Easily Amazed

here’s a cut-and-paste from an inspirational post to the oslist by Agneta Setterwall from Uppsala, Sweden.

I am in the beginning of an interrail, backpackertrip with my 13yearold youngest daughter. We are jumping blind into Europe, going south tonight. We know that we will be in London next week. We know that we will cross Calais-Dover. We know that we can travel in all Europe (we already have the interrailtickets). We know that we don?t have much money. I know that I want to learn this young person things about how to travel and how to become streetsmart enough so that I(!) can be calm (calmer) in the years to come…

i am so moved my her inclination to teach her daughter how to travel and be street smart by sharing such a meaningful adventure together. i am also moved by her effort to calm her own worries in years to come.

it makes me think about my own father and camping. as a child we went on many camping trips. in my highschool years my dad suggested that my friends and i start going camping together. if we all enjoyed hanging out so much and being together, why not take it to the woods (another thing we all enjoyed). years later he shared that that was also a way of helping him know that we were safe. he figured the amount of harm we could actually do to ourselves in the woods was much less than if we were wandering the streets of downtown atlanta.

so today feels like a good day to celebrate gratitude for the parents in our lives who nurture us, stretch us, open us to new vistas, remind us of our value and worth, connect us to the Beyond, the One. They are as intrinsic to our lives as every cell and membrane and belief we are.

They are ocean to our river and river to our ocean. Thank you.

comments:

Last night I finally signed on to the OST list. Rommel gave me an invite for Gmail, and it has made a world of difference in my ability to handle the various email lists I was already on, let alone adding OST to the list.

Anyway…

The email from Agneta was the first email I received from the list, and I found her desire to head out on the railways with her daughter inspiring. It’s a shame they only seem to have two weeks.

I’ve had a similar idea of traveling Europe with Brandon when he gets a little older. It would be truly wonderful to not only encourage Brandon to expand his horizons, but to be present to witness it.

And though I hadn’t thought of it that way previously, there’s a lot to be said to being there the first time out, so I can feel more comfortable down the road when he heads out places without me.

Hmm…. Plotting and planning…

-Dave

Dave | 07.03.04 – 2:22 pm | #

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(oh, good on you, Dave for joining the OSList!)

When Robert & I got married 20 years ago, we made plans to take all our wedding gifts and put them towards traveling. Both our sets of parents encouraged us, suggesting to their friends that we wouldn’t really need household gifts but would really appreciate money towards our trip; they didn’t express any nervousness or disapproval about our plans…we traveled all around east Asia for a year, plus another half a year in Israel and Europe. Now, being a parent, I am so amazed at their fortitude and ability to refrain from expressing their natural worries about our doing something so different from anything they’d done themselves. Such good models for me!

Christy Lee-Engel | Homepage | 07.03.04 – 5:56 pm | #

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oh dave, it’s great to know that you are now among the participants of the oslist!

inspirational parents… i can never get enough of you all!

thanks christy for igniting all sorts of fabulous dreams regarding wedding presents towards traveling, a year and a half traveling with your new life-partner, and the potential of creating new trends in family relations. inspiration of the greatest sort!!

Gmail… is that the google function for email? i just heard about that for the first time this weekend… i must learn more.

toodles,

ashley

ashley | Email | Homepage | 07.04.04 – 1:28 pm | #

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Yep. Gmail is Google’s answer to Hotmail and Yahoo mail. It’s VERY well done. Right now they’re still testing it, and it’s by invite only. They dole out invites to existing users to pass along to others. When they give me an invite, I’ll pass it along to you.

Dave | 07.04.04 – 4:45 pm | #

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You obviously have a great father who is warmed by your thirst for independence and comfort.

henrietta | 07.07.04 – 12:28 pm | #

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you’re must be right, henri! i’m so very gratefull.

with love,

ashley

ashley | Email | Homepage | 07.07.04 – 12:34 pm | #

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happy to find this place!

we are now in London, in the house of Annette Zera, who I met through a Birgitt W.training some years ago.

