I haven't spent too much time recently talking about my website. And I don't want to spend much time now talking about it. However, I do want to share that the website is the only place right now, that folks can support the continuation of these podcasts. Currently, the only way to do that is through buying me cups of coffee. Many of you have done that. And to each of you, I am deeply grateful.
Lately, that coffee pot has all but run dry. Ben and I are working on another way that folks can support Where the Veil Grows Thin by marketing blank note cards printed from original hand drawn artwork by yours truly. We are close to having that option live on the website and have also been making the website more interactive and more fun to explore.
Hosting and publishing these podcats has been life enriching for me. It has been a dream come true to get these stories and ideas out to the greater world, or at least out of me and poptentially out to the greater world. But hosting and publishing podcasts costs money.
Although I do not need nor do I seek to make money from this adventure, there are other expenses every month that have to be accounted for.
I believe, this can and will carry itself quite easily if enough people fiind it. So I am asking each person hearing this today to send the link to one person, just one person you know who might be comforted or in some way helped through the things that have been written about and recorded in these podcasts.
And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it has run it's course and I need to stop. But I'm not stopping. At least not until the well has completely run dry and I'm digging in sand to find money to pay the entities that are necessary to getting these out.
Let's just see what happens if we all find one person to share it with.
I wish I could personally hug each and every one of you who have walked this journey with me and who have supported me in so many ways already.
Okay. Enough already. Here's todays offering....
We don't need to look far to see evidence that the world feels pretty shaky in many respects. It's far too easy to list the many examples of what's wrong, scary, dangerous and upsetting about what we hear on the radio, read in the papers and see on the television.
It seems as though most everyone has an opinion or at least wants to report on what they know about the latest trauma drama of world events. From college campuses to countries at war, the global feelings of uncertainty and fear are real and present. We are a nation in dis~ease on a planet of too many.
In the 15 or so years I was with hospice I was responsible for training people who were interested in volunteering for hospice, and later, when I worked at our local cancer center, I was involved with the NODA traingings for staff and volunteers who were interested in sitting bedside with actively dying patients. Recently, I was encoiuraged to look back at those trainings to see how, if at all, what we taught there might be helpful to us in life during such chaotic and uncertain times.
So I pulled out old traning materials from both of those, wondering if there is indeed a broader way of integrating some of the tools used in preparing people to sit bedside with someone who is dying, into our normal lives, when we are in our homes and with our families. Or when we are at work or at the pool or the gym.
My sense is, if we were to ask people who participated in those trainings, most of them would say they learned something from the class discussons and the readings, but that the strongest lessons have come from actually doing the work.
So I asked myself if the ideas presented in EOL trainings go un-utilized unless we are with someone who is dying, or, if they might very well be something that could help us all the time. That in assimilating them into the very act of being alive and making them part of who we are, we would be giving ourselves a strong foundation from which to, more successfully, be, on the planet right now. Every day. Just living our lives.
Nothing about the trainings for EOL volunteering, is rocket science. It's not clinical, it's not medical and it's also, sadly, not second nature to most of us.
Our presence becomes the gift we have to offer. It isn't about “doing” anything. It's about being present in a clear and intentional way. So wouldn't it make sense that offering that to ourselves would have the same calming effect on our day as it does to offer it to someone who is actively dying?
These are some of the things from those traingings I find most helpful in my own life in regards to cultivating calm in these most trying times.
When we are sitting with someone who is actively dying, it isn't what we say so much as it is our comfort with saying nothing at all. In other words, our comfort with being in silence with another person. Often a perfect stranger.
There is an intuitive nature to being a comforting presence with someone at end of life just as there is to being present to someone who is suffering in grief. Intuition cannot be taught, but helping someone find a comfort in silence, can be. Often, silence is viewed as a void waiting to be filled. It is not. Silence is it's own sound and supporting someone gently and encouragingly to experience that, is it's own reward. It is a beautiful experience to watch someone who was visibly or admittedly not comfortable in silence, to then sit in silence with a group of people and feel the benefit of just focusing on breath and centering to where they are in that moment.
