Cool Mind Warm Heart

I'm Lance Armstrong

I’m Lance Armstrong, which I say rather gratefully believe it or not. 

Following the first day’s television broadcast of Mr. Armstrong’s confessional with Oprah, I heard a radio conversation with Daniel Coyle, co-author of a book with Tyler Hamilton, one of Mr. Armstrong’s  former cycling teammates.  Titled The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France, the book evidently (I haven’t read it) includes Mr. Hamilton’s account of wide-spread use of illegal performance enhancements, to which Mr. Armstrong was party.  When Mr. Coyle was asked by the radio talk show host what he felt as he watched Mr. Armstrong’s statements to Oprah, Mr. Coyle said with great compassion that it was about ten percent of the story––but a significant achievement for Mr. Armstrong.

A Tribe Camping Out In My Heart

Today, day one of year 70, there’s no longer any question that a tribe of lovely beings from who knows where has been camping out in my heart probably since birth, if I had to guess. 

(This shouldn’t surprise.  For one thing, I’d say we each have our own tribe of spiritual cheerleaders serving us whether we know it or not.  For another, before I was born I asked for the most intense life possible to juice my direct experience of God.  A generous universe responded by dishing up no end of both the uncompromising demands of love and the depthless support we all need to embrace those demands.)

The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment

I’m a lazy man.  Laziness keeps me from believing that enlightenment demands effort, discipline, strict diet, non-smoking, the other evidences of virtue.  That’s about the worst heresy I could propose, but I have to be honest before I can be reverent.

 

So begins one of my favorite books, The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment, by Thaddeus Golas, published in 1971.  It’s a spiritual treat so slim (only 80 pages) it can slip into a back pocket, yet so rich it can nourish one’s heart indefinitely.  At least that’s been my experience over some 30 years, even though during most of that time the Guide, as it’s known, has stood patiently on my shelf of treasures waiting for its yellowing pages to be turned. 

Gratitude for Everything

What matters isn’t how well you play when you’re playing well.  What matters is how well you play when you’re playing badly.

~ Martina Navratilova

 

My beloved and I are the friends we dreamed of being when we were married 35 years ago.  Of course at the time we knew nothing about the many deaths it would take to be such friends––beginning with the death of any belief about what it means to love, the death of any notion of who we are...and the death of our marriage itself.  

I’m a great fan of despair, the reality felt in every cell of our being that where we are is profoundly contrary to our heart’s desire, and that if we don’t change our relationship with the person in the mirror we will know nothing but untold misery.  Life doesn’t get much better than that, truth be told, because it can lead to a commitment to go to any lengths to live love.

That my beloved and I each encountered such a dark night of the soul some 25 years ago and allowed it to serve us is among the great joys of our life.  

We look at each other today and what we feel most isn’t pride or some sense of accomplishment, or even love, as present as that is.  What we feel most is gratitude.  And not gratitude for this or that so much, but gratitude for everything.

 

 

When Another Person Makes You Suffer

When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over.  He does not need punishment; he needs help.  That’s the message he is sending.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Sometimes We Must Risk It All

You have to reject one expression of the band before you can have another.  And in between you have nothing.  You have to risk it all. 
~ Bono (of the band U2), in the documentary “From the Sky Down”.

❧

the essay

The Most Accomplished Person on Earth Has Nothing on Us

The rest of us may not be able to jump underwater on a pogo stick in the Amazon for three hours and forty minutes, but we recognize that what it takes to do so is no more than what it takes to meet each moment of our day with love.

the essay

Never Give Up

Never give up on someone you can’t go a day without thinking about.
~ On a scrap of paper among my belongings

This Bug May Be Healthier Than Apple

 

On many levels, Apple is one of my favorite companies.  I’m a sucker for excellence that aspires to serve both mind and heart.  I love people who strive to be outrageously good at something or die trying.  I applaud those who presume to guide the world’s understanding.  I celebrate anyone whose heros include elegance, simplicity, intelligence, intuition, playfulness, love and depth.  At this very moment, however, a client of mine (no bigger than a bug compared to Apple) just might have a better chance of fulfilling its aspirations over the next decade than Apple does.

the essay

Humility When Stuff Hits the Fan

The Joe Paterno saga* reminds me that there are wonderful novelists for whom backstory (how a person or situation got to this moment) means little or nothing.  What matters, they contend, are the actions and consequences of today.  I’m sympathetic.  Surely there is no more important moment than the one we’re in: making a choice, as we all do––love or fear, regardless of every choice we’ve made previously.  Yet I’m also drawn to the big story––indeed, the biggest possible story––for I find that it helps me grow humility, a valuable commodity anytime, but especially when stuff hits the fan as it has in Happy Valley.**

the whole essay

Extravagant Humility

An eccentrically spiritual zillionaire of my imagination once asked me to design a “golf experience” on his private nine-hole course that comprised the backyard of his Adirondack summer cottage. 

