Healing Offering: Part Two

Updated on July 18, 2018:

What specifically could we do for healing relationships (including with ourselves), radiating this healing out into the world. In my experience this practice can dispel disharmony between people (feels like kind of an untangling):

Tonglen Meditation (I originally learned about this in a workshop with Joan Borysenko, Ph.D. in Chicago in 1995.)

Tonglen is from Tibetan, meaning giving and taking (or sending and receiving). It can be a powerful tool to transform negative into positive, what is tangled into smooth. There are many forms of tonglen (see Google). This is my own version, which I taught, re-shaped a bit over the years with my practice, understanding, guidance, and study of healing. There is no one right way to do this. No particular belief is required, just entertain the possibility that this might be helpful and see what happens. Much is accomplished by the power of intention. The basics are: Breathe in, pause (transform), breathe out. Here are the long and short versions.

Long version:
–To get ready: Find a quiet place and get into a comfortable and supported position. Uncross legs or ankles. If you are sitting, feel your feet fully on the floor if you can. Take three deep letting-go breaths (if possible, fill the belly with air and let out noisily). Close your eyes.

–Then envision a gold luminous light above and slightly in front of you, washing over your body, cleansing all the dark grime from every cell in your body and washing it out through the feet. You may feel lighter.

–Next focus on your heart, perhaps placing your hand on your chest, becoming aware of the warmth, energy, and power of the loving furnace of your beating heart.

–Picture yourself in your mind. Breathe in any dark grime that may be covering your own heart-light. Pause briefly as the darkness transforms into love by the power of your heart-furnace. Breathe that love back out to yourself. Repeat for perhaps a minute or two or until it feels done to you.

–Next envision someone close to you. Breathe in any darkness that may be covering their heart-light. Pause briefly as the darkness transforms into love by the power of your heart-furnace. Breathe that love back out to them. Repeat until it feels finished, maybe a minute or two, whatever seems right to you.

–Now envision someone you are at odds with. Breathe in any dark grime that may be covering their heart-light. Pause briefly as the darkness transforms into love by the power of your heart-furnace. Breathe that love back out to them. Repeat until it feels done, maybe a few minutes or whatever seems right to you.

–If someone else now comes to mind, continue this process. You might also envision an organization or troubled region, specific people or whatever seems appropriate to you. A group can also do this together (perhaps in the same place or just at the same time).

–And finally, very important to finish up with gratitude, perhaps thanking any guides you may work with (or none). Breathe normally for a bit, just feeling grateful.

Short version:
You can use this whenever someone throws you off. Say you are shopping or driving or at work and something happens with someone that feels yucky. You notice, stop a minute, breathe deeply, focus on your heart energy, and right then breathe in the dark clouds covering the heart-light of that person, transform the darkness in your heart, and breathe it back out as love, for whatever amount of time feels right. (You do not absorb any negative energy.) End by feeling grateful and breathing normally. And continue on with your day.

Note:
There is no one right way to do this. No particular belief is required, just entertain the possibility that this might be helpful and see what happens. Much can be accomplished by the power of intention.

I have also done tonglen to support healing relationships (which I see as gold cords of light between people). I believe it works for any living thing, including organizations and countries. It feels good to do, calming, empowering, and harmonizing. Practical. Please remember you do not control the outcome. No one can say what will happen after the tonglen meditation. But my experience has always been positive (usually surprisingly so). Good for me and good for the person I was having trouble with. I love win-win situations!

I’d like to know: what is your experience with this?

Tomorrow, my song “Prayer of Lovingkindness.”

An Offering to Inspire Healing

Fall Flower from Stella, Copyright 2011 Margaret Dubay Mikus

I am a long-time member of the International Women’s Writing Guild. This supportive organization is going through a painful (and divisive) transition right now. I wanted to do something to facilitate the healing process. Three things came to mind, to share a new poem, the tonglen meditation, and my song, “Prayer of Lovingkindness.” This then is my offering. First, here is the poem, written for us:

2/13/12

Death…or Re-birth?

