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A New Earth ~ Week 3 & 4 & so on . . .

Here we are, a day from Week 5, and I've not yet written about the Week 3 & 4 Webcasts.

I'm trying a new approach, the AlAnon adage Take what you like and leave the rest. Whiskey River, as is often the case, gives me just what I need:

"Listening, whether to a book or to a person, is the most challenging of the arts, because in listening truly we have to become aware of our own resistances to what is being said, which might be the truth; we must be able to be open and vulnerable in following the thoughts of another person as sincerely, deeply, and imaginatively as we can."
- Krishnan Venkatesh

Of course, there is also this point of view, via Ample Sanity:

"Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence it is almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go on listening to men without snickering."
- H.L. Mencken

Actually, though, I am listening. And reading. I'm reading several books at once, and the massive handouts for the Life Writing class I'll be taking next month. I'm also writing. Just not here.

I will be here in April, though.

Cat Herding

Yes, I've been neglectful of my responsibilities to the cat blogging world. But this -- this -- is too good to pass up. In honor of my cat blogging and Montana friends, I present:

 

My uncles would have loved this. Thanks to Facebook friend Sheri for sending it to me.

Spike & Boo say Howdy!

  

More cat blogging here:

• The Carnival of the Cats, now at Chey's Place; this Sunday it will be at Nikita's Place
  
• Weekend Cat Blogging last weekend was at The Catboy's Realm; this weekend you will find it at Catsynth
• Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos is at Life From A Cat's Perspective and will be at Bad Kitty Cats Journal; and, last but certainly not least,
  
• Friday Ark #184 at Modulator

NaPoWriMo

April is National Poetry Month, and for those bloggers who like challenges, it's also National Poetry Writing Month, or NaPoWriMo:

April approacheth, and stalking in its shadow is NAPOWRIMO, that juggernaut of poetic output. Here's the deal: through the efforts of countless poets nationwide, National Poetry Month is transformed into National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo), and thus from ugly duckling into Giant Robot Duckling That Destroys Cities through the Might of its Verse.

Those who accept the NaPoWriMo challenge must commit themselves to writing a poem every day for the entirety of April.

Maureen at SQUASH BLOSSOM!

I did this two years ago, and made a weak attempt last year. This year, I'm accepting the challenge, with modifications: I shall post a poem (new or old) or a poetry- related post every day in April. So speaketh the (moderately) ambitious blogging poet.

ReadWritePoem is also getting onboard, and Ivy has more buttons here. A board called Poetry Free For All is also playing -- this might be an option for non-bloggers. Poems will be blooming all over the web next month.

I'm moderating my ambition because I'll be taking a -- not unrelated -- class next month: Life Writing: Journal & Memoir, through the University's MOLLI program. I suspect this will incite poems, but I want to give myself permission to do other sorts of writing as well.

Snapshot Poem 26 March 02008

It's spring again. The garden knows it. From beneath,
green and purple leaves, reaching up. Reaching out.

A winter vine climbs the fence. It separates the boards.
Strong and woody, it goes where it pleases. In all directions.

A Japanese lantern hangs on a steel hook. At night, long
winter nights, it warms the garden. I am not like other

people. I watch them, for clues. A woman passes by
with two small dogs on a leash. She smiles. Why?   

I go to the door and look through the glass. On the fence,
at my eye level, a black cat looks back at me. I open

the door, and the cat vanishes in an arc over the fence.
A squirrel eats buds from a scrap tree. A weed, aggressive,

but harmless in its own right, it feeds the tree rats, the various
birds. I am chased by a monster. It's kill or be killed. I am so weak

I can barely lift the hammer; the blow only cracks the monster's
bald skull. Like an egg, cracking. This happens many times, many

iterations. I find a green light and shine it on the monster. I sing it
a love song, and it dies, finally, peacefully. Sitting very still, I hold

my aging cat against my aging breasts. We both purr. With my
breath, we purr. I decide to allow deep pleasure back into my life.

A snow shovel stands against the wall. Unused, unneeded, this
warm spring. Everything has a function. We all do what we must.

Snapshot Poem, Spring Equinox

Worm Moon, Crow Moon

Crow Moon, tonight you fly
at the balance of the year,
half light, half dark, tipping
your wing toward spring.

Crow Moon, caw away
this winter, gnaw the last
crusts of snow from the
frozen garden. Shine

the earthworms up to
the surface. Worm Moon,
Crow Moon, Full Sap Moon,
wake us up once more.

Mar. 21, 2:40 p.m. EDT — Full Worm Moon. In this month the ground softens and the earthworm casts reappear, inviting the return of the robins. The more northern tribes knew this as the Full Crow Moon, when the cawing of crows signals the end of winter, or the Full Crust Moon because the snow cover becomes crusted from thawing by day and freezing at night. The Full Sap Moon, marking the time of tapping maple trees, is another variation. This is also the Paschal Full Moon; the first full moon of the spring season. The first Sunday following the Paschal Moon is Easter Sunday, which indeed will be observed two days later on Sunday, March 23. This will, in fact, be the earliest Easter since 1913.

