Zen and the Art of Peacekeeping

What courage looks like on an ordinary day

Self-portrait in the hall mirror: What courage looks like at my place, on an ordinary day.

When people hear that I lived in places like Afghanistan and the Gaza Strip they often tell me that they think I am very brave.

I am brave. Some days I think I may be the bravest muthafucka on the planet.

As I told some friends this morning, if you look up "courage" in my dictionary, you'll see a picture of me, resplendent in my favorite green Superhero cape.

But on an ordinary day, which means every day around these parts, courage looks less like a trip into a war-zone and more like this:

• Showing up to a yoga workshop even though I know perfectly well that this style of yoga takes me so far out of my yoga comfort-zone that I'll probably end up crying (and not the pretty kind of crying, more the gasping, snorting, snot-dripping kind).

• Accepting that my boyfriend invites his (much younger and much hotter) ex-lover to stay with us, not because it doesn't bother me but because it does bother me and I'm ready to face down those particular gremlins.

• Writing the book I've always wanted to write despite the fact that I know it will never be as good as I've always hoped it would be.

• Leading 45 people on a 30 day yoga journey despite having spent the first two hours of this morning weeping into my yoga mat (which is also green, a great colour for courage).

• Looking at my own tear-stained face in the mirror and finding something of beauty and someone to love, even when the voices in my head are all braying for blood for my failings.

How about you? What does courage look like at your place today?

More on whether or not it is "better" to practice only one type of yoga

Last week I wrote a post asking “Is it better to do only one kind of yoga?. The comments on this post were so insightful and interesting that I decided to write a follow-up post looking at some of the responses and saying a little bit more about my experiences.

Two of the responses came from women with whom I have travelled closely along the yoga path. They are kindred spirits so it didn’t surprise me at all that they, like me, described themselves as ‘straw-suckers’.

KL said “I’ve been a straw sucker myself mainly, and sometimes feel "less than" because I've been unable to dig deep in the desert. Is that just how circumstances have manifested around me or is it because I’m lacking in commitment and focus?”

Laura F described similar feelings in her comment: “I think I may have been a bit hard on myself when, once in while, I feel like doing something aside from Kundalini.”

I think these feelings of “less than” are very common and therefore important to acknowledge. So I love, admire and thank KL and Laura for their honesty.

Life is full of opportunities for us to feel shame about who we think we should be and are not. It saddens me that yoga and our yoga practice often becomes yet another one of these opportunities.

I know KL well enough to know that she has developed a high degree of shame resilience (to borrow a term from one of the best books I’ve ever read about social expectations, perfectionism, women and shame, by Dr Brene Brown), but not all women have this resilience and as a yoga teacher and compassionate human I am mindful of not providing new shame triggers for the women (and men) who come to me for yoga teaching.

Another close companion of mine on the yoga path, Kelly, had a much more positive take on her ‘straw-sucker’ approach.

“I am a serious straw sucker. Committed even. I think there is so much to be learned and there are so many wise teachings available to us on this planet that I want to stay as open as possible to it all. What I've found is that gradually, a certain pattern emerges from the nuggets of wisdom I've collected and forms a cohesive picture. Where there is convergence of information from many different sources, there tends to be a strong resonance for me. When the good people of the world, the serious seekers and the wise leaders have independently come to the same conclusion I know there must be a universal value or truth to their words. Where there is disagreement, there is still a wealth of value to be gained. The more information I have in my toolkit, the more people I can attempt to understand or to connect with. As a teacher, I find that immensely valuable. As a human being, I find that absolutely necessary.”

I personally share many aspects of Kelly’s experience. I’ve learned from many great teachers; some have been yoga teachers, some have been Buddhist teachers, two of them are my mother and father – born-again Christians who live with true service and compassion.

I also find it useful to be able to draw on different approaches when I work with students. Different styles, different language, different practices will work for different people.

On the other hand, I have total respect for the teacher who has found an approach, a language and a set of practices that works for her and who teaches this approach exclusively. She knows that she will attract to her the people for whom this approach resonates and works. That also makes great sense to me.

Evolution towards diving deeper?

