love, self-sabotage and chocolate

White calla lily, Green Gulch San Francisco Zen Center. Copyright (c) 2007 Wendee Holtcamp

Sonnet 13

And wilt thou have me fashion into speech
The love I bear thee, finding words enough,
And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough,
Between our faces, to cast light on each?—
I drop it at thy feet. I cannot teach
My hand to hold my spirit so far off
From myself—me—that I should bring thee proof
In words, of love hid in me out of reach.
Nay, let the silence of my womanhood
Commend my woman-love to thy belief,—
Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed,
And rend the garment of my life, in brief,
By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude,
Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I opened up my chocolate bar (organic fair trade dark chocolate currants and almonds) and there was this poem that spoke to my heart. I bought the bar specifically for the poem, as all these Chocolove bars have inside. I remember reading one from one of the best moments in my life, my Thanksgiving spent in solitude and gratitude at Owl Mountain near Abiquiu, New Mexico back in 2005 - the John Donne poem in my post chocolate foibles, about unintentionally eating maggot-infested chocolate - yum!

I started the Debbie Ford online class, Overcoming Self Sabotage, along with a small discussion group of friends and colleagues to share lessons with. I've also been listening to Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now on audio-CD and when his voice doesn't put me to sleep -- it is very relaxing and calming, and wise, but sometimes that isn't good when you're on a road trip -- I have gained some wonderful insights. As far as style, I think I prefer A New Earth (which I blogged about here and here and here) but this is good too. I really am fascinated by the concept of the pain body. He describes it as "accumulated pain [that] is a negative energy field that occupies your body and mind." It gets activated and overcomes us at certain times, but it is not us. I am not my pain body. It is an "involuntary acting out of old patterns."

It would do wonders if people could see that when someone's pain body is activated, it is not them. They are acting from the ego, from unconsciousness. Yes, ultimately an individual is responsible for actions made during any time, but when recognizing that someone's pain body is activated, you can step back and witness and not judge, not react, and not be so affected by things. Easier said than done, perhaps, but worth trying.

Other bits of wisdom that resonated:

"If the pain body takes you over, [an enlightened or conscious] partner will not mistake it for 'who you are.'"

"Humanity is under great pressure to evolve because it is our only chance of survival as a race."

"The ego believes through negativity it can manipulate reality to get what it wants."

"As long as you make an identity out of pain, as long as your sense of self involves embracing pain, you cannot be free. You will unconsciously resist or sabotage every attempt to heal your pain because you want to keep 'yourself' intact and the pain is a part of you."

This last one was very profound for me. Oprah did an online study of A New Earth and has an exercise related to dissolving the pain body. At any rate, I also hope to share more insights from the Self-Sabotage class since I am the Queen of Self-sabotage, but alas, not today.

I just returned from a wonderful visit to Austin for the SXSW-Eco conference, and got to visit and stay with my friend Deb, who is a documentary producer and is involved with the new film (also by my friends I trekked through Nepal with in 2007- Tim Gorski and Jon Kane) How I Became an Elephant. I also stayed with new friend, former film exec Kee Kee Buckley who traveled solo across the U.S. with her dog Yoda in her Prius, "Princess Leia" and is now writing a book about her adventure. You can read some of her journey at her blog Seeking Shama and not only that, she will appear on Friday's Ricki Lake show "How to Stop Stress from Killing You." Oh, and I should mention that she blogged about giving and receiving, touched by the story of the "free car" I received in a divine act of providence! I truly love connecting with friends, old and new - it makes me feel alive and not so alone in the universe to connect and share wisdom, stories, and love with fellow truth sojourners!

SXSW-Eco was pretty cool, but I was a bit of an emotional wreck to be honest, and keep forgetting things (I'm going through some intensely challenging emotional stuff with my daughter). The highlights of the conference for me included hearing Annie Leonard, who created the short film The Story of Stuff -- she is a rock star -- and Bill McKibben, Larry Schweiger and Ted Nordhaus in this incredible session called The New Environmentalists. I will be writing about some other ideas that came out of the conference. I will keep you all posted when the articles come out.

