Peace Meme

Mindful Exercise

Tried a new approach on the StairMaster today at the gym. I'm usually bombarded with the 12 giant flatscreen monitors playing different stations and competing for my attention, or, yes, looking at other people working out -- some of whom I observe for longer periods than others!

Today I practiced a moving meditation. I took the machine closest to the window (like the lady in the pic).  I set up my 30 minute workout and then closed my eyes as the stairs began to move. At first I simply followed my breathing, and then, as I began to get into a rhythm, I remembered a friend talking about the Jesus Prayer, in which you simply meditate on a specific phrase over and over. This prayer, also knows as the Prayer of the Heart, has been practiced in monasteries since ancient times, and has constantly been prayed in the monastic community of Mount Athos for hundreds of years.

I found that I was much more in tune with my breathing, my heart rate, and what individual muscle groups were doing. I was less distracted by my thoughts, and more "in my body." I practiced saying one word of the prayer as I took each step, and then experimented with slowing it down and seeing if I could stay present. It really changed the nature of my workout, and it didn't seem like mindless drudgery.

You certainly don't have to say a prayer to get the same benefit of mindful exercise. Repeating a favorite saying, a holy word, or an affirmation would work. Even the simple practice of being aware of the rhythm of the breath, or counting to 4 or 8 or 12, would create a more conscious experience.

As I wrote about hypermiling over the weekend, I realized that as our world changes, we are being more forcefully invited to practice mindfulness across a spectrum of daily activities. Changing habits takes time, but I've noticed that driving more consciously is actually much more relaxing than driving like an A-hole (of which I have plenty of practice!). Breaking the plastic bag habit at the store has been a challenge -- we keep forgetting the bags -- but we're getting used to it, and seeing more and more people doing the same.

Mindfulness matters!

Hypermiling = Mindful Driving

First heard about hypermiling from my neighbor who, no kidding works at a place called slacker.com. Yes, yet another brilliant inspiration from Austin, where a lot of people practice the art of conscious driving. It's a series of habits, really, and if you follow all the habits together, and pay attention to the condition of your car in terms of tire pressure and filter changes, you can greatly increase your MPG. And let's face it, filling up the tank these days is an investment. Might as well make it pay off, right?

 

Paying attention to how we drive is necessary in our culture right now. In fact, we need to be paying attention to a lot of things in this day and age, because our imminent choices will be of increasing complexity , calling for a higher level of thinking than most of us are currently employing. And it all boils down to habits and practices. What habits and practices can I employ on a daily basis that will help other people and give them positive energy? What am I doing that moves toward solutions instead of intensifying the problem? What am I doing to increase cooperation instead of conflict? What am I doing to move toward love and away from fear? How can I help you? What do you need?

What we really need to be paying the greatest attention to, however, is the way we treat one another.  JC said that what we do to the least of our human brothers, we do to him. And if he's in all of us, whatever we're doing to each other is done to him. Treat people better. It's the right thing to do.

I'm not much different from most folks. I can be a maniac behind the wheel, screaming and cursing at anybody who doesn't drive the way I want them to. Of course, I fail to notice, most of the time, that nine out of ten drivers on the roads are driving just fine. It's the ten-percenters that get the blood boiling for the rest of us.

I have temper tantrums. I'm lazy. I'm not always nice to other people, including my family. I don't always make the best choice in every situation. But I try to stay aware of my choices, and to watch what I'm doing in the moment. It's a difficult practice. But that's what mindfulness means to me, and I'm really trying to practice. I'm not saying anybody else has to change. But I want to.

Rite of Passage

Over the weekend, my wife and I participated in our church's annual Rite of Passage for teens and young adults transitioning between high school and college. While we don't scar bodies, knock out teeth, or make anyone walk over hot coals, we do create strenuous conditions that push the initiates (and us) into uncomfortable spaces with long periods of meditation, blindfolded hikes in the woods, and physically demanding challenges. This is mixed in with sacred readings and wisdom sharing, all performed in a context of teaching, sharing, and loving. It is an incredible gift for all involved.

It strikes me that one of this culture's problems is that there are not clearly defined rites of passages for those members of society making the transition into adulthood. Sure, we get our drivers' licenses, have sex for the first time, turn 21 and gain the sacred ability to drink legally, but there is very little training in what it means to be an adult citizen. This contributes to a generational trend (though certainly not representative of the whole!) of confused, apathetic, angry, bored youth who either feel that life is completely worthless or that they are entitled to have everything handed to them on a silver platter.

It is a remarkable experience to share such a process with young people who have a conscious intention to uncover the truth about life, about what it means to be a human being, about the purpose of the human endeavor. It is also exhausting, both physically and emotionally.

