Taking A Moment To Be Still

It was unusual for me, just sitting there in my garden, being still and looking around.

I’d had a long session with the trowel, the weed eater, and my hand pruners, attacking the weeds, setting out some plants, and generally tidying up my shade garden. Sweaty, dirty and tired, I found a chair and a bottle of water and decided to catch my breath.

At first, I looked at what I’d done, and what I needed to do, mentally composing additions to my “to do” list.

This is becoming a job, I thought. Gardening is a lot of work, and I’m tired.

Maybe I should just take a moment and enjoy all of this, my own quiet corner of the world. I could let the sweat dry, thinking its OK that I just take a break.

Lately, when I’ve been reading about gardening, I’m nose deep into the science and the methodologies about how to grow the best of whatever is involved in my latest garden project.

In the midst of research on an interesting new plant, I’d come across a quote about gardening and my soul.

“It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
― Ray Bradbury

Take a moment, take a breath, and enjoy the garden for what it is, I reminded myself. Too often, my time here becomes an obligation, a project. Hurry up, get it done, and move on to the next task.

But, I am a gardener, not a laborer. Gardening really is nurturing, and being IN the garden. It is a time to nurture this place and my soul, to find peace, to let my mind be still and just BE. After all, I am a human being, not a human doing.

And, so I became still, and sat there. A swallow was building a nest in the new birdhouse, a hummingbird was enjoying the honeysuckle in bloom, sunlight played on the rhododendron bursting out in full glory. I breathed in the fresh air, and all the smells of spring.

In the distance, a neighbor was mowing her lawn, and a farmer was tilling his field. Off in the forest, a logger’s chainsaw provided the bass line for the house finch’s serenade in the snowball bush.

The real beauty in the garden, I realized, was not all the work I’d done, though I certainly had provided some tidying up and structure to this little piece of paradise. But, I realized, the real joy in this place is all the creatures and plants that make this their home.

I’m only the host, and I only add a few of the finishing touches.

And, I realized, the most important part of my job here, as a gardener, is to sit in a chair, and just be here, finding my own peace, and be part of this magnificent paradise, to simply be in this moment.
5/16/16

Getting Our Brain In Shape

Getting Our Brain in Shape a 3-part series
January 12, 2016

By Neal Lemery

There’s a lot to learn about our brains, and recently, I heard Dr. Neil Nedley engage several hundred of my friends and neighbors in rich conversations about the human brain.

We can improve our brain’s health, and get it in shape. It’s time for a brain fitness challenge which is as important as working our muscles and getting our bodies in shape.

Yes, we can change our brains, our behavior, and our attitudes, and we can change the functioning of our brains.

We can move through depression, anxiety, fear, and other unhealthy “stinking thinking” by improving our nutrition, exercise, social life, and our attitudes! By learning of new developments in brain research, we can improve our thinking and our lives.

Here are some of the things I learned. All this is a great start to a rich community wide education and conversation about mental health and our well being.

PART ONE

Oregon has the second highest suicide rate in the country. Tillamook County has the third highest rate in Oregon. Mental health is an issue we need to address as a community.

The brain has 100 billion nerve cells. There are 100 trillion nerve synapses, and there may be the possibility of ten times that amount. Each one of these cells has 20,000 possible connections. There are thousands of categories of cells.

As complex as the brain is, we now know the brain can repair itself and, with the right tools, even re-wire itself. Our research on the brain is just beginning.

There is a lot we can do to optimize our brains. Consider the acronym NEW START. We need:

• Nutrition – especially from vegetables. Nutrients in food provide the building blocks of our nerve cells and what makes them function
• Exercise. At least 20 minutes a day, ideally using our hands, moving in three dimensions, to stimulate the brain
• Water, more than you might think but yes, you can get too much
• Sunlight, natural or from a light box
• Temperance – Avoid harm. Live in moderation. Practice self-control. Understand the long-term benefits that come from delayed gratification
• Air. Fresh air is vital. Get outside and move.
• Rest. Early to bed, early to rise.
• Trust. Have a trusting relationship with others, with Spirit.

PART TWO – What’s the Frontal Lobe Got to do with It?

Depression and Anxiety

We are experiencing an epidemic. What we have developed to improve happiness actually often impairs brain function. Electronic screens with flickering light reduce frontal lobe activity and induce a hypnotic state in the brain. Increased sexual stimulation actually reduces pleasure and interest. Poor nutrition, lack of exercise and lack of exposure to light and fresh air also reduce the ability of the brain to respond and function.

26% of Americans have a major emotional disorder. Over 50% have a minor emotional disorder. This phenomenon is found across all social, economic, and education groups. One quarter of physicians are depressed.

