The Love, Loss, & Forgiveness Project

WORKSHOP February 28th and 29th

2012-01-20T11:35:00.005-05:00

Living the Loving Life Workshop
This experiential workshop reveals pathways to live a life of meaning and love. Group gatherings and three-person exercises explore practices of love, loss, and forgiveness that are fundamental to well-being. Through honoring ourselves with care and compassion, we experience a deeper, more satisfying connection with loved ones, neighbors, coworkers, and others.

Saturday, February 25th 8:30- 5:00 and Sunday, February 26th 9:30- 2:00
At the Still Point Interfaith Retreat Center 20 Stillpoint Rd , Mechanicville, NY 12118

In this workshop you will experience the practices of the Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project:

•Develop deep listening skills and gain the courage to speak openly
•Grow in your capacity to unconditionally love yourself and others and know contentment
•Honor death and dying and relinquish your fears
•Overcome disappointments and embrace losses
•Learn to let go of your painful stories, forgive yourself and others and experience true freedom

Please join us! Reserve your place. Registration is limited.

Workshop tuition is $120. Upon receiving payment, you will be sent an info packet with directions to the venue. Please bring your own snack and lunch. Coffee and tea provided.

Workshop logistics Questions? Contact Lori Mershon call 518-581-3180 ext 301 or email: twofeathers27@hotmail.com

LLFProject Organization Questions? Contact John Carlson 518-677-5564 llfproject@gmail.com

The Love, Loss and Forgiveness Project (LLFP) offers workshops for individuals and organizations and support for community-based groups. We focus on human attributes essential for promoting personal confidence, community building, and the ability for all to help themselves and others live well. This project is based on the work of Dr. Michael Murphy, a pioneer of the hospice movement in the United States, and has been developed and refined over two decades in the United States and Europe. To find out more about this extraordinary movement and its founder, visit our website at www.lovelossforgiveness.org

Gazing Blindly

2011-07-06T22:55:00.004-04:00

I have a good friend, no, Great Friend, named Jan. Eight years ago this vibrant woman, with whom I shared a once-a-month lunch and hours of good honest conversation as she mentored me through my new experiences in school administration, became gravely ill. She ended up in the hospital, in a coma for a month, rehab centers for several more and then into nursing facilities where she has lived her life bed-ridden ever since. She has lost her sight but she can still "see". Somehow, when I walk into her room, before I even say anything, she knows how I am. When I am about to leave she always thanks me for the visit. I in turn always thank her for the time together, because when this blind friend "gazes" at me-and she does gaze at me- I know that I am loved.

Getting Below the Surface

2011-06-27T08:21:00.002-04:00

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

2011-06-25T00:59:00.005-04:00

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.

TO READ THE FULL STORY CLICK HERE

A Week at the Beach- Gazing and Witnessing

2011-06-22T13:20:00.003-04:00

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...

2011-06-20T14:32:00.004-04:00

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!

- Hide quoted text -

John Carlson

Tom's Place

2011-06-16T22:59:00.002-04:00

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

2011-06-15T06:30:00.001-04:00

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

2011-06-13T09:38:00.003-04:00

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?

2011-06-06T11:57:00.002-04:00

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

2011-06-03T17:07:00.004-04:00

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

2011-06-02T05:00:00.002-04:00

"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

Deeper Feelings on Memorial Day

2011-05-30T05:36:00.003-04:00

As we prepare this mourning here in America to honor those who lost their lives in the many wars we have fought, I ready myself for the flood of emotion that often fills me as I watch the parade of veterans glide past my Main Street home today. “Service to country,” “honor,” “valor,” “ultimate sacrifice for the freedoms we enjoy,” all these words and phrases taught to me back when I was a child fill my mind and bring tears to my eyes. And then the flood of deeper feelings washes over me.

The loss that a mother might feel whose son was killed defending some unnamed hill in North Korea; the abandonment a child might feel whose father will never come home from some far away jungle in Vietnam; the betrayal an eighteen year old soldier might feel who left limbs in some dusty inconsequential town in Iraq. These are some of other human tolls of war, frequently unmeasured and forgotten when we take into account the cost of conflicts that are so often started for economic and/or ideological reasons and that devastate whole populations of innocent and mostly poor people for years or even generations to come.

We humans seem to have a proclivity for warring. Why is it so easy to make up our minds to war, to drive these huge economic and social institutions towards death and destruction and so hard to feel enough love for ourselves and each other to stand up and say “enough;” and in that breath, help lead our countries policies away from all this violence? Love is not a political issue, love is a human issue.

The practices of the Love, Loss and Forgiveness Project might just be one such catalyst, using love to help us heal enough- to make us strong enough- to stand up for ourselves and others and help make a difference in our world.

Letting Go, and the Lightness of Forgiveness

2011-05-27T09:48:00.001-04:00

I suppose it is easier to let go when we are old. I find it fairly easy now, but I never tried it much when I was middle age and under. As I look back, I see that holding on is often quite ridiculous, yet we do hold on—for dear life as we might say. Fear and denial of death must have something to do with it, since if we have something to hold on to we imagine that we can’t drown, even if what we are holding on to is like the stone of Sisyphus. And of course we can’t possibly die if, for instance, we have children to hold on to who could not possibly survive without us holding on to them (or is it the other way round?).

Holding on has a lot to do with our judgmental mind. We hold on to our beliefs and to our goods and chattels (together with lots of insurance) and to careers and relationships that are deadly or moribund. We hold on to the judgments of others till death do us part, and to our addictions that give but momentary relief from our fear of living (as well as dying). What has become clear to me in my old age is that if we don’t love our self very much, we must hold on to something (and there are gazillions of sales persons that will sell us something to hold on to) for without holding on there is nothing if there is no love.

When I look around at most of the people near me, almost everyone seems to be clutching a cell phone and fingering it or talking to it or worrying that it might die at any minute. Perhaps if we loved and held on to ourselves more, we could also let go of our cell phones, because what comes through them is usually either overwhelming or underwhelming and distracts us from what we need. Forgiveness is another word for the wisdom of letting go, and we need to forgive, especially ourselves. So let’s throw away our crutches and become lighter, and not wait too long to do it.

--N. Michael Murphy

Love your neighbor...

2011-05-25T20:30:00.003-04:00

I have had the extreme pleasure of spending time with Michael and John Carlson (my brother) as they record Pod-casts for this website. Michael often speaks of how we need to love ourselves more and how that love will allow us to experience love for others. It is the realization of the religious phrase, "Love your neighbor... as yourself." How can we love others if we don't have love for ourselves? While gazing in the mirror at myself, one of "Love, Loss, & Forgiveness' practices, is the person I see one that I love? Can I then express that love and care for myself to others?

Time and a Matter of Minutes

2011-05-23T21:01:00.006-04:00

I have been reflecting on my good friend Jan today and I thought about the time a few weeks ago when I was feverishly trying to get myself ready to go an extraordinary business trip to a glacier in the Arctic. Jan and his wife, Magda, were visiting NYC and I spent a couple of wonderful days with them showing them around the city and was going to meet up with them again the day before they were to fly home to Antwerp. Because of my trip logistics, I had to delay seeing them until the morning they were leaving. During my three hour drive that morning to NYC, Jan called me but we had bad cell phone reception and it was too difficult to hear what he was saying. "No problem," I kept saying, "I will see you in a few hours."

Unfortunately, our drive took longer than expected and my wife and I missed Jan and Magda by just four minutes! I did not get to say goodbye to my good friends from Belgium. My Mother, who they were saying with said that Jan was not feeling too well and had a strange rash on his arm and leg that morning. She was concerned about his health, but said, "he just wanted to get back home."

The next morning I got a call from Micheal with the tragic news that Jan had died on the plane home. Unexpected, unbelievable, heartbreaking. I was in shock. My first thought was that I missed my last chance to see my beloved friend by minutes. Maybe if we did not stop to use the bathroom, or I was more speedy in my packing, we would have seen him and maybe I would have convinced him to go to the hospital, maybe I could have help save his life?

