Samskara

I have been reading the book The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer.  Singer explains aspects of meditation in very Western ways, thus making it very accessible to the Western mind.  In the book he explains the Sanskrit word Samskara in the following way:” a Samskara is a blockage, an impression from the past.  It’s an unfinished energy pattern that winds up running your life.”  As a therapist this fascinates me because I know that when someone goes through trauma they wind up with PTSD.   I would describe PTSD much the way Singer describes the trapped energy of Samskara “When a Samskara is stimulated, it opens like a flower and begins to release the stored energy.  Suddenly, flashes of what you experienced when the original event took place rush into your consciousness – the thoughts, the feelings, sometimes even the smells and other sensory input.  The Samskara can store a complete snapshot of the event.”  This is exactly how I would describe PTSD, (minus the flower opening – way to beautiful a description for a PTSD flashback which is usually very painful.) 

 In the therapy community it is usually acknowledged that there is big T trauma (near death or annihilation of self experiences) , but that all of us have small t experiences: experiences of loss, humiliation, fear, hurt that we also carry inside us.  EMDR (Eye Movement, Desensitization and Reprocessing) is considered the treatment of choice for PTSD.   It is a process that through bi-lateral stimulation (rapid eye movement right and left, or tapping right then left side of body rapidly) while focusing on the trauma memories creates a brain state that allows the person to re-evaluate the stored painful memory and release the negative conclusions and patterns that have been accumulated over it.  Singer describes how through mindfulness one can watch our energy, can watch how certain stimulate trigger old memories and feelings (Samskara) and rather than blocking off to that which is arising one can simply notice and release it.

This all related in an interesting way to a spiritual issue for me.   My ex-husband was a pathological liar and an alcoholic.  As a result much drama and painful experiences took place, especially involving ways he brought our young daughter in to his dramas.  I worked over and over to forgive him because I did not wish to carry anger or pain with me (or Samskara would be a better way to explain it).  But every time I did a new incident would occur.  I eventually felt he had created spiritual damage to me.  (I did not have words for it, but it was Samskara; I was aware that I was less trusting and less open hearted and I was sad about that.)  I have watched my daughter grow into an open hearted person and felt fear for her as to what injuries she was leaving herself open to.

As I sat reflecting upon all this, trying to see how to open my heart and release these hurts and noticing my own resistance, I watched the familiar litany of complaints against him; the unalienable sense I had arrived at 25 years after knowing him that I simply could not even interact with him any more because it was so toxic.  But this time I tried to just “observe it all” just notice it all.   Suddenly I noticed with my now adult and completely amazing daughter sitting beside me that one of the greatest experiences of my life has been being her mother.   I realized that without him in my life I would never have had this experience or have know this amazing soul!  I realized that I had closed off the energy, held the hurt because my relationship with him had started (like all do) in beauty and hope with a promise of a great witness to all around us about redemption, and then it felt as if he had betrayed all that promise in trade for a bottle of alcohol.  It felt like the limb I had gone out on in marrying him (risking the disapproval, judgement and rejection of all kinds of people) had simply snapped off.   I realized that it was my own attachment to the picture of what I thought my marriage would be, and subsequent stubborn refusal to re-evaluate it for anything other than him “ruining” what it was suppose to be, that had kept me from noticing what the event really was: the introduction of a great blessing into my life – my daughter.

I reflected as well on earlier Samskara from earlier in my childhood which also set me up to push against life’s hardships rather than soften, observe them, notice their gifts, remain unattached to them, etc.   So the spiritual problem of forgiveness which I have struggled with for years, turns out to be more about staying open to the moment, releasing my preconceptions or expectations, being willing to discover what life is really presenting me, not what I ordered up or wished for.

What does Your Soul have to Tell You?

The title would almost seem to imply that we are sitting having a conversation with our soul which is not what I mean.  However, if the soul is God within, this at minimum suggests a different path to hearing God.  Sometimes I have the experience, described elsewhere, of sitting on the banks of the River of God.  This is the experience for me of listening to my soul and its connection to eternal time, and all the rushes of humanity thru all time, humans grasping for survival, growth and joy.  It is a profound experience when I can sit on the banks of the River of God.  Usually I am dropped into this by some sort of reflective experience that connects me to a sense of the eternal human struggle: big crowds in timeless cities, some reminder of the various ways humans have gone about some basic task, or the timelessness of human rituals of love, childrearing, and death, or some reminder of the universality of human traits/behaviors across cultures and eras.  Sometimes I can get on the banks of the River of God from simply sitting quietly and alone somewhere where I can hear the indistinguishable sound of human voices at a distance: not close enough to make out words or even emotion, but just the babbling brook of human existence.

