acceptance

My dark January.

| Mairead

14 1a

(From winter in Cashel 2010)

It’s January. For me that’s the time of year when my energy is at its lowest. When the winter has been long enough and I want some spring….. now! I want it now like my two-year old self wanted chocolate…. but Spring’s not ready yet. So I have to practice patience.

14 1b

(Spider art)

I thought this year it would be different. I am occupied and preoccupied by my course and I thought that would help me forget it was still winter. It hasn’t. Instead it’s shown up further “issues”. When I’m lacking patience with winter I also lack patience with everything else I meet. I am lacking patience with the accounts (my old foe), with my latest assignments, with housework, with bills, with Denis, with myself.

14 1d

(The lovely side of winter)

I had forgotten it all started with January and I was thinking, “these blasted accounts again”, “how can I ever get this history of art done?”, “when does housework finish?”….. but these are not the problem. In fact there is no problem, I just miss the light. I miss getting up after sunrise and having dinner before sunset, I want more time with the light. So I must choose… between making problems out of normal life and accepting the season called winter.

I want to choose to accept winter…. how hard can it be? Mairead.

Wake up Time.

| Mairead

19 9b

(Agawa Canyon… picture by Doris or Grahame (forgot to ask!))

I’m rushing off to a course this morning (more later) so instead of a post here’s a story from the book Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh that explains what waking up from unconscious living means.

19 9a

(A huge rainbow filled the sky one night as we left Staples (stationery shop) in Niagara, it was so big it couldn’t fit in my camera)

A little boy wakes in the morning and realises the whole family has slept in and the whole family will be late for school. He runs to his favourite sister’s room and very gently shakes her awake, “Wake up, wake up we will be late for school.” She awakes and is very angry with her older brother, so she shouts at him and kicks him. He is very upset, because he was gentle when he woke his sister and now she is angry with him. The he remembers that she was coughing in the night and probably didn’t get much sleep and may be very tired. With this realisation he understands his sister and he has woken up from upset. She is his favourite sister again and he is love.

19 9c

(A rock in a lake on the way to Agawa Canyon. There’s beauty everywhere to help us wake up)

In an instant the boy could let go of the upset because he “woke-up”. We’re upset when people treat us badly, we’re upset when things don’t go our way, we’re upset when we can’t do what we want to do, we’re upset when we’re not as strong as we’d like to be, we’re upset when we’re not as wealthy as we planned, we’re upset when we’re sick, when we’re tired, when we’re sad. What if it was possible to let go of the upset and return to love? Being in our natural state of loving is much more comfortable than being in an unnatural state of upset.

We can wake up in an instant, Mairead.

The Walking Machine…. another gadget or a guru?

| Mairead

16 8a

(Collage)

We have a walking machine, we’ve had it about six months now. Having one doesn’t contribute to good health but using one might… I’ve started using it. It has an added benefit of allowing my mind to drift away and have some interesting non-worrying thoughts. Yesterday I was walking along when something popped into my head about noticing the stuff I do that’s ok.

29 6e

(Notice the pretty patterns… instead of the peeling paint)

Usually when the drift away thoughts come into my head they’re in the form of a big picture concept. Like a collage and it takes a little time to look at all the details in the big picture. After that it’s possible to unravel the concept in order to talk about it. I’m unravelling it this morning. In normal life we have the tendency to notice what’s wrong. With the weather, the newspaper article, the dinner, the artwork. Sometimes in our work it’s necessary to notice what’s not right, in order to fix it, make it right. So when we consider ourselves we use the same logic – notice what’s wrong in order to fix it.

29 6f

(Notice something beautiful about this picture)

Other people help us in this work – they notice what’s wrong and they tell us! But I’m not so sure this works well… Mark Twain said If you always do what you always did, You’ll always get what you always got!  So it might be useful to try something different. My big picture was… What if I began to notice what was right? What if I ignore (for a certain period of time) what’s wrong and notice what’s right?

What’s right with you? Mairead.

Summer in Ireland…. an opportunity for acceptance.

| Mairead

25 7a

(Raindrops…)

We’re back home again and I’m wondering what happened to the sunshine and hight temperatures. Just a few hours east of here the sun is shining and some people are complaining about the heat. They are perspiring from the inside while we are being precipitated on from the outside. At this moment I think it would be great to have sunny weather all the time but I know I’d get fed up with it. I know I’d start complaining. I know I’d start fantasizing about soft rain on my sun-burned face…. Wouldn’t it be so much more useful if I realised that what is here right now isn’t too bad? What is here right now is what someone else (even me on a hot sunny day) wants?

