Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel

It's late afternoon, and I'm digging through the pantry cupboards in a vain attempt to create order amongst the cans of soup, crackers, and bags of rice. It shocks me how much food I can accumulate and not eat, month after month, even years at a time, because that particular food item loses its appeal. I have a huge stock of dried goods with which I have become bored.

What does it say about our society when food becomes entertainment? What do we know about scraping the bottom of the barrel? What do we comprehend about making do?

I haven't forgotten what it was like when I was a single mother with four children to feed. I knew how to work wonders with $20 and a week to go before the next cheque. I could make a pot of soup stretch, and do without a lot of things to ensure my children didn't suffer.

Then, with greater prosperity came that settling into the comfort zone where I had more choices, where I could spend more money on food and clothing - and even afford some luxury items. Sometimes, though, it feels like a prison, having so much and taking on the responsibility to maintain a certain lifestyle.

Friends of mine went on a mission to the Philippines with their children. They were gone for 2 years. When they came back, they only lasted a few months before they left again, back to the Philippines. This time, for good. They couldn't handle the amount of waste they see here, they told me. They said, "It's like living in Disneyland."

It makes me wonder what we've sacrificed in order to acquire all of this stuff, all of this excess food. Often, I think wistfully of shaving my head, donning the robes of a Buddhist nun and retiring to a life of meditation and karma yoga. What material goods would I really miss if I chose that life? Without all the distractions of getting and having, would my internal demons eat me up or could I survive their attacks to my psyche - that trial by fire of the unfettered, untamed mind - and emerge truly free?

The simplicity of that choice is very tempting...

2012: The Attunement

Please log on to www.bonitasummers.com and read the section on my upcoming book, 2012: The Attunement. Please let me know by way of email if you'd like to be on the advance notice list so you can be informed when we have a release date for the book.

Thanks for your support.

Bonita

Making Lists

I've always loved lists. They help me remember errands and purchases I need to make. There's a certain satisfaction in making lists of the most mundane tasks and ticking off each one at its completion.

Then there are the internal lists, the shoulds and shouldn'ts we have floating around in our psyches. You have them. We all do. Some you put there yourself, but most of the time, they were started by our parents, our schools, the culture in which we grew up. They gnaw at us, pester us from deep within, creating a distinct sense of unease. Am I doing the right thing? Am I reaching my potential? Am I failing to do something I should be doing? Often, the tension is there but ill-defined.

There's a positive function to that internal set of lists. No doubt, some of our best behaviour is a result of the list of do's and don'ts perpetuating within us from early childhood. However, it's also necessary to dig those lists up now and then and check them. Check them twice. Find out if they're naughty or nice. Do they ripple out of your head as judgement and denigration? Or do they inspire?

Scratch everything off of those lists that feels like a personal putdown - anything that tells you that you can't, that you're not capable. Better yet, create a new list and throw out the dysfunctional ones. Read inspiring books and jot down on your list the words of others that uplift and challenge you in positive ways. Now type up that list and post it somewhere you'll see it every day.

Read it often and imprint it on your mind. Live by it. The best lists don't involve any scratching off of items, because they are things you'll want to do each day for the rest of your life.

The Irony of the Red Rug

At Poetry & Company in Kingston on Thursday night, I performed my latest piece, entitled "Rug". The poem is about the last home occupied by our entire family before my parents split up and my mother moved us kids out of the house:

the rich red rug
ran all through the house
upper middle-class opulence
a la 1974

it muffled the sound of your feet
creeping down the hall

(Edited for adult content)

it brimmed over with
her keening pathos
and your snarling invective

running through the house
barking and lascivious
the rich red rug
absorbed our family secrets
congealed them in wealthy prominence

so when your self-congratulating colleagues
came to walk upon it
with their Italian leather shoes
we stiffly wore our happy plastic grins
while rich red rage
rumbled beneath our feet

This poem is indicative of the contrast in our family between the rage buried in each of us and the successful, happy exterior we were expected to show the world. The luxurious, deep-pile rug, which cloaked the floor of the entire house, save for the kitchen and laundry room was symbolic of this cover-up. In the 70's, such wall-to-wall carpeting was associated with wealth and, therefore, well-being.

