Report Card #1

Being a former student (duh), public school teacher, and homeschooling mom, it struck me today, that I should check in with my "To Do" list from time to time and see how I'm doing. Since it's the end of the month, it seems like a good time for the first check-in. Here goes:

Figure out what I'd like to do with my life (okay, the rest of my life): lncomplete

Lose 15 pounds: 0 (as in that's how many I've lost. oh well.)

Exercise daily: A+ (yes, this is my report card and I can go from number grades to letter grades as I see fit - no pun intended.) I've worked out daily and increased my workout! Yay for me.

Be vegan: Unstarted.

Get through winter without feeling like a crazy rag doll before it's over: A+ I don't feel crazy at all
although on a couple very cold days, I felt very tired. Tired is okay. Crazy is not.

Travel to India: Hmm, what grade to assign myself? I didn't travel to India, but I am reading "Holy
Cow" which is a memoir by an Australian woman who lived in India. Does that count for anything?  A "C" maybe?

Work at an orphanage in India: See above

Travel to the Himalayas: Yikes! If it's too cold for me here, what would I do in the Himalayas
in January?

Develop a craft to sell: F, didn't even give it a thought.

Write: A, for writing in my blog!

Publish my writing: As I think Kit may be the only person besides me to look at my blog and I did
no writing on the story I'd like to make into a Young Adult novel, I think.... nah, let's be
honest, no progress here, a 0.

Learn to sing so that people don't cover their ears or ask me to stop: I don't cover my ears or ask
myself to stop, so I give myself a "B".

Be able to walk into a party where I know no one, or close to that, and not feel shy:  An "A" for my
weekend at Kripalu, which is sort of a party for yogis, for walking into dinner on Friday night
alone and walking out with two new friends!

Stay calm: A! I did good!

Be more loving: A! I did good with this one, too!

Help the world: B! Good progress on the environmental front: bought organic, shade-grown, fair-
trade coffee, started bringing my own cup to Starbucks so I don't have to use a disposable cup, am washing clothes in cold water now, bringing my own bags to the grocery and other stores, didn't take plastic spoons at Panera when I got take-out soup, and I am buying more organics and post-consumer recycled products.

Stop procrastinating: A+ Signed contract to get the den redone, called an electrician the day after the kitchen light broke, etc., etc.!!!!!

Sky dive: In January? In upstate New York? Even I am never that crazy in the winter!!!

Eat healthfully: B. Pretty good. Still eating too much and having some desserts (which is why I
didn't lose any weight. But, I ate good breakfasts. Can still drink more (water, that is!)

Not a bad report card. Not as good as my kids' school report cards, but at least I'll never have to send mine out to a college admissions officer!

Satya

Satya is Sanskrit for "truthfulness". And it's another guiding principle of Yoga. I know I've already written that "ahimsa" or "do no harm" is THE guiding principle of Yoga. Satya really is part of "do no harm", but just as theTen Commandments are all followed if you follow the golden rule (as far as I know - please correct me if I'm wrong), so, too with Yoga, all the precepts are contained within ahimsa. But, it seems we humans need things pretty clearly spelled out in order for us to get it halfway close to right.

When we were studying satya, Leonard, my Yoga teacher, gave my class an assignment. We were to pick one day, any day in the upcoming week and be honest - totally, completely honest for a full 24 hours (minus sleep-time, which frankly, turned out to be a good thing). Being the gung-ho student I am, and a person who sees herself as fundamentally honest, I decided that this would be easy (certainly easier than practicing ahimsa for a full day, right?) and I would do my 24 hours starting the very next morning.

An aside here for definitions: complete honesty means being honest to yourself and others. It means not telling those convenient little social white lies ("Oh, I'd love to but I'll be washing my hair that night" I had a high school friend who used this any time she didn't think the planned activity was interesting enough.)

The next morning, I awoke ready to do my homework. I had a doctor's appointment the next week and for a variety of reasons, I wanted to cancel it (notice the word "wanted"). As I'd determined that it would not be practicing ahimsa to cancel too close to the appointment (because I'd be doing the doctor harm as then he may not be able to fill the time slot), I'd decided, while still drinking my morning coffee, to leave a message on my doctor's answering machine that morning. "Hi, " I said, "This is Madelyn. I have an appointment next Tuesday at 11:00 and I'm afraid I won't be able to make it. I'll call back to reschedule." First of all, in the spirit of satya, I no longer remember what day and time the actual appointment was. I wrote the previous sentence, which is in essence true, as an example. Secondly, when I hung up and turned to my husband, quite proud of myself for taking care of this little detail, Hank looked at me disapprovingly, slowly shaking his head. "What?" I asked (yes, this is a direct quote). "That was a lie," said he. "You said you couldn't make it to the appointment. The truth is you don't want to make it to the appointment." "Crap," I replied (to the best of my recollection). I was about five minutes in to my 24 hours of truthfulness, and practically the very first thing I said was a lie. Hank counseled that I just start anew which was what I did.

