I’m on a Social Media Hiatus.

It’s been going on for about 8 weeks now with no end in sight. 

I’m enjoying privacy, fresh air, writing (a new memoir), IRL non-profit work, and the miracle of love.

If you are interested in working with me on a one to one basis about your writing, your life, or the effects in your own life of a global, mostly-ego-driven digital fishbowl, you can email me at binduwiles@gmail

I only check email once a day, (sometimes less) and I don’t carry my iPhone anymore.

I’ll pop up again here sometime!

If you asked me what life comes down to, I would answer that I believe it all comes down to Letting Go.

Dynamics between people, situations, emotions, get to the point where it’s just not working or it’s simply intolerable.

You don’t feel heard or understood. The way someone chooses to engage is intolerable. You’ve experienced someone doubling back one to many times.

A vulnerable trust is broken yet again. Sometimes, actually often, people feel so justified in their actions and it makes it even harder to be at peace within ourselves.

You are flat out on the ground waving the white flag from the sheer exhaustion of trying.

You’re broken-hearted and disappointed in yourself with how you acted under pressure with throat-choking fear.

This all leads to this radical and daring place of Letting Go.

Or as it’s called on the spiritual path, Renunciation.

From a Buddhist perspective, Renunciation has to do with letting go of holding back.

It’s about seeing clearly all the ways we pull away, shut down, close off, hold back, deny, ignore, and then learning how to open.

How we actually stay open has to do with coming up against our edge. That’s the moment when we learn what renunciation means.

You know how rivers flow down mountains? And then at some point, the flow of the water gets blocked by big logs and boulders? The water can’t move any further, even though it has tremendous force and energy, it just can’t move.

That’s what happens with us. We get blocked–out of the fear of the unknown, or fear of what happened in the past, we put up these blocks, these dams that basically say no to life and feeling.

How do we let go at these moments? How do we renounce? How do we say yes to opening further and let the water keep flowing, and keep our life-force evolving?

How do we not freeze and instead take another step toward the unknown?

Whenever you realize you have met your edge, you can be honest with yourself, by just gently acknowledging that you are saying some version of “No”.

The whole journey of renunciation, and letting go–which are just two phrases that mean saying yes to life– is realizing you’ve come up against your edge, that every single cell, molecule, bone, neuron within you is saying No, and then at that point softening.

The paralyzed quality, and the quality that causes us and others pain, seems to be the hardening or refusing quality.

The letting go, or the renunciation of that attitude is simply feeling the whole thing in your heart rather than your head and letting it soften and penetrate you so that you actually sit there with the troubling feelings and let them soften you some more.

You feel compassion for your predicament and for the whole human condition.

You reach out from inside yourself, the heroine of your own journey of awakening, constantly coming up against big challenges and then learning how to soften, open, and connect.

It’s a journey you can be proud of making on behalf of all beings, including of course, yourself.

*this post is adapted from the teachings of Pema Chodron.

if you are viewing this on a mobile device, please click here to see my iphoto of a rowboat at sunset.

“Spirituality is solitary. Its companion is conflict, a gnawing at the soul that cannot be ignored. We are engaged. There are no rules.

There are no maps. We live with the discomfort and ambiguity of our own authority.

At times, it is lonely, often informed by pain.

On other occasions, it is the body submerged in a phosphorescent tide, every movement sparking a trail of illumination.

Afterwards, we sit on the shore in moonlight. No candles are necessary.

Spirituality exists when we are present, buoyed up by the waters of attention.

We learn the courage of faith.

It is a peace that is earned.”

-Terry Tempest Williams

* Sunset Rowboat at Lowtide, Cedar Beach, Connecticut, iPhone4, Camera+app

please click here to see my Freedom photo collages if you are on a mobile device.

It’s Independence Day here in good old U.S. of A.

As Buddhists, we don’t celebrate Independence as much as we do Interdependence, but we do contemplate Freedom quite a bit.

