Restoring Our Tarnished Legacy

In the bloom of our passionate and idealistic youth, my generation believed we could make the world a better place by ending war, eradicating poverty, freeing the oppressed, and saving the earth from the ecologically-destructive footprint of the human race.

But, as John Lennon aptly put it, "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans."  Looking back now, I often wonder how, as a generation, we allowed our collective compassion to be consumed by the very behaviors we once condemned.  How we have become the establishment we so ardantly once blamed for the world's injustices.

Headlines and evening news videos remind us that soldiers and civilians are still senselessly dying from unjustifiable (and immoral) wars... that poverty and disease still run rampant worldwide... that race and religion still separate us... and that our planet is, more than ever, still threatened by our disrepect for her.

Though we might have become so caught up in our own lives and livelihoods that we set aside that spirit of peace and compassion that defined us in the 60's and 70's, we need to renew our commitment to make the world a better place.  Though "you may say that I'm a dreamer" (to borrow from John Lennon again), I believe we still have a chance to restore the tarnished legacy of our idealistic youth.  I believe we can still make a difference. 

       

    

Things I Miss, Part 2: Wall Posters from the 60's

We tacked them on the walls of our dorm rooms in the 60's to exhibit how "cool" we were (or so we thought!) and to announce our political leanings to anyone who cared to know.  Here is a sample of the "artwork" that adorned my own room in those formative years.

We could see from the news footage every evening that things were a mess in faraway Vietnam -- and an awful lot of young men my age were being sent there by the politcos in Washington.  Though it would take a stint of my own in the Armed Forces to become an avowed pacifist for the rest of my life, it was clear that war was a senseless waste of lives. 

 

The Beach Boys were singing about surfer girls in California.  Even land-locked as I was, surfing, I knew, had to be "cool".

 

The posters we hung also portrayed our tastes in music -- I was a "folkie" and listened to a lot of Bob Dylan.

 

Before the convenience of VHS and DVD, we took in our favorite old movies at one of the local art houses.  This was (and still is) a popular cult classic that regularly appeared at a nearby independent theatre popular with students.  Disclaimer:  That I owned the poster is not an admission that I actually inhaled!

These old posters capture a whisper of who I was... or wanted to be seen as... over four decades ago.  Yet, looking at them now, I do recognize the seeds of who I am today beginning to germinate.

Peace, man! 

Self-Awareness

"He who conquers others is stong;

He who conquers himself is mighty."

~ Lao Tzu

Life seems to whoosh us along at a dizzying pace these days, leaving us exhausted and often without a clue regarding our greater purpose or a final destination. It's no wonder we sometimes sense the whole journey might be rather pointless.

Our twenty-first century culture expects quick results and an indefatigable commitment to the race if we hope to grab the prize at the end. We measure our progress in leaps rather than steps. We demand our information at high-speed, obsessively staying connected 24/7 to our ambitions with cell phone and laptop computer, fearing that "downtime" will somehow make us appear vulnerable. We consider a mere 40 hours in the workplace a lack of commitment...

And in the process we lose touch with our inner selves at the expense of our most cherished dreams and spiritual well-being... and of our authentic relationships with others.

Intuitively we know this. In fact, our curiosity about the effects of our rapid-paced lifestyle has generated a phenomenal market, in print and online, for information on ways to improve our lives. As an example, according to the Association of American Publishers, we purchase well over a billion dollars worth of books on spiritual and other self-help topics a year. That's encouraging. Though no one can say for sure how many of us have actually effected a lifestyle change from reading these books, it appears we're at least finally beginning to get the message: True healing – whether it be spiritual, physical, or mental - begins with examining our inner self.