I realized pretty quickly that the way to stay honest was to neither speak nor think. As neither of those options was fitting in to my day, I felt pretty lucky to make it through the next few hours honestly. Then, a friend called. She wanted me to attend a meeting that afternoon. I'd known of the meeting, but had never planned on going. Yet, I waffled - I didn't come right out and say, "Hey, I have no intention of going to the meeting - it'll screw up my whole afternoon, I really don't care about it, and the last time I went it was a total waste of my time." Nope, I waffled, I listened to all her reasons on why I should go and advance her agenda. Interestingly, as she spoke, I heard her but also had a rather lenghty debate going on inside my head. For a while she and I almost had me convinced that I should go, but then there was a small part of my brain that still whined, "I don't want to go." And a stern part of my brain asked, "Are you acting selfishly here?" Finally (phew!) and fortunately before the conversation ended I realized I wasn't going to the meeting, that I wasn't being selfish, that just as she didn't want to advance her agenda because it really had nothing to do with her, neither did I want to advance it as it had nothing to do with me. Before our conversation ended, I was able to say to her, quite honestly, "No, I'm not going to the meeting, and I think if anyone is concerned about this issue, they should be the ones speaking to it." Ahh, it felt great. I realized an important thing about the truth (okay, I'll admit it - it may be an obvious truth, but I got the lesson clearly that day): sometimes it takes a while to figure out what the truth of a situation is and you can't speak the truth until you know the truth.

After that, it got easier. We usually don't speak (or think) the truth out of fear. Fear of not being liked/loved/respected, etc., fear of getting in trouble, or fear of how things may change if the truth is out there.

But the truth is freeing. Even the little inconsequential truths now seem to me to build a strong structure for my life. When I'm speaking the truth, I can see it more easily. And visa versa.

I did that homework assignment about four months ago and for a long time afterwards, I felt like I was easily being truthful. My biggest fear was that without a certain amount of embellishment, my stories would be flat. But I found that if I spoke with passion, that was enough. Now, I feel I need a bit of a tune-up. My nose isn't about to grow long from my lies, but I've noticed I'm not paying the attention I was to details when I was first practicing satya.

BTW, the next time I changed a doctor's appointment, I called and simply said, "I'd like to switch my appointment but I'll keep this time if my changing it will cause a problem for the doctor." In response, the receptionist said, "Madelyn, you're giving us plenty of time to fill the slot. Don't worry about it, We have a cancellation policy so people can change their appointments." Oh.

What I Do

The process I'm using to change myself and my life has been developing over the past nine months. It just struck me that that's how long it takes to make a baby. And just as an embryo is changing all that time, so do I. So, I'm an infant in this new life I'm creating for myself. Wow! I love that!

Last year, just when I needed it, I stumbled upon Elizabeth's Gilbert's charming, wise, and inspirational book Eat, Pray, Love which is a memoir of Gilbert's year traveling to Italy, India, and Indonesia to rebuild her life after divorce. After reading the book, I realized that there were so many things I wanted to do (including figuring out what I wanted to do) but that if I didn't start soon, I'd lose my chance.

Fortunately again, I came upon a newsletter from the American Meditation Institute (www.americanmeditation.org). Meditation was one of those things I'd always meant to do. The meditation taught at AMI (by the wonderful Leonard Perlmutter), is based on yoga, which I'd only done sporadically in my life, even though I enjoyed it. AMI is practically in my backyard. I wasn't looking for signs, but it did sort of seem that this was one ("Proceed at Maximum Speed"). That this was five minutes from home eliminated many of my prior excuses ("ooh, I hate driving in the dark on the highway" whine, whine, whine).

I took Leonard's six week meditation class last summer and a shorter class with him in the fall on Patanjali's yamas and niyamas (practices for living a right life).