Meanwhile here are a couple articles that came out in the latest Environmental Health Perspectives:

• Are Compact Fluorescent Lights dangerous? Ultraviolet leaks from CFLs. My latest article in Env Health Perspectives (PDF version). Oct 2012.
• Pattern of Clues: Evidence of Distinct DNA Methylation in Newborns of Smoking Women. Oct 2012.

ego

Parrot at the Australia Zoo
Copyright (c) 2006 Wendee Holtcamp

From this stone
will come a bird - WH

Life isn't as serious as my mind makes it out to be - Eckhart Tolle

I love God. I love how He speaks to me through showing up as a sort of message in Bible passages I read at the right moment or in songs that seem almost like a direct answer or confirmation. Yesterday, I related my struggle to a mountain, and said that I surrendered. These were not just words. The day before I literally scrawled in huge handwriting across my journal the words, I GIVE UP! And I also recognized for the first time my total powerlessness over this certain issue.

Today the last song in church was Mighty to Save by Hillsong United, and part of the lyrics say:

Saviour, He can move the mountains,
My god is mighty to save,
He is mighty to save
Forever author of salvation,
He rose and conquered the grave
Jesus conquered the grave

So take me as you find me
All my fears and failures
Fill my life again

I give my life to follow
Everything that i believe in
Now i surrender (and i surrender)

Yep. Wow. I was moved.

I am feeling great today. Again I woke a bit sad, but as soon as I got up, I felt fine. I read a bit in the morning, went to church then went to the gym with the kids. It feels great to be back in my regular routine, and to be home! I was supposed to go to Nacogdoches on Tues-Wed to trap snakes, but that is being rescheduled due to Hurricane Gustav. I'm writing an article on Louisiana pine snakes, which are probably the rarest snake in North America and possibly the rarest vertebrate yet they're not on the Endangered Species List. It's state listed as vulnerable in Texas, and in Louisiana as imperiled to threatened.

I started to re-read Chapter 2 in A New Earth and it really spoke to me given my new realizations. It talks about how a child learns that they are "I" or "me" and what is "mine" and then when you take a toy away, they cry and get upset. Why? It's because the child invests a sense of "mine" and "I" in the toy. Quickly they will forget it and become interested in another toy. But the toy, temporarily, becomes a part of the child's sense of "I" - the ego. And that is what many people do with possessions of various types, including other people in their lives. We sometimes want others as our own, not realizing they are their own people, on their own paths. We can know this in our heads but we don't always act that way.

I also relate to how he says the moment we recognize the ego, it dissolves, at least in that instant. The ego can not stand the light of recognition. As soon as we separate the "voice in our head" from our thoughts and say, that thought is not "me" - but only my ego, only a part of me, and it is not my true essence which is Spirit - then we are able to grow and move beyond the ego's limitations.

The other night I watched this movie, How to Lose Your Lover which had the subtitle "A comedy for the bitter, cynical, hopeless romantic in all of us." I thought MY GOD isn't THAT appropriate for me? LOL. And the even greater irony is that the way the guy goes about first meeting and then doing everything possible to lose his lover, who he actually really likes, is that he wants to rush everything. She resists but then gives in realizing that he has good points. But even though it's a darkish comedy, it's actually exactly what some people, ahem, do...

another day

Copyright (c) 2008 Wendee Holtcamp
Brooke and Chloe getting ice cream! This was from April when I visited last.

Today Jenny and I went to the mall and got some coffee and just browsed and talked, and then I came back and started transcribing tapes from my visit to the Epperson family in Colorado from Easter weekend. It's hard to believe it was that long ago I went there! This is a part of my book since Susan Epperson was the plaintiff in Epperson v Arkansas, the Supreme Court case that essentially made it illegal nationwide to prevent the teaching of evolution on religious grounds. Prior to that, the infamous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial had de facto made it "ok" for states to pass laws saying that it was illegal to teach evolution. Only a few states did, but Arkansas was one of those states - where Susan lived and taught biology at the time.

