Mountain Burnout Retreat…

Re-Membering the Healer’s Spirit

Originally designed for nurses with burnout, the retreat is open and adaptable to anyone. It is great fit for artists, writers, and creative persons wanting to delve deeper, and more abstractly, into the source of our creativity. The retreat has its basic “bones” for the presentation, but also follows an organic path that shows up with each group. A wonderful handout is given which includes many resources for further investigation.

Retreats are scheduled per individual request. Minimum of four persons is encouraged, but retreats can be scheduled even for one person.

To schedule a retreat, call 559.561.4671 or email elsahc@dishmail.net
Offering 24 hours CE’s for CA nurses, many other states also accept California CE’s
California Nursing Board Provider #13161

3 day retreat: registration fee is $595 (for 1-3 persons), $495 (for 4 or more persons)
(includes cost of books used for inspirational reading assignments)
Deposit of $300 required at time of registration, the rest is due the first day of retreat.  Cancellation must be made 2 weeks in advance for refund of deposit, minus $100 fee.  MasterCard, VISA, Discover and personal checks accepted.

The retreat size is limited to eight persons to foster a smaller group experience. 
The retreat starts on day one in the morning and ends on day three in the evening. 
It is advised that only persons who are enrolled in the workshop accompany you for the retreat.
 For lodging located nearby in Three Rivers, visit  threeriversvillage.com. You can also stay at my bed and breakfast cottage next door, see cortcottage.com for details.

[Lake Kaweah at the entrance to Three Rivers, California, photo © Elsah Cort]

About the Retreat

The retreat is organized around six passages, with one and six occurring before and after the retreat. Each passage involves individual reading assignments, some creative projects including mandala making as a contemplative exercise, gathering together for group sharing, and a directed meditative walk among the Giant Sequoia trees at Crescent Meadow in Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park (if snow has closed the road to the meadow, an alternate site with a shorter walk will be chosen, along with time spent in nature at lower elevations.)

Retreat Objectives

1. To present the participant with an opportunity to engage “job burnout” as a creative process, one that is dynamic, organic and inherently healthy.

2. To provide foundational information about origins and stages of burnout, both from the individual’s perspective and within a broader nursing professional perspective.

3. To allow for a retreat setting to encourage the participant to read, journal, and discuss a diverse range of ideas, approaches and bases of knowledge about many aspects of healing.To offer practical ways to experience burnout transformation.

4. To offer practical ways to experience burnout transformation.

5. To support the person in this experiential exploration in ways that are compatible within a holistic healing philosophy.

6. To nurture what happens without judgment, preconceived ideas or pressure. To allow for a natural enfoldment of the person’s own process, one that intertwines within the person’s professional practice.

7. To serve and support the person’s re-membering of spirit, enhancing the dignity of the human spirit and bringing healing and authenticity to the world.

[Crescent Meadow in Sequoia National Park, photo © Elsah Cort]

 

Follow your heart…

Loved this TED talk that showed up as a gift today…
just after I posted the 2011 schedule for The Deeper Well workshops.

Now I need to go do my laundry, including washing the sheets…

Here is Neil Pasricha’s awesome blog.

Return to Wholeness: walk a mile in my shoes

I often read posts in an online nurse community called allnurses.com and today, one particular question by a frustrated nurse really struck me. “Should ‘we’ pay for the cost of non-compliant obese patients?”

Here is the full post this nurse wrote for this question, opening up over eight pages of response from other nurses in a very important discussion.

This is a controversial subject that I bring up but … should we – the tax paying public– have to pay for the cost of non-compliant obese patients and all their problems (htn, chf, dm, metabolic syndrome, depression)? Recently we had a 40 something female patient in with a celluliitis and she was totally non compliant with her care, meds and diet. Her ‘boyfriend’ was seen several times bringing large quantities of fast food from the outside. And this gal was younger then me and already chronically ill, and weighed well over 450 lbs. Now I’m not a skinny mini, but you can’t tell me the extra 300 pounds was from hormone problems.

Geeze what the heck is the matter with people????

Yet she expected to be waited on hand and foot and was one of the most obnoxious patients I’ve ever cared for in all my years of nursing.

