High on Happiness

Archive for June, 2010

Suppose the Good Fairy showed up with an offer to build you your very own retreat—a place all your own, beautifully designed, equipped with every luxury—and a magical means to access it instantly, any time you wanted.

She says she can create it in any environment you want – woods, seashore, mountain top, desert—you name it.

Where would you ask her to have it built?  And what do you imagine it would look like?

A few years ago, my friend Faith told me, she began building an imaginary retreat, and now it has grown to a fabulous estate that she wanders at will, using as she chooses its spa, its music room, its theatre, its conference center, its meditation chapel, its library.

It has a coordinator, two personal guides, various instructors and facilitators, and sometimes other guests.  She can visit with any of them, or be entirely alone, depending on her purpose and desire.

She walks its winding paths to various gardens, some formal and ornate, some like meadows filled with wild flowers, some with fountains, some with pools.    She paddles across the retreat’s vast lake to visit a Teacher whose academy is sequestered in the base of a mountain, accessible only through a secret door.  She has a transparent crystalline transporter that carries her to other dimensions and times.

“It provides me with a place to explore solutions, to envision possibilities, to tap new levels of knowledge, and to rest and heal,” she told me.  “And it has become as tangible for me as my every day life.”

She suggested I begin building one, too.  “Start with something simple.  Some structure in your favorite kind of environment.  Go there when you meditate or when you simply need a few minutes away from the stress of your normal world.  It’s wonderfully relaxing and peaceful.”

I remembered her story today as I walked beside an emerald river, deep in a secluded wood, listening to the babbling waters, the gentle rustle of leaves, the birdsong.  This would be an ideal place for a retreat, I told myself, and I began imagining a beautiful glass-walled lodge . . .

If you were going to build a place of your own, where would you put it?  What would it look like?  You just may want to give it some thought.

“Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.” ~Henry James

Oh, the leisure of it!  And the loveliness!  At long last, summer is here.

“Summer is the time,” said Ada Huxtable, “when one sheds one’s tensions with one’s clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit.  A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all’s right with the world.”

If I could wish a wish for you, it would be that you do indeed become absolutely intoxicated with the belief that all is right with world—and never recover from the notion.

Happy Summer, my friends.  May it live forever in your hearts.

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Life can be the berries!  A great big bowl of cherries!
All you have to do is juice it up.
You start off as a seed.  But you’re growing like a weed.
Living is your creed. Juice it up.

Go ripen in the sun.  Throw in a dash of fun.
The good time’s just begun.  Juice it up.
The storms may roll by.  Bug bites may make you cry.
But you’re stronger as they fly.  Juice it up.

Be growing, fresh and green.  Enjoy the passing scene.
Be playful and serene.  Juice it up.
Be here in the now.  Feel life’s great big Wow!
And flow on with the Tao.  Juice it up.

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“We live only to discover beauty.  All else is a form of waiting.” ~Kahlil Gibran

When beauty spreads itself before you, pause and breathe it in.  Pause, setting aside your thoughts and your doings, and let it shower you with its radiant and animating light.  Let it sing to you its song of exaltation.  Let it flow molten into the depths of you, quickening your soul with its sparks of wonder, its flame of truth.

This is a mystical training.  For beauty’s purpose is to reflect to you the essence of the light within your own heart.  It is life, dancing naked before you, taking the form of a bird, a face, a leaf, a river, a sky.  And the more deeply you see it, the more you come to understand that you, too, are its child and its expression.

Immerse yourself in it.  Ride its tender waves to the edges of the cosmos, to the pure, still point within.  Let it guide and teach you.  “When you reach the heart of life,” the poet Gibran declared, “you shall find beauty in all things, even in the eyes that are blind to beauty.”  This is its ultimate lesson.  May it be your destiny and goal.

She was a free spirit, blithely riding the breeze of her own music, pastel flags that glittered with her laughter trailing behind her.

And he was much the same, tap dancing down the hall like that, whistling up the stairs.  Imagine!

We didn’t quite know what to make of them.  Such risk-takers, earth-shakers, box breakers!  They followed nothing but their own stars.  (And yet, how splendid!)