I now follow a daily meditation practice: about twenty minutes each morning which includes time where I focus on my breath (which isn't what Leonard teaches for a full meditation, but hey, it's my practice so I get to do what works for me), followed by Dr. Joe's intention work (more on this to come) and reflections on what I'm grateful for, some wishes for peace, and more intentions on how I want to conduct my day (not just my to-do list of tasks, but a to-do list of behaviors). It's a lot for twenty minutes, but I'm waking up at 5:45 a.m. to do this before the kids get up at 6:10, and this is the earliest I've ever consistently woken up in my life. I'd like to say I'll soon be getting up at 4:00 am to do a couple hours of practice, but there's not strong enough coffee out there for that.

At night, I again meditate on my breath and reflect on whether or not I was who I wanted to be and whether or not I lived as I intended to during the day. It's sort of a daily report card.

And, of course, since you really can't change yourself without paying attention to what you're doing in the course of the day (or, if you can, I can't), I try to be mindful as my day goes on about what I'm doing, saying, thinking, and feeling. It's a tall order. As any meditator will tell you, our minds have a mind of their own, they like to go hither and yon without so many darn rules. But it's a very exciting way to live. It may not be jumping out of an airplane, but there's excitement just the same. Living this way means that tomorrow doesn't have to be just like today because I don't have to be just like I am today tomorrow.

Time Flies

It's been a week since I've been back from my first ever retreat, my first ever weekend away just for me and with a friend in the twenty years that I've been married.  I went to the Kripalu Yoga Center in West Stockbridge, MA and it was AWESOME.  I took a weekend class with Dr. Joe Dispenza (http://www.drjoedispenza.com), who is a chiropractor, but who also has spent years educating himself about the workings of the brain and also studying people who have had spontaneous healings.  Dr. Joe, as he's often called, has a method for transforming one's life into whatever one wishes it to be.  It's modelled around taking advantage of the brain's neuroplasticity and on the theory of quantum physics.  

I've been practicing Dr. Joe's method since last weekand the early results are quite good.  I have been more productive this past week, definitely calmer and amazingly happy!  I've also increased my workout time on the treadmill from twenty to thirty minutes, upping the speed to four m.p.h., and have worked out daily this week.  So, I'm in a good place to achieve at least some of those goals I laid out for myself!

The List

So, what would I like to accomplish?

In no particular order:

Figure out what I'd like to do with my life (okay, the rest of my life)

Lose 15 pounds

Exercise daily

Be vegan

Get through winter without feeling like a crazy rag doll before it's over

Travel to India

Work at an orphanage in India

Travel to the Himalayas

Develop a craft to sell

Write

Publish my writing

Learn to sing so that people don't cover their ears or ask me to stop

Be able to walk into a party where I know no one, or close to that, and not feel shy

Stay calm

Be more loving

Help the world

Stop procrastinating

Sky dive (?????- do I really mean this?)

Eat healthfully

The Experiment

In a nutshell:  to make my life (and who I am in it) what I want it to be. 

I'm not complaining, mind you - I really have nothing to complain about and much that I'm grateful for.

I live a privileged life.

And I realize that for the most part, I am living the life I've wished for.

Which is very cool.  

And supports the experiment.

The hypothesis of the experiment is that I can "intend" my life.  

Of course, we do this all the time.  Let's say, you intend to become a teacher.  You go to college and get a teaching degree.  You student teach. You apply for teaching jobs.  Voila!  You're a teacher.

Phew!  That was easy.  But other things aren't so easy.  How many of us walk around repeatedly doing things we wish we didn't (eating too much, snapping at poor unsuspecting family member, etc., etc.) or don't do the things we mean to do (exercise more, write in our blogs, etc., etc.)  So, I've got the easy ones down, now it's time to tackle the tough ones.  (Or, maybe it's better to keep the judgement out of it, and say I've gotten some of it down, so now it's time to work toward others.)

I got started on this by watching the movie "What the Bleep do we Know" (http://www.whatthebleep,com).  Which lead to my reading books about intention (and listening to podcasts).  Eventually, I'll write about these.  For now, I'm outta here.  

Ahimsa

Sounds like a sneeze, doesn't it?

It's Sanskrit (I believe).

In any event, it means "do no harm" and it's the guiding principle of yoga.

Sounds simple, but you can really build a pretty good life around trying to live it.

You can spend all day, every day doing it.

And you'll always have to realize that all you can do is strive for it, but never totally attain it.

And that's okay. 'Cause life is messy.  And life is a process - there's no place to get to, only a path.

I started studying yoga last year. I'm not talking about doing yoga, you know, the yoga everyone thinks of when they think of yoga (the poses). I'm talking about yoga philosopy. Which is way cool.