That message – that our desires are the root of our suffering – is not new by any means; it is the foundation of virtually every spiritual belief system, past and present. When we become wired to our outward cravings, we invite into our lives greed, fear, anger, lust, conflict, regret, and a host of other symptoms of dis-ease. By doing so, we close out our own self-awareness and any chance we might have to experience real fulfillment in our life

Until we learn to reconcile our inner awareness with our outward actions, our lives hold little hope of ever having a true sense of purpose or meaning, much less fulfillment or even real joy.

Such reconciliation does not mean we should necessarily forego our ambitions: to rise to the top of our professions, to earn a nice income, to live comfortably, or even surround ourselves with beauty. Rather, self-awareness allows us to recognize that our outward desires offer only temporary gratification, and to expect any sort of permanent self-fulfillment on these alone can trap us in a vicious cycle, spawning disappointment and, when all is said and done, a life lived without real meaning, substance and depth.

By practicing self-awareness – through self-reflection, mindfulness, prayer or meditation - we ground ourselves in the Now and open the possibility of discovering more meaning in our lives. We begin to understand how our lives interconnect with all that is around us. How we create our own sorrows, pain, and disappointments, as well as our joys, well-being and triumphs.

Self-awareness is the anchor that keeps us grounded, reminding us that this often-hectic life does have a purpose to it, however madly it might seem to rush by at times.

Having a Drink with a Famous Writer

While doing a bit of research on the Internet recently, I came across a list of the favorite drinks of famous writers. As one who admires the works of several of the authors on the list, and one who likes a good drink now and then, I couldn’t resist the distraction from my intended research. This post is my attempt to assuage the guilt of interrupting an afternoon of productive research by amusing myself with unrelated web-surfing. Here, then, are a few writers I would have liked to have shared drinks with.

Ernest Hemingway – a Mojito at Bedeguita del Media in Havana, Cuba: The Mojito is my favorite hot-weather drink and Havana one of those tropical places I’ve always wanted to travel to. Throw in an afternoon chumming with Papa and, well, it just couldn’t get much better than that.

Jack Kerouac – a jug of cheap red wine at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco: Though Kerouac’s favorite drink was Tequila, I’m going here with the more traditional Beat Generation beverage-of-choice. The ideal event for this wild camaraderie would, of course, be a poetry reading by Allen Ginsburg.

W. Somerset Maugham – a Gin Gimlet at a Colonial outpost in Burma: Steamy jungle evening... rattan ceiling fan stirring the thick air… the refreshing lime and gin concoction… sharing stories of our adventures in Asia and the South Seas before the days of jet planes and pricey tourist resorts.

Oscar Wilde – Absinthe at an outdoor café in Paris: The author of The Picture Dorian Grey and The Importance of Being Earnest was known for his eccentric character and his love for this potent, anise-flavored spirit. Very bohemian in a Toulouse Lautrec kind of a way. Wilde, incidentally, is given credit for the quote, “Work is the curse of the drinking class.”

Hunter S. Thompson – Chivas Regal at his cabin in Colorado: Though I swore off Scotch many years ago, the entertainment value alone of drinking with Mr. Thompson would be well worth the temporary relapse.

Dorothy Parker – a Gin Martini at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City: I haven’t read a whole lot of Ms. Parker’s stuff, but how can you not want to have a Martini with the woman who penned this famous poem: “I love to drink Martinis, / Two at the very most, / Three I’m under the table, / Four I’m under the host.”

Cheers.

Things I Miss, Part 1: New Novels by Kurt Vonnegut

From the time I discovered Kurt Vonnegut’s fiction around 1970, I simply could not get enough of it to sate my appetite for his wit, irony, satire and the genius with which he called attention to our society’s foibles in a manner that had us laughing at our own serious flaws.

My first taste was Slaughterhouse Five (1969), his famous anti-war novel in which he posed that, since everything exists simultaneously, humanity is insignificant; from that point I was hooked, became a Vonnegut glutton. I binged on his five earlier novels, from Player Piano (1959) through God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) then suffered through Vonnegut famines of roughly three years each while awaiting his subsequent novels. Beginning with Breakfast of Champions (1973), I was too hungry to wait for the feast; rather than place a reserve on the book at the Public Library or wait until it came out in paperback, I ran out and purchased the hardback the day it hit the bookstore shelves.