And if one believes in reincarnation the soul also holds the life wisdom of many lifetimes and so therefore holds the greatest truth we know.  Those who believe in reincarnation will say that some of the things the soul remembers are things like how we died, accounting for "irrational" fears of heights, water, things around the neck, etc.   But for the soul to serve us well it must remember more than what it fears, it must also bring us towards other familiar souls with a willingness to do it differently, to do it better than last time.   And it must bring us to this life with a goal and a purpose.  

If you believe in karma not as punishment for past failings, but as an attempt to live more wisely than last time, then the soul can come with a goal.  Examples of this: I remember dying in two different war;, I came to this life not only born to two pacifists (too guarantee my own intended path?) but with a determination to work for peace and disarmament.  I know someone who says she knew as a child she would be in a life threatening car accident...which she indeed was suffering a severe life altering brain injury.   She says she came to learn about power, and about the not-wielding of external worldly power but rather of self-directed power.  Another person I know has been chronically ill for several decades; she has struggled against not being able to "do" things in the world but finally realized she's been left with one always present endeavor: the focus on her spiritual life.   She realized with some surprise that if she had come to focus on the spiritual life she could not have set the table more perfectly.

If you think also of what it is like when you act in accord with your conscience, when you take action for what you deeply within you know to be right, even at great cost....this I think is also listening to what our soul has to tell us.  I have known many people in my life who were called to acts of civil disobedience, as have I been.  Quite commonly is the holding of the question: should I do this? and some spirit filled experience of answer - some inward prompting which will not quit.   This I think is the soul speaking to us, of the Truth it knows, as well as about our life's purpose.  This is an aligning of our outer actions with our inner knowing.

Radical Acceptance: A book review

Book review of Radical Acceptance: Embracing your Life with the Heart of  a Buddha by Tara Brach

In Chapter 6 the Radical Acceptance of Desire Tara Brach says: "When I was first introduced to Buddhism in a high school world studies class, I dismissed it out of hand.  It seemed irrelevant to my life - grim in its concern about attachment and, apparently, anti-pleasure.  Sure, maybe we all suffer, but why dwell on it?" (p. 128)  Tara's first reaction to Buddhism very succinctly summarizes my own first reaction to Buddhism.  However,having known a number of Buddhist in my adult life and in the last decade beginning to learn about Buddhism, I like Tara, have come to understand what a superficial and incorrect first impression of Buddhism that was/is.  As she later says:  "The Buddha expressed this in the first Noble Truth: 'Existence is inherently dissatisfying'.  When I first heard this teaching in high school in its most common translation as 'life is suffering,' I of course thought it meant life is nothing more than misery and anguish.  But the Buddha's understanding of suffering was subtler and more profound.  We are uncomfortable because everything in our life keeps changing - our inner moods, our bodies, our work, the people we love, the world we live in.  We can't hold on to anything - a beautiful sunset, a sweet taste, ...because all things come and go." (P. 133)

I do recommend Radical Acceptance because so far of the works written about Buddhism which I have read it makes it the most accessible to a western mind.  It is helpful that the examples are all of clients and retreat participants, other clueless westerns like myself, rather than ancient, venerable Eastern monks, who while very wise are completely unlike me.  As a therapist myself I believe all people are either shame base or guilt based (dependent entirely upon your parents style of discipline as you grew up.)  Generally we do not understand the other frame of mind.  Tara's writing is very much to those who are shame based - as someone whose not, I did have to do some translation of those parts.   For those who are shame based and western, this book will speak deeply to your soul.

I appreciate how her different twist on traditional Buddhist teachings which I have encountered else where made them more accessible to me.  For example, in her third chapter - the Sacred Pause: Resting under the Bodhi Tree she talks about paying attention to the pause between the in breath and the out breath.  All other instruction I've had on breathing as part of meditation have said to focus on in- and then out-  which either board me, or got me too hyper focused as to unrelax my breathing and actually hyperventilate.  Throughout this chapter she also weaves in a wonderful narrative about living with a pause between action and inaction - the pause of reflection... which for me somehow finally brought home the point of the whole thing.