Michael, in his hospice work, experience talks about how most people had missed the opportunity to "say goodbye" to their loved ones and how they later regretted it. My own experience with Jan has taught me how important it is to make the time to connect with those that I love before, in a matter of minutes, it is too late.

The Nurturing Nest

2011-05-19T09:00:00.002-04:00

I have never been fond of the term "empty nester". Labeling anyone with any word doesn't sit well with me. Yet, after spending several days visiting my daughter who lives more than half way across the continent, the term pulls at my heart strings. It had been almost a year since we had spent time together and the days shared this past week were too short. We spent time doing things together and, far too little time for my liking, talking about what is happening in our lives now and re-membering our experiences in the nest together. But, we did speak the words, "I love you", many times. I am grateful to the practices of the Love, Loss, & Forgiveness Project for helping me to keep that front and center. Forty days until our next visit when we can share the nurturing of the nest together. What more do we each need to hear than, "I love you".

John Martin Schneider

2011-05-18T18:30:00.000-04:00

John Martin Schneider died at his home on Tuesday April 12th, 2011. His distinguished work as a Professor in the department of Psychiatry at Michigan State University that included writing and teaching about grief was well known. Yet it was not to remember his academic accomplishments that a few of us, including his wife Sharon Olson, gathered on May 13th for a Month’s Mind Ritual.

John was such an attractive human being. In our sex-obsessed society, this would usually be imagined as a reference to his sexual desirability or a judgment that he was handsome or alluring. John certainly attracted people to him because he was a lover, but this was a matter of heart and soul rather than sexuality. John was a kind, gentle and loving witness and an enthusiastic spirit for anyone who would bring their grief and despair, and they received from him the love and courage that was necessary for them to heal themselves and move through the underworld of loss.

Our Month’s Mind Ritual allowed all present to speak about John as they held the Talking Stick, and a Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Practice allowed all to speak to him for ten minutes as if these were the last moments we had with his Mortal self. We all need to say goodbye to the Mortal nature of those we love, but very often, through the suddenness of death or because we put off saying what we need to say, this does not happen. We also had the opportunity to imagine how we could continue to use the loving experiences with John to fuel living and dying more lovingly.

In the last paragraph of his book The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder said “Soon we shall die, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten.” And he ended: “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.” I take this to mean that if we have lived a loving life, the love lives on, and if our life was barren of love, nothing at all remains but ashes. John lived a loving life, so his love is still available to us even though his Mortal nature is not. We have around us many seemingly powerful men and women who have made killings in the market place and the “playing” field and in other wars in bedroom and battle ground, but unconditional lovers are an endangered species, and only they will dissolve the hatred that is killing us.

Thanks you, John, then and now. I love you and the other lovers who were so present at your Month’s Mind gathering.

Michael Murphy

Alone

2011-05-16T23:16:00.003-04:00

Having just returned from spending a few weeks in the wilderness of Northern Alaska I think back on how it felt when the plane that took me there lifted off the glacier and the roar of the engine faded to a deafening silence. Alone, without most of the things that I surround myself with at home that I feel give my life value and meaning.

Instead, I was there with only the mortal me, the one who was born and will die... alone. I felt strongly how I can fear both living and dying and how that fear can so totally get in the way of opening myself to the experience of myself and others. It occurred to me that I do not have to go to the ends of the earth to know wilderness, to experience that alone-ness and that being alone with myself can be just what I need to learn to embrace myself and live in love with my own true being.

We all share that alone place being human. Who knows, perhaps some day we can even learn to love a glacier?

Namaste Jan

2011-05-10T07:27:00.000-04:00

From Arnhem, Netherlands, comes this letter from Christiane Voit, who attended the memorial service for beloved LLFer Jan Marissens in Antwerp, Belgium this past weekend. Jan died suddenly late last month, en route to Belgium from North America, where he had been traveling with his wife Magda.

Dear Tim,

My heart and mind is full of the impressions of this day. May I share some of them with you?

Here is a summary of the funeral service for Jan. Antwerpen is a good two hour ride from where I live. Early in the morning we hit the road. It was lovely to travel with two other LLFers to Antwerpen: sharing experiences and telling of cherished memories and moments of insight and change. In the church there were around 500 people paying their hommage to Jan: the whole company of firemen, lots of young people, about 12 LLF members, neighbours, friends and of course the family. I was struck by the face of Magda. What grief and pain! There are no words for it.

The service was held without Jan - he was still on flight coming home to Belgium. (How difficult it must have been to leave him behind in Canada, I thought. And have the children actually seen their dead father?) So they set up a table with his picture and belongings: his fireman outfit, his climbing ropes, tools from his toolbox, paint roller, cooking instruments, some lit candles. The priest that led the service must be a good family friend. He was invited for the birthday dinner: Jan died one week before he turned 54. In the freezer they still had some spaghetti Jan had made for another get-together. Jan must have been famous for his spaghetti with sauce. So they had Jan's spaghetti on his birthday. The whole service was conducted informal, striving for simplicity and heartfelt commemoration. Just as Jan preferred to keep it simple and straight. He acknowledged that Jan was a Christian and was seeking to find expression for his spirituality. One way to do it was by zen meditation (That is something I talked about with Jan and also his love for the mountains. He went climbing in Switzerland, he loved the nature).

Magda gave a short relay from their vacation in New York. It was their first - and last - far away trip together. How heartbreaking it was to have to call the children "your father has died". Magda was ever so thankful for the great support of friend Marijke during their dramatic flight and time in Gander, Canada.

Music was played by friends, guitar was accompanied by an electric piano and singing!

Son Bert showed that he was wearing the shoes from Jan. With those shoes Jan had walked thru New York and had worn them thin. A smile went thru the whole church.

Namaste Jan

Jan Marissens

Namaste is a sanskriet word and means: "I honour and bow before the divinity in you". This mantra Jan brought home on a poster he had bought in Ireland.

I honour the place in you that is the same in me.

I honour the place in you where the whole universe resides.

I honour the place in you of love, of light, of peace and of truth.

I honour the place in you that is the same in me.

There is but one.

The children gave the following meaning to these words:

Namaste, Jan, papa,

We greet the divine in your love for life,

your family and your follow-men,

we honour the divine spark that also resides within us

around which the whole universe is turning.

This spark within you and us, this is love,

truth, light and peace,

it makes us one.

Aid us and nudge us.

Help us to be strength and warmth for each other,

so that we can go on

hand in hand.

It was a long service of 2,5 hours. The bright sunlight was streaming thru the stainglassed windows. There were moments when I could linger on my memories with Jan when everyone went forward to the front to virtually greet Jan where they had placed his mountaineering picture.

Not till I was in the car that the three of us said: We LLFers should have stood up to sing "may the blessings of love be upon you... We should have picked up the sha! for Jan".

We shared a lunch along the way home to keep, body mind and soul together.

Namaste Jan!

With love,

Christiane

(Pre) Postcard from the Edge

2011-05-09T06:00:00.003-04:00

From The Love, Loss, & Forgiveness Project

When this blog entry posts itself today, I will not even be anywhere near my computer. In fact, I will be hundreds of miles from the nearest road on the McCall Glacier in northern Alaska. True wilderness.

I grew up in New York City, but my spirit prompted me as a young man to go to North. I started my college education at the University of Alaska, in Fairbanks, to be close to sublime mountains and the last wild open spaces left on the planet.

There is something about going into the wild, away from the buzz of civilization. For me it allows me a full mirror view of myself, as all the noise in my head gets focused on the fact that I am alive, and if I am going to stay that way, I need to become present. It is a wake up call of sorts that life can be even shorter than it already is.

Consider this a postcard from the edge, think of me today, on a massive flow of ice moving slowly towards its destiny, as a small drop of water in the Arctic Ocean. It is amazing how in this technological age we can keep up on our communication even when we are “nowhere to be found.”

