The Power of Questions

 

This week's talk was on "The Power of Inquiry."  (If you missed it, it's available on my podcast).

The questions we ask ourselves can dramatically reframe our experience.  They can be used in the realm of self-improvement and problem-solving as well as inquiring into the nature of the self and accessing the non-dual.

All inquiry questions require a particular internal attitude:

1. Drop all expectations of 'getting it right.'
2. Inquire with a sincere desire to know the truth
3. Be prepared for unexpected
4. Look for a 'feeling tone' or an experience that is outside the linear mind

The Five-Problem Solving Questions have gotten me out of jams quite a few times.  Credit to Tony Robbins, who turned me on to this.  As promised, here they are.  The following is my personal adaptation:

1. What's great about this situation?  What could be great about it?
2. What's not perfect yet?
3. What am I willing to do to resolve this situation?
4. What am I no longer willing to do to resolve this situation?
5. How can I resolve this situation and have a great time doing it?

While questions can help us in the relative, they can open up a sense of what lies beyond the mind itself.

Ramana Maharshi claimed that sincere inquiry into two questions could help reveal your true nature:

1. Who am I?
2. What do I really want?

Inquiry requires a curious blend of not just a high degree of sincerity and openness, but an intensity and desire to know what is true.

For more on inquiry meditation, check here.

Piliated at the Feeder

Piliated Woodpeckers are pretty rare, except on our property, where we've got a few battling for pecking rights.  If you haven't seen one, they are huge and prehistoric-looking, about the size of a crow. We've got six large dead trees near the house that support all species of local woodpeckers.

This one surprised me ... I've never seen one on the bird feeder.  It must have thought it found heaven.

The next morning I woke up around 4:00AM to the sound of the wind chime frantically shaking.  I ran downstairs to find a young raccoon wildly swinging on the cage.  It managed, despite  that frenzied rocking, to clean out the entire feeder.

Dam!

The falls were mesmerizing the other morning ....

April 9th at UUCA

We are honored to have the Monks from Gaden Jangste Twawa  Khangsten, India on Monday Night at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington on the 9th.  They will play traditional instruments and chant a Medicine Buddha puja. Stig Regli will lead the opening meditation and introduce the monks.  If you would like to include your name or that of a loved one in the dedication, please send an email to Rebecca Freeman at spc@guyyasamaja.org.

This should be a sweet event.  I'll be teaching on Capitol Hill that night, but will tune in from across the Potomac.

The Fox

One great thing about living in the woods in the natural life around us.  Our bird feeder was buzzing for about six weeks, then suddenly I noticed the owls and hawks hanging around.  All the fat squirrels were replaced by fast, skinny ones and most of the birds vanished. Besides the 15 deer or so who cruise by daily and hang out on the property, we've got a young fox, probably in it's second year, on our property.  It comes by like clockwork.  I've yet to capture a really clean shot, but here are a few quick ones.  You can see it has not yet grown into the size of it's head and still has not shed it's winter coat.

It's Blue Out There

I've been so busy recently that I haven't gotten up many images.  It seems with this warm weather, flowers, trees, weeds and bushes are exploding into buds at once. The Blue Bells are quite early this year and the cooler weather, now that they've bloomed, is holding them pretty steady.

A week of cloudy weather set the stage for the Spring Blues:

I don't know if the resolution will show this, but this close up has the backlit Bluebell, the beginning of a spider web and two jets in the background.  A lot going on here.

Bluebells, spiders and jets

Your Brain on Fiction

Interesting study published in the New York Times on what happens in the brain when you read fiction.

Good things, thankfully.

(Thanks, Angela.)

Breath, Bliss and Liberation

 

I'm looking forward to joining up with my colleague Larissa Carlson at Kripalu Center in a few months, teaching Exploring the Energy Body: Teaching Pranayama and Meditation, part of Kripalu's professional level 500-hour yoga teacher training.

The program is already full with a wait list, so we're looking forward to ten days with 60 yogis and yoginis breathing deep, paying really close attention to what happens in moment-to-moment awareness and learning how to guide others into non-ordinary states of consciousness that arise from these practices.

After many years of yoga practice I found myself more drawn to 'just sitting, ' particularly in the Theravaden Buddhist tradition.  I've found, though, there are times when the pranayama techniques have been amazingly helpful in my practice and I'm rediscovering how powerful they are for cultivating concentration, working with pain and preparing the body and mind for intensive meditation practice.

