We as human beings rely and thrive on intimate bonds. No matter how we’ve felt about belonging or not belonging in the past, it appears that the yearning du jour—from men and women, young and old, urbanite and suburbanite—is for more community and authentic social connection. This current feeling of what’s missing seems a little strange, counterintuitive even, given the explosion of social media and cyber-networking that has taken the world by storm. One might indeed argue that we, as a planet, have never been more connected.

Still, I am convinced that when it comes down to it, we are all striving for a much more hard-copy, nut-and-bolt sensation of community, one where we can actually reach for another’s empathic hand, give hugs freely, or spend an extra hour talking and breathing beside someone with whom we never seem to run out of things to say.

It took years for me to understand and appreciate this kind of deep interest in connection, as my entire teenaged life was a swim upstream against community, a fight against belonging or being identified with any one group. I was in my bones leery of tight knit circles, and chose instead to stand on the outskirts, to never quite fit in.

This all goes back to my coming from a family for which I was desperate not to be a part, and from which I had actual fantasies of being kidnapped. But, blessedly, one summer Sunday, before my freshman year in college, I walked into a Zen Buddhist center North of San Francisco, to learn meditation, hear a talk, have some tea, and take a walk down to the beach. For the first time, I was profoundly struck with wanting to be part of this particular whole. For the first time, I wanted to be let in to this energetic community by the sea.

That was 20 years ago. Today, I have a series of intersecting, chosen communities to which I am comfortable belonging—in my own quiet way—some more immediate, like my husband and kids, and some less. Threading through all of these various groups is a sense of grassroots connection and allegiance, feelings I had never really experienced until I’d found Zen center so long ago, and ultimately re-found me. In other words, my first taste of outer community enabled the experience and acknowledgement of my own interior community.

For those of you feeling a scarcity of closeness and commonality, I so totally encourage you to get out there and join that meditation or music circle, that town board or campaign committee, that regular yoga class or tango troupe. But I also encourage you to go in there, and get to know what it is inside you that has sparked your craving for more external ties. When you begin to excavate that discomfort at not being related outwardly, it may well reflect a deeper lack of relation within. Make sense?

The great news is: you can do and have both. Just remember that the more you lean out, the more you tweet and seek and stretch to find another like you, there is a very deserving beautiful creature waiting and calling for your friendship too, and that creature is you.

In communal sweetness,

ML

I don’t know about you, but I am cursed with an incredible inner critic. This voice has been around for as long as I can remember. It feels tenured in fact, and is always lurking, ready to pounce into action the more imperfect things get, which is, um, like all the time. The bummer here is that when held hostage to my critic’s pounding reign, love for myself appears lost.

The love I’m talking about here is pure and contingency-free. I like to imagine this love as an ever-flowing fountain, bursting with warmth, kindness, and compassion from each one of our hearts. If you can’t go with me on the fountain in the heart picture just yet, can you visualize at least muting your critic, and replacing it instead with a little loving cupid on your shoulder?

Last week, after a sitting practice and in honor of Bob Marley’s birthday, I played his albums for hours. Everything felt so bright, so light and buoyant. The room glowed. It suddenly dawned on me that I was in a state of majorly resonant love, and that all my favorite Bob songs were in fact his love songs.

Just then I looked up into the sky and there was the glorious near-full moon. My heart sprang to life, and there were tears and laughter and everything in between. I was deeply grateful. The wonder of feeling such love without relying on my kids or husband for it was powerful. I also realized that love, self love, is a practice, something to be touched every single day.

Here’s a little sequence that you might consider if your inner critic has got you down:

1. Sit quietly, close your eyes, and get in touch with the critic that is setting up all those rigid conditions. This voice shouldn’t be hard to conjure. It is usually the one most available and pronounced.

2. Turn down that voice. Better yet, turn it off. In answer, breathe life into and turn up the affectionate cupid in you. Feel the love of cupid’s arrows pour into the fountain of your heart.

3. Fortified by this, really allow yourself the experience of the pulsing of love through the tributaries of your body. Revel in it. Say thank you for it.

4. Last, do the thing that enables the full expression of this love. For me it was dancing and singing to Bob by the light of the moon. For you, well, that’s up to you…

This is just one way of welcoming love more consistently and routinely. Best to let it, as Bob says, “come tumbling in.” See how at first it drips, then leaks, then downright pours into your life. Love is that brilliant, and that self-multiplying. Why not give it a try?

There is, so far as I can tell, not a thing to lose.

