The power of symbols

The power of symbols

By Mark Neppo

If you truly hold a stone, you can feel the mountain it came from.

A caveman picking berries was cornered by a wild and now extinct creature, and when he was spared by the snap of a tree limb that scared the beast off, he took a piece of the fallen bough as a good luck charm. And so the story of symbols began.

People have always saved scraps of their experience to help remind them of the forces of life that can’t always be seen. Filled with the timeless rhythm of the ocean, we pocket a shell and carry it thousands of miles to know that presence of ocean when we are hours from the sea. It is why we treasure certain songs, why we save ticket stubs and dries out flowers.

Symbols are living mirrors of the deepest understandings that have no words. I know of two friends who made it through Vietnam. They were rehabilitated in Italy, and before coming home, they split a copper lire, each holding dear the other’s half, as if it were the break of heart forever left in that godforsaken jungle.

We ask the smallest items of everyday life to carry unbearable meaning for us, and the dearest ones work like Aladdin’s lamp. All we have to do is rub them slowly, and feelings and times long gone come and live again, or basic truths hard to keep in view return.

As a boy, I remember visiting my grandfather’s house. He had a milk-white bowl filled with M&M’s. It was a simple magical treasure to me. No matter how often I reached on tiptoe, it never emptied. It has been thirty years since he died, and now when depressed, I hold that milk-white bowl in my lap and eat a few M&M’s.

And I feel better. This isn’t illusion or escapism, but rather using the milk-white bowl filled with M&M’s as a living symbol that can call into my moment of sadness a deeper sense of plentitude and generosity that is always there, but not always accessible.

This is the proper use of symbols, not to coldly represent ideas, but to call into being all that lives in us and about us. They help us bear witness to the painful mystery of living, and whether a crucifix, a small weeping Buddha, or a broken shell from a long-forgotten sea, they help us bear the days.

Recall a special moment in growing up.

Meditate on the feeling of that moment until the scene comes into view.

Slowly feel your way about this special moment and focus on a detail – a certain chair or smell of lilac or a rainy piece of glass.

With reverence, lift up this detail as a living symbol of all this special moment means to you.

The next time you feel less than, bring yourself in contact with this very personal symbol.

Let it open you to gifts you don’t always remember.

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From BAM

Before my mother died, I asked if a rose could be our symbol.

She looked at me, touched my cheek and said, "everything will be alright".

When life is tough, I see the roses. She is there in this symbol saying, "everything will be alright".

Droplet

I realized yesterday that each of us has the chance/opportunity to be a droplet in life. A droplet is the beginning of the ripple effect.

What if we used this as our view in each moment of our day. What changes?


My examples:
Interviewing / hiring college students for an accounting internships in my department.
Coaching people in transition. Helping them find their way.
Being present for someone I love during a difficult time.

All of these experiences came about through a choice to say yes to each of them.

We get bombarded by voice mail, email, text, im, fb, linkedin,......... At the office I call colleagues dropping by pop ins. Or someone stopping by to visit at home. A snail mail letter or card. Each a chance at being a droplet.

I reconnected with a Controller I worked with in my first job out of college. She was a droplet for me through her encouragement, advice and living example of a successful professional, mother, wife. This was over 20 years ago and I will remember our time together forever.

Being a droplet is meaningful and inspiring.

What are your droplet experiences?
Who has been a droplet for you?

Drive the speed limit

This post is interactive because it requires you to to drive the speed limit to understand what is being taught.

Drive the speed limit the next time you are in your car and then come back to read the rest of this post.





Driving the speed limit can be a challenge and uncomfortable. At the least it feels different.

Let's apply this concept to how we move through life. At what speed do you go through your day? What is your speed limit?

I am definitely a 60 mph girl. I hit the ground running. My brain wakes up in seconds (similar to the BMW 0 to 60 timehttp://www.0-60times.com/bmw.asp)

Doing the "drive the speed limit" excercise every time I am in my car is enabling me to transfer the slower pace feeling into my day by giving me a sense of what it feels like to move slower.
And just as I check if I am doing the speed limit while driving, I am checking in on how fast I am moving through my day.

I put a 1,000 piece puzzle outside our pod (office shared by many) at work with a sign " it is important to take breaks throughout the day". This helps me remember to slow down just as speed limit signs guide us with safe driving speeds.

Give this a try. What signs can you use to help keep you moving at a slower pace in your day?

Be the change you want to see in yourself

I am the current president of BMW Women's Inter-Active Network (WIN). We hold meetings 6 times a year and were fortunate to have our first guest speaker to kick off our third year.

BMW WIN had Kathy Caprino deliver a work life balance workshop on January 17th. I held a follow up meeting on January 28th. I went over the presentation and asked everyone to determine what work life balance means to them for our next meeting on February 28th where we will begin to create goals to create our vision.

What I hear is, management needs to .......

What I am teaching is that we create what we live. That we,the people who make up the corporation, have the power to design our work environment. And I am using my small team as the PROOF that it can be done. I am spear heading tele working, flex time. And I am trying so hard to LIVE the change I want to see, yesterday I left work at 2 PM. My team needs to see that, I need to do it. And when someone on my team said he is out of the office on Friday and Monday, I said good, you need that and please don't go online.

Why's am I sharing this? Because I just read this from Jan's book, see below, and it underscores for me that this message, this teaching, this living example I am trying to get across ~ EACH ONE OF US MUST TAKE RESPONSIBILITY! Don't sit around waiting for your manager to give you the ok. Poke your manager with the ideas, with your vision and keep poking, gently, until he or she wakes up, becomes courageous enough to support you. It can be done.