Yes, two weeks is not much, but I have two children (older) at home, and Blenda wants to get back before her birthday.

Four years ago I did the same with her older sister, Amanda, then 13. We just had 10 days on the road (or rail), and that was goodenough to give us the time- and roomspace we needed to let a quality grove, a kind of new beeing-together, a fellowship. I certainly got calmer, and Amanda have after that travelled on her own and have not got lost.

Now, out on the streets of London…

Agneta

Agneta Setterwall | Email | 07.08.04 – 6:43 am | #

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hi agneta!

i know so many of us were delighted with your post to the oslist about your journey, so it is fun to have a report from the trail!

best wishes from the north carolina mountains,

chris weaver | Email | 07.10.04 – 9:41 am | #

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We have now been in London four days, and had plans to go to Berlin where we were invited to stay in the Pannwitz’ home. Yesterday when I tried to book the tickets from London to Berlin, using

our Interrailcards, I met difficulties. “England” seams not so

interested in making it easy to leave, at least not for slow

budgettravellers. The difficulties however gave us space to think, feel

and talk. While my feelings mostly consisted of irritation, thoughts

about young and arrogant railwaypersons and so on, Blenda unfolded a

complex inner of mixed emotions and conflicting thoughts, transforming

and changing through a long conversation, gently supported by our

hosts.

(it is not possible to write more then 1000 signs, so I will continue in next message…)

Agneta Setterwall | Email | 07.12.04 – 4:47 am | #

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The result of a lot of genuine contact, tears and hesitation is that we

are not going to Berlin NOW. Blenda have had enough of sitting on

trains, and have learned that “seeing as much as possible” can result

in seeing nothing. She now wants to go home, and continue our vacation

together there in the sense that I will have as much time for her as I

have had on this trip. In our normal life I am not seldom a very busy

mother, with 15 arms. (running my own bussiness, single mother of three, house and garden, not much money…)

So this is what I have learned: Blenda wants most of all that I really spend time with her. I know that I am lucky that she wants me to, and I know the time is NOW, not later.

Tomorrow we will leave London, going back to Sweden the slow oldfashioned way. It will take ur more then 12 hours. Then we will continue our “travel” at home.

Agneta

Agneta Setterwall | Email | 07.12.04 – 4:47 am | #

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my family too has chosen to travel at home before, & it can be a beautiful journey.

we have also discovered how a retreat apart can sometimes be a way of being together in a deeper way.

living connected & restoring connection is a subtle & rigorous art…

love,

chris weaver | Email | 07.13.04 – 6:54 am | #

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hi agneta,

feel free to keep sharing about your vacation (and life!) with us… you continue to be an inspiration as you are so open to learning with and from your daughter.

the reminder that i also hear in your words is for parents to take as many opportunities as possible to just BE with thier children… no responsibilities, activities, expectations attached. simply sharing NOW with one another.

in the parenting groups that i facilitate parents have 30 minute play sessions once a week that are completely dedicated to the child having 100% of their parent’s attention and being in control. your story reminds me of how important this is, regardless of the child’s age.

with love,

ashley

ashley | Email | Homepage | 07.13.04 – 11:33 pm | #

more touching words from jack ricciuto at gassho

Gratitude for friends

Today is a good day to celebrate gratitude for the friends in our lives who nurture us, stretch us, open us to new vistas, remind us of our value and worth, connect us to the Beyond, the One. They are as intrinsic to our lives as every cell and membrane and belief we are.

They are ocean to our river and river to our ocean. Thank you.

comments:

yeah. friends:

like a gold coin spinning

catching the sun on both sides

one side how sweet it is to be loved

(in ani difranco’s words)

as is

to wear my mistakes like bad hair

to get dressed in the morning

forgetting my socks

forgetting to shave

walking out to meet you friends

a bleeding heart on both sleeves

& the other side how sweet it is to live

openeyed to you, friends,

where nothing you do or say

could ever temper the current

of love that flows,

this shining being,

this cresting wave,

all this, all this.