The chapter on Radical Acceptance of Desire - also stands on its head the misinterpretation of Buddhism ( or spirituality) as a rejection of desire (and/or sexuality.)  And instead talks about being mindfully aware of our desires as they arise.  Instead of judging, rejecting or feeling them - being relaxedly aware of them, conscious of when we do - or don't act on them.  Tara points out the great energy that makes up desire and says that when not fighting it or surrendering to it that desire is the source of great energy and drive within us which when joined with spirituality can move one in profound ways.

As someone who knows that fear is the thing which most quickly and reliably takes me out or relationship with God I also appreciated chapter 7: Opening our Hearts in the Face of Fear.  Here she takes the concept of taking refuge in the Buddha (another concept until then meaningless to me) and transforms this in a very meaningful way as a spiritual practice in the face of fear - of "taking refuge in the truth of who we are".  The very words are grounding to me - causing me to breath out - releasing the fear, returning to my truth self.   "Our fear is great, but greater still is truth of our contentedness" she quotes the Buddha as saying.

Throughout her book, and especially in Chapter 10 on forgiveness, she reminds us again and again of our contentedness to all sentient beings and our own basic goodness.  Such a message is either utterly new for some readers - or a balm to the soul for other readers.  Forgiveness is something that most people I know struggle with - whether it is of self or of other.  Tara points out how closely tied these two efforts really are.  While I have previously learned the spiritual practice of the meditation of loving kindness -she ties this in a new way to the practice of forgiveness.

I had started a new prayer practice during the time I was reading this book so I'm not sure which caused a significant deepening for me spirituality but I recommend this book as a good entry into the New Year!

Miracles

What is a miracle?  Certainly Judaism names any number of miracles in the old Testament that God is said to have brought about: the parting of the Red Seas - the pregnancy of Sarah, etc.   Christianity claims any number of miracles that Jesus was suppose to have accomplished: the raising of Lazereth from the dead, the feeding of a whole crowd with just loaves and fishes, making the lame able to walk, and the blind to see again.  Apparently Buddha acknowledged certain supernatural powers but said they were not to be used by his followers except to relieve the suffering of others and then they were miracles.  Interesting discussions have taken place over the centuries about whether the above mentioned events were literal events or metaphors about faith's ability  to give us new life, to create abundance from little, to give us new site or new possibilities.  And I must confess that when I approach these questions on the metaphor level I am able to recognize that I have heard stories that are indeed miraculous of people turning over a new leaf and coming to a new life, of how with an abundance mindset financially impossible things become possible, amazing stories of people being transformed my their own new insights or their own willingness to heal.  (I recommend any number of such stories that Wayne Dyer tells.)

I think those that have focused on measuring whether religion is "True" based upon improbable stories of miracles have unfortunately missed the boat entirely.  While looking to whether science could validate or explain the reported miracles, they have missed the miracle that is science every day all day long.  I mean even though we understand how reproduction and birth works...anyone that has ever watched a woman's belly swell for 9 months and watched a baby be born into the world knows that the ordinary is in fact quite miraculous.

Here are some other miracles:  that birds fly and that in mimicking them we do too.   that we have sight and that the world is so spectularly beautiful!  That on a remarkably regular basis total strangers do acts of kindness for others they do not know - including saving people's lives.   That those who survived the 9/11 towers did even while others perished (and if you listen to their stories many are miraculous in the curious exceptions that took them out of the buildings)  That I have have not been killed in a car accident (do you know the feeling?  If we are truthful we have all had so many near misses whether our fault or someone else's  There is an angel that hangs in my car and that is NOT accident, but an acknowledgement that Spirit keeps me safe)  It is in fact a miracle in each our cases that a great great great grandfather survived a war and came home to bare off spring, and that a great grandmother survived the scarlet fever and thus became a mother to your grandparent.  Then there is the very ordinary miracles: that I passed algebra in HS, that we open our eyes each day, that we have sight, hearing and mobility (assuming you indeed do) that our immune systems worked so well to keep us healthy, that people meet their spouse out of the millions of people on the planet, etc.

Dear Reader please post one of your miracles here.

Somehow we have become confused about miracles - because we think the are the Red Seas parting or a dead man rising we are failing to recognize and celebrate the miracles that happen everyday.  We fail to notice the Divine at work in our daily lives, and thus also to give Thanksgiving for the many Blessing we are each showered with in the most miraculous of ways.   Celebrate your Miracles!