Today, many of us would tear the rug out, knowing it off-gasses toxins of its own and harbours impurities. I think about that rug and the poison it carried from a deeply unhappy and violent family. I hope that the homeowners who came later had the good sense to rip it out.

However, with Father's Day approaching, I don't remember just the unhappiness, but the intelligence of my father, how hardworking he has always been, his artistic ability, his sense of humour, and the way I felt special as a very young girl, cuddling with him while he watched sports on TV, or the way I thrilled to the horror stories he read to me (at an age when I probably shouldn't have been privy to such tales, but they fueled my interest in the macabre in general and the works of Poe in particular).

I think it must be said that the ones who can inflict great pain upon us can also be the ones who teach and inspire us. From both of my parents, I got my drive, my intelligence, and artistic abilities that find their way into my writing, dancing and singing.

It is healing to remind myself that my parents are complex beings, and that there is nothing black and white about their behaviour. Just like me, they've sought to end their suffering - and as humans, we don't always choose a path to happiness that is kind to others. May they both have joy in their lives today. I wish they knew that they have a daughter who still loves them, even if it must be from afar.

Mask Work - Swimming in the Subconscious

I'm standing before Jacob James, actor and director with the Stratford Theatre, who is graciously taking time from his busy schedule to teach a series of acting classes at the Wellington Street Theatre in Kingston.

I'm new to acting, but not to energy work or tapping into the subconscious, so this feels like familiar ground. With a few preliminary instructions on the sacred art of mask work, he has me don a white mask and slip into a scenario that takes me on a journey into my own mind.

Placing the mask over my face, I close my eyes, and lie down on the floor. Breathing into the mask, I awaken and find myself on the shore of a vast ocean. Walking into the water, I find myself going deeper, ever deeper, and yet able to breathe in the water. I've been instructed to find a gift and see an animal and then fall back to sleep.

As I descend lower, I can feel my limbs become lighter, bobbing with the current. Soon, I notice a Venus flytrap (no matter that they do not exist at the bottom of the ocean - this is my dream). Prying open one of the pods, I find a pearl. I hold it in my hand and relish its glow as it catches the light from above the waves.

Suddenly, a large snake appears. I stroke its head and body as it coils around my waist, drawing me down to the sandy ocean floor where I fall asleep.

It's quite astonishing when we completely let go what we experience of our own mind, whether in an acting scenario, meditation, a Holotropic breathwork or other practice designed to open us to our inner terrain. When we really allow, all kinds of interesting imagery will arise. Why a snake, a Venus flytrap, a pearl? That is for me to ponder at my leisure.

Even more interesting to me is how the brain can generate the environment and objects in the scenario with mere prompting and my willingness to access the subconscious without editing its input.

As I continue to read "The Brain that Changes Itself", I'm astonished at learning how much of our perception is based on the way our brain works - and the choices we make in terms of perception. In his book, Norman Doidge MD writes about an experiment conducted by V.S. Ramachandran, who works to help amputees resolve "phantom pain", which is pain felt in limbs despite the fact that they are no longer there.

In this experiment, Ramachandran asked volunteers to put their right hand under a table while he simultaneously stroked and tapped the hand and the tabletop. This activity caused their brains to associate the tabletop as part of the body (to learn more about brain maps and how they do this, read the book). Then, he smashed the tabletop with a hammer and watched the stress levels of the volunteers skyrocket (measured by instruments to which they were attached). He discovered that the brain determines whether people register pain, and that altering participants' sense of reality (by getting them to associate the tabletop with the body) can influence their experience.

I find this particularly interesting given that I used meditation and self-hypnosis during my last two labours to circumvent the pain process. I suspect few doctors have seen women calmly sitting in a lotus position in hard labour indicating, "I'm ready to push now." The staff were so surprised, they actually placed me on a gurney in that sitting position and wheeled me to the operatory for the birth of my third child. With my ability to bypass the pain process, my husband and I were able to conduct the fourth birth at home by ourselves.

The brain's capacity to create our experience and our ability to consciously determine that experience continues to amaze me. Though we cannot control the external world, we can determine how we will respond to it, and thus influence whether we benefit or suffer as a result.