Deena Metzger:

There is time only to work slowly.

There is no time not to love.

chris weaver | Email | 07.02.04 – 11:17 pm | #

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thank you, chris, for this touching expression. i can so clearly see both sides of the coin shining, shimmering, and reflecting the light of acceptance and unconditional love that radiates in true friendships.

feeling grateful,

ashley

ashley | Email | Homepage | 07.03.04 – 11:36 am | #

i turned to jeff aitken the other day in search of some guidance in prayers for beginning and ending the waking parts of my days. in his helpful response he introduced me to the hebrew word/practice, kavannah. his description of this practice moved me to learn more and i turned to abraham joshua heschel’s book, god in search of man: a philosophy of judaism.

what i found deeply moves me, relates to the post on attention, and highlights for me a distinction between being and doing.

What is meant by the term kavanah? In its verbal form the original meaning seems to be: to straighten, to place in a straight line, to direct. From this it came to mean to direct the mind, to pay attention, to do a thing with an intention. The noun, kavanah, denotes meaning, purpose, motive and intention.

Kavanah, then, includes first of all, what is commonly called intention, namely the direction of the mind towards the accomplisment of a particular act, the state of being aware of what we are doing, of the task we are engaged in. In this sense, kavanah is the same as attentiveness….

To have kavahah means, according to a classical formulation, “to direct the heart to the Father in heaven.” The phrasing does not say direct the heart to the “text” or to the “content of the prayer.”…Kavanah is attentiveness to God. Its purpose is to direct the heart rather than the tongue or the arms. It is not an act of the mind that serves to guide the external action, but one that has meaning in itself.

i understand this to say that being, in a fully present sense, is synonymous with directing the heart to god/spirit/oneness. and with such direction, such a straight, direct line of connection, meaning, purpose, motive and intention become clear along with a profound state of being aware of what we are doing and what we are engaged in. heschel goes on to discuss appreciation, mitsvah, and what i see as the more doing component.

mitsvah means commandment. In doing a mitsvah our primary awarenss is the thought of carrying out that which He commanded us to do, and it is such awareness which places our action in the direction of the divine. Kavanah in this sense is not the awarenss of being commanded but the awareness of Him who commands;…the awarenss of God rather than the awareness of duty. Such awareness is more than an attitude of the mind; it is an act of valuation or appreciation of being commanded, of living in a covenant, of an opportunity to act in agreement with God.

i take a mitsvah to be an action guided by god. to me, this statement illucidates the primary aim of acting upon our passions, the wishes and desires of our true selves. our true selves are always pointing in the direction of the divine. heschel continues,

It is in such appreciation that we realize that to perform is to lend form to a divine theme; that our task is to set forth the divine in acts, to express the spirit in tangible forms. For a mitsvah is like a musical score, and its perfomance is not a mechanical accomplishment but an artistic act…it is not enough to play the notes; one must be what he plays. it is not enough to do the mitsvah; one must live what he does…the holiness in the mitsvah is only open to him who knows how to discover the holiness in his own soul.

let’s join together in our task to set forth the divine in acts, to express the spirit in tangible forms, to bring light to humanity.

comments:

thanks for this ashley – i love the idea of beginning and ending the day with ‘being’!

penny | Email | 07.01.04 – 10:30 pm | #

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sure thing, penny. and how about the aspiration of the whole day in ‘being’!

with love, of course,

ashley

ashley | Email | Homepage | 07.02.04 – 2:41 am | #

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oh my, yes! i’m practicing! but i have been more aware lately that all there is is current reality…and so being present in each moment, i find that when a decision needs to be made, i know instinctively how to make it. little kids are really good at this – lots to teach. which reminds me of something i just read that buckminster fuller said: ‘children are our elders in universal time… because they’ve come into a more evolved world as more evolved beings.’ lots of love to you too! p

penny | Email | 07.03.04 – 2:26 pm | #

dave posted a link to this article about the worlds most difficult words to translate.

