I don’t accept it anymore- the mind pulling its bullshit with me- on how I did it wrong, how i wasn’t good enough, how I didn’t figure it out, how I should have known better. I just don’t let the mind ramble on. I tell it very simply “Shut Up!!!”

That part of us, the inner critic is poison and needs to be treated like a toxic substance that should be expelled immediately from the mind. Do not entertain it for one second. Tell it to stop and keep telling it to stop until you find peace. I actually am a warrior with this- I do not believe in the kind way or the Zen way where one should just watch what the mind says. Why watch a total lie that keeps you bound? Why allow bombs to drop in your psyche? Why be hurt over and over?

Be the protective Mama Bear to your heart and mind. Do not let this negativity enter in. There is nothing good that comes from the inner critic. It DOES NOT help you be a better, more productive, more resilient person- it only brings you down. The Mama bear protects her young with fierce committment. She will lay down her life for her babies. Treat your heart and mind like little young babes, so innocent and open. They deserve to be held in a state of grace and loving kindness. The Mama Bear will not let mean angry thoughts kill them.

I know this may be hard to do because the inner critic is so hard wired into us. Become vigilant- this means be the watcher of your mind. When you are in crisis or stress- the inner critic becomes alive and will blame you for this. In no uncertain terms tell it to stop.  You might have to do this over and over.  Don’t ever let the inner critic win- it’s only goal is to tear you down.  Stand Tall and tell it to shut the f*** up!

Benjamin  teaches me spiritual lessons every day.  For the last several months, we have slowed down on our walks.  I used to be such a go getter on the hikes-  trying to get as much exercise as possible, trying to go as far as the farthest point,  trying to wear my mind and body out.  I have done  it this way for as long as I have been walking, and now Benjamin is showing me the kinder way.

I walk slow, real slow somtimes.  My walking now reminds me of the walking meditations I have done at retreats.  Walking slow inherently makes me more present.  I get to look around and notice things because there is no place I need to reach anymore.  It’s all in the journey now.  Benjamin likes to stop and lean against me often on the walk.  This stopping allows me to pause the internal chatter as well.  All that matters in that moment, is the reassuring touch I give my boy.

With no destination in my mind,  I get to walk side by side with him, taking in each step.  Sure, the mind is still going, but when I physically slow down- I notice that nature around me captivates me more.  There have been years of walking where I barely noticed the beauty around me because the mind kept me so busy with nonsense.  And now my teacher, Benjamin has asked me to slow down and take in what beauty and gifts Nature and the Present Moment have to offer.

The last 2 years, I have been letting Madeline and Lucille up on my bed! We have a funny routine. Madeline will come sit in front of me and look at me around 1030pm, after our evening walk. This is how she communicates with me- no barking, no whining- just a simple silent longing stare. She either wants affection, food , or the bed and I can figure it out by what time it is! So I walk her into my room and help her get on the bed. She can’t do it herself, poor girl, because of her hip displasia. She gets up and I quickly block her from my side of the bed. She stretches out with her back legs open behind her- like turkey legs, it’s so damn adorable. She closes her eyes and starts to snore instantly.

Around 3 a.m, I wake up instantly to Lucille’s footsteps coming down the hall. She waits at the back door for me to open it. She always has a nighttime pee at this time. It’s the mom mechanism in me that can wake up without effort or pain to to let her out. Then she comes back in and walks to my bed, tail always wagging. She also needs help getting up, she has arthritis in her back legs. I have tried to sleep with both of them on the bed, but its too much- so at this point, I ask Madeline to get off and go to the bed right next to mine. I help Lucille up and then I cover her. She loves to sleep under the comforter.

This is our nighttime ritual almost every night. I love having the girls breathing next to me. I love being in slumber with them. Benjamin meanwhile is very content to sleep right next to the bed on his huge orthopedic mattress. My room is very dark (black curtains help this!), so it feels like a perfect den with our pack of 4. It feels like we are all so connected throughout the night.

