Navigating By Heart

A Cave In The Heart 10"x10" mixed media

The other day while exploring the second hand store of my inner landscape I discovered the vast navigational powers of the heart. But perhaps you are more sailor-like than I, and already knew about this awesome device?  I  was combing the cluttered inner shelves of stories and regrets, moments of delight and longing, rubbing off dust and cobwebs, when I came across this valuable but rusty bit. I mean I have bumbled around with this navigational heart-tool, using it  haphazardly, perhaps even recklessly at times. And there have been stormy situations where I suspect this knowing tool steered the course while I choked and sputtered below deck.

But as I painted the other day, the words "navigating by heart" bubbled to the surface of my little mind pond and I realized that for once this is what I was doing. The imposing navigational device of my mind had dropped off the charts (perhaps for scheduled maintenance?).

Continental Heart Drift mixed media 8"x10"

I am not negating the awesome powers of the mind but sometimes reason and logic are not the best tools in the chest.  Perhaps they are best called into service as gathering tools?  The mind can collect and process vast quantities of information, bringing home jewels and treasures. And maybe then the navigational tool of the heart is called into service, working its magic, making  choices, charting the way through narrow or difficult creative channels where the course is best steered with the heart.  Sometimes you prepare a checklist for what you want in a new home or what elements should go into a story you are writing but in the final cut, you buy that home with your heart or the story veers deliciously off course to become something you hardly recognize.   When we trust our hearts we may find that the heart can know what you need when the head doesn't have a clue.

Rounding The Cape of Good Hope mixed media 12"x12"

And so it is with the process of creating as you stand before your project. The head is limited to what it can conceive of but the heart is open to unknown possibilities, its maps and charts are less well defined, more amorphous.  Because of this the heart has a reach that is greater than the head's and that's why it's navigational powers hold such strength.  The heart is charting the course by a map that the eyes cannot see, traveling in terrain where the mind doesn't go.  There are stars shining in the darkness that the heart navigates by.  There are tangles in the bushes that the heart somehow eerily anticipates, if you let it.

I recommend heartily (pun intended) that you get yourself over to the hardware store of your inner knowing, close your eyes and pick out a heart compass that is vibrating at just the right frequency for you.  Pick up a few and hold them.  You will know the right one by how it feels in the palm of your hand. There are wonderful topographical maps and charts of vast inner oceans waiting for your heart compass to navigate. I wish you wonderful travels.

Hearing The Still Small Voice

In an email exchange with a friend the topic of "intuition" came up. It ties in deeply with the things I have been trying to capture in my studio lately (eek, capture, that sounds a bit like I'm chasing a fly around the house). As part of a project on "seeking authentic voice" I have been turning my attention to "listening" and patience during my studio time. I have had mixed success with both. Given I'm not a particularly patient person (who, moi, as Miss Piggy would say) I expected patience and listening to happen right away! I learned these are skills that, well, get this, take patience to develop. (Duh, as Homer Simpson would say) Where do these guys come from??

But when my friend talked about intuition, I began to revisit the "listening" aspect of practice. Gasp, I learned I'm not the greatest listener! I recognized that cultivation of that "still small voice" requires the willingness to just sit and be with the canvas in the same way you would be with a friend who is telling you some story from their life, something important and arresting. If the voice is still and small, it requires quiet and attention, right? Otherwise in my busyness, my need to get on with things, get something done, exert my wants, I drown out that voice.

I think we have to be willing, willing to do what needs to be done to hear this voice, willing to clear a space for it, willing to be available, willing to explore and be quirky and creative in that exploration, and ultimately, willing to receive. I think of myself as this little short wave radio set, just tuning in to see what's out there. And then of course having faith once I find a channel that's not all static, to believe that this is a channel that I am supposed to be listening to. John Daidoo Loori talks alot about this receptive state in his wonderful book, "The Zen of Creativity"

Here's what Jisho Perry of the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives has to say on listening for that still small voice:

"Most of the time we are not quiet enough to hear anything other

than the noisy demands of our greeds, angers, worries,

fears, frustrations and the "busyness" of our everyday lives.

