The Holiday Anti-angst Movement

Hafiz, interpreted by Daniel Ladinsky says:

I know the way you can get
when you have not had a drink of love.

Your face hardens.
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
about a strange look that appears in your eyes
which even begins to worry your own mirror….

Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
and call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant
to help your mind and soul.

Oh, I know the way you can get if you
have not been drinking of love;

You might rip apart
every sentence your friends and teachers say,
looking for hidden clauses.

You might weight every word on a scale
like a dead fish.

You might pull out a ruler to measure from
every angle in your darkness
the beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
trusted.

I know the way you can get
if you have not had a drink
from love’s hands.

That is why all the great ones speak
of the vital need
to keep remembering God,
so you will come to know and see him
as being so playful and just wanting–just wanting–to help.

That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me.
For all I care about is
quenching y our thirst for freedom!

All a sane man or woman can ever care about
is giving love!
–Hafiz (14th c.), translated by Daniel Ladinsky

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This time of  year evokes the most intense emotions! Holiday stress is evident in every friend, relative and psychotherapy client I see.

Advertising Hurts

Advertising invites our greed and our feelings that what we can provide to our loved ones doesn’t measure up: “Nothing says Christmas like a diamond bracelet,” commercials insist. It’s impossible not to know that some people receive designer wardrobes, sports cars and trips to Paris for Christmas. It’s impossible not to know that some people you know personally have a much more generous holiday budget than your own. It’s easy to find yourself thinking that dream come true gifts given and received would make your holiday so much better.

Movies and TV images

Movies and television add to our angst. From “It’s a Wonderful Life,” to  “Charley Brown’s Christmas,” television bombards us with images of perfect families having perfect events. Spouses adore each other. Children behave beautifully and with touching gratitude for their gifts. Relatives who have not spoken for years are reconciled. If only life were a movie!

Silver Box Memories

Then there are our silver box memories. I remember one Christmas where everyone around me seemed happy, and every present I dreamed of was under the tree for me on Christmas morning. I was five.

Years later, I was able to give my own young children a similar experience; they were thrilled. These are my silver box memories; no doubt I remember them as more perfect than they were in reality.  When I allow those memories to become a blueprint for a present day holiday, I can in get into emotional trouble very quickly.

Holidays In An Economic Downturn

For millions of people, the 2009 holiday season means foreclosure worries, life-threatening illness, impending divorce or misery between spouses or family members. Even for those of us who have decorated homes where everyone is well, this holiday season will not be a movie. It will be imperfect and sometimes disappointing. Our personal limitations and weaknesses will be as present as they always are, and our ability to orchestrate fabulous celebrations will fall short.

Resisting Holiday Angst

Dear visitor, please join me in my Holiday Angst Resistance Movement. Expect imperfection! Buy less! Serve fewer courses as holiday meals. Insist that some gift-giving involve “white elephant” (used) presents. Give touching sentiments written down on paper to relatives and friends. Make an anti-angst agreement with a friend, and arrange to call each other when the next showing of It’s a Wonderful Life threatens your equanimity.

From the 14th century, Hafiz reminds us that “All a sane man or woman can ever care about is giving love.” Let’s keep that in mind.

Blessings to you dear visitor! You may post a response here or email  me at drvlee1234@aol.com.

We are more than what our eyes can see.

Rumi says:

Let us choose one another as Companions.

Let us all sit at one another’s feet.

Come a little closer now

so that we may see each other’s faces.

Inside we share too many secrets.

Do not believe we are simply what these eyes can see.

….Now we are music together,

sharing one cup and an armful of roses.

It means so much when we remember to look more deeply at ourselves and at each other. It’s so easy to get caught up in the details of daily life–so easy to forget the deeper aspects of our lives and relationships.

In a recent counseling sessions with a couple who are coming to see me because they want to recover the passionate connection they once had, I’m struck by their preciousness. Each is so caring, so kind, so vulnerable; each is so unique and so beautiful. Before my eyes, they begin to see each other more deeply than ever before. They realize they’ve chosen well; each of them has character, and a deep, unselfish concern for the other. More and more, they understand that their difficulties stem largely from a lack of modeling. Like so many of us, they never had a chance to see a loving and passionate relationship in action; they must teach themselves and each other.

In this, they represent most of us. When they fully realize what a marvelous adventure lies ahead, they’ll have made a quantum leap.

Doing sex therapy is such a pleasure because the results are so delightful. Couples who turn the corner and enter new realms of discovery tend to be very happy with their therapy experience. They learn to get out of their own way. They learn to create a no-fail zone in the bedroom. They learn that our cultural stereotypes about sex (How big? How often? How long?) are incredibly narrow and limited. They learn to surrender–surrender to love, to each other, to their bodies’ wisdom.

Blessings to you dear visitor. May your journey be full of surprises and joy!

