WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER  7, 2011

JUST BE!  You are enough just as you are . . .
FREE PDF & MP3 to DOWNLOAD, Conceptual Art VIDEO to Watch

FREE MP3 of "JUST BE!" Meditative Music for You!
Right-click to download or left-click on this link to play JUST BE! MP3*
MP3 audio file of original meditative music heard in video above.

FREE PDF of "JUST BE!" Notes for You! (below)
Right-click to download or left-click this link  or the image below to open JUST BE! PDF*
Print on 8 1/2" x 11" paper, cut apart, & spread around your surroundings!
(You may need to adjust your printer's "Print Settings" to fit on paper.)


 

JUST BE!

JUST BE   .  .  .  yourself
JUST BE   .  .  .  present in this moment, whatever it brings
JUST BE   .  .  .  imperfect**
JUST BE   .  .  .  aware and awake and alive
JUST BE   .  .  .  doing what you're doing here and now
JUST BE   .  .  .  loved
JUST BE   .  .  .  happy
JUST BE   .  .  .  gentle and kind and compassionate
                                   with yourself and with others
JUST BE   .  .  .  enthusiastic!
JUST BE   .  .  .  resilient
JUST BE   .  .  .  patient and persistent
JUST BE   .  .  .  honest
JUST BE   .  .  .  open to beauty
JUST BE   .  .  .  playful
JUST BE   .  .  .  adventuresome
JUST BE   .  .  .  hesitant
JUST BE   .  .  .  full of contradictions
JUST BE   .  .  .  full of hope
JUST BE   .  .  .  inspired

JUST BE   .  .  . 
 

ACTIVITY
How would you finish this phrase for yourself?

Choose your favorite pen or pencil and paper. In your own handwriting, write out the phrase "JUST BE!" 8 times, each time on a separate line. Listen to the unique sound your handwriting makes as these words take shape.  Now go back and complete each phrase as I have above, selecting words that are most meaningful to you, things that you most need to hear.  As the rhythmic sound of your writing unfolds, breath deeply and come alive in the moment.

OR  write out the phrase, as described, and leave it open ended, incomplete.  Some of the most meaningful times are those wordless moments spent in quiet, receptive observation of people and nature.  Still the inner hum of criticism and expectation, and open yourself to whatever comes.

** Notice the handwriting mistake I made in the 4th square of the image above.  It could have been removed in Photoshop, but I liked what it said about accepting that imperfections and mistakes teach some of  life's most important lessons.  Can you hear the change in rhythm near the beginning of the recording when I momentarily lost concentration and penned an E instead of a B, then wrote over it before continuing?
 

THE  STORY BEHIND "JUST BE!"
THE PATH OF PRACTICE THAT LEADS TO FREEDOM
 
I’ve experienced it so many times before that you’d think I would have expected it. When something looks easy, it’s guaranteed to require a heaping helping of persistence, repetition, and self-discipline to master. That’s why, when I added morning meditation to my daily routine a few weeks ago, I really should have known that it wasn’t going to be a  shortcut to instant bliss.

In most religions, meditation and prayer are viewed as practices. They’re meant to be regular habits that deepen our connection with the Divine and strengthen our compassion for others, while helping us learn to let go of fear and worry, release ego attachments, and learn to JUST BE! Meditation is a practice. Prayer is a practice. Stillness is a practice. We learn the things they have to offer through mindfully showing up and doing what's required over a long period of time.

This not to say it's drudgery.  Not if we take the attitude of playful exploration and self-acceptance we knew as young children.

This is simply one of life’s ironies; making something look easy requires hours of hard work.  The masterful performer who stands unruffled on the world's great stages, the experienced diplomat who negotiates peace amidst heated conflict, even the expert backhoe operator who maneuvers artfully between power lines and pavement; all acquire the appearance of effortlessness through countless hours of attentive engagement, focused wholly on the refinement of their skills and knowledge.

In Italian, the word for studied effortlessness is sprezzatura. In the arts,  sprezzatura refers to ones ability to perform without apparent effort, to execute complex tasks without drawing attention the level of skill required. This can only be achieved through a considerable investment of time and focused effort.

A study by psychologist Anders Ericsson, referred to repeatedly in Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers”, calls this the 10,000 hour rule.  Gladwell writes:

“The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.”

The ability to maintain inner peace during our most challenging moments is no different.  Letting go of self-consciousness and worry, anger and regret, and learning JUST BE! relies on habits formed  while  facing the many challenges, large and small, of our daily spiritual practice. It’s not an inborn talent. It’s something to be learned.

This is my working hypothesis.  My first experiences with meditation, to put it gently, have been a bit of a struggle.  I will persevere in the hope that it will get easier with time. I'm weary of relying on outward circumstances for inner peace.  I’m ready to try another way.

CALM AFTER THE STORM
Hurricane Irene blew through New England at the end of August.  She knocked down trees, blocked roads, washed away buildings and bridges, and left several hundred thousand people—including us—
without electricity for most of the following week.