Lucid Dreaming

I'm running down a hallway, having just demanded that the woman I was handcuffed to be locked away. I then sequester myself in a private cell, safe for the moment. The woman in the dream is actress Patricia Arquette who stars in the TV show, Medium. Later in the dream, I'm writing down on a pad of paper the sentence, "What keeps you going?"

It's 4 a.m. and I'm writing down this dream on the pad I keep by my bed. As a lucid dreamer, I'm able to make decisions in the dream state, and to remember my dreams with greater clarity than normally available to the dreaming mind.

Having analysed my dreams since childhood, I'm clear on the meaning. I had been considering a change in focus to my career that would cut me off from my intuition (represented by the actress from Medium) and also limit my creativity severely (putting me in a cell in the dream) by playing it safe. My subconscious painstakingly wrote out the sentence it wanted me to consider carefully. As anyone knows who dreams lucidly, writing something down in the dream state can be hard work, since letters seem to move and shift with the tide of the human mind.

I was a teenager when I first picked up a book on the subject of lucid dreaming, written by Stanford University professor, Stephen Laberge. My dream recall (I can still remember dreams I had when I was eight years old) has often rivalled my memory of waking life, and I'd learned early on how to be completely present in the dream state in order to make conscious choices as to how I reacted - including waking myself just before being trampled by a wooly mammoth!

Laberge's techniques deepened and extended my ability to stay conscious to the point that I learned how to slip into dream imagery and out again without losing consciousness. More than a parlour trick, knowing how to maintain awareness in the dream state means getting the most out of the information that your subconscious has to offer.

Historically, dreams have given forewarning and inspiration to the recipients. Elias Howe invented the needle on the sewing machine based on a dream he had of savages attacking him with spears. Each spear had a hole in the tip, thus giving him the solution as to how the needle should be threaded.

Tibetan buddhists use dreams for spiritual development, with the aim to realizing enlightenment in the dream state.

My dreams have proven useful over the years, providing direction on practical and spiritual matters. It seems a shame that so many of us spend a considerable amount of time sleeping and never utilize the dream state to its full extent.

To improve your dream recall, here are a few tips:

1. Keep a pad of paper by your bedside and write down your first impressions in the morning before you get out of bed. Record images, emotions, phrases that pop into your head - even if they seem nonsensical. Doing this signals to your subconscious your willingness to hear what it has to say. Over time, you'll get more information. Today, my recall often involves writing down as many as seven dreams in the morning in considerable detail.

2. Tell yourself as you fall asleep that you will remember your dreams. Your subconscious is open to suggestion and will offer more information as you persist with this affirmation.

3. As you start to fall asleep, stay aware of the images that arise. Notice when the things you see appear to be dream imagery rather than what you would expect to see in waking life. Tell yourself, "I'm dreaming." It will help you to stay conscious in the dream state.

Dreams are doorways to a rich inner terrain that offers guidance and ideas the waking mind is too busy to realize. Plumb your mind for the treasure it has to give. Dream.

Searching the Shadow

It's 2:30 a.m. and I've finished a thorough housecleaning I felt inspired to begin at midnight. The need for order overwhelmed me. Tidying up was also a vain attempt to sweep away thoughts that arise in the wee hours, that time when the world is quiet and we have no distraction from our shadow self.

It's then that it's most tempting to dissolve into sleep, ignoring the unfinished business of the psyche. Yet, this uninterrupted period is when we can best confront what we wish to ignore about ourselves: our pettiness, our inconsistencies, our fears and reactive indulgences. Honesty reigns when there is no one to rescue us from ourselves.

Take time on occasion to embrace the hours after midnight, to sit with your demons and discover the treasure beneath the dross of the human mind. Beneath the bullshit we feed ourselves to prop up our egos, there lies pure truth. Within, we find the Observer who never thinks to wear the tired costume of identity, role, and plot. The Observer simply is, with no need to impress or further one's aims. If you can forget the ego for a moment and dwell in the Observer, I guarantee you will find a simple sense of peace, a recognition that all is as it should be, a connection to the benevolence that permeates everything.

It's only when we stop running away from our shadow and sit with it until it dissolves that we know ourselves to be the Observer, that we know peace.