The only direction I received can be summed up by his remark: “Anyone who thinks this course is about golf will think naked skydiving is about transportation.”

We All Can Be Steve Jobs In the Way That Matters Most

In the wake of his death, the all-but-exclusive focus on the “super-specialness” of Steve Jobs can be a disservice to him and us. 

It’s kind of like Jesus or Buddha or history’s great saints.  If they’re special because God tapped them on the noggin and said, “I hereby anoint you Wonderful Beyond Measure,” what the hell good are they to us?  They provide no example we can apply to our life.  The question isn’t what makes Mr. Jobs delightfully unique.  The question is what do we have in common with him.  What is there about his remarkable insights and achievements that we share, and therefore can learn from and take action on?

Ruthless Saints: A Sign of Life

[from the archives]

Here’s one measure of how the world is heading in a positive direction. 

Fifty years ago the epitome of the circus was Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey.  With its lion tamers, dancing bears, trick horses, performing elephants, monkeys on bikes, and seals bouncing beach balls on their noses, the implicit message was Man Over Beast.  Even the aerialists, tightrope walkers, jugglers, fire-eaters, knife-throwers and human pretzels were an example of Man Over the Beast Within.  Today, the epitome of the circus is Cirque du Soleil, whose implicit message is The Celebration of Humanity.  Indeed, Cirque leaves most churches in the dust when it comes to inspiring the integration of body, mind and spirit: the criteria for living as a whole person. 

Death Ends a Life, Not a Relationship

Forty years ago my pop dropped dead while playing golf one glorious October Saturday morning on his home course overlooking the oddest of New York’s Finger Lakes, the one shaped like a Y.  At 65, it was a fitting exit for a guy who’d lived a charmed life.  That today I, too, enjoy no shortage of wild-ass blessings amidst the many pains of ignorance, reminds me how much my dad is part of me.

An essay for Father's Day

 

Why I love Alzheimer's

I can’t count how many times my own unmanaged fear prompted me to wish that the elders in my life with Alzheimer’s would die.  Still, it wasn’t anywhere near the number of times I’ve been grateful for all they’ve taught me about how to love.

from the archives

My Phone Call With Osama

[This essay, offered in May 2011 upon the announcement of Osama bin Laden's death, was first published in February 2007]

❦

I’d food fight the Dalai Lama on the back of a crocodile (prime time on ESPN, of course) if I felt the world’s love quotient would rise a tick.  So if Osama bin Laden were to ring me here at the farm and ask would I consider taking him on as a client, I’d say sure, I’d consider it.  In my imagination, the rest of our conversation might go something like this:

MORE

Playful Reminders to Pay Attention

So the other day my inner guidance prompts me to take a single sheet of 8-1/2 by 11 paper and fill one side of it as quickly as I can with the names of everyone I can think of that I’ve met in the flesh who has contributed to my life.  In less than 10 minutes, the page was brimming: four full rows, 200 names.

Connecting With The Mother

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread,
a place to play in and pray in,
where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

~ John Muir (1838-1914), American naturalist

 

Thought Number One for 2011

When the avatar, Paramahansa Yogananda, was about to leave his body in 1952, he was asked how his work in the world would continue without his physical presence.  He said, basically, when I am gone, only love will take my place.  I’m sure this sentiment isn’t unique to Yogananda or anyone else who’s on a first name basis with the ultimate nature of things.  After all, even for us chickens, what more rewarding (if occasionally terrifying) practice is there than to embrace every life experience as a gift to grow love?

By the way, for those who enjoy my drawings and/or photographs of my stone sculptures, a variety of them are now available for purchase in my website’s gift shop (A Place To Buy Love).  Among other items is the 21st Century Coloring Book: Playful, Loving, Deep.

 

 

Happiness: The Great Ambition

My niece Elizabeth, a high school senior applying to colleges, represents the very best in humankind because, when asked on the admissions form what idea challenges her most, answers, “How to be happy.”   At least that’s what her heart says.

More

Managing Performance Anxiety

A singing coach friend recently asked for any insights I might have to help one of her students who is being challenged with performance anxiety. 

One of my sons calls me the well-adjusted agoraphobic.  Small talk is beyond me, but when it comes to the stuff of the heart I can speak at ease to anyone, single ear to the population of most phone books.  Among the reasons is my one and only speaking coach, Charlotte Fitzpatrick, the woman who, 50 years ago when I was in 12th grade, made me the American Legion speaking champ in my county.  Never mind that the achievement was helped by the fact that only I and one other kid competed for the prize, since ours was the least populated county in the state.