Radha suggested that the difference between drawing from different traditions and immersing oneself in just one tradition was a matter of progression or evolution. She explained that in her experience:

“When you're ready, you'll find the one practice and stick with it, but until then will keep searching and trying different things, which will be useful, informative and help you grow and you'll convince yourself it's the right way because we all want to feel what we do is right!! When your consciousness evolves to the next level, you probably won't even talk about the one practice and one practice alone that you do. And you'll understand why, but there aren't words to emphasise the importance of one practice, just an individual souls own experience.”

I have to confess that this was the comment that gave me the most pause. Unlike all the other commenters, Radha seemed to be suggesting that one approach was better than the other. That one is an evolution on from the other, a progression, a deepening, an improvement. Perhaps she is right. Perhaps I’m just convincing myself that my approach is ‘right’ for me because my consciousness hasn’t evolved to the point that I can understand the importance of one practice. I happily concede this is quite possible.

In all fairness, my description of my approach to yoga and the spiritual path may not have been very clear. Radha seemed to have been left with the impression that I was “dipping my toes” into the water. In response to this she expressed a beautiful wish:

“I hope everyone finds their one practice soon, it will be nothing like the gentle toe dipping of different practices. It's like diving into water, however far under the ground it may be, and stopping breathing, and fighting and struggling for your survival, and then magically realising that it's ok, you can surrender because you have actually always been able to breathe in that very water, you just weren't aware of it. It's the hardest thing in life to do, but whilst dipping in different waters, you'll be safe from this experience.”

Deep water and thin ice

When I read this I knew that I recognised Radha’s description of the deep water. Although I am interested in learning about and from different traditions, I have certainly found the practices that throw me into my own deep water. I’ve felt the ground fall away from under my feet. I’ve been left floating in the waters of not-knowing and I’ve learned that – despite my powerful desire to hang on to something solid – it is possible to surrender to that not-knowing and let everything be exactly as it is. So perhaps the straw-sucking metaphor was misleading. Perhaps a better image is that I was always standing on such thin ice that it only took 21 days of a zen-style meditation practice to throw me in over my head in my own deep water.

Different appetites and a varied diet

On the other hand, my friend T-bone (yes, he was the person who I was eavesdropping on in the first place) proposed an analogy of our practices being like our food:

“I think of spiritual path like the food I eat. What works for me may not provide you with what you need and vice versa. Over time, my appetite changes and we all know variety is the garam masala. Personally, I like my diet varied with high concentrations of my favorites while having the odd import is good too. Samskara, Karma and Dharma is so intensely individual. What Marianne overheard was actually part of a very personal narrative. Rather than 'better' (after all upon comparison one always loses through dividing, separating) perhaps more union-fostering would be 'relevant' its more kind, non-violent even.”

Thanks T-Bone! You rock figuratively as well as literally. Yes, it is possible to be a sensitive and committed yoga teacher and a rock star. T-Bone is living proof of that.

Better vs. More Useful - choosing union over separation

I was so glad that T-Bone took issue with the word “better” in the title of this post. It’s not a union-fostering word at all, and since union is at the heart of all yoga it seems a poor choice of word for this question.

I much prefer to ask what is most useful for each person. Which practices add most to your well-being and to your deepening awareness of the union of all beings? If the practice of yoga (and most Buddhist practices) is intended to help dissolve the illusion that we are separate, then it seems unhelpful to ask a comparative question that emphasises that very illusion.

Dhyan made a similar point, albeit more beautifully, when he pointed out that:

“There has never been any real reason to worry since all small individual rivers are already on their way to the ocean, to the Whole. It is not about swimming, it is about relaxing and to float with the river in a basic trust that life already leads towards the sea of consciousness, towards the Whole.”

Word, bro!

BZ also suggested that “once you've climbed the yoga tree, you can sit on any of its branches and get the same view.  … I've found that good teachers and different types of yoga help me to connect to the same source.”

This has also been my experience. The source remains the same. The practices and paths that help us connect to that source may vary, but we’ll recognise it when we get there.