Gratitude!

The poet says:

It is a glorious privilege to live, to know, to act, to listen,
to behold, to love.  To look up at the blue autumn sky;
to see the sun sink slowly beyond the line of the horizon;
to watch the worlds come twinkling into view, first one
by one, and the myriads that no man can count, and lo!
the universe is white with them; and you and I are here.
-   Marco Morrow

I woke up this morning with a profound sense of gratitude–of thanksgiving. It’s as if I’ve noticed the true meaning of this season for the first time. Usually I compromise my pleasure in holidays by having a pretty rigid agenda, and then feeling disappointed when it fails to materialize. In my fantasy life, everyone I love and am related to shows up and is glad to see everyone else. We’re like the Waltons; we speak of old memories–how mom used to make that great angel salad every holiday, how Uncle Stu paid me fifty cents to eat a whole, huge turkey leg when I was nine, how dad was already started on his gift list for Christmas. Would he buy mom another puppy this year or another major appliance adorned with a huge red bow and rolled into the living room on a dolly? We catch up on the latest marriages, babies, illnesses and ups and downs of life. We say a prayer for those who’ve passed, and we remember their humor and their practical jokes. We eat a feast to which each family has contributed a favorite dish.

I’ve already had days of precious memories of my mom as I prepare to cook some of the foods she made. I think of her late at night the night before a holiday. I’d sit in the kitchen with her and we’d slice, dice and talk. She was always sweet at holidays. I think she compared them to the impoverished events of her childhood.

On the outside, my Thanksgiving this year will look very different  from the old agenda. It starts today with a small gathering of cherished friends, assembled to eat “pre-Thanksgiving.” I will take the opportunity to let them know how very precious they are to me. I hope to create an atmosphere in which we can all be in touch with how blessed we are. Their laughter, their poetry and their music warms me in advance.

I’ve let go of my holiday agenda. Whew! What a relief! I celebrate whatever is.

In the days  to come, I’ll see some of my precious family members, Many live far away; I’ll call some of them. Whether or not they’re here, I’ll see them in my invisible circle. I don’t need any particular grouping of guests. I don’t need all of my relatives to make peace with each other. I don’t need the pumpkin pie to be the best I’ve ever made.

All I really need is the love in my heart, and the opportunity to give some of it away. Having just seem the movie Precious, I’m acutely aware that for countless numbers of people, this holiday will be spent in misery or danger or hunger. Like you, I’ve contributed to food banks, and I will volunteer some time. The need is so great! One thing we can all do is to look deeply and see those we interact with. Look into the eyes of the grocery store checker, and be prepared to be moved.

As the poet says, I’ve already lived more lifetimes now than I deserve. On these Thanksgiving days, I celebrate them all!

May you do the same dear visitor. Don’t fail to notice what you do have. Don’t make what (or who) is missing more important than the gifts before your eyes!

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You may post a response here, or email me at drvlee1234@aol.com.

The True Love In the Mirror

Recently, a dear friend and colleague told me about an experience she’d just had with a trusted spiritual teacher. “I’d been telling her about my marriage and its frustrations,” my friend said. “It’s a good marriage in many ways. My husband’s a good friend, good lover, and good father.”

When the teacher said “that’s a lot!” she had agreed. “But, as I told her, we have an insane amount of petty conflict. We have such different styles. I worry that my fate is to go all the way to old age without ever having the deep, true love I’ve always wanted.”

Then the teacher taught my friend a profound lesson. The teacher looked lovingly at my friend and said, “That question is not about your husband at all. That question is asking you to fall in love with yourself, and to love the person you see in the mirror with your whole heart. The real question is whether you will learn and practice a ‘deep, true love’ for yourself.”

Profound words! This is potentially life-changing advice to anyone longing to find a partner, or to anyone who keeps trying to change the partner they have. “If only he would tell me he loves me more often!” If only she would get a better job!” If only she would lose (or gain) weight!” “If only he would stop complaining about my weight.” “If only she’d want more sex!” “If only he learn about foreplay!” “If only she or he would appreciate me more!” “If only he or she would give me the love I need!”

The wise teacher replies, “If only you would make a spiritual practice of learning to love yourself. Like all learning, that requires commitment and practice.”

I’ve edited Derek Walcott’s beautiful poem Love After Love below. It illuminates the path:

The time will come when, with elation….
you will love again the stranger who was your self….

[the one] who has loved you all your life, and who
who you ignored for another, [the one] who knows you
by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes.

Peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life!
There’s an easy way to know if we’re doing this. As Adyshanti says,

When we start to suffer, it tells us something
very valuable. It means we are not seeing
the truth, and we are not relating from the truth.
It’s a beautiful pointer. It never fails.

Blessings to you dear visitor. Remember to feast on your life today!

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You may post a response here, or email me at drvlee1234@aol.com.

