP’s co-founders.

This year, a number of you contributed to a travel fund to help me get here, and I am deeply grateful for your generosity.

Yesterday morning I had breakfast with Ouyporn and Venerable Dhammananda, the first Thai woman to receive full ordination as a monk in this country where there is so much suppression of women’s rights. As you can see from the photo above, both of these courageous women have absolutely luminous spirits. That is so often the case with people who are absolutely committed to freedom, internal and external.

During these last couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about the interconnected nature of freedom, about how important it is for us to show up for each other in our struggles for liberation.

A few weeks ago as we heard the news about the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage equality, we celebrated that huge breakthrough. But that very same week the same court gutted one of the most important provisions from the Voting Rights Act. Then just this past week, many of us were outraged and devastated by the decision in Trayvon Martin’s case. Could there be a more clear example that while we’re making progress on some fronts, we have such a long way to go on others?

As part of preparing to offer this workshop that starts tomorrow, I’ve been reading a book about Bayard Rustin, one of the most important leaders of the civil rights movement – who you’ve probably never heard of. Rustin was the moving force behind many of the most successful justice events of the Twentieth century, including the 1947 Freedom Riders bus campaign and the 1963 March on Washington DC.

The reason why Rustin’s role was so hidden? He was an openly gay man. Rustin knew with painful intensity what it was like to be a member of more than one oppressed group, and he clearly saw the linkages between things.

Later in his life as he became more active in the fight for gay rights, Rustin said,

The major lesson I had learned in fighting for human rights for 50 years for people all over the world: No group is ultimately safe from prejudice, bigotry, and harassment so long as any group is subject to special negative treatment.

A number of years ago I became familiar with the work of Jobs with Justice, a labor organizing group. JwJ invites its members to become aware of each others’ struggles and then make a promise to show up for each other. This is the JwJ pledge:

During the next year, I will be there at least five times for someone else’s fight, as well as my own. If enough of us are there, we’ll all start winning.

I really love that.

Imagine how the world might be different if we started actively reaching out across to each other across the lines that often divide us and lending a hand when it really counts.

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An Illustrated Guide to Magic

Posted by Maia Duerr on 6:00 am in Spirit | 8 comments

There’s a world behind the world we see that is the same world
but more open, more transparent, without blocks.
Like inside a big mind, the animals and humans all can talk,
and those who pass through here get power to heal and help.

– Gary Snyder

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Last week I returned home from two weeks in California… which is also a home to me. It’s where I was born and where I lived for half my life. As a native Californian who now resides in northern New Mexico, I still feel a very strong affinity for the Golden State and the ocean that embraces it.

My journey had multiple purposes…

Meetings with clients as well as a weekend retreat with a “wisdom circle” of amazing women entrepreneurs I’ve been part of for the past year…

Time with friends, including a house concert in Santa Cruz by Jami Sieber (who is the source of that powerful quote by Gary Snyder at the top of this page)…

An overnight at San Francisco Zen Center to ground myself in meditation practice…

And a visit with my parents in Southern California…

All connected by a train ride on the Coast Starlight.

 

During the trip, I held the first-ever “Liberation Lounge” – an in-person gathering of LLP readers – though it wasn’t where I expected it to be. Originally I planned to hold this event in the Bay Area but it fell through for various reasons. However, something else happened. More on that in a moment.

Magic was the operative word for those two weeks.

I’ve used that word magic a lot this year. What’s that all about? What does “magic” really mean?

Here’s what I think: Magic is what is always just below the surface of our lives at any given moment but usually we are too entrained into conventional ways of seeing and knowing to feel its existence.

Like a dowsing stick, we have to learn to trust something deeper and to be guided to that underground stream of magic that is constantly flowing, even when we’re not aware of it.

In the classic book  A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson writes that the true nature of reality is always the opposite of what we are conditioned to believe, that our spiritual truth is exactly upside down from the ‘truth’ of the material world. I believe that magic is what helps us to uncover what was there all along at that deeper level of reality.