The Eppersons are Presbyterians, a mainstream Protestant denomination that has a doctrine stating that evolution is the way humans came into being - a step beyond many church denoiminations that simply say there can be no conflict between science and faith. So I am including my discussion of their interesting story and my visit with them over Easter in my Chapter 2 and maybe other parts of the book too.

I've been reading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle and am enjoying his chapter about the pain-body. I will blog some more about it but it's a really fascinating idea of how the past pain rears its ugly head into our present circumstances but by being aware of when this happens makes it "go away" to some extent. It can not tolerate the light of awareness. When people are unconscious, they can be dominated by the pain-body. Even when someone is conscious of it happening, it does not always go away immediately but awareness is the first step to change. Back to work!

commitment-phobia

"God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages." — Jacques Deval
Some groovy Bots in Berkeley, California
(C) 2007 Wendee Holtcamp

I've had a lot of insights into myself in the past couple of days. Not too pretty, as usual. But first, Tolle writes in Chapter 1, "To recognize one’s own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence," and "The greatest achievement of humanity is not its works of art, science, or technology but the recognition of its own dysfunction, its own madness." Wow.

He defines insanity not in the traditional sense but as any dysfunction, any "sin" or such. He says the difference between someone walking around talking to themself out loud that we may label as a "crazy person" and all of us who go around with a constant stream of words going through our minds is just a matter of degree. He implores us to be more present, more living in the present reality, in our physical form, and less in our "minds" which can be the domain of the ego. We can and should use our intellect, but only insofar as it does not feed the ego (which he says is the root of all "insanity" or dysfunction).

But what I realized about myself: I am a commitment-phobe! I pulled out this book on my shelf, He’s Scared, She’s Scared which I'd bought in immediate post-separation/divorce phase of my life. It hit the nail so squarely I about fell out of my bed. I’ve thought all along I’m so scared of loss and abandonment, because I've had so much of that. But this makes complete sense with my utter inability to make decisions sometimes (which I've blogged about before), especially when they affect someone else, or are really important.

These are the characteristics of the "active" commitment-phobe: sends mixed messages, afraid both of committing to a more serious relationship & to leaving (which is also a "commitment"), acts out to force the other away (hoping subconsciously they will end it or be so hurt it’s damaged). They go from one extreme to another afraid to make the wrong choice & strongly desires freedom, hence confusing & hurting the partner in the process.

On the other hand, the "passive" commitment-phobe gets heavy & serious right away, projects and fantasizes about how this relationship could be “so perfect…”, drawn to unavailable partners (emotional or physical distance or both), trusts too quickly, then lives in constant state of intense yearning for the relationship once rejected. Interestingly I've been both active and passive in different relationships, and in fact normally follow a particular pattern but it's seemed to have flip-flopped. And so that is in itself interesting. Anyway I love insight into myself, because only through awareness can we change. I welcome it, even when it's painful insight.

Also in the A New Earth workbook, one of the questions is: "What makes you feel more alive and open, less dense, less bogged down by heavy thoughts and feelings, and could this be the beginnings of what A New Earth is pushing toward?" What I wrote quickly, without thinking:

Yoga, running, sunshine, dance, jumping, spinning around, swinging.

Then I realized, wow besides "sunshine" those are all physical activities. (I later added another item to the list, which shall remain unspoken because children read this blog! hee hee) :) I am such an in-my-head intellectual, always questioning, pondering and I realized that what makes me happy is actually what he’s calling us to in the book already to just live in the NOW and be present. Quite interesting.

Oh and the Berkeley bots pic resonated because I went to see WALL.e with the kids yesterday, plus it reminds me of how much we, or I, rather, can sometimes act like robots acting out these crazy subconscious issues of the past. Hallelujah for awareness and enlightenment!

A New Earth

Sunset at Drum Bay, near Galveston Texas
(c) 2005 Wendee Holtcamp

So today was one of those crazy mixed-up-rotten-all-wrong-inside-out-everything-goes-wrong-days. But honestly nothing major. Plans just kept changing like a million times! Ah well. mama told me there'd be days like this...

