Jul16
Posted on Jul 16 by Ruth Davis
In Zen Buddhism, Beginner’s Mind refers to “having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner in that subject would.” (Wikipedia) Children are a perfect example of living in Beginner’s Mind. They approach every new experience with curiosity and wonder. They have no experience, no expectations. They just show up and try. As adults, even when we know we are learning something that we don’t know, or attempting to do something we’ve never done, we expect to immediately be good at it. Often, that expectation of perfection and competence butts up against the deeper knowing that we WON’T be immediately good at it, and so we don’t even make the effort. How often, as an adult, do you allow yourself to be in a position where you know you won’t be a master? Where you let yourself be taught, encouraged, and allowed to make mistakes? Where you give it your best without having to be perfect? Several years ago I took a...
Jul09
Posted on Jul 9 by Ruth Davis
It’s too quiet to think! This is what so many of my clients tell me when I ask them to sit in stillness. They are uncomfortable. Fidgety. There is nothing to distract them from the silence. Even with all of the scattered thoughts running through their minds, it becomes too quiet to think. And this is exactly where I am hoping they get. Because sometimes we need to just STOP THINKING. Sometimes we need to stop trying to figure things out, stop planning every moment and just BE with our feelings. BE with the void of thought. BE in that sacred space where our deeper knowing can begin speak to us. I remember one of the first times I sat in a group, practicing meditation. We were listening to a CD of a woman asking us to sit still and just notice everything we thought, felt, imagined, but not stay with any one thought. She wanted us to let our thoughts float past us, making room for whatever came next. And through it all, she wanted us to be...
Jul02
Posted on Jul 2 by Ruth Davis
“It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” E. L. Doctorow said this about writing, but it’s really about anything in life. You have to trust that things will be revealed as you move forward toward a goal, that there will always be enough light to see what’s in front of you. But it takes so much courage to step into that unknown, that darkness, to move into that place of not knowing, fully aware that you have no idea what lies ahead. But you also know that, if you stay where you are, waiting for all of the information, you may never take a single step. Change happens with one next step in the direction of your desire. Just one, single, full-of-faith movement into the darkness. Maybe it is making a phone call for more information about a class, or saying hello to a person you’ve had a faraway crush on. Maybe it is sitting down at your keyboard and writing the first...
Jun25
Posted on Jun 25 by Ruth Davis
Ah summer. The days are long, stretched out in light and heat and possibilities. Especially when you are a kid. For most of us, summer was the best part of the year–no school, playing all day, maybe even going on a family trip. Even if we didn’t have the ideal childhood, summer offered us a kind of escape. We could disappear into a book or the swimming pool or a favorite hiding place and just be with our own imagination for a while. Often, remembering those childhood summers can trigger a forgotten dream or remind us of something we’ve always loved. I grew up on Long Island, the fish shaped peninsula east of New York City that juts into the Atlantic Ocean. My neighborhood was pure suburbia with green lawns and good schools and a mix of Jewish and Catholic families. Summer meant weekly visits to the library, hours lying on the grassy incline in our front yard, imagining shapes in the clouds, and playing kickball with the neighbor kids in the school playground...
Jun18
Posted on Jun 18 by Ruth Davis
The summer I was six, my father taught me how to fish. We’d leave my mom home and drive out to Robert Moses State Park on the south shore of Long Island, past the swimming beaches to the fishing piers. We’d walk up and down one pier and then the other, watching the fishing people cast their clear lines over the rail and into the water. I loved the sound of us walking on the wooden boards of the pier, clomp clomp clomping past the men and boys leaning against the wooden rails or sitting in webbed folding chairs, surrounded by buckets and fishing poles and tackle boxes. My father and I would stop to look in their buckets and ask them what they had. Often we saw flounders and sometimes there was a gray blowfish, still filled with air, lying in the bottom of the bucket. Always there were screeching seagulls perched on the rails and circling overhead. While my father talked to the men I would lean through the rails and watch the colored balls...
Jun10
Posted on Jun 10 by Ruth Davis
On Friday evening, after I took my meds, I tossed the Frisbee into the pool for Mabel. She’s such a water dog, navigating around the snaking cleaner hose, onto the loveseat and out of the pool. I threw it four or five times and then I was hot enough to go in too. This is that time of year when the water is cooler than the outside air and I have to ease in, one step at a time. My mind says to go slow but my body pushes forward into the water, the coolness sharp against my bare torso, and then I am in, all the way up to my neck. It only takes a few moments of moving in the water to acclimate to the temperature and feel one with the water. In the past I would start with laps and stretching and splashing in the water. But I know I need to move slowly, with awareness, and not overdo it. So I dog paddled into the deep end and pretended I was a buoy, my...