It’s a terrific time to contemplate and reflect on these ideas and our engagement with them in our own lives.

Here are some quotes from my root teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche on Freedom:

Freedom is offering nothing to ego in which it can take comfort.

Freedom is letting yourself go so that you fully experience your existence as a human being.

Freedom is fearlessness. Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to offer your heart to others.

* Flags on Cedar Beach, iPhone4, Camera+ and Diptic apps

*  Summer Beach Clouds all taken on the same day, Cedar Beach, iPhone4, Camera+ and Turbo Collage apps.

please click here to see my photo of the buddha if you are viewing this on your phone.

Last week after I posted What Are We Doing All This For Anyway I got an email from a woman asking if I would be interested in starting what she called a Maitri  Support Group.

I instantly thought it was a genius idea and emailed her back and said yes!

We just had a phone session and I’m super excited about it!!

Pam, who emailed asking about starting a group like this–is an internet marketer and will be helping me  with that end of this project, and I’ll be building, organizing and launching Sept 19th.

The word Maitri is a Buddhist word that means unconditional friendliness to oneself.

I think it’s safe to say we all struggle with self-care, self-love and keeping the focus on ourselves in order to be more available to others.

Some of us don’t even understand how to do those things on a regular basis–or for that matter even what this really means!

In the spirit of the powerful 12-step programs, I’m creating The Maitri Group.

I’ll be holding 2 calls a week where we will have a speaker who will give a short talk on an element of Maitri and then we will go around the circle of whomever is on the call and share whatever is on our mind about the designated topic.

It will be affordable, supportive, and will be a way for you to check in and clear the pipes and be inspired and keep working your Maitri muscle.

This past year, I have had to develop a level of self-care that I had no idea about previously.

As a result of this developing relationship of unconditional friendliness toward myself, which I also like to call unrelenting kindness and radical acceptance of myself, my life has changed in ways that I wasn’t able to change for years.

The changes in me are the result of the self-care and self-love I have insisted on giving myself (actually I sort of had no choice– I was given the gift of desperation!)

When we are suffering or confused, we can get really foggy and languish in indecision and pain. It’s just not necessary to linger there.

We can have amazing lives if we are willing to make the sort of daring leaps required.

Being a part of a weekly support group in the spirit of AA, Alanon, CoDA, and all the other 12 Step programs out there, is a tried and true way of developing what is called Emotional Sobriety.

In the language of Shambhala Buddhism it’s called  Authentic Presence which is what is referred to as our Field of Power–full of integrity, creativity, love, dignity, and fearlessness.

Please help spread the word won’t you? post this on Google+, Facebook etc!

And please subscribe to my blog so that you can stay updated for the coming posts on how to become a part of The Maitri Group launching this fall!

* The Buddha, 14th Street, NYC, iPhone and camera+ app.

Here’s what happened:

I was on the L train yesterday at around 1pm. It was fairly empty in my car–maybe about 15 or so of us.

It was 95 degrees and I was going to stay in Williamsburg in air conditioning as I haven’t put mine in yet and my apartment was getting unbearable.

Across from me on the subway, a guy was sitting there in a Yankees baseball hat. He was in his 20′s, handsome, black, and really fit.

Another guy, wearing a red baseball hat of some sort, skinny, Latin, with a long ponytail, came walking down the middle of the car and said something to the guy in the Yankees hat.

Then the guy in the red hat sat down, took off his glasses and hat and started to talk to the other guy and as he spoke, he stuck his hand out 3 times for the guy to shake it, which the guy wouldn’t. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could see by the Yankees hat guy’s face, it wasn’t going well.

Then all of a sudden, the Yankees hat guy jumped up and was towering over the other guy and as the skinny guy looked up, the Yankee hat guy cold-cocked him right in the face with a closed fist.

He grabbed the guy by the shirt and lifted him off the subway seat and they wrestled down the length of the subway car, the Yankees hat guy seriously pummeling him with his fists the whole way.

