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The Storm Before the Calm

September 11, 2016/14 Comments/in Living & Wellness, Spirituality & Healing /by Martha Beck

No matter how many times I experience The Storm Before the Calm, it always sneaks up on me. I never recognize it until I’m fully lost in it; bruised, drowning, desperate for relief. Storms are devilishly clever at disguising themselves. “I’m Hurricane Bob!” “I’m Tropical Storm Betty Sue!” “I’m Low Pressure System Barry Manilow!” Don’t let them fool you. No two storms have the same name, but they all wreak the same kinds of havoc. Of course I don’t mean literal storms. I’m talking about periods of intense disturbance we go through prior to deep and lasting personal growth. I suspect we all have these Storms Before the Calm. But I don’t think most people recognize them. So it’s about to get unbearably metaphorically meteorological up in here. A Storm Before the Calm begins long before we see it. It’s born in deep wanting—maybe a subtle itch, maybe a yearning […]

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May all our scores be very low

August 5, 2016/10 Comments/in Living & Wellness /by Martha Beck

Doggie Do-Good Camp was supposed to last two weeks. That’s a long time to be separated from a dog you’ve just adopted, but when we got Claire, our emergency backup Golden Retriever, it seemed necessary. She was anxious, jittery, and unresponsive to even simple commands. After two weeks, a Doggie Do-Good trainer called to report that Claire needed more time. “Claire is one of the cutest dogs we’ve ever worked with,” said the trainer. There followed a charged silence. The trainer took a deep breath and added, “Her scores are, er, very low.” It was hard to contradict, but still, harsh, dude. All our lives we’re taught to jack up our scores, fight for every point we can get, compete for rank like hyenas fighting over filet mignon. After a full month of Do-Good Camp, Claire came home with a dim, flickering concept of the word “Come.” Mainly she just figures […]

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Make of yourself a light

July 14, 2016/2 Comments/in Spirituality & Healing /by Martha Beck

I’ve heard from so many of you in recent days, weeks and months about how we can get by during a period when the news from the world feels cruel and dangerous. I wanted to talk to you directly about the helplessness many of us feel at such times. The Buddha’s last words were, “Make of yourself a light.” As a tribe, it’s my wish that we may all be lights for ourselves and each other in times that feel dark.

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All for All, Always…and Other Wisdom from Martha Beck

June 5, 2016/4 Comments/in Living & Wellness, Spirituality & Healing /by Martha Beck

Task Seven: Notice that you are all for all, always. We’ve arrived at the final task in our newsletter series based on my new book, Diana, Herself: An Allegory of Awakening. The Seventh Task in becoming your wild self is the ultimate act of spiritual surrender, in which you completely release your identification with what I call your “meat self”, that sense of individuality and “me-ness” that has defined you throughout your life. So, why not do that now? Take a deep breath, and just let go of your ego forever. Take a few moments, if you need them. I’ll wait. Obviously I’m kidding, though kudos to any of you who just achieved spontaneous enlightenment through the sheer power of suggestion. The Seventh Task represents the end of all suffering, which makes it the Big Banana, spiritually speaking. It’s what generations of mystics and yogis dedicated their lives to seeking, […]

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Put Your Mind in Service to Your Higher Self…and Other Wisdom From Martha Beck

May 8, 2016/1 Comment/in Living & Wellness, Spirituality & Healing /by Martha Beck

Task Six: Let Your Meta-Self Flow Through You Task Hello, beloved readers! If you’ve been following along—or if you’ve read my recent book, which is finally out and about in the world—you know it’s time to learn the Sixth Task of Bewilderment (pronounced “be-wilder-ment”). It’s all part of the process of waking up to your inner, deeper, higher purpose. Task Six is about learning to let inspiration flow not only through your limbs and heart, but also through your brain. This delicate operation can’t work well if you haven’t mastered at least the rudiments of earlier Tasks, particularly Task One, which is to calm yourself out of fear. Most people tune into fear and use their thinking as a control mechanism, trying to access good feelings and avoid bad ones. This approach can be quite effective. It can get your taxes filed, your children educated, and your ordinary work done. But it’s sort of like […]

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Lame Animal Totem: Bony-eared Assfish

May 4, 2016/2 Comments/in Lame Animal Totems /by Martha Beck

There is a creature swimming our oceans that is called Acanthonus armatus. But, perhaps because Acanthonus has the smallest brain-to-body weight ratio of any vertebrate, it prefers to go by its more familiar name, the bony-eared assfish. I did not make that up. You can know that Acanthonus armatus is your animal totem if you’re swimming around subtropical waters and you hear yourself call out, “Whoa, Mabel! Get a load of the bony ears on that ass fish!” Listen: fish don’t have ears, and you don’t know anyone named Mabel. Now, I know that if the bony-eared assfish is your totem, you’re already having trouble following this, so just lie still and try not to think.

