Tag: Acceptance

Posted on

The best way out is always through

Resilient tree growing through a fence
A resilient tree shows us the way through

Resilience. That’s what comes to mind each day as I pass this tree on my walks around the neighbourhood. Resilience in the face of suffering. Perseverance in the midst of pain. 

You might have seen this unusual tree in the photos I shared on Instagram last week as we saw yet another stay-at-home order announced. I offered it as a reminder that we have within us the strength to overcome whatever challenges stand in our way, to make it through to the other side – we need only find a way to connect to it.

Sometimes the challenges we encounter are of our own making, and sometimes they’re beyond our control, arriving seemingly out of nowhere – like this fence. We could be going about our business, this tree was simply growing in the forest, and suddenly something stops us in our tracks. To be honest, I’ve found myself in that very situation in recent months: stopped in my tracks by unexpected health problems. In the face of challenge, in the face of pain and suffering, how do we connect with our inner strength and resilience and harness its power to guide us safely through?

For me, this connection comes through mindfulness, which of course, can take many shapes and forms. Asana and pranayama, the postures and breathwork of yoga, help me release tension and create space in body and mind so that I can open my awareness to signals arising within. Meditation deepens my practice of svadhyaya (self-study) and santosha (contentment) as I observe, notice, embrace my experience without judgment or attachment, with lovingkindness and compassion. I invite mindfulness into my favourite everyday activities – gardening, baking, walking in nature. I give thanks for the many blessings in my life, without glossing over the fact that I’ve lost my job, that I’m struggling with health issues, that I’m tired of being stuck at home in lockdown. I remind myself of the vital importance of self-love, self-care, self-compassion, and self-acceptance. Connecting to the present moment through these practices fosters in me a deeper connection to myself, a greater awareness of who I am beneath all the mental busyness, beneath the self-doubt, the pain, the expectations and uncertainties.

In his poem A Servant to Servants, Robert Frost wrote that “the best way out is always through” and I believe that’s just what mindfulness teaches us. We learn to welcome the present moment exactly as it is – its joy and its pain, its triumph and its sorrow. We learn to practice acceptance of what is rather than fear of what might be or regret for what was. We take it day by day, moment by moment, breath by breath. We make our way through the challenges, fueled by strength and resilience we’ve cultivated within, and like this extraordinary tree, we keep reaching our branches to the sky.

Tree branches reaching to the sky
Branches reaching to the sky
Posted on

Listening deeply

Listening to nature in Algonquin Park

It’s been a while since I shared my thoughts with you in this space – apologies for my absence! These are strange times. Although most often what I’ve been feeling is grateful – grateful that I’m healthy and so is my family, grateful that I have a roof over my head, grateful that my husband is still working when so many have lost their jobs – I have experienced a range of other emotions over the last few months. Anxiety. Frustration. Uncertainty. Disappointment. Boredom. Stir-craziness (perhaps that’s not really an emotion…). I’ve had insomnia. I’ve felt my energy levels wax and wane. However, perhaps more important than the particular range of feelings and emotions experienced is the fact that I’ve listened deeply to what my body has been telling me each step along the way, and I’ve tried to respond with kindness, compassion and acceptance. At the end of the day, that’s all we can do. Change is inevitable. Nothing is certain. We have this very moment in which we find ourselves and we can choose to befriend it and experience it fully, or we can struggle against the inevitable and lose out on the simple joys that this moment might bring.

More and more I recognise the importance of listening deeply within. The answers we seek usually exist somewhere inside of us, we need only be open to what our inner wisdom has to share. I’ve heard quite a number of people observe that these months of lockdown and restrictions have afforded them a rare opportunity to slow down and take stock. Most of the time we focus our attention outside of ourselves, sometimes because that’s what’s required – when we’re at work, caring for others, driving a car – and sometimes because it’s easier to distract ourselves with the external to avoid dealing with the tough questions that might come up when we look within. As our activities have been necessarily restricted to protect our health and the health of our community, we’ve found ourselves with fewer external time demands and more opportunities to reflect on what really matters.

Beyond the devastating loss of life the world is grappling with each day, I’ve been saddened by the less visible casualties as well – seeing small businesses go under, people losing their homes and their livelihoods, being cast into an uncertain future. I’ve also been deeply touched as I read about random acts of kindness, small and large – a reminder that human beings are inherently good, and that a crisis can bring out the best in us. In my personal experience over these last months, I’ve seen a bit of the best and the worst coming out in people, organisations and institutions around me. The actions of those in the ‘worst’ category have enabled me to make healthier decisions about whom I trust and support in the future, while those in the ‘best’ have reinforced my trust in them and strengthened my commitment moving forward. As you look back over the year so far, what has warmed your heart in humanity, and what has given you pause and perhaps made you question or re-evaluate something about yourself and your life?

It’s good to ask ourselves tough questions. It’s good to evaluate our habits and behaviours, our beliefs and expectations. We’re not static beings – we are constantly changing and evolving, learning and unlearning, exploring and discovering new things about ourselves and the world around us. If we pay attention, if we remain open to all of these new teachings and experiences, we can then take what we’ve learned and allow it to shape the way we grow. It can make us stronger and more resilient in the face of challenge; it can make us kinder and more compassionate in the face of suffering and injustice; it can bring out the very best in us, our innate goodness and wisdom, to lead us humbly forward on the uncertain path ahead.

