These meditation intensives were usually difficult for the first few days. My knees and back hurt, I exhausted myself getting up at 4 am.  I made myself nervous, and frustrated myself going in to see the Roshi three times a day to answer the seemingly senseless question or koan.  And though the structure was the same (get up in the dark, go to the zendo, have tea – sit – chant – sit – walk – sit – see the Roshi – sit – eat – sit (and that was just the morning), not one of these days or weeks was ever the same.

Each sitting was unique. If one sit was euphoric I would often go into the next sit with expectations of another euphoric half hour, but the next sit would inevitably be completely different from the last.  At the end of each of these intensives, I was a different person from the one who had walked into the zendo at the beginning of the week.

After each meditation training I would practice diligently for a while and then my commitment to the practice would fade.

For the past ten years I’ve been a serious student of Green Psychology. When I participate in a GP retreat, I also find that I never step in the same river twice.  I am not the same person I was in the last retreat.  The people at the retreat are different than the one before.  Some of the material is the same, but I am a new incarnation of myself – experiencing and discovering new and old parts of me, as I am now.

Green Psychology was originally taught by two pioneers in the human potential movement, John and Joyce Weir.  They taught this way of living for 40 years. They called their retreats “Percept Labs.” John and Joyce delighted themselves with discovering unknown parts of themselves and further growing themselves during each lab, even into their 80s.

The day I met Joyce Weir, 15 or so years ago, I was happily working at home in my studio creating and selling beautiful little objects called “DreamStones”.  Jake had brought the Weirs to our home to meet me. After they left, Jake shared a comment Joyce had made about me. “Yes, Hannah is happy, but how is she going to grow?” I woke myself up with that comment, and signed up for my first Percept Lab.

For me, Green Psychology has been a much richer soup in which to nourish and grow myself, more than meditation ever was, because I am not trying grow myself in my own isolated private world, but sharing and witnessing my growth in relationship with others…which is more akin to living and relating in the real world. Green Psychology, like Buddhism, is a rigorous practice that asks us to be very considered in our lives, but I experience the GP atmosphere as much more joyful and celebratory.

Because one significant aspect of Green Psychology is a very intentional way of using language, my practice is no longer limited to periods of meditation.  Every time I open my mouth to speak, I am practicing being awake and in the moment.

Growing myself I believe is my job.  Making myself safe by staying in my comfort zone is okay for a while, but if I want to keep growing, I must return and immerse myself into this unique experience again. Like meditation, maybe more so, this is a paradigm that I cannot fully see or experience until I am in it. And so, with each retreat, I grow and challenge myself, get to know and accept, and even love more of myself, in a nourishing, non-judgmental environment and so, I deepen myself.

After each retreat, I leave with a new sense of who I am and a commitment to speaking and living in the GP paradigm.  Then after a while I find my practice fading and my tendency to victimize myself or judge myself with others increasing. So, I return and immerse myself. I dive again into this practice where I can freely be all of who I am and who I want to be.  And as any practicing Buddhist would say, I am never done.

“Loving-kindness (maitri) toward ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy, we can still be angry. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away or become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already.”

An attractive idea—to befriend ourselves, but is it always realistic? Realistically, we’re unlikely to make friends with someone we don’t like. So, in Green Psychology, we make a distinction between befriending aspects of ourselves and accepting aspects of ourselves.

Most of us have aspects of ourselves that we truly don’t like. Maybe an outdated behavior, or a knee-jerk response, or unfulfilled needs that we see as unattractive. We’re suggesting it may not always be realistic or helpful to expect that we can like or befriend all aspects of ourselves. But we believe it is realistic to learn to accept these aspects of ourselves. Accept, but not necessarily like, we believe this is worthwhile distinction.

If we create expectations that we should be able to like or befriend all aspects of ourselves, we may end up feeling as if we have failed…because try as we might, there are aspects of ourselves that we don’t want to befriend.

So, what to do, and what not to do? We see four keys:

1. Don’t deny these aspects of ourselves.

2. Manage our lives so that we are less likely to trigger these aspects of ourselves.

3. Don’t ask anyone else to convince us that these aspects of ourselves are truly okay. To request another person to convince us that some part of us is okay—after we have decided for ourselves that this part of us is not okay . . . this is a recipe for a power struggle.

