Getting Past What We Think We See

I’m fascinated by this optical illusion.

I’m so sure of what I’m seeing here—a gray and white checkerboard—I can hardly believe the demonstration showing how it’s not that simple. Certainty encourages me to dismiss any new information. It limits what I am able to perceive. I can barely take in the information that challenges my understanding because I “know” what I saw. But it turns out I was wrong.

Hmmmm.

I wouldn’t want to go through life never trusting my sense of how things are. I need to rely on my perceptions to get through the day. But I also know from experience that certainty can be misplaced. Past choices that seemed perfectly clear at the time had far more room for questioning than I was able to see. I know now that I knew less than I thought I did back then, if you can follow that convoluted sentence.

But I was generally doing the best I could with what I had. Who can do more than that? It’s what we all do. But it would have been better to ask if there were more to know than what meets the eye. I might have made better decisions if I had been willing to test my assumptions.

Yet even in our lack of wisdom and experience we are given an inner sense of when things are out of balance. When our misperceptions matter, life provides indications that we need to pay closer attention. They accrue until we finally notice.

Within us is a life force, a holy spirit, urging us forward and helping us to transcend illusion. Often it speaks with a still, small voice that helps us know what we need to know, even when thoughts and perceptions are confused. Occasionally it jolts us into waking up to what is going on around us.

Could it be that this clever video is speaking to us of such things, even now?

And if you still don’t believe the squares are the same color, check out this demonstration:
The Checker-Shadow Illusion

Everyday Rituals

Lately I’ve been thinking about how a task can be transformed by a sense of ritual. Ritual lends weight to what we’re doing. To clear space in our mind and schedule for a particular task is to acknowledge its importance. It says there is nothing we should be doing instead, and no reason to hurry through this moment on the way to the next thing. That alone is a relief, and all too rare. Ritual invites us to be fully present, to set aside anything else pulling at our attention and focus on the one thing in front of us.

Cooking dinner can be that kind of experience on days when I clear the countertops, turn on “All Things Considered,” and set aside the time to chop, saute, and simmer. Other days it’s a chore I squeeze in between other things, hurrying on to the next thing I need or want to do. The difference is whether I make space around it and become present in doing it. Ritual encourages presence, attention.

I remember as a child watching my father polish his shoes. He had a box where he kept everything he needed: the round tin of dark polish, the cotton rag saturated with its orange-brown color and oily scent. He would spread a newspaper on the floor to mark his work space, then open a tin and rub the cloth over it in a circular motion. After he worked the polish into the leather he would take up the wide wooden brush with soft black bristles, placing his hand inside the shoe to hold it and brushing with long sweeping strokes until it shone. I can still hear the thump of the brush against the shoe, the whisper of bristles across its polished surface. Then he folded the newspaper and threw it away, carried the box and gleaming shoes back to where they belonged.

I remember my mother preparing to iron, sprinkling clothes with water from a Coke bottle fitted with a metal-capped cork, its rounded surface filled with holes like a salt shaker. There was the muted sparkle and splash of water inside the glass bottle and the dark spots of moisture on cotton. She rolled up the clothes for the dampness to permeate, with an extra sprinkle over the bundle for good measure. With its hiss and rising steam, the transformation of rumpled fabrics into crisp, clean, finished laundry, ironing didn’t look like a chore. It looked like an important part of the week.

As I didn’t have responsibility for doing them, those tasks never appeared to be a burden. Instead they seemed special, meriting the time set aside for them. To a child fascinated by its particular tools, the job was clearly important. It offered elements perhaps of pleasure, but at the very least of satisfaction. I liked ironing handkerchiefs and helping to brush shoes.

I don’t know if my mother and father brought the same attention to their tasks that I brought to watching them. I was free to do something else if I grew bored, while they had to see the job through. And having raised a family myself now, I’m sure they had other things on their mind. Perhaps it’s easier to be mindful about someone else’s work.