this statement really hit home for me:

“Probably you can have a look at the dictionary and… find the meaning,” she said. “But most importantly it’s about cultural experiences and… cultural emphasis on words.”

this is my exact reason for playing the dictionary game. i wish to learn more about the cultural emphasis and meaning that different individuals and cultures place on common words. as part of my path of claiming conscious language, i usually tend to have a few words at any time that i am “working on”… working to fully integrate a meaning that feels right throughout my entire being… and i strive to attain some clarity about how the word reflects off of and is interpreted by others. my practice is to come to a clear meaning for what the word means for me and that aids me in staying centered. (i also stay open to an ever-evolving definition… rarely am i satisfied to a point of completion, but i find grounding for the time-being!) this practice has been especially helpful when something is projected upon me with words (projected by myself or another). i find a comforting sense of grounding in this practice.

below is a medley of moments gathered from the near-death conference, the open space listserv, and narrative therapy…i’ll merge some pieces of these worlds into thoughts to share with you!

a profound result of my involvement in communities of people who have had near-death experiences and other spiritually transformative experiences is the collective story that emerges about consciousness, connection with spirit/god/the universe/oneness, and most significantly to me, the story concerning how and why we live our lives here on earth. the commonality of transformative experiences, the increasing freedom for individuals to disclose and discuss their experiences, and the corresponding shifts in scientific, research-based perspectives of consciousness and spirituality are all adding to the creation of a “new” social story (that perfectly resembles the old, ancient stories from most religions and indigenous cultures).

the narrative metaphor says that “our sense of reality is organized and maintained through the stories by which we circulate knowledge about ourselves and the world we inhabit” (Goldenberg & Goldenberg). Individuals who have near-death experiences or other spiritually transformative experiences are often forced to re-organize their sense of reality, they have to re-write their personal stories about themselves and the world we inhabit in order to incorporate the reality of that which they have experienced. the old stories no longer hold truth and definitely lack importance. these people’s attention shifts to a new perspective, to greater purpose, to universal connection, towards countless new ways of seeing, being, and believing.

paul everett posted to the open space listserv about attention:

We make something or someone important by giving it/them our attention, our life’s time. The quality of our attention tells how important it is to us. In fact, my guru taught, and I have found this to be true, that ‘attention heals’, in personal relationships. Lack of attention results in distance, diminishment or atrophy…

…Attention is a choice, every moment what you and I are giving our attention to we are making more important than another moment we might have given our attention to but chose not to. So, attention also creates our future because it contains the decision about what to give our life’s time to—the collapse of the wave function in the New Physics. And it is through attention that we become aware, which promotes insight, knowledge, action and results. You can see this, perhaps more clearly, by what you don’t give your attention to and hence, what doesn’t happen.

To begin with, i am always moved by people who give their attention (and life’s time) to their life purpose and their passions.

but on a broader scale, i am moved by the shift of attention that occurs in experiencers, the shift in social acceptance towards such experiences, and the rate of occurrence of such experiences. if i were the kind of person that remembered facts, i’d tell you how many individuals experience cardiac arrest each year. then i’d note that of that population 10-20% have near-death experiences. where my curious mind wanders is to the rapid pace at which this “information” about life and life after death is being shared with our waking, living inhabitants on earth! and with the increase in technology for bringing people back to life (i.e. Automated External Defibrillators and such), it appears this window into another perspective will continue to open for many. it’s almost as if our social, collective attention is being re-directed towards the expanded awareness that these experiences and hearing about other’s accounts of these experiences bring to our collective consciousness… to the social stories that we co-create and believe with one another.