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from Jan Phillip's book, No Ordinary Time;
My chiropractor's office was filled with worker's comp cases today."I don't understand why they are doing this to themselves", he confided to me. "they are over working, over stressing, taxing themselves beyond reason. It's like they are on some treadmill and don't know how to get off. They are waiting for someone to tell them to 'slow down', but corporate America is never going to say that to their workers. We have to start saying it to ourselves".
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Waiting for someone else is like holding our breath! Our life belongs to us. It is our responsibility to create the life we want. Finding out what we want is the hardest part. Kathy Caprino's book Breakdown, Breakthrough and her free career assessment are good starting points to find out what you want.
http://www.elliacommunications.com/ellia-store/

The Beauty of it

The Book of Awakening

By Mark Nepo

If al I have is Now, where will I look for joy.

Without hope for the future, without hope that things will change, with no hope of finding what’s been lost, and no hope of restoring the past, with only the risk to crack open all that has hardened about me, what will I do with what I have?

At first, this might seen scary or sad, but as a tired swimmer comes ashore surprised to find pearls washing though his legs, I lift my tired head again and again to find all I need is right where I am.

But being human, I stray and dream of lives other than my own, and soon I am busy wanting something else, somewhere else, someone else; busy imagining something just out of reach to strive for.

It leads me to say if you are unhappy or in pain, nothing will remove these surfaces. But acceptance and a strong heart will crack them like a shell, exposing a softness that has always been, exposing a soft thing waiting to take form. It glows. I think it is the one spirit we all share.

·        Center yourself, and with your eyes closed, imagine what you want.

·        Breathe slowly, and with your eyes open realize what you have.

·        Reverse the process. Close your eyes and realize what you have. Now breathe slowly and with you eyes open, imagine what you want.

·        Keep doing this until what you want and what you have start to become the same thing.

Nowhere to go

Nowhere to go

By Mark Nepo

There is nothing the do and nowhere to go.

Accepting this, we can do everything and go anywhere.

One of basic notions of Taoism is that the world in all its mystery and difficulty cannot be improved upon, only experienced. We are asked to believe that life in all its complexity and wonder is complete as is – ever changing and vital, but never perfectible.

I’ve come to understand that this doesn’t prevent our being involved. On the contrary, accepting that the world can do quite fine without us allows us to put down the burden of being corrective heroes (or defining/finding our purpose) and simply concentrate on absorbing the journey of being alive.

Thus, our work is not to eliminate or re-create anything. Rather, like human fish, we are asked to experience meaning in the life that moves through the gill that is our heart. Ultimately, we are small living things awakened in the stream, not gods who carve out the rivers. We cannot eliminate hunger, but we can feed each other. We cannot eliminate loneliness, but we can hold each other. We cannot eliminate pain, but we can live a life of compassion.

I only came upon these notions after experiencing them. Faced with dying, the opportunity to change the world was taken away. It was all I could do to survive being changed by the world. This sent me into a sudden depression, but soon I found what remained to be liberating. Stripped of causes and plans and things to strive for, I discovered that everything I could need or ask for is right here – in flawed abundance.

Since then, my efforts have turned from trying to outrun suffering to trying to express it, from trying to achieve joy to trying to discover it, and from trying to shape or better the lives around me to accepting love wherever I can find it.

Sugar in the tree

Sugar in the tree

By Mark Nepo

As someone sitting beneath a tree can imagine the earth from above the trees, a heart encumbered by reality can know eternity.

As a boy, I spent many hours at the sea on a thirty-foot ketch my father had built. When the sea would get rough, I’d go below where the noise and motion of the deep would pound the hull and every toss and lurch would feel sudden and pointed.

Finding me there, my father told me how sailors, when feeling seasick, have always made their way on deck to look at the horizon. While that doesn’t prevent the pitch and drop of waves in the storm, it is somehow less upsetting if the larger context is kept in view.

I have kept this wisdom close to the when pitched in storm. In truth, whether facing cancer or riding the insecurity of repeated rejection or trying to surmount the most profound moments of loneliness, my greatest pains and fears have been lessened when I’ve managed to keep the largest sense of life before me like a horizon.

This is the difference between despair and faith, between the narrow point of doubt and a view long enough to sustain all life-giving possibility. It seems we suffer more when huddled below, and through the eternal perspective, the horizon of all time and all life, doesn’t remove us from our storms, it does make things bearable.

During the hardest times, keeping my eyes on the horizon has helped me endure such things as the loss of a rib, and a marriage, and a job I loved. For staying where we can keep God in view allows the ups and downs to be somewhat predictable. It even shows that suffering has its rhythm. Keeping the larger view can be the difference between thinking life is cruel and knowing that experience is a powerful ocean. In ways that truly matter, God is always in the horizon, and faith is making our way on deck despite our pain.

·      Wherever you are- in your bedroom, at your desk, or on a bus – sit quietly and see yourself sitting there from above your bed or desk or the bus you are riding.

·      Breathe slowly, and be both where you are and above where you are.

·      Now feel the stress or pain of what you are carrying this instant.

·      Breathe slowly, and try to see yourself in your life and from above your life, and feel both your pain and the Universe surrounding your pain.

·      When you find yourself huddled in your pain, try to breathe your way to the horizon.