Nonetheless, I think that how they went about their work taught me something of value. Ritual creates space around something important. When we turn the pages of a magazine, a few words on a large field of white rivets our attention. In the same way, we can put focus on the most important aspects of our lives by giving them breathing room. We add meaning to our lives when we notice what they contain. We elevate our work when we set it apart through the simple rituals that center us in the moment and ground us in our lives.

What are the tasks that give you satisfaction? Are they enhanced by a ritual of some kind?

Working with Stones

I’m fascinated by the limestone fences that line the Central Kentucky landscape. Constructed without mortar by skilled builders, many of whom were itinerant Irish and Scottish masons, they can endure for centuries. The Dry Stone Masonry Conservancy teaches this almost-lost art to local masons, preserving and spreading the knowledge that allows the old rock fences to be repaired and maintained in the original way, as well as new ones built.

To study a section of stone fence is to appreciate the depth of attention brought to the work. Rough and irregular stones are layered without gaps, as if each settled naturally into its place according to its nature. Even the smallest stone is an integral part of the whole, filling a space that would otherwise weaken the structure. Made of limestone from the surrounding fields, the fences come from the land and fit easily into the landscape. They were built from the necessity of working with materials at hand. They belong.

Labor and skill are apparent in these old stone fences, but so is a sense of reverence for the world as it is. The builders worked with the nature of the stones, so that the textured unity of the fence is not imposed through conformity but coaxed from diversity. The strength and beauty of a rock wall comes from working with what is given, carefully determining the placement of each piece so that is part of a cohesive whole. Nothing is forced; every stone is different. Yet put together in the right way the stones yield a structure that is beautiful, cohesive, and strong. Each stone lends its strength to something that endures.

The building method works because the stones are different shapes. They don’t just sit side by side, they fit into each other. Scattered across the ground, the stones don’t look like building material. They’re just rocks. They suggest nothing of the potential seen by a mason. But placed by a master builder, they become part of something beautiful and enduring.

In the same way, it can be hard to see what the scattered parts of our lives add up to. Sometimes we lack the perspective on our selves, or on our communities, to see anything more than a rocky field. At those times it helps me to remember that I’m not the mason. In spite of everything I try to do and learn and accomplish and create, there is only so much improvement of myself or the world that I can bring about under my own power. But there is a master builder who has the vision to make something good of my life and its odd-shaped elements, and of this world and its rough-edged inhabitants. There is good work in progress.

What helps give you a builder’s perspective?

The Wakefulness of Autumn

A couple of weeks ago Kentucky sweltered through a summer that had far overstayed its welcome, as a string of 90-plus degree days begun in August disregarded the beginning of fall entirely. Then last week everything changed: I put an extra blanket on the bed, huddled with a cup of tea against damp gray air and wondered how much longer we could get by without turning on the furnace. But now the warm, golden afternoons of the past few glorious days remind me of why October is my favorite month.

There is no lull of sameness to these days. When the world we move through shifts so dramatically, it claims our attention. A changing environment heightens awareness of what’s going on around us. Especially when the haze and humidity of late summer gives way to the bright blue skies of autumn, the shift in seasons is like waking up.

Fall is a gift—a powerful reminder to live wakefully. A lot is happening. I hear it from the raucous crows convening in the tops of the ash trees. I see it in the spiders looking for shelter indoors, the plants going to seed. I feel it in the new wind picking up.

The urgency of the transitions teaches us to notice. And to appreciate. The season’s end offers a sense of the great effort behind its growth. As the energy that infused blossom, fruit, and harvest withdraws, the withered vines mark with startling contrast a place where life has been. It also signals the necessary rest before a new cycle of growth will begin.

The force of life in a growing season is a marvel, and the efforts we make during our own periods of growth can be fairly miraculous, too. Often it is only at the completion of some phase of life that we can take a breath and see how much we’ve accomplished, even as we wonder how we managed to do it. In the thick of things we are rarely able to see how much is happening. Yet something within continues to strengthen us, helping us grow green and supple enough to rise and meet the next challenge, too.

I don’t know how much of the credit is ours for times of growth and moving forward. There are periods I can look back on with a sense of satisfaction at the hard work accomplished. But when I consider those times it’s also with a sense of awe at the life that has moved through me. I feel grateful to have served as a vessel for something good, and I hope it might happen again.