In sweet love,

ML

My ego is feeling rather bruised at the moment. In other words, the part of me that is proud and prone to endless rounds of self-inflation and deflation is feeling a little beaten up. Let’s just say I’ve convinced myself I’m not as beautiful as I would like to look today, scratch that, this week. But hey, despite this surface egocentricity, I am far more committed to vibrancy and health of the heart, than to that of  the overly important head. Besides, this is nothing compared to what I’ve been through with the tyranny of ego before.

My most extreme experiences of ego to date were in the various pockets of anorexia that peppered my late teens and early 20′s, and in the one episode that even crept in at 30. In these intensely obsessive times, my egoistic head has swelled with the sense of triumph at the thinness of my body, the ability to rock any piece of clothing, and the convoluted sense of power that comes with it. The realities however of anorectic episodes, filled with deprivation, self-obsession, and constant anxiety, are the farthest thing from powerful or deep.

Fortunately for my truer self, and unfortunately for ego, I also started practicing meditation in my late teens and sit everyday. I’ve come to understand that, when not super aware, we experience the reign of ego most all the time, and hence most all our thoughts and beliefs are fueled by it. Reminding myself of this, like right now, reveals the aim of sneaky ego, to simply keep on perpetuating its little (or big) self.

The good news is that we can legitimately work toward letting go of ego. Just as Rodney Yee, yoga teacher extraordinaire, has likened yoga practice to a steady chipping away, so too, is the exposition and subtle dethroning of  ego. The anatomy of ego in fact, when you really shine the light on it, just sort of scampers away, like a startled cockroach into a crack. Ego is indeed afraid of the light, or rather truth, and I love how Cheri Huber puts it, the truth in “the realization that there is nothing separate-from All That Is, from God, from Essence.”

Can you, if only for this split second, bask in the freedom of this realization, that there is no separation between you and me and the wonder of it all? Can you be lifted by that sense of unity—minus ego’s pseudo-largesse, judgment, strain, and delusional groping—as if we were all connected across the landscape of the sky, like a wonderfully clear and crystalline rainbow?

I can, at least in this instant, and all I can say is: What peace.

In sweetness,

ML

I take tremendous pride in myself as a parent. Being a mother has indeed been the greatest, most healing gift in my life.  I also take it rather seriously, given I had a really rough start as a child.

Though my parents are still alive, I don’t think of them as parents at all, and learned basically from infancy what not to do. Because of this, I am profoundly committed to giving my kids the safety, stability, and undying love that I never had.

Add to this my early steps onto the paths of Buddhism and yoga, and my life seems more and more spread into a fan of practices, parenting no less spiritual than the other more formal designations.

For now however, let’s stick to the practice of parenting. Let’s really consider it. In my mind, parenting has two legs, one is how we relate to and support our children, and the other oft-neglected leg is how we relate to and support our inner child.

As if the outside parenting leg weren’t exquisitely hard, wow is the self-parenting leg a struggle! This tender, subtle, fragile, and intimate relationship with the child inside—often the piece of us that has been ignored or traumatized—so needs our attention.

Sometimes I see mine, this frightened little girl, nested inside my body, hovering in my left shoulder or down in my abdomen. I visualize bringing her to life in the middle of a garden or wrapping her in my arms, and letting her cry the way my blessed grandmother used to when I would sob into her chest.

How do you relate to your inner kiddo? Or rather, do you relate to yours at all? If nothing else, might I cajole you into looking into this crucial relationship?

And how appropriate that I am sitting here writing on the daybed, where I was in labor for 40 hours in 2009, and where my almost two-year-old Stella just came to me bleary-eyed and rosy-cheeked out of her nap and into my warm arms, needing that love, that solid, steady reminder of deep love. This is exactly what the inner parenting is about too, and come to think of it, what the formal spiritual practices all seem to point to as well: the cultivation of deep love.

Join me if you will in dedicating your parenting and all other practices to this same quality of affection, this outpouring of radiant love. Our hearts certainly have the capacity for it. If only our wild, critical minds would get out of the way! Or rather, if only we got out of theirs…

In sweetness,

ML

Have you ever exalted in something so simple as a slice of fruit, the branch of a tree, the sleeve of a shirt, an old worn sneaker, or the dripping umbrella leaning by the door? Do you believe that the magic, celebration, and depth of the world can be found in any one of these everyday things?

What I’m writing about today is cultivating our appreciation for spirit, the sublime energy within us all, through the appreciation of this same spirit in the most ordinary of objects. The reason? We are so often cut off, bewildered by, and stranded from spirit in our suffering-prone, rampant minds, that coming to experience spirit out in the world is at first more accessible than experiencing it inside.

