July Sabbath for Care

The month of July is a golden time of passion and activity. Nature celebrates the peak of its power, the sun reaches her highest point, and I do the same; every day I get to share my light with the world. I put my best and brightest energy into my projects, my garden, and my art. I seek out chances to be courageous, and extend myself beyond what’s comfortable.

The question for July is How do I shine through the clouds?

“Hold the sadness and pain of samsara in your heart and at the same time the power and vision of the Great Eastern Sun. Then the warrior can make a proper cup of tea.”

~ Chogyam Trungpa

Agenda:

1. Keeping the Sabbath

2. Care practice

3. How to finish things I start

4. Read "Repacking Your Bags"

1. Keeping the Sabbath:

Keeping a sabbath day is a personal thing. For me, it's a day with a slow pace, and everything I do has a flavor of peace. I schedule some work, but it's work I find fulfilling, or uplifting. Simple is a great word to describe my ideal activities for the Sabbath: Simple tasks, simple foods, and an undemanding schedule.

Today I plan to spend my whole day at home, read and write, work in the garden, take a bath, call my mother, and bake a birthday pie.

2. Exceptional Care practice:

My theme this month is integrity. To cultivate integrity in myself and in the world, I need awareness and courage: Awareness of my own thoughts and actions - how I treat the people I talk to, and how I clean a tool when I'm finished with it - and courage enough to speak up when I see a need for greater integrity in the world around me.

But I've been grappling with carelessness lately: Forgetting to take care of details, leaving my tools out in the yard, forgetting to feed my dog, even going all day without brushing my hair ... it's a symptom of impatience, distractibility, and fatigue. 

I need an awareness practice to counteract my carelessness, and so I've decided to practice Exceptional Care today, the awareness of every little action. I'm going to go slow, be present, listen well, gather all the threads and tie them off before moving on.

Because it's my sabbath and I'm home alone all day, I'm going to make it a meditative mantra practice. I'm going to stop before every transition to a new activity to say: 

"Take Care of Beings; Take Care of Things; 

Take Care of Details; Take Care of Myself."

3. Finish things I start:

One part of taking care and having integrity is to complete the projects I start. We are a start-up society, and I am prone to getting bored and moving on to the next idea, and pack-ratting away all my collected pieces. 

Today I'm going to make an effort to finish some projects: 

• Finish building my wall (done!)
• Varnish some painted rocks (done)
• Finish reading "Repacking Your Bags"
• Read through and recycle half of my notebooks
  

4. Read "Repacking Your Bags":

I'm studying the book "Repacking your Bags; Lighten your Load for the Good Life" by Richard Leider and David Shapiro, third edition. Chapter 6 is Repacking on Purpose. This chapter starts "At many points on our journey through life, we have to decide what to take along and what to leave behind -- and once we decide, how to carry it."

The goal is to pack just enough into life to feel supported and fulfilled, but not weighed down with responsibility; to consider what matters most; to consciously reimagine your life over and over again. They equate unpacking with being aware, and repacking with accepting responsibility. "Repacking is a cradle to grave process."

The authors suggest what they call the Repacking Inventory, to check out the stuff (and habits, activities, people) I have, and how much of it has been mindfully accumulated. They suggest three questions:

- What does success mean to me?

- What parts of my life are non-negotiable?

- What makes me want to get up in the morning?