We were fortunate, though. Our old farmhouse  escaped without  damage. Only our century-old apple tree toppled harmlessly onto the lawn. When we found ourselves living without electricity for 4 days, like modern-day pioneers, we devised creative ways to stay clean and fed without hot water or a working kitchen, and connected without internet access or cable TV. With the help of our neighbor, we powered up a small generator to run our refrigerator and basement freezers for a few hours each day.

I enjoyed the peacefulness of living a tech-free life. My husband and I had long, uninterrupted conversations as we spent more time together. We went for walks and chatted with neighbors who were also out and about.  In the evenings, I read and wrote by candlelight.  On the first night after the storm—the sky cloudless and the moon new—we stood on our back deck staring up in wonder at the wide glow of the Milky Way. It was the first time the night sky had been dark enough in our little corner of suburbia for us to see it.

Going off-the-grid would have remained a blissful minimalist retreat if our 20-year-old refrigerator hadn’t decided to call it quits before the electricity was finally restored to our street. Its compressor motor objected to being run via a long extension cord connected to the smallish generator chugging away outside my studio window. Then I discovered that the freezer downstairs hadn’t been receiving sufficient power either. My precious frozen blueberries—60 lbs worth, laboriously hand picked from the garden this summer—were starting to thaw, along with several pot roasts, a dozen containers of homemade tomato sauce, and various other provisions put up for the coming winter. We had no way of knowing when we’d have electricity again. It might be days.

As the fridge and freezer lost their cool, so did I.

A frantic struggle ensued. I rushed out to haul home 200 lbs of block ice and pack it into fridge and freezers. The serenity I’d enjoyed just hours before evaporated. I’d gone from solid to steamed faster than you can say sublimation.

Once all the ice was in place and there was time again to chill, I had to ask myself: What good is inner peace if it’s so easily disturbed? What good is serenity that’s dependant on changeable outward circumstances? I need to make inner calm a habit rather than a happenstance.

It wasn’t until after the power was restored and I’d finished running the gauntlet of appliance sales and delivery people that I finally followed up on my intention to start spending time each morning in reflective silence.

REFLECTING: BEYOND THE REFLECTION

Naively, I expected this to be easy. I’d just sit down cross-legged on a silky pillow on the floor, set the timer 25 minutes, maybe read something for inspiration and focus, then close my eyes and breathe deeply for the duration. I was confident that my Quaker upbringing and lifelong affinity for solitude would make this a natural addition to my day. I looked forward to opening my heart, stilling the inner chatter, and experiencing a lasting, deepening calm in mind and body.

It soon became apparent that in meditation, as in music, practice is not without it’s struggles.

Each time I sat down during those first few weeks I was swept away by waves of self-criticism and a storm of unbidden memories rising from the every strata of my personal archeology. My intuition tells me that these are the very things disturbing my calm as circumstances change around me. The only way to know for certain and to move beyond this Sturm und Drang is to persevere.

The only way to is through.

The spot I’ve chosen for meditation is within view of a full-length mirror.  On the first morning I saw myself sit down with a serene half-smile. I was soon distracted by the reflection in front of  me. Intensely focus, but on all the wrong things, I noticed the way my glasses make my eyes look abnormally tiny and the thick lenses refract the sides of my face to freakishly narrow proportions across the temples.  Did I look this silly like all the time?

Then my gaze was drawn downward to the effects of gravity on my formerly well-defined chin. When had this happened? How embarrassing!  I caught sight of slouch shoulders—curving forward under the weight of self-criticism.

The woman in the reflection had stopped smiling. I glanced at the timer:  from serenity to slouching sadness in less than 5 minutes. I shifted my attention back to my breathing, straightened my shoulders, and began again.

I would never treat anyone else with such unkindness. This had to change. I scribbled in my open journal:

“I don’t have to measure up.
I JUST need to BE!
I’m good enough just as I am.
I JUST need to BE!
I am loved!
I JUST need to BE!"

. . . and returned to breathing deeply.

This time I redirected my gaze toward the blank wall beyond the reflection, hoping for better concentration. There I saw chipped plaster—patched but never repainted, a tangle of dust bunnies congregating along the battered baseboards, and worn wooden floorboards stained by a water pipe that sprang a slow leak winter before last. I am no domestic goddess. My vision narrowed. I felt pressed upon by all the maintenance and housekeeping a 100-year-old farmhouse requires. If I were to complete even a portion of what I saw all around me, I might as well give up on any ambitions for my creative work. All or nothing thinking. The reflecting woman was slouching and frowning again. Fifteen minutes remained on the timer.

Another deep breath. Let’s start again. Square the shoulders, lengthen the spine, breathe deeply, slowly 1-2-3-4-5, expand, pause, relax, let go, gently release, accept, 5-4-3-2-1. Better. Close eyes. Shut out visual distractions.

I’m suddenly 20 years in the past. Or is it 10? Or 40? It doesn’t matter. Dates have become irrelevant. The past is now and I am there.

