Letting Go: Then and Now

When I was 16 my father passed away. I was 55 when my Mom died. These two seminal life passages were so very different for me. What was the difference between Then and Now?

Loosing my Dad at such an early age left me filled with questions...how different would my life be, would my self-confidence and esteem issues be what they are? At 16, my response to his death was on such a deep level, I did not have the emotional depth to really understand it. My relationship with my mom became contentious. She was left a window at 45 with 3 children to finish raising. I was her youngest child, a teenage daughter who was defiant, with more than a little anger, lost and lashing out.. Mothers and daughters...it's a complex relationship under the best of circumstance.

In my adult life, her home was my haven, the place I returned to time after time. Her basement held boxes from each of the many moves in my life. I always knew I had a home with her. So when it became clear she could no longer live by herself, I moved her into my house. For the last 4 years of her life, she lived with me.

It created hardships, but brought far more joy. I slowed my life down for her. Parkinson's and dementia was slowly taking away her physical self, but her spirit never faltered.

Unexpectedly, Mom feel gravely ill. Per her directives, we began hospice care at home. What a remarkable gift this was from her. My sister stayed with me for the 3 weeks prior to Mom's passing. I had never spent that much time with my sister and it created an even stronger bond between us. 24/7 just us, no husband or kids, no work, just Mom, my sister and me. It gave us time together in a way that would never have happened had Mom not wanted hospice.

To be with the person who gave you life at the moment they pass to the next realm is remarkably life changing. As my sister and I each held a hand, Mom slipped away surrounded by her photos, her music and her two daughters. It was sad, but so beautiful to experience.

It is only now, one year later that I realize the different experiences I have had with my parents' deaths. The teenager is still struggling to understand what happened while the adult woman is honored to have been allowed to wittness such an intimate time in one's life. Through the experience of my mother's death I am now able to ask the questions and begin to let go of that angry, scared child who lost trust and felt deserted by her father. My mother gave me that gift by allowing me to help her die. It is the greatest gift of all and one I am eternally grateful for.

SHARE YOUR STORY Click here for more information

Imagine Loving Yourself!

We are urged to love our neighbors as ourselves, and that is a disaster for the neighbors. In fact, most of us hardly know our neighbors and probably don’t like them never mind love them. No big surprise, because we are also unfamiliar with ourselves, and loving ourselves is something that we have been lead to believe is weak or self-indulgent or narcissistic, regardless of the fact that Narcissus killed himself because he discovered that he was unable to love himself. What if we really loved ourselves and then acted in the same manner towards those around us! Why should the love of another be the primary aspiration of our lives, and why not start with ourselves?

Imagine! Waking up and saying “Good morning! How glad I am to see you!” Imagine being our own best friend: someone we can trust, and someone to whom we can take our concerns and our worries without fear of judgement. Imagine being comfortable with solitude yet relishing connectedness!

Loving ourselves is giving voice to our feminine Soul nature, and the feminine within men is often unfamiliar. If we love ourselves or love other men, then we imagine we must be gay regardless of the fact that sexual preference has little or nothing to do with love. If we love ourselves, we might believe that we prefer masturbation to a sexual relationship with another, regardless of the fact that masturbation and sexual relationships may have nothing to do with love, and may be more akin to scratching an itch than to being an expression of caring. If we love a woman other than our wife that love may be seen as off limits. It must mean that we want sex, and we may have the erection to prove it, regardless of the fact that we can love ourselves and others without needing the sex to demonstrate it. So men are often lonely and out of touch with their feminine nature and may only permit themselves sportstalk, back slapping and a variety of addictions in association with other men, and chaperoned exchanges with women.

For women, loving themselves is the best preparation for unconditionally loving others. Many women who have little love for themselves dedicate their lives to filling the feminine void in men, but filling the emptiness of another is impossible as broken marriages and other relationships tell us, and neither the woman nor the man is satisfied once the bloom of sex is dimmed.

So let’s imagine loving ourselves. We will need to practice forgiveness, letting go of the doubts, judgements, and limitless ways in which we torture ourselves for not being someone else. Let’s look in the mirror, and love what we see. Let’s meditate on loving ourselves, and when we are full, the love will spill over and nourish others.