I would always recommend to NODA and hospicer volunteers, that they create and establish on a daily baisis, a ritualistic moment that belongs only to them. So, if you are not already practicing some type of daily moment of centering prayer or meditation, I invite you to consider the benefit of beginning one. And I'll talk in a minute about what that could look like.
We talk a lot in care giving professions about 'holding space' and what that means. When we are holding space it means we are aware that we are with someone who may need to unpack something as a way to understand something else. They may need to talk about something as a way to understand it themselves.
So part of holding space is the ability to allow for that processing without judgement or opinion and learning to be able to find the right words to help the process continue if the person gets stuck. It isn't about us weighing in, adding our two cents or squirting gas on an already lit fire.
I'm not talking about building relationship. We're talking now about cultivating calm. Holding a loving space around ourselves allows us to be present for others we encounter throughout our day. And one way to do it, is to spend a brief bit of time each morning in silent contemplation.
OK, so we'd talk a lot about the idea of holding space. And knowing when to hold our tongues. I say that silence is not a void waiting to be filled; it is it's own symphony. Before we speak we can ask ourselves if what we are about to say will do anything to improve on the silence. If the answer is no, stay quiet. We can ask ourselves if what we are about to say will improve anything at all. So often, I hear words between friends act as fuel on a fire.
Sometimes, it's hard to stay quiet. Most of us are quite uncomfortable keeping silent. An appreciation for and an understanding of how important it can be to be quiet, is a practice that takes time and one that has served me repeatedly in my own life.
I know too, that well chosen words, offered in the spirit of wanting to help the world feel less chaotic, are also important. Knowing when and if your words will be received or heard is one of those intuitive things again.
So it's important to be sensitive to the emotional energy of any interaction. By checking in with our selves. What are we feeling? And where are we feeling it? Are we with someone who is a friend or someone we are unfamiliar with? I'm not speaking now about being bedside with someone who is dying. This is when we are walking with a friend or running into someone at the grocery store or the post office.
A lot of this boils down to doing the inner work of knowing ourselves well. Knowing how to listen to what our bodies are telling us. And trusting or believing that there is merit to taking who we are out into the world with the aim of making a difference, in a positive way. Or at the very least, with the aim of not feeding the tiger.
We don't get opportunities to do that every day. Some days, no matter where we find ourselves, nothing much seems to happen. No big deep discussions with anyone in the parking lot of of your local market, no transformational epiphanies due to a seemingly benign interaction with someone we hardly know. Which isn't to say something didn't happen that mattered deeply to that other person and we might just not be aware of it.
But. On those days that those things do happen, on those days when we exchange something that feels big with someone whether they be stranger or friend, the sense I walk away with is that something good just happened. Some love was exchanged. Some compassion was shown. Something meaningful occurred.
I said earlier that there is an ease with which we fall into conversations with others based on the chaos and drama and violence in the world and not the goodness, glory and grandeur. So, believing that there is a plethora of local and global goodness, and then believing that when we source from that, we are in a place of exchanging the energy of chaos with an energy of peace, calm and hope.
Vibrationally, the energy of goodness, calm, peace and hope is a much higher frequency vibration than the vibrational energy of chaos. But for whatever reason, the energy of chaos attracts others to the chaos faster than the energy of positivity attracts and inspires us toward those more helpful ways of holding space.
The idea of changing fear and chaos into hope and peace, has to be an intentional, conscious awareness that we move through the world with on a minute to minute basis.
I'm not saying that we put on our rose colored glasses and sing kum ba ya. What I'm saying is that when we are in the presence of someone who is ranting or simply just talking about all the things that are wrong and scary and potentially lethal about the state of the world, if we remain silent, we don't then add to the energy.
