Just Do You

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“A new you can still emerge from the old you.” Bamigboye Olurotimi

As we round the last corner and 2016 begins to come into focus many of you might be thinking about making new years resolutions and changing. I have a suggestion for 2016 – just do you.

The earliest recorded festivities in honor of New Year’s arrival date back some 4,000 years to ancient Babylon. The Babylonians marked the occasion with a massive religious festival and made promises to their gods at the start of each year. Caesar instituted January 1 as the first day of the year, partly to honor the month’s namesake, Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, whose two faces allowed him to look back into the past and forward into the future, and to whom the Romans made promises to at the beginning of each year.

Millennia’s later we are collectively still making the same empty promises to change. But in every moment of every day, we’re changing and evolving and growing. In every moment, we’re reconstructing our identity. We’re not defined by our decisions from two years ago. We’re not even defined by our decisions from two minutes ago. We’re defined by whom we choose to be in this very moment. We have this myth of identity — that who we are is the summation of a lot of choices we made in the past. That we’ve got a map for the life we’re supposed to lead, and we’ve got to stick to it. But that’s assuming that we’re all static beings, and that’s not how people work. We’ll never be “figured out.” Over the course of our lives, we’ll constantly be transforming into a more and more authentic version of ourselves.

Each of us is rare. Being unique is the spirit that already resides in us, the inner intention, primary style and way of being that makes us true individuals regardless, of the pressure to conform to temporary social patterns and contemporary cultural fashions. At the individual level, each person is here to give something that is not just unusual, not only exceptional, but that is distinctive and divine.

This year I hope you find moments of peace and your inner uniqueness for life aspires you to do meaningful work and discover genuine purpose. That you have the courage to undertake the seemingly impossible tasks of transforming culture and helping to heal the world. Not because the world can be saved or redeemed in a hurry, but because it is the impossibility of the great problems and projects of life that awakens the sleeping uniqueness within and changes work from a simple job to a life-long, life-enhancing project. And that serves the dignity and nobility of one’s soul as well as the well-being of one’s community. I hope you experience good health, that you are kissed by fortune, treated kindly by fate, that you jump high, and fall slowly, and that all your landings are gentle. But mostly I hope that you are encouraged to recognize and embrace your inner and exceptional uniqueness.

Piano Playing As a Spiritual Practice

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Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul. ~ Wassily Kandinsky

I don’t think I can say, yet, that I play the piano, but I’ve been meeting with one everyday for almost a year, just late at night, or first thing in the morning. I’ve been learning to follow its notes up and down the scales and I’ve been going through the short pieces in several exercise books. It’s not long before the left and right hand are asked to work at different rhythms and to make surprising steps and rests. And it’s not clear where to look. If I look too closely at the notes, everything slows down and I’ve lost the meter. If I watch one hand too intently, the other one wanders off. So I try to look on from afar, dispassionately, just enough to discern the patterns on the sheet and the shapes that my fingers make as they nearly strike the correct notes. Using this method, I have managed to get through the first few pieces in my piano books. I’ve played them hundreds of times now, inscribing little minuet memories into my muscles. I try to get out of the way so that they can take over while I listen along. Of course I can hear it when something goes wrong but it’s been interesting to find that the wrong note feels wrong to the finger as well.

When my fingers have woven together a passing musical likeness, I move on to the next piece. Immediately the baroque threads get tangled up. Notes ring out in strange clusters and at such a glacial pace that it reminds me a bit of nails on a chalkboard. Over and over, I retrace my steps, trying to find the path out of this woeful, accidental modernism. At the rate I am going there is little hope that I will ever become a very good pianist but this doesn’t bother me. It’s fun to be a beginner, every day, unsure of when and how the music will come.

Something I didn’t expect from the relationship I have with my piano is that outer music is leading to inner music in me. Playing the piano is turning into a spiritual practice.

Like any spiritual practice I have the help of a guru, my teacher Sebastian Estrada. And like any spiritual practice piano playing requires discipline. After hours and hours of practice I’ve reached a moment when the motion of my fingers across the keyboard is actually pleasurable, regardless of the sound. And then something else happens: there’s the sense that the music is playing me, rather than me playing the music.

Professional musicians must have this sense all the time, the very best concert performers becoming translucent to the music that they play. Perhaps this explains how they play large chunks of music, involving possibly millions of notes, by memory. It’s not that they memorize it bar by bar. Rather, they know the music so well that the notes could not go in any other place.

Is that a spiritual experience? Perhaps in this sense: musicians give themselves, via the discipline, to a communication that is far greater than themselves. The source of the music lies elsewhere – in the mind of the composer. But nonetheless, without the discipline and skill of the musician, the music could not be realized, could not be incarnated.