So why is it she qualifies for all sort of aide – and free insurance — when she has chosen a life of sloth and gluttony?

So my question to you reader is should we pay? Would she have become this aberrancy if we (society) hadn’t supported it in the form of welfare and social security disability? And should we withdrawl her benefits if she remains non-compliant?

My response:

I have just read every response to this very important thread. “Walk a mile in my shoes.” We truly have no idea what has led any person to make the choices they have. It is not our job to judge them. So what would be the best care plan for this “obese” (or insert whatever other so-called non-compliant condition here) patient? Are you a nurse who knows how, and is willing, to listen and communicate with her spirit? Who could access what is at the core of her pain? Because, yes, this patient is in pain of some kind. She cannot just will the weight off of her body. Her body now “needs” the sugar, food fix. Where is the nurse who will assist her in this? Who will nurse her pain (now described as a vital sign, remember) and support her as she changes deeply ingrained patterns, which have invaded her life for whatever reason. Where is the healthcare infrastructure and insurance payment for this kind of follow-up?

Non-compliance is a serious issue in healthcare, but not because of so-called non-compliant patients. It is because of the judgment handed down by caregivers. If someone feels uncomfortable to take a lot of pills, and their gut instinct says it is not for them, then they are judged non-compliant. Who determines what the best healthcare course is? The for-profit drug companies?

Health is about wholeness, not following orders. Nurses have a huge opportunity to support this return to wholeness, which has to come small step by small step.

Perhaps the frustration of the nurse, who asked this important question, is also related to a feeling of helplessness, not really being able to help someone who “appears” not willing or able to help themselves? Being able to be neutral is the key. Judgment can energetically land on someone, even contributing to a need for more adipose padding to deflect that energy hit. Obesity, is more than eating food. And the fact that so many people in this country are over weight, is bigger than just the number of calories in and calories burned.

“I am not a mechanism, an assemblage of various sections.
And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill.
I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self
and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help
and patience, and a certain difficult repentance,
long, difficult repentance, realization of life’s mistake, and the freeing oneself
from the endless repetition of the mistake
which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.” D.H. Lawrence

Many aspects of life brought both this patient and this nurse together at this exact time….with an opportunity, a mirror (because we are all mirrors for each other) to help each other face issues in their lives. Sometimes the smallest of gestures, words, compassionate recognition of spirit, can change everything…everything.

Being a nurse is a difficult choice and a serious responsibility. Respond in the best way you can to light the way for patients in your care to find and return to wholeness. Redefine healthcare as you do this. It has become a profit-oriented business and not the care-giving, heart work that it could be. Do the best that you can in this difficult work that you have chosen to do. Heal both nurses and other people, who are called patients, as you step up to the plate.

The Gratitude Gig

How do you do this gratitude thing? Is there a five or nine step guide to follow? People seem to like numbered steps these days. We are encouraged to write lists of what we are grateful for, just in case we don’t remember them all. Making the list is supposed to elevate the object of gratitude, make it special and honored.

Gratitude is about eating some humble pie, but not the pie that denigrates or belittles the grateful one. Humble pie reminds you that you are a daily novice in this earth life experiment. Swallowing it with reverence and fearlessness will feed you exactly what you need. Be grateful when you see it on your table.

The motion of gratitude is propelled simply with love.

“Wu Wei” digital mandala (made from one original photograph) © Elsah Cort

The Hidden Cost in Health Care of Nursing Burnout

There never has been a time in my forty-one years as a registered nurse that I was not exposed to some aspects of nursing burnout, either noticing and being affected by it in my nurse colleagues or in myself from time to time. Burnout was not even a concept back in those early days. We had no defining term that described our frustration, fatigue and, often, sheer exhaustion at just doing our daily job. We have been called professionals, with standards we have to exemplify to present a professional image. Yet, most of the time we have been relegated to just getting the job done. And this job has always been a somewhat dirty and difficult one of caring for persons in deep need, complicated crises and overwhelmingly frightening dis-ease situations. A burned out nurse can unintentionally be a big liability in the delivery of optimal health care.