(necessary turmoil)

Let us be calm.
Let us each take a deep breath,
let it out loud and long.
Then another.

Let us let go of
unsupported assumptions
and blame and taking sides,
the past is over.

We are creating the future
out of whole cloth…or not.
This sacred time of transition,
unparalleled opportunity

to re-envision the mission,
take the best of what was and
meld into what could be,
let go of what might have been

if only….
let go what you heard
might have happened….
If this collective

is to stay connected
patience and imagination,
minimum requirements for coherence.

We are women, we are writers, we are midwives.
It is our nature to give birth
to a living thing
only partly from our own genes,

to merge apparent opposites.
We are not powerless
waiting for the whims of others.
We can sit in our homes, clear-focused

and imagine the most ardently desired outcome.
With one caution, I set this in motion:
be kind, be generous, envision from certainty of compassion.
We are healers, it is not only what we do

with words or looks or action,
it is who we are, where we put our attention.
So let us heal our beloved organization.
Begin.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2012

Tomorrow I’ll post my version of the Tonglen Meditation, a practical and powerful aid to untangling relationships. What in your life is struggling to change and grow? What do you need to let go?

Inspiration and Creation

One thing that fascinates me is how creativity inspires and encourages further creative expression. How a poem I read may prime the pump for the emergence from me of another poem — or some other form. It is magical, somehow. I’m aware of being careful what I read, what fuel I put into the hopper…

A week or so ago, while battling yet another cold, I happened on the Facebook announcement of Virtual Choir 3.0, Water Night. This is an extraordinary choral piece by Eric Whitacre, adapting a poem by Octavio Paz, (translated from Spanish by Muriel Rukeyser). Very cool story about the music came to be composed. I had heard about Virtual Choir 1.0 and 2.0 from a TED talk by Eric.

The way Virtual Choir works is that Eric posts video of himself conducting the chosen piece which he posts online.  Virtual choir members then practice and submit individual recordings of their parts: soprano, alto, tenor, or base. These videos are then assembled by a super tech guy into a coherent whole. The results are stunning. VC 1.0 was Lux Aurumque (scroll down), with about 180 singers from 12 countries and VC 2.0 was Sleep with 2052 singers from 58 countries.

The deadline for submissions for VC 3.0 is Jan 31. Even with no voice (from laryngitis) I was drawn to do this. Although I’d sung in choirs most of my life, the last time was 15 years ago. (Since then I’ve been taking voice lessons which has increased my confidence, etc.) So  last week I began with learning the words to the song, listening to my part (alto 4) and listening to the whole and getting acquainted with the technology. All with the hope that I would recover in time.

Every night I “practice.” One night I actually sang. This is a gorgeous piece, a spiritual experience to sing. The more I work with it the more compelling it is. And through the Facebook page, I feel a connection to other singers, struggling with the same difficulties in notes and breathing and tech problems.

I am inspired and encouraged by this experience, however it ends up. And, as it turns out, I’ve written my own poem about the process of creation of this wondrous work that is uniting people all over the world through music, through hopeful vibration…dare I say, healing?  Who has inspired you? Come sing!

1/19/12
Thursday

Creation of Water Night

by Eric Whitacre and Octavio Paz

First was the word
and that vibration in translation
set the possibility in motion
that someone, sometime
would come who heard the music
and could set it down.

And in that decision
was the inherent gift,
the Universe saying Yes,
leading to the poem, then
words lassoing the music.
The lotus bud tightly closed
opened its lush velvet petals
revealing the inner gold.

