Affirmative Action

When all is not well, you need more than wishing.

Back in the 90’s, “New Age,” was the craze, a magic time of crystals, chakra healing and life-changing sayings that you repeated over and over until you believed it with every cell in your body. These were called Affirmations, which became a lifeline during a time when I was literally drowning and needed to hang on to positivity.

I was big fan of Louise Hay, the queen of affirmations.

Here are a few:

I am healthy.

Everything is perfect in my life.

I am beautiful and everyone loves me.

Except I wasn’t healthy. For one thing, I couldn’t sleep and was a wreck. Things were definitely not perfect in my life, and thinking I should be perfect was killing me. And everyone didn’t love me, even though I turned my people-pleasing tendencies up to 110 percent. Still, I affirmed until I couldn’t anymore and was forced to turn to something more action-oriented- the 12 Steps of AA, which also promised change, except you had to work for it and stop telling yourself lies.

I found out that simply saying something is so does not make it happen. Maybe that’s what’s so maddening about the wholesale butchering of truth nowadays – both by those in power who sell the “all is well” affirmations and those who cling to them to keep themselves from facing reality.

The Steps demanded a lot of me, including facing hard truths. And it also demanded having faith, which for me meant faith in myself despite all my self-destructive tendencies. And that somehow led me to Zen Buddhism, which encouraged me to take a deeper plunge into seeing clearly and accepting that I didn’t have to be perfect. I just needed to be present and willing to learn what each moment could teach me. For me, this was real magic. The work of transforming suffering – mine and that of the world.

HOWEVER, the whole issue of affirmations arose for me this past month when the Peace Monks made their way from Texas to DC. It didn’t hurt that they had a dog with them, Aloka, a stray who joined their efforts and became a four-legged monk. That got my attention!

Aloka the Peace Dog- in his burgandy Rakusu

When they made it to DC, The Venerable Bhikku Padakanna, their leader and teacher, spoke at the National Cathedral and at American University. DC is my former home ground. What has happened there – to the institutions of democracy and people who worked in them – is tragic on so many levels. In an online forum, I heard a friend say what the monks brought and gave to DC was not just needed but transforming. And empowering.

So I googled the talk and listened to Padakanna speak at AU, and was surprised to hear how he married affirmation with action. For me, the simplicity and power of it was astounding.

He asked everyone in the audience to say to themselves,

“Today is going to be my peaceful day.” And then he asked that we make a commitment to say this everyday so we can tap into our own inner peace.

At first, I thought, oh, great. Another freakin’ affirmation. But then I thought back to what he had spoken of before putting this request out.

For half hour prior to this request, he spoke of mindfulness, of being aware that peace always begins from within. And that instead of starting outward – with what someone is doing or not doing, we go within and see what we are doing—to ourselves. How we undermine our own peace. To effect change, he says, we must ground that peace within ourselves to tap into our own inner resilience.

I am a woman who is filled with anger, especially for what is going on now- the brutality, the cruelty, the inequity, the stupidity. But for some reason, his request that I say this line- This is going to be my peaceful day, helped me pause and go inward and feel – on a cellular level -the violence and unease I pour into myself when marinating in this rage.

I literally began to release and soften that toxic energy coursing through my veins. It was action I could take in that moment. And I did feel more peaceful more grounded. More here in the moment.

There is concept in Buddhism called the “Second Sword.” When someone plunges a sword in us (when we are attacked), instead of whipping up the winds of anger or despair or shame or fill-in-the-blank negative self-talk, we pause and notice that we are stabbing ourselves with a second sword, our own self-destructive actions that we injure ourselves with.

Sure, whipping up that anger and anxiety feels good at first (I’m a great fan of swearing as a way to push out ill winds), but if I let it go on, it takes root into rage, depression and under that, powerlessness. It exhausts me.

So I work with the little things. When mealybugs took over my Bird of Paradise plant, I had to stop everything and hand scrub each ginormous leaf by hand. I caught myself from going off into a rant about it and could feel how it was ramping up in my body. took a deep breath and told myself I am going to have a peaceful day. Then, I filled a bowl with water and dish detergent, got a rag and offered my love to that plant (sorry, not the mealybugs - I’m not a saint) and became tender as I tended to what needed to done, gently wiping each leaf front and back, careful to not tear or tug. I got to know it and all its shiny, deep greenness. It was enough to give me joy. And something very close to what I’d call peace.

I’m hoping I can keep more of that going. That tenderness. That care.

The world so needs it now.