It was a sad day, indeed, when shortly after the publication of Timequake (1997), Vonnegut announced that he’d written his last novel. Like, I suppose, most other Vonnegut aficionados, I always hoped he wasn’t serious about that pronouncement, that there would be another novel forthcoming. Though he did offer us a few other choice fiction tidbits afterwards – two collections of short stories, Bagombo Snuff Box (1999) and Look at the Birdie (2009, posthumous) — that next novel never came. And never will. Kurt Vonnegut died in April 2007.

So it goes.

A Lesson from Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway's closing words in A Moveable Feast have always resonated with me: "But this is how Paris was in the early days, when we were very poor and very happy." Hauntingly sad words from a writer who had already become a legend - as a writer and as a public figure - by the time he wrote them nearly four decades later in 1960 (a year before his death) and who was enjoying all of the material trappings that went along with his fame.

I think I've figured out why those closing words have stuck with me. They are an indictment of conspicuous consumption. A Moveable Feast is Hemingway’s testament that happiness and satisfaction with one's life are not measured in material possessions acquired or in celebrity status.

The "things" we acquire often distract us from our life's journey with temporary gratification, squeeze our sense of purpose with artificial expectations and, in the end, disappoint us with their intangible value. They clutter our lives - physically, emotionally and spiritually.

To paraphrase sociologist Elise Boulding, because our consumption society has conditioned us to feel that happiness lies in acquiring possessions, it has "failed to teach us the happiness of not having things." Our ambitions make us hungry for status, mistakenly measured not in the inner satisfaction of the accomplishment itself, but in our public displays - luxury automobiles, bigger houses, the elite company we keep, and the power we wield - that the accomplishment makes possible. We lose sight of our real needs and, in the process, let our wants run amuck.

Possessions, in and of themselves, are not necessarily a bad thing. But when we mistake our consumption urge as a means toward enduring happiness, we're more often than not going to be disappointed. At some point the things we own begin to own us. Once the instant gratification wears off, the value of the objects we've acquired diminishes - often while we're still paying off the credit cards and loans we took out to purchase them. In turn, we seek more gratification and succumb once again to our urge to own something bigger or better, perpetuating a vicious cycle of consumerism.

Beyond our perceived need to exhibit our status publicly, there are many theories of why we become entrenched in this cycle. If we grew up poor, for example, surrounding ourselves with material goods may assure us that we'll always have enough. Or if we suffer from low self-esteem, we may feel the need to shore-up our morale with beautiful surroundings.

Whatever the reason, we are fooling ourselves if we expect happiness to be packaged on a retailer's shelf, to come with leather upholstery and a convertible top, or to be embedded within the walls of a new house.

Once we're caught in this cycle, our desire for a newer model, for a bigger and better this or that, clouds our perspective on what matters most to us. We condition ourselves to no longer be content with what we have and, thus, the object of our life's work becomes a quest for material goods or name recognition. We lose sight of spiritual fulfillment or of accomplishing the task or the skill we set out to master. Always wanting more, we are unable to celebrate the way things are in the moment.

Happiness cannot bloom amid the weeds of discontent. Truth is, our possessions eventually become little more than clutter in our lives rather than a panacea to assure our happiness. At some level we all know that.

The key is to separate our true needs from our wants, to rid our lives from the complexity the clutter creates. "When you realize there is nothing lacking," Lao Tzu said, "the whole world belongs to you."

In Paris, the world belonged to Hemingway. He lived simply and happily, requiring only a good morning’s effort at crafting a new story, the intimacy of his wife and young son, and a close circle of friends.

That was before his fame and fortune made his life complex and robbed him of fulfillment and happiness.