We are all one, but we are not all the same

Many of the comments reinforced T-Bone’s point that “what works for me may not provide you with what you need and vice versa.” Jim pointed out that:

“Everyone is different. It is so great that many people can try different things in which to improve themselves, hopefully finding one or a few that really 'hit pay dirt' so easily. But like some of your readers pointed out, sometimes there are few choices. All things change. Maybe someone's practice is 'perfect' for them, but there is no guarantee that it will be that way for their whole life. Our 'outer' practice is just that. It helps with our 'inner' practice so one shouldn't get too attached to it, no matter how good it is.”

Kelly said:

“I think it comes down to knowing your own nature. Some of us are straw suckers and would never be satisfied only drinking from one well. Some have to go deep and stay in one pool. And I think it depends on who you are which path you take. I too, love and respect that deep-digger friend of yours immensely. It is my opinion that he is on the right path for him. And I think I'm on the right path for me. And we've got a lot to learn from each other. Beware judging yourself harshly. When you follow the path that feels authentic to you, whether it's a path strewn with holes poked by your straw or one deep channel downward, you can't go wrong.”

True dat, sister!

The final word on all of this goes to Laura F, who made a very good – and very practical point.

“Perhaps as a beginner, like me, it would help to dig deep - to learn how to stay focused, work on your commitment, intention etc, just to strengthen your yoga base.”

Laura, I think you are probably right. That’s certainly been my experience and the advice of my teachers and at the end of the day that's all I've got to go on.

Thanks to all the people who commented including the awesome comments that I haven’t quoted here because this post was becoming very, very long. I’d love to keep this conversation going so let me know what you think!

Living the questions

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

            Rainer Maria Rilke ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ (1934)

I've read this quote so many times. In the past I've read it and aspired to love the questions, even while my heart and mind seemed determined to yearn after the answers. We live in a society that believes in solutions and that sees the questions not as a place to reside but as a barrier to get through as quickly as possible. Recently I rushed headlong towards a resolution to uncertainty. I leapt to embrace a solution despite the fact that it didn't fit.

I woke up the morning after this moment of decisiveness and felt out of sorts and out of place. I was not ready to live this answer. Instead I decided to keep company with the questions for a little longer. It was a wonderful relief.

At first I wondered whether this was the relief of avoidance. I wondered whether I had simply turned away from the hard questions and chosen to live in blissful, willful ignorance. I wondered how I would know the difference.

But as I sat in meditation one morning I realised that I already knew the difference between avoiding the question and keeping its company. As long as the questions were with me, as long as I was willing to sit with them and observe the feelings, thoughts and sensations that came up for me in their company, I was living the questions. 

Three weeks later I don't know if I am any closer to an answer. But in the meantime living with the questions has turned out to be a refreshing change. Now that I don't feel the terrible pressure of making a choice, I can relax and really pay attention.

How chilli seeds are like dreams

My jalapeno babies - taken with my iPhone.

We all have different approaches to our dreams. Some of us love to write them out and draw up plans for how we are going to bring them to life. Others prefer to whisper them to the wind and trust that they will find their way to us when their time is ripe.

I'm somewhere in the middle. I tend my dreams much as I tend my seeds. In my kitchen there are 31 trays of seeds germinating. It is spring in New Zealand and now is the time for planting summer vegetables. This year I am watching over tomato, cucumber, summer squash, chilli, radish and fennel seedlings. As I have tended these precious trays of life I realised that I tend my dreams in very much the same way as I tend these seeds.

I prepare the soil of my life by digging over the rich manure (sometimes known as 'crap') of my past. The manure is richest and most nurturing for future life if it gets warm sun and oxygen. This means not hiding it away, being courageous enough to pay some attention to the manure of my past, digging through it a little and giving it a good turning.

The seeds of my dreams are then planted into the rich fertilised soil of my life. I choose my seeds carefully, listening deeply to my heart and trusting that it knows the right seeds to choose, even if I have no idea when or how they will sprout.

I plant the seeds with love, placing them at just the right depth below the surface of the soil. Too deep and they may not find their way up to the surface for the sun and light they need to survive. Too shallow and they might dry out or be picked off by a passing bird.

I place the seeds in a warm, safe place. They all like something different. The tomatoes like to be on top of my fridge where they are warm and get afternoon sun. The chilli like all-day sun.