So, Leonard, my teacher right off suggests we practice ahimsa, it not being a sneeze, but like I said, yoga's guiding principle (kind of like the one commandment). This was in the spring and I was all fired up to build a wonderful, lush, colorful flower garden (how do I know that spring is the season of hope? Because for each of the eighteen springs I've lived in this house I've been fired up to build a wonderful, lush, colorful flower garden and each year my garden is.....a dud). So, gardening seems like a good way to practice "do no harm". Because growing things, nurturing life is the opposite of harm, right? However, I start coming out in the morning to watch my fledgling plants grow and instead of thin, bright green shoots and tiny buds, I'm finding big, fat, juicy slugs, lots and lots of big, fat, juicy slugs all over the place. On the grass, on the walkway, on the driveway, in the flower beds! AARRGGHH!!!!!  And if it isn't enough that they're eating my garden before it even has a chance to grow, they're leaving trails of slime all over in their wake!

In my pre-yoga days, I'd put out small plastic containers filled with beer, the slugs would crawl into them and drink themselves to death - or drown, I never knew for sure. I used to tell Kit that the slugs just liked to drink the beer and went to sleep from it, because she was a baby yogi and always hated the idea of any creature, no matter how grotesque, being killed. I felt fairly much the same - except for slugs, which I figured didn't count because of their really gross slime, ugly otherworldliness, and that they ate what little bit of garden I managed to coax out of my Rensselaer county clay.  But, now...hmm, killing slugs....do no harm....what would the slugs have to say about that? Clearly that I was harming them.

So, I grabbed a shovel, each and every morning, I picked up dozens of slugs, carried them into the woods and knew the next morning that I was carrying the same ones back to the woods again. And their skinny, slimy babies. And that if slugs could, in between bites of tender leaves, they were laughing at me.

So, the next week, I went back to Leonard's for another lesson, very bummed and confused and asked how was I supposed to proceed, after all, the slugs were harming the garden. So, who's rights should prevail here. And Leonard said, as any great teacher would, you figure it out.

Which brings me, finally to my point, when figuring out how to "do no harm" we each have to figure it out for ourselves each and every day, each and every moment. And the same goes for the rest of life: we each have to figure it out for ourselves. The only expert for your life is you. The only expert for my life is me.

After a while, I stopped trying to move all the slugs - I just moved a token few each morning. Then, I stopped bothering with even those few. Sometime later, I realized the slugs had moved on, or passed on or whatever. They weren't in my garden anymore. They came back later in the summer and I realized that I wasn't bothered by them anymore. Now, I wasn't going to pick one up and kiss it on its gooshy lips or anything, but I did realize they're a part of the world, a part of my garden and I no longer felt they stood between me and my potentially beautiful flowers, nor did I feel like serving them any free beer.

The Lead-Up

I have a wonderful life. Wonderful family (husband, kids - I even love the extended families on both sides). We have a cool house in the woods. Enough liquid propane to keep us warm in the winter. We can afford the gas to drive where we need and wish to go.  Healthy food to eat, clean water to drink and wash with, a safe spot to live in.  We have friends, laughter, and a lot of music in our lives.

But it's been years since I started trying to figure out what to do with my life - and I wasn't getting any closer to knowing. I wasn't even getting any closer to starting any of the projects I told myself I'd do to before "getting a real job" (I'm a homemaker and I've done it for years, and I'm sorry if this offends but I believe that though we may work hard, it really is very different from bringing home the bacon - veggie or otherwise).  I realized last year that I felt very much as I did as a teenager when I was going through an identity crisis. But, now here's the kicker - as a teen I felt like I had forever to figure it out. Thirty years later I realize that time's a-wasting - either I learn and become who I really want to be or I lose the chance.

So, I'm working on it.  It's hard but it's easier than I expected it to be.  It's both boring and exhilarating.  It's turned my thinking upside down which has brought my thinking back home to where it's always been.  The old me is gone and the new me is the old me.  And strange as it may sound, this paragraph makes perfect sense to me!

Deep breath.
Deep breath.
And another.
This is worse than staring at a blank piece of paper. Because, even if no one but her reads this, Kit will. So, it's public.
And it's me out here.
Scary.
So, here's the semi-grand experiment:

Okay, it's tomorrow, or the day after I wrote the above. I suppose that in the blogosphere I should start a new post but I never got to actually say anything yesterday, so I'm editing this first post (I keep writing post, because I'm trying to learn the correct terminology for what I'm doing here. I usually say "blog" for "post" and Kit (who, btw, is my daughter and bloguru) rolls her eyes and corrects me (again).)

So, anyway, here's the semi-grand experiment:
To see how much I can change myself and my life.
(For good, not evil, in case you were wondering.)