Tag: Tracy Cochran

• Pilgrims

  Today, as many of us prepare in one way or another for Thanksgiving, can we reflect on what it means to be a pilgrim. We can let go of an old story about a particular group of pilgrims sailing to a new land and welcome the truth that we are all pilgrims.

  Each of us is born with a double yearning, twin pulls–to venture out, to find a new path or way to a larger sense of ourselves, and longing to be still, to stay put, to find a deep connection with place.   

  Our pilgrimage begins at birth and proceeds.  In our dreams and fictions–and even in our earliest childhood play–we seek ways. We seek ways out of trouble, out of heartbreak, the possibility of loss, the looming inevitability of death.  We seek meaning, healing.  We yearn to find a way to be more at peace, to be more. We seek to be part of a greater life.

  In sitting and walking meditating, we practice letting go of our habitual way of thinking, of our usual stories.  We practice sensing what is happening in the body below the thinking.  When we realize we are lost in thought (which is most of the time), we redirect the attention to the endlessly changing flow of sensation. A feast of impressions, of glorious, mysterious life, is constantly being offered.  The indigenous people who met the storied Thanksgiving pilgrims were aware of this unending stream of gifts from the Creator. But most of us pilgrims don’t notice.  We are too busy telling ourselves stories, longing for better entertainment than Creation, picturing ourselves in better starring roles.

  But at moments, we experience a deeper kind of knowing, a soul-knowing. Having a soul is related to the deep knowing of life in the body and the heart.  Often we discover this knowing when the way seems blocked, when we cannot be satisfied by the stories of the head. A feast appears when we know our true poverty.  Soul is the body and the heart receiving and appreciating the gifts of life that keep coming like grace even when we don’t notice. Soul is knowing that we are made to be pilgrims…and to be still and pay attention…and to give thanks. Here is a great poem about thanks by W.S. Merwin.

  Thanks

  Listen
  with the night falling we are saying thank you
  we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
  we are running out of the glass rooms

  with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
  and say thank you
  we are standing by the water looking out
  in different directions

  back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
  after funerals we are saying thank you
  after the news of the dead
  whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
  in a culture up to its chin in shame
  living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

  over telephones we are saying thank you
  in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
  remembering wars and the police at the back door
  and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
  in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
  with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
  unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

  with the animals dying around us
  our lost feelings we are saying thank you
  with the forests falling faster than the minutes
  of our lives we are saying thank you
  with the words going out like cells of a brain
  with the cities growing over us like the earth
  we are saying thank you faster and faster
  with nobody listening we are saying thank you
  we are saying thank you and waving
  dark though it is

  –W.S. Merwin from “The Rain in the Trees,” 1988

  November 22, 2023

  Awakening, Drstvh, Esy, Presence, Thsnkdhibinh, Tracy Cochran, Ytsvy Vovhtsn, zpilhtimd, zpsyh

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• Box of Darkness

  “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness,” wrote the beloved poet Mary Oliver. “It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”

  This past year has been a giant box of darkness–and for many of us that box has been full of smaller boxes–a nesting doll full of darkness. On top of the pandemic and the election, we have experienced our own wrenching losses and loneliness. At different times, most of us have feared that hope is gone too, that life will never be good or safe again. 

  And yet…but still…each in our own homes, there are moments when we touch our deepest questions: Who am I? What am I really here for? At moments we may sense that we are here to wonder about that and we notice that being in question like this opens us. An inkling comes that we are here to take in impressions, not to do great things but to be touched by great forces. 

  “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,” wrote Julian of Norwich. How can this be?

  “For there is a force of love moving through the universe that holds us fast and will never let us go,”wrote Julian (who knew about pandemics).

  December 9, 2020

  essay, hope, loneliness, Loss, pandemic, short moments, surge, Tracy Cochran, why are we here? mindfulness

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• What Draws You?

  When I was young, I didn’t write in a journal. I drew pictures. I drew every day, whenever I had chance. Drawing was my way of entering my inner life—my real life–not the life of the culture at large, the world of words and inherited stories. Drawing put me in touch with the world closer to my body, the world of sensations and feelings. I made realistic drawings of real things: trees and animals and humans. But I also drew stories that conveyed feelings and questions.

  I drew characters escaping forbidding castles to slip away into the forest, riding beautiful horses, hair flying, becoming free. I drew animals with wild, intelligent eyes, animal guides. I drew to draw closer to myself and to the world.

  Let your whole life be your practice. Notice how you are in any given moment, doing dishes, avoiding work, see it all of it with kind interest. And also notice activities that draw you in, walking or looking at your dog, and/or remember things you loved doing as a child.

  Often, people come to meditation and spiritual practice hoping to escape themselves, or at least the parts of themselves that they find painful. This is completely understandable and natural. But it turns out that freedom is a door that opens inward. It comes as we learn to see and know and love ourselves.