Larissa just wrote a great article on "Reinvigorating a Pranayama Home Practice" you might enjoy.  If you have the opportunity to study with Larissa, do it.  She's incredibly knowledgable and compassionate.

A Prayer from the Intensive

 

I'm back from leading the Energy Intensive at Kripalu Center this weekend with my cohorts Shobhan and Danna Faulds.  We've been leading this three-day 'blow out the tubes' weekend for twelve years.

Shobhan shared a prayer that many asked for and as promised, here it is:

May you be happy and healthy.

May you prosper in all ways.

May your studies be illuminating.

May your practice being you deep realization.

May you find joy in serving others.

And may you awaken fully, in this very lifetime.

Living In the Body

 

A senior teacher at Spirit Rock once told a story of when he went to Burma to study meditation. This was decades ago, before meditation hit the mainstream.

He made his way to a monestary and was assigned a little hut for his practice.

His teacher gave him this instruction: "Keep your awareness in your body. We'll check in in a week."

That was it.

Not "Watch the breath at the tip of your nostrils."

Not "And this is how you do walking meditation."

Not "Here's how you do mindful eating."

"Keep your awareness in the body."  From there, we apply the practice in all the different ways we sense, feel and move.

This was the basic theme for our daylong retreat on Saturday, "A Meditative Journey: Movement, Meditation and Deep Relaxation."

Here were the two other instructions:

1. Relax 2 Pay attention.

That's pretty much what we did all day while doing conscious movement, body scans and various forms of seated meditation.

Consciously shifting your attention from the story to the experience of the 'here and now' is a radical act.

Inevitably you start to relax. When you relax you begin to feel more. You notice more. You start to recognize what's between you and feeling free.

I'm always amazed at what happens when I pause even if just for one breath, relax and notice what's happening.

One breath.

What's happening right now?

New Retreat Location

 

Our retreat this Saturday, "A Meditative Journey; Movement, Meditation and Deep Relaxation," has moved to St. George's church in Arlington.  Here's a map.

This is a 'practice retreat' with rounds of movement, relaxation and vipassana meditation and less emphasis on dharma talks, though I'm sure I'll have something to say here and there.

Most of the day is in social silence, but we will have time for questions and discussion at the end of the day.

I believe we still have a few spaces available and you can register online here.

This is one of my most favorite retreats.

What I Did On My Winter Vacation

It had been a long while since we'd taken a real vacation, so Tara and I headed out for an adventure filled with the following criteria:  quiet, warmth, swimming, snorkeling and diving. We went to St. John's in the USVI, which is about 80% National Park, looking for time away to renew and sharpen our skills in the art of Having Fun.

We settled on the south side of the island, which is more desert-like, undeveloped and remote.

We were also shielded from the northern swells, which were particularly rowdy on our arrival.

With the grace of good health, we explored many of the cays and points on the south side, most of which were only accessible by 4wd, hiking or boat.

There's something edgy about snorkeling in remote areas.  While we are both confident swimmers and with wet suits, felt both warm and buoyant, I was aware that at the furthest point in many of our ventures we were often a half-mile swim to a half mile rock scramble to a rutted road to a long drive to anything remotely medical.

Fortunately we had nothing but good fortune.  While the reefs had degraded in the years we'd been away, there was still a raw beauty that continually kept me inspired and awake.  We swam with turtles and tracked an octopus swimming and then magically congealed into a little ball under a rock.  A big manta ray swam inches under me in shallow water and we watched crabs stuffing themselves on sea veggies as we floated by.

At one point the variety of fish racing around the coral outcropping was so overwhelming I started laughing.  Who invented these crazy-looking creatures?  Occasionally I would wonder if I was dreaming.

It seemed clear that the process of natural selection was exquisitely precise and conditional.  The little blue fish with the sparkling sides seemed only to exist only between three and ten feet of depth and only with a certain type of coral, while the long-nosed, spindly ones never seemed to go more than six inches under the surface, and only in a specific temperature.

Each day we learned more, saw more of this exquisitely sensitive world.

Ten days I think is the perfect length for a getaway.  Like being on a meditation retreat, it takes time to let go of the past and get immersed into the present.

(As an experiment I took all photographs on my iPhone and edited them on my iPad with the the Snapseed photo editor.)