What are you noticing this fall?

The Spiritual Practice of Changing the Filter

Today I’m drinking a glass of water that tastes much better than the one I had yesterday. Not that I noticed anything wrong with yesterday’s water, but I did notice that it was time to change the filter I use. The difference is dramatic, the taste softer on the tongue—something like cashmere vs. leather.

The water filter works beautifully when it’s fresh. It removes minerals and chemicals, yielding the clear, sweet essence of water. It accomplishes this by absorbing the unwanted elements, but after a time it simply cannot take in any more. The filter’s loss of function is subtle, incremental, and at first it’s hardly noticeable. But eventually the filter stops working, and will actually introduce impurities into the water if it isn’t changed. The water tastes bad.

All of which has me thinking about the psyche’s filters.

Messages, images, and information are everywhere, more than we can ever process. The needs, demands, requests, and unthinking effects of other people’s actions continually challenge our ability to respond. We cannot let everything in; there’s too much. But determining how to filter our experience requires effort.

When the air is thick with frustration and anger, callousness and mindlessness, that’s what we most easily absorb. Without a conscious effort to resist them, negative mindsets permeate our way of being. It’s important to see the world around us as clearly as possible, but to live compassionately requires being careful of what we allow to become part of us.

Yet even when we are mindful about the ways we sort and learn from our experience, eventually the filter becomes too saturated to do its work. The anxiety we encounter begins to color our own emotional life. Thoughts become infused with the taint of fear or resentment in the air around us. It’s time to change the filter.

The upper portion of my Brita pitcher is designed to hold the cylindrical filter securely and allow it to be changed easily. I just lift the lid and drop the new one in. Sometimes I wish I could do that with my mind, but our filters are more complex. It’s through spiritual practice that they become clean again.

The hardest part about cleaning or changing a water filter is remembering to do it. That may be the case with our psyche’s filters as well. The means of restoring spiritual strength and resiliency are as different as people are varied. But we all need our spiritual health to live fully and well. We need the ability to cleanse our thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and motivations. We need a way to experience the pure, sweet essence of life that will nurture and sustain us.

Cleaning the filter might happen through prayer or meditation. It might mean a walk in the woods, yoga, or an exercise routine. It can occur in the experience of music or poetry. It could result from our own means of artistic expression. It may grow out of our relationships or from doing our best work.

Spiritual practice restores us and enhances our ability to take in what we need for health and wholeness. In whatever way we find effective, it’s important to keep up with those practices that cleanse the filter. It changes our way of being in the world, and that changes the world.

What helps you to cleanse the filter?

If you’d like to read more, I’ve posted a reflection on the recent talk by Diane Ackerman as part of the Kentucky Women Writers Conference over at the KaBooM Writers Notebook. It’s called Paying Attention, and offers a look at one way of changing filters by closely observing the natural world.

In the Meantime…or Late Summer

August, for me, is the month before things really get started. Heavy with the accumulated heat of the season, it flattens all ambition. Even as the long days grow shorter, with summer slipping away, there is no energy to spare.

My daughter returns to college soon; life is about to change. Soon it will be time to take on new projects, but not quite yet. If there was ever a waiting time to fill, August is it.

What to do in the meantime? Tomatoes ripen faster than we can eat them, the urgent culmination of the season’s growth. The basil desperately tries to go to seed, anticipating the first frost that still seems far away to me. Summer wanes, yet for the moment I’m not ready to move forward.

I’ve been looking around at what needs to be done, giving the attention that’s harder to bring when I’m in the midst of things. I’ve culled cookbooks and recipe files; kept appointments with the vet, the dentist, the rug cleaners; read through magazines I’ve been saving; cleaned out the refrigerator.

In the meantime is valuable in its own way. A time of gathering energy, of clearing a path through the clutter of to-do lists. It’s a particular kind of waiting, like emptying the dishwasher while the tea steeps, or finding a good read while watching for a friend at a bookstore. It’s a way of attending, not “killing” time but filling it.