The Privilege of Psychotherapeutic Work

In answer to many requests, I’m repeating one of my favorite poems today:

George’s Leaving
by Mary Ellen Edwards

In my work, I become a lover.
Understand people better than their own parents,
know them in ways their lovers and children long for,
learn their sighs, their movements,
discover what
their facial lines reveal.

I love them better
than they love themselves….

Coming as envoy to the interior land,
I chart the features,
map the vastness,
near the enormous, red, wet heart.

The work is privileged.

I’ve lived more lifetimes now than I deserve
and know the anatomy of inner space
like my own two hands.

Across from me could be by my
lover    mother   daughter,
A perfect counterpart,
unfulfilled potential.

My unconscious rises.
I need to be impeccable.
I am not!

Today my heart hurts.
Tired of being a professional,
a perpetual lover
sickened  by change
I take to my bed.

Every leaving
tells me I am alone.

How can I say goodbye
over
and over
and over
yet stay open to the unknown face
the voice on the phone?

George looks at me sideways,
goodbye tears running down.
“I felt cradled here,” he says.
“thank you for urging me to see my Dad
when he was dying.”

George, please don’t thank me.
For you it’s grace.
I know.
The work’s complete and
healing satisfies.

He says goodbye.
He goes.
I feel the loss of him all  night.

These lovely words express the deep treasure of being a psychotherapist. In my work counseling a all kinds of individuals and couples I feel over and over again that “I’ve lived more lifetimes now than I deserve.” And, by now, I do know “the anatomy of inner” space very well.

Today I’m doing a guest lecture at Menlo College in Atherton, CA. I’ll be speaking on sacred sexuality and sex therapy, encouraging the students to choose the lifelong passion that is their birthright. It is so true that

Love is a fruit in season at all times.

Anyone may gather it and no limit is set….

Blessings to you dear visitor. Choose the path with heart!

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You may post a response here or email me at drvlee1234@aol.com.

Hearing Your Own Voice

Mary Oliver says:

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting their bad advice-

though the whole house
began to tremble and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my Life!” each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,

though their melancholy
was terrible.

lt was already late enough,
and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,

that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,

determined to do the only thing you could do-
determined to save
the only life that you could save.

What is it that you know you must do? How easily we forget that, whether we’re young or old, it’s already late enough– already late for choosing to make the difference we can make.

It’s always seemed to me to be the most important work-related question of life: how much am I making my life count? How much difference am I making? “I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world” is another, wonderfully compelling Mary Oliver line.

What can I do to help pass health care for all? What can I do to discourage the President from wasting more precious lives on foreign soil? Very little perhaps, though I can learn to listen to my own voice. I can lend my voice to those who are mobilizing coordinated efforts. I can stand with those who demand accountability for legislators who serve the interests of insurance companies over the interests of their constituents. I can stand with those who want to save lives by an early end to two futile wars.

Most of all, though, I can share my gift for providing caring support to my clients and readers and students. Whatever your gift is, dear visitor, we need more of you. Thank  you cellists, gardeners, poets, floor installers, teachers, and doctors. Thank you kind people and strangers who smile; thank you children who make me laugh.

Thank you Creator, for all that is our life! Tomorrow, may I find new ways to serve.

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Blessings, dear visitor. Please post a response here, or email me at drvlee1234@aol.com.

Take a drink of love!

I know the way you can get
when you have not had a drink of love.

Your face hardens.
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
about a strange look that appears in your eyes
which even begins to worry your own mirror….

Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
and call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant
to help your mind and soul.

Oh, I know the way you can get if you
have not been drinking of love.

You might rip apart
every sentence your friends and teachers say,
looking for hidden clauses.

You might weigh every word on a scale
like a dead fish.

You might pull out a ruler to measure from
every angle in your darkness
the beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
trusted.

I know the way you can get
if you have not had a drink
from love’s hands.

That is why all the great ones speak
of the vital need
to keep remembering God,
so you will come to know and see him
as being so playful and just wanting–just wanting–to help.

That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me.
For all I care about is

quenching  your thirst for freedom!
All a sane man or woman can ever care about
is giving love!
–Hafiz (14th c.), translated by Daniel Ladinsky

All of us become shadows of our true selves when we have not had enough love. Looking in the mirror, we seen limitation, inadequacy, mistake after mistake. Looking at those we love, we see lack of empathy, bad intentions, and failure to live up to our expectations. Strangers become heartless and faceless, intent on taking our parking place or running us down on the freeway.

When our state concerns the children and animals around us, it can be hard to ask for and receive the love we need. “You don’t love me enough!” rarely evokes what would meet our heart’s longing.

Psychotherapists like myself get frequent and priceless opportunities to learn that giving love away can be the shortest route to letting love flow. We give it simply by attentive listening and an open heart that really cares about what we hear from the person in the client’s chair.