I can’t help but think of William Carlos Williams here and his famous poem about a red wheelbarrow in the rain. Much like a still life painter, WCW manages to infuse and amplify that wheelbarrow with the ethereal.

Same with our toddler Stella and the small apple she lines up for after her yoga class every Wednesday. There is nothing special about this apple, just one of a great many in the basket awaiting the children when class is over. Yet, the apple palpates with such remarkable spirit, its power obvious in how she asks for it, how she holds it in her sticky little fingers. While she takes maybe three or four bites tops, the eating of the apple is not what makes it so much more meaningful than itself. It is rather how she is able to blow up and saturate the thing with such glowing energy, how she is able to give it a pulse, as if it were alive.

The elevation of and exaltation in everyday stuff is wonderful training, our attention made crisper, our gratitude deepened. Might you practice feasting your eyes and lifting your hearts with the sight of a mere avocado, or lemon, or apple on the counter waiting to be tasted? When your understanding of ordinary shifts from basic, drab, less than excellent to containing the divine, you will know it. From here, from this feeling of rock-turned-to-gold, you can then move your gaze back to your very human and wonderfully ordinary life—where so much of the work is—and behold spirit within you.

Suzuki Roshi said, “Ordinary mind is not something apart from what is holy.” In even our little dramas, our bigger heartaches, our most banal and boring moments, there is spirit. The ordinariness of all these things makes us human. The sacred in all of these things is also what makes us human. It is our job, in toil, distraction, frustration, and play, to kindle and rekindle this relationship between the holy and the plain.

Start by discovering the vital energy in any old piece of fruit. That’s good enough. Then slowly, with practice, you can jibe your attention and discover that vital energy in your own existence, where spirit lies embedded, gleaming and unperturbed, at all times.

In ordinary sweetness,

ML

What is spiritual practice? Furthermore, do you have one?

Simply put, I define spiritual practice as something you do every single day that draws you deeper into who you really are, by connecting you with your divine self.

Please don’t be put off by the word spiritual here! Spiritual doesn’t have to entail–though it often does–meditation cushions, prayer beads, chant books, yoga mats, or any other such paraphernalia. A spiritual practice might be baking, gardening, running, knitting, playing piano, painting, hiking, meditating, golfing, doing yoga, tai chi, or calligraphy. It is not so much about the form but about the profound and connective quality of the time spent within it.

The practice part means just that: you do it daily, over and over, not in a gross way, but rather in a this-is-what-makes-me-who-I-am way. Without the aim of ever stopping with it, you practice as contribution to your ever-unfolding life on this earth. It can feel beautiful and compelling, harrowing and agonizing, annoying, vexing, boring as hell, or as ordinary and routine as brushing your teeth. Above all it is your rock, the ultimate placating pillar, steady and reliable as they come.

There have been times when, driven by such desperation, my yoga, pranayama, meditation, and journaling practices served as literal life preservers, day by grueling day. In these pockets, practice translates directly as necessity. In the coasting phases of our lives however, or during the highly celebratory ones, spiritual practice feels as joyous as the spread of a bright authentic smile, or as easy to fall into as a hammock under the stars, in the perfect climate, and between the two most exquisite trees.

This is all great you say, but how do I actually do it? First you have to admit that practice is essential, and something you must do. Next, you must designate, carve out, and stick to the time for it, often letting go of something else in order to keep it alive. Many people find it easiest to maintain practice first thing in the morning. But what does that mean you give up? Sleep? Or is it the extra hour on the computer before bed the night before so that you don’t lose the time in bed? There are choices here. It is up to you.

In short, and for you to take as inspiration or affirmation, here are my top ten benefits of spiritual practice:

1. It provides clarity in the midst of our overflowing and demanding days.
2. It cultivates the attention required to complete our tasks.
3. It lifts our mood.
4. It creates a sense of steadiness and grounding in change.
5. It keeps us afloat and even-keeled in even the most riotous emotional storms.
6. It helps us see our lives on a macro level.
7. It helps us understand our lives on a micro level.
8. It draws us into the simplicity of the moment.
9. It touches us so deeply that without it we would feel lost or downright not right.
10. It connects us to and reveals true spirit.

Ultimately, we must summon the courage to make room for spiritual practice, and the experiment that it is, as instigator at any given time of peace, elation, chill out, aha, tears, or evocative reflection. We must be willing to face whatever arises within this uncanny vehicle and to touch the sacred in ourselves every precious day.

How do you feel about that?