I took my friend Marian Haddad, who I met at the 2006 University of North Texas Nature Writers Symposium where we both were invited speakers, to the airport and she is on her way to SYRIA! That is her native country, where her parents were born, but her first time visiting. She is blogging about it for the San Antonio Express News so you can check that out and follow along her journey!

I watched the first video of Oprah and Eckhart Tolle last night for the global "Summer School" and it was an hour and a half! It was kind of humorous because he was talking about how we should live in the now, live in the moment, and be fully present. So many people are mult-tasking so instead of fully listening to someone, you are also checking your email, or instead of paying attention while brushing your teeth, your mind is off somewhere else (and I am the queen of multi-tasking). It's a very Zen thought to be in the moment. But the video was so long I was checking my email and replying... kinda ironic. But hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.

I liked that at the very beginning, the first question Oprah got on the video webcast was from a listener who wanted to know how Oprah reconciled her Christian beliefs with A New Earth which seemed at times to use wisdom from other spiritual practices or apparently contradict with Christianity. She said that with 6 million people, she did not believe that Christianity is the only path to God. She said it's her path and her tradition. But A New Earth is more about the spirit than about a "religion" per se. It's actually quite brilliant and philosophical. I am loving it.

Of course I must add James Dobson would probably, certainly, accuse Oprah of "distorting the Bible" as he did to Obama. That man is out of his mind! I have a great deal of respect for a lot of what Dobson has taught about Christian living but when he starts to muck with politics, or science, that starts to raise my hackles. Jesus is not a White Anglo-Saxon Republican!!!! Plus, I tend to agree more with Oprah than Dobson on these matters of faith when it comes to other religions and that I am opposed to fundamentalism and extreme literalism. However I believe something that is a little bit different than Oprah - or maybe she didn't get into it in the time she had to answer the question. I believe that although there is wisdom and there are central truths in other religious traditions, still Jesus came to bring a new message that is not present in other religions, and that is grace, mercy, forgiveness & the message that we can not "work" our way to God or achieve God's favor through our own efforts. I'm not saying Oprah doesn't believe this because she surely does if she's a Christian.

I don't know the totality of her beliefs, so I'm just making my own comments here, but though much of his teaching throughout his earthly life IS shared by other traditions, I believe that there is a new order, a new covenant, a new message - good news - from Jesus life and death nd resurrection that is not present in the other religious traditions. It's there - He is there - to pull the world toward a better way of living (and Tolle quotes Jesus frequently in his book). Though all the wars and hate would make you think it hasn't made a difference, I do believe it has, and it is. I know that in my very most personal life I daily continue to see God's love and life in action manifested through the people He brings into my life and the way they show their genuine, continual, grace-filled, merciful love for me. Truly it is a miracle.

sin and ego

"It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Monarch butterfly at Guadalupe River State Park, Texas.
(c) 2007 Wendee Holtcamp

Blech, disgusting! I returned from spending the day working all day on shark research at a local spot with Wifi to poop. Yes, poop. No, I do not mean my own. I mean that the cats had somehow dragged their poop, or it plopped out of their behinds, onto the carpet. Not only that, one of the cats had thrown up on my son’s floor. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled. But maybe this is payback for the fact that HE left the toilet clogged with totally disgusting poop of his own! And I know he’ll love me for announcing this fact on my blog but sheesh!

Other than that, I’m actually quite happy. Besides a great sadness and empathy I feel toward some of my friends going through some really tough struggles, I feel really good about things at the moment. I’m trying to live in the now, and I am. I love my life, actually, and things are pretty darn good. I came home halfway through the day and took a nap, then went back out to work. I can’t seem to focus too well at home these days so getting away seems to help!