I love the bond that sleeping together creates. I tell my clients with difficult dogs- no bed, no couch!, but if rehabilitation happens with your pups- go ahead, ask them back into your bed- spoon your dog and drift off  into dreams together.

I am addicted to thinking. I am not unique- most humans are.  and what is the definition of addiction?  A compulsive behavior done to avoid pain.  People drink to avoid their pain.  People shop to forget about their troubles for a moment.  People overeat to stuff their suffering.  I over think to not sit with painful feelings.

This is how it works:  I have a painful feeling- loss.  I feel it for a moment and it hurts, big time.  I want to stop the pain- so I start to analyze the situation around the loss- why did it happen?  What went wrong?  What was my part?  can I make it stop?  Who can make me feel better?  and on and on and on.  This is repetitive process of picking the situation apart is actually an addiction.  The mind  does it so that it does not have to be quiet and have the feelings surface.  The mind thinks it is doing a good and protective thing, but in actuality- it is prolonging the suffering.

There is a way through, and it is very simple, yet it takes immense courage.  The way out is to sit with all the angst that is there.  Feel it, all of it.  Allow the pain to have a voice.  When the thinking starts- the whys, hows, whens-  gently tell the mind to stop, and instead go into the feeling.  Feel the pain in your body.  Feel the heaviness of  your heart.  Feel the contraction of your belly.  Let the cries and gasps flow freely.  Let is all hang out.

Something deep and profound happens when the thinking stops and the feeling have their space-  healing happens.  Its the kind of healing that over time allows painful patterns to be broken. We all have patterns in our lives-  things we do over and over that are crazy making.  We ask ourselves- “why the hell am I doing this again?”  Its because- we haven’t touched the core of deep pain that is the source of it.  We have pushed it away by thinking, drinking, eating, sex, etc.  These patterns can stop if we give our heart all of its attention.

The mind is a beautiful thing- so creative and analytical.  It always wants a job and its biggest job is to protect us from pain.  Unfortunately  this protection keeps the pain inside, just pushed into the farthest corners.  We need to gently tell the mind to stop, and allow the heart to do its job-  to feel.  Feel it all.  Give pain its freedom from the mind. Once this is done-  peace will arise in heart and mind.  Try it next time you want to think yourself out of a painful problem.  It’s a bit scary the first time you truly feel, but I promise you- you will survive and the heart can then thrive.

Joey reminds me of a monkey- very agile, playful, and goofy.  If he could climb walls to get to the next fun thing, he would.  Joey is a small package of gusto and might-  He loves to be at the center of what’s going on, he makes the most of his walks by being everywhere at once.

He’s a dog’s dog-  he loves them all.  He  greets every new one with enthusiasm and a big wagging tail.  Even curmudgeon’s like Lucille like him.  He brings out the social side of every dog.  He’s his own welcome wagon- that announces  “Hey I am here to just have fun, you gotta join me!”.

Joey loves to dig for gophers.  he can be seen butt to butt with Miss Madeline trying to get the squeeky little mouse out of the hole.  He also loves to run up and down the trails. He’ll come barreling down to me and sit in front of me with great satisfaction, when I call him.

Joey is a dog that loves his life.  He’s a happy boy, no doubt about it and he makes me appreciate the hours I get to spend with him.  He reminds me to greet everyone with a smile and  find fun around every corner.  Life is an adventure with Joey around.

Sunday night-  Benjamin was up all night vomiting and shaking.  He could not get comfortable- pacing, digging, panting.  Needless to say, I was up all night with him too.  By 9am, I decided to take him to the hospital.  He was there all day- getting blood work , xrays, and fluids.  All the tests came back normal.  So we have no idea why this happened.  I am not sure I like that outcome.

Poor guy was so exhausted- he has been sleeping since 7pm last night and its now  10am.  I just want his body to rest and recuperate.  He felt soooo bad.