In sweet practice,

ML

How does it feel to be deeply inspired? Who in your life arouses these feelings in you?

Inspiration is a whacky singular thing. No two people could ever possibly be inspired by all the same greats, though there are of course mass overlaps when it comes to the luminescent icons of our time, the visionaries who inspire the world. Still, some inspirations are so close and profoundly intimate that nobody else might ever imagine their incredible power to open the heart of another or bring about exaltedness.

Just as an electrician said to me years ago in San Francisco: “There’s no right or wrong to your feelings,” there’s equally no right or wrong to who inspires you. They might be remarkably solid people, or huge walking hearts, or amazing talents, or wise teachers. There is no hard and fast rule. Anyone can inspire. What’s important is that you are more awed and awake when in their midst. What’s important is that these inspirations not only deeply touch you, but that they move you to emanate your own subtle or stand out magnificence.

Dorothy Whipple, one of my favorite British writers, wrote in her novel Greenbanks, “‘Mmmm,’ said Charles. ‘The French have an expression “Bon comme le pain.” When I heard it, I thought of you. You’re good, like bread; you’re essential, you know, Mother. The world couldn’t get on without people like you.’” This was a son speaking to his mother. Don’t his words capture to a tee the feelings that our own inspirations elicit?

It is so vital to take the time once in a while to give shout outs to these lights, these beacons that have palpably made our lives and often many other lives around them better. Why not make a list, then some calls. Or why not send out emails and tweets to your personal inspirations? Let them know just how pivotal they are to you, and that the world just wouldn’t be the same without them. Now’s as a good a time as any.

My grandmother Sylvia, though she’s been gone for 9 years, is my essential inspiration, the “good like bread” beam of glorious hope that will always see me through. I know she feels how safely nested she is in my heart, and that she will forever float along beside me, in all my endeavors, triumphant or failed, because she of all people has taught me about love; and love is after all the marrow of life.

Sylvia, brightest light of them all, this one’s for you.

In sweet inspiration,

ML

For many of us, trying to inhabit our bodies is like rummaging in the dusty dark with a single sub-par flashlight. We get so hooked on our outsides, and spend so much time trying to look perfect, that we cede the actual experiencing of our bodies as they are. Of course, we all feel extreme physical stuff when it is happening, the intense workouts, the painful and ailing episodes, as well as the highly pleasurable moments when we are drawn into intoxicating sensation. Yet, I’m talking about a softer more sensitive awareness and taking up of residence in our physicality.

Can you imagine being in such close correspondence with your body? Can you imagine truly feeling such phenomenal structure?

Fresh into January, given how predictably most of us have already resolved to make our shapes better, leaner, and sexier, mightn’t we amend the body-improvement pledge a little? Mightn’t we make it more profound by folding inhabitation and experience of it into the description?

Here are the main hints I’m giving you (and me), meant to promote legitimate body experiencing, not some conjured, brain-centric idea, but all-out, full-on, real-flesh feeling:

*Every day, move your body. This isn’t limited to intense sweaty physical exercise people—though of course this is great for most of us. I mean anything from walking meditation and really showing up for each step, to lovely, slow and deliberate stretching, where you scan and pause at your legs, spine, shoulders, and so on.

*Every day, give your body at least one thing that makes it/you hum with deep satisfaction, from a nutritive green juice to the most fortifying smoothie, or delicious colorful salad, or handful of clean raw nuts, the list goes on and on.

*Every day, at least once, consciously drop out of your heavy brain, and sink into the melodious swirling vitality of what’s happening below it. Inhabit what your body feels like right then and there, slumped in that chair, stiff on those legs, distracted in that car, curled up watching that flick. Don’t fix. Just be conscious.

*Every day, break at least once from the usual criticism and measurement. Quietly say thanks to your wonderful body instead, then go on knocking yourself out with assessment if you must. At least start the trend of feeling body grateful, and it will hopefully morph from a trickle to a stream, where the obsessive sizing up is ultimately the thing that’s knocked out, not your blessed body.

I am so totally on this journey with you. I’ve actually dedicated 2012 to forging a more profound relationship with my body. The big resolution, instead of toning up my thighs and butt—which in all honesty I’ll be doing mild bits of—is to more subtly develop a mindful body dialogue.

Inhabiting our bodies is indeed a thoroughly in-the-present job. These sacred vessels are what make all the talk about meditation, mindfulness, and awakening come to life. Best to start now, one experience of the foot, the hand, the neck, the chest, the belly, the ankle, the knee, or the hip at a time. Happy New Year.