We must look for long-term gain. Once brain health is optimized, a family is able to leave poverty, reduce violence, addiction, unemployment, and hunger.

The frontal lobe is the least studied aspect of the brain and yet makes up 33% of the human brain. If it is compromised, it affects moral principles, social interaction, judgement and foresight. The frontal lobe takes 30 years to fully develop and is home to such things as abstract reasoning, mathematical understanding, and empathy. When enhanced, the frontal lobe increases a person’s creativity, originality, curiosity and adaptability.

The frontal lobe is the seat of critical thinking. Current research shows that 45% of college students lack critical thinking skills. Lifestyle and behavior choices play a large role in the development of the frontal lobe. Drugs that can impair this development include illicit and prescription drugs, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine and marijuana. Alcohol can impair brain function for as long as 30 days after consumption. Repeated use of marijuana lowers IQ permanently, also lowering emotional intelligence (EQ) and motivation.

Intelligence is the capacity to learn, retain, and apply knowledge. Advancing in a job is NOT related to IQ but rather to Emotional Intelligence (EQ). Creativity, logic, and persuasion are tied to EQ. Improved EQ increases longevity, enhances the immune system and improves social relationships. Emotional Intelligence can be taught and increased over one’s lifetime.

PART THREE – “Know Thyself”

Enhancing Emotional Intelligence (EQ) occurs in five stages. The first of these involves self-awareness and understanding your own primary and secondary emotions. Why are you feeling that emotion? What thoughts and experiences are tied to that emotion? Feelings can lie. How we think, influences our reactions to problems and situations. Use the THINK technique to identify if these thoughts are helpful or harmful. Are they True, Helpful, Inspiring, Necessary or Kind? This is at the root of “Stinking Thinking.” The second stage of Emotional Intelligence involves the ability to manage our emotions and the thoughts that lead to them.

The third aspect of enhanced Emotional Intelligence is the ability to accurately recognize emotions in others. This is coupled with the ability to practice empathy, or the ability to understand and feel the emotions of another person even though you are not experiencing their situation firsthand.

The final two aspects of Emotional Intelligence have a lot to do with social relationships and “getting ahead” in life. How well we manage relationships with others and how effectively we can motivate others are features of a well-developed EQ.

There are many ways we sabotage the development of our EQ. Negative self-talk yields to adverse emotions. Magnifying minor issues or minimizing major issues are signs of impaired EQ as are defensiveness and denial. The alternative to this is an attitude open to repair and redemption. “A man who commits a mistake commits another mistake if he doesn’t correct it.” – Confucius

Practicing self-control, expressing gratitude, finding hope, seeking “bright lines” of morality, seeking worthy goals, and giving of self willingly are part of living the “psychological good life” and are the foundation for personal transformation.

We can turn setbacks into victories. Find the lesson, apply it, and
Move on. Then look back on defeat and smile.
–David Schwartz

A Letter to My Son

Dear Son:

It was a good visit yesterday!

I’d like to give a bit of fatherly advice.

You are now of an age and in a place where you can truly be your own man, your own boss.

Write down your short term goals and your long term goals and dreams.

Then, each day, make a list of tasks you want to accomplish today. One of those tasks should be something that advances one of your long term goals. Several of those tasks should be something that advances some of your short term goals.

If you work ten minutes a day towards a long term goal, then you will ensure that you achieve that goal.

Check off your accomplishments. At the end of the day, update your list, mark off your accomplishments. Even doing something that is part of a task is an accomplishment. Be proud of moving forward. Be proud of the direction you are moving in.

You are a man now. You get to decide who your friends are and who is your family. You get to decide what kind of relationship you have with family. You define who is family.

Just because someone is biologically related to you doesn’t mean you need to keep them in your family. Family is how you define it.

You will always have some sort of relationship with your mother. But, you are the guy who decides what that looks like and how that works. That is pretty much what you do about your relationship with your dad. You have decided how that is, and you make sure you protect yourself and work through all those feelings about your dad.

Same with your mom. Your job is to protect yourself and to make sure you have a healthy relationship with your mom, whatever that is. You decide. You set the boundaries. Don’t let yourself get hurt, or let her run your life. You are in charge of running your life. You are the boss, the manager.

Figuring out our relationships with our parents is tough stuff. I am still doing that, and both my parents are dead. Yet, I hear the old voices, the old ways. But, I am the one who decides what I listen to, and how I respond. I am the boss. I have the power.

You are smart about relationships and about feelings. You have the power, and you have the brains about all that. Put your learning to work. Do what is best for you. Only you get to decide what is in your best interest.

