What Are You Adding To The Energy Soup?

This tree is just down the road from me. I call it the heart tree. It's a bit hard to see in the photo but people have gathered stones that are shaped like hearts and tucked them into the mossy crevices of this living tree. It makes you smile just to see it.

In my imaginings, one creative soul tucked in the first rock and then others joined in, searching the ground for heart-shaped stones and adding them to the collection.

The tree reminded me of a Dharma talk I heard a while back. Heather talked about how we live in a teeming energy field. Everything is alive with energy. We are part of the ingredients in a giant pot of energy soup, if you like. Her question to us was, when the going gets tough (or anytime really) it's good to ask ourselves what do we want to contribute to the energy field? What do we want to contribute to the energy soup, a bitter, slightly off ingredient or something sweet and tasty.

I loved this question as something to ask myself as I go about my day. And I had the opportunity to answer it as I spent Friday in the city doing errands; getting a haircut, doing banking, buying vitamins, and generally rushing about before overnighting with a friend. As I ate a muffin and walked down a busy street I decided to pass a fellow walking a little more slowly than I. As I passed him, he picked up his pace. This felt oddly uncomfortable, so I picked up mine. And then I heard a quiet, but not too quiet voice say, "Do you always cut people off?" In my mind I had not cut him off as I did not tuck myself back in front of him but somehow he felt cut off. Quickly my mind thought I have an opportunity here. So I slowed down and said, "did it feel like I cut you off, that was not my intention. I apologize if that's how it seemed. Really what I am doing is rushing about doing a bunch of errands." And at that point we began a little chat, remarked on the sunny day and when we parted at the stop lights, he wished me a nice day. It was my impression that I had not sent him on his way to stew about how rude and inconsiderate people are and that perhaps he even felt a bit cheered by our exchange. I felt like I had added at least a pinch of something wholesome to the energy soup. In the past I probably would have shrugged and thought, he's having a bad day and carried on.

So I offer this to you, this little question, that can be answered in tiny ways, like my walking experience or in large ways, especially with dear ones. What are you adding to the energy soup? A great thought I find, when things get a bit dicey.

Climbing To Higher Ground

Today I am thinking about how easy it is to get swept away into someone else's story, to buy into their world view.  Why is that?  And how do you keep that from happening? How do you retain your equanimity when people around you are doing the funky chicken?  How do you get the funky out of the chicken??

These are my questions today.  Do I have answers?  Not really, but I'll do a little archeological dig of the spiritual kind with you.  Let's talk specifics, because as I've learned over the years, talking in generalities is mostly not that helpful.  It's like the rules of phonetics when you're trying to explain them to someone.  The first word you come across is the exception.  So it is with the Dharma, you need to examine each situation for it's chards of truth.  

On Friday we talked to a realtor as we are thinking about making a move.  It wasn't so much a doom and gloom vision that they painted, but a picture that made us feel  squeezed.  The interview should have been called a gazillion reasons why your property is worth less than you think.  Realtors, car salesmen, always create that feeling in me.  I somehow move from sitting at a card table with a lovely hand to feeling like, hey what's that guy over there doing with all the cards, where'd mine go??

So over the weekend I teetered back and forth between thinking that our plans were not possible or maybe we should put them on hold to  feeling that things could work out just fine and that I didn't need to buy into someone else's story.  Now this is not to say that I should buy a pair of rose coloured glasses or stick my pointy little head in the sand.  It seems to me that it is about energy.  There is an energy of fear and lack and there is an energy of openness and possibility.  And for me it is easy to be swept away in someone else's tidal wave of fear (or create my own).  I need to remember to get out the surf board or climb to higher ground.  The work is in how to do this in a real world pragmatic kind of way.  It's easy to say all the words, "don't buy into the story, it's not real, etc, etc".  But how actually do you do that?

It came to me today that one thing I need to do is centre or ground myself before I go into these type of situations or meetings, to gather my chi or energy (in the hara).  Am I sounding too weird and new agey for you??  Even without the pink sunglasses?  And then to be mindful and breathe, which I so often quickly forget.  Human relations are kind of like a martial art in a strange way (and I don't mean I'm going to pull a Jacki Chan on anyone, no kicking and punching allowed!).  But I am thinking in energetic terms for some reason.  You need to be able to hold your own energy in a non aggressive way, like a qi gong master.  Now this is a real skill I think, one I am not very adept at or conscious of.  You see some people with such grace and decorum and equanimity.  They are centred and less likely to be thrown off balance by unwholesome energy.  In the martial arts, it's all about how you stand and how you use the opponents energy to support your own.  Over at the Humble Yogini's blog she told a wonderful story where she and her husband did just that, maintained their centre, held their energy, rather than being blown around by the winds of crazy talk. 

So this is my next project.  To work with (no, maybe play with) preparing myself before encounters that I might perceive as difficult and then attempt to remember my mindfulness as I move through the experience.  Any thoughts on the subject out there?  No rubber chickens, please!