John Lennon reminded us that life is what happens while we’re making other plans. Our goals and hopes and plans are important, but so is the life we live on the way to attaining them, in the meantime. It’s good to remember that, because sometimes life surprises us with what is substantial and what isn’t. The things that look solid as a stone wall can crumble, and what may seem ephemeral as a delicate weed can endure among the rubble.

Soon and suddenly, we’re pulled into the forward momentum of September. It happens so fast I’m in it almost before I see it coming. This year August has cooled down early here, with the autumnal weather bringing a corresponding change of pace for me. Those languid days seem slow, but they pass quickly by. September will soon be upon us.

What do you do in the meantime?

Seeing Those We Meet as an Expression of the Divine

A friend recently shared with me her sense that everyone we meet is an expression of the divine. Maybe that’s what is implied in saying that we’re all children of God, but her way of stating it captured my attention.

A day later I was on a plane for New York City, and her words remained with me while I was traveling. As other passengers claimed their seats, I considered the greater connection we shared. In that light, the aircraft seemed a container of sacred space.

In the city, among rivers of pedestrians filling the sidewalks, the press of engines and car horns through the streets, and the whoosh of full subway cars gliding by, I moved in close proximity to thousands of other people in a single day. So many souls; I was one among many. It changes everything to remember that each one is a way of seeing God. When the light changed at the street corner, I joined the wave of people washing across the avenue, part of the ocean of humanity in that city, upon this earth.

Thinking of other people as expressions of the divine lets everyone in. It shows that adopting tunnel vision regarding what I want is to choose a kind of blindness. All these people line the walls of that tunnel, each with their own ways of manifesting life. Each one matters. When I open my eyes, I see that every place where our lives intersect is holy.

Yet sometimes it’s too much, letting in all that humanity. Their energy clashes. Their oblivion is painful. They make such a mess, leaving chaos behind wherever they go. Like the trash blown up against the curb early on Sunday morning. Like the young woman dropping a gum wrapper on the stairs of the subway in front of the old man sweeping up and spitting a round of Spanish in response. There are reasons why we block out the press of life around us.

But if people are the diverse expressions of a divine commonality, we inherit a connection to all of them. Other people are the sea we’re moving through, whether we’re fighting the water or swimming in it. We, too, make up this sea of life. We’re part of a miraculously varied and endlessly energetic creation. The diversity we see out there is within us as well, and the expression we give to it makes us an integral part of the whole.

We really are all in this together. Why is it hard to learn a truth so old and so familiar?

Breathing a Prayer

Part 1 in a series on Breath Prayers

Breath means life, an association so close that breath itself feels sacred. Watching the gentle rise and fall of a loved one’s chest, smelling the sweet breath of a baby, hearing the labored sound of a struggle to breathe—all are deeply felt experiences.

Breath also holds power. It carries the voice, in speech and song, into the world. A wind instrument filled by the breath becomes an extension of the body, magnifying its expression. We move into life by the strength of our breath.

Breath is an intimate mystery, distinctly personal yet not of our doing. Becoming aware of my breath connects me to what is within and what is beyond. In this way, breathing is connected to prayer. Breath also carries the prayers we voice. So it’s only natural that we have many traditions of praying in rhythm with the breath. The flow of air, in and out, is an ever-present stream of life and energy. Watching it, like observing a flowing river, helps focus and soothe the mind.

A breath prayer can be wordless. One possibility is to breathe in health and well-being, and to let go of dis-ease while breathing out. Another way to pray a wordless breath prayer is to focus on breathing in God’s love and care for me, then breathing out that love and care to the people around me and to all of creation. Both inhale and exhale, receiving and giving love, are essential; they complete each other.

These simple, rhythmic prayers are good to take along into the world. Repetition of a brief prayer that touches the heart can change how I see other people, my circumstances, and myself. It offers calmness in the midst of chaos. It offers some comfort when life is difficult. I can practice a breath prayer when walking or washing dishes, while waiting for a traffic light to change or a computer to reboot.

As I practice a breath prayer, it greets me of its own accord when I become quiet, or sometimes when I most need it. A breath prayer is a reminder that God is present. The prayer, and the presence, are available in every moment.