Our culture encourages a constant input of noise: the music

in elevators, or while waiting on the phone, car radios, car

phones, television, radios, headsets to wear while exercising.

We have a difficult task to find a quiet time when there is

not a major input of external noise. Even when we have

established a time in our day for meditation, when we can

listen to the silence, it is usually anything but silent. It still

takes time to let go of the internal noises we generate for

ourselves. If we establish a regular practice of meditation we

create a situation where the noise and busy mental

processes can settle."

So I am heading into the studio with my headset on and my magic decoder ring. I'll send you a picture. I am really going for it. I will strap a pair of those old rabbit ears onto my head. You know those ones we used to put on the TV. Remember those. And when the reception was particularly difficult we'd put some tinfoil on the round tips at the ends. Pass the tinfoil, please.

Who Is That Tapping On My Cocoon?

Impermanence is very busy at my house. Impermanence is definitely pushing its way around at this address as furniture moves on to new homes, scads of papers get torn and recycled, boxes fill with belongings and give-aways.

This evening's round of drawer cleaning produced my mother's birth certificate, my parent's marriage certificate and both of their cremation certificates. And there it was, in a bottom drawer, the tangible leftovers of a life, some letters and papers, bits of pressed, inked fibre. A little sad, a little tug at the heart. And then the practical matters: snip up the plastic cards with scissors, tuck mementos into a folder.

And it seems in this state of getting ready to move I am more conscious of this movement, the flow of impermanence as it reaches its tentacles into all the nooks and crannies of the house and our lives. It is good to just be carried along with it. But I notice how sometimes I hang on to a rock on the shore or grab for a strand of seaweed, trying to slow down the swooshing of impermanence all around me.

And while my homeless friend has an intimate relationship with impermanence, what she has really taught me a lot about this week, is about listening to that "still, small voice" that each one of us has inside, that voice that can provide the direction, the voice we have such a hard time hearing with our doubting-thomas socks pulled up around our ears.

You see when I finally found her a potential place to park off the street, she didn't do a happy dance. She sat with it, consulted her pendulum and decided no, that wasn't the right option for her at this time. It was hard for me to imagine that she would not grasp at the first opportunity. But there she sat in all her dignity and composure, with a sense that she needed to follow some other options. She was so grateful for the offer and said all she really needed, the important part, was our support. She felt cared for and loved and supported by those of us who had come forward to offer help and that was what really mattered. And so we parted ways that day both feeling unattached to the outcomes and really enjoying each others loving presence. We agreed that we would talk next, when we needed to, that we each knew how to find the other.

Her fine example reminded me to slow down from the frantic busyness of getting things done and listen for "what is it good to do next?" I wish that someone so wise and full of teachings will come into your life. I wish that they will present you with interesting puzzles and predicaments and little hurdles to jump over as you run through the days of your life. I suspect they will come disguised in some interesting form, perhaps a bird with a broken wing, a lonely neighbour, a broken hearted co-worker. Will you hear it as your call to action, as a place to breathe life into the Dharma or will it be just another sad, depressing or slightly annoying event tapping at your cocoon.

Comfort Soup

I confess. I am a "feelings" junkie. I live in a thick bubbling soup of feelings. I am not so much a thinker but a feeler. This rich stew of feelings is like a pot of winter evening soup, roiling and boiling. Ingredients rise to the top and surface at random, a small fluffy dumpling of delight, one moment, the pungent scent of fear, next, perhaps, a hard lump of sadness later.

As the sun disappeared this evening, the soup sent up little tendrils of melancholy for no apparent reason. Sometimes there is a reason, as in someone turned up the heat on the pot, but sometimes feelings just arise. Is there some deep human sense of melancholy associated with the falling of night or the depth of winter? Or is it something more karmic, peculiar to this body/mind in this lifetime, or perhaps carried over from other lifetimes if you care to tug on that green bean.