Image of the Week: The Light That is Morning

Photography is all about light. This is the time of year when things get a bit monochromatic. The woods are a uniformed grey and the ground has little color. Down by the river with the morning light bouncing off the water, though,  the light has a particular, if fleeting warmth.

What We See

My family were camera buffs. Many an evening was spent looking at slides of our adventures in nature. My first camera was a Brownie.  Then I moved on to someone's discarded Minolta, which led to picking up a Photomic Nikon from a wealthy kid in high school who wanted to upgrade.

A professional level camera led me to countless hours in the darkroom, working for my high school and college papers. That led to a job as a stringer for the Rockford-Register Star, the second largest paper in Illinois next to the Chicago Tribune. From there, freelance work.  I actually made money.

I've had a large format camera down to a tiny Rollei with a Zeis lens. That little camera didn't have a viewfinder. I did 'hyper focal distance shooting,' which means guessing. Amazing shots with that little guy and an increased confidence in shooting.

Now I'm using my iPhone a lot.  I just love the instant feedback and capacity to edit on the fly.

It's shaping what I see and the mundane comes so much more alive.

What Remains

There's an old joke that claims your first and last birthdays are similar.  Someone  explains to you it's your birthday and there are a lot of strangers standing around looking at you.

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My father turned 87 on Sunday and I drove up to Pennsylvania to join in the celebration with some family members.  My sister-in-law made his favorite raisin cake, which his grandmother would make on a coal-burning stove.  We sang a very out of tune "Happy Birthday" and all the residents of his Alzheimer's unit who were present enough joined in the treats.

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My dad loves the company and attention.  He's never quite sure who I am, but he recognizes me when I walk into the room and listens attentively when he asks me where I live and what I do.

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Despite the nature of his mental decline, his trademark sense of humor remains.  It's fascinating to see how much his sense of comedy now relies immediately on the present moment.

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Any laughter or smile lights up something inside.

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Image of the Week: The Eastern Sky

A February morning ...  

The Men's Retreat

 

We just completed the 5th annual Men's Retreat this weekend.  Almost 70 men rolled in to share the adventure.

Movement, breath, social silence and meditation drews us inward and inquiry and sharing in partners and small groups drew us into relationship with each other.  Differences in wealth, professions, cultural backgrounds and sexual orientation seemed to melt as we explored common inquiries into what it means to be a man in these trying times.

Our final round of questions took me to the heart of what it means to be awake in heart and mind:

What am I most committed to in my life right now?

What do  I need to be feel more whole?

Some find it easy to respond to the first question.  The second question takes us into a deeper sense of vulnerability and into a more profound sense of relationship.

If you're interested in exploring more, a new group is starting up in DC called Men Meeting for Meditation, or M3.  Here's a link for more information.

This is a recent start up and you are welcome to join in.

Image of the Week: Geese in Flight

It's always a debate as to how much to edit an image. Some say the right thing to do is leave the image as natural as possibly while others claim it's OK to tweak a bit ... to lighten shadows, saturate the color just a wee bit to bring out the best in the image.

I was in the Keep It Utterly Natural Camp, but since I've been doing photo editing on my iPad I'm having a blast in the Manipulation Camp.  This morning I took off for the river with the fog dense, thick and smoky, hoping  to get some good shots as it would burn off.  Most of the shots I took were grey with little color available as there was so little light.

So I took to my editing tools and came up with this.  Cool.

At the Smith Center

Last night I led a workshop on “The Still Small Voice Within: Exploring the Relationship between Meditation and Intuition” at the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts on U Street NW.

First of all the Smith Center is a wonderful place and does good work.  Thank you all for your donations that support their work.

It was fantastic to do this experience in an art gallery.

There is an interesting mindfulness exercise whereby you look around you and notice one thing you didn’t notice before.

And then another.  And another.

This can lead to a wonderful sense of presence.

With all the amazing art on the wall, it was incredibly rich as we all sat for a few moments after meditation to take in the imagery surrounding us.

Here's more on the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts.

Image of the Week: Is This You?

One of my current goals is to catch the Coots with the sun behind them as they go into their frenzied 'escape.'  Coots, otherwise known as March Hens, don't have webbed feet.  Really cute, they give off the appearance of being incredibly dumb.  If one spooks in the least, they all freak out and frantically start running across the water while wildly flapping their wings. This little one I can seriously relate to.  You know that feeling?