So what I observed yesterday, after an all-too-brief nap, and engaged in a snarling Saturday afternoon traffic jam on our beloved I-35 in downtown Austin, was that despite the heart-opening impressions taken in the night before, my tired state led to an easy irritability that manifested itself in judgment of others and snapping remarks toward my wife and kids. When we have these so-called holy moments, the other end of the pendulum is sure to follow shortly. It takes awareness to realize that I've mechanically drifted into nasty judgments and base criticisms. It then takes non-critical self-observation to move back into the stillness underneath all of that.

That's my daily rite of passage.

Another Inspiring Idea from Austin

As I look back over Peace Meme entries from the past two years, I'm taken back to the emotional, yet questionably effective, peace demonstrations I attended as I first began this blog. One thing that occurs to me, looking back, is that every time I went to a protest or march, there were always throngs of people shilling for their own pet causes, whether it be shutting down nuclear plants or coal power, impeaching the president, freeing some unjustly jailed dissident, or protesting against FOX News or Wal-Mart or China. All of these may have been worthy causes, but they were all about being AGAINST, AGAINST, AGAINST, or ANTI, ANTI, ANTI -- it got to be mind-numbing after a while.

That's one of the reasons that I wrote about in my last entry for letting the blog lie fallow for a season (or two!). Lately, I've been doing some research that has put me in touch with ideas regarding corporate social responsibility and social entrepreneurism. If you're well versed in this field, you may be familiar with FLOW, an organization founded by John Mackey, Whole Foods CEO, and some of his colleagues. I remember reading an interview a while back (can't locate it at the moment) in which Mackey said that entrepreneurism will replace protesting as the new means of revolution. I like that because it blends the formerly "EVIL" world of corporations with progressive ideals and aims. If people can make the world a better place while MAKING MONEY, then we're on to something. This links to the Peace through Commerce page. Here's a primer from the FLOW website.

Vision

We envision a world in which everyone is living a life of flow: with meaningful engagement in productive, positive activity based upon creativity, optimism, and personal initiative.
Mission

    * Create sustainable peace, prosperity, and happiness for all by liberating the entrepreneurial spirit for good.
    * Articulate and animate an inspiring vision of a world with sustainable peace, prosperity, and happiness for all, catalyzed and sustained by entrepreneurial initiative and conscious capitalism.
    * Serve as an "entrepreneur of meaning" to other organizations and initiatives.
    * Provide an inspiring yet pragmatic vision.
    * Create collaborative networks of organizations aligned with this vision and working to realize it.
    * Provide public outreach, education and engagement platforms to catalyze a mass movement based on this vision.
    * Cultivate awareness of the powerful role creators, innovators, and entrepreneurs play in the evolution and elevation of humanity.
    * Describe and foster those social, cultural, economic, and legal conditions that lead to increasingly effective entrepreneurial solutions to all problems.

Principles & Values

FLOW and the FLOW Community are committed to the following four core principles:

   1. Cultivate human flourishing,
   2. Practice non-violence and radical tolerance,
   3. Embrace freely-chosen, mutually beneficial solutions, and
   4. Criticize by creating!

FLOW is comprised by people from all geographic, social, economic and political spheres who believe in the FLOW vision and embody FLOW principles. The FLOW community is an open, free space in which people can work together to create sustainable, global peace, prosperity, and happiness.

Reanimating the Moribund Peace Meme

There are a number of factors that play into the process of letting a blog die -- overwhelming demands of career and family, other projects taking precedence, boredom, laziness -- and all of these definitely played a role in letting this sit for most of the past year. But the biggest factor was the inherent contradiction in trying to write a blog about peace while many of the items, concepts, and events that I came across in this work made me angry and fed my own sense of inner divisiveness.

Peace has to begin within, and as I argued with conservative bloggers, watched pundits on TV, and read the Huffington Post and Mother Jones, I felt less and less peaceful. There are still big parts of me that want to fight, to judge, to make others wrong, to blame, to self-justify, to smirk smugly at those poor souls whose views don't match mine.

At the same time, the demands of becoming a professional therapist, finishing grad school, and trying to work a full time job while raising a family took precedence over my contemplative meditation practice. So as I've gotten busier and busier, I've become less and less still on the inside. The feeling of running in circles begins to feel like reality.

But the signs have been pointing me home, like the prodigal son. A couple of recent teachings of Tim Cook have been right on the money, as usual, and I'd invite you to check out the link and listen to one or two of them. (There is a time code next to each one; forward to that time to go straight to the beginning of Tim's talk).

All right, bedtime calls, but the Celtics won tonight and I'm back on the board.