Is there a wordless prayer that you might want to pray with your breath?

You might also be interested in Part 2, Simple Prayers that Fit our Lives or Part 3, Praying the Psalms.

Stretching Gently

You probably know how it feels to wake up with a crick in your neck. That happened to me a few mornings ago, a ghost of which remains when I turn my head to the left. I wonder how it’s possible to be in a position that does me harm and yet sleep through it. I could have avoided pain if my body had recognized the strain and awakened me with a complaint. But apparently I was too tired to notice, and remained in a contorted position until the damage was done.

This makes me keenly aware that discomfort helps keep us from harm. Restlessness is a message that we’ve held the same posture for too long. When visited by dissatisfaction and an urge to try something new, we’re goaded into making the changes we need.

These stirrings, even if unwelcome, are the energy of the soul pushing us forward. They are the whispers of God beckoning us toward the life we’re called to live, or at least to a healthier place. But exhaustion can block the message, and fear can convince us to ignore it. They tell us it’s not the right time to make a change, and sometimes they have legitimate reasons.

But we have to sort through the reflexive warnings and determine how we can stretch. And when they’ve outlived their usefulness and we’re fed up with being depleted or afraid, restlessness can overpower even those elemental emotions. The need to grow is as legitimate as the need for shelter and rest.

Though I wasn’t conscious of it, I got myself into the predicament of developing this crick. I have a new appreciation of how the neck operates, how often it’s called into use, how easily and naturally it turns and bends. And now I’m trying to guard its health. I turn my head gently and stretch the neck carefully, even though it hurts. I need to use those muscles, but carefully. Every time I stretch it gets a little easier. I expect that in a few days I’ll be able to enjoy the freedom of movement I took for granted just a few days ago.

Is there something your body is telling you?

Beyond Personal Growth: Trusting the Mystery of Transformation

It took a long time to make much progress through John O’Donohue’s Anam Ċara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom. I mean that in the best of ways. The Gaelic term, anam ċara is literally “soul friend,” and if books can be friends, this is such a one. Most pages hold something rich enough to send me off thinking about it for a while. I’ve kept returning through about two-thirds of it now, and today this is the passage on my mind:

Spirituality is the art of transfiguration. We should not force ourselves to change by hammering our lives into any pre-determined shape. We do not need to operate according to the idea of a predetermined program or plan for our lives. Rather, we need to practice a new art of attention to the inner rhythm of our days and lives. This attention brings a new awareness of our own human and divine presence.

A willingness to grow is a good thing, but the programs and plans available to encourage our development are overwhelming. Bookstore shelves teem with personal growth books, religious and secular, as if we can’t stop flagellating ourselves with agendas for self-improvement. And yes, I’m familiar with these store displays because I’m irresistibly drawn to them. It’s hard to pass up some bit of wisdom that will make me more capable, more fulfilled, more deserving. When an article promises to share Five Steps to Happiness, I can’t help but read it.

I want to grow, but I’d prefer to do it without all the messy uncertainty and annoying unpredictability of not knowing the way. I would love to learn what to do and just do it. But O’Donohue spells out what’s lacking in such a prescribed approach:

It is far more creative to work with the idea of mindfulness rather than the idea of will. Too often people try to change their lives using the will as a kind of hammer to beat their life into proper shape. The intellect identifies the goal of the program, and the will accordingly forces the life into that shape. This way of approaching the sacredness of one’s own presence is externalist and violent. It brings you falsely outside yourself, and you can spend years lost in the wilderness of your own mechanical, spiritual programs. You can perish in a famine of your own making.

Creating, growing, transforming—these are all mysterious processes. They happen underground, in the depths, in the dark. Paying attention while a process unfolds that we can neither control nor rush is a counter-cultural way of life. It can be hard to learn and harder to trust.

But if we lose faith and limit ourselves to the kind of processes we can control, we banish ourselves to the wilderness O’Donohue describes. Will power is hard work, and doesn’t make for a very joyful life. Maybe it’s trust power I need to work on.

What kind of power keeps you moving forward?