Easter Eggs and other Prayers

I have struggled for years to have a daily (well nightly actually) prayer practice.   Although for years my daughter and I have said prayers allowed with each other - saying first thanks for that which we found to be a blessing in the day and then saying prayers for each other.  But I have wanted something more than that.  Recently at a public meeting a man well known for his work for social justice shared his daily prayer practice.  I was very touched by it.  It inspired me to once again focus on this.

Another thing which made me focus on this is that as a therapist I have read the literature about health and happiness.  The literature is pretty clear people who have religious lives are both happier and live longer.   And happier people express more gratitude about life.  (Literature also says 50% of happiness seems to be inherited...just an uptick we are born with.   For some of us this is NOT good news because we know what we inherited!  However, only 10% is circumstance the rest is considered to be in our control and the attitudes we hold towards life.)   So I have been trying to get serious about my attitudes!  I realized wistfully that unfortunately, I learned nothing about gratitude from my parents.  Its not that they were grim miserable people. But they were private about their spiritual lives, so if gratitude was part of their inner life I don't know.   But outwardly they were task oriented - please and thank you were not big words in my family and there was also a rather prominent tragedy in my childhood and that took focus certainly away from gratitude.

But I'm very aware of the deep and meaningful gratitude with which many people I know live.  A friend of mine got out of prison after spending 30 years behind bars.  It was amazing to watch him hug a tree for the first time in 30 years, pet a cat...how a pine cone on the side walk could turn him to tears.  It was a very poignant and powerful reminder to me that I have taken for granted the small joys and beauties of life.  This same friend sent me this link one day called gratitude:   I encourage you to watch it.  It is certainly also a powerful reminder of all that we overlook.  So I decided I was going to look for the blessing in my life.   At the moment I decided it I was feeling rather down, and thus felt like it was going to be a hunt.   The image popped to mind of an easter egg hunt...hidden just barely peeking out beautifully colored and decorated eggs, put there with love.   I shared this image with a worship sharing group I belong to and several indicated that they too wanted to look for Easter Eggs.

So that was the first part of the nightly prayer practice.  Step two was about looking at the bad, but in a new way.   The happiness scientists now say we can teach children optimism.  This involves teaching that the bad is temporary and the good is permanent.   We still have to look at the problems of course.   A client of mine had encountered in some other kind of therapy this very magical question to ask when we feel everything is terrible.  The question is:  How could it get any better than this?  Of course on first glance this seems ironic or even sarcastic.  But if you stare seriously at the question you begin to realize that it is an invitation to bring our imagination to seeing our way forward and up. It helps us begin to project a better future.  So my second prayer stop is to review one upset of the day and apply this question.

Like many I have read Jampolsky's Love is Letting go of Fear..where he says among other things we are either in love or in fear.  I know the truth of this, and I'm not proud of the fact that too often I am in fear.  Although I know that fear is what brings me into "God who?" (mentioned in other blog posts), and I know that the best thing for me to do with fear is to bring God right into it -to give my fear over to the Almighty. This has been the hardest thing for a scared brain to remember.  So my prayer step is to ask myself: am I in Love or fear?  And if I find I am in fear to then bring that fear to the All Powerful One.

Step four is the old familiar pattern I shared with my daughter of offering prayers for others.  I say my prayers for those in my life whose struggles I am aware of - asking for healing of their hearts or bodies, to find right work, for Americans to make good choices about Climate change or choose wise national leaders.  Ask for those who are lost or lonely to find direction, etc.  Ask for courage for those who are carrying a leading, etc.  I have been taught to focus on visualizing the desiring and not on the problem.  ie not to ask that someone's unemployment will end, or even that they will find a job, but to say thank you for the job having arrived in their life now.  To ask that something will is to keep it in the future tense.  My prayers are worded to place them in the present tense.

I have been very influenced by Wayne Dyer as I have mentioned in other blogs, especially what he has written about living with intention.  Interestingly, our happiness scientists also say that living with purpose and with a sense of efficacy increases our happiness.  Dyer refers to some research that says that what we go to sleep thinking about sets sort of "marinates" while we sleep.  So I have wanted to end my prayers and my thoughts with positive intentions for the next day.  So I first review in my mind what I am doing the next day, and then I set certain intentions - to see and speak that of God in my clients, to express love in the world, to notice beauty, to notice the people in the grocery store as real people, etc. 

So here it is my nightly journaling prayer ritual:  

It begins with listing 3 to 5 Easter Eggs = the blessings of that day.