Posted on

Pulling weeds & planting flowers

Spring blossoms

There is a Sufi story I have shared in class several times over the years, its author unknown. It’s called Mullah Nasrin and the Dandelions, and it goes like this:

One day a man named Mullah Nasrin decided to take up gardening. He loved flowers and vegetables and he became an adept gardener. But when his garden became plagued with dandelions, Mullah became more and more upset. Finally he couldn’t take it anymore. He travelled to the palace of the king and consulted the king’s own personal gardener. The royal gardener gave Mullah instructions on how to get rid of the dandelions. Mullah returned home full of enthusiasm and followed the instructions perfectly. But still the dandelions returned. Really angry now, Mullah returned to the king’s palace and found the royal gardener. “You’re a fraud!” he hollered. “Your remedy was no better than the rest! What else can I do about these dandelions?” The royal gardener looked thoughtful and stroked his chin. Finally he said softly, “Mullah Nasrin, there’s only one thing to do. You must learn to love dandelions.“

In mindfulness practice, we are constant gardeners, tending the landscapes of mind, body and spirit. Yoga teaches us the merits of self-study, Svadhyaya, deepening our awareness to reveal the nature of our true Self. When we take the time to observe things like physical, mental and emotional patterns in daily life, we might notice habits, biases, judgments, or assumptions that are shaped by past experience but no longer reflect who we are in this moment. Once we become aware of these old patterns that no longer serve us, we can choose to release them – to pull these weeds from our garden and make space for new plants to flourish.

Neuropsychologist and meditation teacher Rick Hanson speaks often of our ability to change the way our minds work by attending to our thoughts and experiences (check out his fascinating book, Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love & Wisdom). As human beings, we have a negativity bias that is built into us as a survival mechanism. We learn from our past experiences, and those that caused us physical or emotional harm influence the way we perceive and respond to similar situations in the future. To balance this negativity bias and give positivity a chance to take root, Dr. Hanson advises us to take the time to fully embrace positive experiences, allowing them to be absorbed into our awareness to create a lasting effect over time. In an excellent TEDx talk several years ago, he offered a simple exercise to illustrate this practice: recall a positive experience (e.g., the love of a friend/partner/child/pet), sit with that experience for a short time to enhance its effects (e.g., the warm glow you feel inside as you think about the person), and let those effects be absorbed by the mind and body. The more we allow ourselves to fully experience positive thoughts and emotions, the less room there is in our mental chatter for negativity and distress.

Now, what about Mullah Nasrin and his dandelions? Dr. Hanson might say that Mullah could call upon the warm glow he feels when he looks at his beautiful garden and try to associate that same warm feeling with the dandelions. When negativity arises, this technique does not ask us to push it away or deny it; rather, we infuse the negative with positive, we use the positive experience as an antidote to help release us from the suffering caused by the negative one. This could be an effective tool for addressing difficult or traumatic experiences from the past that are creating unhealthy or unhelpful patterns in our thoughts and actions today.

On the other hand, yoga has another teaching that Mullah Nasrin might find helpful: Santosha. Through the practice of Santosha we find contentment and acceptance, embracing whatever arises in our experience. Struggling against the reality of our experience can only lead to suffering – so instead let’s swim with the tide, let’s welcome each moment, each thought, each emotion and sensation as if we had invited it. Open your heart and your mind. Be curious. Explore. Take the time to notice the blessings and simple pleasures in your life and let the joy they bring you fill your vessel to overflowing. Maybe the joy will displace some deeply rooted weeds in your garden, making space for beautiful new flowers to grow. Or maybe, you’ll simply learn to love your dandelions.

Posted on

Live the questions


“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

A friend shared an article with me recently that included this quote.  It is one that gives me pause every time I read it, and this time in particular it resonated deeply. Over the past few months, I have written often about mindfulness, its myriad benefits and also its challenges. Given the latter, some might say that true mindfulness is not for the faint of heart! When we embark upon the journey of mindfulness practice, we seek to embody certain attitudes that guide the way we respond to what arises within us and in the world around us, moment by moment. Among the most challenging of these attitudes can be Patience and Acceptance – which is exactly what Rilke asks of us in this beautiful passage.

The more we practice, the more familiar we become with two important realities: uncertainty and impermanence. Nothing is guaranteed, and nothing that arises will remain exactly the same for any length of time. Put another way, for all the beauty and possibility that lies in our hopes and dreams, we must acknowledge that we can never truly know what is coming until it is here, and the only certainty we can rely upon is that everything in our life will inevitably change. How then do we continue to hope and dream and imagine in the face of this reality? We learn to embrace the very things that challenge us and welcome them as opportunities to learn and explore – ourselves, each other, the world we live in.

I think it is safe to say that we have all experienced impatience at some point in our life. It can be as simple as the impatience of waiting for a delayed flight, an appointment with someone who is running behind, a traffic jam that makes you late for an important event.  What do all of these things have in common? They are external circumstances that have caused us frustration or inconvenience – and they are all beyond our immediate control.  This is where mindfulness can step in, providing a refuge from our frustration and an antidote to the spiraling thoughts that can easily lead us down a path to anger or fear or impulsive reactions.  When we notice ourselves becoming impatient and annoyed, it can act as a mindful reminder to acknowledge what is and is not within our control, and to accept what we cannot change.  As always, this is easier said than done, but then that is why we call it a practice – we are practicing these skills, honing our abilities, cultivating them like seedlings planted in our garden.

It takes time to build a deep and abiding mindfulness practice – perhaps a lifetime. A vital part of this journey is to be patient as we encounter challenges and disappointments, as we look to the horizon for answers and find only questions. If we can accept that change is inevitable and the future will always remain unknown to us, perhaps we will find a sense of peace that allows us to truly inhabit the present moment and embrace whatever it may bring – to love the questions and to live them fully, right here and now.