Getting Below the Surface

What we see of ourselves is only the tip of our own iceberg. There is so much more below the surface that is invisible to us as well as to others as they try to navigate around the surfaces that we present to them.  This hidden bulk can be dangerous to all concerned.

One of the benefits I find of doing the practices of the Love, Loss and Forgiveness Project is that they get me below my "surface" and help me to see the great mass of myself that is hidden even from  myself. Once these places become known territory, I can chip away at the parts that I no longer need. I become lighter and I gain the ability to communicate to others the true dimension of who I am.

Helps make for much more interesting and safer passages across the oceans of my life.


John Carlson

Five Regrets

Excerpted from the website Inspiration and Chai, by Bronnie Ware. The lessons of LLF lead to a loving, more fulfilled life, safeguarded from such regrets.

For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. . . . When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

2. I wish I didn't work so hard.

This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.

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A Week at the Beach- Gazing and Witnessing

I am looking forward to time with family at a beach house we have shared for one week a summer for almost twenty years.

The family configuration has changed through the years. Divorce has lead some family members to other pathways; death has taken the physical presence of another away; aging and disabilities have prevented others from the trip; while remarriages and new relationships have brought new family into the picture. Just writing this brings both tears of joy and sadness to my eyes at the same time as I think of all those with whom I have shared the time and space.

In the past this excursion to the beach has been a time and place to "de-tox" from a strenuous year of teaching or school administration, or to shelter from hurts from my divorce, or to just "vacate" from the stresses that I experienced in daily living. This year is different. I find myself without the need to "de-tox", shelter or "vacate". I have this great desire to spend time gazing at the family individuals who will share the week with me and witnessing what wonders they each are. I hope and pray that I will be able to experience these practices of the Love, Loss, & Forgiveness Project with the ease of a young mother (which I haven't been for years) for her child. For what else do I really need to do during this week?

Blogging for Love...

Blogging for love, loss, and forgiveness. There are a lot of people out there reading this today who've had experiences with the practices of the Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project and I would like to invite you to write down those experiences and share them with us. You can send your submission to me at the address below and I will post them on this blog (we reserve the right to edit for size and content). It would be great to have your voices here as part of this community that we are developing online for Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project work.

Also some of you have shared that you're having trouble leaving comments in the comment section. Comments are a great way to start conversations and to get people to think about things that they may not have considered before and we would love you to comment when you feel moved. So, if you are having trouble posting in the comments section, I'd like to hear about it so that I can make corrections and changes, if possible.

I'm very excited about the forward movement of the project and I'm very happy that you're here with us, and hope that you'll share more by sending your stories about your experiences and your thoughts on Love, Loss, and Forgiveness!

I can be emailed at LLFProject@gmail.com

Looking forward to sharing your insights! May the blessings of love be upon you!


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John Carlson

Tom's Place

I am thinking about moving on. I've lived at the same address for more than seven years, a lovely cottage I rent in an older section of a quiet suburban town. I've made friends here and am comfortable, but lately a voice has been telling me my time here is complete. The house is at end of a dead-end street, a pregnant metaphor if there ever was one, but never mind that. I don't mean a subdivided cul-de-sac, but a true dead end. The road just stops. I cherished the place for my first five years, because the street terminated at an overgrown farmstead occupied by a old man named Tom. Mine was one of three small houses on the street overlooked by Tom's 300-year-old home and barn, both painted farmhouse red. Tom was a hoarder and not much on maintenance, so the yard was always overgrown and the house and barn were falling in. Yet for all its decrepitude, the house possessed a true beauty both of proportion and character.

The property was, as I said, an old farm, and the lot beside it was a grove of soaring trees, basswood and cherry, which each morning ignited with birdsong. Deer lived in the thickets, as did rabbits, raccoons and the occasional opossum. I was ten minutes from the capital city, living in a microclimate of rural charm. All that changed when Tom slipped and injured his wrist three winters ago, and his family, in-laws primarily, used the occasion to seize his power-of-attorney while he was in the hospital. They proceeded to commit Tom against his will to a nursing home, and soon a dumpster arrived at the house and strangers threw eight decades of my friend's life into oblivion. Some months later, I was awakened to the sound of chainsaws razing the grove of its trees. Finally, I left one morning for work with the house and barn still standing and returned after dark to a sense of something amiss. Tom's place was now a blank piece of land. Huge machines had erased both structures in a matter of hours.

There are four nearly identical suburban houses occupying Tom's property today, soul-free boxes conceived and built to maximize profit. And while they are not the only reason I'm feeling it's time to go, their presence is not an unimportant one. Love, Loss, and Forgiveness founder N. Michael Murphy speaks of the importance of the gaze, through which we regard the world not in scrutiny and judgment but with a receptive heart. The gaze is that mutual sharing of love that passes between mother and child. When we gaze in this way, be it at ourselves, another, an object or a landscape, we actively create this same experience of cherishing warmth.