       

March Sonnet [an old poem]

The full moon glides across winter's night
as February now concedes to March,
the month between the seasons, fickle skies
that now are mellow, now are cold and harsh.
The crocus tentatively tests the air
that taunts with whispered hints of summer warmth;
the daffodils, the tulips, debonair,
all toss their yellow heads with wanton charm.
But winter only rests, it does not sleep
and bears still hibernate in mountain caves.
The snow will come again, and cold and deep
will bury woods and gardens many days.
So treasure this fine darkness. Take your time
to sleep and dream till March makes up its mind.

   

St. Patrick's Day

I am putting this little Irish critter dance beneath the cut, as it seems to slow loading on the front page.

A New Earth ~ Week 2

Well, it worked this time. Even at 84kbs, the webcast streamed here to Montana with no problems. No technical problems, that is. And, judging by a quick look at the MESSAGE BOARDS, few saw any other problems, either.

But I did.

At the end of the webcast, I found myself wondering (ah, yes -- I watched myself wondering...) why, in a house that holds books by the Dalai Lama, Pema Chodron, Thich Nhat Hanh, and many other teachers (I even have several Bibles, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon) -- why -- am I spending time and energy watching and reading and thinking about the thoughts of  a man who claims to have transcended ego?

Yes. He really did make this claim. From the transcript:

OPRAH WINFREY: But why do we have it, though? Why do we have an ego? We're all human. We all have one, right?

ECKHART TOLLE:  Yes.

OPRAH WINFREY:  We all have one.

ECKHART TOLLE:  Yes.

OPRAH WINFREY:  You say yours -- last week, you said yours died. Does that mean you don't have one?

ECKHART TOLLE:  Yes.

OPRAH WINFREY:  You said yours died in that moment where you wanted to kill yourself. I'm so miserable, I can't live with myself no longer.

ECKHART TOLLE:  Yes.

OPRAH WINFREY:  You said in that moment, your ego died.

ECKHART TOLLE:  Yes.

OPRAH WINFREY:  Never came back? It died forever?

ECKHART TOLLE:  Yes. When we say that it simply means -- it sounds like some great achievement (unintelligible) it's not.

OPRAH WINFREY:  Yeah.

ECKHART TOLLE:  All it means is I'm no longer identified with my thought processes.

OPRAH WINFREY:  Mm-hmm.

ECKHART TOLLE: I know when thoughts happen. I know they are just thought. I don't look for myself in some opinions that I hold of myself. Some mental concept, including the concept that I am free of ego, I don't think in those terms. Because if I have this concept, I am free of ego, that would be ego again.

OPRAH WINFREY:  That would be ego again, yeah.

My, my. I wonder if anyone has told the Dalai Lama this? Perhaps he (the Dalai Lama) could retire.

A primary difference between the teachers mentioned above and Tolle is that Tolle claims this is all easy. All that is required is to become aware, and then ego will dissolve, and bad habits will fall away. Other teachers present a more difficult -- and, in my opinion, more realistic -- task: a process of practice and attention. A life-long process, a life-long practice, that calls on all our resources as human beings -- including our reason.

The Dalai Lama says: My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness. Now this, I find challenging. This requires attention and effort on my part, and I'm often unsuccessful -- as this very post, no doubt, exemplifies.

Tolle hit another of my buttons in this webcast (not, mind you, that I think this is personal); he gave this advice to a woman who called in:

VICTORIA (AUDIENCE MEMBER): ... I was diagnosed over ten years ago with systemic Lupus and RA [Rheumatoid Arthritis]. And I've been a really active person. But two years ago I gave up my business. My health deteriorated . . . . it had actually become the most important part of who I perceived myself to be. How can I undo this identity, and how can I stay focused when I'm in excruciating pain from the illness to have the peace constantly and not just fleeing moments?

OPRAH WINFREY:  That's real.

ECKHART TOLLE:  Yes.

OPRAH WINFREY:  That's Real.

ECKHART TOLLE: Yes. Now, the most important thing has already happened, which is you have become aware, up to now, you have become identified with the idea that I am a sufferer of such and such an illness. So the illness had become thought forms in your head, and you had identified with these thought forms and took them to be who you are. And now, the most important thing, the question is still valid but realize that the most important thing has already happened, which is the awareness has arisen. So you have -- there is a space between you and your thought processes and the image of yourself as a sick person.

Now another thing, of course, in addition you can do is, for example, no longer talk about your illness to other people except when you visit your doctor. That doesn't -- then otherwise, when you talk about it to your friends, acquaintances, family members, the more you keep that process going.

OPRAH WINFREY:  Empower it.

ECKHART TOLLE:  Yes.