-Many Blessings to all my LLF friends, John Carlson

The Untried Path

2011-05-02T06:00:00.000-04:00

Leaving my comfort zone through work, through interactions with friends and family, through reflections on myself often gives me a wild and uncomfortable journey. When I am in that place my calves tighten, that flight or fight mode kicks in full bore. I am finding with age, (one of the beauties of it, actually) is that when I am on that untried path now I more embrace Love (which itself, can be untried, if not true). With Love, both for myself and for others, my friends, and yes, foes alike, I can be more at peace with myself. Then, the untried path can become a path of new and unexpected life changing and fulfilling magic. The Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project, is one such untried path for most of us, at first, anyway. What might feel like a jump into the unknown at first, can be full of goodness and illumination when we take Love's hand for that ride.

The Month’s Mind

2011-04-29T00:36:00.000-04:00

Death is a breath-taking event even when we imagine that we are prepared. We mourn and grieve and gasp, and we have wakes and funerals, but we quickly forget. We fail to remember, perhaps, because the mortality of ourselves and the others we love is too difficult to imagine, so we banish its memory as soon as possible. The old form of wake has largely disappeared, and has been replaced by mourners making a brief appearance during restricted “visiting hours” at a funeral “home” away from home. This modern ritual allows us to act as if death is not part of the normal stream of life that flows through the place where we live. The sanitized showroom of the funeral home bids us to take a quick voyeuristic look at the dead, pay our “respects” to the living, and sign a book to prove to ourselves and others that we were there. Having done our duty, we return to “normal” as we continue to stoke the fires of the market place.

Funeral services conducted by pastors are usually other-worldly, most often calling upon God to give peace and comfort often without much focus on the life and death of the Mortal who just died. Many memorial services offer a more personal touch, but I believe that both with a memorial service and with the quick glance in the funeral home, not enough time is spent involving ourselves in the alchemy of the occasion.

A ritual like the one depicted in the Oscar (2009) award-winning Japanese film Departures has us pause for a while and gaze at the body of the one we loved. This ceremony gently holds our silent attention while we absorb the shock of the end of life of the Mortal nature of our loved one. It also gives us some moments to weep and to gaze and to absorb the death, as well as to give thanks and say goodbye.

Another ritual that is practiced rarely in these times except in Ireland is the Month’s Mind* mass that is celebrated one month after death. Shakespeare made mention of the ritual in TwoGentlemen of Verona, (Act 1 sc 2) “I see you have a month's mind for them,” and the wealthy in England often used to leave elaborate instructions for the Month’s Mind that would follow their death.

I imagine us re-creating a Month’s Mind Rite that begins on the fourth Friday evening following the death and continues on Saturday until about five o’clock. A facilitator would explain the details of the ceremony to the gathering, and those who have attended a workshop on Love, Loss, and Forgiveness would also be familiar with the design of the ceremony. The Friday evening session would begin with two rounds of the Talking Stick that would be interwoven with a candle-lighting ceremony. The Saturday session would involve two trio exercises and a final round of the Talking Stick.

The first trio exercise would have the theme: “What did his/her life mean to me? Our friendship, connections and disconnections, the loss and much more.” We would have ten minutes to talk to the witness in our trio about our thoughts and memories of the person who died a month before, and ten further minutes to speak “to” that person by way of the witness. All the trios would reconvene in the large group, and there would be a period before lunch for participants to share their experiences.

The exercise after lunch would be inspired by the thought: “How will I spend the rest of my life?” We would have ten minutes to talk about our self with this focus, and then ten minutes for our Soul and Spirit to gaze at ourselves (by way of the witness). For the first five minutes we gaze lovingly at our mortal selves living life, and then for the next five minutes gaze and perhaps touch our self by way of the witness who lies down in front of us as if she were our dead Mortal self. After each member of the trio has completed their experience of witnessing their Mortal life and death, they reconvene in the large group as before for some reflections, and we would end the Month’s Mind Ritual with a final round of the Talking Stick.

I believe that the Month’s Mind Ritual would be an example of how loss may be transformed into loving energy for living. Thornton Wilder ended his book The Bridge of San Luis Rey on this theme with the words: “Soon we shall die, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten.” Unbelievable and unacceptable, and yet life is very short, and all memory of our being will be forgotten in a generation or two, if not earlier. “Oh no!” we cry, “I will never forget you,” but we do. And Wilder concludes: “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.” So this ritual celebrates the survival of love, the only meaning, and if our lives are to have meaning, we must pass it on.

Since I first thought of the idea for this ceremony less that a month ago, two important men in my life have died. The first was John Schneider that I first met in Lancing MI and then at a workshop in Ireland and later at his home. Then, a few days ago, a close friend for twenty years, Jan Marissens, died next to his wife Magda while flying back to Belgium from New York. I had no idea that I might be facilitating this ritual in Michigan and Antwerp so soon, but it would be my awe full privilege to do so. I wrote the following for John, and I have now added dear Jan’s name, for they seem like brothers to me:

Good Mourning is also a greeting and an encouragement to we Mortals left behind, urging us to go through this ultimate confusion of being mortal. I imagine Gentle John and Gentle Jan smilingly encouraging us to move on through the chilly darkness, for the love they lived is everlastingly available and palpable to the touch even though their Mortal natures have moved on. Thank you John and thank you Jan for the time and the love you shared with us, and thank you for your love that is now and ever more.

Michael Murphy

Albany, NY

*These “Minding Days” were of great antiquity, and were survivals of the Norse Minne or ceremonial drinking to the dead. The Venerable Bede (672-735) spoke of the day as commemorationes dies.

Good Mourning?...

2011-04-27T21:21:00.003-04:00

Last week I wrote of "Good Mourning" as I attended a memorial service for a 23 week old fetus. I felt the mourning of the family and friends that attended. I mourned the loss of the baby.

This week there was nothing "good" about the mourning I experienced at the lost of our Jan and as I thought of his wonderful wife who is an inspiration to me, and of their children whom I have never met. I have not spent much time with either of Jan or Magda, but the time I did spend with them at Dzogchen Beara in Ireland in 2009 connected us. The time they spent with my Mom just before Jan's death connected us even further.

It was a shock, a punch in the stomach, an ache that will be mourned and remembered. I have no other words.

The Edge

2011-04-25T06:00:00.002-04:00

I have been thinking about “the edge” recently. That place where what you believe, and maybe even hope for, becomes eclipsed by what is. Sometimes this may seem like a good thing and sometimes, not. I am thinking about a dear friend who just months ago retired from her work and was trying to come to terms with “what now?” Then, she started coming down with debilitating migraine headaches and what was believed to be a hernia that turned out to be cancer. Healthy, vibrant, full of promise just a few months ago and now in the hospital, in critical care fighting for her life. It can happen that fast, and it gives me pause.

Stopping to think about a work trip I am about to take to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northern Alaska, one of the most desolate wildernesses left on our planet, and how going out “there” brings me closer to my friend in the hospital, and closer to us all, as we live out our human conditions. We are fragile, and we are going to die someday and that is hard to talk about- who wants to think about that!

But as I do consider it here and now, I feel my heart open. I feel the strength of my spirit wake up and look deeply into that seeming void, and there, I catch glimpses of life, of real living… on that edge, where the view can get terribly clear, and be terribly beautiful.

As we each struggle with our own facts of life, I feel blessed that I have connected with other brave souls, spirits, and mortals like you, who find your selves here- sharing the reality of our being.

For me, it is in this sharing that makes living all the richer and softens some of that edge.

Great Sadness

2011-04-24T11:18:00.003-04:00

Jan Marissens

Today I am grief stricken by the unexpected and tragic loss of my great and gentle friend, Jan Marissens. He will be remembered by all who knew him, his family, friends and many who were graced to have met him through the Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project.

I have no words at the moment, it is hard to move or even breathe. My sister tells me to move forward with the life I still have in me. And so with this life, and a heart ripped open, I send love to all of you.