The Shift; It's Happening

Anodea's New Video

Independence Day (A Little Late)

Kim Pleticha is the editor of a small parents' publication in Austin called Parent:Wise, and I recently picked up a copy while waiting for an appointment. (Unfortunately, the current issue has not been posted online as of today.) I was surprised and delighted to find an editorial on True Patriotism that summed up and amplified many of my own vague feelings that somehow get stirred up on the Fourth of July. I do love this country, and I love it because of my reverence for the courage, wisdom, and supreme humanity of the men who risked their lives to create it. That those same men would be appalled by the pseudo-democracy emerging in the last couple of decades (and the last six years in particular) brings me little joy. However, Kim Pleticha has some wonderful musings on what it means to be patriotic today.

She began the piece by taking on the common lament that our media is responsible for our sorry state of cultural and historical awareness:

But in blaming the media, we may as well blame ourselves. The media program TV for us: news ratings are broken down into 15-minute intervals, which means media corporations know almost exactly when you (or the person with the Nielson box) switch off the TV. If you aren't interested, the media aren't interested, because they can't sell ads and pay for programming if there aren't any eyeballs on the screen. If Paris Hilton draws more eyeballs than the War on Terror, then Paris Hilton gets more airtime. It's simple economics.

She then goes on to address the role that parents play in educating informed citizens within a culture of ignorance and apathy:

If we give [our children] the impression that apathy is OK, that understanding their basic Constitutional rights is unimportant, that not paying attention to the world around them and their place/responsibility in it is perfectly acceptable, then we have nobody but ourselves to blame if we lose the freedoms we currently take for granted.

And on to the meat of the argument:

Embracing patriotism should not be confused with espousing nationalism, which Albert Einstein once called "the measles of mankind." Paatriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first, former Prime Minister of France Charles de Gaulle said. The distinction is important. Patriotism is rather like a parent's love for a child: you may love your own child above other people's children, but you also love other children and want the best for them.

When you look at it that way, you understand that true patriotism is not limited to any one political party or set of beliefs; neither should it be ignorant nor blind.

President Teddy Roosevelt said patriotism means standing by the country -- not by a public official. Most important, Mr. Roosevelt said, "it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth."

So that is what parents must do. We must teach our children not to take lightly this country's freedoms, nor ignor its transgressions. We must educate them about the legacy they have inherited: the brilliant and, yes, the base. Navigating the future requires knowledge of the past.

Words to live, and teach by, Kim! Well said.

Women Rule

This is my wife taking her first look at our newest daughter, Baby Josie, born on Tuesday after a challenging labor and an unscheduled C-section. Talk about heroic efforts and the marvels of modern medicine. In the old days, one or both of them could easily have not survived such an ordeal. The cord got wrapped around the baby's neck, so when Dawn was pushing, the baby's heart rate kept dropping. When they made the call to go into surgery, this whirlwind of nurses and technicians descended into the room, threw scrubs at me, and told me to follow them. My other daughter, age 3, was waiting in another room with Granddad, and I wanted to bring her in to see Mom before the surgery. Talk about a range of chaotic emotions!

Once I got my scrubs on, I had to wait on a bench in a hallway for what seemed like an hour while they prepped Dawn. They finally came and got me. In the next room, or on the hall above, they were doing heavy construction, so as they're cutting my wife open, there are all sorts of slamming and hammering noises literally shaking the room. After a while, they called me to look over the curtain because the baby was out. She was gorgeous, but I still hadn't heard her cry. They took her over to the incubator, and seconds stretched and stretched. "Why isn't she crying?" Oh, she will, assured a nurse, she'll cry in just a second. I could see three people working on her, and my heart felt like an old punching bag with some of the stuffing bursting out of it. Finally her first little cries rang out, and our panic was jolted into uncontrollable elation. I've never experienced anything like the rollercoaster I was on that day. Everybody's fine now, and three days later we came home.

This experience, and my previous daughter's birth as well, have made me realize that every human being walking the planet is a living miracle. I once heard a Buddhist story about the likelihood of each incarnation of a human soul being like an ocean in which there floats a wooden ring. Every 100 years, a solitary sea turtle swims to the surface of the ocean, and if he happens to surface with his head inside the ring, that's the same odds of a soul actually incarnating in human form. Our lives are not random accidents. We are all connected. Each human being is, as Emerson said, "part and particle of God." And, if even just for a moment upon being born, every human being is an expression of Love. How quickly we forget where we came from!

If we could tap into and harness the power of that bond between mother and child, and remember the transforming power of birth that touches all who draw near to it, then perhaps we could begin to heal the human race. I am grateful for my wife, whose courage and willingness to suffer have stretched my love, respect and awe for her. I am grateful for the rest of my family, who have selflessly come to support us with loving help and encouragement. I am grateful for the nurses and doctors who have worked so hard to be able to do their jobs so that they can safely bring new lives into the world. I am grateful for friends and neighbors who have cut my grass, watched my older daughter, cleaned our house, fed us, and provided good company in sharing this incredible experience.  Experiencing the birth of a child reminds us of the ultimate goodness of the Universe.

Austin's Asylum Street Spankers!