Frank's Mindfulness Journal

"How you doing?"

2010-08-05T12:33:00.000-07:00

Neighbor just asked me how I'm doing. My reply, "Just getting more mellow by the day." And it's true. Meditation, hiking two and a half miles a day with Joyce, mindful eating, mindful living, mindful work in my shops, down six pounds since waking up two weeks ago . . . hmmm, this feels right and good. Namaste.

A Letter To My Sons - A New Day

2010-07-28T10:03:00.000-07:00

Hi my guys,

The mindfulness retreat at Deer Park Monastery was an amazing and practical and life changing event for me. I want to share first of all with my two precious sons the new path I have begun.

Actually, it is not a new path, it is the culmination of several threads that have existed and been wrestled with in my life for many years.

One thread has been the desire for gentle, simple rhythms in my life, rhythms of meditation, exercise, healthy eating and drinking, and the kinds of quiet down time that allow for rest, relaxation, reading, and the willingness to stop and take a nap when my body tells me I need one.

But to put it simply, I have just been too driven and too intent on being productive (and recently, on being successful and well recognized as a photographer) to allow myself these "luxuries." I have had an abhorrence to the idea of "wasting" the precious time I have on this earth. I have wanted to "be all that I could be."

And then, of course, there has been my relationship with alcohol and cannabis. Never really out of control, and often managed relatively well, but also always prone to sliding into sloppy periods of time and lack of moderation. Retirement, and more available pieces of time, have not helped in that regard.

And then along comes five days at Deer Park monastery, rhythms of early morning meditations, walking meditations, mindful eating, and a truly remarkable gathering of 250 people committed to peaceful ways of treating themselves, others, and the planet, and it all just came together. I felt like I was home.

On the final morning of the retreat I came forward and committed myself to the kind of life I have always wanted to live. And it's much, much more than knowing that alcohol and cannabis are out of my life forever, to the moment I take my last breath on this earth.

I am also recommitted to being a vegan, with the exception of eggs when we have our own happy, organically fed chickens.

Joyce and I are now getting up at 5:30am, meditating for 30 minutes, then stretching before we leave for an hour of hiking up Hubbard Gulch Road to the Quaker Center and back. When we return home, we prepare and eat breakfast in silence and in mindfulness. We are ready to begin the rest of our day by 8am.

And it's not a fleeting thing or a whim of the moment. I can feel it all the way down to the core of my being. I am home. I am finally living the kind of life I have always wanted to live. This is the culmination of many fits and starts throughout my life. The time is here and the time is now.

I know there will be many, who when I share this with them, will wish me luck and offer me their support and encouragement. That will be wonderful, but what I much more ask for is that my loved ones and friends join with me in jumping up and down with tears and laughter and joy and celebration of something that is already a done deal. I am totally grounded and solid in this. It is the most natural, easy decision I have ever made in my life.

I love you Joshua. I love you Seth. I offer you the gift of a father who will be as mindfully present as I have ever been in my life. When you find me to be tired, it will be an honest tired that comes from a mindful and passionate love and engagement of life, and activity, and YOU! I stand ready to share or answer any thoughts or questions you might have.

All my love,

Your Dad.

A Letter to Desire

2010-07-28T10:02:00.000-07:00

Dear Desire,

There you were, once again, as you have appeared at various times throughout my life. Joyce and I are at a five day Mindfulness Retreat with two hundred and fifty others. As I notice the faces of all the new people around me, I see you. It's always your face, something about your face that captures my attention. From that moment on I am usually aware of where you are in a room in the days that follow. When I was younger, I would get caught staring at you, but that rarely happens anymore. I have learned a lot in these 63 years about respecting you and not making you feel uncomfortable. Still, I know what color top you are wearing or how you're wearing your hair each day.

All of this has absolutely nothing to do with the relationship I share with my beloved Joyce. Fantasies of it being anything more than appreciation, I have learned long ago, are not real. When I was younger, if by chance we ended up in conversation, I was tongue tied by your beauty, but again, I have learned a lot in my years. I have become more comfortable with myself and relaxed with you. I am charming, conversational, and downright relaxed with you if by chance we end up in conversation. But the truth of the matter is, there is still a kind of fixation I have with you. Despite my best efforts to not notice you, I get caught in a cycle where I feel trapped by myself.

But you did something this time that you have never done before. You kept showing up, literally right in front of me, everywhere I turned. And I know that this was not because you were planning any of it. It just kept happening, over and over again. I would go to return my fold up chair at the end of a session, turn around, and there you were with your chair, right behind me and our eyes would meet. This was more than knowing where you were in a room. Even when I didn't know where you were, you kept showing up. It was unnerving, and it changed the dynamic.

Finally, I determined that the next time I saw you, I was going to walk up and have a small chat with you, in an effort to relieve and remove the tension I was experiencing. It's not just that I wanted you to be normal, I wanted to be normal as well. I wanted to break the ice, to somehow move beyond my uncomfortableness to a place where you would just be another face in the crowd. Right after deciding to speak to you, I was coming back from a short hike and was walking to be with Joyce, and there you were, sitting right behind her. This I knew was the moment. I walked up to you, in easy earshot of Joyce, and said, "Well, I see that I must introduce myself to you. I seem to see you everywhere I turn. My name is Frank." I did this easily and comfortably. Then I asked your name, and you replied, "Desiree." At that moment I did not even realize the incredible ludicrousness of that. Desiree. But of course! Who else would you be?

We each joked a little bit about stalking the other, and you were very gracious. After sitting down with Joyce, you offered a little chit-chat of your own, commenting on the beauty of the tattoo on Joyce's back. It was all very sweet and innocent and I left feeling like maybe this time, you would fade back into all the normal people.

The very next activity of the day was a deep relaxation session in the meditation hall. Joyce and I thought that this was another session where the men would be on one side of the hall and the men on the other. We parted and I laid down for the almost hour session of mindfulness, following my breath, and being sung to by the sister nun with the lullaby voice. It was beautiful. When it was over, I rolled over on my mat to look down the hall to see which nun had that awesome voice, and there you were, just two mats away, looking back at me. We were both shocked. I could see it on your face and I know you had to have seen it on mine. You gave me a body shrug like, "What the hell is that all about?" and I returned the gesture in kind. Just weird!

After that, we learned to joke about it and Joyce would join in on the joking as well. There was that time where the three of us hit the bottom of the stairs together that led up to the lunch line, and I greeted you and we all chatted on the way to the line and once in it. You became more and more to me the regular, beautiful person that you are, definitely not just someone else, but at least someone who became flesh and blood instead of goddess.

I still can't believe the way it just kept happening, right up to the end of the retreat, as you and I both moved into the line of those who were to make their public commitment to the mindfulness vows on that final day. A little later, shortly before the retreat was over, we found ourselves walking down the stairs together to gather for the last walking meditation (ok, that one wasn't totally coincidental . . :o)

I joked that this was my last chance to "follow" you, chatted a little with you, and congratulated you on your commitments. You congratulated me as well. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.

It ended as well as it ever has for us, Desire. And I thank you for that. You didn't allow me to simply be an invisible voyeur. You called me at my own game and in the process taught me that I can indeed learn to appreciate beautiful people when I happen to see them, enjoy conversation with them when that happens, and then have it be nothing more and nothing less than that.

Thank you Desire,

Frank.