Just like a dowsing stick has two prongs, there are two elements that make magic possible:

• Presence – paying attention to what’s inside ourselves and around us
• Our willingness to let go of what we think we know, to loosen up on the beliefs we hang onto with such tenacity

Magic does not mean that the hard things of our life will disappear. It does mean that we can swim under the surface of reality as we know it and find an entirely different way to relate to our hard thing, whatever it might be.

Given that definition, a lot of magic showed up throughout my trip but especially the last few days when I was in Pasadena, visiting my aging parents. I always feel challenged on those trips. The best part of this particular visit was that I realized I don’t need to live in an old story around them anymore. This is the mantra I started living into on that visit:

Everything happens for us, not to us.

That became my dowsing stick. Keeping those words in my heart and mind, I felt much more spaciousness around everything. Sure, my mom and dad still had all their dysfunctional patterns, individually and in relationship to each other. But I didn’t feel compelled to spin a miserable story out of all that.

Sure, I was concerned as I watched them growing older, wondering how they would take care of themselves and how this will play out in the future. Everything seemed very precarious, and as an only child I felt the burden of figuring this all out as they are not at all proactive about their lives.

So there is all that.

But then there is this. Every time I go there to visit, I connect with more and more people to support me, in all kinds of ways. Last year when I was in Pasadena, I got in touch with Karen Maezen Miller, a fantastic writer as well as a Zen priest and simply a good human being. Maezen lives in Sierra Madre, the town next to Pasadena. What a gift to get to know her and know that when I have to spend more time in this area in the future, I have a meditation buddy who will support my practice.

And then there was this bit of magic that happened on this most recent visit. While checking my email one afternoon, I got a Facebook friend request from a woman named Laura who also happened to live in Sierra Madre. She included a note with her request and told me that she has been following the Liberated Life Project for the past two years and loves it.

When Laura found out that I was going to be in Pasadena and that I had this idea for a “Liberation Lounge,” she graciously offered her home to host one. Even though we only had two days to put this all together, I said “yes”! — trusting the beauty of the synchronicity.

But there was still more magic afoot.

As I looked at Laura’s Facebook bio, I noticed she went to Alverno High School, a Catholic high school in the area which I was very familiar with since my high school (St Andrews) would often play Alverno in sports events. Way back in the olden days.

So I shared that with Laura, having no idea if we were anywhere near the same age bracket. It turned out that we graduated in exactly the same year (1979) and we were on our schools’ respective softball teams. I am certain we were on the same field together at some point!

But there was more.

On the last afternoon of my trip, we had the first-ever “Liberation Lounge” at Laura’s home. It was a sweet event with four of us — Laura, Maezen came, myself, and Tim who lives in Pasadena and is enrolled in Upaya’s Chaplaincy Program. We started with meditation for about 10 minutes, then had a lovely conversation and tea in Laura’s garden, underneath an abundant orange tree.

That’s where I found out that Laura has been working in elder care and loves being a companion to older people. She does this for an agency but doesn’t receive much money for it, and is going through a pretty stressful financial situation. As we all sat in her backyard, I realized that I was seeing the answer to a prayer: someone who I could trust and who loves to help older folks…. someone who could potentially be a resource for me as I deal with my parents and their aging process, and who could really benefit from this connection herself.

We all had an amazing talk during the Liberation Lounge, and it was clear to me that all of this came together for a reason. And not only my reason–there were many more beautiful synchronicities and connections for Maezen, Tim, and Laura.

As I finished up my last night in Pasadena, I felt deeply at peace and trusting in the benevolence of the universe, even when things seem hard and confusing. It’s all there, just beneath the surface — and everything depends on what we are looking for.

A dear friend once said to me:

Allow the world to surprise you.

 Yes. That’s magic.

 

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—Maia

8 (More) Life Changing Questions

Posted by Maia Duerr on 6:00 am in Spirit | 2 comments

I love questions. A good question can open up limitless possibilities in our lives. But questions also require us to be courageous and to hang out with the unknown for a while, sometimes a long while… that’s where the treasure is.