  “Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am, that I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself full in the right way I will already have surpassed myself.” – Thomas Merton

  July 12, 2020

  Following Your Bliss, Mindfulness Meditation, Spiritual Practice, Tracy Cochran

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• PAUSE AS PRACTICE

  Life is difficult. Even in the best of circumstances, before a pandemic shut down much of the world, the pressures were great. Sometimes the demands were so great, my friends and I would switch into warrior mode. Like Navy Seals, we plotted and planned and pictured, mentally rehearsing the operations to be executed, how to get from here to there and back again, maintaining focus and a positive attitude. But unexpected things still kept happening. And then came the Great Pause of the global pandemic, and something strange and wondrous was revealed: we can get triggered without going out at all. A memory, a news story, sometimes a change in the light or temperature, and our world is transformed.

  Emotional triggers are amazing to behold—to notice mindfully, without judgment. The moment before we get triggered, we can feel like sleek and nimble ninjas, masters of life. We smell the spring air, feel the warmth of the sun on our skin, hear birds sing. This is mindfulness, we may tell ourselves. This is openness!  But then comes unwelcome news or an extra demand and poof.  Instantly it feels as if the doors and gates are being barred and locked. Instantly, and I do mean instantly, we are embattled little fortresses in a dark and unknown world. We are thrown for a loop, pushed out of the brain’s well-trod civilized pathways, pulled down into the ancient reptile brain, standing ready to fight or flee.

  There is a powerful undertow to fear. It has stories to it, pulling us down into our earliest or most painful memories, down toward the primal fear of dying. We discover at such moments that it is not just physical death we fear but ego death, the death of who we think we should be.

  But when life asks more of us than we think we can handle we tend to see things about ourselves that we don’t usually see. We can actually glimpse the ego defending us against pain and blame, experiencing it as a separate creature, a Rumpelstiltskin endlessly spinning a better, shinier version of ourselves. A teacher once who told me you never can really kill the ego because it was never really alive. That statement shocked me, but I have come to experience it as true.

  The ego is a complex creation, an intricate set of defenses, as beautiful as clockwork, wired into us.  But it is also inessential. We can be free of the ego in moments of emergency and love, moments when we seem to respond from our essence, from a direct experience of being alive and present to what is happening. In the very next moment, the ego will take over again, literally like clockwork, but that trace of another way of being will remain.

  I discovered something else by paying attention in the hard times: under the mind that is freaking out, there another mind, vastly quieter and more receptive and responsive. We find this deeper mind when we let go. Letting go can feel like garden variety giving up. “Thy will be done,” we may say to ourselves. Or “Let it Be.” Or even “What the hell.” 

  This letting go is actually letting things be the way they actually are without resistance, taking off our armor, allowing essence to appear. The most amazing thing happens when we do this. A new energy and a new freedom can flow in to our lives. We see and hear more. We are here. Just for a moment.

  May 12, 2020

  Awakening, Ego, Emotional Triggers, Liberation, Life as Practice, Mindfulness, Seeing ourselves, Tracy Cochran

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• The Practice of Not Knowing

   

  At times, I wish I had more funny things to say to buoy spirits. But this particular time doesn’t lend itself to humor. Nor is it a time for self-improvement. It’s a time of collective sorrow and grief and fear, a time for sheltering in place (those of us who can) and waiting for what is to come. We are told that staying home, saves lives. What if we considered our efforts to be present to ourselves, to be open to what is happening inside and outside, to be for the collective good as well?

  This week brings Passover, a celebration of liberation. One of my friends wrote about how amazing it is, to celebrate Passover, while sheltering in place, hoping to be spared from a plague. We can imagine how frightened and vulnerable those humans must have felt. I am not a Jewish scholar, but I am pretty sure no one was telling them to practice “positivity,” or to consider this the “New Normal.” All that they were feeling, fear and faith, joy and terror, is treated as part of the sacred story. Our greatest stories are invitations to remember our own deepest humanity. We are very limited but also blessed.

  The root meaning of understanding is to be in the midst of something, to know it by living through it. This global pandemic is not a time for personal lessons but for a collective knowing, a remembering of our humanity, our frailty and also our capacity for moments of joy and goodness. I can’t stress enough how helpful it is to make our practice one of noticing small moments. The sun is out today! Just for a moment, we may feel this as a blessing and a source of hope and joy.

  In Pali, the language of the earliest Buddhist texts, “sati” or mindfulness literally means to remember the present moment.  All great spiritual traditions emphasize the power of remembering and recollection, each in their own way. When we are more present, a small moment may become huge, something cosmic and profound. A moment of feeling the sun may suddenly open like a lens and we remember that we are standing on the Earth and under the Sun, being given the gift of life.

  We all long for this to pass, to be able to go out and see our friends and loved ones, for the danger and the dying to stop. Please remember that we are going through a time of collective trauma. This is a time to accept all of our feelings as they are. This is a time for not knowing, for being like little children or like our ancient ancestors. Here is a fragment of a letter Rilke wrote to a young poet, urging him not to try to be a busy, successful adult:

  “And when you realize that their activities are shabby, that their vocations are petrified and no longer connected with life, why not then continue to look upon it all as a child would, as if you were looking at something unfamiliar, out of the depths of your own solitude, which is itself work and status and vocation? Why should you want to give up a child’s wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn….”

