Iin this conversation, Cheri Maples talks about her experience as a high achiever who sacrificed being in favor of doing… and how she came to find balance between both.

For 25 years Cheri Maples worked in the criminal justice system, as an Assistant Attorney General in the Wisconsin Department of Justice, head of Probation and Parole for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, and as a police officer with the City of Madison Police Department, earning the rank of Captain of Personnel and Training.

In 2008 she was ordained a dharma teacher by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, her long-time spiritual teacher. She is now a dharma teacher and organizational consultant and trainer. She works with individuals and organizations in the justice system and the helping professions who must manage the emotional effects of their work, while maintaining an open heart and healthy boundaries. See: mindfulnessandjustice.org.

Published: May 2011

Transcript of the above recording:

So, just human… Just human… So, for me that is in contrast to those times when we talk about something transcendent, something like religious ideas, ideologies, and something out there that gives meaning… Whereas — just human — we are at the center of meaning [as something essentially subjective].

So, just human… Just human… As we focus on the experience, this experience is also going to be something that’s going to affect our sensations, our felt sense, moment by moment. We slow down, we pause. We’re not just carried away by big things. We pause, we check inside. As we pause and check inside, we also notice the other person, or the other people, as people. And so again, from the place of just human, we communicate with each other as human beings, as opposed to obstacles in the way of something transcendent. When we are in that mode — paying attention to our experience — even when we are exploring big ideas or transcendent experiences…

When we pay attention to our own experience, we are away from the realm of the black and white, the simplistic, the “this is right” and “this is wrong”. We are in a much murkier zone, a grayer zone, where words don’t necessarily have simple meanings. This is the “hmm”, the pausing, paying attention to it… And so we’re very much in a Focusing mode. And Focusing is the attitude, the tool, the language that enables us to explore that area of “just human”… of human experience… In which we can touch upon the trivial, but also the sublime, in such a way that we can feel the richness and complexity of it. And we can build bridges to communicate, develop the richness and complexity of it with other people who do not necessarily come from the same point of view. That’s the beauty of being just human.