And if we do speak, it can be with compassion for those who are actually experiencing the events being reported on. It can be with words of empathy, understanding and compassion. And sometimes, that can stop the chaos in it's tracks, just to do that. Those kinds of words do not act as fuel to a fire.
Simple acts of kindness and holding space for the suffering of others are two ways we can help ourselves cope, with the added benefit of also helping others.
Lighting candles, or keeping a light on in the nightime hours year round, meditating on a mantra of hope and healing for our world are not a waste of time. Listening to soothing music, reading the deep and profound writings of the masters of living an intentional life are ways to carry calm with us when we leave our homes.
I'm also not saying that we shouldn't be aware of what is happening in the world. In fact, the Planet is far too small for us to ignore the reality of what is happening, and ever believe that whatever happens somewhere else on the Planet, won't eventually touch us.
I'm saying that what I've discovered to be hugely important in maintaining a sense of calm is that MY immediate attention needs to go to that which I feel I can influence. Staying true to what I believe is best for my own higher and greater good because we must start at home. Within ourselves. So, in my morning meditations that take just a few minutes, I will begin with “I”. May I have ease of mind and peace of heart. May I be free from all suffering.
May I love myself exactly as I am
And May I know the greatest joy or (may I know God is present) or (may I feel the presence of God love on my heart).
And then I say, may my family and my household, also know all of those things,
And then my neighborhood, and my town of Glenwood and lastly, through our power to change loss into learning, burden into blessing and grief into growth, we can ask that the Planet have peace of heart and ease of mind, that She be free from suffering, and that She and all life upon her know the greatest joy.
That, for some of us, may be as far as we ever go. And that's enough. An easy, short meditation every morning or evening; will make a difference. Beginning with the sphere of that which we feel we can touch or influence.
And using what ever words feel most authentic or hoped for in your life.
But here's one of the realities to be aware of.
With the world literally at our fingertips because of the instant relay of information around the globe, we might think our scope of influence is greater than it really is. Or maybe, we don't understand just how great it might be. Turbulence and violence spread faster than wildfire. The shock value of bad news being gossiped about or just reported on through social media creates instant influencers out of ordinary individuals hungry to feel important. But, if we ask ourselves that question from earlier, “Is what I am about to do going to improve the situation?” before we 'share' on social media some story of sad violence and instead ask ourselves, if we feel the need to say anything at all, “What might I say or do right now to help ease the sadness, sorrow, pain or fear being created in this situation?”.
I think we are not always aware of the impact, both on ourselves and on others, when we expose ourselves and others to the horror, anger, violence and sadness we find on social media or elsewhere in the news by perpetuating the reports of things that are horrible, violent and sad. We all know those things are happening and if we feel like we are in a position to help in some way, by all means, we need to do that.
But again, so much of that, at least for now, feels too far away for me anyway to have an immediate influence on changing it. But I do not have to spin in it here. I can do what I can do here. I can be kind to someone. I can listen to someone. Maybe, I can help someone. All of us can do that and each time we extend kindness, compassion and love...kindness compassion and love, grow. What we feed always grows and what we ignore eventually starves. Learning to discern just what we are feeding, by how we speak or what we speak about, can help us enormously to see if we might be feeding the fire. Thus, the energy so many people already feel of anxiety and fear.
Sometimes it's ok to simply ask someone, “What do you need from me right now?” or “What feels like it would be most helpful right now?”. The answer can give us the information we need in order to know what to say or do next and even if the person can't answer us, they will feel they will feel seen.
Simple acts of human kindness; simple acts of humanism.
It seems simplistic. And it is. It just isn't always easy.
We can help by continuing to be aware of the need for us to be the change. I love this thing I saw in a window one day that said, “If not now, when? If not you, then who?”
It matters, that we believe we matter and that we can turn the Titantic in this hot bubbling bath tub of a world.
As always, I am humbled by the gift of your time. I always trust that what I have to say will be received in the spirit in which it is offered.
So...thank you for joining me.
And I hope you will join me again WTVGT