The Un-Dead

2011-04-24T08:41:00.000-04:00

This is one of those rare years when the Western Christian and Eastern Orthodox Easter celebrations fall on the same day. The news media, ever alert these days to the gathering of crowds in the middle east, report that it is creating a bit of choas in Jerusalem. Extraordinary crowds of pilgrims seek to retrace the Via Delorosa or stand within the Church of the Holy Sepulcher as Sunday's light dawns. Mass movements need to be carefully choreographed. Yet, though swept along with the crowd, each pilgrim is on an individual journey: to consider and better comprehend the permeability of the boundary between life and death. Half a world away, we can ponder with them.
Theologians use the term "resurrection"; more simply we ask, "Can the dead live?"
The scientist within wants to insist that dead is dead and that the siren song of denial must itself be denied. I visit the tombs of my father, mother, sister, aunts, uncles, friends and no stone is rolled back. They are where I saw them last-- laid to rest--undisturbed--that's it--finis! Why then, even as I stand there, looking at their names and dates inscribed in stone, do they all seem so alive within me?
I suspect that for others as well as myself, the dead are not so dead either. There is a portion of my consciousness where all these familiar folk have set up house. At a moment's lapse, I am through their door. I see them, they speak, even dialogue with me in tones I recognize and in settings I have experienced. Close my eyes in sleep and they are likely to meander through my dreams, sit there alongside as I relive my day, offering their unsolicited opinions. They seem as influential as ever, perhaps even more so. When I am awake, I seem to be their vehicle of expression, adopting their habits, employing their attitudes, indulging in their emotions. Like the cats who snuggle into bed with me at 4:00AM, I love them dearly, but crave my own space.
We are far more than the sum of our genes and influences. Deliniating one's own particular parameters of spirit and self is necessary and worthy work. Thankfully, Love, Loss and Forgiveness makes that work a deliberate conscious process. Confrontations and conversations that might have happened [had not circumstances and human frailty intervened] are given expression and hearing in safe settings so that we are freed to focus on the life we live rather than the life we might have lived. In a sense, the permeable boundary is re-crossed. Grateful for what we have been bequested, we move onward toward greater self-appreciation and self-responsibility. And that feels very much like becoming un-dead.

Imagine Loving Thy Neighbor as Thyself

2011-04-22T07:48:00.002-04:00

This is the time of year when many remember One who loved his neighbors as himself and died for them. I thought that the following piece that will shortly appear in my new book, Gazing at the Lighthouse: Reflections on the Loving Life might be of interest, and I offer it with love.

We are urged to love our neighbors as ourselves, and it 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 many of us are also unfamiliar with ourselves. 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! Imagine waking up and saying to ourselves, “Good morning! How glad I am to see you!” Imagine being our own best friend, someone we can trust to whom we can take our concerns and worries without fear of judgment. Imagine being comfortable with solitude yet relishing connectedness!

Loving ourselves is giving voice to our feminine Soul nature. In our increasingly masculine world, the feminine within men is often unfamiliar. If as men 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 this to be a statement that we prefer self-love to a sexual relationship with another, regardless of the fact that masturbation and sexual relationships may have nothing to do with love: they may be more akin to scratching an itch than being expressions of love. If we feel love towards a woman other than our wife, that love is often seen as off limits because coveting our neighbor’s wife is taboo, and it must mean that we want sex, regardless of the fact that we can love ourselves and others without sexual activity. So men are often lonely and out of touch with their feminine nature. They may only allow themselves sports talk, backslapping, and a variety of addictions and protective habits with men and flirtatious but not deeply penetrating exchanges with women.

For women and for men, loving ourselves 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. 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 diminished.

So let’s imagine loving ourselves. We will need to practice forgiveness; we will need to practice letting go of the doubts, judgments, 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 lovingly on ourselves, and when we feel fulfilled, the love will spill over and nourish others.

Michael Murphy

Cracks and muscles

2011-04-21T06:21:00.001-04:00

Mortal, Soul, and Spirit — the Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project unites these three aspects of ourselves into a trinity of well-being and inner strength. The Mortal is our physical self, the one that eats and breathes, toils and dances, and must eventually die. For each of us, the Mortal takes the guise of one gender or the other, but what the Soul and Spirit recognize is that within each of us we possess both the feminine and the masculine. The Soul is that feminine part of us that can love unconditionally and gaze in rapt attention at another without judging, and feel the heart fill. The Spirit, our masculine energy, is the voice of inspiration and enthusiasm, the nudge that prods us to live life and meet our destiny.

When I began in LLF earlier this year, I was astonished by how little I was acquainted with my own soul and spirit. Although the idea that each of us embodies male and female energy was not new to me, I only knew it as an idea, an abstract concept carried in my head. For me, as for so many others, my intellect had become not a way to engage with life but a clever means of escaping it. I began to see this as the exercises of Love, Loss, and Forgiveness had their effect on me, which was first to crack the thick crust that had formed over my inner life. As Leonard Cohen says, the cracks are how the light gets in; very quickly, I began to feel alive in ways I had longed for but had not known how to achieve.

Once Soul is stirred, life takes on a texture and depth that feels almost miraculous. My emotions woke up to a different space. As I have begun to feel more deeply within myself, I find I am able to respond more genuinely to the outer world. One aspect of our personal soul is the way it connects to the souls of others, and to the larger mystery of Soul that unites everyone and everything. It's a thing called Love. As Soul has come alive in me, my spirit, which before had been largely a mechanism of responsibility, duty, and stymied dreams, has begun to grow its muscles as well. I have experienced a new level of creativity, confidence, and courage, outward manifestations of Spirit. Spirit animates the world, literally sets it in motion. And so we can begin. — Timothy Cahill

Good Mourning

2011-04-20T19:12:00.002-04:00

Last week I attended a funeral service for a stillborn infant of 23 weeks. The young twenty year old parents were surrounded by many friends and family members. The priest greeted us with the words that most of heard as ‘Good morning’. How strange I thought. She acknowledged the strangeness of the greeting and clarified that she really meant ‘Good mourning’, that we were going to take our time to mourn the loss of this infant, and to acknowledge that the mourning would continue. And that is the way it would be…

Ah, now I understood the profound greeting and immediately thought of the Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project. My first experience with the LLF Project allowed me to experience the loss of my Dad in very powerful ways. One way was through the realization that his death was an intense ‘scream’ in my life, a time when one feels a deep loss and a scream, whether voiced or internal, is the sincerest response. My Trio- myself, and two others who acted as a witness and a guide- gently allowed me the expression of that loss in a way in which I could embrace the love that my mortal Dad had given me and to acknowledge that he would no longer be here as he had been. Yeah, Dad! You are still in my heart!

-Kate Reid

The journey started for me...

2011-04-16T19:22:00.002-04:00

There is a ring I wear on my right hand, a ring made up of three interlocking bands of gold: yellow, white, and rose. Even though each one is lovely in its reflective, pure nature, the three bands cannot be fully separated from each other, and all three are necessary to make this trinity ring. You are able to spread them apart, you can allow air to blow freely through them, but they are forever entwined.

I’ve been wearing this ring since I first put it on last May in my “wedding ceremony”, standing on the banks of a lovely cove in the middle of formal gardens in Ireland. My dear witnesses were two women whom I had never met until five days’ previous. I was pledging to love and be faithful to myself, and to respect and honor all aspects of my being: mortal, soul, and spirit. Thus, the three interlocking bands. This was the culmination of an amazing week with people who had been strangers to me but who had all experienced a life-changing workshop on Love, Loss & Forgiveness.

This journey started for me when I attended a weekend mini-workshop with Michael a year ago in Troy, NY. I experienced the first steps towards profound changes in my approach to life, to those in my life, and to myself. I took a risk and signed up for the week-long workshop in Ireland, which led me to that little cove, accompanied by other seekers. And I’m thrilled to have this opportunity to impart my experiences with you all, and hear about yours in return.

You and I are able to connect through our stories, how we got involved with the Project, our first tentative steps, our fears and enthusiasms, those “Eureka! “ moments as well as the slow awakenings to self-love, and our applying what we’ve learned to “Real Life”. We do the work ourselves, but how wonderful to be able to bond and learn from each other as well!