Parents of children small enough to welcome loving overtures have their own gold mine of opportunity to give love selflessly today, right now, by exercising that last modicum of patience and attention you have to give.

All of us have the next person we meet. Look deeply into the eyes of the person who a moment ago seemed only a clerk whose job was to total our purchases. A playful or kind comment can make buying carrots a precious experience.

Thank you, Daniel, for bringing us the priceless Hafiz!

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Blessings, dear visitor. You may post a reply here or email me at drvlee1234@aol.com.

 

 

“You do not have to be good.”

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of yourself
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile, the wild geese, high in the clear blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
–Mary Oliver in Dream Work

What a relief to know that we don’t have to be good. We don’t have to even remember the soft animal of ourselves. We will forget it soon enough, and once again fall into identifying with our ego, our persona and our social role.

Even though we forget that soft, sweet part of ourselves though, it stays with us, waiting for us to remember it and bring it up to consciousness again. It’s available for kindness, for connection, and for love. It’s available  today, requiring only that we let ourselves love what–and whom–we love.

Blessings to you, dear visitor. May you find some quiet moments in this and every day–moments to reflect on “your place in the family of things.” As Rumi says, “Inside you are sweet beyond telling!”

Psychotherapy: a profound privilege

George’s Leaving

In my work, I become a lover.
Understand people better than their own parents do,
know them in ways their lovers and children long for,
learn their sighs, their movements,
discover what
their facial lines reveal.

I love them better
than they love themselves….

Coming as envoy to the iinterior land,
I chart the features,
map the vastness,
near the enormous, red, wet heart.

The work is privileged.

I’ve lived more lifetimes now than I deserve
and know the anatomy of inner space
like my own two hands.

Across from me could be by my
lover….mother….daughter,
A perfect counterpart,
unfulfilled potential.

My unconscious rises.
I need to be impeccable.
I am not!

Today my heart hurts.
Tired of being a professional,
a perpetual lover
sickened  by change
I take to my bed.

Every leaving
tells me I am alone.

How can I say goodbye
over
and over
and over
yet stay open to the unknown face,
the voice on the phone?

George looks at me sideways,
goodbye tears running down.
“I felt cradled here,” he says.
“thank you for urging me to see my Dad
when he was dying.”

George, please don’t thank me.
For you it’s grace.
I know.
The work’s complete and
healing satisfies.

He says goodbye.
He goes.
I feel the loss of him all  night.

This lovely poem by Mary Ellen Mctamaney captures the preciousness of the journey of psychotherapy. It’s my calling and the great privilege of my life. I have indeed lived many lifetimes through my work with all kinds of couples, individuals and groups.

I’ve been privileged to help 21 years of couples restore the passion and sexual joy that creates the emotional glue of a long-term relationship and stable family. I’ve been a source of support through recovery from grief and from addiction. It’s been a joy to be a trusted guide for men and women facing depression, anxiety and mortality. Some seek new strategies that they can learn in a few months of strategically focused sessions. Others come for years, seeking healing of deep wounds with decades of history. I treasure them all. Each has in some way been my teacher, as I have been theirs.

“How can I make a difference?” is one of the most important questions in life. I’d like to make this post an invitation to anyone who knows about therapy from the inside. Please share your experiences.

Blessings, dear visitor. Please respond by posting here or email your response to drvlee1234@aol.com.

Start again today.

Mary Oliver says:

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–
who is gazing around with her enormous, complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how  to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

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On the morning after a seemingly wasted day, this poem reverberates in my heart. Once again, I’ve fallen short, failed to progress toward my life goals, even gone backward.

I’m old enough to know my good days are limited now. They always were, but my bad knee and grey temples make it real.

What will I do with my wild and precious life? What have I done? My answer is well enough in family, a good start in my books, and and years of work with clients who’ve said the work made a difference–even a transformation. So far, so good, though never enough, never impeccable.

In addressing those who are most in pain, who suffer from war, abject poverty, life-threatening illness, or the daily threat of violence, I’ve failed badly. In assisting the least of these, I’ve done so very little.

I was a Peace Corps Volunteer once. Later, traveling in India, I gave rice to the poor. At home, I worked with homeless, addicted youth. Sometimes, I’ve been privileged to assist with dying and death. Good intentions, followed by inconsistent action. So little, so unsustained, so lacking in commitment to turn around some corner of the planet.

If I died tomorrow, anyone who spoke of me truly would say, “She had a big heart, but she never buckled down and took on responsibility to make change happen for a group with no voice or power.”

May I be guided to that group or project. Perhaps you, dear visitor, know of someone or some place in need. Will you let me know?

And what about you? When you and I have both merged with the Light, what will be said of how brightly we lit up the darkness?

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Please respond, dear visitor. You may post a response here, or email your blog post, question, or comment to drvlee1234@aol.com.