Simply Opening, Simply Closing

I am grateful I began this blog. It was the stimulus that led to discerning my current signature life. Here is a brief review of key points and the end result:

• When I cannot readily see a new direction in my life, simplifying my physical space can be a potent ally. This is actually an age-old mechanism for helping the seeker find what he or she seeks. Simple living, simplicity or minimalism are all terms for this.
• Clearing space physically can facilitate clearing space mentally. When I sit with emptiness in stillness, small insights and sometimes, larger insights, come to me. Again, I think I could call this meditation, another age-old means.
• The more playful the process the better. For me to maintain a lighter attitude, I find it is necessary to simply let matters be after an insight has arisen. Charlotte Joko Beck, a North American Buddhist, once wrote something to the effect that it is not what you know (the rational mind) as much as how you hold what you know. My rational mind often complicates matters. For me, returning to the physical realm and doing something immediately after an insight has proven beneficial in allowing the process to unfold.
• A realization, small or large, feels like a comfortable fit. That is how I know it is valid. This holds true in all four arenas, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
• Naming is powerful. When I named myself a “pragmatic mystic”, that was a surprising event, but a comfortable fit.

Simple Matters in seeking a new direction. Creating space, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, implies simply emptying. Emptying facilitates opening to the new. My new is creative writing and pursuing a Master’s degree in feminist theology. These two activities are my new signature life, just like my signature clothing look is classic and casual.

And now, this blog having served its purpose, I will write no more here. Simply closing, like emptying, can be an act of radical gratitude.

 

My Simple Direction

Following the mid-point review, I realized that I knew what it was that I most wanted to do and that I am ready and willing to do it. I am going to write something more extended in format. I have a subject matter and even a working title. I am dedicating two days a week to this.

This is a simple decision, which will, I expect, bring me both challenges and joy. To do what calls to me is essential, is what matters most, is why Simple Matters.

I will continue tor report my progress here.

My Simple Mid-Point Review

I thought I should review my original objective in creating Simple Matters: “to create a life that is unique and satisfying to me in four different arenas – mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually”.

Defining my purpose in light of being a pragmatic mystic with My Simple Image definitely addresses the spiritual and is unique and satisfying to me.

Largely regaining My Simple Heart addresses the emotional.

Using My Simple Compass, I am now going to move beyond the initial exploratory small steps I was taking at the time of that post. I feel attracted to working with my mind in a unique and satisfying way. I have had a sense of something I might undertake in this arena playing in the background of my consciousness since My Simple Image post.

I will report my progress.

My Simple Compass

Close on the heels of my army boots post , I had another positive experience. Here it is with a bit of helpful background.

Earlier in My Simple Identity, I had seen myself as a room with four walls and an open ceiling. I suggested that orienting within that room would be guided by two statements:

• I am an individual and I am in relationship; and
• I live in the present moment and am also in some manner, eternal.

Now what I find is that the room is no longer static. Instead of two statements about orienting in the room, the room itself has become a working compass with four cardinal points, autonomy, relationship, the present, eternity as directional markers.

Presently, I am exploring how this works in light of the impetus provided by My Simple Image. Thus far, I have two observations:

• when I take a small action in any given direction, there is a  clarity and a confidence that is almost effortless; and
• when I move in any given direction, there is a tendency for the other three directional arenas to be strengthened simultaneously.

It may be that I will shortly begin (pragmatically, mystically) walking down that street  from My Simple Image, army boots on, long hair and outer coat flowing as I move.

I trust it will be a Simple Matter when I do.

My Simple Image

Call it serendipity, call it grace, however you name it, I have experienced two instances of it in recent months. And because this, my progress towards regaining a simple heart has been exponential.

In this post, I am going to share the first of these two gifts/insights/catalysts.

I was talking with a friend when she casually mentioned army boots. Instantly, I had a visual memory of my favourite black and white photograph from my teen years. It was taken circa World War One and features an old man walking down an Israeli (then k/a Palestinian) street. His back is to the camera. All you see is a long black coat, a lower portion of pant legs, his long white hair and on his feet, army boots. His body language suggests that he is neither sauntering without purpose, nor rushing. He is simply on his way.

It was a Simple Matter of recognition. As a teen, the photograph had been of “an other”. Now, in that moment with the passing reference to army boots, I “owned” the image as “me” in some fundamental sense. It spoke directly to my simple purpose: mystic love (the long coat) plus practical living (the boots) = pragmatic mystic. And with that “owning”, I felt, almost physically, the confidence* I had known in my teen years return. I can and am walking forward, overcoat flowing and army boots on.

Confidence: con fide (Latin) meaning “with faith”

Progress

I am recovering simplicity of heart. I did not expect it would happen. Nor did I expect that it would not. The lack of expectation makes the progress all the sweeter. Now the challenge lies in articulating how this is occurring.

The physical heart gives and receives through arteries and veins. A critical aspect of the heart functioning well is that the pathways for giving and receiving be as clear as possible.

Drawing a parallel, a simple heart has no clutter. This creates a feeling of lightness, ease and flow.

The clutter in my heart has been about two forms of clinging — either wanting life to return to what I saw as a better time (the pleasure principle) or wanting life to have not been so difficult (avoidance of pain/the flight principle). These opposing poles, seeking past pleasure and fearing past pain, were actively influencing both my present and the future. To greater or lesser degrees, they played off one another, somewhat like magnets in an active field.

