Amita Schmidt

Buddhist and Non-Dual Meditation Teacher

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Prayer or Despair?

In difficult times, choose prayer instead of despair.  Despair and fear lead to a freeze response in the body. Prayer unfreezes the heart and moves us towards connected action.

The immediacy of the world problems are our teacher now.  Many years ago during a retreat, my teacher Matt Flickstein asked me to carry a knife 24/7 for a week. I had to carry it on the toilet, in the shower, meditating, making food, brushing my teeth, at the dinner table, talking to others, and in bed all night while sleeping.  He told me, “Death can come at any moment. The knife will make sure you do not forget this.”  Carrying the knife made it clear that each moment could be my last, and reminded me to pray, be mindful, and express gratitude constantly that week.

In the weeks after I put the knife down, I soon forgot the fierce necessity of prayer and mindfulness.  Now, with nuclear and environmental destruction so immediate, all of us have a knife by our side.  It is not something we can “put away.”  The knife is here while we are on the toilet, making love, at the dinner table, or in the shower.  Rather than creating fear or despair, this can create a fierce reminder to be mindful, love and connect 24/7.   Prayer or despair?

 

 

 

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Return to the Feminine

A few years ago Molokai Kapuna Alexander Pua’a offered this wisdom to me:

“Each of us has a bowl full of light.  We fill this bowl with stones which are the masculine.  We have covered the bowl of our feminine with stones.  There is too much male energy.  We need to return to the feminine and intuitive energy.  Things heal through the feminine.”

How do we do return to the feminine as Kapuna Pua’a suggests?  Both men and women can do this.  Here are some daily practices I have found helpful:

  • Slow down.  There is a Cherokee saying, “As the world speeds up, slow down. The faster things go, the slower you go.” It is through the masculine quality of quickness/speed that we are getting flooded with anxiety, fear, overwhelm, and over-consuming.  Slow your pace down. The feminine is timeless.
  • Acknowledge the Earth.  Each day recognize the ‘aina or Mother Earth, and with a sincere heart say, “I’m sorry” and “I love you.”  In Hawaii this is the practice of ho’oponopono or making things right.  The earth is our very essence and when we honor Mother Earth we honor ourselves.
  • Speak less, connect more.  Mothers regulate their babies through attunement. Attunement is connection through the eyes, the skin, and the heart rate.  Even as adults, whenever we are at arms length from someone our heartbeat attunes to the other person. Get arms length in real time.  Look into someone’s eyes. Touch them. Speak less. Love more.
  • Focused love.  Each day do some silent meditation, prayerful movement, chanting, or focused practice to remember a power greater than yourself.  If you get quiet, you can call upon a much clearer wisdom than your own thinking.
  • Connection through service.  Give loving service to children, elders, your community, animals, ecology, spirituality and the arts. The feminine connects through kindness, healing, creativity, inclusion and love.
Artwork: “Hatching the Universal” by Judy Chicago

 

 

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Worry or Prayer? “Courage is fear that has said it’s prayers.”

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“Courage is fear that has said it’s prayers.” -poet Karle Wilson Baker 1921

Just for today, do you want to focus more on worry or prayer?  I have worked with people who have had so much anxiety they could not ride in planes, cross bridges, shop in major grocery stores, or drive a car.   Through meditation, prayer, and a commitment to not velcro to their anxious thoughts, I have seen these individuals completely turn their lives around. Anything is possible.

Worries have no end point.  You are not your anxiety and worry.  Where will all your anxieties be after you die?  They are not truly who you are. Take a moment and decide, “Enough.  From now on more prayer, less worry.” It takes a conscious commitment one day at a time, until prayer takes over on it’s own. If you want, eventually prayer will take over. Your body and mind are a vehicle for prayer.

When worry comes let it move through, without indulging, fearing, or pushing it away.  Worries are not your fault and not something wrong with you.  Let worries roll through like a big wave. In Hawaii if you get pulled under by a big wave, you roll with it, and in a few minutes the ocean gives you a lull to swim to safety. If my daily worries go into hyper-drive or panic, I remind myself that even panic tends to last less than 5 minutes, and if I can roll with that too, it will move through.   Rainer Maria Rilke advised his students: “Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”

If all else fails, breathe. Breathe into your belly.  What can you trust at your core? When you are on your last breath you will have prayer. If a tragedy happens you will have prayer. Prayer is always here waiting for you, as a friend, a guide, and an eternal resource. A Buddhist friend who died of ALS a few years ago mentioned that meditation was his best friend in the final stages of the disease, and without it he would have crumbled due to the pain.

Find time each day to cultivate your friendship with prayer and meditation. Your prayer might be something as simple as blessing people.  In busy airports or stores if I find I’m getting overwhelmed, I start to bless everyone I see.  This reminds me that each person is someone to love.  Each day I also repeat, “Trust life,” Thy will not my will,” and “I don’t need to be general manager of the Universe.”

Overall, prayer and meditation is how we meet each moment.  Prayer is a willingness to meet each moment with heart.  Ultimately there is no other choice. Start now.  Aloha.