My Meditation Experience

Posted on January 31, 2013 by circleofpractice

I try to do three meditations a day: the first for 11 minutes in the morning, the second for 31 minutes around noon, and the third for 5 minutes in the evening.

The deepest meditation is the one lasting 31 minutes, Kirtan Kriya. I sit on a pile of three yoga cushions in easy pose: the first halved, the second folded three times, the third folded four times.

I begin by “tuning in” a kind of centering exercise.

The kriya consists of chanting the four syllables, SA-TA-NA-MA, while simultaneously touching the thumb to the index finger (SA), the middle finger (TA), the ring finger (NA), and the little finger (MA) (this is the mudra associated with the kriya). At the same time, I visualize the navel chakra (SA), the heart chakra (TA), the throat chakra (NA), and the brow chakra (MA).

I wear a watch which has a countdown timer. For five minutes I chant voiced syllables; for five minutes I chant whispered syllables; for ten minutes I chant silently in my mind; for five minutes I again chant whispered syllables; for five minutes I chant voiced syllables; and then I count 15 rounds on my fingers without chanting.

Usually by the time I get to chanting silently in my mind I’ve become aware of the beating of my heart. At that time I try to synchronize each finger tap with my heartbeat. I try to keep my focus on the chanting, the mudra, the chakras, and my heartbeat. If I find my attention drifts, I just gently bring it back as I become aware of it.

If I find myself wanting to squirm, or quit altogether, I just remind myself to trust the practice and submit to it.

I haven’t had any strange out of body experiences or hallucinations. But it does seem to have a very stabilizing affect on my emotions, and has over time turned off the pervasive sense of anxiety I once suffered from.

Practicing Perspective

Posted on January 30, 2013 by circleofpractice

About 25 years ago I was in a conversation with someone in our book club when it dawned on me the person I was talking to had begun to fear for his physical safety. My body language and tone of voice had become positively homicidal.

Since then I’ve tried to be aware of both my body and my attitude when engaging in conversation. What am I feeling and why? What is my purpose? Am I trying to understand the people engaged in conversation, or trying to win an argument?

If what the person is saying is producing an unpleasant reaction in my body, I know it’s time to be careful; time to focus on my breath, and try to understand what the person is saying. What are her assumptions? What is her point of view? What is her life experience?

Sometimes someone will say something that just pushes my buttons, which produces an immediate bile dump in my gut; my blood pressure goes through the roof and my breathing becomes rapid and short. When this happens I need to breathe through these feelings and calm down before I open my mouth. Often times this is a signal to me that I am feeling disrespected in some way. Sometimes this comes, not from any intended disrespect, but from my own sense of inadequacy.

If the person says something I don’t understand, or uses a word I’m unfamiliar with, I’ll ask her what she means. If I’m unsure I’ve understood what she said, then I’ll try to paraphrase what I think she’s said. If I think I disagree with her, I’ll try to understand what she feels is important in the situation, or what life experiences have influenced her conclusions.

How do you practice perspective? Do you have a method for psychologically distancing yourself from the conversation in some way? Or is your source of perspective from something other than conversation?

Practicing the Presence of God

Posted on January 29, 2013 by circleofpractice

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; (Acts 17:28, KJV)

Several years ago I was turned onto a beautiful book by a friend from church, The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, a monk of the 17^th century. Since then I have tried to make a practice of being aware of God’s presence.

God is inescapable, and his presence is always Here and Now, regardless of where we are or what state we’re in: If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou are there (Ps 139:8, KJV).

In the Bible the Hebrew word ruah means both breath and spirit, as when God, “… formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.” (Ge 2:7, New Living Translation)

So it is natural for me to associate God with my breath, and whenever I want I can come into God’s presence merely by observing my breath and knowing that God is in it, and in me.

Another way to come into God’s presence and into his joy is through praise, “…but be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;” (Eph 5:18-20, KJV)

This “giving thanks always for all things unto God” is so powerful and so simple a way to come into God’s presence; and it is not just the big things but the little things especially we can take notice of and be grateful for. Read the poem Pied Beauty by Gerald Manley Hopkins. I think this is what Paul had in mind when he wrote those verses in Ephesians.

God’s presence is all around us; all we need to do is take notice to walk with him.

Persistent Behavior

Posted on January 28, 2013 by circleofpractice

Persistence comes of our belief that we will accomplish what we’ve set out to do. How do we build that belief if we don’t already have it? Where does that belief come from in those that do have it?