Then I write one thing which upset me and ask the magic question:  "How could it get any better than this?" (and answer it of course)

Third I ask myself: am I in love or fear?   I turn over to the Comforter whatever fears I identify or ask the Holy One into the fearful or terrible place in my heart.  And if I am somehow resistant to that I ask My Holy Parent for the willingness to turn the fear over.

4. Prayers for others
Finally, I set my intention for the next day, and hope that I will both fall asleep and awake with that positive thought in my mind.

An Ocean of Love - a poem

Torn from my birth mother

  Too young

      Too young to know a Heavenly Mother’s arms,

No container to hold my tears

 To boundary my endless grieving.

God came later, in the male energy form of the Divine:

Initiator, driver, knower, truth finder, truth creator

How many more years till I would know the Goddess?

Comforter, nurturer, intuiter,  creator, lover.

Cry on the breast of Mother Earth she said.

The tears and sobs coming freely.

As I realize the healing of not just me, the individual orphan,

But of a paradigm – that sees us as separate from, above, master of

And then no longer separated from Her Love

Comes the Ocean of Love,

Touching into the endless memories of people loving me

Of the love connection between us all

The irrelevance of so many imperfect love vessels –

Yes it is incomplete love, but love none the less poured through these imperfect vessels.

And love not just present, not just immediately past, but I feel the love of my grandmother

And I feel the love of those who loved her who I knew only in pictures and

The people who loved them, unknown,  faceless, stretching back in an unbroken line of love,

Holding fevered babies, toiling in the fields to feed them, binding up wounds of loved ones –

Worrying, guiding, cherishing, celebrating the ones we love.

All this love has taken me in, no longer the match girl looking into the mansion from the cold,

For I now know that I belong to the Manson filled with this ocean of Love.

This timeless march of love.

That when those moments of feeling rejected, left out or without come

That I have simply to connect with that Ocean of Love to be again in that Mansion.

But what of fear, the insidious companion of 3 years of her dying?

The fear also needed the Goddess: the comforter, the nurturer,

The breast or the earth to lay upon.

There is a pause – a pause when we are not running , or

Fighting, or freezing,  - a pause before the breath in

A pause before the breath out

And in that Pause Goddess lives!

And in that pause is Eternity!

And in that pause is no fear.

Just as the Ocean of Love contains all Love from all time

So the pause contains whatever love needs

Comfort, connection, kindness,joy, excitement, love,

These are the Easter Eggs lay waiting to be found in each day

And I the seeker!

Calling all Angels

Another theological question would be : Are there angels?

Crimson Glory sings;                                                   
We fly without fear
Through the valley of shadows
Waging our war against evil
In your world
We rule the heavens and earth
From kingdoms of light
We are the holy

This sort of alludes to the popular notion of Angels as dressed in white robes with wings and halos, sent to save us or to bring us home.  Angels of God that fight evil.  With that image comes the question of whether we can see angels when we are alive or only as we face death? and whether angels actions are direct or indirect?

In the Lyrics to Calling All Angels, Train seems to suggest that Angels save in the way of bringing us hope, reminding us of the presence of God and keeping us safe.

I need a sign, to let me know you're here...
I need to know, that things are gonna look up....

When there is no place safe and no safe place to put my head
When you can feel the world shake from the words that are said

And I'm, calling all Angels
And I'm, calling all you Angel

Certainly throughout the ages people have called on angels to protect them and often those who were sainted by the Catholic church were called upon specifically to provide certain kinds of protection.  St. Christopher is said to protect travelers, St. Anthony was to protect "lost souls" and apparently the archangel Michael had time also to protect people's home.   Although in this idolatrous age a google search of ANGELS to protect the home will still bring up several home security systems first, so certainly the 21st century folk have some confusion about where our real protection comes from.

Christianity is not the only religion that has the concept of angels.  Buddhism has the concept of devas, (different word in different Asian cultures) who are luminous beings who do not eat or sleep and who fly. They can be seen or heard by those humans who have developed their spiritual powers. They are not however immortal, all knowing, all powerful and there are considered to be several levels of devas.  

Muslim belief in angels is not that different than traditional Christian belief in angels. They are beings of light with wings who do not eat. The Koran also mentions angels specifically Gabriel (Jibreel) and Michael (Mika'eel) as well as Israfeel and Malik.  Although Muslims do not believe in any fallen angels.   But similarly they see angels as executing God's laws in the world, visiting people at the time of death, recording the behavior of humans for the day of judgement and acting as guardians keeping us safe, and keeping paradise.  One breathes the soul into fetus, sort of assigning its fate in life!