Music Completes the Spoken Word

I once read somewhere the quote “music completes the spoken word” but did not really understand the true meaning of this until a few weeks ago. I was attending a reading at a local coffee house by the award-winning poet (and colleague of mine at the university where I teach), George Kalamaras. I have read George’s poetry, so knew this would be an artistically rewarding evening. I had not, however, anticipated the glimpse of satori that his final poem of the evening delivered.



I should explain that George’s poems contain many metaphors and imagery drawn from Eastern Wisdom traditions – particularly the Hindu-yogic tradition – so, listening to George recite them tends to produce an almost meditative state of mind anyway. But the finale took this even deeper.


For his last poem of the evening, George was accompanied by a cello and a guitar – both musicians improvising as the poem was read. The soft music of the stringed instruments seemed to carry the words of the poem to an ethereal level. You could actually feel the energy of the Universe resonating through everyone in the audience. Collectively, we were engrossed in the moment, our temporal reality suspended as George read.


Afterwards, I attempted to capture the experience in my journal and, though I am admittedly no poet, preserved the evening for me with this poem:

Cello poem and poet song

lifted on kensha strings of guitar

to the cloud-ringed mountains.

The bodhisattva pauses.

Glimpse of satori.

Learning to Take Ourselves More Lightly...

"Angels fly because they take themselves lightly."

~ G.K. Chesterton

It's a crazy world out there and, let's face it, sometimes just coping with the problems of the world (and in our own lives) can sap our energy and leave us feeling emotionally drained at the end of the day. Fortunately, to deal with the stress of our day-to-day existence, Nature has provided us with a "sixth sense" - our sense of humor.


The problem is, as we grow older we develop an unhealthy tendency to take ourselves too seriously. We fool ourselves into thinking that proficiency at what we do in life must necessarily involve an appearance of sober attention to our commitments. To be perceived as taking our responsibilities too lightly sends, we fear, a message that we're somehow less skillful, less efficient, or less dedicated to what we're doing.

As a result, we too often pay for our seriousness with stress, burnout, and a sense that we're getting no joy out of our work. We fail to understand that it's quite possible to be sincere about our work... and our life... without taking it so seriously. In fact, learning to take ourselves more lightly is without a doubt better for our physical, mental and spiritual health.

Think of it this way: Nature gave us that sense of humor because we require it to stay healthy. Though medical science stops short of claiming that humor and laughter are capable of reversing any disease, an active sense of humor undisputedly makes sure that our body's natural health and healing systems are fully engaged in defending against disease.

Most notably, laughter has been shown to lower the level of the stress hormones epinephrine, cortisol, and dopac in the blood. And, since stress has been linked to the six leading causes of death in the U.S., a good laugh a couple of times a day may be the easiest - and most affordable - prescription for our wellness.

When we take ourselves more lightly and allow our sense of humor to influence how we view the world, we nurture a more positive, optimistic perspective of things. Our attitude about our job and our life almost immediately improves. Obstacles seem less formidable. Troubled relationships appear less difficult to mend. And, as we replace high-stress emotions like anger, anxiety, and fear with compassion and a positive attitude, we are able to respond to adversity and challenges with a calmer, clearer perspective. We enjoy life more.

It's ironic, I suppose, that as we grow older, take on responsibility and the need to deal with the obligations and tragedies of our lives, we tend to ignore our most powerful resource for maintaining our emotional and physical health - Laughter. According to William Fry, M.D., professor of psychiatry at Stanford University Medical School and an expert on health and laughter, the average kindergarten student laughs 300 times a day. Adults, on the other hand, average just 17 laughs a day.

Perhaps it's time that we recapture a bit of that lightness we knew as children, a time when each day promised opportunities. When we took ourselves lightly and understood the pure, cleansing delight of a good laugh.

Losing Yourself in a Great Novel...

