I Hate Richard Gere

I have a deep and abiding hatred of Richard Gere.

It started the day I got stuck watching that terrible movie, where he’s in a beach house on the coast, and there’s some woman, so it gets all romance-y, but builds no interesting tension, and I’m stuck wishing it would please God turn into a horror movie so they can both die a bloody death when they get eaten by sharks that bypassed 6,000,000 years of evolution and grew legs just so they could walk out of the ocean and kill Richard Gere and put those of us watching the movie out of our misery.

Nights in Rodanthe? Did anyone I know actually like that movie? (Maybe you shouldn’t answer that. I might not be friends with you anymore if the answer is yes).

But my hatred of Richard Gere goes beyond this crap-ass movie. I hate him because I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE SWOON OVER HIM. He is not sexy. He’s a total douche in Pretty Woman – asshole businessman hires escort and saves her by falling in love. Ick.

—

I should be able to live a peaceful, Richard Gere-free life. It shouldn’t be that hard. I avoid his movies. I don’t click on gossip articles about him.

The damn problem is that he’s a Buddhist. He’s even FAMOUS for being a Buddhist. And I work for a Buddhist organization. We get the occasional book to review, “with foreword by Richard Gere!” Gah! Get out of my life, Richard Gere!

The last time we got one of these books showcasing Richard Gere, I went on an epic rant in front of one of my co-workers. The evolution-bypassing sharks are a mere glimpse at the depth of hatred I spewed that day. She tried to convince me that he was the hotness in An Officer and a Gentleman. Given my hatred of Richard Gere, I don’t think it’s wise to try to watch it and find out if I agree. People could get injured. Sharks could bypass evolution and grow legs.

—

The universe played a funny one on me this week when I finally set up my first online dating profile.

One of the first messages I got from an interested suitor:

I really like your profile very smart and funny
I did know there was such a thing as a radical Buddhist is Richard Gere one?

Bwahahahaha!

I’m trying to decide whether or not to respond to the potential suitor. If I do, I think I’ll just send him a link to this blog post.

Diving Deep

New insights on what I’m up to right now!

I’m diving in deeper with the things that brought me to the Bay Area – Buddhism, activism, and hanging out with queer folks. I’m getting more precise about exactly what I do and don’t want to be doing, who I want and don’t want to be hanging out with, how I want and don’t want to be doing it.

(Precision isn’t exactly a new thing in my world. But I’m diving deeper into precision).

 

 

 

 

 

Fig. 1: My post-it note reminder to seek precision while I’m diving in to explore things!

What does this look like specifically with this month’s goals?

1. Practice the energy of destruction

Destruction is an important part of precision. I have to be willing to cut away what’s not right to focus on what is right.

I cancelled some plans with folks – things I thought I would enjoy doing, but am realizing are not precisely what I want. I decided I would rather spend the evening on my own, reading and journaling, then doing something with others that wasn’t precisely right.

My initial project – fixing my iTunes library that is an organized mess – had a major hiccup when I deleted most of my library accidentally. Thank goddess for back up!

Part of getting comfortable with destroyer energy is getting comfortable with that hiccup of, “OMG, I totally just screwed that up.” To stay calm and present and able to look at options for remedying the situation.

I’m glad to say the music is back (Ani DiFranco! Aimee Mann!), but I’m feeling cautious about jumping back in to deleting music. There’s a lot more confusion about multiple folders than I thought. It’s turning into a project that needs thought about, not just one I can do mindlessly.

I do think the next steps are to keep deleting the songs I know are duplicates. That feels like it will keep the energy for this moving.

2. Play with online dating

So, I found a couple of people I’m interested in messaging. But I haven’t finished my profile yet! How will they evaluate me if my profile is incomplete?

In the meantime, I’ve just left tabs open with their profiles. It feels like so many steps to message them!

1. Finish my profile
2. Worry over and edit my profile some more
3. Re-read their profile 429 times
4. Draft a message to them
5. Send it to 3 friends, asking “Would you want to meet me if you only read this message?”
6. Edit my profile some more
7. Edit the message some more
8. Get drunk and finally hit send

I have to remember that I will be more interesting than this d00d, who just wrote me, “hi im horny.”

Oy, welcome to online dating.

3. Do what I love at work

I am not sure that happened this week. I put some fun projects near the top of my list, but they got sideswiped by meetings and emails and a push for fundraising.

I did some interest writing on Tuesday. While at the beach, trying not to work. Part of my dilemma is that I want to do more than I’m actually getting paid for.

Part of this is resolved by my decision to dive deep, including into Buddhism & activism. I’ve decided not to count my work hours so closely, to not stress out so much about keeping things to 30 hours per week. To think of my pay as a stipend, and do what work I can and want to during the week. To track my work loosely, so I know how much I’m working and to make sure I’m at least working 30 hours. But to embrace the work as all part of what I love.