I remember reading in Duhigg’s The Power of Habit about Michael Phelps. His coach, Bob Bowman, believed the key to winning was building the right routines. Routines built of small wins; small wins that built preparedness, confidence, and a sense of calm; which in turn led to a series of record setting victories on one of the world’s biggest stages: the Olympics.

My secret dream since college has been “to be a writer.” But as soon as I turn my thoughts from “practicing writing” to “being a writer” I’m a deer in the headlights. It was the same way with “practicing mathematics” versus “being a mathematician.” One perspective keeps my pencil moving, the other keeps me from even getting started.

I thought writing a 250 word essay every day would be easy. It isn’t.

“Being a writer” isn’t a small win. In fact it isn’t even well defined. Does writing this essay make me a writer? Or writing a book that never gets published? Or writing an article for a newspaper or magazine? It’s too vague; and “Being a writer” focuses on identity rather than practice.

Obviously I’m no expert on this matter. But I suspect the key is to have a well defined and very specific routine that leads to the behavior required to produce the desired outcome. For example if you, like me, are interested in writing essays here is “How to Write an Essay – 10 Easy Steps.”

How about you? Do you struggle with persistence? Or are you one of those who seem able to beat down any obstacle that stands in your way? Do you understand where your persistence comes from? Please share your thoughts with me.

Virtue: the Practice of Well-being

Posted on January 15, 2013 by circleofpractice

Well-being is that state of wholeness, meaningfulness, and connectedness we associate with happiness, the good life, or a life well lived; a life that aims to fulfill its potential. Virtue is the practice that leads to well-being.

These ideas of well-being and virtue have been discussed and debated by philosophers and theologians down through the ages. But it is only recently that science has begun to investigate them.

In 2004 Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman published Character Strengths and Virtues, an attempt at a scientifically derived catalogue of the healthy human character. They made “a comprehensive literature search of lists of virtues critical to human thriving” that was both interdisciplinary and cross-cultural, and made a determination as to whether those lists converged.

Their research strongly indicated an historical and cross-cultural convergence identified by what they describe as six core virtues:

Courage: the capacity to overcome fear; the exercise of will to accomplish goals in the face of opposition.
Justice: that which makes life fair; broadly interpersonal, relevant to the optimal interaction between the individual and the group or the community.
Humanity: relating to others, interpersonal strengths; positive traits manifested in caring relationships with others; dispositions to tend and befriend.
Temperance: moderation; positive traits that protect us from excess.
Transcendence: meaning or purpose larger than ourselves; that which allows individuals to form connections to the large universe, and thereby provide meaning to their lives.
Wisdom: hard fought knowledge used for good; exceptional breadth and depth of knowledge; creativity, curiosity, judgment, and perspective; positive traits related to the acquisition and use of information in the service of the good life; cognitive strengths.

If well-being or happiness is our aim in life, then it behooves us to find one or more practices to inculcate each of these virtues into our lives. I will be inquiring into what the nature of these practices might be over the next few days.

Therapy as Practice

Posted on January 8, 2013 by circleofpractice

Yes I have a therapist; and fortunately so, because therapy has made my life a whole lot better, and made me a whole lot easier to live with.

But therapy is a practice?

What is practice anyway? It’s a means to mastering some skill. The skill I work on in therapy is self-awareness, and relating to others.

Therapy is my practice dojo for learning trust, vulnerability, and honesty. Part of what makes therapy work is that you’re paying this person to keep your secrets, and if they don’t they can lose their license. This enables you to look into the dark places of your soul, admit to yourself and your therapist they’re there, and begin to understand why.

Everything that walks in the light casts a shadow. The only way to avoid casting a shadow is to walk in darkness. Our shadow selves come from trying to find ways to cope with the world. They are the part of ourselves we’d like to hide from the world, the part we are ashamed of, and the part we want to deny exists.

Embracing the shadow is embracing ourselves; it means accepting who we are. Deny our shadow and deny our own self-acceptance. Grace comes from that acceptance, and can lead not only to our own acceptance, but accepting our spouse, our children, our parents, and so on. It’s a profoundly healing experience.

That’s a hard path to walk alone. A good therapist can help us find that path to trust, vulnerability, and to honesty; a path that leads into our own darkness; but there is light and wholeness on the other side.

The Conversationalist

Posted on January 5, 2013 by circleofpractice

I learned most of what I know about conversation from my second father. He never met a person he couldn’t learn something from.

He owned a convention services business. As a kid I would often go with him to work with my brother. He would give us odd jobs to do, like sweeping the dock, stuffing envelopes, or folding drape.

Along the way we would inevitably run into someone, like a guard, an exhibiter, or a convention manager. He would talk with them all with the same respect and interest. And it seemed to me he would invariably learn something interesting from all of them.