Today the concept of “burnout” itself is trying to undergo a makeover, with new terms coming out for it. People are hesitant to use the word burnout at all. This is especially true for the nurse who is burned out, whether in small, subtle ways of job dissatisfaction or more severely as nurses who would quit the profession all together (if they did not have to meet life’s necessary financial obligations.)

The potential for healing nursing burnout is really within the burned out nurse her/himself. This is a challenging notion, I realize. If you are that burned out nurse, how could you possibly accept that you are the one who can transform it? It already takes all your energy reserves to just show up for work!

There are two kinds of burned out nurses. Both are exhausted and at their wit’s end in their work. One talks about the burnout, often in the form of bitching (don’t you just hate this word?) and lashing out at fellow workers and family or friends. The other one is the burned out nurse who has reached a kind of despairing complacency, but still longs for a solution, a better something.

I have been both, and in recent years found myself immersed in a kind of deep grief that I could no longer stay on the job as a nurse. This decision has taken a personal financial toll, but I still feel that I did the right thing to step aside and get a different perspective. Out of this came the birth of a nursing burnout retreat called “Re-Membering the Healer’s Spirit.” When I teach this retreat I wake up happy and joyful about going to work that day. How many times do nurses really wake up happy and excited about going to work?

The burnout retreat has revealed another aspect to nursing burnout that I had not realized. It seems that the nurses who could benefit the most from the retreat are not able to let themselves do it. Part of it is the huge energy depletion in the burned out nurse, that barely allows them to get done what is already on their list. And with family obligations, the household chores and the daily list of things needed to be done, there leaves very little time for getting away or going on “retreat.” Yet, this can be the most potent time to drop everything, and take a very deep breath!

Underpinning all this, is the level of self-worth that is often diminished in the burned out nurse. We are taught as nurses that we have to be exceptional at our work, be strong and able to multi-task where lives are depending on it. If we aren’t measuring up, as our symptoms of burnout are telling us, then we see ourselves as nurse failures. This devaluing of ourselves is the most profound aspect of nursing burnout, that somehow we just aren’t good enough. The cycle deepens here…if we aren’t a good nurse then we can’t do a good job, and if we are exhausted, drained and on the edge, how can we be a good nurse?

There is a sadness coming over me as I write these words, because I know at this very moment in time, there are nurses out there thinking and feeling this way right now. And there are persons (we call them patients) who are in dire need of a nurse who is present, competent, caring and energized to help them.

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An open invitation is sent out to anyone (not just nurses) to gift yourself with a retreat from The Deeper Well.

There are two dates set this fall, one in October and one in November, and both have open slots. You can schedule a retreat for a different timing, if you have three other persons who also want to come. The retreat does offer 24 hours of Continuing Education for California or Nevada nurses. The retreat does offer 24 hours of Continuing Education for California or Nevada nurses.

Read more about them at “burnout retreat” link in the above menu, but know that the fluid, organic nature of the retreat is not so easy to put in words.

Rocking the boat within Nursing Burnout

Reading an article about nursing burnout this morning in the online nurse’s forum at allnurses.com prompted me to post this reply:

“Don’t rock the boat…is a common thread for many nurses and nursing work environments. Management says they want to have input to make the nursing environment better (what they really want is more productivity for less paid hours on the clock.) And nurses don’t want other fellow nurses stirring up the dust too much by sharing their frustrations. Just get through the day, do your job (perfectly) and don’t tell me about what you think needs to be fixed or changed.

I have been researching burnout for years, both from an experiential perspective (40 years as a nurse) and from a holistic “healing” perspective. To realize the complicity between both nurses and the job situations themselves, is a multi-faceted discussion. How do you talk about burnout with anyone–other nurses, family or friends–without it becoming just a gripe session or getting suggestions like this article’s title says to “just relax”?

There is a fundamental core issue that relates to nursing burnout and to our so-called health care crises….that is that we are not becoming healthier or “getting well.” We need to send ourselves, as nurses, an authentic Get Well card. We can change the nursing profession. And I know for sure that there are nurses who realize this, envision this and long for it to happen.