I think in that, there will also be precision about what I don’t love, and either ending or changing it.

4. Play with incorporating other activities

I noticed this week that I have the most ease in having a balanced life when I’m busy.  This week, I have been writing blog posts, getting to dance class, reading, getting outside a lot. Meditation has been part of the week too. And it’s felt rather easy instead of strained.

Getting the Hang of Level Two

This month’s goals looked different than I expected. I rewrote January’s goals, wanting to deepen into them. I got what I needed, even if I didn’t exactly achieve these goals.

1. Meditate for 30 minutes every day. Including (and especially) while on vacation with my family.

While I found it hard to maintain meditation while on vacation, I meditated two more times than I normally would have. Progress.

Even more exciting was how easy it felt to return to meditation after I got home. I’ve meditated every day, a minimum of 15 minutes, and 30 minutes or more most days.

I’m finding it hard to talk to people about how easy meditation feels right now. For folks who are struggling with meditation, it touches their pain at how hard daily practice can be. People who have been meditating daily for ages don’t remember when their practice solidified. I’m so excited about this, and it’s hard not to easily talk to people about it.

2. Use the even greater cuts at work to focus on what is absolutely essential.

At my mid-month check-in, I changed this to “How do I relate to work in a way that is sustainable?”

In addition to meditation, I also started some daily practices to help with entering work mindfully, and finishing the day by releasing it. Some combination of these practices are allowing me to interact with my work in a different way. While the work is still impossibly hard, I feel a lot more spaciousness around it.

I review these phrases daily:

• I forgive myself for any pain and suffering I have caused myself or others due to my own ignorance and confusion.
• I ask forgiveness from all those whose pain and suffering I have caused due to my ignorance and confusion.
• May I show kindness and patience for the world by being kind and patient with myself.
• May I show love for the world by loving myself, just as I am.
• May I learn from any mistakes I made today, and use what I have learned to benefit all beings.

3. Ask (everyone) for help.

I am getting a lot of help. It’s sometimes hard to fully take it in, as I am not getting help from some key places where I am expecting it. It’s easy to get sucked into the stories of pain that come up when I’m told help is coming and it doesn’t appear.

But that’s not all of what’s happening. There’s a lot of help coming from unexpected places. And there’s even more help available, if I just ask for it.

I’m noticing I feel a lot more ease in asking for help, in identifying who to ask for help, and taking it in. I think it’s about time to drop this story that I’m bad at asking for help.

In the spirit of receiving for help, I’m looking for a few good folks to step up as my posse in my latest journey.

4. Be Nourished By Everything

In my daily practices for entering and exiting work, I start the day with five things I’m grateful for and end the day with five things I have learned.

Naming the small, beautiful things in life reminds me to be nourished by all that is good in my world. Framing the hard parts as lessons learned helps me remember how fucking up nourishes me too.

If Only All of Life was Apples to Apples

In July, I started sharing my Sunday ritual of monthly goal setting and the weekly or mid-month check-ins. I have a bad habit of forgetting how much change happens over the course of a month, so this check-in helps me remember to celebrate all that I do!

OCTOBER Goals

1. Clear priorities for political campaigning

It’s the final whirlwind month before the November 2nd election. I’m terrified that crazy tea party candidates like Ken Buck will be elected here in Colorado. But I barely have time to do more than post on Facebook about how Ken Buck must be defeated. I’m swamped with organizing against 60-61-101, a trio of ballot initiatives that would devastate Colorado. More jobs lost on top of those lost in the recession, the state would take over control over local schools, and we wouldn’t be able to build basic things like roads, bridges, or state buildings. Anyone reasonable (read: anyone not in the tea party) thinks these are a terrible idea. Unfortunately, the tea party are energized and fired up and ready to vote. The rest of us are a tad bit apathetic.

So it’s been hard to set boundaries around the political organizing. Because OMG. What if our state and country are taken over by radical extremists? It’s freaking me out. I’m doing a good job at least of setting priorities for the work that needs to be done, and I took all of Friday off because I was burnt after a week of long days and nights. Well, most of Friday off because I was incensed to come home to a Vote Yes mailer, paid for by the “nonprofit” group Active Citizens Together, a known front for Douglas Bruce to hide campaign expenditures from the public. GAH!

Noticings for the next time I’m this engaged in a political campaign: the final weeks require a lot of quick response time. Make sure to leave time for that, and to develop agreements with your team beforehand about how to make quick decisions about how to respond to crazy mailers like this one.

2. Apply for fantastic jobs in San Francisco

I applied for a dream job with Spirit Rock Meditation Center. There is no timeline listed on the announcement, but it’s still up so I’m going to assume that means they are still in the accepting applications stage of the game. I’m also in conversations with another Bay Area nonprofit about providing some help to them.