My heart's seeds also crave different conditions for their germination. Some love to be in the light, shown off for all to see. My book dream is like that, when that wee seed was planted it stayed deep in the soil for a very long time until I moved it out into the light. As soon as I did it began sprouting. Other dreams sprout best in the shade, far from prying eyes or the possibility of judgement.

My seeds need daily love. When it is warm and sunny outdoors I carry all the trays out onto the porch so they can soak up the rays. As soon as the temperature drops in the evening I carry them all back in again. I feed them plant food, and water them lightly every day. I talk to them. Encouraging those that are peaking through the soil and congratulating those that are reaching tall.

I love them all equally, although differently depending on their needs. But I never really know when each of them will sprout. Some - like the golden tomatoes - sprouted within days of being planted. Others, like the habanero chilli - are only now starting to peak up through the soil eight weeks after they were planted. I have learned that these miraculous little seeds - containing within them all that is needed to grow the fruit and vegetables that will feed me this summer - know perfectly well when the time is right for them to grow.

Not until the days are just so long and the evenings are just so warm will those habanero chilli sprout. I could worry over them, hover over them, poke at them and wonder if I did something wrong when I planted them. None of it will make them sprout a day earlier. So it is, I believe, with my dreams.

I will prepare the soil of my life, I will choose and plant the seeds that my heart dictates, I will water and tend them every day. I will trust that they will sprout when the time is right. No amount of crying or wishing or hoping will make it otherwise. I will do my work and then I will trust.

With thanks and love to Andrea Scher and all the other dreamers at Mondo Beyondo

What 350 taught me about conscious activism

Dawn ceremony in Wellington to open the International Climate Action Day (photo from www.350.org.nz)

On 24 October, people in 181 countries came together for the most widespread day of environmental action in the planet's history. At over 5200 events around the world, people gathered to call for strong action and bold leadership on the climate crisis. How did they do it?

Lesson One: Harness the Mighty Power of the Interweb

Bill McKibben, the elder statesman of the 350 movement, has already reflected on the role the internet played in making Saturday the extraordinary success that it was. Perhaps the single most critical factor in this has been the expansion of the internet to some of the most remote and isolated corners of the world via mobile phone networks. When Bill came to talk to 350 organisers and climate change activists in Wellington earlier this year he told us a very moving story about a text he had received from a farmer in Bangladesh who was ready to do his part for the climate, the planet and our shared future. This man was already living with the harsh daily reality of climate change as he struggled to adapt his crops to changing and unpredictable weather patterns. He didn't see this as someone else's problem, nor did he see 350 as someone else's movement. Thanks to the reach of the internet via his mobile phone he felt that he was part of the movement and part of the solution.

Lesson Two: Don't Hold to Tightly to Your Brand

The 350 flag was flying in every country on the planet on Saturday. For images of 350 from Papua New Guinea to Denmark and from Ethiopia to Berkeley, check out the 350 Flickr stream. If you were a brand manager, this kind of exposure would surely have you in brand heaven. The 350 co-ordinating team pulled it off with very modest resources. How? As an event organiser for Saturday I was given total freedom to design my event. The 350 co-ordinating committee for New Zealand offered me support if I needed it but made no attempt to control or influence my vision for the day. They encouraged me to use the 350 logo and even hosted an old-fashioned banner-making workshop at their Wellington office so that we would all have the flag ready to fly. I felt supported but never stifled and that left me the space I needed to plan our event in the yogic spirit in which it was conceived, relying on the natural flow of enthusiasm and effort from our local sangha without forcing my timetable or agenda on anyone.

Lesson Three: Bring Your Joy with You and Play Along

Every 350 planning meeting I attended was fun. The wonderful young people who led us always turned up with their passion and sense of joy. We had brainstorming sessions for 350 actions which wandered down pathways of such silliness that we were all rolling on the floor laughing. It was fun to play with those kids and that motivated me to keep coming back for more. I've been involved in different activist groups and movements over the years and the one factor that seems to get lost all too quickly is this sense of joy. It's hard to stay angry or despondent for long when you are invited to play.