Piano playing takes you out of yourself too. Therein lies much of its satisfaction. And there’s one final aspect to it as a spiritual practice that occurred to me. It has to do with love.

Love is like playing a piano. First you must learn how to play by the rules, and then you must forget the rules and play from your heart. The same could be said for finding God.

To All The Broken Hearted

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All the genuinely smart, talented, funny friends I know seem to be broken-hearted. You will notice it on Twitter more than Facebook, because Facebook is where you go to do your performance art. It’s where you pretend to be hip; the place where people have ridiculously perfect relationships; the obligatory trips to the moon and where all toddlers potty train themselves. It’s the place where you hide how really bat shit crazy you really are. Facebook is surface; Twitter is subtext, and judging by what I am seeing lately, there are a lot of people experiencing bone aching sadness.

I have attempted to find a common denominator for all these broken-hearted souls and the answers were varied. Anything from; she had a mole on her eyelid; he pronounced it “cold slaw,” and Venus is retrograde. All the excuses you can imagine and some you can’t. But no one has said, “I am three gallons of crazy in a two gallon bucket and no one can put up with a mess like me.”

I don’t have the answers. I don’t know some big truth that I can reveal to everyone. All I can do is hurt, and try to stop hurting, and try to help others stop hurting. Maybe we need to tribe up, find each other and put our arms around each other and say something like: I know you have lost someone and it hurts. Perhaps you began to lose pieces of them until one day, they had disappeared. I’m not going to tell you tomorrow is another day, the sun will go on shining, or there are plenty of fish in the sea. It is ok to hurt, and it won’t be better for a long, long time, but eventually it will. For now take all the time you need. Here is some chocolate.

And most of us have figured out that we have to do what’s in front of us and keep doing it. Go to work, return calls, answer emails, return library books, go to the store. And breathe. And some of us even pray. The horror felt is real, and so you do your laundry and you make it through another day. In the aftermath of a loss we do what we’ve always done, although we are changed. Perhaps that’s the point. People change for two reasons I think: their minds are open or their hearts have been broken.

I know it’s hard to believe people when they say, “I know how you feel”. But I actually know how you feel. I understand feeling as insignificant as humanly possible. And how it can actually ache in places you didn’t know you had inside you. And it doesn’t matter how many new haircuts you get, or gyms you join, or how many glasses of Malbec you drink with your girlfriends, you still go to bed every night going over every detail and wonder what you did wrong or how you could have misunderstood. And how in the hell for that brief moment you could think that you were that happy. And sometimes you can even convince yourself that he’ll see the light and show up at your door. And after all that, however long all that may be, you’ll discover that little pieces of your soul will finally come back. And you will realize where there is potential for love the heart keeps on going. It will love whom it loves even if you don’t want it to, even after relationships end. It will keep loving after that too.

“And you finally realize with all the bad stuff there always comes good. If our lives are like clay cups then pain carves the cup deeper as we endure more sorrow but only to make it hold more joy as we drink from the well that of the love that surrounds us everyday.”
J. August Luhrs

Hope Makes all the Difference

“Never lose hope, my dear heart, miracles dwell in the invisible.” ~ Rumi

Hope is a universal concept, a renewable energy source and it never runs out. We can tap into it whenever it is needed. From poets to presidents to box office hits, hope has captured thousands of generations and helped each of us endure the heartache and suffering that is life.

Scott Russell Sanders, an American novelist, and essayist explains that the Latin word for hope, sperare, comes from the Indo-European root spei, which means to expand. “To be hopeful is not only to feel expansive but to count on an ever-flowing bounty while to feel despair is to feel constrained, to fear that the springs are drying up.”

From the view of the soul, facing an overwhelming array of troubles is an old story. Throughout history in times of great uncertainty, we have told stories and myths which seem to provide us a meaningful path through life and give us what we all need the most–the touch of the eternal. These myths continue to remain relevant because we continue to endure the same challenges of our ancestors. And myths continue to captivate and help by reinforcing the concept of connecting to the old soul within each of us.

The story of Pandora’s Box is an origin myth made up to explain how all the evils came about in the world. It was written by Hesiod in an epic poem called “Theogeny” about 800 BC.