You are the only one who really knows what is best for you. Practice self love and self care. Protect yourself from giving other people permission to hurt you and to make you feel bad.

You have done very well as you have grown up. You have new skills and new power. You have self confidence, and self esteem. Keep up that good work. Move ahead, and go in the direction you want to go in. Be proud.

No one else gets to run your life. You are in charge. Do what is good for you. Go live your dreams.

Take those hard steps, and move in the direction you want to go. Don’t try to please other people. But, please yourself. Do what is good for you.

You are surrounded by people who care about you and who support you in all of this. Use that energy and that support.

Believe in yourself.

You are finding your power in what you are writing. Be proud of what you know and what you are feeling, and what you are dreaming. Go where you need to go.

My job is to be a cheerleader, and to believe in your dreams, and to support you in the direction you want to go. I don’t get to run your life, and no one else does, either. Don’t worry about what I think. What really matters is what you think, and where you want to go. What really matters is what is best for you.

If you need a tool, ask for it. You live in a place where there are lots of tools. You live in a place where people believe in you and support you.

Anything is possible.

All my love,

Neal

Cleaning His Basement

The lock on the door is rusty, his key barely wanting to fit into the hole. An awful screech fills the air as he turned the key hard, his hand trembling, his heart pounding. For most of his life, no oil has seen its way into the lock or the dead bolt on the door, or the rusty old hinges. The door screeches its reluctance to his visit here today, a place he seldom visited. There are too many memories here, too many monsters to wrestle with.

A puff of stale, moldy air seeps out of the darkness below, filling his nose with the dark, fetid stench of a place he’d always been terrified to enter, let alone even acknowledge that it exists, deep below the rest of his life.

He’s lived here all of his life, and all of the other rooms, finally, are fixed up and remodeled, reflecting his idea of what a happy house should be. It has been a long journey, but, finally today, he’s ready to tackle the basement. Until today, he wasn’t ready to take this on. But, now, at last, he is.

Large windows, often open to the fresh outside air, and the bright sunlight of happy days, polished wood floors, and the fresh green of house plants fill the rest of the house with brightness and contentment. Cheery art work, and vases of fresh flowers brighten his living space, where he plays his music, read his books, and fixes meals for his friends and family. Books and pictures of family and beautiful places he’s visited crowd the bookshelves, and the shiny floors brighten his heart as he sips his afternoon tea, reads his books, and visits with his friends who drop by.

He’s worked hard to make a good life for himself, to bring the sunshine into this house, brightening the rooms and sweeping away the darkness and gloom of his childhood. He’s landscaped the yard, planting beautiful flowering shrubs and annuals, taking care to arrange secret little refuges under the trees, places where one can simply sit and enjoy the day, soaking up the quiet of the neighborhood, taking in the fresh air and birdsong.

Others come here, too, neighborhood kids and young lovers, looking for a place for some solitude and communion with all the plants and the birds and the squirrels, creatures calling this place their home, their place of safety from the chaos of the world. His friends and neighbors tell him he has a beautiful life, that he inspires them to be happy and fulfilled. Yet, the dark, scary basement is still here, underneath all of the beauty and peace.

It’s taken most of his life to re-order this place, this home of his, to truly make it his space, a place where he can relax, a place he can finally call his own
.
Every time the trash man came, he managed to fill up the trash can with the results of his remodeling, his sweeping of the trash, his emptying of closets and shelves, sometimes the remnants of entire rooms, as he cleared away the old, the mildew, the unpleasantness and the dirt of days past. He’s brought in new wood, new sheetrock, windows, and cans of bright, cheerful paint, covering the old and remaking this place into what he really wants, a home, filled with real love, a place where his soul can be, at last, at peace.

Yet, late at night, in the quiet of moonless nights, or when a storm moves in and rattles the windows, rain beating on the glass, he hears the old monsters, the old memories, the old ways, lurking in the darkness of the basement. In the dank of the sunless space, where cobwebs and the occasional rat lurk, the old thinking, the old way of childhood life, still linger.

“It’s always been this way,” they whisper, in the black hours before sunrise. “You’re not good enough,” is the response to the emptiness, the quiet. “You can’t change. You are a failure.”

Even before he could remember, even before he’d thought about arguing with those thoughts, those voices, those words of doubt, those thoughts of worthlessness, those horrid voices filled the house, finding a place in his soul. They ate away at his young heart, even when he was so wanting to find love and acceptance. Yet, that is what he heard, all that he heard, and so, he believed those voices, taking their messages deep into his soul, believing that such words were the truth in his life, the way it would always be.