It is my intent to write a new blog entry at least once a week. I also hope you will write back and take advantage of this opportunity to build our little supportive community around the globe.

May the blessings of Love be upon us! CD

Romanian Reflections

2010-09-18T21:39:00.023-04:00

Photos by Traian

Here are a few pictures from the recent LLF Workshop in Romania!

Always great to see Michael at work.

Brings back powerful memories of past workshops myself.

Here's to gazing everyone!

Warm Regards,

Kelly Hurley

Roadtrip to Now

2010-09-08T09:11:00.009-04:00

By Roger Wyatt

The miles fly by. I pass an eighteen wheeler out of Quebec. From my car radio comes the music of my youth - Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Kinks. The miles fly by. I'm headed to Ohio to spend time with my departed wife's family. She died ten months ago.

In Syracuse, I get gas. In Buffalo, I pay a toll. In Erie, I stop for a meal. Back on the road. I'm into the rhythm of the journey. The music drives me as much as the gas - Stones, Supremes, James Brown.

Life is not static. I intend to tell them about the new woman in my life and how deep and serious our relationship is. This roadtrip flows and changes just as our lives do. ... When she died, we spent our last moments together with eyes locked in an intense gaze. There was no more to say, just a loving gaze to share as she sliped out of her body and into eternity. In seconds a life can change forever.

Suddenly I see fragments of a blown out tire in the road ahead of me. I swerve past it. Two seconds later I see smoke from the car whose tire had blown. A second later I see the car in front of me has stopped to stare or to help. Time has slowed and seconds have become lifetimes.

I'm traveling at seventy five miles per hour. If I don't react immediatly I will plow into the back of that car. I will die or be maimed along with the other driver. In the next second I swerve into the right hand lane. In reaction to my high speed maneuver, my car fish-tails, wildly swerving left and right. In the next second I pass that stopped car. I have control of my vehicle but do I control the length of my life? Our time is not our own.

When she died what needed to be said had been said. But life keeps flowing. If my life had ended in that auto incident so much would have been left unsaid with so many others. Now is the only time we actually have. The past is a blurred memory and the future is yet to be. We must use the present wisely, it is all we have. Now is the time to say what needs to be said.

Michael Writes a Letter from Laz

2010-09-06T09:37:00.006-04:00

Dr. Traian Strambu in Ireland, Photo by Roger Wyatt

The house on the hill in Laz, Romania, a small village in Transylvania, was the home of Dr. Traian Strambu’s grandfather. Traian is the heart and soul of the Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project in Romania. He first invited me here after he participated in a workshop I gave in Ireland. A psychiatrist by trade, he is a warm and enthusiastic man, as passionate about LLFP as I am, so it was easy to become friends.

The three generations of participants in this workshop ranged from a fourteen year old girl, who came with her mother, two other teenagers, and eight others. Everyone was silent as the beginning of the workshop—awed and a bit fearful about what was to come. They sat pensively waiting for permission to speak. The Talking Stick gave them that permission. This initial Silence seemed a shadow from the particularly dangerous and malignant brand of communism that bred fear and distrust throughout the country and was made more poignant by the dark mantel of guilt and secrecy brought on and practiced by the church.

I could easily feel the warmth of these beautiful people, but that warmth at first seemed to be hidden from themselves, and each other. However, when given “permission” to talk, they opened right up-- for they were literally dying to talk. It was so moving to witness their struggle to find the words necessary to give voice to their suffering-- and when they dared to speak, they cried fountains of tears that had been unshed for years.

We also laughed a lot, and had an evening of fun-- for Romanians love to sing and dance and enjoy life, however difficult.

Poverty is the rule here, and most of the people attending could not afford this, or any other workshop. I envision a time when the Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project community will be vital enough to help make available the practices of LLF to these brothers and sisters in Romania and other less fortunate places around the world.

I wish you all could have met these beautiful people, because you would have loved them as I do. Perhaps someday you will have that opportunity, as we expand our LLFP Internet programs and open new channels for communication with one another.

With love, Michael.

Michael Leaves for Romaina Today!

2010-08-30T09:39:00.005-04:00

Micheal is off to Romania today to meet with Romianian LLFP practitioners and lead a workshop.Thanks to Traian and Simona Bernat, and others, Romania is home to a lot of project activity, with active groups of nine and annual start up workshops given by Michael. Michael will be staying with Dr. Traian Tudor Strimbu at his home on the waters edge. This should be another amazing series of meetings!

This also kicks off for Michael, and the LLFP, an exciting time for the Project, as John Carlson, Roger Wyatt and Kelly Hurley of MediaThinks Inc. will be heading the development of a whole new Internet membership platform for the organization and running of LLFP activities internationally. More on this new way for you all to stay in contact with each other and the project on this blog in the coming weeks...

Please keep in touch, we love would love to hear from you in the comment sections of the posts.The Love, Loss and Forgiveness Project is about all of us, it can become an important international movement for Living the Loving Life!

"I was frozen inside..."

2009-10-01T14:00:00.005-04:00

"I have been involved with the LLP-project-work since 2000. In that time we called it "Murphy-training", because we didn't have a name for it yet. During these nine years I came together with many groups and I have SEEN wonders happen doing Michael Murphy's work. As a witness and a guide I have seen TRANSFORMATIONS happen in other people...I have experienced the power of "listening without judging", the power of " looking in the mirror," and these taught me (as a general practitioner and a human being) that there is always hope ... for everyone... even when we go through very bad things or very difficult times.

I also learned I cannot do this when I'm alone with a patient. We need TRIOS-- the story-teller needs a witness AND a guide. So now during my work, when I met people that I as a GP can't help alone, I know there is hope for them if we can practice in the trio's of the LLF Project. And then came 2009... and a crisis for me. My body didn't allow me to do what I wanted it to do. Tired and exhausted… (How was that possible?), I felt I had lost a part of myself, but I did not know what to do, where to go, or why this was happening to me.

I went to Ireland this September to the Love, Loss and Forgiveness Project workshop of Michael Murphy .... and there I felt the WONDER of transformation happen IN ME. It took only 36 hours....and I was "my whole self" again... I could cry again... I could really laugh from inside, again... and I felt, and I still feel the warmth of LOVE deep within me. I was frozen inside and was becoming a hard women…

My difficult time is not over yet, but I'm sure I will become better, and I know that it will take time and as Michael always says, “it is VERY SIMPLE, BUT NOT EASY.”

I'm so grateful that I know the Project, and that I can help to spread it a little bit in my region in the future".

Krista from Belgium

Michael's Musings- The Grand Canyon

2009-09-23T13:04:00.005-04:00

"The Mortal needs to be aware of and Gaze at his own Soul and Spirit in order to have meaning in his life, for the Mortal without Soul and Spirit is loveless. In the same way, the Soul and the Spirit of the Grand Canyon need a Mortal to Gaze at them if the Canyon is to be loved and have meaning, for if there is nobody there to Gaze, the nature is loveless.

Our inner life is like the Colorado streaming through the unimaginable depths and heights of our being, with the ever-changing light at dawn and dusk inspiring Soul and Spirit, and the moments of illumination in between cause Mortals to gasp with wonder at the ebb and flow of life. At night, everything vanishes into the darkness that is both prelude to a new day, and a reminder to Gazing Mortals that time is running out. (Visited with Sandra and John on November 20-21 2008)"

This post is excerpted from a book by Michael, of Love, Loss, and Forgiveness essays, to be published in 2010.

The Welcome Book is here!

2009-06-09T10:05:00.008-04:00

The Project's Welcome Book is now available and can be downloaded here, and soon from the website.

This eight-page booklet is a summary of the Project and Practices. Please share it freely with associates, colleagues, friends and family members; introducing them to the project and answering questions they may have before becoming involved.

The lighthouse is the Project’s symbol, may it also light the way for others.

