MoxieLife

Sitting with my crazy little mind.

Sitting has been in my life since early this year - it was a chance to stop talking about what was happening in my life and to just quietly watch my thoughts and feelings. It was an opportunity to stop telling my story and just experience myself.

It's funny, last weekend my husband and I went on a walk around the lake in our neighboring park. On that walk I planned what we were having for dinner, felt like I was on a death march with him behind me pushing me along, retold stories of conversations I wish I would have had, and listened to a chorus of birds - all in my head. There were only brief moments that I was actually just walking on the trail and those moments were peaceful.

I am no expert at sitting meditation, and I miss days more then I would like, but I know that it makes a difference in my life. I slow down. I appreciate. I act rather than react. All of that is off the cushion but comes from the practice of sitting and watching my breath and my mind do it's crazy little thing.

This is part of Gwen Bell's #Best09 Blog Challenge and sitting is part of my 40/40 Challenge.

Silent Retreat, the interview & last thoughts - part 4

After I slept that horrible sleep of the guilty (balloon popper and mouse mind) I woke at 5:30 to greet the sun. We sat, had a silent breakfast, sat, and then we had interviews with Joy. Throughout the morning and afternoon she met with those that were interested for a brief interview/session with her to see how it was all going. One by one people walked out to the bench she was sitting on at the far edge of the pond.

The Interview

As I sat down we discussed any things rather then detail the conversation here are some excerpts - I warn you that this a bit hippy dippy, but here it is:

When people say "they'll pray for me" or express their path with Jesus I can choose to see that as lovingkindness. I can choose to believe that they don't have the words/vocabulary/cultural ability to just say that they care for me and wish me well. That in their cultural reference they are expressing those things the best they can. I can choose that or I can choose to flip them off.

By constantly defending my version of reality I am missing the show - I am only seeing it through the narrow hole of "the atheist" not as the person experiencing life with other people.

She suggested that there might be extreme trauma from my mother that I am carrying - my mother did experience and inflict extreme trauma. And that might have caused my adrenal gland to either be smaller than others or to just race to flight or fight quicker.

We talked about my position as a defender - a warrior. That perhaps always being prepared for battle - to defend - shuts down that capacity to love. It is hard to love when you are covered in armor.

She said that Stephen Levine would call me an Orthodox Atheist, which by her account, is a hard path - the path of the skeptic. The hard part is to not be zealous, not to have rigid thinking and to find the strength to know but also to love.

My 40th Thing

She said my 40th thing (on my 40/40 Challenge) would be "Releasing dear Jack Frances to his own energetic resonance, and the need to defend that space "for "daddy." - What does that mean? To not defend his way of thinking - to let him go - and to experience life as it is happening. If you are interested I'll share more about that.

And then we sat, ate, sat, shared in a circle and dashed out to our cars as it started to pour for the journey home.

The Way Home

All the way home my friend Kath and I chatted. We talked about the weekend, what we thought, we laughed. It was great. The funniest part is that the two women that I didn't like she also didn't like - on sight. We never talked about it. It was just instinctual. We laughed because we never did find the shower and after 3 days we were pretty ripe. We could have asked, but were to busy sitting silently to think about it. As Kath would say, "all I was asking for was a clean crotch." Amen sister! Amen.

Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. It was fantastic and completely jumpstarted my sitting practice at home. Can't wait to share the next time with you - better yet, come along!

Silent Retreat, where she talks - Part 2

When I left you last I had just gone to bed in the cob "Castle" at Wattle Hollow. I woke at 6:00 am. I had set my cell phone alarm to wake me - figuring that I am not used to getting up in the dark. The person who had signed up to sound the gong did so at 6:30am. It was a strange break in the silence of the morning.

I brushed my teeth on the little porch outside of my room, quickly got dressed, and made my way to the main hall. We sat, silently, outside on the deck, benches, or chairs littered around the pond. The sun had peeked up and was silhouetting the trees - a perfectly quiet morning only becoming undone with the burst of gunshot every now and then.

At 8:00 we ate, silently, a beautiful meal of hot cereal, toasted nuts, Greek yogurt, muffins - really more food than needed. After our meal we sat for 30 minutes and then walked for 30 minutes - followed by sitting for 30 minutes (I think you are getting the hang of how this went.)