Part of him knew the truth, yet, he could not escape, not then. And, when he failed in his efforts to leave, the dark voices laughed, reminding me once again that he was a failure, that his despair was just the way life would always be. Hoping for happiness was just ridiculous.

Yet, later on, when he found love, and there were people who came into his life who would love him for what he really was in this world, he began to hear other words, new messages. He began to learn new ways of thinking, new ways of feeling, learning that he wasn’t who he had been, not who he was expected to be as a child, a person who could only know shame, and guilt, and looking at what he wanted to be only as a failure.

Other people opened up the blinds, and washed the grime from the windows to his soul, bringing flowers and sunlight into his life, asking him to breathe the fresh air, and to drink from the pure waters of sacred springs, asking him to truly live.

At first, he hid from those loving people, knowing deep inside that he was a failure, that he wasn’t good enough, not worthy enough to sit in sunlight, and sip rich, sweet tea with others, to think new thoughts, and to actually know love. The old voices were strong, and they had always been there. And those who should have loved him told me that the old voices were right, that he wasn’t good enough to live any differently. It was just the way life was. He should just accept that, accept that he wasn’t worthy of anything else.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he opened the door to the people who came into his life, the people who loved him, and who talked about love, and acceptance. He finally heard them speak, as they told me the idea that life can be filled with joyfulness and with purpose, that we are here to love others, and to be loved, that we are truly children of God, and that the God we should know is a God of love, and acceptance.

He breathed in that fresh air, and soaked up the sunshine they offered, his soul craving the goodness that was offered to him, freely and with love.

His doubts and his wounds, always bleeding, and always painful, soon began to go away, and he began to heal. Life without pain and self loathing was still new, but he began to know what a minute, then an hour, and then a day could be without that darkness hanging over him that life could be more than breathing the fetid, dank air of despair and worthlessness.

And, he began to grow, and to hold his shoulders back, taking in the fresh air, finding strength in the act of loving others, and of being loved. The anxiety, the ever-present cloud of worthlessness began to leave him, then, and he saw life in a new way, in a way of hope and joy, and real purpose. He had something to offer the world, something more than being the sack of rotting garbage, getting in the way of others, no longer being the putrid, worthless trash that the rest of world simply had to tolerate, until he finally died of terminal worthlessness and self-pity.

Yet, the old ways were still there, still living in his basement, still whispering their hateful message to him in the darkest moments of the night.

Today, he opened the lock, pushing open the door, letting the rusty hinges creak and moan as the door swung open, the old spiderwebs and dust of those old years now lit up in the bright sunlight of his new life, his healthy, vibrant life, a life filled with purpose, and meaning, and the intention of doing good works, being a part of the real world.

His friends came behind him, their hands filled with brooms and mops, and fiery torches, following him down the steps into the darkness, into the basement of all of his fears and doubts, and the old voices that still called to him in the dark times in his life.

They set to work, sweeping and cleaning, and sacking up the filth and the grunge of the old times, the old voices. The dumpster outside was soon filled with old, stinking trash. They ordered another dumpster, and then, another, filling them up with all the old memories, and the old ways, and the old, poisonous litanies that had filled his childhood with all of its anger, and rage, and degradation and loathing that they could find.

As he and his friends worked, they sang, their voices filling the rapidly changing darkness with hope and love and community, songs of love and happiness filling their hearts with the satisfaction of getting a dirty job finished, of cleaning out the cesspools of one’s old ways, and bringing into his life a basement filled with purpose, with joy, and with the love that a good life has, a place of contentment and vibrancy, a place where good things are nurtured, and allowed to grow into their full potential.

Soon, the dark, moldy basement of his house, once filled with those old ways of looking at life, the nightmares of despair and hopelessness, was transformed into that last room in his house to know the sunlight, the music, and the warmth of love and satisfaction of a happy, productive life.

Their work done, they climbed the stairs, ready for their feast, their celebration of a great day of cleaning, of the purging of the old ideas, the old ways, the old voices of disapproval and bitterness.

Surrounded by his friends, his heart now filled with love and happiness, he said goodbye to all that, all that darkness and voices in the past.

“Begone,” he yelled. “You no longer run my life. You are released, and I now let you go.”

He took the old lock, rusty and seldom used, no longer needed, and threw it in the last of the dumpsters containing all of the trash, all of the bitterness of the old life, knowing he didn’t need to lock the basement anymore. All of the monsters, and all of that evil was gone. Instead, his basement now was truly part of his home, filled with all of the love in the world, and all of the happiness in his heart.

6/23/2014
Neal Lemery