Face to face…

“I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success.  I am for those tiny, invisible, molecular, moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootless, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which, if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man’s pride.”
Utah Philips, from his “Loafter’s Glory” radio show, recording date unknown, it was re-broadcast on KPFA radio on November 29, 2009.

We are macro and micro, and everything in between.

burnout blip:
The relationship,
between each of us and the energy that spawned us,
is reciprocal.
We both evolve together in the perfection.

photo from the Suburu Telescope,
at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

“What is the origin of the ocean on the Earth where the life began? Researchers think that the Earth was formed by the aggregation of a huge amount of dust particles in the circumstellar disk around the Sun during its birth. There is a hypothesis that water ice in the dust at that time is the material of the sea on the Earth. The observation from Subaru Telescope shows that there is water ice in the gas and dust disk around a young star HD142527 toward the constellation Lupus. The ice discovered by Subaru may become the sea on a planet revolving around HD142527 in the future.”

Plant your seeds in the invisible soil…

the words of Bahauddin, the father of Rumi:

“….How do you feel about doing work that brings no benefit to you or anyone? Aren’t you always aware of a destination when you walk out your door? Do you ever walk out, look around in all directions, then go back into your house and sit there with no purpose, for no reason?

You often plan work without knowing what will come of it.  You plant seeds with no guarantee they will sprout. You enter into a business deal with no sure sense it will make profit.  Many do not reach the point they move toward, but that doesn’t mean they stop trying.

Certainty comes only with work we do in the invisible, but we cannot know that. Journey taken and seeds planted there never disappoint.  The saints and hermits and prophets might be able to give us some of their confidence if we could work along with them.”

from The Drowned Book, Ecstatic and Earthy Reflections of Bahauddin, the Father of Rumi by Coleman Barks and John Moyne

©Elsah Cort, digital collage from Square One series
elsahcort.wordpress.com

Cementing your life’s ambitions

“Cement is the most common human-made material in the world. Combined with water to make concrete, it is a fundamental ingredient in many buildings and roads. And yet no one knew its precise structure until recently. Then a group of scientists figured out that its strength comes not from its orderliness but rather from its messiness. At the atomic level, cement’s molecules display both regular geometric patterns and areas of random variation. It’s in these chaotic areas that water molecules bind with the cement, creating a structure that’s both flexible and robust.  This is the kind of foundation I urge you to work on…..a configuration that will endure exactly because it has a lot of give.”

Rob Brezny’s weekly advice…worth taking
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photo of cement texture
source freedigitalphotos.net

The quiet work

I call the “daily grind” the quiet work.  It is what you do each and every day, sometimes at home or sometimes at your workplace.  These are the tasks that you can almost do in your sleep, or at least without much thinking or preparation ahead of time.

For me, sometimes it’s just washing the dishes, almost making the bed (wish this happened more often) and feeding the cat.  Today it is watching the rain and catching up on writing and thinking.

When I was “grinding” away as a home health nurse, it was seemingly endless computer charting each day.  I gave that up for a freer schedule with room for creativity and flexibility and even doing absolutely nothing.

The burnout has almost left my system after a year or so.  I am now learning how to work without my old familiar pattern of feeling dissatisfied and frustrated.  No more excuses for not doing the real work…

Light from the Heart Nebula

When you do the quiet work as a heart-centered work, you can transform any menial task into a kind of grandeur. Then any work becomes connected to authentic work.  But if you complete a task mindlessly, just because you have to do it, then it could be a wake up call to step back and look at what you are doing from a neutral perspective.

Is it something that really needs to be done for the greater good?  Is it something that could be removed from your “to do” list? Are you working mindlessly, because if you actually became mindful of what you are doing, then your heart might start screaming at you? Could you just do it a different way? Or could you do something else entirely new for you?

Finding and identifying your authentic work could be the best work for you to do at any time, on any day, just like today.

Quiet your mind, wash the dishes, and notice what shows up.