How did I handle this?  I kept myself from going into a deep panic, but I was a crying girl at the vet’s.  I just don’t know how not to take on his pain.  I actually think I take it on 100 times more than what he is experiencing because I put fear on top of the pain.  I create stories that shouldn’t exist like  ” He is scared”  “He is not going to get better.”  “He is helpless.”  I am reading a great Zen book that talks about a simple technique that can begin to put space between the scary thoughts and yourself.  It tells you to label your thoughts as they are happening.  So instead of saying  “Benjamin is scared.”  I would say  “Having a thought that Benjamin  is scared.”  What this clearly does is show the possibility that the thought may not be true. Just because I am thinking it does not make it true.

Someone said “the mind is a scary neighborhood to live in.”  I am going to start to planting new thoughts and raking old ones away in my neighborhood.  I want to make mine more inhabitable so that I can drive through it  without so much worry that I will be hijacked by a scary thought.

I want to showcase all the dogs I walk, so over the next many months, I will give each of them their space on my blog.

Pippin is Joy expressed. When I pick her up from her house, she is makes these adorable eeeehhh sounds as she races down the stairs to my truck. She sits up front with Madeline and Lucille often. On the way to the park, she is shaking in the seat and eeeehhhhing the whole way. She knows somewhere there is a ball in my truck. I love to joke with her and make funny sounds back at her. Then she will lean over and give me a solid puckered kiss right on my lips. We are buddies on our way to an adventure.

Once out of the truck, she looks at me and waits with her big eyes wide open, asking “where is it, I know you have one!” Depending on the dog pack that day, I will bring a ball out or not. If the group has big intense excitable energy, I have to fore go the ball- I don’t want a fight breaking out over it. But usually, Miss Pippin has her dream realized.

Pippin will fetch over and over and over again and the entire time, her tail never stops wagging. She is a “high drive” dog. This means she is a working dog. She could be finding drugs along the mexican border, finding people lost in avalanches or even detecting when a seizure will hit someone. She has that insatiable need to do, work, and play.

Pippin makes me laugh a lot. She looks like a cartoon character- big head, big eyes, big smile and big personality. She is so full of life that she gives me inspiration to smile and find joy in whatever is happening. Pippin has one rule: Love Life.

I think most of us don’t like endings.  They can ignite a fear of loss and loneliness.  They can bring on feelings of emptiness, they can even feel like death.  We will resist against an ending, perhaps pushing something to keep something going even when Life is showing us its time to let go.  No one wants to mourn that something is over.

What if we looked at endings as beginnings instead?  What if we saw that the end of something was really the birth of something greater?  Nature is perfect in its timing of life and death.  It lets go exactly when it is time to begin again.  A flower wilts and dies just as its seeds around have taken hold into the earth.  Sometimes the connection of life and death is not so transparent. We might need to let go and grieve fully for a time, and then God brings someone into our life to bring new love when we least expect it.

The sun sets and fades out of our view, bringing an ending to the day, but in its place, is the bright round moon ready to shine its light on a new night.  Today, I choose to believe in the birth of  new love and awareness , as the old one leaves from my view.

What I love most about my dogs is the feeling I get from being with them. Quite simply- its Big Love. It is so big that there are no words to adequately explain it. There is the constant hum of it, then every so often there is a bliss wave that rides in that takes me over.

I got it yesterday on Benjamin’s evening walk. I stop usually every 5 minutes or so, and he always makes his way over to me when he sees that I have stopped. he leans up against me and rests. I talk to him then, telling him what a good boy he is. Then I will often look back at his little nub and see it wagging. The moment was pure connection. My heart opens so wide , its like a huge inside grin. The love can’t be contained, it flows over and out of me.

I think this is what the sages would call Samadhi. The dogs make it easy to reach this state because they ignite in us a heart expanding phenomena. It is easy to forget about time and lay with your dogs in all their glorious silliness. It is easy to forget the past bad day while your dog looks at you with such sweet earnestness. It is easy to stop fretting about tomorrow’s big stressor when your dog gives you his paw as if to appease your worries.

If you are one that finds it hard to meditate in the traditional sense of butt on pillow ,sitting tall. Do what I do- just lay around with your dogs. Stretch out your body next to their warmth, and DO NOTHIING but soak them in. This is Meditation. This is your Present Moment. This is Life Bliss.