Lesson Four: Take Care of Each Other

About halfway through this year I got an invitation to a special meeting of climate activists in Wellington. We were still six months out from the big climate negotiation meeting in Copenhagen (which will take place this December) and we had all already been working actively on local and international climate advocacy for many months. A wise soul in a young body decided it was time to check in with each other about how we were all going. We gathered in a warm, cosy room out the back of a yoga studio. One by one we spoke about how we were and what we needed from each other. Those who were tired or despondent were given gentle words of encouragement. Those who were enthused and inspired found new collaborators. Those who were making big leaps of faith were reminded of the community standing with them as they leapt. We talked, we each prayed in our own way and then we ate together. It was one of the most nourishing  meetings of activists I had ever been part of and it sustained me for many more months.

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I could list a dozen more lessons I have learned from the leaders of 350 in New Zealand and abroad but these four capture the spirit of the movement. With joy, a light grasp, care for each other and very savvy use of the internet, 350 have redefined global movements for social change and have created something more diverse, more playful and more effective than I've seen in a long time.

On empathy and imagination (with thanks to J K Rowling)

A little over a year ago I tried to put into words here some thoughts I had on empathy and imagination and what they had to do with activism for human rights and social justice. What I managed to say was:

"Ultimately, though, I believe that the strongest motivator for the defense of human rights is ... empathy. It is because I can imagine how it might feel to be a Palestinian mother who watched her child die because the ambulance carrying him to the specialised hospital in the West Bank was not allowed to pass an Israeli checkpoint that I feel compelled to work towards securing the right to freedom of movement for her and for everyone else. It is because I can imagine how it might feel to be an Algerian asylum seeker in New Zealand, labeled a security risk by the central intelligence agency but unable, even through my defense lawyer to see the basis on which I am accused of being such a risk, that I feel bound to do what I can to defend the right to a fair trial and a defense for him and for everyone else."

Today I watched the commencement speech that the amazing J K Rowling gave at Harvard University. I know it has been emailed and posted in various places, for good reason. It came to me from Blue Poppy, via Swirly. So I took a break from studying about how community psychologists should be committed to working with oppressed people to help achieve their goals for liberation and watched this video.

She puts it so well and I was not expecting it. Although I probably should have been expecting it, her Harry Potter books explore complex themes of marginalisation and social justice, including a fairly intense exploration of racism and xenophobia through the device of the "mud-bloods". But I wasn't. I under-estimated her and expected a speech about how important imagination is to the creative act. Which it is, of course. But she goes on to talk about how that creative act, the ability to imagine, lies at the heart of what makes us human. We, apparently unlike all other species, can imagine what it might be like in someone else's shoes and based on that creative act of imagining we can feel empathy. 

What I said in May last year was that I didn't believe that empathy was a "static quality that we are either born with or without. I think we can generate empathy, I believe we can cultivate the quality of empathy within ourselves."

I also had some ideas about how to generate empathy - they included a certain kind of travel and releasing ourselves to the transformative power of literature, art and film. I think those are still great tools for generating empathy. In fact my very next post was an exercise in using the creative power of poetry to cultivate the moments of powerful empathy that I experienced in day-to-day life in Afghanistan. But what I have been also learning, over and over again. Is the power of the simple practice of letting go, through seated meditation or whichever practice works for you, and revealing our natural warmth, compassion, imagination and empathy. 

Lessons from a long walk

Crossing the finish line - 29 hours and 28 minutes after we started

The Oxfam Trailwalker event has been a big part of my life in the past few months. It is a fundraising walk in which four team members walk together for 100km, not a relay and not a stop-and-sleep type event. We walked together over farmland and bush for nearly 30 hours. But first we trained!

The training walks were a kind of therapy for me in the early weeks and months of my return home. On gorgeous summer days in Wellington I would set out in the morning to walk for two hours or more and by the time I got home I'd have quietly processed all sorts of doubts and worries about coming home.

Many mornings I was accompanied by a very dear old friend, Andrew, who has known me long enough to let me talk my way through moral dilemmas and existential crises without trying to find answers for my unanswerable questions. On my wobbliest days I knew that I could find Andrew outside at 6 am ready to walk and talk and listen.