Looking at clouds…part two

(“Seeing” twitter postings as clouds forming, moving and disappearing…
one cloud showed up this morning from @paulhaynes in London with a link to)
Part 1 of 9 of a video interview with Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len, who says:

“….without realizing, we are stuck in old data and we’re dead and the Ho’oponopono* is about releasing the death and the debt. Basically we have a mortgage on our souls and we don’t even know that. And because we’re not conscious of it or not even aware of it, we’re stuck in it and we’re just going to suffer. And it doesn’t have to be so.

You can erase the data back to zero, and at zero, out of nothing, comes this phantom force of inspiration—new data, brand new….”

#One

#Two

#Three

#Four

#Five

#Six

#Seven

#Eight

#Nine

Each video is 6-9 minutes, from Monterey Public Access Television
and YouTube from gr8light

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image found with a google image search for the word “zero”
from Kevin Kelly at www.kk.org and his blog/book called The Technium.

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*The word Ho’oponopono means to make right, to rectify an error.  Read more…

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more profound core material: Kahuna Kindergarten with Candace Lienhart
teacher, healer, Kahuna in Tucson, monthly class available on MP3 or tape

Clouds are somebodies too…

burnout blip:
When was the last time you spent hours just watching clouds
form….. move….. disappear?
Today is a good day to start this practice.

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You may have to travel to some place where
you can see wide expanse of sky…
but don’t let this stop you from looking up
from where you are standing now,
always the best place to be.

Burnout Retreat Calendar

Are you feeling up against a wall that you can’t move?

Might be time for a burnout retreat in the mountains.

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New dates added to retreat calendar:
October 17-19, 2009
January 23-25, 2010
February 20-22, 2010

Read more about who, what, where, when,  and  why.

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“Your hand moves
and the fire’s whirling takes on a different shape.
All things change when we do.”

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The burnout retreat is open to anyone experiencing job burnout, or just plain life burnout.  The agenda is simple: make space for calmness, rest and an opening for organic change that is not forced or pressured.

24 hours of continuing education is offered for California and Nevada nurses.

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photo credit: Erwin Wurm

quote credit: KuKai, 8th century Zen Master

Connection Is: (whether you like it or not)

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A human being is a part of the whole called by us ‘universe’… a part limited in time and space.  He experiences his thoughts and feelings as separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

~ Albert Einstein ~

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Now is the time to remember you are not alone.

In thought, word or deed, you are totally connected to everything else.

You cannot made headway until this realization embeds your agenda.

~ Elsah Cort ~

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Eventually, everything connects.

~ Charles Eames ~

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thank you to http://cargo.superfamous.com/#123
for helping to coagulate my thoughts this am…..
follow Folkert Gorter’s gatherings at http://butdoesitfloat.com
if you can take the speed/avalanche of images

Time measurement…

Time has been on my mind much lately.  At any moment, without any particular pattern, I realize how time has moved on and I still feel that I haven’t gone anywhere. Yes, it is illusory, this movement through time. And inescapable. The green leaves of the trees in front of the house have these colors, waiting in invisible repose for time to pass, to be seen during a brief passage called Autumn (a doe emerges softly from behind the wild lilac, as I write.)

It has been almost a year, as measured by humans, since I quit the home health nursing job to find more time to write and teach.  It happened out of the blue, this job quitting.  And the living on the edge, as I have often called my life here in the Sierra foothills, began in earnest (now a raven sits high on a blue oak branch squawking across the hillside meadow, no time measuring for him.)

The nurse in me, the one who graduated from nursing school forty years ago tomorrow, is still here.  But what I know to be true about healing and caring and nursing itself, is not the same as that nineteen year old nurse graduate (I turned twenty the day after graduation.)  What I know now is fluid and deep.  And this knowing has not created a life that is perfect, using old ways to measure perfect.

Changing the patterns of thinking about how and where to work is my daily task.  When I find myself looking at the nurse job openings at the local hospital, one of only two in this county where I could work, I see steps that move backwards. I know it could be a radical approach to encourage all nurses working in traditional nursing jobs to leave their jobs this very day.  It definitely would change the flavor of the healthcare debate going on right now (a hummingbird is drinking from the vitex tree blossoms, now rests, still, on the clothesline.)