I can remember riding in a cab with him one day; I want to say in New York, but I can’t think why we might have been there. But it was a long ride, and in the course of time it took us to get where we were going, he had coaxed that cabby’s entire life history from him. And I remember it fascinating me completely, both how interesting this cabby’s life was, and how effortlessly my father was able to draw it out of him.

My friends loved to talk with him; they would feign otherwise, and talk about playing twenty questions with George. But to this day they never fail to mention those conversations whenever his name comes up.

His questions come from a genuine interest in people, and he is able to ask them in such a way that they don’t feel probing or intrusive. He makes the person he’s talking to feel like she is utterly fascinating to him, and they seem to trust him completely.

I’ve tried to emulate him, but it’s not as easy as it looks. There’s a subtle difference between a question that makes a person feel interesting, and one that makes a person feel threatened. He listens. He’s interested. He’s observant. I can remember him more than once describing roadside scenes that utterly escaped my notice. Somehow he makes his conversations go where most others can’t.

Budgeting with ADHD

Posted on January 4, 2013 by circleofpractice

My wife and I and both our kids have all been diagnosed with ADHD. Imagine four people living together who struggle with goal setting, planning, organizing, and getting things done.

We’ve tried to set a budget a couple of times, but it just seemed like an overwhelming task; too many categories, too little planning, too many moving parts. We didn’t get through a week.

The most important aspect of creating wealth for a family is to be economically productive; i.e., live within their means and have an adequate level of savings. This generally means creating and living within a budget. But some families manage to save without setting a budget. These families build wealth by saving a certain percentage of every paycheck. Those who are “wealthy” save at least 15 percent.

My wife is a psychiatrist in private practice. Doctors as a group have a higher propensity to spend than nearly every other occupation. Suffice it to say that the propensity to spend combined with deferred expenses (like taxes, malpractice insurance, etc.) make saving a certain percentage of each “paycheck” more complicated, and for us, an inadequate means to accumulating wealth.

Like most people, what gets us into trouble are retail purchases made via a credit card. We have three cards: one for medical expenses (like a medical flex account), one for Costco (they only take American Express), and one for retail purchases in general.

The idea behind saving a percentage of each paycheck is to create an artificial sense of scarcity for the family. They put that percentage into something like a 401k right off the top, and have to live on what’s left. To create that sense of scarcity for us, I calculate the expected costs in certain broad relatively fixed categories like taxes, utilities, housing, saving, etc. I give what’s left to retail, and then calculate a per diem expense for retail by dividing by 365 days. I pay those cards off every week, calculate the per diem rate of retail spending for that week, and then my wife and I get together to discuss how we did, and whether we need to make adjustments in the following week. And thus our family is becoming more economically productive. What works for you?

Measuring Wealth, a Target for Financial Practice

Posted on January 3, 2013 by circleofpractice

If we are to have a financial practice, we need to know what we are aiming at. We need to know, “How much is enough?” The best exposition on this topic that I’ve read is in the book, The Millionaire Next Door, by Thomas Stanley and William Danko.
When someone says that another person is rich or wealthy, they typically mean that person has a relatively high gross income relative to other people. We’ve seen that in the fiscal cliff debates, where congress and the president have argued over where to draw the line between the “rich” and everyone else in terms of gross income.
But gross income is just the sum of all sources of income, earned and unearned, that a person has received in the course of a year. It says nothing about what she has spent, what she has saved, or what she has accumulated over the course of her life.
A better measure for determining wealth is net worth. Net worth is just the difference between the sum of all your assets (everything you own), and the sum of all your liabilities (everything you owe). Net worth measures what’s left after all the dust has settled; it measures what you have to show for all your work.
But net worth by itself is not enough to measure wealth. Say Joe (age 40) makes a million dollars a year, but only has a net worth of a hundred thousand dollars. If Joe lost that income tomorrow, he could only sustain his current lifestyle for less than six weeks. But if John (age 50), who makes a hundred thousand a year and has a net worth of one million, lost his job tomorrow, he could sustain his lifestyle for ten years.
For Stanley and Danko, a person has “enough” when her net worth is at least equal to her age times her gross income less inherited wealth, divided by 10. Using this model for wealth, John has twice more than “enough”, but Joe has only about 3% of what would be enough for him by age 50. So even though Joe makes ten times more than John, John is in fact in much better financial shape than Joe. John is “wealthier.”
Hence the target I use to determine whether we have “enough” is the sum of our age times gross incomes divided by 10, and compare our net worth to that number.

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