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Make Language Your Servant…and Other Wisdom From Martha Beck

April 10, 2016/2 Comments/in Living & Wellness, Spirituality & Healing /by Martha Beck

When you look in the mirror, you don’t see what the rest of us recognize as your face. You see all your small asymmetries—the freckle on your left cheek, your crooked smile, the part of your hair—reversed. When you think about yourself, this quirk of perception is much more dramatic, because as Byron Katie says, “Like a mirror, the mind has a way of getting things right but backwards.” Katie fans (including all MBI coaches) spend a lot of time noticing this reversal of the real, and flipping our thoughts to discover the truth. This is what I’m calling the Fifth Task of Bewilderment. It’s a way of making language our servant, not our master, as we wend our way toward the truths that set us free. If you’ve never heard of this Task, but you’re sick of misery, I urge you to learn it and use it, soon and […]

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Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

April 8, 2016/3 Comments/in Martha's Bookshelf /by Martha Beck

Even though Elizabeth Gilbert is one of my very favorite writers, it took me a long time to read her book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. The reason is that when I read about creativity, or when I read Gilbert’s work, I get so motivated I have trouble sleeping. I’m talking for weeks at a time. Liz Gilbert writing about creativity? Frankly, I found that a little scary. Then, last week, I went to the Arctic in search of the aurora borealis (also called the Northern Lights, and definitely something you should put on your bucket list). Since the lights are most likely to show up between midnight and 4:00 AM, a little insomnia was in order. So I read Big Magic between excursions into the arctic cold, and I got wired like a fox terrier on cocaine, jet-propelled into every creative project I’ve got going. I read, I laughed, I marveled, I […]

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Demolish Your Definition of Self and Other Wisdom from Martha Beck

March 6, 2016/4 Comments/in Living & Wellness /by Martha Beck

The Fourth Task to Bewilderment: Follow Love This month we’ve reached the fourth of our Bewilderment Tasks! If you have no idea what this means, you’re already bewildered and may be excused—or read my last three newsletters,* which cover the first three Tasks. But if you’ve been following along, you know that Bewilderment is a re-awakening of the wild essential self, and that the Tasks are practices for encouraging this awakening. My favorite deceased Indian dude, Nisargadatta Maharaj, once said, “When I look inside and see that I am nothing, that is wisdom. When I look around and see that I am everything, that is love.” Task Four is about connecting with the world so intimately that you experience everything as your true self. As you practice the first three Tasks, you’ll be living more fearlessly, honestly, and fluidly. Now your wild side will begin pushing you—sometimes subtly, sometimes overwhelmingly—to […]

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Let Yourself Be Moved and Other Wisdom from Martha Beck

February 14, 2016/3 Comments/in Living & Wellness /by Martha Beck

The Third Task for Bewilderment: Let Yourself Be Moved Lately we’ve been discussing the Tasks of Bewilderment, a series of exercises designed to help you become your wild self. Task One is Calm Down. Task Two is Don’t Swallow Poison (anything, from a food to a belief, that makes you ill). If you’ve mastered these two tasks, your life is already better than most. People often protest, “But if I’m not acting out of fear and obligation, I’ll just sit around licking butter right off the dish.” Actually, once fear and poison are out of our energy, we begin to move like Luke Skywalker trusting the Force. Enlightened people say they watch as some benevolent energy does things, efficiently and effectively, through their bodies. Learning to let yourself be moved this way is the Third Task for Bewilderment. To practice, take 10 minutes to sit or lie down. Relax completely, […]

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The Storm Before the Calm

May all our scores be very low

Make of yourself a light

All for All, Always…and Other Wisdom from Martha Beck

Put Your Mind in Service to Your Higher Self…and Other Wisdom From Martha Beck

Lame Animal Totem: Bony-eared Assfish

Make Language Your Servant…and Other Wisdom From Martha Beck

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Demolish Your Definition of Self and Other Wisdom from Martha Beck

Let Yourself Be Moved and Other Wisdom from Martha Beck

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