This author is one of these nurses. She offers her insights and tells us that we can change our mindset about how we approach our difficult and sorely needed jobs as nurses. She has discovered a process for transforming nursing burnout, born out her own personal experiences as a nurse who cares.

I have looked at her offerings and found that we share common views on how to help nurses with burnout. It gives me hope to find such a kindred spirit. And I know there are many more of us out there, and I hope some of you will post your perspectives here. Burnout is becoming a cliche, and we are supposed to couch it in different words like compassion fatigue, almost in a kind of denial that it is still happening. Nurses are not supposed to burn out, they have been trained to be professionals who get the job done. And now, with the economic times so unnerving for many people, nurses are feeling even more stuck in jobs that they fear they cannot leave or “rock the boat” in any way.

If you are a burned out nurse reading this, or know of one, or wonder if you will become one…..I invite you to explore it with me in a mountain retreat in California. You can see the details at thedeeperwell.wordpress.com and yes, this could seem like an advertisement, but it truly is a helping, caring hand reaching out. (The retreat does offer 24 CE’s for California and Nevada nurses.) It is a documented fact that burned out, stressed out and overwhelmed nurses contribute to a less than helpful, and sometimes out right dangerous, health care environment for patients. Nursing burnout affects us all, whether we are immersed in it or not.

We need to welcome all the voices talking about it.”

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Read more about burnout from Lori Daniell, author of the article, at her Nurse Your Spirit website.

A New Wave

The burned out nurse is the pioneer portal for a new wave…washing over the shore of nursing. The burned out nurse finds her(him)self floundering like a lost fish on the sand, thrown up on the beach by weariness and tempest, not knowing it’s only low tide. Surrendering to the now, as it is, and stilling, opens to a deeper, slower, ancient tide. Then the real work begins.

“In your heart is a mysterious portal that interconnects the infinite ocean of Love to the oceanic consciousness in your body. Ground substance, as the inner ocean of the body, is a liquid connective tissue inside and outside every cell that unites the awareness of 50 trillion cells as one consciousness. So body as microcosm reflects macrocosm: our individual consciousness is an expression of the whole. Paradoxically, by descending inward to heart we contact the outer shimmering, pulsing oceanic heart of mother earth. And since the heart of the Mother is one with the infinite heart, we directly realize ourselves as Love – all that is – expressed as body.”

from Charles Ridley, author of
Stillness: Biodynamic Cranial Practice and the Evolution of Consciousness
a free download called “Relax into Your Natural State”
from his biodynamic craniosacral school

Nursing Burnout on Facebook

Started a new group on facebook for sharing stories and solutions for nursing burnout. Nursing burnout affects the health and wellness of everyone. But for the nurse, it is a deep and difficult challenge. It can permeate all aspects of the nurse’s life…AND it holds a supreme opportunity for transformation.

Link to new facebook nursing burnout group.
Please join us and add your two cents.

Image available as greeting card or digital print at 1000markets.com
©2010 Elsah Cort

Change a life just by saying hello

burnout blip:
Offer yourself for service today, not for rewards for you.
Look for the invisible person that is taken for granted. Say hello.

We all have rushed by the invisible persons that keep our human society functioning. Some of them work right beside us, some are cleaning up after us, and some are even in our families. Some times we feel that we are the invisible person that no one really recognizes or even wants to know.

Martín Prechtel (Native American healer, author and teacher) teaches a beautiful ritual in his moving workshops. He asks that you bring three small gifts. During the workshop you interact with a partner. At the end of the time together, you give one of your gifts to this person. You also give them the other two gifts, with the instructions for them to give one of the gifts to an “invisible” person that they come across in their daily life. You are to also give them the second gift and ask them to notice another invisible person and share the third gift.  It can become a profound paying it forward.

Image is a drawing by Martín Prechtel.
floweringmountain.com

On the job training…

Training yourself to be “awake” when you’re on the job is a way to ease the onslaught of burnout. I am thinking about all the nurses, at this very moment, doing the same task over and over again. They are writing the same words in their nurses’ notes, checking the same boxes for meds given, hanging the same IV bags, and facing the long lists of treatments to do. How could anyone in this kind of position even think about waking up by actually slowing down, even just a little bit?

