There is a mountain of unfinished resolutions behind me. Luckily, I’ve let that disappointment go and simply accepted that they just can’t all get done. Some were too big. Others, too boring. Others, well…everyone is lazy sometimes.

Maybe, there just wasn’t enough momentum behind the resolution. Not enough caring. Not enough personal desire to change. Adopting a new discipline is hard. It can be worth the effort (Look at the pounds go! Look at my business flourish!). But without real passion behind your resolutions and dreams, it seems astronomically unlikely that they will ever happen.

This year, ask yourself: How do you want to feel? What if instead of accomplishing something specific, you focused every day on feeling more joyful? More ecstatic? More spiritual? More grounded? With that kind of resolution, your day-to-day activities can change dramatically. You won’t be derailed by the unexpected intrusions of life, you simply refocus and incorporate it all into your plan for happiness. Every day, remember, life is really about being happy. And every day, try again to take yourself closer to your joy.

Her voice caught me from the first note, swelling through the concert hall in a wave of sound. I didn’t speak the language – wouldn’t understand a thing until the English aria near the end. It didn’t matter. In fact, I barely glanced at the translations included with the program. I didn’t want to be distracted.

Just a single voice and a piano player. Her expressions danced from anger to sorrow to thoughtful to flirtatious – I could feel the emotion without understanding the words. She leaned against the grand piano when it fit the music. I appreciated the beauty of her, the invitation to be watched and admired. Her accompanist beautiful too, as she swayed with the playing, her foot pumping the pedals. The curves of the women and the piano, the golden lines of the stage, the black and white of her dresses. I wrapped myself in the sheer sensuality of the experience, let my mind wander on the notes, a Fantasia of ideas and images…

I found myself wanting to write. I was surprised and delighted by this desire. In the past, musical and theater performances have made me want to get on stage and act or sing. I’ve felt inadequate or sometimes better than the performer. I became caught in comparisons.

This time, I only thought about talents I already have. My imagination took me into fantastic journeys of well-crafted words. I relished the thought of fine-tuning the drafts until I was satisfied. Then offering it up to whoever wanted listen, like me, here, in this concert hall.

I thought about other art that had inspired me. Not just performances, but also great books and movies, poetry slams, galleries of art. Soaring architecture and brilliant sculpture and delicious, beautiful plates of food.

I realized that in my search for creativity, I had always thought it should be original - an idea fueled by inspiration from some divine source. And none of that mattered here. I could fly on the inspiration of this voice and this piano player wherever it wanted to take me. I could build on this music, this experience, make it a part of whatever I was trying to create.

The last piece was Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915”. Barber had read a poem by James Agee and was so inspired he put it to music. I smiled with appreciation at the synchronicity. A musician, inspired by a poet to create a beautiful work, to be enjoyed by me almost 60 years later. Inspiration doesn’t emerge from a vacuum – it’s right here, on the wings of these poets and composers and singers. It’s in the boldness of someone willing to get on stage and put their soul out there.

If you are missing that creative spark, try indulging in a live performance. Or pick up a really great book. Read some poetry, go to a gallery. Let the sheer magnificence of human imagination revive your passion. It surely did mine.

I was struck the other day when I received this email - starting with a dose of everyday ecstasy and then flowing into a series of intriguing questions:

“I sat outside today and watched the cottonwood seeds flow throughout the sky - backlit by the sun. Amazing. It was like watching a deep ocean current, but up, enhanced by birds flowing though, and sometimes, dive-bombed as well. I could hear the thwack of the wings as they changed flight directions.Balance - in life and in yin and yang…sitting, walking up four flights of stairs, all of  it, balanced. How do you measure balance in your life? If helping others is one of the most important things we do in life, how can we accomplish this if we sit behind a desk all day long? Is it saying thank you? Is it doing the little things that we say we should do, and do them freely and cheerfully, without comment or issue?

How does balance interweave with gratitude? Do we say thank you to life by just being there and being ready to step up when an opportunity occurs, not having judgment, and being in the moment?