Zeus gives a wedding present, a box, to Pandora, the first mortal woman on earth. Zeus does not tell Pandora what is in the box but gives her strict instructions not to open it. Pandora waits a year, at which point her curiosity gets the best of her and she opens the box. The lid flies open and all the evils and miseries of the world bolt out: Hate, Violence, Sorrow, Ignorance, Jealousy, and Sadness. Pandora manages to shut the box, leaving only Hope, who is hiding under the lid. This old myth teaches us that all the ills and ailments, all the scandals and betrayals and the rampant dishonesty must be faced before the hidden hope of life can be found again. It’s as if things must become hopeless before a deeper sense of hope can return from the depths of the human heart. This level of hope includes a darker knowledge of the world and a sharper insight into one’s own soul.

Hope is found, not by clinging to old dreams or by denying despair, but by surviving it. When life becomes darkest, the eye of the soul begins to see. “Hope springs eternal” is when people begin to see beyond the parade of facts and the litanies of ideologies and learn to trust the deeper values of individual life, as well as, the underlying truths of human culture. Great crises are not solved by simply conserving assets but by finding inner resources that were hidden from sight.

The sense of connecting to the underlying spirit of life and the hidden resiliency of the individual human soul is the source of genuine hope. This level of hope is based on creative imagination that appears when people honestly stay in the tension of opposing ideas long enough to lean into their despair. This intensity and deeper meaning of hope depends upon the profound power of the human soul to imagine and therefore to create, renew and innovate. When all hope is lost and all seems headed for disaster, it is genuine meaning that is missing and needs to be found again.

In the end, Pandora hears a faint voice in the box. When she lifts the lid, she finds hope, releasing it into the world. Everywhere evil goes hope goes too. And all that is touched by evil – so to is touched by hope. So hope continues to make all the difference in the world.

Merging Spirituality and Fashion

The world is shifting and rapidly changing, and as I travel and experience other parts of the world, I see transference towards a more spiritual way of thinking and being, and it seems the fashion world is changing right along with it.

Spirituality is usually associated with things we see as greater than ourselves. It conjures images of a higher power, of enlightened thought, prayer, meditation, our connection to others, our place in the universe and the meaning of life itself. True fashion is an expression of art and of personal identity. And for centuries spirituality and fashion have long been somewhat intertwined.

The pope’s clothing is infused with history, symbolism, and fashion. Though popes through the ages have worn many of the vestments, each new bishop of Rome puts his own spin on the classic fashion. The last pope, Benedict XVI, put his own mark on the clothes he wore both day-to-day and for special occasions, restoring long-lost hats and capes and adding a bold touch of color.

The Native American feathered headdress is a symbolic and meaningful fashion icon. Typically made of bird feathers, the headdress was reserved for the most powerful and influential among the tribe. These headdresses were not made at one time. Each time a chief, warrior, or other important tribe member committed a brave act, a feather was added. In many cases the warrior would have to prove himself by fasting for several days, praying and meditating to show his steadfastness, and only then could he add a feather to the headdress.

Growing up in Austin, my family and I went to church every Sunday and we were expected to wear our “Sunday best” and for me, that was always my most fashionable outfit. For my brothers that meant dress slacks, shirts and ties and loafers, no tennis shoes allowed. My parents taught us that part of our offering to the Lord on Sunday was the best of what we had to wear. My father used to say, “The mind and the heart are not disconnected from the body. The way we dress affects the way we think, our disposition, and our behavior. We can help steer our hearts toward worship, we can help focus our minds on God by dressing in a manner befitting an audience with The King.” I still dress up every Sunday and buy a fashionable spring dress to wear Easter Sunday.

You don’t have to go all out and walk around in ritual robes to combine fashion and spirituality. You can simply choose items for your wardrobe that best help express what’s inside of you.

I am noticing that I am merging my spirituality and fashion in my everyday life. My outer self is a reflection of my inner self. I am conscious of supporting clothing lines that give back to the community like Tom’s shoes. They give a pair of shoes to an impoverished child if I buy a pair of shoes and, if you buy eye-wear, part of the profit is used to save or restore eyesight for people in developing companies. Kind of a spirit meets style arrangement.

On any given day I might be wearing my “Om main padme hum” bracelet I bought in a monastery in the mountains of Tibet, or Inca necklace a shaman blessed while in Peru, or my Ganesha tee shirt I wore through India. And most days I wear a cross of some kind.

Your personal appearance doesn’t necessarily have to conform to any particular ideas about beauty or fashion. But it is still something to which you should pay attention, and allow how you look to be a reflection of how you feel and what you hold sacred.

Are you wearing the best colors for you? According to the ancient art of Feng Shui, each of us has a power color based on the five elements and the day you were born. Sign up for my email list and provide me the day, month, year of your birth and I will send you your birth element and power color!

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Michelle Cromer