I’m occasionally scanning the job ads, but only applying to the perfect jobs at this point.

3. Post some of the great writing I’ve been doing on the blogs

Yes! This week, watch Rooting Nonprofits for a series on Buddhism and nonprofit management. I wrote SO MUCH for this job application at Spirit Rock that had to be cut down to a cover letter. So the cuts are going up on the blog instead! I’m posting segments of an essay I wrote that helped me flesh out how my experience led to my philosophy of leadership.

The process was a good lesson in how hard I have to work to write what I want to go on my other blog. It’s a lot of rounds of editing and re-editing. But I have hope for more writing over there now that the dam has broken again!

4. Maintain the things that sustain me – meditation, eating well, an organized house, and time with friends

Gorgeous hikes to enjoy Colorado’s fall colors. No pictures sadly, I was just out enjoying myself. I struggled with eating well – too many 5-8pm meetings. I need to remember to have more quick food available when that schedule is my life. There was just no time to cook. I’m enjoying the Essential Dharma class, and have turned my house into something manageable again. I’m sure it will be a wreck by Tuesday.

Apples to Apples is the best game ever. Pure giggles & laughter.

May You Live With Ease

Ease at expressing just what is there.

Ease at naming your bare experience before it gets all wrapped up in a story.

Ease at knowing without a doubt the next right thing.

Ease in the transitions.

Ease with the hard parts of life – pain, loss, disgrace.

Ease of enjoying the good parts of life – happiness, gain, joy.

May you live your life with ease.

How do You Celebrate Independence?

It’s Independence Day here in the United States, a holiday usually celebrated with fireworks & beer, family & friends, parades & barbecues. American flags waving, I keep expecting people to start a “USA! USA!” chant. I love getting together with great people on this day, but I’m never quite comfortable celebrating independence in a strongly pro-America way.

Instead, what if we worked on projects that helped us develop our personal independence? Our business plans, our investment strategies, healing old traumas, or whatever is holding us back from living the great life we dream about?

What if we supported the struggles of Burma for independence from military rule, or campaigned for our nation’s independence from oil?

What if we celebrated Interdependence Day, and honored our connections with each other and our world?

Pain for the World

In April, I attended a retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center on Transforming Distressing States. Joanna Macy was one of the teachers, and is an amazing feminist Buddhist ecophilosopher, who wrote World as Lover, World as Self.

One of the most profound shifts for me on this retreat was Joanna’s revelation about the pain we feel for the world that we totally repress. BP’s oil spill destroying the Gulf, thousands (or millions) of people dying in multiple never-ending wars, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict about to blow, Arizona getting more racist by the minute, and whatever else is going on that I don’t know about because I can’t even stand to read the news. Every new piece of information is like a blow that hits and retraumatizes that wounded, vulnerable part of me – it’s a wonder I can even get out of bed.

Because we believe that we have a separate individual self, we feel the pain for the world and assume it’s all OUR pain. Our individualistic culture tells us to do this, and look how much it helps keep us from fighting the larger corporate and political powers that are creating all this pain. While psychotherapy is generally awesome, it can contribute to this as well – when we talk about our terror over how the land and water is being raped and pillaged by masculine corporate interests, our therapist redirects us to talk about our “real” terror of our own bodies being raped and pillaged. As if there’s no “real” terror to be had over the destruction of our environment.

I’m certainly not minimizing or denying the reality of the pain and terror of our own bodies being brutally violated. But what if they BOTH get to be real? That when the pain & terror comes up, we can name it as about BOTH our own violation and the violation of our world? What if we flipped the therapist’s script, and when our trauma came up, we honored it AND asked “What other trauma is going on in the world that feels like this same pattern of individual trauma that shows up in my life?” And then we honored that too. For me it’s nearly impossible for me to tease out how much is mine vs. how much is the world’s … because it’s really all the same trauma at some level. My trauma ripples out and diminishes the rest of the world, and the world’s trauma ripples out and diminishes my ability to live.

I’ve found it immensely helpful to understand why I’m feeling overwhelmed, triggered, and ready to just shut down – there’s a lot of shit going down and it IS overwhelming and triggering to my system. A little Breathing Through practice is in order – just breathe it all in, and breathe it all back out. No need to transform it, and certainly no need to hang on to it. Open to let it in, and breathe it right back out.

Check-in: 2010.5

An almost mid-year check-in for my version of New Year’s Resolutions.

In the spirit of New Year’s Resolutions: What are you willing to fail at this year? For me:

• Weekly blog posts
• A daily meditation practice
• Asking for too much time off of work
• Working less, making more

The theme of the year? Consistently showing up for myself.

