Smoke, Self-Acceptance and... Spices in Everyday Ramblings

Dried crepe myrtle blossoms with leaf litter from Thursday.

Right now it is sort of sunny (with heavy fire haze, we had the red sunrise) and cooler and then tomorrow the rains return. This is going to take some adjusting to as we are not normally known as having a dry season and a wet one but as we all know we are in for Mr. Toad’s Wild Weather Ride.

We have barely had any rain, less than half an inch for 90 days and it is obvious everywhere.

I have been listening (and sometimes watching) lectures and conversations all this week from the Self Acceptance Summit that Sounds True is presenting. At first I was just going to listen to my favorites, Kristin Neff and Tara Brach who are both incredibly bright and have a Buddhist inflection to their work on self-compassion.

But I am actually getting little nuggets of wisdom even from the more new age presenters that are motivational workshop oriented as opposed to simply being grounded in the Buddhist or Yogic traditions.

It has been interesting from a teaching point of view, not only content but style. I am once again impressed by how much more effective relaxed, open hearted and humorous teaching is, than insecure or in one case this mish mash of all received wisdom currently out there on this topic of self-compassion and awareness.

But also I think at this late date I finally get it that we all, or almost everyone, has this internal critic that speaks to us in a way that we would never consider speaking to someone we love.

(Unless of course we are the mentally ill president of the United States.)

What a radical concept it is to meet that voice with kindness!

So I went to Penzey’s the spice store yesterday before class to get some cardamom seed, which I like to add to the pan when I cook eggs and I thought to ask the lovely knowledgeable store clerk what type of cinnamon she recommended I choose for baked apples.

As we turn towards fall I am making more warm apples and usually I just sprinkle cinnamon on them. I have graduated from adding a little brown sugar as unnecessary because I am getting these sweet (expensive) organic Gala apples and peeling them.

They had about five different kinds of cinnamon in this chest level display and each one had this broad glass bowl with a lid with that particular version in it. She picked up one bowl, took the lid off and handed it to me and I was like oh cool I can taste it, so I stuck my finger in to get a taste. And there was a look of almost horror on her face.

It tasted yummy by the way, sweet. :)

After that I got that I was supposed to smell the bowls. That was what I was supposed to do. She presented each one to me.

I chose the less sweet Ceylon Cinnamon that she told me was a different plant than the others. It has this earthy quality that I think will go well with the sweet apples. We had a friendly conversation while she rang my purchases up and she suggested I try a little butter when I cook the apples and that sounds like a good plan.

But as I was leaving my inner critic went into overdrive.

I was supposed to know not to do that! I am a failure as a culinary explorer, how totally inappropriate and so on and blah blah blah.

I tried turning some kindness towards myself at that point. And it helped.

Then later I told my students, as we were getting ready for class. They wanted to smell my cinnamon so we had a lovely sensory spice interaction and my minister student who is so incredibly kind said, “But how would you know???” She modeled the compassionate response.

And then went on to tell a story about the charter school her local grandkids go to.

Princess Hungry Ghost (what I call my inner critic these days) was, like, yeah I get that. How would she know? I was trying to protect her from social embarrassment but you know I’d rather just try one of those baked apples with butter and the new cinnamon. Okay?

Last updated September 16, 2017