Once a week I did my training walk with an even older friend, Bronwyn, with whom I used to climb trees and explore creeks as a child. At the same time I left NZ for Afghanistan, Brownyn and her husband and two boys left for a mission with the UN peacekeepers in the Golan Heights and Southern Lebanon. As you probably remember, in 2006 Israel attacked Lebanon and Bronwyn and her young sons were evacuated after a week of bombing in their town. They had to leave their father and husband behind to finish his mission.

Bronwyn is one of the few people here in New Zealand to whom I don't have to try to explain how I'm feeling. She just gets it. Our weekly walks have been a joy and a balm to me. Now that I'm settling more and more we talk less about war and trauma and more about our respective studies. I still think that nothing beats a long walk for a really good conversation.

Many times I walked alone. I listened to great audio books on my iPod (I highly recommend both "Water for Elephants" and "The Life of Pi" in Audiobook form). I listened to the sounds of the harbour. I listened to my own thoughts. I listened to the silence. I answered my own questions. I found more questions to answer, and I found questions to which there is no answer and learned little by little to live with the questions.

Okay - enough about the training walks. They were great.

Also great, astoundingly so, was the response and support we got from friends and family (including lovely readers of this blog). We originally set ourselves a target of raising $2500. Within 48 hours of posting the fundraising website we had passed that target. So we doubled it to $5000. We also passed that. In the end we've raised a little over $7250. This part of the experience was overwhelming positive for me.

Coming home from Afghanistan I struggled with the glaring contrast between the comfort, ease and luxury of life here in New Zealand and the poverty, insecurity and struggle of life in Ghor. I often looked around me and wondered if people had any idea how lucky they were. I wondered if they even cared that their life of comfort was possible only because of a globally imbalanced economic system which favours the rich at the expense of the poor.

When I invited people to make a donation to Oxfam's work with some of the poorest people in the world in support of our 100km walk I was stunned by the response. I can say with confidence that people DO know how lucky they are. People DO care that so many others live in poverty. They DO want to find ways to change that. When I offered people one way to make a contribution to making that change they responded with enthusiasm and generosity. It was a huge part of my healing. Thank you.















A hug for my cousin (and physio-extraordinaire) Helen

Then came the actual walk. We were a team of four women who would walk together for 100km. We didn't even all know each other before we began. One of our original team members had to withdraw at the last minute and her replacement didn't know my cousin Susannah and I. We broke all the training guidelines about training together. I had done all my training alone in Wellington, the others had done their best to work around child-care and work responsibilities to fit in some joint training walks in Auckland, but our newcomer was making it up as she went along.

We had the most extraordinary support crew. It included my parents, my sister, my cousin (a physio who delivered therapeutic massages through the night) our original teammate and another cousin. Various aunts and cousins turned up through the night. This amazing crew carried us through 30 hours on our feet, by meeting us at 15km intervals giving foot rubs, filling our Camelbacks with sports drink, handing us hot water bottles to heat our chilly hands, strapping our blistered feet and serving us hot soup. I was humbled and moved by the love they showed us and the committment they made to the cause for which we were walking. I was reminded of the power of a team and the importance of giving and accepting help.

But despite the BEST support crew ever, in the end it was we four who had to keep walking. And in that process I uncovered a layer of myself of which I'm not overly fond. When the going gets really tough, so do I. When we'd been walking for 24 hours it was dark and cold and we were making our way through a hilly and relatively challenging section of the walk before dawn. At this stage of the walk, about 85kms into the event, we each had to reach deep into our personal wells to find our own strength.

My personal approach at this stage was "focus on the positive, keep your eyes on the finish line and just keep going". It is the approach which has got me through endurance running events, through mad deadlines on big work projects and through apparently unmanageable situations in Afghanistan and elsewhere. I believe that you have to use what limited energy you have under such extreme circumstances to propel yourself forward.

So when my team mate spent hours complaining about how tired she was, how much her ankle hurt, how steep the hills were, how dark it was and how long the sun was taking to rise I tried to encourage her to focus on the positive. I encouraged her to think about the women and children for whom we were walking. I encouraged her to find silly songs to sing with me. I suggested that she hold off her tears for once we were across the finish line, in case having a big cry sapped her precious reserves of energy. In the end I lost patience (God have mercy on my soul, I had been walking 85km as well!) and just told her that there was nothing I could do to fix her sore ankle or get her to the end any faster and I didn't want to hear her complaints any more.