I don’t guarantee this will work, but here is an idea to try:
Take 1-3 deep breaths before some of your tasks, or even all of them.
Stop walking, talking, and moving while you do this. Smiling is definitely okay to do, though. Looking into the eyes of your patient while you do this is also encouraged. Invite your patients to join you.

Then when you return to your mundane, and often critical, tasks after this brief “retreat” notice how your hands move, how your mind feels (not thinks) and how your eyes see.

When you first try this, you may feel entirely ridiculous. You may not even want to give it a try. But don’t let your negative, discouraged, stressed out self force you to continue working mindlessly and even sorrowfully. Do this often each day. The key is the noticing that comes during these intervals. You could write little notes to yourself, but don’t let it become another chore and a something that you should do. Just breathe…

[There's more to try after this small step.....
but for now, this is a first step or two.]

Essential Breathing (art and words from Yoga News)
Oxygen is the most essential nutrient for human life. We can live mere moments without oxygen, while we can go without water for three days and without food for nearly six weeks. Breathing deeply is essential, both for optimum health, but also for continued lung capacity. Some studies have estimated that up to 75% of a person’s lung capacity can be lost unless a person practices deep breathing. Deep breathing stimulates organs in the body, increases circulation, decreases stress and allows us to process our emotions fully. Many people have to actually re-learn how to breathe fully, so start today to reclaim the wonderful effects of filling your lungs to capacity!

Why are we right and you are wrong?

“The primary reason that modern medicine fails so many times is that it tends to assume that symptoms are just something “wrong” with the person that then needs to be managed, controlled, or suppressed. Distinct from this medical viewpoint is an ancient and futuristic model that recognizes that symptoms represent DEFENSES of the body that should be nurtured and augmented as a way to treat disease processes.” from a blog post today by Dana Ullman, called Lies, Damn Lies and Medical Research.  This in-depth article sparked a heated debate in the comments section. Ullman is a homeopath and that just does not sit well with mainstream medicine supporters.

My longer response to his article comes below. I had to shorten it to fit with the comment format for his article.

:: Right and wrong, black and white, us and them, red and blue, yes and no, you and me, my science and your non-science, only tell two viewpoints and do not reflect the organic, multi-faceted and abundant lives we live here on this small planet….We listen (sort of) to any argument, and lean toward acceptance of a particular message, based on where we are “standing” at the moment.  I am right and you are wrong. We all want to be right and to have others agree we are right. And most of us would rather die than change our minds.

Wanting to be right starts at a young age for most of us.
(photo source: dreamstime.com)

This conversation about healing, causes of dis-ease, treatments and cures, efficacy and longevity pivots around wanting to be the one who is “right”.  Moreover, many “right” people want to force their views on everyone and also want to make a profit while doing it.

We are emerging out of a group mentality where we have been abdicating our individual power to outside (of our true nature) authorities. It is not comfortable, nor is it meant to be.  What I know (or believe or where I invest my money) is what I know only for now. My knowing is evolving, not fixed, and I am open to admitting I was mislead by a lot of what I have been taught (especially as a registered nurse).

I admire this author’s courage to speak the truth as he knows it and, more importantly, lives it. Prove all things, for yourself. The best advice I have ever given as a nurse to a patient, is to see all doctors, nurses, pharmacists and healthcare professionals as consultants presenting possibilities, not necessarily the final word on what is the right health care path for you. Being personally responsible for your own healthcare is a challenge requiring great courage and wisdom. It is not easy.

We heal from the inside out, and all the bandaids, medications, surgeries, and scientific/homeopathic remedies work only when the body says yes. And the body only says yes, when our consciousness (whatever this really is or is not) is on board. ::

Migration

Change is inevitable. It is the fuel of life. I want it. I resist it. I am it.