He got him into the corner of the end of the car and was really beating on him. The sound was just hideous and sickening.

And then, I found myself standing on my feet screaming at the top of my lungs to STOP IT STOP IT!!

The Yankees hat guy turned and looked at me and I thought I was going to pee my pants, I was so afraid.

But his balled-up fists stayed dangled at his sides. The red hat guy was cowering in the corner with his hands over his head and face.

There was blood everywhere from the red hat guys face, I guess his nose or mouth, dripping all over the floor.

I kept screaming at the guy, threatening to pull the emergency brake of the train, that it was assault and he could go to jail, that it was illegal….I don’t know, I was mostly just trying to make such a scene to get him to stop.

Because this started between 1st ave and Bedford, which is a short distance, I knew somewhere in my mind that we would come to the station any second.

The other people on the train did nothing. The women I can understand, but the men?

This past weekend, my father was particularly struck by an article in the Sunday Times, Moral Dystopia by Maureen Dowd and shared it with me.

It was a timely article for him because the night before, on Saturday,

A neighbor of my parents was giving their son a high school graduation party and had supplied the roughly 100 kids ages 14-18 two kegs among other various bottles of liquor for this party.

All the kids drove to this party in cars.

My father was in an uproar. He went over to the house and told the mother that he was uncomfortable with what was going on and that it was in fact illegal to serve alcohol to minors.

She got in his face and told him  basically to F**k off.

In the article Moral Dystopia, Maureen Dowd makes a particular point of the cowardice of Mike McQueary who walked in on that sexual deviant monster Jerry Sandusky and did nothing, and that cowardice might be an societal epidemic right now.

Back in Brooklyn, the train doors opened at Bedford Ave and I got out. The Yankees hat guy was still cornering the other guy. I was yelling at him, imploring him to Leave it!! You’re gonna get arrested! It’s not worth it! Leave it!! (I was Cesar Milan for a moment commanding him to Leave it!).

The guy was looking right at me. I had a flash of seeing him as a child ( this often happens to me). I said to him, Dude, they’re going to call the cops. Don’t mess up your life. Just walk away. Come out.

Miraculously, he stepped toward me as the doors were closing and I touched his forearm (I know, but I did), and said, Whatever that was, you can’t solve it that way. If you go to jail, then what? What if you had killed him by mistake?

He said, I don’t even know that guy!! He started shit with me.

I said, You can’t beat people dude. It’s no way to solve things. You gotta value your life. Just go!

He stood staring at me. He was about 6’3″ I’m 5’2″. I was looking almost straight up at him.

He smacked the metal post with a flat hand that must have stung. It’s okay I told him.

We walked toward opposite staircases away from each other and I whispered to God to take care of him.

We live in such a violent world. We must fight to transform they ways we are aggressive in speech, thought, and physicality.

We must come together collectively to stand against violence of all sorts when we see it.

This is what makes compassion a force, like the spine of things.

We must commit to the principles of Enlightened Society which are fearlessness and bravery, dignity and tenderness.

I shouldn’t have been the only one to stand up on that train and scream my head off to get the violence to stop.

Please click here if you are viewing on a mobile device so you can see the beautiful photo I shot and be more inspired reading!

I was going to post today and then this came into my inbox and just blew me away because it’s what I have been thinking about listening to people talk about their next business venture, and also in my work coaching people  through hardships and making changes in their lives that they want to make.

So here it is said better than I could ever say it. That’s why she is one of the greatest modern teachers of the dharma that Western Buddhism has ever seen.

It bears asking, are we really practicing, or just feeding ego and therefore fooling ourselves?

May we have the to bravery to be genuine in our lives and to unconditionally accept ourselves.

There is nowhere to get too. There is nothing to improve.

“I’ve known many people who have spent years exercising daily, getting massages, doing yoga, faithfully following one food or vitamin regimen after another, pursuing spiritual teachers, and different styles of mediation, all in the name of taking care of themselves.