And finally community…. I guess this is where it intersects…Ying and yang, it’s where the rubber meets the road. expansion or contraction happens, where do we stand when the change occurs… Happy or sad, judging or accepting. Gratitude for just breathing…. in and out, evenly, balance, that’s seems to be it, balance, the dance of equilibrium.

Gratitude, acceptance, graciousness, love - the bottom line of it all.”

 

I loved the questions most. They seemed to flow out of the cottonwood seeds, a comfortable conversation that took its joy from simply asking, submerging in those currents of air and emerging with arm loads of enigmas to ponder.

How often do we get stuck in the need for conclusion? For an answer? And how much do we miss by searching so hard that the ecstasy of the question is lost? Sometimes, it is much more fulfilling to simply explore the possibilities.

I realize that the writer did come to a “bottom line” - gratitude, acceptance, graciousness, love. But for me, that still felt like the question, held and breathed and pondered and relished. Right there, in that moment. An emailed whirlwind of musings that left me wondering what love and gratitude and acceptance mean to me.

A few days later, she sent me a quote from Rilke:

“i beg you…to  have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and 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…”

I thought it was perfect.

Have a delicious day,
Ephraim

I received this email from my client struggling with West Nile on her Flow Stretching practice (used with permission):

You’re doing it anyway. Every day. Every hour. Every second. You see the colors, the movement. You hear voices, footsteps, wind. You feel the texture of your clothes or the air on your skin. Taste your saliva, the lingering flavors of your last meal. Smell flowers, food.

Your senses are active all the time, flooding you with information that is most often ignored. And sometimes, it needs to be. You need to filter those things out to allow your mind to focus. Maybe. Even as I’m writing, I notice the pads of my hands resting on the keyboard, the clack of the keys. It’s like accompaniment to the experience of writing, of being in this moment.

But for an hour every day, imagine that accompaniment as the foreground of your life. An entire hour of deep sensual experience. Perhaps do it during lunch, noticing the flavors of every morsel, the speed of your bites, the textures of voices, the temperature of your silverware.

Perhaps try it the next time you make love. Indulge in the sensations in your hands and arms and legs and feet, see the color of your lover’s eyes. Or try it on a long walk, taking everything in through the senses, letting the thoughts that usually distract you fade in favor of feeling your weight shift on your foot as you step. 

And, as you get better, try noticing in times not so obviously sensual. Like at work, or the grocery store, or watching TV. Yet, even those things, once you think about it, are filled with input from all your senses.

Simply notice. Even for 15 minutes to start. Remember: You don’t have to do anything different. This doesn’t have to take any extra time from your day. Just shift the way you perceive things for a few minutes - or an hour. And after awhile, you’ll also notice how your perception broadens, how your curiosity sharpens, how delicious every moment can be.

For many people, one of the biggest problems with meditation is finding the time. Who has an extra 30 minutes a day to sit and desperately attempt to quiet the mind? It takes serious discipline to make that a practice, especially when piled on top of work and exercise and foraging for the next meal and relating with people and cleaning the house and everything else.

Meditation in a New York Minute

That’s one of the reasons I love this book. You see, what you really don’t have is an extra 30 minutes in a row. You do have driving time and eating time and pauses while you wait for your computer to catch up. Mark Thornton’s Meditation in a New York Minute takes advantage of all those extra moments (way more than 30, by the way) and shows you how to use them to destress your life.

He has numerous exercises on how to do this, ranging from simple to advanced. For example, why not put an alarm on your PDA to remind you to take a deep breath? I have something like that on mine - and occassionally I’ll change the alarm time or the message to help me see it in a new light.

My favorites activities are, of course, those that help you really develop an awareness of your body - when you’re eating, walking, brushing your teeth, working in the garden. I often encourage my clients to do the same with their senses - anywhere, anytime - feel the experience of life in that moment. After all, the input is there. We’re always smelling, tasting, hearing, touching, seeing. Simply allow yourself to notice.