Bonnevier Counseling Services

06/01/2023

"'Om Mani Padme Hum' – while it has many meanings, one explanation of its symbolism is that compassion arises when the jewel of the mind rests in the heart of the lotus." – Jack Kornfield
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05/31/2023

I have found this aspect of hope in unexpected places and with people I barely know. A few years ago, I was teaching a stress-reduction workshop with women who work in domestic violence shelters. We asked the women to write down their sources of stress in one column and what they did to handle stress in the second. Many women said they handled stress by being in nature or pursuing a hobby. Yet they could not remember the last time they had done these things.

That realization made a connection for all of us, those conducting the workshop as well as the women who worked at the shelter. We are all stressed at times, all fearful and sometimes despondent, but we might not be doing much to help move away from these hopeless feelings. Or we might be.

My friend Willow just started her new year with a commitment to swim five times a week to reduce stress. It’s still a struggle, but often what draws her there is the big whirlpool bath right next to the pool. It can hold twenty people but there are usually only two or three lazing there, letting the underwater jets massage away their aches. Sometimes she dreams about it, she said, and there is relief in having this luxury so close at hand.

Last week, her swim didn’t go very well. She was distracted and didn’t feel much joy being in the pool. In the whirlpool bath, she found three people talking about the exact topic that dominated her mind during her swim: her aging dad. All of the others were caring for elderly relatives in various states of decline. Willow at first was too shy to join the discussion. Eventually, the water worked its magic and she felt comfortable enough to speak.

“I feel terrible about him all the time,” she told her companions. “I feel like I’m doing so much and also that I’m not doing enough.”

One of the women shook her head kindly. “No, don’t think that. You’re doing exactly the right thing,” she told Willow. “You come here every day and you leave it in the water.”

In order to work for change — in our personal lives or in the world — we need to find the ordinary things that can help us sustain our energy and optimism. The idea of leaving what we can’t control in the water spoke to my idea of hope.

What Willow experienced was the buoyancy of hope, not the burden. She connected to strangers who were also carrying a terrible burden and through one she got the simplest and least conflicted feeling of support. Do the best you can. Live according to your values and intentions, while knowing that you may not always succeed in your aspirations. The actions you’re taking are honorable and those feelings of despair and inadequacy are part of the human condition. When you find community with others, you know you are doing the best you can with what you have.

The rest you can leave in the water.

05/31/2023

Love is an intentional practice.

05/31/2023

05/31/2023

Fabulous book!

"The problem in middle life, when the body has reached its climax of power and begins to decline, is to identify yourself, not with the body, which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. This is something I learned from myths. What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light? Or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle?

One of the psychological problems in growing old is the fear of death. People resist the door of death. But this body is a vehicle of consciousness, and if you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this body go like an old car. There goes the fender, there goes the tire, one thing after another— but it’s predictable. And then, gradually, the whole thing drops off, and consciousness, rejoins consciousness. It is no longer in this particular environment."
~Joseph Campbell

From The Power of Myth

https://jcf.org/titles/joseph-campbell-and-the-power-of-myth-with-bill-moyers-book/

05/31/2023

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If it works for you, say thank you. Thank you, little miracles. Thank you, little good things. Thank you, little moments of smiling, little instances of joy, little times of happiness. Say thank you. And then take those experiences of gratitude and allow yourself to breathe them in, the gratefulness, the gratitude.

Know that as we practice looking for the good moments, looking for what to be grateful for, it becomes a habit. We see what we’re looking for. We shift our moods. We’re more in our lives at that moment. We’re living large.