This booklet is the group effort of Michael, Sandra Murphy, and me; along with help from the US Board, friends in The Netherlands, Belgium, and Romania. It features the lovely design work of graphic artist, Paul Miyamoto, a former Board member and a good friend of the Project.

The Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project wishes to thank all those gave generously of their time and energy to make this publication a reality.

Welcome!

Spring Blessings

2009-05-04T11:04:00.007-04:00

Spring is in the air, and I feel like I should be on a plane to Ireland again ! ( we have been the last 2 springs! )

I just returned from New Mexico and spent 2 weeks with my Son, Rob. He is in the Air Force, and will be deployed to Qatar the end of May. It was wonderful to spend this time with him and be in some warmer weather.

I attended Michael's weekend workshop in Dec. at Dr. John's home in Traverse City. It was wonderful, even though it was a lot shorter than the others, there is always more learning in a great project.

I would like to share a blessing from John O' Donohue's book " To Bless the Space Between us". It is a wonderful book... if you get the chance, pick it up, it is great & uplifting with many beautiful blessings.

This blessing reminds me so of learning to love oneself..."

For Solitude

May you recognize in your life the presence, power and
light of your soul.

May you realize that you are never alone,
that your soul in its brightness and belonging
connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe.

May you have respect for your individuality and difference.
May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique,
that you have a special destiny here,
that behind the facade of you life
there is something beautiful and eternal happening.

May you learn to see you self
with the same delight,
pride and expectation
with which God sees you in every moment.

I love this blessing, that last verse reminds me of the mirror practice.I remember the first time I did it, and how hard it was, and I could not do it. I have learned so much from this project, and the wonderful people I met in it. It helped me though the hardest time in my life. I cherish each friendship of the people I met, and learned something from each and every one.

I hope to do more in the future, and look forward to the project growing and passing on to others.

Hope to see you again sometime.

Much Love,

Suzie.

“Solitude” from: TO BLESS THE SPACE BETWEEN US (Doubleday 2008)

Sharings

2009-03-26T21:05:00.007-04:00

"Sharings" is a new thread made up of postings written by participants of the love, loss, and forgiveness practices all over the world. Share with us your experiences, insights, joys, challenges etc. And use the comment section to communicate with with others on your journey towards living more loving lives!

Send your sharings to me, John Carlson at emailjdc@gmail.com

"One of the practices last weekend transformed my relationship with my brother. He and I had more (and better) times together in the last three days then, it seems, years and years. And we have great plans for the coming weekend... and plans to sail together this summer.

I fixed a mirror close to my computer monitor so I can turn my head and easily take gaze-breaks while I am here. I like it. I am very happy. "

John O.

Starting up in America!

2009-03-24T20:46:00.006-04:00

This past weekend, I had the privilege of facilitating a "start-up" workshop in Troy, NY. This was a "sampler" workshop that gives people some experiences of the Practices with which they will become involved when they join a 9-person Love, Loss, and Forgiveness group. We have organized similar "start-up" workshops in Michigan, and also in Belgium, the Netherlands and Romania. It was an amazing experience for all of us, and I wrote the following to the participants:

Dear Storytellers Who Are Also Beautiful Witnesses and Guides!

I am personally very grateful for your participation in the start-up workshop this past weekend. Your involvement gives me much hope for the Project, nudging us all to continue the Practices we all need in order to lead more loving lives. These practices for living have never been part of any curriculum in schools, or many homes, for that matter.

It is not easy to Gaze at ourselves in the mirror, even though it is so very simple! Much easier to Gaze and give to others. Yet how can we love others, unconditionally, if we have so little time and love for ourselves?

It is not easy, and may seem disloyal to speak about our family when all was not well for us when growing up. Yet if we don't speak, we betray ourselves by continuing to carry burdens of resentment and self-neglect, and nothing will change. If we are to make life-saving changes at the global and national levels, we must start with ourselves.

As you may remember me saying, I was not able to speak to my mother before she died. I was too terrified, and I didn't have the words. Fifteen years after she died, I was able to have a ten-minute conversation with her in a session like we experienced together last weekend, and I was able to forgive and be forgiven and express unconditional love like I never had before, letting go of shame, guilt, rage, and more. The good news is that we can learn to say what needed to be said, even if important people in our lives are no longer with us, but why wait so long?

Many realized through the workshop, that if we are to become loving storytellers, witnesses, and guides with others, we must first become more loving towards ourselves; and we discovered, for most of us, how difficult that is!

You made a great start, and I will be with you in Soul and in Spirit along the way as you continue the Practices in your Community-based groups.

With love to you all, Michael

P.S. In order to give others some idea about what happens in Love, Loss, and Forgiveness groups, we would love to have you post your experiences of this weekend start-up workshop, including any artworks you would like to share, on this blog.

Send posts to John at emailjdc@gmail.com Please put the words "LLFP Blog Post" in the subject line. Thanks.

Let's keep the practices alive and movement towards more loving lives growing!

Michael on Radio Show from Bennington Vermont (UPDATED)

2009-02-26T20:19:00.019-05:00

I will be joining Michael tomorrow to do a radio program from 10:00-11:00am about our efforts over the past two years to develop the Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project as an international community of groups of nine who work independently on the practices of love, loss, and forgiveness. Dr. Carol Tunney, the shows hostess, spent a week in April of 2008 at a Love, Loss and Forgiveness workshop lead by Michael at Dzogchen Beara in Ireland. The Station is WBTN, 1370 AM, in Bennington, Vermont, USA. The show is "Natural Instincts: Health, Healing, and Conscious Living." So, if you are local, tune in. If not, I will try and post the audio here for you to enjoy.

(UPDATE) Here is an audio stream of the show. Enjoy, and thank you, Dr. Carol Tunney, for giving us the opportunty to get the word out!

The Many Faces of Loss

2008-05-14T08:59:00.005-04:00

Loss takes on may guises. I am just beginning to understand this. I always associated loss with great sadness, but I am learning that loss is not always sad but is always life altering.

I am losing. I am losing weight and yes, that is a type of loss. All my life I have struggled with overweight issues. Discovering why it has been such a struggle is helping me let go of the past and move into the future that I desire.

I'm starting to let go. Letting go of all the things that my child-self thinks the extra pounds are hiding. What has it been hiding from if not my self. It's a wondrous path of discovery, and very scary. I fear that I will once again fail in my quest. I fear that my imaginings of what life will be like without a weight problem will not be any different. Then I ask, how could it not? Loss is transformative. To successfully confront this loss, I must be honest with myself. And yes, I must look at loss from a new perspective, one with anticipation of the new things to open up as opposed to holding onto the safety of the past. This is a joyous loss and one I need to celebrate while still honoring the feelings of loss.

The past informs our lives, but it does not need to dictate our future. I think that this loss is teaching me that I must Forgive-- forgive myself; Let Go-- lose the tethers that hold me back; Love-- the present, embracing all the possibilities that come without fear.

Unprepared Transformation

2008-04-04T07:48:00.002-04:00

After a longish day cleaning out my parents' house, I was in the local grocery store. Dashing to get through my list so I could get home and wash off the grime and exhaustion, I was caught up short by the gaze. I mean frozen (or warmed) in my tracks. There it was in the ground beef section, beaming between a mom and her infant, rendering them oblivious of all but their oneness. It was stunning.

Then it was over as if it had not been. Mom turned to ponder the sirloin vs. the chuck and the infant, after a brief pause to see if Mom's focus would return, let his eyes wander. They shifted smoothly, but they had been somewhere very, very else.

I was unprepared for how transformed I, a mere observer, was by their gaze. Its radiated light bestowed a sense of wholeness and belonging upon me as well. When I too moved on, the grime and fatigue of the day were weightless. –Nancy Harding

Michael's Musings- The Winds of Spring

2008-03-11T07:14:00.005-04:00

There is a huge storm churning the waves in south-west Ireland where I am living and writing these words, and it seems like Spring is blowing winter out to sea to make room for new beginnings.