A mob of sharp-toothed situations and heavy-footed Neanderthals of past acquaintance drag me forcefully from where I sit, back through a dozen epochs of memory, to a place where wooly mammoths and sabertoothed cats wallow chest deep in the thick black tar of anger and resentment. I race from one to the next, struggling to undo their missteps. I try, without effect, to rewrite the geologic record, to pull them from the pit where they came eons ago looking for food, water, and rest. There they fell, instead, into a mirage, a trick of nature, a trap. Living fossils cry out in anguish, freshly reanimated.

With a thick sucking sound, I feel my own feet begin to sink into the muck.

Eyes snap open. A crazed woman in wire-rimmed spectacles sits facing me, wreathed in a gauzy, faraway stare. She looks at me askance, slack jawed, shoulders tense and hunched up around her ears. I catch her eye. This time she looks genuinely pissed off.

Twelve minutes still remain on the timer. Impossible! I’ve been gone for years! Surely, I’ve endured enough. Where is the peace of mind I’d hoped to find in silence? Why are my thoughts so easily drawn to what is lost or lacking? Why this when I have so many reasons for gratitude?

FROM AWKWARD AND AWARE, TO AWAKE AND ALIVE

I’ve come to the conclusion this chaos of Pleistocene reanimations and heartless self-critique has been going on, mostly unnoticed, behind everything I do. It’s noise is usually drowned out by the bustle of life in constant motion. Most often my attention is fully engaged visualizing grand plans and executing far-reaching projects. Until now.  I've finally stopped to listen and learned that I’m trying to take flight with my feet mired in mud.  I have a hunch I’m not the only one.

I breathe and remind myself, meditation is a practice. Prayer is a practice. Stillness is a practice.

This is how we learn. We try. We fail. We become aware. We learn. We try again. We succeed sometimes. We try again. We fail again sometimes. We learn. We try. We fail and learn and succeed and give up and start over and give up and start over, until the time comes when we’re ready to try something more. This is how we grow. Whatever is lacking or lost becomes the beginning of something new, something more.

This is what I’ve learned over the years as a musician, as a potter (ceramic artist), as a baker of bread and grower of ambitious vegetable gardens. It is to be expected. First encounters with a new medium are always unsettling. We don’t know how much we don’t know until our awareness is awakened through awkwardness.

In all my creative work I’ve experienced first hand, quite literally, the life changing value of mindful repetition and patient persistence.

Through the practiced play of an artisan, I’ve learned the feel of the clay as it’s worked, as it’s particles align, and its moisture content begins to change. I’ve learned to listen to an inner visual language that reveals hidden truths that words could never speak.

Through the disciplined practice of a musician and the explorer’s spirit of a songwriter, I’ve learned to trust the first glimmer a song when it first appears under my fingers tips at the piano or in my inner singing, as it struggles to take form over time, then eventually makes itself at home in voice, hands, body, and emotions.

Through the slow patient practices of a gardener, I’ve touched and been touched by the steadiness of seasons, and felt the irrepressible force of life in soil and stem, fruit, roots, and leaves.

Most recently, through adventures in the kitchen, I’ve taught myself to bake bread by hand. I began timidly, nearly 5 years ago, with the rote routine of a few basic recipes, gradually building tactile and theoretical knowledge over time, until now I can improvise freely with the magical elasticity of yeast and flour without ever looking at a cookbook.

Why should traditional spiritual practices be any different from other arts?

I’m in this life to grow, to learn, to love, and to do good. If I’m brave enough to show up and start again when I fail, neither outward appearances nor past missteps have any power to prevent these things from taking shape.

That’s why it doesn’t matter whether my face sags or my eyes look tiny behind thick glasses. That’s why I don’t need to panic when I fall into the La Brea Tar Pits of memory from time to time. That’s why the fact that this 100-year-old New England farmhouse will never be ready for a Better Homes and Gardens photo shoot makes no difference to the bigger picture of my life.

I know this from experience; the dawning awareness of awkwardness is an integral part of any practice. It is to be expected. It is the beginning.  It tells me I’m on the right path, the path where I can learn the things I need to know in order to JUST BE!
 

© Kay Pere ~ Effusive Muse Publishing

*These are copyrighted images, recordings, text, and files.  NOT to be sold for personal or commercial monetary gain. PERMISSION IS HEREBY GRANTED to duplicate for personal use ONLY.  Also authorized for academic use.  Please, contact to secure permission to use to raise funds for non-profits supporting social justice and the environment.  Kay Pere and Effusive Muse Publishing retain all rights to text, artwork, graphics, music, video, and sound recordings. Contact Kay Pere for additional information.

Your comments will appear once they have been approved, in order to prevent spam.  This may take up to 24 hours.

CONTACT: Kay Pere c/o Heart&Spiral Studios, PO Box 145, Mystic, CT 06355 USA
e-mail: kay @ kaypere . com (remove the spaces used to prevent spam)

All Website Design & Content ©Kay Pere ~ Effusive Muse Publishing