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Writing and Healing Prompt: Ira Progoff’s Stepping Stones in Three Dimensions

Posted by Diane Morrow on July 13, 2014 in Blog, Writing and Healing Prompts

Another useful way to work with stepping stones, building from last week’s prompt, is to take a set of stones and add another layer: What did I want at each stone? What was my motivation? And why did I want that? And why did that matter? And what was beneath that? It’s like taking a two-dimensional map and adding another dimension—the dimension of depth. The dimension of why. You can begin to deepen the map in this way. You can notice threads that emerge—patterns. You can see how your motivations may have changed over time. The previous piece on stepping stones is here. The photo, Stepping Stones, River Rothay, is by Chris Heaton and can be found...

Writing and Healing Prompt: Stepping Stones as a Way to Examine Your Life

Posted by Diane Morrow on July 6, 2014 in Blog, Map, Writing and Healing Prompts

Ira Progoff, a student of Carl Jung, who developed an elaborate process of journaling for self-discovery, one that involved binders and dividers and multiple colors, used the term stepping stones to describe a way of looking back and examining one’s life. I’ve always found his term evocative. I see the stones on a path with spaces between them, the stones stretching back as well as forward. Our lives are a river of moments. The stones are those key moments—often ones we remember vividly—often ones where something of significance turned, or shifted. In his book, At a Journal Workshop, Progoff writes: They may come as memories or visual images or inner sensations of various kinds. Especially they may state themselves in the form of similes or metaphors in addition to expressing the literal facts of past experience. Let your attitude be receptive enough that the continuity of your life as a whole can present itself to you both in symbolic forms and in literal factual statements. He compares the creation of stepping stones to a running broad jump. “We go back,” he says, “into our past in order to be able to leap forward into our future.” He recommends “placing” eight or ten steppingstones. No more than twelve. Simply naming the stepping stones is a beginning—and later, if one chooses, one can come back to a single stone and explore it in more depth. The book, At a Journal Workshop, can be found here. More about Progoff’s workshop process can be found here. Photo by Chris Heaton at Geograph: a footpath over the River Rothay in Cumbria, Great Britain...

Writing and Meditation Brought Down to Earth

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 29, 2014 in Blog, Writing and Meditation

I’ve been a bit stuck this morning—trying to think about where to go next with writing and meditation—and so, after staring at the screen for forty minutes or so, thinking in circles and not-writing, I did what I sometimes do when I’m stuck—started looking around at what others think. (Often, I’d be inclined to Google around, but the internet is down here because of a storm and so I had to look around in books!) I found this paragraph and I appreciated the plain language of it—the sense of space and permission in it—and I feel like it brought me back to earth: Meditation isn’t necessarily some kind of holy activity; when you meditate you don’t have to imagine holy things up there in the sky. Simply examining your life from the time you were born up till now—looking at the kind of trip you’ve been on and what sort of psychological impulses have been propelling you—is meditation. Observing your mind is much more interesting than watching TV. Once you’ve seen your mind, you’ll find television boring. Checking in detail what you’ve been doing from the time you were born—not so much your physical actions but the psychological impulses driving you to do them—is extremely interesting and is how to become familiar with the way your internal world functions. The paragraph appears in a book, The Peaceful Stillness of the Silent Mind, by Lama Yeshe, in a chapter called, “Introduction to Meditation.” Several years ago now I got my first iPod and was looking around on iTunes for free material. I was becoming more interested in Buddhism, and I began looking for lectures on Buddhism, tried some out, and started listening to lectures by Robina Courtin, an Australian Buddhist nun who teaches internationally. When I discovered that her teacher was Lama Yeshe, I did a bit of research on him and found that several of his books were available for free. (A pattern can be discerned here—me looking for free resources!) In any case, I got several of his books and, as with Robina Courtin’s teachings, have appreciated the clear, plain, intelligent, and practical language of them. When I listen to Robina Courtin’s teachings or read books that have been transcribed from Lama Yeshe’s teachings, meditation doesn’t seem too high or far away or inaccessible. I recognize what is being asked for. When Lama Yeshe says, “Simply examining your life from the time you were born up till now is meditation,” I can wrap my head around that. Examining my life is meditation. Oh. And I can see how this clearly overlaps with the practice of writing and healing, for instance with the idea of writing about stepping stones which is a writing exercise I first learned about from Ira Progoff—and which I think I’ll post next week. For me, having meditation brought down to earth like this makes me feel as if meditation is closer to my reach. I feel a bit more open again—I experience less stuck-ness. I can begin to think again about areas of overlap between writing and meditation, what connections are possible between the two, how the process of one might nurture the other, and how exploring this might promote healing. The Peaceful Stillness of the Silent Mind can be found for free at the...

Writing and Meditation Prompt: On “In Silence” by Thomas Merton

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 22, 2014 in Blog, Writing and Healing Prompts, Writing and Meditation