In sweet body,

ML

This past weekend my husband and I went up to the Adirondacks, and wow was it magical. The landscape was powerful, beautiful, and gentle all at once. I spent the days staring out a huge window overlooking snowy fir trees and the lake, still not frozen, undulating rhythmically beyond them. I took long morning walks on trails half covered by snow and branches, smelling the pinecones, appreciating the green, stopping along the water, breathing the crisp air, and looking up into that clear open sky.

To be surrounded by such noble largesse at all times, in yoga, sitting, and writing practices even, was inordinately soothing. Over and over, I was reassured by the voluminous presence of those ancient trees of just how small my hang-ups and me actually are.

An old literature mentor used to advise me that when things got really rough to simply look out the window at the wind rustling through the branches of a tree. She felt that this elemental vision was enough to bring anyone back to their roots, or more succinctly, to the root of all living things, namely movement, energy, and pulse.

That tree, those branches, that wind, those leaves are never in great debate over better or worse, or in anguish over their incessant disruption. No, that tree, those branches, that wind, those leaves, are just that, exactly who and what they are meant to be. They are simply their divine, revelatory, real, and unfussy selves.

Whether you are struck by a lone shoot pushing through the cracks in city pavement, the runt tree on your block, the intermittent flow of sweet rain, the seeming forest of the park, the night or early morning sky, or the fallen leaves, please let nature be your teacher and think deliberately on these things:

• Let nature be a part of your every day.
• Let nature fill you with joy and overwhelming peace.
• Let nature mirror your own elemental and affectionate nature.
• Let nature remind you to accept your own organic shape.
• Let nature lead you into an authentic expression of you.
• Let nature always ground you.

Though my husband and I had to say goodbye to all that rugged upstate beauty, I have a new little pinecone sitting on my altar. It harkens from one of those early mornings hikes, and is here as talisman and anchor, to remind me, and hopefully now you, of all these substantial and essential things.

In natural sweetness,

ML

Our lives are predicated on choice. The freedom to choose just about anything is truly our blessed right, however we are so often enslaved to the process of deciding, and caught up in there being a hierarchy amongst the potential answers—the best, the worst, the mediocre—that the liberation bit gets lost.

What adds to the trickiness is that embedded in this hierarchy, and pounded into us from early on, is not only the best/worst classification, but too, and even more problematic, the right/wrong one. In mathematics, this is true; there is one right answer, one right choice. Yet when it comes to life decisions, like where to live, where to work, whom to date, where to raise children, how to nourish our whole selves, the right/wrong, black/white thing is pretty unreasonable, or more pointedly pretty artificial. We grow so afraid of choosing “wrongly” that we go crazy in the process, presuming that we are potentially on the brink of ruining our lives.

I have notoriously struggled with making decisions. When I was living at Zen center so many years ago, there came a time at the end of the practice period where I had to decide if I was going to continue my leave of absence by staying on, or go back to school. I agonized. I lost sleep. I had formal and informal meetings with Norman Fischer, the abbot and leader of the practice period at the time. He even gave me a Japanese calligraphy of the word Decision, as he had been made so intimately privy to my struggle. You know what I ended up doing? Neither, but that’s another story.

What was once deep agony has with practice been downgraded to moderate stress, which obviously still stirs the pot. A couple months ago, I got anxious in deciding which multi-vitamin to take. I chose one that in my mind sounded really great, pure, and was food-based, so was by far, I convinced myself, the most fantastic of the bunch. Well, I took it and had a horrible allergic reaction. And for one or two days I got really upset with myself for my choice. Why did I do it, if I had only chosen differently, you get the drift. I mean, seriously, how was I supposed to know? The main thing, when we make one not-so-fortuitous decision, is to absorb it, drop our fear, and of course act wiser when food-based is an option in the next supplement showdown.

There is also the sense with decisions, that someone, anyone, everyone out there, knows better than we do, as if they were the ultimate experts on us. It’s silly, honestly. But if you have a hard time deciding like I do, let me be the first to tell you, you truly are your own supreme expert. You truly do know what is the best choice for you. You just have to give yourself a chance to be quiet, and intuit out what feels true, not from a reactionary frenzied wild place, but from a deep delicious in-touch place.

Here’s my final plea: How about you set as your base intention taking the pressure off of making decisions, and let yourself be guided more organically instead, so that the next time you freeze in the cereal aisle, you smile and know it is symptomatic of being frozen about the bigger forks in the road. You smile too because you know that this classic moment is the perfect clue—and cue—for you to seriously thaw out and relax.

In sweetness,

ML