Nothing seemed to get them down.  It was as if they had eaten a box of special secrets for breakfast.  They were always a step ahead.  And all that mirth and eye shine.  (Should this be allowed?)

They made us uneasy somehow.  We wanted to find fault.  Yet they were so gentle, so kind.   (And brave, too.  Don’t forget that.)

One day, they walked up to the edge and leaped, and flew into the clouds.  Afterward, we saw their faces on glittery skyboards, and we told people we knew them when.

They were really something, Pat said.  They made you feel . . . well, so alive!

Mixed with the joy of life, suffering.  Mixed with the beauty, pain.  Walk gently in the world, my friends, and be slow to condemn.  You cannot tell just by looking what agonies your neighbor’s heart bears, what thorns have pierced his soul.

Wear your kindness on your sleeve; keep a packet of comfort in your pocket.  Be ready to extend a hand, a word of condolence, a gesture of grace.  Tomorrow you could be the one in need, longing for a word of understanding and reassurance.

But today, while the sun shines on your path, while the breezes are fair, look on the world with a sweet compassion and let your life exude the fragrance of  a faith that knows, in the end, love reigns and all will be well.

Play it with passion, baby.  Let your song come rolling on through.  Peal it like thunder, like trumpets sent to wake the morning.

Let it boogie. Let it wail, so sweet that it sends tears streaming down their glad cheeks, so clear and pure that it makes their hairs rise.

Deep in your heart lie crystalline dreams: Play them.  Hurl them like crimson banners into the day.

Don’t hold back.  You’re the only one who’s got it.  Give it up.  Give it out.  Let it glow. Let it shine.  Let it shine, baby.  Let it shine.

A new day, a new week, a new hour, a new breath: You can always begin again.

What has passed is past, and has only the power you give it and no more.

Now is the moment of genuine power:

Seize it; make it your own.  Bring to it your best; shape it as you will.  And be glad in it. Be glad.

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So the Great Divine One whispered in Mother Nature’s ear, “Give them something to make them glad.”  And that’s why there are daisies.

They weren’t her only response to his wish, of course.  Bountiful creature that she is, Mother lavishly scattered the earth with billions of tokens of joy.  Starfish, pandas, rainbows, snowflakes.  The list is goes on and on.

And then she built into us the wondrous capacity to take delight in them and to choose our personal favorites.

The Great One was, as always, exceptionally pleased with her efforts.  In celebration of them, he sent an edict to the Cosmic Coincidence Control Center ordering them to strew our paths with them at frequent intervals.

Then, when we come across them~when we see or touch or taste or smell or hear one of our favorite things~we can know that Something out there loves us and wants us to be glad.

Except for a few stolid fishermen hunched in flannel and rain gear along its bank, the lake is deserted.

The fishermen ignore me as I squish along the shore between raindrops, camera in hand,  looking for photo possibilities.  If they notice me at all, they dismiss me as someone foreign to their fraternity, not knowing that I, too, am simply there for my catch of the day.

I amble slowly, walking with care through the slick mud, trying to avoid the larger puddles as my eyes scan the lake and the bordering woods, waiting for something to snag my attention.

Finally, about a quarter mile down the shore, I spot a patch of vibrant blue at the water’s edge.  Irises!  They’re wild irises!  And how their color gleams through the gray gloom of the day!

The kid inside me squeals and turns cartwheels and I hear myself laughing quietly as I train my camera’s lens on my find.  I wonder if the huddled fishermen feel like that inside when a fish finally nibbles at their bait, if that’s why they sit for long hours in the rain.

I take my photos and head back to my car, sending a silent little dart of camaraderie to each fisherman as I pass him.  We’re cut from the same cloth after all, we who follow our intentions regardless of the weather, who pursue our goals with patient perseverance, even in the rain.  We share a secret, a results-backed knowing, that between the raindrops, there comes the reward.

I’m almost to my car when I see one of the fisherman’s lines go tense and watch him come to life as he works his reel with a practiced hand.  I’m right behind him as the glistening fish clears the water and I smile in recognition as I hear him quietly laugh.