Joy, the teacher, asked us to write about a part of our body that we had divorced (my stomach), someone we weren't sure loves us unconditionally (some of my friends), and a yucky situation (family stuff).  We then explored our Persona/Mask with the three following ideas: What are we defending, promoting, or augmenting? Our ego is constantly working to do one of the three.

Then: yoga, lunch, hiking, sitting and then the open dharma question and answer period - one of the few moments where we talked.

During the Q&A I was physically irritated by the airy fairy bullshit that was being tossed around - my chief debater wanted to come out. I had known that I should not have stayed for this session, it was optional, but I know that sometimes people ask a question that you are ruminating. That isn't what happened though. When the members of the group started speaking about their affinity for this new age practice, or that new age author I was just ill. Granted, there were two in the group that I immediately did not "like" when we met at our arrival. They just rubbed me the wrong way and I was trying to avoid being near them - and as is the way of the universe they were the most vocal during this session.

Finally, I spoke that, in my home, we believe that Buddhism is just a practice to being here and that the religion - any religion - is only a story that we tell ourselves to understand the practice. There is no afterlife, no god, no great redeemer, just us telling ourselves stories to make sense of what is happening around us.

Joy then asked me questions about my beliefs and said my version of Buddhism was more akin to Zen - just the practice to practice. She then asked how I felt about sharing that, and I said quite fine.

And I was until that evening. More later.

Thoughts from Wattle Hollow - Part 1

As part of my 40/40 Challenge I did a 3 day silent meditation retreat at Wattle Hollow with Joy Fox. It was given to me by my friend Kath (who I realized after this weekend she prefers to be called instead of Kathy - and I have known her 4 years.) She went with me and like me had never done anything like this before.

We arrived in the evening and it was quite dark - it is a 1.5 hour drive from our house. After going down the dark road we promised each other that if at anytime we want to escape we would just grab each other and go. When we got there Joy wasn't there - she was running her helper back to town. Ken, a nice man from De Queen tried to show us where we were staying, but he wasn't familiar with the surroundings either. We finally found our spot, dragged our crap to our rooms, and went to the main hall to wait.

Because it was dark we didn't really see where we were or what the surroundings looked like. It was the smell that hit me first. It smelled exactly like East Wind. For those who know me, I lived in an intentional community in 1999 and there is a distinct smell to communal, organic, hippie living - and Wattle Hollow captures that essence. It isn't a bad thing - it is a mix of Nag Champa incense, tea, brown rice, and the earth. All good things - but distinctive.

As we waited others who were going to spend the next three days in silence with us arrived. Joy came in as we were sitting on the deck overlooking a very black pond. She introduced herself and we gathered to eat and chat with the group. A beautiful organic vegetarian meal was provided - Joy did all of the cooking. It was the last meal we spent talking.

After we had cleaned up we signed up to do a bit of shared work over the weekend - I signed up for kitchen help Saturday night. Then Joy led us through what to expect over the weekend. These were brief instructions that would be expanded upon over the course of the weekend. We then took vows of silence as we sat on cushions on the floor. After a brief sitting session (30min), we did a brief walking mediation, and then we were off to bed.

The teachings were primarily Vipassna in the school of Jack Kornfield. All familiar to me and I was grateful for this moment to be able to practice them with a teacher who had been doing this 30+ years. Joy, like her name, is a complete joy to be with. Gracious, kind, funny, energetic, sensing, and rich with experiences. Not only did I feel completely at ease, but I looked forward to the next day. A day that would come quite early when the gong rang at 5:45am.

More tomorrow.

Challenge Updates and the OMG Award of the Week

Challenge Update:

I wrote my Tuesday poem - this is much more challenging then I thought. The process, for me, is to think about it for a couple of days. Write it on that Tuesday some time in the mid day in a quick dash. Edit it to something poem like. Call Lynn and read it to her voice mail. And then check it off on the calendar. I can see where I could forget this on a busy Tuesday - but I am trying to add it to my To Do list so it doesn't fall off the track. It is interesting that it takes several days for some idea to percolate - nothing to earth shattering, but something that would be easily captured in a few brief lines. Again, I am grateful that I am reading them to her voicemail because I would be TOO shy to read them to her in person.

Other updates: Went to yoga, wrote letters, did a after Olympic gymnastic hands in the air happy dance after hiking through a trail I had never hiked in Lake Leatherwood, wrote two friends about creating a retreat, designed the coolest To Do list, and have not figured out how to exercise everyday other then walking to the mail box.