There are few things I enjoy more than losing myself in a well-crafted novel – stories so adeptly told that, once you’re drawn into them, you are no longer merely reading words. You are experiencing an alternate reality. You feel as if you are actually living the story.

I’m not talking here merely about plot, the mystery or suspense that keeps you anxiously turning pages to the climax and denouement. The best of these “page-turners” most definitely entertain us and allow us to escape from the tedium of our day-to-day lives in much the same way a good movie does. But few really move us.

Great novels, on the other hand, add to the experience of our lives. They draw us so vicariously into the story that, at its end, we become changed in much the same way as the novel’s protagonist has.

These are the novels that haunt us long after we’ve finished them, the books we go back to periodically throughout our lives, the titles that immediately come to mind whenever someone asks us what our favorite novel is.

They are the books that make reading a spiritual, as well as an entertaining, experience.

Favorite novels, of course, are a matter of individual taste. That’s why I’ve always found those lists of the Best Novels of the Century and so forth as purely the subjective opinion of the originator of the list.

And, in case you are wondering what my subjective favorite novel is: it is The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham.

Why I Keep a Journal

“Journal writing is a voyage to the interior.” ~ Christina Baldwin

I’ve been keeping a journal off and on since the late 1960’s. At first, when I idealistically (and naively) thought I was destined to become a great writer, its pages served as my “writer’s notebook”, a place where I could record story ideas, sketch out characters, or test dialogue. My earliest journal is a spiral notebook with a hand-drawn peace symbol on its worn cardboard cover. Its pages contain the faded pencil and fountain pen entries that were my initial serious attempts at poetry and storytelling. The poems are little more than doggerel, and the stories embarrassingly amateurish. There are also three pages of notes from Immanuel Kant’s essay “On Perpetual Peace”, the first bit of philosophy I ever attempted to sink my teeth into. From cover to cover, it is filled with sophomoric musings that, now, I am glad I decided to preserve. Here’s why:

That first journal and its subsequent companion volumes – and there a dozens of them in the old wooden file cabinet in my attic – have, in addition to serving as my “writer’s notebook”, also functioned as a diary; as a therapeutic outlet for my anger, fears, desires, and regrets; and as a permanent repository for interesting factoids I’ve encountered, flashes of brilliance that came to me in dreams and were recorded immediately upon awakening, and passages of “mental doodling” during which I allowed my subconscious a creative outlet.

As a legacy, my four-plus decades of scribbled thoughts have no public value, the way journals of great historical or literary figures attract scholarly curiosity. For me, however, they are priceless records of the expression of my Self and, together, a personal map of my individuality.

I revisit an old journal now and then, and each time I am rewarded with a reminder of what was important to me at that particular stage of my life. On their pages the roller coaster ride of my existence is processed, dealt with privately, perhaps resolved. I observe my emotional, intellectual, and spiritual growth. By re-examining where I have been, I begin to understand more fully who I am today.

Hell Explained by a Chemistry Student...

I came across this on the Internet today -- it's just too good not to share here...

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid term.

The answer by one student was so 'profound' that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well :


Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?


Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.  One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today.

Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.


This gives two possibilities:


1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.


2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.


So which is it?


If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct......leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'


THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A+.

The Tea Partiers are Undermining Our Democracy

My intent is not to politicize this blog but, pondering the behavior of the Tea Partiers and other right wing nuts in response to the recently legislated health care reform bill, I feel it is necessary to pose this question: What is the value of a Democracy in which opponents of its legislated laws respond with threats, character defamation, and even violence?

When disagreement with a piece of legislation becomes an open invitation to threaten or harm those who supported it, when the hate-mongers throw bricks through windows, cut gas lines, and fire gunshots, they are mocking the very core of our Democracy. Furthermore, that such hate and disrespect for the legislative process is incited by certain neo-con blowhards on radio and television is unforgiveable and treasonous.