  Don’t try to understand with your thinking right now. Just let yourself sink down into your embodied experience and notice how it feels to be here.

  The Buddha based his enlightenment on a memory from childhood.  He came to point where he realized that all his mighty efforts and sacrifice had not led him to liberation. According to the great story he split off from his fellow ascetics and collapsed by a riverbank, broken and despairing. A young woman riding an ox offered him food and he ate. That small act of goodness, of offering and eating food, caused a memory from childhood to bubble up. The Buddha remembered being a young child, sitting alone under a tree, watching his father and the other men from the village plowing the fields in a spring festival.

  The boy who would be Buddha remembered the good feeling of being by himself in nature on a pretty spring day. He was alone yet not alone. He was secluded but also communing with life, the way it feels to be out in nature. According to the great story, the little boy saw some insects whose homes were being torn up by the plowing.  His heart opened to them. Secluded yet deeply connected to life, he felt joy and compassion at the same time, safe in his solitude yet also aware of other beings. This is attitude the Buddha took under the Bodhi tree to reach full awakening.

  It wasn’t an easy night, heaven knows. The devil Mara launched assault after assault, alternating terror and desire, anything that might get the Buddha up off his seat and out the door so to speak. But the Buddha didn’t move. He slowly reached down and touched the Earth, asking it to affirm his right to be there. We belong here. We are limited and going through our own dark night. But we are also connected to that which is unlimited.

  This is also Holy Week in the Christian calendar. Next Sunday will be Easter, a celebration of love triumphing over death. But first come the somber days when all seems lost. I remember one particular Good Friday, as a child.  It was a beautiful spring day, and I was lying outside in the grass, inside a circle of big purple and white lilac bushes. Who knows why, but I was singing “Thumbelina,” a big hit of the time. I remember the warmth of the sun and the scent of lilacs and the beauty of the sky and the clouds and the budding trees that arched above me. I remember feeling suffused with a love of life and an extraordinary sense of hope and promise.

  My mother called me to come in the house and be still. Reluctantly, I went in and sat on the couch, not at all sure what I was actually supposed to be doing. My mother wasn’t much for explanations especially about religion, but she indicated that it was a kind of vigil. Why is it called Good if it is so Sad? She ordered me to sit down and not talk and eventually understanding would come…or not. In retrospect, her approach had a Zen-like simplicity: just sit. So I sat there, assuming a child’s attitude of not-knowing, marveling that I had just felt a connection to the future, and now I was supposed to feel a connection with an extraordinary event from the past.

  I knew the basic story of Good Friday, of course. And I thought of it at first. I thought of Jesus suffering and dying and facing the darkness of the unknown. I thought of him giving up control, putting himself in God’s hands, and the great forces of love and compassion that came to help him. I wondered if this really happened. I wondered if it happened for ordinary people also. Did love come to you in your darkest hour? Maybe not in such a big public way but maybe in a small private way? I just knew I had to wait there and be open until I was released.

  April 6, 2020

  Buddha, Chrisian, Good Friday, Holy Week, Jewish, Mindfulness, Passover, Sheltering in Place, Small good things, Small things, The night of the Buddha’s Enlitenment, Tracy Cochran

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• Small Good Things

  “After great pain, a formal feeling comes,” writes Emily Dickinson.  “The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs.”

  After a great shock, a stillness comes. We may be very busy outside, but inside we are still. The world we knew and the narrative we constructed about our future has been blasted away. We may be able to go about our days, but inside we are in a state of suspension. We are grieving, sad, and afraid. It is best sit ceremonious inside, just being. At such times, it is enough to be quiet and kind, to give ourselves the loving attention we would give a dear friend. This kind allowing, this not doing, not striving to fix or to know, allows us to touch the earth of our experience. You may feel completely lost in the world. But deep within, a new understanding may be taking root

  Understand comes from an Old English root that means to stand in the midst of–not under as you might think but in between or within something. There is an understanding that comes from familiarity, from being with, the way the way a sailor understands the sea or the way you come to understand a friend.  To comprehend this way is not a matter of words, but a feeling of recognition and remembrance of the good. Sitting helpless by a window, we may suddenly remember the warmth of the sun coming through feels good. A cup of tea is also good, and a moment when we remember to soften inside, to open to receive.

  There are times in life when we feel lost, unmoored, wandering in a desert. These are the times that reveal the power of the smallest actions: inner movements of availability, a willingness to be with our experience with an attitude of acceptance and self-compassion, trusting that as we do this a deeper understanding will come.

  April 1, 2020

  Compassion, Corona Virus, Covid 19, Life as Practice, Mindfulness, New York, Quarantine, Tracy Cochran

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