Cleaning House, part 2

Posted on October 25, 2012 by circleofpractice

The essence of practice is repetition.

I suspect what separates the well ordered house from the clean house, and the clean house from the messy house is the regularity and quality of repetition. What do I mean by that?

In one of those disgusting houses I mentioned yesterday, there is no repetition: the countertops don’t get scrubbed, the clutter doesn’t get picked up, and the floors don’t get vacuumed. Hence the foodstuffs laminated to the countertop, the buried floors, and the accumulation of filth and odors.

On the other hand, we can’t do everything that needs to be done every day; there isn’t enough time, and we have other things to do.

Certain things I feel need to be done every day: the kitchen needs to be cleaned, the clutter needs to be picked up, the mail processed, and laundry needs to be kept moving. I feel like I’m reasonably competent at these things, though I tend to get behind on the mail.

Other practices don’t need to be done every day, but probably at least once a week: vacuuming floors, cleaning bathrooms, etc.

What I really struggle with are those activities that need to be done only occasionally: organizing the basement, washing the windows, cleaning the garage, etc.

The problem for me seems to be, how do I make these activities regular without making them frequent? How do I bring them into my awareness?

What I’ve noticed about myself is that I have a kind of tunnel vision. I see the daily or weekly things that need to be done, but the other things may as well not even exist. There have been file boxes at the bottom of the basement stairs that have been patiently waiting for over a year for someone to deal with them.

So my experiment to deal with this blindness is to spend the first part of my day devoted to housework on these kinds of chores. In addition I will keep at list of these chores in a list together with the date the chore was last done.

How do you make the occasional regular?

Cleaning House

Posted on October 24, 2012 by circleofpractice

Housework is something you do that nobody notices until you don’t do it. –quotegarden.com

This topic may seem out of place on a site like this. When we think of practice it’s generally in the context of learning some vocational or avocational skill like accounting or playing the piano; or some transformational practice like meditation.

Housework has almost acquired a taint: No liberated woman would choose to be a housewife, and no man would choose to do woman’s work.

So how does it get done? Does it matter?

I have been in living spaces where the foodstuff on the countertop is so thick and hard you couldn’t take it off with a chisel; where old cat poop lay about on the floor; where the floor couldn’t be seen for all the clothing, papers, and trash strewn about; where there are bug infestations; where the smell stops you at the door.

Clearly it matters.

I know our house isn’t clean enough when it starts getting in the way of life: when it’s too cluttered to find things, it smells bad, it looks bad, etc.

On the other hand, there is more to life than a clean house. That is, our house is too clean again, when it starts getting in the way of life: there’s no time for fun, all we do is work and clean the house; or it’s never clean enough to have company over.

Aristotle described virtue as a mean between two extremes. So if the two extremes are those above, then we know clean enough lies somewhere in the middle.

When is your house clean enough?

Fallen from Practice

Posted on October 23, 2012 by circleofpractice

I’m a big believer in practicing every day, at the same time and the same place.

I just don’t do it. That’s probably why I’m a dilettante and not an expert.

I do try. But invariably I have a late night out with friends, or take a trip out of town, or just don’t want to practice; so I don’t.

This is where the planning ritual becomes important:

Reviewing my vision reminds me of what kind of person I want to be, of what kind of life I want to live.
Reviewing my goals reminds me of what I want to accomplish.
Reviewing my projects reminds me of what it will take to accomplish those goals.
And reviewing my tasks reminds me of the habits required to complete my projects.

By the end of that process I am generally motivated enough to climb back on my horse and start riding in the direction of my vision again.

I once found it difficult to look myself in the mirror of my plans once I’d fallen out of practice. It made me feel like a failure.

I’d go for months without looking. By then I’d be out of shape, out of tune, and feeling a great deal of stress. The stress would drive me to look for a solution, which in turn would bring me back to my plans and to practice.

I’ve decided I’d rather feel like a failure occasionally than to actually be a failure perpetually. So I plan – daily.

Finding Meditation

Posted on October 19, 2012 by circleofpractice

I chant.

It’s not something I would ever have chosen to do on my own. But my EPT therapist prescribed it for me, I practice it, and it works for me.

By “works for me,” I mean I finally found the off switch to the nonspecific sense of anxiety that haunted me most of my life.