I can't tell you how bad I felt about this. I spent days and days trying to justify my harshness to myself. It helped that my deeply compassionate mother and cousin had also reached the limits of their patience with her. But that still didn't take away the fact that I'd simply not been able to reach deep enough myself to find the patience and compassion to keep gently encouraging.

We did all get to the end. She and I walked across the finish line arm in arm and she was beautifully gracious about the leadership (her word!) I'd shown to get us all there together. But I struggled to get past the fact that this amazing event, which had come to symbolise so much to me in the process of my learning to live a life of making peace here in NZ, has ended up with me telling a team mate that I didn't want to hear any more complaints! Doesn't seem very gentle, compassionate or peaceable.

So in the end the lesson of this long walk was this: I had to let go of my expectations of the event and of myself in the event; I had to embrace the messy thrilling reality of the event and of what we had each learned about ourselves in the process; I had to celebrate what we had achieved and let go of what I felt I had not achieved; and I had to cut myself some slack (because when blood sugars are low and I'm sleep deprived I end up being just as tough with other people as I usually am with myself and seen in that light it is not so admirable!). 

Lessons in letting go: Part V

The monarch butterfly emerged from her chrysalis yesterday. My apology for fuzzy focus, I was a little awe struck by her beauty and mystery

If I had to identify one key theme of my life in the past two years it would be this: it is harder to let go than to hold on, even when what we are clinging to is obviously doing us no damn good.

When I learned about Mr. B's abduction I was overwhelmed not only by fear and concern for him but also by a terrible wave of guilt. The guilt washed in like a heavy rain cloud stealing the sunny moments from my day. As I walked home from the coast along the ridge of Wellington's stunning "green belt" - surrounded on all sides by vistas of harbour, hills and native bush - I would be about to lose myself in a moment of pure bliss when a voice in my head would berate me.

"How can you be so happy when we are still suffering?"
"What about us?"
"Don't you care about us at all?"
"Have you forgotten about us?"

And beneath it all this insidious message:

"If you let yourself go fully and enjoy this moment then you will forget about us"

Quietly, quietly this week I have come to recognise that I was hanging onto the guilt for fear that if I let it go I would also let go of them. I was afraid of becoming like so many other people, so wrapped up in my own world, my own happiness and comfort (or lack thereof), that I would stop caring about them.

Them.

All the people I've met in Afghanistan, Timor-Leste and Palestine whose lives continue to be insecure, poor and relentlessly harsh. All the people I worked with who are still there, working through the cold, dark winter to bring a little relief, to provide a little security. All the people I have never met but whose conflict and natural disaster afflicted worlds are more real to me some days than this fantasy land we live in here in New Zealand.

I'm terrified of forgetting them. But how could I ever forget them? Seriously. It's impossible, right? But I've been so afraid of it that I've been clinging to my guilt as a kind of reminder. Every time I get too close to relaxing into joy, pleasure and fun my guilt kicks in like one of those electric shocks that scientists give to rats in aversion response research.

"Oh - look at that amazing sunrise over the south coast. Feel the sun on my skin. Feel the amazing freedom of walking: alone and safe. Revel in the pleasure of the moment. This is perfection. This is bliss."

ZAP - guilt

"Ouch. Oh, no. I was forgetting them. I was forgetting how terrible the world is for a moment. Thank goodness for guilt. This way I'll never forget."

Crazy.

I'm a little bit crazy like that. I guess we all are. Hanging onto guilt, fear, pain just because we are afraid of what might happen if we let it go.

Realising that I was choosing to hold onto the guilt because of this fear of forgetting, together with realising that it is impossible for me to ever forget, has helped me begin to let it go. Little by little I've been letting go of the guilt. Letting myself relax into the joyful moments. The joy of walking free and safe along the hill behind my own house. Those are the freedoms for which I would fight for any other person. So I guess I can let myself enjoy them without guilt.

PS: No confirmed news of Mr. B but thanks to HiK for her report that he may still be alive and being held. I'm holding onto that hope.