A couple of years ago, I asked a number of people to share the most important question they ever asked themselves as well as how it changed their lives. The result was one of my favorite LLP posts: 10 Life-Changing Questions.

Reader response was so positive and I loved the process so much that I promised myself to do it again. Now is the time! I’m happy to share with you this new batch of life-changing questions from another group of people whom I love, respect, and admire. This time I also included myself since many folks have asked what my question is.

Here is the invitation I offered to everyone:

• What’s the most important question you’ve ever asked yourself?
• How did (does) that question change your life?

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Luisa Kolker is a shamanic healer and psychotherapist based in my hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Luisa’s workshops and individual sessions have been a wonderful vehicle for transformation for me, and I feel so lucky to live in close proximity to her.

The Question
What are you willing to do to come to your own assistance?

The Impact
Actually, this was a question that someone asked me at a time in my life when I felt really broken. Desperately, I flailed in every possible direction to avoid the ultimate and obvious truth: that I was it; no one else could save me from the black pit of ancient pain I encountered in the core of my being.

And so my answer to that question became: “I will do whatever it takes. I will die to my lifelong attachment to looking okay while feeling awful. I will let my heart break and rebuild it again. I will be the friend, mother, lover for whom I’ve been waiting.”

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Robin Rice is an author, teacher, social thought leader and mentor. Robin founded Be Who You Are Productions, which brings creativity to social change in both profit and not-for-profit platforms. While I have not yet met Robin in person, she is an online inspiration and I love her perspectives on life and work.

The Question
Can you make it bigger?

The Impact
Every time I write a novel, I ask myself to go in and see if I can make it bigger. Which is to say, more vivid, more universal, more compelling, more accessible, etc…? In other words, can you make it a “bigger” story. Big stories compel us to turn the page.

In the same way, this question has become a way I challenge my life. How can I be bigger… bringing the world more presence, more beauty, more impact, more generosity, more curiosity, more truth?

Bigger isn’t always better, for sure. Sometimes that tiny, small gesture is exactly right. But in that case, I’d say “more simple.” The point isn’t the bigness, but the stretch beyond into bigger thinking.

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Desiree Adaway is a tower of power. That’s the best way I know to describe her! On a more tangible level, Desiree draws on years of experience in the nonprofit and foundation worlds to help talented leaders to successfully navigate through integrations, reorganizations, and organizational evolution. She’s amazing, trust me.

The Question
What are you afraid of?

The Impact
This question exposes me to my vulnerabilities and fears. I get to name them then face them. I get to lean into discomfort and when I do, I get to feel resilient. There are great lessons for me in both those activities.

This is good medicine. The healing kind that makes me feel strong spiritually.

We as a society like to run away from discomfort. We don’t like being the only ANYTHING. It’s natural for us to enter a room, whether it’s a yoga class or a networking event and search out someone that looks like us,  or sounds like us  so we can relate to them. We do this to help ease our anxiety. Our social security blanket.

Yet I argue it’s good for us to push a bit and lean into discomfort and fear- I am not talking about living in a place of high anxiety every day – but to step into a space that is new and unfamiliar. This discomfort is a gift… one that very few people or organizations actively seek. This discomfort should push your boundaries so that you feel tired, but it should never hurt. Like when you speak your truth and your voice is loud and clear and just a bit shaky.

Discomfort and fear are medicine.

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Satya Colombo is a consultant and healer who helps change-makers awaken their creative flow and build lives in alignment with their highest calling. He loves yoga, writing, playing ukulele and journeying with the intrepid tribe of Soul-Fire Walkers in the Fire of Love Community! His four-part Awakening Epic Flow course is available to anyone here: Live and Thrive in Your Highest Truth: The 5 Elements Way of Epic Flow.

The Question
Your question is great, and it’s not an easy one to answer. I pondered it for over a week, and quite a few popped up. There is one that really stands out for me, though: What is my soul crying for?

The Impact
I recently rediscovered this question in my work for the Fire of Love Experience. I was pondering how to really support our tribe in reawakening the essential inquiry: “Who am I and what am I here for?”