So I am really digging A New Earth. I also am still grooving on that new Alanis CD. That song Underneath actually touches on a point that Tolle makes in his first chapter, which is the parallel between the way that we are in our personal lives and the problems around the world – whether hate or greed or war or other social ills. They all start in our hearts, and though we may say “I would never do that” like I would never murder, for example, even Jesus says that if you hate your brother (not necessarily sibling brother) you are just as guilty of murder as a murderer. If you say “I would never cheat on my partner” (or "I have never cheated") but you have lusted after someone in your heart, or had feelings for someone in a relationship with another person, you’ve committed the same sin. It’s one of those spiritual paradoxes, because you can easily say that actual murder is “certainly” worse than just hating someone, or cheating is certainly worse than merely lusting in one’s mind or heart, right? Sure. But only in this world. In spiritual terms, no, they’re the same. But so we’ve all done something like one of these things, right. Exactly the point. We are all guilty, and so we may as well just stop judging others for the sins they make that appear “worse” but really are not in God’s eyes.

Tolle says that translated from Greek, to sin means to miss the mark. “It means to live unskillfully, blindly, and thus to suffer and cause suffering.” Well again, of course, we ALL sin and we all miss the mark. But the conscious life and the spiritual life is to become increasingly aware of one’s sin and hence to be transformed and stop judging ourselves and others harshly, and to become more and more like God in terms of “God is love.” Tolle also writes that “Fear, greed, and the desire for power are the psychological motivating forces not only behind warfare and violence between nations, tribes, religions, and ideologies, but also the cause of incessant conflict in personal relationships.” His solution (though I’m only on Chapter 2) is not necessarily to let go of fear and greed and the desire for power, but to recognize and become conscious of the workings of the ego, which cause these things, and recognize the ego as separate from the “I” that we each believe ourselves to be from the self that we truly are, which is more than the ego - and includes the spirit. We are more than our ego, more than the collective memories, thoughts, beliefs, traits and so on that we use and the things we associate with “I am….” More to come. Interesting stuff.

a flower

Flowers in Glacier National Park, Montana
(c) 2007 Wendee Holtcamp

I just started reading Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth, along with some girlfriends, the same ones who I was reading The Artist's Way with. I picked it up on the way back from Australia at the airport because people kept talking about it. I flipped through and at first it didn't really strike a chord but since my girls are reading it, I said ok let's do it. So just the other day, I read Chapter 1 and actually this time I really loved it. I had a couple revelations. He talks about how a flower is like a leap in evolution, and kind of symbolizes a leap in consciousness. This symbolism is interesting since I've just been buying myself flowers again, and was just talking about that as an act of self-love.

As I mentioned, I've also started trying to meditate for 10 minutes per day, and Tolle tells a story about a group of monks whose teacher came to lecture and he simply brought a flower. After a long time, one monk started to smile. He was apparently the only one to "get" the sermon. So besides trying to smile in my liver, I'm trying to meditate on a flower.

This is normally how my meditations go, something like this:

I envision a flower. A lavender rose, the ones my daddy planted for me. I can almost smell it. Then I see fields of wildflowers. I'm a wildflower person.I love wildflowers. Stop thinking, focus. Flower. Flowers. Lots of colorful wild flowers everywhere. Lots of different colors of flowers, like a giant field overflowing with flowers - blue, red, yellow. A single lavender rose. I miss Sean. I wish it was easier. I love him. Lord, help me to know do I follow my heart or follow my head? Problem is, my mind can see both sides of any argument, and I often don't know which one I really belong on. Stop intellectualizing Wendee. Focus. Flower! I should blog about this. [Start composing blog in my head.] I have monkey mind. I wonder how Daline is. Focus! Flower. Flowers. I am hungry. I need some coffee. FLOWER! A simple Gerber daisy. Red. That's Sus' favorite. I have some on my table. Flowers represent a change, a growth, an evolution, a flowering and blooming of consciousness. I want to be there. I want to be a flower. I want to evolve. Flower.

And so on... Ah well, at least it's a start. Liz Gilbert actually has a funny passage about meditating in her book, Eat, Pray, Love.

Anyway Oprah made A New Earth her book club pick, and she is doing Summer School where people can read the book together, do the workbook, share in the Forum, etc. Here is a page with a video interview -- you see several authors in rotation on the page. One is Eckhart Tolle & there are 3 videos. But… the thing that is for the book is called Summer school and you go to this link for Oprah's 10-part series