If we want a Happy New Year, let’s give it a try.
What do you think?
Please comment!
With love, Michael

On Re-membering My Nature

Gazing at the sea and on out to the horizon, I notice where sky and sea come together, and imagine that this is the meeting place of the Spirit and Soul of nature. The Spirit of nature is astral, uplifting, inspirational. The Soul is moist, deep, life-giving and beautiful to behold.

A boat moves slowly across the horizon from left to right, and I gaze until it is out of sight. It is there for a moment, and then it is gone, for the boat is like my Mortal nature: fragile in the immensity of Soul and Spirit, and only visible for the briefest time before it dies to our sight.

For the time being, my feminine Soul-nature keeps my Mortal boat afloat, and my masculine Spirit-nature gives me the wind and the courage to sail on.

Wonder full.

~ Michael Murphy

Gazing at Dzogchen Beara

Dr. Murphy Gazing (Photo: J. Carlson copyright 2007)

Dzogchen Beara is the site of this Spings taping of the workshops that will lead to the learning films on Love, Loss and Forgiveness. These short, experiential films, are a cornerstone in the developing program to aid us all in learning more about our relationships to ourselves and love, loss and forgiveness.

Here is what Michael says about this special place:
"I rediscovered my Celtic roots on the Beara Peninsula in Ireland a handful of miles from where my father was born. Beara is a spectacular speck on the planet where the wild masculine Spirit of nature is so much in evidence in the clouds and the wind, and the earthy, moist feminine Soul of nature bids us welcome in this Irish place. It is the feminine that is so frighteningly absent in our modern masculine super-Spiritual industrial and scientific world, and this vital feminine is so palpable in rural Ireland. In Beara, my Mortal self discovered the Spirit and Soul of nature, which in turn allowed me to rediscover my own Spirit and Soul. I imagine this reunion as a Celtic Trinity that is stable and loving, in contrast to the masculinized Trinity worshiped by many religions that is unbalanced because of the exclusion of the feminine Soul. The Celtic Trinity is a shamrock-like connection of Mortal, Soul and Spirit that we have forgotten. This Celtic-inspired rediscovery of who we are and where we came from is the subject of "Secrets of Love, Loss & Forgiveness."

For those of you who don’t yet know it, Dzogchen Beara is a small Buddhist monastery with a view over the Atlantic that is beyond belief. Workshop participants are invited to attend the morning meditation, and the community offers us loving kindness, food, and the most amazing sanctuary in which Soul, Spirit, and Mortal can be in harmony. Dzogchen Beara is to me an incarnation of the place that is Beara."

Announcement: Michael's Musings

For those of you who know Michael, one of the refreshing things about him is his facile and creative mind. Here begins a new thread called "Michael's Musings."

From Eurekas at four in the morning, to uncensored thoughts on society and the psyche, Michael let's his thinking free in this new thread that is sure to stir our own thoughts and inspire us to comment. Enjoy!

Michael's Musings

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

We often turn ourselves into someone that we dislike intensely because a parent or other important person berated us so often (in rage and loathing and self-righteousness that they would deny) that we began to believe that we were the person they said we were.. In judgmental rage-infested bursts, they called us useless or dumb or wild or mean or a nobody, and they may even have assaulted us physically or sexually as well as emotionally, and we began to live their image of who we are in excruciating detail. When we looked in the mirror, we detested the creation that we saw.

What we see in the mirror if we will gaze, is the loss of innocence. A terrifying void is created by the absence of Soul and Spirit who fled from the abuse, and we attempt to avoid that reflection at all costs by refusing to look. It is the loss of self-esteem that we see in the mirror, and it drives us mad, for we know that we cannot live lovingly without our Soul and our Spirit. It drives us mad with hatred or it drives us mad with grief, and we become depressed or filled with anxiety or, like Narcissus, we may kill ourselves. Psychiatrists give us diagnoses of depression or panic or anxiety and prescribe pills, but no pill ever changes a reflection nor fills a void.

Take this pill,
It helps you not to shout.
It takes away the life
You’re better off without

~R.D.Laing