Then something bad happens to them and all those years don’t seem to have added up to the inner strength and kindness for themselves that they need to relate with what’s happening.

And they don’t add up to being able to help other people or the environment.

When taking care of ourselves is all about me, it never gets at the unshakeable tenderness and confidence that we’ll need when everything falls apart.

When we start to develop maitri for ourselves, unconditional acceptance of ourselves, then we’re really taking care of ourselves in a way that pays off.

We feel more at home with our own bodies and minds and more at home in the world.

As kindness for ourselves grows, so does our kindness for other people.”

-Pema Chodron

* Salt Marsh, Milford, Connecticut, shot with iPhone and Camera+ app

Please click here to read on my site if you are receiving this on your phone, so you can see the pretty photos, or click display images up top. Even though it’s Monday, would you consider clearing your Saturday or Sunday this coming weekend and not having any plans at all?

I mean like none at all for the entire day.

It’s a way to take Refuge from busy-mind, over-committment, technology, heartbreak, loneliness, stale-mind….all forms of burn-out and killers of creativity and your sex life.

Simplicity is a giant refresh button on the internal screen of the heart/mind.

For me, getting outside, being close to plants and food, being immersed in color, and carving out open-ended time brings a spaciousness, ease of heart and creativity that is full of cool relief and inspiration.

Below is what I did this past Saturday. What can you do for yourself like this?

However you approach it, the main point is how can you be active in self-care/love, slowing down, connecting to earth, giving yourself open space to think and feel.

We thrive in the open space of simplicity.

+ Go to the Farmers Market with your wheelie cart

+ Buy a coffee and almond croissant. Sit somewhere outside and drink and eat watching all the people swirl around you before you shop

+ Walk the farmers market and buy food for the week. Not too much– sugar snap peas, eggs, greens, flying pigs farm english banger sausages, fresh ricotta, strawberries, arugula, milk, maybe a whole chicken to roast if you feel up to it…. + Buy a bunch of basil and about 5 red rip organic tomatoes

+ On the way out of the farmers market, buy Peonies or some other seasonal flower that won’t be around in a few weeks. Buy as many bunches as you can afford + Arrive home at noon or so

+ Put on a pot of water to boil some Cappelinni

+ Dice and de-seed the tomatoes. Place them in a bowl and sprinkle them with a bit of salt and sugar. Let them marinate while you boil the pasta

+ Put your flowers in a vase on your kitchen table– I think glass pitchers make gorgeous vases

+ Dice up some garlic and heat it in olive oil very briefly in a pan. Pour over tomatoes

+ Drain pasta and toss with tomato mixture, more olive oil and Malden Salt

+ Take your scissors and cut up the basil on top of the pasta mixture. Go nuts with the basil–I think it might be an aphrodisiac

+ When you sit down to eat, you will be intoxicated by the smells around you and what you have made

+ Have the courage to smile and appreciate your state because life is really about these sorts of small ordinary magic moments that we string together.

+ Yes, there are deep disapointments and tremendous pain and heartbreak.

+ But we can use the power of simplicity to stay close to the earth and appreciate our lives right here, right now.

+ After your lunch, take off your clothes and take a nap in your bed

+ This is the transcendent power of simplicity, and in simplicity there is renewal and serenity.

And p.s. Go see the movie The Intouchables. It’s heartwarming and funny and will put you in a terrific mood. Plus, the soundtrack is top shelf.

I’m working on a book project with a deadline of December 31, 2012.

Its working title is The Refuge Project: An Active Guide to Self-Care and the Genuine Heart of Sadness.

Or, my other working title is 100 Ways to Ease Your Suffering When Life Hurts Like a MutherFucker.

Whatever the title ends up being, it’s going to take more days like I have been having recently; the kind where I sit down alone and bang each letter out on the keyboard of my computer or make black ink sentences on my pads of paper. For hours. And then more hours. And then do it all again the next day.

Most things get done by consistent small increments.