If our own Democracy is to be so wrought with domestic terrorism – and that is, really, what the actions of many of the opponents to the health care reform bill have become – how can we expect it to be a model of stability and freedom for those countries we are trying to force it upon?

"The Hurt Locker"

“In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons.” (Herodotus)

Were it not for my desire to view at least one of the top nominees for this year’s Best Film Oscar – and that the relatively low-grossing “The Hurt Locker” was already available on my cable provider’s Pay-for-View – I likely would have never seen this movie.

As a rule, I don’t watch movies about war. Four years’ service in the military during the Vietnam War convinced me that all war is a senseless waste of human life. Period. There is nothing glorious about fighting a war. Movies that suggest war is about patriotism or power, quite simply, miss that point. Yet, unlikely as it may seem, I was rooting for “The Hurt Locker” to win the Best Film Oscar during last night’s Academy Awards.

In the weeks leading up to the Academy Awards, “The Hurt Locker” received much negative criticism for its lack of reality, for taking liberty with the facts to embellish the drama. Some even politicized the movie, saying it was an insult to our troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These critics, however, missed the point of the film. It is not a documentary, nor was it intended to be one. Instead, the movie concerns itself with the psychology of fighting a war where the foe and the ally are indistinguishable from each other; where providence metes out life and death in seconds; where the rational is frequently a less-sound tactic for survival (mental and physical) than instinct. All of the facts in “The Hurt Locker” may not be accurate, but its message comes off quite clear: War is hell and should never be glorified. No one who has served in a combat zone will argue with that.

The Oscars for the movie, for its director (Kathryn Bigalow) and for its screenwriter (Mark Boal) are well-deserved. They got it right.

An English Professor's Epiphany

A couple of weeks ago I became upset with the students in the Freshman Composition class I teach at one of the local universities. As I explained the necessity of using action verbs and sensory details to evoke a dominant impression for the reader, and pointed out how vividly the sample essays in the text used description to this effect, I realized from the expressionless faces in front of me that not a single one of my students even vaguely shared my enthusiasm for good descriptive writing. It was evident, too, that they neither read those assigned essays nor cared to discuss them. To them this was all a bunch of pedagogic hooey!

That prompted the usual diatribe with my colleagues about how today’s students are unprepared for college, lack critical thinking skills, and suffer through general education courses like Composition not because of the value of the skill learned, but because the course is required for their degree, et cetera, et cetera.

As I mulled this over throughout the day, my rant gradually turned into an epiphany of sorts. I realized that when I was a freshman in college – nearly forty years ago – I thought this stuff was a bunch of crap, too. Like the aspiring artist who fails to recognize the need to know the mechanics of drawing before attempting abstract paintings, I saw little connection between the drudgery of learning the tools of composition and the great stream-of-consciousness novels I was certain would soon be flowing from my pen. Likewise with the other courses I’d enrolled in – Biology, German, American Literature, and Trigonometry. With the exception, perhaps, of the literature course (though I found several of the authors on the syllabus dry and tedious reads), I was convinced that my professors had no clue as to the sort of education a wannabe writer required. Instead, I set my own curriculum, one that consisted mostly of skipping classes and writing poor imitations of whatever author I was into at the time. The result was a much less than stellar first semester – two B’s (Freshman Comp and Literature), a C (German), and two Incompletes (Biology and Math).

I finally wised up – after two false starts at college and a stint as a Hospital Corpsman in the Navy – and recognized the importance of those basic courses I’d naively thought a waste of my time. And I realize now that, as I did, most of those students who stared blankly at me, bored out of their skulls, during that class period a couple of weeks ago, will sooner or later “get it”, too.

So… to the students of my English 101 class: I absolve you of your Sin of Disinterest that morning. Sometimes, alas, it seems professors forget that they were once freshmen, too.