4. Learn to use Green Speak—a non-dualistic language that promotes acceptance.

In my private practice I often hear people struggle with the expectation that, “Until I love myself, no one else can love me.” This is often code for, “I can’t use another person’s love to make me love myself.” I think there is some truth to this, as I said above, other people won’t convince us we’re okay if we’ve decided we’re not okay. But, having said that, other people can love us even if we don’t love every aspect of ourselves. The key is acceptance.

When I accept those aspects of myself that I may not like, I grow myself up. I become realistic about myself. I can give a mature voice to those parts of myself that I don’t like, because after I accept them—and stop denying them—they calm down. Said in Green Speak, “when I accept myself, I calm myself.”

I hear so many people talk about spirituality—of course I live in Santa Fe. But, even elsewhere, I hear many references to spirituality. I discomfort myself when I hear one person categorizing other people as “spiritual” or “not spiritual.” This kind of distinction doesn’t seem very spiritual to me.

But, what do I mean when I use the word “spiritual”? If you use the word, what do you mean? How do you know if you are living a spiritual life? For me, the answer is very simple.

The word “spirit” is a Latin word meaning “breath.” Breath is the essence of all living beings. So, I view all living—breathing beings—as spiritual beings. If I live my life in such a way that I respect spirit—living beings—then I consider myself to be living a spiritual life.

To live this way is much easier when I adopt the practice of Green Psychology. Why? Because I experience this practice as unusually respectful. Green Psychology—fully practiced—eliminates violence and victims. The way we use language reduces our tendency to be judgmental, to tell others about them, or to think that others are telling us about ourselves. This is a very different way of being in the world, a way that engenders equanimity and kindness. The result is greater respect, for ourselves and for others.

And what’s unique about this practice, which is rooted in the way we use language, is that I practice all day long, every time I speak. This practice is not compartmentalized to a limited period of time, such as when I sit in meditation. No, the practice of Green Psychology and Green Speak is alive and awake in me all day long . . . and so are the benefits of living this way.

One aspect of Green Psychology is something we call The Process of Growth. There are 5 steps in the process. I won’t explain them all right now, just mention them:

Awareness, Acceptance, Ask, Await, Act.

How do these relate to “doing yourself over again”? First, you become Aware of your own discomfort. Then, Accept how you feel, don’t try to minimize your experience. After you Accept your feelings, thoughts, needs…whatever it is that’s going on for you, then you Ask:

• “How do I want to conduct myself?”
• “How do I want to use my personal energy?”
• “How do I want to feel?”

Chances are there is something you can do, or redo that will allow you to renew yourself (make yourself or the situation anew.)

Here’s a metaphor. When you make a video or a movie, you get to do several “takes.” If you aren’t happy with one take, you can do another. I think life is pretty much like this. Most of the time, not always, but usually—we get to do another take. We get to apologize if we behaved poorly. We get to ask for what we want, and if we don’t get it, we get to ask in another way. We get to speak again, using a different voice tone, when our original message didn’t get properly conveyed. We get to touch when words don’t work.

If you want to see an example of me “doing myself over again,” check out the following video. It’s just meant to be fun…but it serves as an example of “doing ourselves again.”

When I was 35 I set a goal to ride my bicycle over a steep mountain pass that was about 20 miles from my house. Given that I wasn’t a serious bicyclist, this was an ambitious goal. I worked at my goal from late summer through the fall, but as the weather got colder and winter approached I was unable to make it up the last mile of the mountain pass—the steepest part. I put more pressure on myself, trying harder, but to no avail. Finally, when the first frost of the season came, I realized I didn’t have it in me to accomplish my goal. I quit. I hung up my bike and accepted my limitations.

Two weeks later we had a surprisingly warm fall day. I decided to take my bike off the wall and go for a short ride. I headed off in the direction I always went and after 15 miles I felt great. I decided to head up the mountain pass—just for fun—and when I was within a mile of the top I thought to myself “what the heck.” I just kept going. I rode up, up, and over. It was not effortless, but it was not insurmountable. I amazed myself.

More recently I was pushing myself toward a self imposed deadline to finish my book. The writing was done, but I needed to get it prepared for the printer. This meant using a design program that was new to me. I gave myself 4 days to complete the task. By Sunday afternoon—the 4th day—I overwhelmed myself with the problems I was having. I saw no way to finish in time and decided the project would have to wait for 6 weeks until I returned from my trip to Asia. Annoyed, I quit. To get out of my bad mind space I invited Hannah for a walk. After our walk we had dinner, then sat down to watch a movie. During the intermission I went to my office and started fiddling around with the layout for my book. I had no expectations, but rather I was just curious to try something. It worked. I decided to continue. All the problems I was previously having had obvious solutions. I didn’t watch the end of the movie, instead I finished my book layout and sent it to the printer before I went to bed.