Demagnetizing these two autobiographical “storylines” began when I did a radical decluttering of books and memorabilia. I stopped holding onto things which represented past pleasure or pain. Immediately following that, I realized I wanted a simple heart.

I did not consciously work on recovering inner simplicity. Rather, the process happened of its own accord. And I trust that it will continue to do so.

Writing this post has been helpful. Articulating provides greater clarity. In this sense, it is like placing names on a previously unmarked map.

I am making progress. Life is easier, more straightforward. Simple Matters.

 

My Simple Heart

Simple Matters. It creates a feeling of lightness, ease and flow.  I would like a simple heart. I had such a heart in my childhood and for several years as an adult.

How strange…. Having written that last sentence, I suddenly know what the words, “pragmatic mystic” embody. It is to have a simple heart. It is openness to love from wherever and to wherever. That openness is exactly like the lack of a ceiling in the empty room where I discovered my simple identity. If air were love (or the Mystery), then a simple heart is so immersed in it, so dependent on it that it is neither sought nor questioned. Neither seeking nor questioning is why in my last post, I turned to the physical realm once again, clearing away books and mementos that no longer spoke to me. That emptying created the space where the simple heart realization was born.

I will post more about this as I learn how to recover my simple heart.

My Simple Purpose

In my first post, I said that emptying is a key to success. In my second post, I explored emptying my inner landscape through stillness. This led to fully accepting that my basic structure is body, mind, emotions and spirit. In my third post, I identified two compass points towards determining my simple purpose. One was that I am both autonomous and interrelated. The other was that I am both embedded in the present and part of the “eternal”. I then said the next step was to discover my purpose.

I approached this by not approaching it. By this I mean I simply let the matter drop. I did not consciously decide to let it drop, nor did I consciously decide to trust that an answer would come to me.

Still, an answer did come. Within two weeks in the midst of a conversation on another topic altogether, I had the thought, “I am a pragmatic mystic”. These words rang true even though they sounded slightly strange to my inner ear.

Again, having this noun descriptor sentence, I did as before. I unconsciously simply let the matter drop.

I returned to the physical. By emptying a room in my first post, I saw what purpose it might serve. Now, I reversed the order. I had the statement, “I am a pragmatic mystic”, but I did not pursue it analytically. Instead, I went through the entire upper floor of our house in stints over a two-week period. I reduced our belongings, notably books and mementos. In these latter two categories, I eliminated (either by donation or disposal) three-quarters of what we had. This represents in the physical realm a freedom from past thought and feeling.

The stage is set for more growth.

 

My Simple Identity

My simple identity is my body, my mind, my feelings and my spirit. It matters that I know this deeply. With this basic realization, I can see that everything else is my free will choice and also everything else is contingent, a choice that may last or alter slightly, significantly or completely over time.  

An empty room becomes a parlour by my seeing it that way and choosing to furnish it based on that insight and . Using this analogy, I must now identify the purpose of my signature life. Only then, can I begin to fill in the details.

In a previous post, I said the floor of my basic identity was any given present moment. I also said there was no ceiling: I was open to the unknown, the Mystery. These two statements indicate an awareness of two simultaneous time frames: the present and the eternal. This knowledge is not my purpose, but it does point me towards that purpose.

An empty room becomes a parlour by my choice. Physically, I can occupy that room either alone or with others. Similarly, in my signature life, physically I am either alone or with others. Mentally, emotionally and spiritually, I am both autonomous and also interrelated at one and the same time.

These two insights function as compass points (the present moment and the eternal, personal autonomy and relationship). The next step is to see my fundamental purpose, much as I saw the purpose of the empty room that became a parlour.

Stillness

 

I am sitting in the parlour, the room I once emptied of all but a chair (for more, see post). Today, I intend to remove “the furniture” in the inner space I call my identity. I hope I will then see the barebones of myself, “only the room”, so to speak. If this works, I can take the next step towards creating my signature life.

I sit in stillness. Memories, emotions, attachments to status and accomplishments, aversions to loss and failure, future anticipations of similar attachments and aversions scroll past my inner frame in random sequence. I am not reliving every moment of my life. Rather, I am observing, likely only enough for a general overview. I watch the stream quite passively. If some item disturbs the flow, such as a feeling of some intensity, I will respond more actively.  Today, I am fortunate. Nothing disrupts. The streaming stops, just as it began, seemingly of its own volition.

I sit in stillness. My inner eye registers the emptied space. I feel a twinge of anxiety, a flame lick of frustration. Will I be able to do what I have intended? I am sufficiently aware not to feed either the anxiety or the frustration or to pursue an answer to the query.

I stay with the stillness.

And then, out of the emptiness, within the stillness, I know. I knew already, but only as a conceptual tool, a free-floating description. Now, I know from direct experience. I know my barebones self “down deep in my bones”. I express it as metaphor. This room, my basic identity, has four walls: my body, my mind, my feelings and my spirit. The floor is any given present moment in my life. The ceiling does not exist. It is open to the sky, to the Mystery.

I smile. There it all is conceptually, referenced in About and listed as categories (now empty) in Simple Matters by Simply Me.