I can remember my Zen teacher once saying to me "that feelings were not a good measure of things". If the soup gets too hot, it can burn your mouth. Like our thoughts, feelings are cycling through, ebbing and flowing and not a solid ground on which to rest our choices. They are impermanence manifest in the heart. A favourite bumper sticker of mine is "don't believe everything you think." Ditto for feelings too.

As I write theses words it seems important to distinguish "feelings" from that deeper sense of "knowing" that comes from inside, that may seem illogical or irrational but carries intuitive information that is a good basis for choices. I am learning to work with this. It can be very difficult to discern this "knowing" and only through experimenting with it, it seems to me, do we get an actual sense of it. I remember a number of us asking our teacher with such urgency, "how will I know the still small voice?" "how can I distinguish it from my imaginings and my longings?" Have faith and patience she would say and you will become acquainted with it.

And so as I sit here on this wintery, evening, the furnace has come on and there is a soft yellow glow to the light coming from the dining room. I think there is a tasty bowl of soup being created in the kitchen, filled with wonderful comforting things like cabbage and tomato and onion and potatoes. Comfort is bubbling to the top.

Tuning in to the Dharma on TV

It was a cold and wintery night here and we took the opportunity to make some comfort food and snug up in front of ye old telly.  I was reminded that you can find the Dharma anywhere (even on the boob tube!) as we watched a show on the food channel where contestants vie for the title of top chef and a bit of spare change.  I have watched it off and on over the months and tonight was the grande finale.  There was a woman in it who has always appeared graceful and kind.  This is not always the case in the heat of kitchen combat.  

And tonight I saw pure Dharma unfold, and it was a cautionary tale for me.  This woman like all of us has produced some things of great beauty with personality and passion but she has also produced some of the biggest flops on the show.  But somehow she has always managed to regain her composure and shine again.  

So the pressure was on tonight and each contestant got a sous chef to help them cook the best 3 course meal they could.  Their helpers were former contestants.  At one point in the meal preparation, Karla, this delightful chef that I was rooting for, took a suggestion from her helper that altered the preparation of her main course in a big way.  We watched her take this suggestion quickly, as in yeah okay, lets do that.  Later she did it again and in the turn of a spoon changed her final course to a little souffle (not in her original plan) which subsequently flopped and was unservable.

Now the clear Dharma message for me was: we come undone when we don't follow our heart, our intuition, our true self, our inner knowing; however you want to express that.   The judges commented on how "not her" the meat course was and that it was a flop.  And interestingly the souffle that met the bin rather than the judges table was also not her idea.  How often do we do that?  Not trust our instincts, not trust our inner menu plan?  Why did Karla do it?  Was she trying to be accommodating, trying to be liked (a big motivator for many of us), did she truly think Casey's ideas were better, or was she just a little frazzled under all the pressure?

I don't know the answer but I can use this information next time I want to second guess what feels right to d0.  Sometimes it's not easy to stick to your original plan.   It's about faith and trust in ourselves.  Sometimes we get a sense that, maybe I should call so and so, or I think I should pass on this seemingly wonderful job opportunity.  Logic can kick in and tell us that this seems goofy, but somewhere deep inside we have an inner knowing of what is the right thing to do.  It is a skill to simply be aware of those blood and bones feelings.  It can be tricky  to distinguish between those voices vying for attention in our head.  But as we practice we become more acquainted with the true authentic voice of the inner self, sometimes it is just a whisper and sometimes it's a ear splitting shout.  

The second part of the puzzle is to actually have faith and follow through with execution of the plans of the heart.   Karla started out with a plan that was a true expression of Karla but allowed it to be altered and that became her final undoing.   For her it  was a hard way to learn the lesson of  "listen to your deepest self"  but we don't forget those difficult lessons quickly.  Me, I was just an observer  in the 3 ring cooking circus of life but the message seemed clear and instructive.  No matter what's on the menu, make sure that you're reading from that  inner recipe sheet.  Second guessing leads to burnt offerings at best.  And hold the salt, it doesn't go well with wounds.