Be still. Listen to the stones of the wall. Be silent, they try to speak your name. Listen to the living walls. Who are you? Who are you? Whose silence are you? from “In Silence” by Thomas Merton One way of thinking about meditation, it occurs to me, is to think of it as listening to thoughts in the silence—either one’s own thoughts or the thoughts of someone else, or some combination of the two. And one way of thinking about writing and meditation would be to combine this kind of thinking in the silence with writing about it afterwards. The meditation and the writing complementing each other. This is something I’ve been trying out lately, and playing with, in my quest to explore and practice meditation. I seem to have settled on three steps. These steps could be thought of as meditation for those (like me) who find meditation a challenge. Or these could be thought of as writing and meditation for the beginner. Relaxing and settling in The meditation itself Writing about it The steps, of course, could be adapted as needed. Here are the three steps as they might apply to meditating and writing on this excerpt from Thomas Merton’s poem. The process as outlined here would take about twenty minutes. Probably best if one can find twenty minutes of quiet, uninterrupted time to try this out, but this too could be adapted. First, settle in and begin to relax. Take 5 minutes or so. If you’re already a meditator, you can sit in the posture you use for meditation. (If you’re already a meditator, you probably don’t need these instructions!) Or you can sit in a chair. Whether sitting on the floor or a chair, best if possible if your spine can be straight—and then your muscles relaxed or beginning to relax. I’m including here brief instructions for relaxing and settling in, instructions I’ve adapted from instructions I learned when I was doing imagery training (a kind of hypnosis training), fairly basic instructions that I often used with patients when I had my mind-body medicine practice. Sometimes, when working alone, it can be helpful to record a script like this and listen to it while you relax, but you can also simply read it and go back and forth between reading it and settling in. Begin with a cleansing breath—a deep inhalation, a pause—and then a long breath out. Do this twice. And then begin, very gradually, to bring your attention to your body. Beginning with your feet. The soles of your feet. Your toes. Noticing that, and then, if you like, inviting your feet to relax. And noticing what that feels like . . . Now your calves. Noticing what you feel there. Your thighs. Your hips. Inviting the muscles to relax. All the time noticing, paying attention. As you do so, you might begin to feel a flow of relaxation moving from your feet up into your legs, your hips, your belly, your chest. If you do, just notice it. Notice what happens as you bring your attention gradually up the body, imagining the relaxation flowing into your neck and shoulders, and down into your arms, and past your elbows. Then down into your hands—the tips of...

Writing and Healing Prompt: A Poem and a Meditation

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 15, 2014 in Blog, Writing and Healing Prompts, Writing and Meditation

________________ “Hurry” by Marie Howe We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store and the gas station and the green market and Hurry up honey, I say, hurry hurry, as she runs along two or three steps behind me her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down. Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave? To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown? Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her, Honey I’m sorry I keep saying Hurry— you walk ahead of me. You be the mother. And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says, hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands. ________________ “Meditation: Make the Best Possible Use of Time” by Matthieu Ricard Contemplate the passage of seasons, of the days and months, of each moment, and the changes that affect every aspect of the life of beings. Then think about death, which is inevitable but whose time is uncertain. Who knows how much time you have left to live? Even if you live into old age, the latter part of your life will pass just as fast as the beginning, if not faster. So you need to consider, in the deepest part of yourself, what really counts in this life and use the time left to you to live in the most fruitful way possible—for your own sake and others. If you have the wish to meditate and develop your inner qualities, it is never too soon to start. Some questions: What really does count in this life? How can we weave this glimpse of what counts into our ordinary lives? And how can we maintain some sense of humor about it while we’re doing so? ___________________________________________________________________________ The poem, “Hurry,” by Marie Howe is from her book, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time. She reads the poem aloud, along with several others, at a new site I just discovered: onbeing.org The meditation is from the book, Why Meditate? by Matthieu Ricard, which can be found here. You can learn more about Matthieu Ricard and his work at matthieuricard.org and at karuna-shechen.org...

Thinking About the Preciousness of Human Life

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 8, 2014 in Blog, Writing and Meditation

The kind of meditation I’m most familiar with (mostly from hearing about it and only a bit from experience) is meditation that focuses attention on a single object—like the breath—or that focuses on one’s thoughts or experiences, such as in mindfulness meditation. But when Matthieu Ricard finally turns to actual suggested meditations, in his fourth chapter, “Turning the Mind Toward Meditation,” he doesn’t start with either concentration meditation or mindfulness. Instead, he begins with four meditations that will, themselves, he suggests, “strengthen your determination to meditate.” Some teachers, I believe, would categorize these four meditations under analytical meditation because they involve thinking about things and trying to analyze them and apply them to our lives. I used to think meditation involved trying not to think—or only trying to think exclusively about one word or object—but it turns out I was wrong. And in fact, it’s these more analytical meditations that seem like they could potentially have a closer connection to the act of writing than say concentration meditation or meditation that focuses on the breath. Here is the first of the four meditations: On the Preciousness of Human Life Realize how precious human life is and arouse a deep wish to draw out its quintessential qualities. Unlike the life of animals, human life offers an extraordinary opportunity to accomplish good things on a scale beyond that of your own personal experience. Your human intelligence is an extremely powerful tool that can create either great benefits or horrible disasters. Use it to achieve the gradual elimination of suffering and to discover genuine happiness, not only for yourself but also for those around you. In this way, every moment that passes will be worth living and you will have no regrets at the time of death, like a farmer who has cultivated his fields to the best of his ability. Remain for a few moments in the state of profound appreciation aroused by these contemplations. If this were a poem I would be most drawn to the image of the farmer cultivating his fields to the best of his ability. Not wasting any of it—not the fields or the time. And not having regrets at the time of death. If this were a poem I would also notice what it’s not saying—that it’s not locating the preciousness, for instance, in any particular experience of the world, no matter how lovely. That he’s suggesting that it’s not what we experience that makes life precious but that it’s the opportunity to create benefit that’s precious. This opportunity to cultivate our fields—whatever those are—to the best of our ability. This opportunity to use our intelligence to gradually eliminate suffering. I’ve been sitting here for a while thinking about what that means—what it could mean—to use this life well enough to not have any regrets at the time of death—to keep remembering, in spite of whatever arises, that this life is a precious opportunity—and finite. I’ve been trying to think how it might happen that these words of Ricard’s might become something more than mere words flowing past me while I remain unchanged, with the same old configuration of thoughts as before. I’m beginning to think that’s what meditation might be—or one kind of meditation—thinking deeply about something in the silence–letting new words and thoughts actually sink in and...

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