Posted December 16th, 2009 by Liz McCoy
Today’s post is by Liz McCoy, a Lost Coin student in Salt Lake City.
There was a discussion in the Salt Lake City Lost Coin class recently about the Lost Coin Blog. What is a blog? Why have a blog? Should we all write for the blog?
The discussion left me thinking – 2009 is the year blogs transformed my life. And no, I am not a technology junkie; I am more or less a technophobe. For me the blog discussion and my experiences with blogs illustrate many of the lessons Doen teaches us.
Since August of 2009, I have learned about or been invited to join five blogs. Each blog describes someone’s battle with cancer or some other random and inexplicable phenomena that is trying to extinguish their lives.
Each person shares their story through their blog and although each blog is unique, many aspects are the same. Each blog demonstrates the power of community, of love, of effort. Each blog has made me laugh a big ol’ belly laugh and shed tears. Each offers mind blowing wisdom and beautiful memories. Every day I read at least one entry and am reminded to expect the unexpected. Today my cells give me life – tomorrow, my cells might take it away. Chemo, a poison, gives hope, gives life. “We are all travelers; we are all just passing through” as Doen often says.
The blog I am most familiar with, however, is my mother’s. My mother died on July 31, 2009. After spending 50 odd years befriending her Multiple Sclerosis, she chose not to fight stage IV colon cancer. As soon as we learned of the diagnosis we knew we needed to communicate, simultaneously, with many people around the world. With help from fellow Lost Coin student, Sterling, we set up a blog; a first for most of us.
By the time we started posting to the blog our journey with my mom’s death was fast tracked. We decided to post twice a day. I wrote some of the postings and organized the rest. The sprint became a marathon and the twice daily postings became stressful. The experience started to feel like a reality TV show. I wasn’t a professional blog poster or a writer. Was this offensive? Did people care? What else could we say? Hello crisis of confidence. Hello negative thoughts! Hello fear!
According to Sterling’s analytics and personal emails we knew many people were following the blog closely, relying on the blog to stay in touch with a person they loved. Daniel often talks about facing our fears and dropping our negative thoughts so I tried to do that.
By following Doen’s teachings and trying to drop my own negative thoughts, I found I had more space in my head to listen to what people said more intently, to read emails and guest book entries more carefully, to pay even closer attention to my mother’s breathing patterns, her pulse, her face, her smile. The stress was gone, the entries were right there, they were easy to compose. Some were funny, some sad, some witty, some wise, some were poems, some were prayers, some were hymns, and some were fanciful songs. But none of them would have existed if I had stayed in my head, with my own thoughts.
Every time someone asked “Are you sure you want to post that?” I would ask if they had another idea and when they did not, I would post the post in question. Later I would receive one, then two, sometimes three emails thanking me for the entry. The lesson – what touched one person, deeply, did not resonate with another. The variety of thought and voice created and strengthened my mother’s community.
Finally, my mom’s blog allowed many people to remember and celebrate her perfection. When someone reminded me of my mothers’ weaknesses, I was surprised to know, to feel, that it was these blemishes that made her, and me, and you, perfect. I did not have to talk about anything negative because I had come to fully accept my mother, who like all of us was perfect by virtue of her imperfection. I celebrated her completely with my whole heart. This is life. This is practice. This is perhaps what Daniel means by asking us to “just be nice”.
These experiences opened my mind and my heart to blogs, to modern Lost Coin non-monastic Zen practice. Yes, like it or not TODAY translates to technology, to life, to Lost Coin. By reading, writing for and organizing posts to a blog I practiced. I observed myself, my negative thoughts and my fears. I practiced being nice. I efforted and stretched my abilities. I never dreamed technology could touch me and so many others so deeply. Although the blog was about my mother, the posts were about all of us, about all our journeys through life “as we pass through”.
So how about it? Let’s put a similar effort into the Lost Coin blog. Let’s make it alive, let’s make it life. Let’s all participate and add our unique voices and touch someone. Let’s strengthen and widen our community. Let’s laugh, sing, and cry. Let’s share our wisdom, our jokes, our songs and our poetry. Let’s celebrate the beauty of perfection that is Lost Coin, that is a blog, that is Life.
Tags: blog, community, death, Doen, fear, lost coin, practice, technology, traveler, writing
Posted April 1st, 2009 by Daniel Doen Silberberg
Dismantling beliefs is one of the practices of the Lost Coin. When I look at beliefs I have held I often wonder where they came from. I find they aren’t based on any real evidence, not really grounded in reality. These beliefs are things I have heard from sources I don’t remember. When I have looked at it deeply I have often found that many of my beliefs are just perimeters surrounding territory I am afraid to go outside of – boundaries formed by fear.
Doen
Tags: dismantling, fear, lost coin
Posted March 18th, 2009 by Tawni Anderson
I’ve been talking lately about choosing to change. Change can be very difficult, whether it’s a major change or even just something relatively small. But choosing to change, and acting on that decision, increases our personal power and, if we stay with “what is”, also makes us happier. What is it that we’re afraid of? Why do we protect ourselves from our own power? Why are we afraid to take paths that will empower us? If we all did what we wanted, if we were fully empowered, what would be so wrong with that?
Well, other people might be unhappy.
And sometimes this is the excuse we use: we won’t mix things up for fear, say, of upsetting our spouse. But what this really means is that we don’t want the anxiety of worrying about hurting that person.
But everything you do will work out just fine if you just do what you want to do. Be yourself. For many who were raised in a Judeo-Christian tradition, there’s an underlying belief that we think we’re somehow “bad.” We fear that if we were truly empowered, we’d be bad or do bad things.
But whatever you feel, you’re going to feel anyway. The difference is when you’re empowered, you’ll also be doing what you want. If you don’t take your power, you’ll still feel the same way, but you also won’t be doing what you want.
The difference between empowerment and non-empowerment is fear. Nothing gives you energy like not being afraid and doing what you want. When you avoid living, you cheat everyone around you too, because they don’t get the benefit of who you really are. So as long as you’re not, say, an addict, you’re not going to do harm by doing what you want.
Be in the moment, always, but choose to change your life if that is what you want. You’ll be happier, and so will the people around you.
(Adapted from a talk given by Doen Sensei, November 2007)
Tags: anxiety, change, choice, empowerment, fear, happiness
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