Mrs. Fitz asked me how I felt whenever I saw someone make a poor public presentation. I said I hated it.  She said what do you wish for that person.  I said I wished they would be wonderful.  She said remember that, remember that's the way everyone in your audience is feeling about you.  They're rooting for you to be great.  Feel their support, and let it serve you.

The World Cup and the World's Future

And when we meet...we’ll laugh tears of compassion as we compare scars from all those lifetimes, like this one, when we were so oblivious of our beauty. 

[a new essay]

We Can Never Have Too Many Healthy Parents

My youngest brother, Cris, has five biological children, ages 24 to 13, and virtually countless other children he’s parented in one way or another over the years.  And the guy’s a banker for crying out loud.

Honoring The Mother In Us All

I Am All The People I Ever Met

 

“Who am I, you ask?  I don’t know, my friend.  I am all the languages I ever spoke, I am all the places I ever lived, I am all the people I ever met, I am all the women I ever loved, I am all the writers I ever read; I am all my ancestors – but at least they had the decency of never thinking of themselves as writers.  Who am I, you ask?  I don’t know, my friend; I don’t even know who is writing this page.”

— Jorge Luis Borges

SINGING MEANINGFUL SONGS

Although I would prefer that a two-ton potato not fall on my head, I’m grateful to be reasonably unattached to whether I’m alive or not.  It makes it easier to decline to participate in our nation’s wacky and profoundly harmful approach to health care. 

It is my intention never to agree to pay out-of-pocket for any essential medical service.   If that means I’m refused care, so be it.  Maybe I’ll change my mind if I’m in excruciating pain, and if I do, I’ll learn something about myself.  But it won’t alter my commitment to resist a way of thinking about so-called human health that is at odds with human dignity.  I’m speaking of the view that medical treatment is not a right but a privilege, and that it’s okay for someone to become financially devastated because of his or her health.  As George Carlin said about America, we’re a great country but a strange culture.

Corky Burr and the Keepers of Awe

[a story for thanksgiving]

Thirteen words that shape the world.

His name is Corky Burr, age mid-sixties by my calculations.  He and I were high school classmates.  I don’t believe our paths have crossed since, and we really didn’t know each other well then.  I have no memories of him, just a single impression: a small sparkle of kindness.  By “small” I mean his physical size, not quality of light.  Recently we became Facebook friends, which, as millions of us know, means mostly we get to glimpse at whatever sliver of a person’s life they wish to share with their Facebook companions.  The very first statement of Corky’s I was privileged to read was this: “I have 16 more days before I marry the love of my life.”

The Spirit of You

Here’s a rewarding way to spend every minute, whether as an individual or an institution.  Be on the lookout for the “spirit of you,” the spirit of who you really are, whenever and however it may appear.  A joke, a song, a photograph, a pizza, the caress of a shirt on your skin, a gracious memo, the way someone rakes the lawn or walks their dog––every smidgen of existence is a potential expression of that distinct vibration of beauty that is you. 

Maybe all there is to creating a healthy life or a healthy enterprise is identifying the spirit of our true self, and doing our best to make choices hand-in-hand with that spirit.  And the more open we are to discovering (or tripping over) that spirit in the world around us, the easier it is to spot when we look within.

...Vermont sunlight in September, Cirque du Soleil’s collaboration with the Beatles, the architecture of Antonio Gaudi, the part of a clam shell that forms a heart with wings, offerings by crazy quilt artist Allison Aller....

My heart smiles, “Hey, that’s me.”

NONE OF US IS WHO WE THINK WE ARE

It was such a sad thing to feel the despair in Michael Jordan as he said in conjunction with his induction to the Basketball Hall of Fame that nothing in his life would fulfill him as much as playing basketball.  Think about it.  How would he know?  Is he so visionary, so mystical, so in tune with the ultimate nature of things that he grasps the limitless possibility of the universe to surprise and challenge––and finds it wanting? 

What he’s saying without realizing it, my guess is, is that he can’t conceive of anything providing him the rapture he has experienced playing basketball––and since he can’t conceive it, it must not be possible.  And there Mr. Jordan demonstrates the great delusion common to us all until we choose to look at things differently.  The delusion that the boundaries of our understanding are the boundaries of understanding itself. 

Ted, Michael and the Price of Joy

No doubt by now Ted Kennedy and Michael Jackson have shared a little fist bump in the great beyond.  They had so much in common in their most recent incarnation.  They were born under the star named “Go Big or Stay Home.”  They were dramatic reminders to millions that we are all multi-dimensional beings––animated by nobility and ignorance: able to heal and inspire, as well as harm and confuse.