My point is not that you should chant, but that if you keep an open mind with respect to the various forms of mediation, then you might find one that works for you.

I tried transcendental meditation back in college some thirty years ago. It gave me headaches.

I tried pranayama (without a teacher; they were hard to find back then) and had a problem with swallowing air.

I tried just lying down and counting my breaths – that helped. But nothing has worked as well as the chanting.

I’ve been diagnosed as ADHD. When I was a kid I couldn’t focus on anything but the television. I think my favorite kriya, Ganpati Kriya, has several aspects to it that make it easier for me to stay focused and harder to be distracted.

First, there are eight syllables that I chant out loud over and over for eleven minutes.

Second, the kriya has a mudra where the thumb touches the successive fingers on each hand with the pronunciation of each syllable.kirtan kriya

Third, I associate one of the chakras with each syllable and visualize the “activation” of that chakra with the pronunciation of each syllable.

So my mind and body are fully engaged as I practice this kriya, making it easier for me to stay focused for the entire eleven minutes.

I practice Ganpati Kriya in the morning, Sat Kriya at noon, and Kirtan Kriya in the evening.

How about you? Have you tried meditation? What works for you?

Emotional Polar Therapy (sequel to Practicing Acceptance)

Posted on October 18, 2012 by circleofpractice

All my life I have struggled to keep my emotions under good regulation. When I wasn’t worried or anxious, I was angry or depressed. Joy was nearly unknown to me, and I thought it belonged only to those who had won some great victory.

When the series on Integral Life Practice came to an end, I wanted to work with someone on my shadow self in the context of the enneagram. One of the presenters referred me to an Emotional Polar Therapist.

My first visit to this woman was very strange, yet powerful. We had an interview. She tapped on my shoulder and took some notes. She had me push against her hand while thinking some thought and took more notes.

She put magnets under my feet, a pillow on my lap, and a kind of bicolor needle work between my hands. Then she laid hands on me and had me breathe deeply in unison with her. She had me repeat after her affirmations like, “I am a valuable person,” or “I deserve success,” etc.

The odd thing was that it was a struggle for me to say these things. In fact, at one point I began to choke and weep. This was my first visit, mind, and all the while I’m asking myself whether I’d been referred to some kind of witch doctor.

When that was done she gave me some homework of breathing exercises, and “kriyas” to do. I left feeling like something had “happened,” like I’d seen a light after a long stay in a cave.

I did the exercises daily, returned to her periodically, and began to notice a gradual change in my emotional state. The frequency and duration of my negative emotions steadily decreased. The same measures of my positive emotions trend upwards.

I even experience joy now, and have discovered that it has less to do with great victories than it does with recognizing small ones.

Practicing Acceptance (sequel to The Problem of Envy)

Posted on October 17, 2012 by circleofpractice

I solved the problem of envy by accepting the fact that I am a jealous person.

That sounds paradoxical. But like it or not, if we walk in the light, then we will cast a shadow. The only way to get rid of your shadow is to walk in darkness.

The women who led the Spiral Dynamics workshop subsequently led multi-week sessions on Integral Life Practice. In one of these sessions we were told to pair off. Each person was to give her partner a word to meditate on. My partner gave me the word ACCEPTANCE.

That was huge. For some reason I had trouble just speaking the word. But I knew immediately it was the right word.

Its meditation was transformative. I stopped hating myself. I stopped wanting to change my wife and children. I stopped projecting my image of perfection onto the people around me. I stopped being Agent Smith, and just let myself be who I am, shadow and all.

Now when I feel jealous or inadequate, I recognize that’s just my soul casting its shadow. I don’t try to deny it, or eliminate it. I just accept it and move on.

That is what acceptance allows me to do: move on. It is so simple, and so powerful.

I believe that is what the Apostle Paul is trying to tell us in his letters: that we are accepted and complete in Jesus. There is nothing we can do to make ourselves that way. We are made that way through the Christ.

The Problem of Envy

Posted on October 16, 2012 by circleofpractice

For most of my life, I’ve had a negative affect. I’m not sure how I got there, but by the time I went to college my world was painted black.

Ironically, I knew I was blessed. But I felt like my own inadequacies outweighed any number of blessings in my life. I was so focused on what was missing that I couldn’t see what was present.