Donors Choose Challenge:

Well, it is the 17th of October. I have just a few days left to raise enough to help ONE MORE CLASSROOM and if you are reading this you know I am talking to you. It takes MINUTES to do and it goes DIRECTLY into a classroom. If you don't know Arkansas 37.4% schools failed - we are ranked 48 out of 50. Your $5 donation goes DIRECTLY into classrooms that are desperate for help.

I know you have a million organizations asking you for your money. I know that this has been a hard year, but if you could help one child wouldn't you? If you knew that your money would make a real difference wouldn't you give it? With Donors Choose it does - the teacher gets it for projects that are meaningful to their students.

So, go look under your couch, in your change bowl, and at the bottom of you purse and give that much. Thank  you.

OMG Award of the Week:

This was tough because we had the ridiculous parents who thought their child went up in their hot air balloon, but really just seek crazy amounts of media attention, but the award goes to the Louisiana judge who denied the interracial couple their marriage license because of what it would do to the children. See, this is what living in the South is like folks.

Speaking to the Masses - or at least to Rotary!

Light a candle of celebration for me! I completed something on my 40/40 Challenge! I am so excited to have my first thing crossed off. I wrote about it on 43 Things, which is where I am really keeping up with all of these projects/goals.

My goal was to: Speak in Public Somewhere I Haven't Spoken Before or in a Subject I Haven't Spoken About. (I did the first - spoke to the local Rotary group.)

It was number 32 on my list (good thing these aren't having to be done in order). Being a public speaker is something that I want to do. I want to motivate, teach, share with people. Many of you know that I long ago wanted to be a UU minister, but because of many things I have not taken that path. That burning desire to connect through public speaking hasn't gone away and I am continuing to make it a reality. My goal is to someday be able to share what I do, how I might help, and connect ideas on a larger scale, but right now I am learning the fine art of public speaking through the groups in my community.

Things about speaking in public that are still very real to me:

• I still get very nervous.
• I hate that every projector is a little different and wish I had my own that I could take with me.
• I want to be more interactive and am slowly building that into how I present.
• I am hopeful every time that someone learns something - or makes some new connection.
• I get really hot right before I talk.
• If I am really nervous there is a trill in my voice - a slight shake.
• I don't like to use a mic.
• I ALWAYS feel like I have to pee right before I am supposed to talk.
• I don't use a written speech, I have a pretty tight presentation - but I talk from my heart. This is true when I talk about business, motivational, teaching, or from experience. I just think written speeches are boring and don't reflect the true passion of what I am saying. I might get a bit off topic, or lose my thought for a moment, but I try to share from deep inside rather then just bullet points on a page.

For those that do this on a regular basis do you have any tips to share with this novice public speaker?

Challenge Updates and the new OMG Award of the Week

40/40 Challenge Update: I have 39 of my 40 things... not bad! Now I just have to keep focused and not completely obsessed with doing them. Tough for this Type A. This week alone I, wrote and read my poem, hugged someone I haven't hugged before, scheduled a French cooking class, scheduled a silent retreat, exercised every day (not terribly hard, but still I moved my ass), wrote in my journal, made my daily to -do list, and scheduled to speak at an organization I haven't spoken to in the past.

Whew - I am tired just thinking about this! I have to say though that it is great fun! Granted it is my first week and that makes me a bit over the top in trying to achieve my goals - I am sure I will mellow out. I'll keep you posted!

DonorsChoose.Org Challenge: Dear readers as you know I am, once again, doing the DonorsChoose.Org challenge to raise funds for schools in Arkansas. Now, don't think that you can't donate to this noble cause because you DON'T live in Arkansas. We can use ALL the support we can get!

I am thinking I need to sweeten the deal. Let's say that we (you and I) raise the money in my challenge (supporting two school projects). That would be great, but perhaps just giving $10 doesn't make it INTERESTING for you. Well, what can I do that will make it worthwhile? You suggest a suitable reward/punishment for reaching my goal and I will pick a winner.

Past participants have dressed up like a tomato and toured the streets of DC, recreated a Pat Benetar video, and another got a tattoo. What would you like to see little ol' me do if I reach my HIGHLY coveted goal? Donate to this incredibly worthwhile cause and then suggest what I should do! Happy donating!