I was so surprised by my own answers to this simple question — what is my soul crying for? It was shocking! From there I began to inquire into what would bring me closer to the fulfillment of these core desires. The inquiry continues to lead me through strange and beautiful uncharted territories!

If you can get intimate enough with yourself to draw out your soul’s deepest yearnings, there’s no reason you cannot also awaken the fire in your spirit strong enough to burn any obstacles in your path!

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June Tanoue is a pretty rare combination — a Zen priest, reiki master, and Kumu Hula (master hula teacher). She’s also a good friend and a gem of a human being. Any time I go to Chicago, I love visiting the peaceful oasis that she and her husband Robert have created there.

The Question
I think my biggest question now is, “What do I want to do in the years remaining before I die?”

The Impact
I’m turning 63 in a couple of weeks. I’m starting to think about the fact that my body will physically disintegrate at some point.  So, how do I want to spend my remaining time here?  A friend recently told me the best advice he ever received was, “Don’t get good at something you don’t like doing.” 

At first that didn’t really resonate with me…and then I thought, “That makes a lot of sense.”  Why keep doing something that doesn’t nourish and feed your body, mind and heart?  I’ve always tried to follow my bliss or do things that feed my heart.  Sometimes it’s hard and I wonder if I still love what I’m doing. It’s good to ask questions and not expect an answer right away.

My newest projects: I’m going on the Heart Mountain Pilgrimage this summer to witness the place that many of my relatives were interned during WWII. And I’m starting to study Tibetan appliqué with Leslie Rinchen-Wongmo. I want to leave something beautiful behind and enjoy myself in the process.

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Mike Ambassador Bruny is a speaker, life coach, and author who helps young professionals through life transitions. I first encountered Mike’s beaming smile and brilliant bowtie last fall at a conference, and I so much appreciated how much love and kindness he put into helping many of us get to know each other better…truly embodying his tagline, “Hashtags to Handshakes.”

The Question
Why not me?

The Impact
That question allowed me to move from a mindset that says, “It will never happen,” to “let THEM tell me ‘no’,” to “I got this.”

The question, “Why not me?” allowed me to stop focusing on all the reasons why something can’t happen and instead focusing my energy and that of the universe on alignment to make things happen. It’s shown up in having the wedding of my dreams at Oheka Castle, to getting job opportunities and to being part of really cool projects.

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Maia Duerr is…. well, me!

The Question
Am I making this decision from love or fear?

The Impact
Anytime I’ve been at a crossroads or faced with a significant decision around work, relationships, or other aspects of my life, I let myself sit with this question for a while. Sometimes it takes a long while before I get really clear on it, because what initially seems like a fearless choice may actually have a lot of fear informing it when I look more deeply.

The best barometer is often my own body – when I imagine making a certain choice, am I feeling an expansive energy inside me? Or is something constricted? As I consider my decision, am I being ruled by anxiety and anticipating the worst possible outcome, or am I trusting in the essential rightness of the universe and that all is working out as it should?

Sitting with this question has always guided me in the “right” direction. No matter what I decide, I rest easier in the knowledge that my intentions are clear. Even if the outcome isn’t immediately positive I know that I am moving in the direction of love and openness – and that can never be “wrong.”

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Karen Maezen Miller thought she wasn’t answering my question when she tapped out the words below on Facebook. I thought her response was perfect. Maezen is a wife, mother, and Zen Buddhist priest at Hazy Moon Zen Center in Los Angeles. She’s also a pretty amazing writer and the author of a couple of great books about spirituality in everyday life: Momma Zen and Hand Wash Cold.

I’m afraid I would have to make something up that wouldn’t be quite true. So instead I will try to remember what I learned from Maezumi Roshi. He said the “magic question” was “Why?” Not because there is an answer, but because the question points us to the infinite ways we suffer, and the infinite ways we can free ourselves from suffering. That’s why I like to say that in Zen we do not find the answers, we lose the questions.

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