Tom's home was a place where I gazed endlessly with my eyes, my ears, and my heart. Such a gaze no longer feels in place in my new suburban enclave. This is not an elegy for the way things were; I accept that things change and life moves on. I am changing as well as I progress in the work of LLF. My dead-end street and I, once well-matched, have transformed in opposite directions.  The time is nearly upon me when, as much as I will miss the pleasures of living here, staying will no longer be possible.

Teaching That Which Isn't Taught

Michael, John and I have had several conversations recently about "teaching that which isn't taught", that which assists us in loving and caring for ourselves and each other. The Love, Loss, & Forgiveness Project "teaches" us how to do this.

May I suggest, for those of us who teach children, another source for imparting love and care for ourselves, our co-workers, and children we 'nurture'. It is called 'Nurturing the Spirit in non-sectarian classrooms', by Aline D. Wolf. Written from a Montessori point of view, it is easily used in most educational settings.

Maria Montessori wrote in her 'Education for a New World', "Education should no longer be mostly imparting of knowledge, but must take a new path, seeking the release of human potentialities." (1946)

Fears Present

As a think back on my fifty-three years of life, and the times when I have faced my most significant fears (fear of: heights, water, tests, being good enough, intimacy…oh, must I go on?), I realize that most of my important life’s lessons, my times of greatest growth, have occurred at these epic moments when I have faced those fears or somehow lived through coping and/or dealing with them. Fear can be an amazing teacher, something that can put us in touch with who we are and our greatest internal resources.

If we live long enough, we will all face that which we most fear. Be it the death of a parent, the loss of a child or spouse, or our own difficult health issues, and eventually- the real boogieman in the closet- our own death. If we push these trials and tribulations out of our minds, if we do not have healthy ways of dealing with them as they arise, they can shut us down, dampen our spirits and bring us daily doses of discontent. Denying these dreadful moments will not keep them away, they will keep us away… from living full and loving lives.

I have found, with no uncertainty, that doing the practices of the Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project and interacting with others who do them as well, that I have developed both a workable toolkit for coping with fear and uncertainty and a reliable community that helps me stay present for those difficult “presents” that life will surely throw my way.

What do you think?

I am learning to knit. As I wrap my mind around each stitch and try to focus enough to get the twists and turns just right, I am also learning to slow down, look closely at what is before me, and to relax (or the stitches tighten terribly making future movement frustrating and difficult).

The greatest lesson so far comes from considering how small variations in one single stitch can create such dramatic effects on the outcome of the finished piece. Yarn twisted one way gives you a smooth look; another gives you a ribbed look; make a Trinity stitch and you are left with something that looks like a blackberry (the kind you eat, that is!)

Is this not true for the rest of my life as well? One thought twisted one way or another, followed by the next thought creates the structure of my awareness and the place where I live out my days. It reminds me that I must learn to guide my thoughts and to take responsibility to knit my own thinking in ways that create the best possible outcomes in the fabric of my life.

The Loss of Love in Wildly Spiritual Times

The word “spirituality” speaks of concerns both lofty and other worldly. It has to do with a higher power that is above the mundane concerns of Mortals who speak of the spiritual in hushed tones, if at all. Spirituality has to do with thrones celestial, ecclesiastical, and regal, and is essentially masculine in nature even though the thrones may be occupied by Mortal women as well as men. In the so-called “developed” countries where the primary currency for living life is financial rather than powered by the loving soul and spirit, these same hushed tones are reserved for banks and stock markets where all the shouting and fighting and chaos and greed is behind the scenes.

In these days when suicide bombers are all the rage, and it is every man (and many women) for themselves, some call for more spirituality, but in fact we need less. We need less of the wild masculine financial warriors who make killings and relish take-overs. We need less of the fundamentalist dictator spirit in religions, politics, and business who are the self-styled experts, and much more of the feminine soul. The feminine soul is down to earth, non-judgmental, and lovingly compassionate, and this “soulfulness” in both men and women is endangered, having been eclipsed by the wild masculine warrior spirit. This cry for soulfulness is not a matter of equal rights nor is it a gender issue, for we desperately need the loving and caring masculine and the loving and caring feminine to be in balance in both sexes if we are to survive.

Loss of Love, soulfulness, and the feminine within us need to become the primary subjects of a Spiritual Literacy that we treasure more than gold. The Gaze is the manifestation of love, soulfulness, and the feminine, and the gaze is what the mother and the father give to the infant who reflects it back to them and everyone else. The gaze is the pure manifestation of unconditional love and provides the foundation for loving trust in self and others. We need the gaze in infancy, and we need the gaze from infancy until death if we are to develop lasting self-esteem and be a lover in more than sex. Since our parents are Mortals and may not have practiced loving themselves very much and they may not have acquired a lasting supply of self-esteem, we will need to re-learn how to gaze with loving compassion at ourselves if we are to live loving lives and not be overwhelmed by wild masculine attacks on our hearts and souls.

-N. Michael Murphy

My question was the gaze

"I asked the earth, I asked the sea and the deeps, among the living animals, the things that creep. I asked the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the things that stand at the doors of flesh. . . . My question was the gaze I turned to them. Their answer was their beauty."

—St Augustine

Confessions X vi