Spring and Easter are special times to remind ourselves about Love, Loss, and Forgiveness; If we forget or neglect these facets of our lives, we will be chained to impossible dreams of others, going nowhere alone and forever carrying burdens that cause us endless suffering.

I knew little of love in earlier years. I was told that God loved me. Perhaps he or she did, but I certainly didn’t. As I look back, I see myself surrounded by good people who often spoke about love but practiced self-neglect. I learned obediently from them, and love never became a part of me until much later in life. Like those in my proximity, I also attempted to ignore most of my losses and my screams, and seldom if ever experienced loss as a catalyst for living a more loving life.

Furthermore, without self-love, forgiveness was an impersonal religious ritual that passed me by, never releasing me from shame and guilt and self-neglect. But in later years in the hospice and in my workshops I was fortunate to learn before it was too late.

Soon the storm will pass, and in the opening moments of spring we will film a workshop on Love, Loss, and Forgiveness as part of the Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project. We trust that the films that emerge from the lives of courageous people who will offer us glimpses of their stories will encourage large numbers of people from everywhere embrace Love, Loss, and Forgiveness in their own lives. We will re-member our three natures—Mortal, Soul, and Spirit—and in remembering, enable ourselves to live lives fueled by love rather than wasting our mortality going through the motions of living paralyzed by fear and hatred.

Pause for a moment and gaze out to sea. Can you hear the promise of Spring from the far side of the wind?

Listen.

--Michael Murphy March 10th 2008: Castletownbere, West Cork

(Photo: J. Carlson copyright 2007)

What does "LOVE" mean?

2008-03-10T07:47:00.005-04:00

A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds, 'What does 'love' mean? The answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined.

'When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love.'
Rebecca- age 8

'When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.'
Billy - age 4

'Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.'
Karl - age 5

'Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.'
Chrissy - age 6

'Love is what makes you smile when you're tired.'
Terri - age 4

'Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.'
Danny - age 7

'Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss'
Emily - age 8

'Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.'
Bobby - age 7 (Wow!)

'If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,'
Nikka - age 6
(we need a few million more Nikka's on this planet)

'Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.'
Noelle - age 7

'Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.'
Tommy - age 6

'During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling.
He was the only one doing that. I wasn't scared anymore.'
Cindy - age 8

'My mommy loves me more than anybody. You don't see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.'
C lare - age 6

'Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.'
Elaine-age 5

'Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford.'
C hris - age 7

'Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day'
Mary Ann - age 4

'I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.'
Lauren - age 4

'When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.' (what an image)
Karen - age 7

'Love is when Mommy sees Daddy on the toilet and she doesn't think it's gross.'
Mark - age 6

'You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.'
Jessica - age 8

And the final one...

Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child.

The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbour was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife.

Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there.

When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbour, the little boy said, 'Nothing, I just helped him cry'

What does love mean to you?

Michael's Musings - Leadership

2008-02-06T07:05:00.001-05:00

February: Is the month of my birthday. Even though I will be seventy-seven (usually on the last day of the month, but not this year), I have not retired. I have advanced. I am still pregnant with possibilities, and I have tried to adopt a new way of imagining my Spirit, because we are in urgent need of a new and vital form of Spirit that will lead us out of the dreadful dangers we are in. You and I must rise up and become the leaders we need. Let’s do it together. Happy birthday!
Leadership in the face of Dragons, Warriors, and Other Dangers

How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. –Rilke

Rage and fire and dragons may be transformed by the loving feminine into a masculine Spirit that protects and makes safe rather than one that conquers and kills. Young boys are often snatched too early from the maternal (and sometimes paternal) Soul that would have taught them softness. Instead, thrust into the arena of competition that judges them winners or losers, and admires marines and other terror-mongers that breathe fire and death, they learn to become warriors who are feted as heroes. What causes us to make monsters out of men? All too often, marines and other warriors return home so very much alone, and discover that their brutalized Souls have forsaken them causing love to pass them by. Many are suffering from Post Traumatic Soul Derangement, and, like Narcissus, some kill themselves while others take pills and potions in a desperate attempt to fill the void. Others act with beauty and courage, and only in the face of beauty and courage will love reappear.

For our survival, we need a new paradigm for the masculine Spirit. We need a Spirit—a leader—that acts with beauty and courage and makes us safe for love. The age-old winner-warrior may promise security and appear to be powerful, but this Spirit creates legions of losers and coffins full of the dead who will haunt us.

In the umbra of a disastrous and untrustworthy US Presidential leadership wholly lacking in beauty and courage, we crave a new leadership that will inspire us to rise up and channel our energy into a powerhouse of love. We need a hopeful and inspirational alternative to the hunter-gatherer leaders or the heroic warrior leaders who are violent Spirits from the dark side of history that still repeats itself as we fight each other and consume ourselves to death. We need not wait for the coming of a new political Spirit. We may adopt this new paradigm of masculine Spirit that will love our feminine Soul, and then our Mortal nature will feel safe and well prepared to live the loving life. Then and only then will the world be transformed. --Michael Murphy

Letting Go: Not Like Everyone Else

2008-01-09T17:01:00.001-05:00

Not Like Everyone Else

Long ago I figured it out. That’s just the way I am.
For example: I have never been able to understand
what's so great about sliced bread,
search everywhere for the other variety.
And there is no desire lurking inside me
for a large-screen TV.

Still, it seems a bit strange that now, mostly,
what I feel is this sense of peace.
Dylan Thomas would never have approved (at least,
not if we believe what he says in the villanelle).
Toward the end Dad was sleeping all the time—
even when someone shook him,
called persistently in his ear.
How much additional transition is there,
I ask myself, between one "good night"
and the next?

Let him go, gently.

He was ten weeks shy of 94 years
and, until a month ago,
could have engaged you
in an intelligent conversation. Can’t see
how we have any right to be upset.

Had either of them departed quickly,
never suffered their prolonged frailty,
a younger son might still be inclined to dwell
upon parental insufficiency. Instead,
over time, youth and age exchanged
places. (In the end, now-sightless eyes
still twinkling, Dad even introduced me
to everyone as his father.) And I forged
a bond with each that otherwise
might still be counted among the missing.

Let him go, gently.

Perhaps, I decide, it’s not so strange
that now what I feel, mostly,
is this sense of peace.

Steve Bloom
January 2007

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Michael's Musings - On Being Pregnant

2008-01-03T14:26:00.000-05:00

In 1964, Robert Coles interviewed a poor black woman who spoke of the desperation of her life, and the difficulty of finding happiness:

“To me, having a baby inside me is the only time I’m really alive.”

She was right and she always will be, for life is all about being pregnant. It is all about being alive and feeling alive with love inside, for that is what the inner child gives us. Yes, a woman feels alive during pregnancy, but if the life she feels is that of a child other than her own, the feeling will pass after birth and not return until the next pregnancy.

It is only when we feel pregnant with love for ourselves that we feel really alive and know why Mona Lisa smiles.

Women need to be pregnant, and men need to be pregnant. There is no other way of being in touch once again with our whole nature. There is no other way of re-membering.

For men, making a killing during the hunting season or in the battlefield or in the stock market doesn’t do it. Acquiring mounds of minerals and magnifying our net worth, or scoring bulls eyes with hoards of women, or being immersed in any other addiction does not fill the emptiness that only being pregnant and re-membering can fill. Having a son, and being filled with pride is no substitute for being pregnant with our own inner child and filled with love, for only when we are filled with love are we prepared to become lovers of our sons and peacemakers instead of warriors.