For what was desire
was only a direction to head,
not the ultimate goal.
And direction led to here…
and now…and astonishment…
and beauty everlasting.
Small splash, then larger
as patient tendrils effortlessly
envelope and transform
the ever-expanding whole.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2012

What I Learned (so far) from Falling

Saturday, Oct 15, a beautiful, clear, fall day, was the weekend after my husband, Stephen’s 60th birthday and we all gathered to celebrate. That afternoon his sister, Barbara, was flying back to Texas and his aunt, Dorothy, was flying back to Michigan. We met our two kids in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago for brunch before heading to O’Hare Airport. The first restaurant we tried had a wait of two hours, so we decided to walk to another place under a mile away. I was feeling good that day, walking briskly, and talking to my daughter’s boyfriend. Suddenly my feet were knocked from under me. We had stepped to one side to let a jogger pass and apparently my foot caught on a decorative stone that was sticking up around a tree in the sidewalk. With nothing to grab hold of I went flying and … well, the poem tells the story.

It is now 11 days later. I am still sore, but healing fast. Whatever I was going to do was mostly put on hold. What have I learned (again)? It all works out. Whatever life looks like, however messy and even painful, it all works out. I say this from a full awareness of ongoing challenges and sometimes dark days. But I am more and more aware that Life is mystery. Somehow with all that has gone on, I end up in the right place. What have you learned, maybe the hard way?

10/18/11

Hard Fall

The fall
not from grace
but from briskness,
momentum following
ordinary laws of physics.

One moment laughing,
walking, talking,
the next stumbling,
falling, sprawling
into the street

between the curb and
a new brown parked sedan.
From a good day (finally!)
to unbearable pain
embarrassment, shame.

Try to rise
try to dust off
try to see
to act normally
pretending…

but not possible.
Halsted Street and buildings
melt into bright light,
few outlines remain
and the pain

takes over everything.
Not a head hit,
not bleeding,
scraped knees swelling
from inside pants

(material still intact!).
Left shoulder
hit cement curb and though
mind and will are strong as ever,

eyes close.
She retreats into the bubble
forming around her,
hard to stay with him
despite intense entreaties.

Ambulance gurney,
lying down she returns,
shock retreats.
Emergency room.
X-rays. Testing.

Telling the same story
of what happened 20 times.
More herself, joking even.
Flashbacks
play inside her eyelids,

over and over she stumbles
and falls…and falls,
trying to rise on bruised knees.
Nothing broken,
healing begun immediately,

she remembers to take arnica
tablets to minimize bruising.
Also the best of it:
her left side hurt, not dominant right,
no blood or ragged gash to stitch,

help immediate.
Back not wrenched
face not scraped
teeth not chipped
hands not ripped

pants not torn
nor sweater, nor purse, nor coat,
bladder was empty,
her stomach had breakfast.
In some essential small corner

all is well.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2011

Happy Birthday Mom!!


Today is my Mother’s 85th birthday. She was 25 when she had me, her oldest daughter (second of seven children). Now her life is wrapping up. After a series of many small strokes or “episodes,” she has significant cognitive loss according to testing. (Not Alzheimer’s.) She was a registered nurse for many years (maybe 50?). But now she cannot recall many words that used to be easy for her and she more often loses her train of thought, which frustrates her.

Yet every Monday we have these amazing conversations, talking of our week, our lives, our memories. I try to be calming and newsy: what’s going on with the kids, my husband, or my writing. We try not to talk too much about the medical. I may describe a squirrel swishing his tail on the tree in front of me. And we both remember that my Dad loved to watch the antics of squirrels in our backyard. I am grateful she knows who I am and remembers what is going on with our family. We both consciously treasure these conversations, this time we still have. This is the most recent poem for her.

9/12/11  Monday

An Ordinary Conversation

My mother wanted to remember
and I want to remember

this particular conversation
which started out about disarray

of a problematic week and
took a journey to calm consideration

of life as it plays out.
And if her voice is rough, throat dry

and if memory slips in and out
well, so what? Here we are still

talking of past and mostly present
telling stories that mean something

lending support, encouragement
eye to eye, heart to heart.

What could be better than that?

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2011