Whether its tasks or an emotional situation, a little bit of work every day towards the things we are avoiding out of fear, but that when engaged, lead us to a life that is fresh, deep, rich, awake, full of self-expression and honesty.

The ways we are lazy and avoidant end up being so boring ultimately.

Buddhism teaches the importance of daily practice. It’s actually better to sit every day for 10 minutes than once a week for an hour.

Writers need to commit to daily practice too.

I am someone who does really well with support, accountability, inspiration, and a buddy system when it comes to my writing projects.

I recently hired someone to support me reach my writing goals for this summer.

I was thinking this would be a terrific thing to offer to all of you, so in the spirit of supported daily writing practice, I’m offering two terrific Summer Vacation Diamond Cutter packages.

              1.  Summer Vacation Diamonds

For a $300 investment into yourself and your work, you get:

+ We have a 1-hour consult to plan your summer writing project

+ Mid-summer, we have a 1/2 –hour check-in progress call

+ End of summer, we talk one more time for a 1-hour final consult, which includes a 10-page manuscript consultation

+ Email access to me throughout the summer

If you dont’ want the whole package, you can parcel it out this way:

Initial consult only? $150

Additional ½ hour support check-ins? $80 each

Potential page count by end of summer with this program?

Unlimited with the structure and support of writing towards the 2 phone calls with me and the reading of your sample.

2. The Diamond Daily Practice

+ You write a minimum of 2 pages a day for 25 days out of
each month and send me 50 pages

+ We email during the month and a 2 10-minute check-in calls
scheduled by you

+ I read 50 pages and we have a 1-hour phone call before the
end of each month

+ You start the next month and do it all over again

+ By the end of the summer you have a minimum of 150 pages
of a manuscript!

+ $250/month billed monthly for 3 consecutive months

Potential page count by end of summer with this program?

150 pages, but easily 300 if you do 4 pages per day, which you can do because of the daily practice supported by phone calls with me.

Invest in yourself this summer to create something that will last longer than an expensive bikini.

Invest in something that will take you farther than 2 therapy sessions where you talk about why you are procrastinating—you already know why.

Invest into the Summer Diamond Cutters programs, for less than $3 a day. You could make that coffee at home and actually feel the clean unburdened feeling of work done at the end of this summer!!

Is this your time? Is this the summer you are going to commit? I am.

I don’t know about you, but I am a better, funnier, sexier, more carefree person when I am writing and working on my projects.

To do that, I need support and accountability. I’ve bought it, how about you too?

That was a really fabulous call! Truly awesome. You are good at this shit!!! Definitely your superpower!
-Andrea R., Memoir writer

I just wish I had found you sooner…my writing workshops haven’t done in 2 years what you managed with me in 4 months—you gave me permission to write about what I was afraid to write about and gave me the support emotionally to do it. Your presence is AMAZING and you are so fearless! Thank you!!
Jenny D., writer

Summer Vacation Diamonds Package:

Lately, I’ve been putting a lot of effort into changing some emotional habits I have.

In Buddhism, we train to wake up to the ways we are avoiding our lives and our emotions out of fear and past hurts.

This is not easy work by any stretch of the imagination.

Change takes awareness, willingness, razors-edge self-honesty, the ability to tolerate being vulnerable, and a daring leap over and over again into the unknown.

All this is to say: it takes Herculean effort.

It’s also summer here in NYC, and for me, summer is a time to read Emerson.

I came across this quote by him in my readings, and was encouraged and inspired by it.

“We measure ourselves by many standards. Our strength and our intelligence, our wealth and even our good luck, are things which warm our heart and make us feel ourselves a match for life.

But deeper than all such things and able to suffice unto itself without them, is the sense of the amount of effort we can put forth… 

He who can make none is but a shadow; he who can make much is a hero.”

What sort of effort are you making in your life?

Can you lean into the pain and difficulty of a Herculean effort to open up, while at the same time remaining gentle with yourself and others?

Email me at binduwiles@gmail if you are interested in my summer coaching packages, which will change your life!