And the OMG Award of the Week goes to: Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High School in Georgia. What were they thinking?

My 40th Year - 40 Things Challenge! The List!

It was great fun getting people to help me come up with my 40th Year - 40 Things Challenge. Granted I won't be doing all of the suggestions (sorry Dan, no yodeling in the town park), but it got me thinking about some of the things I want to do. Some serious, some foolish, some just for me.

A lot of people asked WHY I wanted to do this and my answer surprised me a bit. I said, I want to have more fun in my life. I won't be remembered for how much or hard I worked. Life is so much more than work and to bring a little joy to this year is both needed and the path I want to take for the long run.

Although I don't really talk about work here - I work all of the time. I spend most moments thinking about work, solutions, ideas... and it is great fun, but it isn't the whole of me - or at least I don't want it to be. I want to have a full robust life 365 days a year for the next 40 years!

One of the best things about asking other people to contribute to my list was to ask other people if THEY wanted to do the things with me. AND surprisingly they said yes! SO, I am opening that up to the universe too (or at least to the 10 people who might read my blog). If you see something on my list that YOU would like to do WITH me - let me know and I will do everything I can to make that happen. It has to be more fun with two, or three, or twelve! Join me!

I will be keeping track of my challenges here on my blog and on 43Things.com. Join me as I experience the next year as if I am living a reality show of my own making!

Jacqueline's 40th Year - 40 Things Challenge!

1. Walk and Win the 2 Mile Walk in the Victorian Classic in Eureka Springs (with Jean)
2. Picnic Somewhere New to me (with Kathy M)
3. Learn to Play Guitar (with Loretta)
4. Learn to Make Soap (with Donna W)
5. Do Yoga Once a Week (starting with a class with Jean)
6. Work Out (to some degree) Every Day (possibly join Gym with Kelly) - Basically move my ass!
7. Take a French Cooking Class (with Peggy)
8. Float the Buffalo River to Gilbert, Arkansas (with Amanda)
9. Do a Silent Retreat at Wattle Hollow and Reincorporate DAILY Meditation Practice (with Kath)
10. Take the Wild Cave Tour at Blanchard Springs Cave
11. Write a Poem Every Tuesday and Read it to Lynn L
12. Love Myself Completely (thanks for the reminder from Donna D)
13. Go on an Overnight Hiking Trip
14. Run My First 5K
15. Turn off the TV one Week a Month (this will be hard to convince my husband to do!
16. Journal Daily (even if it is just ONE word)
17. Write a REAL Letter to a REAL Person Once a Month
18. Finish Nanowrimo in November.
19. Say YES! - (At least more often than I say no) And Document What Happens.
20. Take a Dance Class
21. Practice Being Curious, not Judgmental.
22. Celebrate the Unexpected (Everything deserves celebration! Break out the Birthday Candles!)
23. Practice Paying Attention (Never do anything else while someone is talking to me)
24. Join a Group (or rejoin a group) and Go to Every Meeting (church? book club? Something new?)
25. Get my First Massage
26. Do one "art" project this year (interviews, photos, free hugs in the park, painting... something) and document it.
27. Make a List of Food I haven't Tried and Try All of Them
28. Be Generous (Time, Things, Money - Even When it is Really Hard)
29. Create A Tribe Retreat with My Friends (Like This Lovebomb Retreat)
30. Entertain (casually) at Least 5 Times at our Home (book club, cookout, dinner party...)
31. Get my Passport (and one for everyone in the family)
32. Speak in Public Somewhere I Haven't Spoken Before or On A Subject I Haven't Spoken About
33. Go Someplace with my Family we have Never Gone Before.
34. Finish my Dad's Probate
35. Save a Nest Egg (Starting from Zero - Let's See Where we can Go!)
36. Do a Daily To Do List - (The Goal isn't to DO everything, but to download it from my mind)
37.  Hug one new person a week (preferably someone I have not hugged before) (Submitted by Melodye!!!)
38. Take photographs of the challenges to create a book of this amazing 40th year. (Great suggestion!)
39.  
40.  

As you can see I am short by 2. I didn't do anything that is really DARING. No karaoke (the bars here all have smoking and that would be a turn off), sky diving, building a friends pizza oven, travel (I know what is realistic in our budget!)! But I am sure there are 2 more things that need to be done... any suggestions now that you have seen the list?

I am ready to start my Amazing Year!