Using Music to Unlock Creativity

Recently, I was having a difficult time with a short story I wanted to write. I had visualized how it was going to begin, how it was going to end, and even had played out several scenes in my mind. But when I’d sit down to actually do the writing, the words just wouldn’t come. I tried all of my usual “tricks” for overcoming writer’s block: attempting to write the first draft out in longhand instead of at the computer; free-writing to get the creative juices flowing; even focusing on the story during my morning sitting meditation. Nothing seemed to work and I spent too much of my precious writing time staring at a blank page.

After one particularly frustrating attempt to get the story going, I gave up and decided to spend the last hour or so of my planned writing time instead listening to a collection of classical music that I’d downloaded the night before onto my iPod. As I lay on the couch in my study, headphones on and eyes closed, listening to the likes of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Vivaldi, an amazing phenomenon occurred. Suddenly the words to the story I’d abandoned a short time before began bursting into my conscious mind… driving me back to my desk. There, the words finally began to flow onto the page. The “Mozart Effect” had released the story that had been trapped within my subconscious mind.

You’ve likely already heard about the “Mozart Effect”. That’s the theory, backed by some fairly impressive research results, that listening to classical music stimulates the brain’s alpha waves which are associated with feelings of calm and relaxation. These feelings allow us to enter into a peak state of intelligence, focus, and increased creativity. The state is much like that experienced while meditating – alert, but our mind uncluttered by the thoughts and images that rush through our normal waking hours – allowing us to tap into the creative force of our subconscious while still awake.

The “Mozart Effect” got its name from study results, published in the journal Nature in 1993, that suggested that listening to Mozart temporarily boosted students’ IQ by 8 to 9 points, and was popularized by author Don Campbell in his 1997 book, The Mozart Effect: Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit.

The “Mozart Effect” is also my go-to antidote for writer’s block these days.

Godliness...

My personal spirituality has evolved from the Roman Catholic catechism of my childhood, through an exploration of the sacred texts of the eastern religions – particularly Buddhism – and the stories of indigenous traditions. What I learned was, once you strip these religions of their dogma, parables, and myth, they all pretty much point to the godliness of all living things. In other words, the creative force of the universe (or God, if you prefer) reveals itself in each and every one of us.

In a world where religious traditions seem to divide us rather than unite us spiritually, a worship service that honors all of the religious traditions of the world as equal spiritual sources makes a lot of sense to me.

I recently learned of the Universal Worship Service, a service officiated by the clergy of Universal Sufism. During this ceremony a candle is lit and readings taken on a particular theme from the sacred texts of six of the world’s major religions and traditions. Each reading evokes a Divine Quality the tradition is said to illustrate: Divine Wisdom (Hinduism); Divine Compassion (Buddhism); Divine Purity (Zoroastrianism); Divine Covenant (Judaism); Divine Self-Sacrifice (Christianity); and Divine Unity (Islam).

Other candles may be lit to honor other world traditions, including the Earth Goddess tradition (Divine Feminine), Taoism, and the local indigenous tradition.

The first candle represents the light of Divine Truth and from it all of the other candles are lit.

Perhaps this godliness that is each of us is The Word that has been passed down – though, unfortunately, misinterpreted by us – from Jesus, the Buddha, and all of the other revered leaders of the world’s spiritual traditions.

There Will Come Soft Rains

I would like to think that Nature will survive our often-destructive footprint on our planet. This poem... a favorite of mine... expresses that hope.

There Will Come Soft Rains
by Sara Teasdale

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

About the author:
1884-1933. Sara Teasdale won the Columbia University Poetry Society prize in 1918 for Love Songs, which also won the annual prize of the Poetry Society of America. Although the popularity of her work declined considerably in the second half of the 20th century, it has received renewed interest in recent years.

Nature Enlarges the Mind and Spirit

Emerson believed that solitude in nature leads to true enlargement of the mind and spirit. His books, he said, “should smell of pine and resound with the hum of insects.”