In both situations, I stopped trying so hard. I actually gave up and in so doing I relaxed, and accessed my abilities that I previously constrained with pressure and too much effort. I believe this dynamic in which trying too hard is problematic, also applies to relationships. Consider the following:

1. Trying really hard isn’t that much fun so we lose the joy that is largely the point of relating.

2. We inhibit ourselves when we work too hard at relating…worrying, evaluating, judging. Tiptoeing, holding back, or pushing too hard for a particular result. In such situations we don’t experience much flow. It’s the flow that sustains us during the challenging times. Without the flow and ease, the challenging times become too much.

3.  If we are “successful” as a result of trying really hard, we create a relationship built on hard work, effort, and tenacity. To maintain this we very likely will have to work hard, keep efforting, and remain tenacious. This is not how I want to characterize my relationships, certainly not my primary, intimate relationship.

What if we change our criteria—in certain situations—from hard work to ease? We could relax, breathe, access more of our resources and build relationships that naturally and effortlessly evolve.

I invite you to explore not trying so hard.

These moments happen numerous times during a day for me and if I choose to pay enough attention, I can stay with each moment as it merges into the next one. Thus, I experience a string of moments that then becomes an extended, intensely focused experience.

Once, while engaged in a week-long meditation retreat, I connected with my breath to such a degree, that my attention became continually focused on my breath – as each breath moved into the next breath. I don’t remember how much of that day I was in this state, but do know that I left the meditation hall, headed toward my bed, laid myself down and spent the entire night aware of my breath. And then, aware of the sun rising, getting myself up, feeling fully rested, clearer than ever before, never losing contact with my breath, I breathed my way to breakfast and back to the meditation hall.

Most of my moments have to do with really connecting with another human being, or an animal, or nature. Sometimes they begin with noticing something I have never noticed before, even though I have looked at this particular scene numerous times. Some of the best moments are those when I aware myself that I am being very kind. Noticing these moments has become a practice for me. The more I aware myself of moments, the more ‘life’ I feel I experience. Moments become a part of my memory album.

As simplistic as this may sound, this is a large part of what my life is about. I am here to be as conscious as I can be. Take in as much as I can. I need no other explanation or reason for being here. If I am true to this intention, my marriage, Green Psychology, work with others, and my relationships feel all the more sumptuous.

My experience of a Green Psychology retreat often feels like one long extended moment to me. Once I have settled in, the retreat becomes a blend of sweet tactile, visual, auditory, and visceral moments all strung together. Then those 4 or 8 or 9 days of retreat moments merge into a sensation that I feel deep in my bones. I leave the retreat with the feeling of being lastingly and almost genetically changed . . . and incredibly alive.

Jake and I have begun to point out ‘moments’ when we take our dog and cat for a walk. We point moments out to each other by saying the word “moment” when we notice one. We have even had a contest to see who could capture the most moments. On the trail yesterday Jake proclaimed “moment” as he watched me unconsciously step in dog poop. That was a very funny moment.

Did anyone ever teach you the power of attention? Did anyone ever teach you how to use attention? Most of us never learned these things. But it’s not too late. What we pay attention to determines the course and quality of our lives. It may be the most powerful tool we have to influence ourselves.

In recent days Hannah and I have been paying attention to moments in which we feel most aware, alive, and appreciative. The more we look for these moments the more of them we find. We’ve actually turned in into a competition (well I have). I’m up by 3!

What do you want to pay attention to today? What do you want to look for—in yourself, your partner, you children, and your work . . .because we tend to find what we look for.

To learn more you may want to read Rapt: Attention and The Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher

The Homeopathic proving of eagle reveals that the sensation of speed is euphoric for eagles.

I conjure up two metaphors related to eagle mating and human relating:

Falling for someone who, on some level, we may know is not right for us, but the euphoria we feel, or even the primal need to mate, is experienced as a stronger motivating force than taking care to make a more rational choice. So, we speed through the process of getting to know each other, ignore all warning signs, grasp hands, fold our wings, and free fall toward . . .

OR

With eyes wide open, clear about what we are looking for, we carefully find someone who is an appropriate match, conect, make a full commitment, and whole-heartedly, sometimes euphorically, go the distance.