Then maybe five years ago, a friend of mine and I went to a weekend workshop on Spiral Dynamics. During the course of the presentation, I made a comment on the dangers of comparing ourselves with others, and how Spiral Dynamics invited such comparisons. The presenter said something like, ‘That may be a problem for you, and it’s good that you are aware of it.’

For some reason her comment really pissed me off. I tried focusing on my breath, tried to listen to what she was saying, but I could not shake my feeling of anger.

I sat by her during lunch, and explained to her what I was feeling and why. She told me I was a four, and was motivated by envy which was the source of my anger. Huh?

She went on to explain a little about the enneagram, which is a model of human personality types. The enneagram is a nine pointed star, and each point represents a type, the fourth point or type having the vice or passion of envy.

Now the Enneagram of Personality is beyond the scope of this post. The point here is that I knew she was right.

Jealousy was a passion I had struggled with in my youth that I thought I had overcome as an adult. But what I didn’t realize was that those feelings of inadequacy were another manifestation of envy, or the fixation I had of comparing me with others.

That epiphany led to what has been a sea change for me which I will explain in the next post.

Practicing Faith

Posted on October 15, 2012 by circleofpractice

How do you practice your faith? Or perhaps you don’t think you have faith.

We all believe in something. We couldn’t even get out of bed in the morning if we didn’t believe something was true, meaningful, or valuable. Whatever those things are, that’s your faith.

I think faith has at least three parts:

Understanding our faith.
Connecting with like minded individuals in a community of faith.
Practicing our faith.

By understanding our faith I mean drilling down into those writings, traditions, and ideas that are the underpinnings of our faith. If our faith has scriptures, then those scriptures are the foundation that faith is built upon. So it is important to know them, understand them, and to reflect on your life in the context of those scriptures.

If your faith has no scripture, then ask yourself what are the writings or the sources of the ideas upon which your faith is built. Again, dig into them, know them, understanding them. And reflect upon your own life in the context of those writings.

What can you do to embody those ideas on which your faith is built?

It is important to connect with others who share your faith. We are social animals. We need other people. We want our faith validated by others who value the same things we do. We can encourage each other in our faith, and pick each other up when we fall down.

Finally we need to practice our faith. We want our actions to embody those ideas we value. And it is easier to practice in groups than it is alone. If you believe in public service, then find a group that is doing work you value.

Act on your faith and passion with those who share your faith and passion, and you will make a lasting difference in the world.

But ask yourself whether you and your group are a blessing or curse upon the world. And if it is that later, perhaps it is time to reexamine your faith.

Goal Problems

Posted on October 10, 2012 by circleofpractice

All those executive functions like creating a vision, setting goals, mapping out a project, etc. just do not come naturally to me.

I didn’t begin setting goals until sometime after college, when I read Dennis Waitley’s book, Seeds of Greatness. I found it remarkably difficult to do.

Feelings of grandiosity would lead me to set goals that were unrealistic, and feelings of inadequacy would lead me to despair of accomplishing them, and I’d give up on them.

For years I went through this cycle of goal-setting and goal-despairing. Seeds of Greatness was only the first in a long line of self-improvement books, and most if not all of them would talk about goal-setting in some way shape or form. But somehow I just could not seem to get the knack of it.

Maybe five years ago I started getting together for breakfast with a couple of friends. Our conversations seemed to gravitate around certain ideas, like the Hero’s Journey, mastery, expertise, and practice. This blog grew out of those conversations.

One of us in particular was a real goal-setter and planner. I would listen to his planning process and began to notice differences between what he was doing and what I was doing.

First of all his goals were on the edge of belief, not beyond the pale.

Second he had a due date for each goal, but these due dates were not set in stone. If he missed a due date, he tried to understand why he missed it, and then just moved it back. The date gives the goal a sense of urgency, but missing the date is not a reason to despair. This may seem obvious, but it was a real breakthrough for me.

Third, he had a daisy chain of small goals that lead to the big goal that was his end in view. The chain of small achievable goals builds hope and confidence with the accomplishment of each small goal.

Fourth, he reviewed and revised those goals daily whether things were going well or not.

Putting these four points into practice is working for me. I’m sticking with my goals and getting things done. What works for you?

circleofpractice

Turning life into practice; practice into transformation

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