Nature also teaches us humility. For those who doubt this, you only have to stand beneath a towering sequoia or gaze across the expanse of the Grand Canyon to appreciate our insignificance in the overall scheme of creation. Our greatness is not defined by our desires and arrogance, but by our interconnectedness with all of nature.

How Art Reveals Our Inner Nature...

Kseniya Simonova is a Ukrainian artist. She uses a giant light box, dramatic music, imagination and “sand painting” skills to interpret Germany’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine during WWII.

This is a truly amazing and moving video (viewed over 11 million times on You-Tube) that exemplifies, I feel, the power of art to reveal our inner nature.

A Walk in the Snow...

It is snowing this morning. Not one of those arctic-blast snows that stings your face, but a powdery, gentle snow that blankets and purifies the landscape. The dog and I take a long walk. He amuses himself sniffing and snorting in snow banks. I use the crisp morning exercise to figure out problems with the short story I’ve been working on, replaying the fixes when they come – the new dialogue, the improved character development – over and over again in my mind so as not to lose them before I return to the story after the walk.

Captured in the Timeless Web of Rome

To me, the greatest reward from travel is not the destination itself, but the sublimity of the experience that somehow continues to resonate with you long after you return home. The following was written after a trip to Rome a few years ago...

As any great city will, Rome reminds us why we travel. The real discoveries – the experiences that hang on longest after the trip is over – are not the “must-sees” we highlighted in our guidebook before leaving home. These are merely the embellishments that draw us to her. Rome’s true allure reveals itself in more subtle ways.

We visit, of course, those obligatory sites. It is expected. For one does not go to Rome without seeing the Coliseum, or without marveling at the harmonious architecture of the Pantheon. We eat gelato while sitting on the Spanish Steps next to the Keats House. Exercise neck muscles to capture the full panorama of Michelangelo’s masterpiece on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And, following tradition, throw coins over our shoulder into the Trevi Fountain to assure our return to Rome.

But the memories that haunt us the most afterwards are those that come about unexpectedly – the dozens of feral cats that escort us on the Palatine Hill; the artisans restoring century-old furniture in tiny workshops tucked into the medieval buildings a few blocks off the Campo dei Fiori; the osteria on a side-street in Trastevere, where we eat lavishly and inexpensively and then successfully negotiate with our waiter in our rudimentary Italian for the ceramic pitcher he’d served our vino rosso in.

And we remember the Sunday morning church bells, their chiming replacing the usual early-morning cacophony of Vespas and spirited conversations over cappuccini beneath our hotel room window.

The first bells arouse us from the deep sleep of exhausted travelers. Then, one by one, other bells from Rome’s hundreds of churches join in, permeating the morning with their collective celebration.

This ethereal wake-up call draws us from our bed to the window, as if the sound of the bells might actually be seen, as well as heard. The sun, though not yet dipping into the shadows of the piazella below, pours invitingly into our third-floor room. The late-February air teases of spring. But the bells dominate the morning.

The day before, we’d walked among the ruins of the Roman Forum, imagined we might actually be placing our feet upon the very stones that Julius Caesar once walked, yet still conscious of that vast chasm between past and present.

But these bells chiming across the city defy such temporal barriers. This, we realize, is the same Sunday morning concerto that centuries of travelers to Rome have awakened to. As they might have, we linger at the window and listen, captured in the web of that continuum. We know now why Rome is the Eternal City. This is why we have traveled here.

Listening to Our 'Whispers'

“None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’ve spent more years (decades) than I care to remember seeking inner satisfaction from ‘things’ and ambition, only to discover that their value, in the end, is insignificant or even non-existent. What has stayed with me, though, are simple moments of experience that were unadulterated by expectation or hoopla. I’m convinced the grandeur of our existence is revealed when we pause long enough to reflect on those experiences that whoosh by unexamined as we speed towards our desires. What follows are the 'whispers' I've listened to in hope they might encourage you to examine your own glimpses of satori in turn.

Wishing you inner peace and a happy 2010.