OPRAH WINFREY:  She empowers the disease.

ECKHART TOLLE:  That's right.

OPRAH WINFREY:  Yes.

. . . and this conversation continues awhile, with concepts like directing attention to well-being rather than dwelling in the illness. Now, there's certainly something to be said in favor of this. In the months following the onset of my illness (there I go, talking about it) I looked at websites and tried a support group, and soon concluded that, for me, this was a bit too much dwelling.

For a very long time, I didn't write about it online at all, until I began Abide to give myself a place, separate from here, to do just that. There is, after all, empowerment to be had in connecting with others who share your experience; a certain level of comprehension and even helpful advice that can't be found elsewhere.

And -- my stiff-upper-lip-I'm fine-ness earned me little beyond isolation. So forgive my skepticism about this particular advice. Everything in moderation...

There is another book that speaks to this, though it's about writing rather than talking: Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives, by Louise DeSalvo.  DeSalvo's book is based on the research of James Pennebaker and others. She tells us:

Pennebaker's work on the relationship between suppressing our stories and illness, on the one hand, and telling our stories and increased health, on the other is well-respected and path-breaking in the field of psychology... In carefully controlled experiments [he] and his associates made the extremely important discovery that "writing can be an avenue to the interior place where . . .we can confront traumas and put them to rest -- and heal both body and mind." But not just any kind of writing. Only a certain kind of writing will help us heal.

Briefly:

Writing that describes traumatic or distressing events in detail and how we felt about those events then and feel about them now is the only kind of writing about trauma that clinically has been associated with improved health. Simply writing about innocuous subjects . . . or simply writing about traumatic events or venting our feelings about trauma without linking the two does not result in significant health or emotional benefits. In fact, in one experiment it was found that simply venting feelings might have made the writers somewhat sicker.

Writing as a Way of Healing then goes on to lay out a program and process to work toward this goal. Please note that experimental evidence guides us toward behavior that is more specific, and somewhat contradicts, Tolle's advice.

Finally, the issue I've mentioned before as my most serious concern about New Age thinking. This is a quote from Tolle's book:

One thing we do know: Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.

Would Tolle say this to the children of Iraq? To the people of Darfur?

One fears he might.

And, of course, we know no such thing. One may believe it, if one likes -- though it can easily lead to victim-blaming, and, often, self-blame for circumstances beyond our control. This idea, which means to emphasize one's power over our own responses to the world (and even that is seriously in doubt after recent research indicating we are much less in control of ourselves than we think) ends up, in the hands of New Age magical thinkers, placing responsibility where it does not belong.

Does this concern outweigh, for me, the potential benefits of thousands of people noticing -- surely not for the first time? -- that our minds are full of thoughts, and that we need not believe that thinking makes it so? (Wait -- that's the opposite of... OK, now I'm confused.) Thom Rutledge says all this much more clearly in The Antidote -- go read that.

So, am I done with A New Earth? Maybe. Maybe not. I may have more to say about this, which may require that I keep up.

Or not.

UPDATED TO ADD this truly amazing video. Now, this is my kind of teacher!

12 March 02008 - Snapshot Poem

Richard

A chilly overcast day. One day
unfolds into the next. My brother
visits my dreams, one night folding
into the next. I think of his long bones,
the long bones of his fingers, shards
in the ashes. I think of his passion
for opera, the depth of his voice,
his mind folding one day into

the next. Sparrows calling from
the garden, scandal in the news,
mournful music on the radio. How
he loved Mozart, opera, Sondheim;
how his long legs loped through
the streets of Manhattan; how
that hole inside him could never
be filled; how he looms

in my dreams, tall and alive;
the inconsequence of our
conversation, the dead to the living,
the living to the dead, not noticing
how one folds into the other, folding
together, dream into dream, brother
into sister. How we light each other's
smokes. How light we are, how thin.

       

small poem ~ a poem dance!

UPDATED: We have a poem dance! Come dance with us! Add your poem in comments, or email it to me, and I'll add it to the dance.

 

new moon
spring rain
    begin again

                    ~ sb

 

       

 

inspiring thought
new chance
to understand

                    ~ jenett

 

 

sky
is hardest —
rainy day jigsaw

                    ~ Shelley

 

 

like a
breath of
fresh air

                    ~ niki

 

 

sun's jewels
sparkling all afternoon
across the tides

                    ~ bobbi

 

 

interiority
complex, a leaf
of fresh air                  

                    ~ Pearl

 

 

my dog stella
jumps and spins
within the snow

                    ~ Judith

 

 

From northern NH:

No shadows
outside my window~
snow suffocates spring.

                    ~ Linda Jacobs

 

 

eyes mirror
what lies deep
within our souls

yet change is set
like a story told
it must unfold

                    ~ Beloved Dreamer

 

 

Spring cold

I could water the world

through my nose.

                    ~ Cindy Smith