Briefly…..I have migrated the main Deeper Well website to this blog.
It is home for now.

mandala © Elsah Cort

Sprout Yourself

“The less a project or task or opportunity at work feels like the sort of thing you would do if this is just a job, the more you should do it.” –Godin’s admonishment today.  After 40 years as a nurse, I have thought so much about “burnout” and working in jobs that are just task oriented and not heart-centered. Are we brainwashed, especially now, to think that we have to accept whatever job we can get? Are we doing real work, or fake work, made up by others to maintain the status quo? Including ourselves?

burnout blip:

Notice the new green of leaf sprouts on the live oaks.
Trees do what comes naturally coming from deep inside.
Sprout yourself.

::………::………::

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Photos of the landscape where The Deeper Well retreats are held.

A message from the deeper well…

Take 5 minutes from your perfunctory lists today and listen to this. Then do what you really came here to do. Don’t let anyone define who and what you are, even yourself. Push yourself to think and work outside the box of consensus reality. How do you know, that if you don’t do what you came here to do, then I can’t do what I came here to do? Open your mind by opening your heart, and help others to do the same. It is our authentic job description.

burnout blip:
Is burnout a luxury these days when we are desperate to have any job?
Authentic work is needed now, more than ever.
Create it.

Open yourself for the unknown…

burnout blip:
When we become fixed in our notions,
no matter how good we think they are,
we can miss something entirely new and just for us.

Be fluid, open, generous, neutral…….and wait.

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burnout blips are posted each morning @burnoutblip and @thedeeperwell
photo: Marble Fork of the Kawah River Watershed © Elsah Cort

Path Wanderings

Teaching the second day of burnout retreat today.  We will visit Passage 4 (of 6) called “Path Wanderings” and here is a quote from MartÍn Prechtel that pretty much sums it up:

“It has always seemed hopeful that people passing the same spot of earth, on the same day, at the same time in their lives, could have utterly divergent experiences. Other people have gone where I have gone, and met some the magic beings I knew, but it wasn’t in their destinies to experience what I did. There are layers of realities before us, behind us, around us, and in us, and we stay in a layer no matter how far we travel until the spirit admires our courage and grace and allows us to sprout into another zone of experience.”

We read this story in the retreat.

See thedeeperwell.com for future retreat dates.

January Retreat

Quick note: date change for January retreat, now to be held on January 26-27. The retreat is an organic process.  You are an integral part of its making.

Re-Member the Healer’s Spirit:
nursing burnout retreat, open to anyone with job burnout

Depending on the snow level in Sequoia National Park, we may be doing our contemplative walk in the foothills.  Call 559-561-4671 to register or if you want more information.  See thedeeperwell.com for retreat details.  24 hours continuing education provided for California and Nevada nurses.

Change :: Comfort

Clouds are most effortless in allowing change.

Snuggling down under a warm blanket, with my wireless laptop connected to anything and everything, and thinking of the myriad of creative work I want to do with my life, the biggest challenge is to move at all.  Comfortable and warm physically, but restless and feeling a strange urgency, it is a tug-of-war.

We read, talk, think and write about a longed-for change for our lives.  It is especially apparent on designated change days like today, when we start a new year, magnified by starting a new decade. Yet change itself meets resistance on all levels of our being. We are wired to search for the familiar, the comfortable, defined by our patterned existence and socially supported values.  We want the change that everyone else seems to have, not the change that could be fine tuned to our unique purpose for showing up on the planet.

The world needs our courage to change, to relinquish our attachment to comfort.  Small steps can work, like just beginning to notice what keeps you comfortable. No judgment or pressure, just try a single step to one side of your comfort zone. Then, see what happens. And tell someone about it.

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Comfort: a state of physical ease and freedom from pain or constraint. Comes from a Latin word for strengthen, confortare.

Change: As a verb—make or become different, move from one to (another.) As a noun—the action of changing, an instance of becoming different. Comes from a Latin word for barter, cambire.

__________________________________

I make no new resolutions for today, except to move with what shows up from any inspiration (breathing-state.) Today it is the movement of fingers to type these words about this dilemma. In a few minutes it will be moving legs to step out of this cozy room, maybe to tidy a few things scattered around the house and finish some art due tomorrow for a group exhibition.

(photo by Elsah Cort: the sky outside my window a few days ago.)

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
____________________________

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
February 26-28, 2010
April 23-25, 2010
May 21-23, 2010
June 18-20, 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