What if nurses said no to caring for the ill in ways that have no real connection to health and healing?  What if nurses refused to work within a system that does not support healing at the core but promotes expensive stabbings at symptoms and diagnosis codes? What if each nurse willingly got off a daily treadmill grind, that offers little or no real support for completing the daunting, overwhelming tasks required each and every day? What if nurses stopped nursing in old ways?

What if time was measured not in hours (until your nursing shift was over) or not in days (until your next day off) or in years (until you could retire from the job itself) but only with awareness of this one and only moment you now find yourself living?  What if you understood how well and thoroughly you are loved and supported by the Universe itself, and let this be your paycheck?

What if you gave up how and where and why you work as you do? You don’t have to quit your job to do this.  All you have to do is change your mind and breathe (now eight yellow finches, in a perfect circle, drink from the bird bath.)

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For assistance with changing your mind…
visit www.thedeeperwell.com for the Autumn burnout retreat schedule.
Retreats are open to all, not just nurses.

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Are you late for your life? Listen ♫ http://blip.fm/~bxtf4

The Wu-Wei Principle

burnout blip:
For at least one day a week, move very slowly in the morning.
Don’t look at a to-do list. Practice doing non-doing. Wu-wei-wu.

We define ourselves and each other by what we do.  A common question asked when people meet each other for the first time is “What do you do for a living?” Then follows a longer exploration of how you do this thing, how well you do this thing and what are the secrets to your successes (or failures.)  No one has their reputation enhanced by doing nothing, yet we long for this do-nothing life.

Doing nothing well is its own art form.  You can learn non-doing but not by trying to learn it. It comes with surrender, trust, and nurturing your ability to listen to subtle intuition then acting, or not, as you are nudged.

Somehow we mistake not doing what we think we have to do with activities that have little to do with non-doing. We don’t give our minds a time and space to wander without purpose or intention or attention to goals.  We find ourselves longing for “time off” but then spend that time doing something that we call recreation.  We trade one list of have-to-do with another to prove we know how to have fun, sometimes busier than when we are working.

Wu-wei-wu, or doing non-doing, is a principle found the ancient but ageless understandings of Taoism.  The direct simplicity and enigmatic depth of this teaching has fascinated me since my early adult years when I discovered the Tao Te Ching, said to be given to the world by Lao Tsu, a wise man (some say legend) who lived in China sometime between 600-300 BC.

716, 000 links on google for Tao Te Ching
1,060,000 links on google for Lao Tsu
95,100,000 links on google for doing nothing

In governing one’s life.
there is the subtle path.
The path is ageless.
The subtle path has been recognized as Tao,
the Integral Way.
Tao is also called the universal subtle energy.
At the same time, it is the universal law.

The subtle path can be discerned,
yet it is not an ordinary path…
There are no words that can describe it;
the subtle path cannot be limited
by the definition of words…

Because Tao is subtle energy
and at the same time subtle law,
it looks like nothing.

(from Esoteric Tao Teh Ching)

The principle of wu-wei contains certain implications. Foremost among these is the need to consciously experience ourselves as part of the unity of life that is the Tao. Lao Tzu writes that we must be quiet and watchful, learning to listen to both our own inner voices and to the voices of our environment in a non-interfering, receptive manner. In this way we also learn to rely on more than just our intellect and logical mind to gather and assess information. We develop and trust our intuition as our direct connection to the Tao. We heed the intelligence of our whole body, not only our brain. And we learn through our own experience.  (from www.jadedragon.com)

Watch The Man who found where God lives

Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9 per cent
Of everything you think,
And of everything you do,
Is for yourself -
And there isn’t one.

(quote from Ask the Awakened, author Wei-Wu-Wei aka Terence Gray)

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photo above by Elsah Cort, taken on the path encircling Crescent Meadow in Sequoia National Park, where we go for a discovery process with purposeless wandering during the burnout retreat called “Re-Membering the Healer’s Spirit”, details at www.thedeeperwell.com.