comments:

love this integration ashley! i am fascinated by how people describe having a greater ‘sense of purpose’ after a near death experience. do you think that in our culture we often think of fulfilling purpose as having to do something grander and bigger? whereas the words you are relating here suggest that people are connecting to ‘what already is’…and having more clarity about what they want to give attention to. i just read this from pema chodron last night..con’t in next post…

penny | Email | Homepage | 06.29.04 – 12:03 pm | #

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‘we already are everything that we need…all the trips we lay on ourselves, identities we cling to – never touch our basic wealth. they are like clouds that temporarily block the sun. but all the time, our warmth and brilliance are right here. this is who we really are. we are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake. we are enough. the reason that we’re sometimes not there for others – is that we’re not there for ourselves in each moment. there are parts of ourselves that are clouded and unwanted and whenever they come up, we run away. because we escape, we keep missing being right here, we keep missing the moment we’re in. yet, if we can experience the moment we’re in, we discover that it is unique, precious and completely fresh! one can appreciate and celebrate each moment, there is nothing more sacred, nothing more vast or absolute. in fact, nothing more!

penny | Email | Homepage | 06.29.04 – 12:04 pm | #

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for the third time now, penny, i love these words!

it’s so wonderful to me how those clouded and unwanted parts are really such treasures. we’re so fortunate to have those come up because they give us the opportunity to stay in the moment and heal. in staying with that murky water we discover how unique, precious and completely fresh the terretory actually is, we transcend its murkiness!! and then we get to appreicate and celebrate the moment… it becomes so sacred… us so vast and absolute in our connection to ‘what is’.

ashley | Email | Homepage | 07.02.04 – 2:47 am | #

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the visitation by andrew gonzalez

i’m off to Chicago for the IANDS conference, “Creativity from the Light.” here’s some information on Near-Death Experiences (NDEs).

For Marilyn, in the emergency room with a heart attack, the pain suddenly stopped. “All at once I just popped out of my body and floated up to the ceiling. I could see dust on top of the light fixtures, and I thought, ‘Boy, somebody’s going to catch it for this!’ I could see doctors working on someone on the table, when, all of a sudden, I realized it was me, I mean, my body. I thought it was kind of silly they were working so hard. My family was waiting down the hall, and I wished my kids could stop crying; I wanted to let them know I was fine, but they couldn’t hear me. Then it seemed I had to get back, that it was my job to take care of them, see them grow up okay.”

The Gallup Organization and near-death research studies have estimated that, as of 1982, some 13 million adults NDEs in the U.S. alone had had one or more NDEs. Add children’s NDEs, all experiences worldwide, and all experiences since 1982, and the figure would be much larger. Near-death experiences are uncommon but not rare.

No two NDEs are identical, but when numerous NDE reports are considered together, a pattern becomes evident. Any single experience is likely to include one or more of these aspects of the overall pattern:

* Feeling that the “self” has left the body and is hovering overhead. The person may later be able to describe who was where and what happened, sometimes in detail.

* Moving through a dark space or tunnel.

* Experiencing intensely powerful emotions, ranging from bliss to extreme distress.

* Encountering a light. It is usually described as golden or white, and as being magnetic and loving; rarely, it is perceived as a reflection of the fires of hell.

* Receiving some variant of the message “It is not yet your time.”

* Meeting others: may be deceased loved ones, recognized from life or not; sacred beings; unidentified entities and/or “beings of light”; sometimes symbols from one’s own or other religious traditions.

* A life review, seeing and re-experiencing major and trivial events of one’s life, sometimes from the perspective of the other people involved, and coming to some conclusion about the adequacy of that life and what changes are needed.

* Having a sense of understanding everything, of knowing how the universe works.

* Reaching a boundary, a cliff, fence, water, some kind of barrier that may not be crossed if one is to return to life.

* In some cases, entering a city or library.

* Rarely, receiving previously unknown information about one’s life, e.g., adoption or hidden parentage, deceased siblings, glimpses into future events.

* Decision to return may be voluntary or involuntary. If voluntary, usually associated with unfinished service to loved ones.

* Returning to the body.

Most NDEs are pleasurable, but others are deeply distressing. In either case, virtually all NDErs sooner or later come to see the experience as beneficial.