I myself am agnostic about angels with wings or spirits who come to us at death (despite my love of the old tv show Touched by an Angel which included a rather good looking angel of death.)  But I do believe in a kind of angel that has no halo.  I after 3 car accidents in rather short order in my late 20's hung a Christmas ornament of an angel that a friend had made and given me in my car.  I was never in another car accident (although heaven knows, literally, how many near misses there were.)   When that angel became very faded and bedraggled I eventually decided that she needed an honorable retirement, and got a new angel ornament.  Right now I'm on my third car angel.  Does this mean that I believe in little beings in white robes protecting me like the object suggests?   No, I think in the sense that countless New Age writers suggest we create (or co-create)with the Divine our own reality and this includes setting intention.  I believe as I hang my angel I am setting an intention to not get into car accidents and putting it out to the universe that I will be kept safe. I have given two other friends after they also had a series of accidents, angels to hang in their cars.  I believe the fierceness of my own belief worked like a placebo to make them also believe that they would be kept safe, and both so far have been.

I have always put out to the universe that I would not be raped and I never have although I think I was on at least one occasion skating over thin ice to avoid that fate (guarded by an angel?).   I similarly after having being pick pocketed several times in my 20's and once having my home burglarized put it out to the universe that I would be safe and not robbed.  I so strongly believe that my intentions keep me safe (not "security systems") that I have at times not locked my car or my home, bowing only to the needs of others I share these things with to use locks.  But I have also believed that if anything was taken from me that apparently the thief needed it more. Apparently this practicing of non-attachment is translated very interestingly by the universe.  I have had a bike stolen and recovered.  A wallet lost and returned with half a month's pay in cash in side it and a car stolen (while I was out of the country and it was locked!) and reclaimed by the police before I even got home!  I simply do not have fear about this, and I believe my "faith" in my safety actually protects me.

Once while walking in a neighborhood primarily populated by a racial group not my own, two teenage boys came by and snatched the hat off my head and started playing catch with it tossing it back and forth between them, taunting me with it as I screamed for them to give it back.  Suddenly a man of their same racial group drove around a corner in a little yellow VW bug and told them sternly to give it back and they did!  This is the kind of angel I believe in.

The best Cat I ever had was named Mr. Cat after his dignified and gentlemanly ways.  After he died I realized however, that I had been overlooking the presence of an angel in my home for over a decade!  People talk about angels looking over their children while they sleep.  Mr. Cat would literally sit on the bed and help me tuck my daughter in at night, but then he would sleep next to her head on the pillow watching over and comforting her. He indeed was always watching over us extending comfort.  He would actually come when I sat on my couch holding the hand of a crying friend and put his paw on our hands and lie down.  Unlike other cats who would drop their eyes in submission if you stared at them he had an unblinking gaze that seemed to ooze love, compassion and wisdom.  He was always there somewhere in the background sending this energy.  I was a single parent for many years and he died only after I remarried.  I realized that he had come and served as co-parent.  He was an angel, sent my God and I mean that truly.

In our society we often say about a person who rescues us, or bring us something or has remarkable timing, or shows much kindness:  "Oh you are such an angel".   Maybe we need to start taking that inner knowing much more seriously.  For if angels are to help us know God on earth than our fellow humans are not exempt from being God's angels.  Consider for a moment who are the angels that have shown up in your life?  By accident or intention?  Familiar or strangers?

For many years when I lead workshops on spiritual topics I would do just like the old "secret Santa" routine, "secret angels".   People would pick out of a paper bag the name of one of the participants in the workshop and during the week we were together they were to do secret acts of kindness, comfort and encouragement...they were to think of how to shine the light of God into that person's life.  People were not infrequently more touched by thinking about another in this way than what they received during that week.  Once I accidentally left someone's name out of the bag, and this was a person with a handicap  who struggled in life in many ways who was very much dismayed to loose out on this.  I was also distraught because of this mistake and chagrinly announced this on the last day of our conference.   Then a thing of Grace happened. Numerous participants did special anonymous angel acts for her in the remaining day of the conference signing them Your Secret Angels.  She tearfully approached me to tell me this and told me she had learned from this to trust God patiently even when all visible signs would indicate that the spirit was not available, and to know that God acts in God's own time.  I learned that if I called on angels, that they would act even despite my own human fallibility.