25 7b

(Ducks like rain)

There’s a quote from Eckart Tolle (The Power of Now), “When you are in a state of gratitude for what is … that is really what being wealthy means”. He’s talking about acceptance, when you are content with what’s right in front of you, you are rich. So I’m going to practice being content with this type of summer….. I’ll start with my thinking: I got a little too much sun in Bletchley Park and this cooler weather is very calming for the burning…. There’s no way I can cut the grass in this rain, I’ll have to do something more relaxing, instead…. Isn’t it great we have no flies buzzing in through every open window? It’s so much easier to go walking in this cool air….

25 7c

(Isn’t that pretty?)

Feeling richer already! Byron Katie (Loving What Is and http://www.thework.com) has lots of quotes about this, it’s her main theme, but here’s one…“I am a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality.” So for today I’m not going to argue with the reality of the weather. The weather is all around me physically and visually, so making friends with it might be enlightening.

Love the soft rain dripping down your face, Mairead.

Ode to the girls….

| Mairead

17 7a

(Contentment –  even with green hair)

I’m back home now and I’m hen-less and egg-less. Will go to the supermarket later for the eggs but we won’t be getting hens. Some people and animals come into your life for just a short time and then they leave. But not before passing on a message or a lesson. What I can remember best from the hens is their one step after the other approach to life…… Sure they were cautious, but once the danger (usually me) passed by or stopped and backed away, then they continued one step after the other.

17 7b

(Take the next step)

Another thing about the hens, they did their own foraging. Each day I presented them with a shovelful of feed and some “treats” but that wasn’t all they ate. They spent a lot of their time scratched around for tasty worms and insects. They could have so easily sat back and eaten the food provided but they took nourishment into their own hands, they maintained their independence and probably their good health.

17 7c

(Celebrate the mistake)

Although I let them out in the mornings (or in the afternoon if I wanted an egg) I didn’t put them back in their pen, they went back in themselves, in their own time. I locked the gate when I found them tucked up together in their house. And the eggs… whenever possible they left their eggs in a place of their choosing, where I never found them.

17 7e

(Find the beauty)

They remind me of Dr. Viktor Frankl who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning having survived life in a concentration camp. Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. Viktor E. Frankl.

He could easily have included hens, Mairead.

Be careful with the lettuce….

| Mairead

Hands 2

(Perfect Hands… Granny and grandchild)

I will be giving a talk in Dublin on Tuesday night and one of the sections is about being unique. I was thinking… we’ve heard it all before…. each person is unique. From our finger prints to our retinas to our heartbeats, we’re all different. We even look different. Of course we know this already, it’s normal, ordinary… and so it’s lost. Uniqueness needs to be connected to our everyday life. When I look in the mirror I don’t think about my particular eyes being the only eyes exactly like them on the planet. I’m more interested in what I’m wearing (do my clothes fit in?) How I look? (do I look normal?) Is my hair brushed? (will people think I’m a homeless bum?) Is there lettuce in my teeth? When I look at my hands I don’t notice the intricate patterns that are mine alone.

Hands 3

(Perfect Hands… Aunt and Niece)

We watched a movie the other night about the guy who created the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. He realised that fingerprints would be a great way to identify law breakers. Before that it was only possible to identify criminals or potential criminals from their photograph and if they were seen in the act of law breaking. But fingerprints are left behind after the person has gone and fingerprints are unique.

Hands 5

(Perfect Hands… artist)

Why would any of us worry about being as good as or as smart as or as pretty as or as successful as anyone else? Do we ever wonder if our fingerprints are “good” fingerprints. Are they smart fingerprints? Are they pretty? Are they successful as fingerprints? Yes, yes, yes, they are perfect fingerprints and only because they are ours. They would not be perfect glued onto anyone else…. they would be counterfeit. Fraud.

Hands

(Perfect Hands…. another artist)

So, as I look in the mirror this morning I will be brushing my hair and extracting lettuce but mainly I’ll be looking for what makes me different; what makes me unique; what makes me a perfect specimen of me. And it’s not just the stuff on the outside that’s unique, it’s a combination of everything about me. A combination of all the things I love, all the things I like, all the things I hate, the way I relax, the way I cry, the way I get mad, the stories that inspire me. Every little thing about me bundled all together is unique and is a perfect me.

Seriously, is there lettuce in my teeth? Mairead.