Weekly blog posts: I’m successfully failing at this, writing just 5 posts since the New Year on this blog and 2 on Rooting Nonprofits. I’ll appreciate that I’ve written at least a few things, since my judgmental memory thought I hadn’t written a single thing. And I’ll appreciate that I’ve mostly been kind to myself about not blogging regularly. I’m keeping pretty busy these days.

A daily meditation practice: I’m successfully succeeding at this one. A meditation retreat at Spirit Rock this April helped me settle my practice into 15 minutes a day. I miss a few days here and there, but I feel really solid about this and if I miss 2 days in a row I start jonesing for some time on the cushion.

Asking for too much time off of work: I’m successfully floundering around in this one. The good girl in me doesn’t want to push the boundaries too far. I don’t want to deal with the fall out of having someone react to how much time I’m taking off. But seeing that this was something I intentionally wanted to push the boundaries on, as a practice in failing and seeing just how much leeway exists in a job, I’m tempted to push the boundaries a little farther on this one.

Working less, making more: I’m both succeeding and failing at this one. I’m earning a higher hourly wage than I have the rest of my life, which is allowing me to only work part time. But that hasn’t really changed since I set this intention at the beginning of the year. I need to ramp it up even more … time to negotiate a raise!

Consistently showing up for myself: It’s not quantifiable, but I think I’m succeeding at this more than I ever have. I’m pretty keyed in to my needs and focused on getting them met. I love the brain trick of being a servant to the sovereign King, as in “Queen Dawn is hungry and must eat soon. Be sure it’s the freshest, most delectable food available. It’s the Queen!” Might as well use it to my advantage that it’s easier to take care of “others” than it is to take care of “myself”!

Overall: A good mix of success & failure. If I was rocking everything, I probably didn’t stretch my goals high enough! Especially since my overarching goal was to practice more failure. Dance of Shiva – yoga for the brain – has also been a stellar practice in failing miserably in an effort to grow and rewire my brain.

Distracting Food

I set an intention this month to relish pleasure in my life, and thus renounce mindless pleasure seeking. The primary place I struggle with this is eating food. I love good food, but so seldom allow myself to really enjoy it. I often sit down to eat with a television program or a book, distracting my mind with other pleasures rather than focusing on the pleasure at hand. It’s a long-standing habit, and is related to my use of food to numb out my feelings. Adding other distractions to the food allows me to feel even more numb and distracted, which helps me feel safe and less overwhelmed.

I made a small batch of no-bake cookies last night, one of my favorite foods from childhood. For every cookie, I’ve sat down specifically to enjoy the cookie. I look at it closely, and sometimes smell it to add to my anticipation. I take that first bite and let the oatmeal roll around in my mouth so I can taste the mixture of chocolate and almond butter that permeates the cookies. They are small cookies, perfect for finishing in three bites before I get distracted from the task of tasting. Even just sitting with the taste of those cookies for a few seconds feels like an eternity. Unfortunately, it’s not in a way that is an eternity of pleasure. It’s more a terror in staying in the present moment, a desire to check out as soon as I can, a worry that if I stop being able to check out with cookies, I’ll stop being able to check out when life is just too overwhelming.

Buddhist Beginnings

I believe that I first started to practice Buddhism on a fall afternoon in Athens, Georgia in 2003. While I had taken a course on Buddhism in college in the late 90s, it had remained a purely intellectual pursuit. Early in 2003, I started going to Al-Anon meetings, as my partner at the time had become an alcoholic before my eyes. I’d resisted going for months, terrified of going to a meeting that talked about God when I was living in the middle of the Bible Belt. Once I was desperate enough to go anyway, I met other people searching for a spiritual path when all the traditional paths had failed them. One friend I met there decided to pack up her home and go to India for a few months. I offered to help her pack, because I’d appreciated her insight and was sad I was not going to be interacting with her for months.

While at her home, she gave me Pema Chodron’s book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Shambhala Classics). I knew this was a book I needed to know intimately when I turned to page 1 and read the first chapter quotation: “Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” All I felt during this time was fear: fear that he would leave, even greater fear that he would stay; fear that I would do the wrong thing, fear of what would happen if I did the right thing; fear of whether he would survive without me propping him up, fear of whether I would survive a life of propping him up.

So I read and read, and learned about nonattachment, compassion, and just being with the feelings that were swirling in me. I most remember during that time feeling a strong desire to act, to fix things, to just do something, but finding the courage to do nothing. As Pema Chodron says directly, “Usually we feel that there’s a large problem and we have to fix it. The instruction is to stop. Do something unfamiliar. Do anything besides rushing off in the same old direction, up to the same old tricks” (p. 137). My old tricks had got me in a pretty miserable place, so I was willing to try something else, anything else. Sometimes the gift of suffering is that our desperation makes us try something new.

—

The first in the “What is Practice?” series.