Tony Blair quoted Thornton Wilder* at the Memorial Service to the British people who died in the Twin Towers: “But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

Let us all be aware and celebrate our life-long pregnancy, for love is the only survival, the only meaning. --Michael Murphy

*The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder

Michael's Musings -HAPPY NEW YEAR

2008-01-01T08:58:00.002-05:00

This is the Year of Love, Loss, and Forgiveness

The year in which we begin to replace the prevailing atmosphere of hatred and fear with one of love and creativity. If we are to live our lives lovingly, we must start with ourselves and then spread the movement outwards and upwards. First, we must re-member. We must recover and treasure the three members of our nature, for only when these three parts are in balance are we capable of giving and receiving unconditional love

This is a picture of unconditional love. There is nothing at all between Alma and Ellen except love, and the love is expressed in The Gaze. The three parts of their Trinitarian nature are so apparent. We clearly see their Mortal selves, just as they are. We see their Souls: their feminine, witnessing nature that does not judge and does not expect, but simply gazes with love. We see the masculine nature of their Spirits: exuding energy and trust, creating a place of safety in which the Mortal in both Ellen and Alma can be in love. This is the picture of the Mortal, the Soul, and the Spirit together in harmony and love. This is what we are capable of, and this is what we must re-member, and this year 2008 will be our year of re-membrance. 2008 is such a wonderful year in which to re-member! The 2 reminds us of Soul and Spirit as do the 00, and the 8 seems to be a perfect symbol of Soul and Spirit interwoven with the Mortal! So let’s re-member together!

Letting Go: Then and Now

2007-12-30T13:56:00.002-05:00

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.

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Imagine Loving Yourself!

2007-12-18T06:56:00.001-05:00

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

2007-12-13T16:44:00.002-05:00

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

2007-12-07T06:23:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-01T12:04:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-01T12:00:00.002-05:00

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

Letting Go: A Magical Experience

2007-11-30T11:38:00.001-05:00

We got the call from my brother. Papa had just passed away at the nursing home. My mom and I went out the door.....I suddenly felt him everywhere at once, in the stars, the fragrant night air, the cricket's chorus, the trees, the earth......more potently present than where he had just been, in a body that was broken and painful and uncooperative.

As we moved towards the car, I found myself turning to the thick darkness and saying, "Dad, we're going to say goodbye to your body, but I know you are here....and we'll be right back!"

We arrived at the nursing home, and then we saw his face, and he looked like himself for the first time in a year, really. No more contortion of discomfort, smooth as a calm lake, and a gorgeous smile! So what was your transition like, Dad? Who escorted you through the portal? What does it feel like to expand in every direction with no limitations? How wonderful to be done with your body, and begin anew. I see/feel your smile inside my head/heart and am delighting in this magical experience. I know the waves will hit me harder down the road, but for now I relish in this palpable connection with this mystery, this miracle of death, and with the pleasure of celebrating amazing, brilliant, kind hearted, wonder-filled you with everyone, and with myself. Thank you!

Your loving daughter,
Laura

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Announcement: Share your Stories

2007-11-26T15:49:00.002-05:00

One important aspect of The Love, Loss and Forgiveness Project is creating community, and one way to do that is for us all to share our stories.

We invite you, the readers of this blog, to this new Thread (a "Thread" is a weekly posting with a specific topic or focus) called "Letting Go," that will highlight postings written by you; stories about your personal experiences with fear, loss and grief and what you did, or tried to do, to re-member yourselves as you moved through the difficulties. If you so chose, your submissions may be made anonymously.

The stories should be under 450 words, longer submissions will be posted as a series over a number of weeks.

One of the fun and educational parts of a Blog is the comments feature, please click on the word "comment" after each post and use this opportunity to interact with the community in support of each other's story's. There is so much we can learn from one another.

As this new Blog develops, we invite your ideas for other topics as possible new Threads.

Letting Go: Farewell to my Father

2007-11-26T15:44:00.000-05:00

A year ago today, at an intensive care unit in a New York City hospital, I placed my left hand on my Dad’s heart just as he died. The rush of energy that flowed through me at that moment is as unforgettable as the spirit of the man who fathered me into this world, a gentleman who always did his best to provide his family with support and love.

Today, on this anniversary of his passing, I lit a candle that will burn for 24 hours in his memory, illuminating the very last photograph I took of him alive. In quiet reflection I wonder how it is ever possible to let someone like him go completely—to accept fully his death—to let the parts of him that I still may harbor in myself move up and out of me, allowing for his souls own completion in whatever state of grace it finds itself in now. And letting go, must go both ways, for my soul too needs to find wholeness as a still living being on this planet.

Mother turned 85 years old this November, and me, 50. For our birthdays, we decided to skydive for the very first time. It was something she always wanted to do, but knowing it would scare my father to death, waited until he actually was gone to do it.

For me leaping out of a plane 14000 feet about the earth, was in many ways an experience as close to dying as I ever had before. In fact, there was much about it that mirrored Dad’s experience of a year ago; the intense aloneness (even while in the company of others, it was something ultimately each of us had to do ourselves), the newness of sensation (our bodies were experiencing things they had never suffered before, for me it was falling at 120 mph for 7000 feet) and the disconnection (we both had left the grounded-ness of the earth, for me, it manifested mostly as floating through large billowing clouds).

In reality, I was just a few threads of parachute cord and nylon material away from truly experiencing my own demise as well.

In a few hours the memorial candle will go out.

For Mother and me and our family, these two intense, life-altering experiences are behind us now. We must each, for ourselves; continue to say YES to life, to live each moment like it was our last, to acknowledge with love our own true beings and to hold these fragile and magnificent mortals, gently, for the rest of our days.

jdcarlson2001@yahoo.com

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Greetings All

2007-11-24T20:07:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the new Weblog for the Love, Loss and Forgiveness Project.

It is easy for anyone who has engaged with Michael Murphy at one of his workshops on Love, Loss and Forgiveness to know the importance of what he does.

In his work he deftly guides participants towards making healthier connections with themselves and challenges them to go even deeper still. He connects them with their basic humanity, encouraging them to marry their thinking to their bodies, souls and spirits.

In short, he leads us to the acknowledgment of our selves, then opens us up enough to fall in love with what we find there and teaches us to use our own resources-- tools acquired through living life and experiencing loss-- to build a renewed sense of self that ultimately supports our living healthier and fulfilled lives.

We hope you will become a frequent visitor to this site, as we provide a place to share ideas and stories about our individual journeys towards learning to love ourselves, and in the process, help to make the world a saner place.

Below you will find an introduction written by Dr. Murphy.

Introduction: Love Loss and Forgiveness Project

2007-11-24T19:47:00.001-05:00

Dear Friends,

In these days of war against terrorism, politicians have used fear of death along with suspicion, rumors, lies, and deception to retain power, and the media fuels this dark purpose. Confidence in politicians and the political process has reached drought proportions, and religions also offer little hope, with self-righteous fundamentalists fighting one another in the name of a higher power. If there is to be change and hatred and greed are to be displaced, love is the only solution. Love will not flourish unless it is deeply rooted in each of our individual Mortal beings. We must learn to love ourselves, and then love will spread.

The Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project begins with the impression that few of us love ourselves very much. We have been raised to put others first, especially our children, and there is little understanding that the greatest gift parents can give their children is that they love themselves and each other. Only then are children free to thrive in love.

One of the most important secrets of Love, Loss, and Forgiveness is that when we learn to love ourselves unconditionally, we are well prepared to love others, and hatred will have no place. Another secret is that when we are prepared to experience the pain and grief of everyday loss, we are also prepared to experience the creative possibilities that follow. When we are prepared to forgive, we will know how to lay down the heavy burdens found in our stories of betrayal, abuse and hurt. It is the weight of these stories that make the loving life so difficult to live. When we love ourselves, we say “hello,” and when we say hello to ourselves and others we are in a position to say “goodbye,” as it is inevitable that we will someday need to say goodbye to our Mortal selves, and to those we love.

As the The Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project develops it will make available to you filmed materials (based on the workshops of the same name) and will be accompanied by interpretive guidebooks. There will also be a vibrant online community created for additional support with forums and other guided learning environments. These resources will help inspire and give you tools that will help you lead more loving lives as you create ongoing, home-based, peer learning opportunities that become woven into your everyday lives.

These materials and the methods will unfold on this blog and on the upcoming Website as the Love Loss and Forgiveness Project grows.

Join us on this exciting journey towards a deeper understanding of love, loss and forgiveness!

With Love,

Michael Murphy