How will I recognize you?
]]>You have an infinite capacity for kindness. You have the capacity to be infinitely kind.
I believe in you. Will you believe in me until I'm ready to believe in myself?
]]>I have this idea that I need to go to Karme Chöling and spend an entire day circling the site of the Vidyadhara's internment with an open mind and an open heart. He spoke to me the last time I was there and I'm having trouble hearing the instructions from afar. I don't know how to make this happen. Where is my resolve? What happened to the girl that made things happen? Is she really too busy trying to manage a household to pursue her dreams? Why is the household not the dream? Why am I asking so many questions?
Breathing in, it is lasagna prep time. I'll feel so satisfied to have accomplished this task, I'm sure.
]]>My initial assumption was that you were either asleep or out. Now, as I write this, it occurs to me that you could have been ignoring my call. I sort of doubt that, but nonetheless I find the thought of being an intrusion to you rather saddening even though I myself was glad that you didn't pick up the phone. Yes, I called you, and yes, I'm relieved we didn't speak.
It begs the question why one might call when one doesn't actually wish to speak, doesn't it? I was about to explain that it all makes sense somewhere in the recesses of my mind but then I realized that it really doesn't. I was acting on a whim and the relief was more base than that. Seems like sticking with the raw stuff wouldn't be so bad once in a while, although it was the raw stuff that got me into so much trouble in the first place.
I told someone that was interested in me today that I wasn't interested. I became nervous afterward, wondering if perhaps I'm rejecting a good thing for the wrong reasons. I want my heart to dance and sing and to write novels and bad poetry. To bake cakes and make delicious meals and to walk in the rain without umbrellas. I want spark. I want inspiration.
Why does that bring me to be calling you? No reason, really. Where I am just reminds me of where I've been and thinking about that is a hell of a lot easier than looking at where I'm going or being here in the now (although I might consider being here in the now in the future).
]]>Stillness is not the absence or negation of energy, life, or movement. Stillness is dynamic. It is unconflicted movement, life in harmony with itself, skill in action. It can be experienced whenever there is total, uninhibited, unconflicted participation in the moment you are in—when you are wholeheartedly present with whatever you are doing.
For most of us, however, most of the time, our lives do not resemble a perfectly centered top, spinning so fast it appears motionless. Our lives are more like a top in a somewhat wild, erratic, and chaotic spin. We know we're alive because at least we're still spinning, but we are not quite perfectly centered, and we are not spinning anywhere near full speed. We don't have as much energy as we'd like, we are not experiencing as much aliveness as we might, nor are we experiencing the peace of stillness or the joy of being.
Stillness, therefore, is a higher energy state than what we're used to....—Erich Schiffman
]]>I love to share things and that was certainly an aspect of myself that developed to a near obsession when I was fortunate to share my life with Gabrielle. When someone I love loves something I want to experience it, taste, discover it. I try to imagine the experience from my loved one's point of view. However, there's always been something a little special in that heart-skips-a-beat kind of way about discovering some kind of pre-existing mutual love and affection for something and that's what Gabrielle's post reminded me of. I find this rather coincidental as this is something that has been floating around in the back of my mind, mainly as I feel that I've come to a point that I've lost this, which unfortunately is to say that I think I've lost a bit of my zest for life if for no other reason than I so enjoyed that enthusiasm. One could surely argue that perhaps I've grown, "matured" past this point and am now looking for something deeper to click upon, but as sound as that argument might be I'm not sure that it's based in any sort of truth. And as I continue on, ideas coming to me as I type, I realize that I'm simply too wary to experience that kind of connection at this point in my life.
This wariness could be a good thing. A little caution would behoove me, although I fear that caution may solidify into paralysis if I'm not careful. (How ironic.) I'm not sure that I'm quite frozen yet, but I do feel numb, shell shocked. I could step on a live wire and not feel its tingle.
This [post] isn't coming from a place of dreariness. I'm just observing where I am relative to where I've been. I'd like to speculate where I'm going (because naturally those of us that have dedicated our lives to staying present in the now find everything outside of the now extremely compelling) but I can't quite muster up the energy. I've been on karma mode; I keep myself so busy that I haven't a drop of energy left over. Which reminds me, I'm exploring balance. That busy-ness might be a topic for reflection in my yoga practice (which is another spot of irony for me as yoga is one of the things that keeps me so busy).
Returning to the subject of wariness, I notice in reviewing my archived thoughts on the early part of my relationship with the ex how wise I was at the time. At some point, though, I became so attached that the wisdom could no longer flow through me. It was as if I grew a spiny carapace that held that inner wisdom so deep within that I could only experience it in an artificial way, as if I were recalling a book that I'd read rather than touching in on something that was inherent in my being like Hennifer remembering her childhood through images and relics than through her actual memories.
I was the world's worst science partner to my dearest best friend, but I do have some memory of the class. I recall there was an egg once that had been soaked in vinegar or something so that it still had the shell but was no longer hard. I believe that is what has become of my carapace; I haven't shucked it off but its in the processing of softening. Perhaps, then, this is a time for proceeding with caution. Someone dropped that egg. Soft and pliable though it had become, it still cracked.
(Too tired to proofread. Read at your own risk. Should have placed this disclaimer at the top, eh?)
P.S. I'm really sorry that I bailed on you in science class, J. I can only assume that my absence served to boost your grade, though, since I didn't do any work and always had you coming into class late from our lunches of Spaghetti-O's or Cocoa Puffs. Oh, and while I'm at it I should apologize to my father. Dad, I'm really sorry that I made you drive me to school in the morning even though I lived a block from school and came home on my lunches on my own. High school really just wasn't working out. (And for the rambling record, I have never once regretted dropping out of high school. That's a topic to expand upon another day.)
]]>I've been reading up on health and fitness and I experiment with different things, browsing the NYPL's online catalog as if it were my personal library. Spring, how I love you. Although you are not my favorite season, you may very well bring out the best in me, inspiring me to juggle a little more meditation practice and dharma study into my busy mornings or to find some extra precious moments with Norbu to start the day.
I have so many time consuming interests and pursuits. Naming running, yoga, meditation, reading, and writing only begins to skim the surface. I'm working with how to balance all these practices given that I can't pursue them all as ardently as I'd like, and I'm hoping that learning to find that balance may help me to appreciate them more.
I spent many years not ever really spending much time doing the things that I loved, or perhaps I'd do one or two of them whilst abandoning the rest as if they had never held a place in my life. It amazes me, for example, how calming and soothing reading for pleasure is for me given that I hardly read for pleasure at all for the entire duration of my extended academic career. (I still recall how deliciously indulgent it felt that one break between the semesters in graduate school that found me reading a novel!) I'm afraid to schedule to many things in my life right now lest I go that route a second time, and thus spend a two to three hours each day engaged in some combination of those activities mentioned above. I think that once I find that balance, though, I'll be able to relax around my need to schedule this "me" time (just in time to find something new to work with, I'm sure.)
Sometimes I write out of a burning need to exorcise my inner demons, while other times I journal to amuse myself. This was more of a "just sharing" kind of post, since one of my dearest started blogging again.
]]>I wanted to add a postscript to the email requesting that when he replied to me he not sign his name or indeed use his name at all given his propensity toward speaking in the third person. I started the sentence a few times but I just couldn't find the right words. You just can't ask someone to stop using their name, to tell them that the privilege of using that name or even having a name has been revoked. Hallmark doesn't make a card for that.
I avoid using his name whenever possible. It's a way for me to carve the cancer that was us out of what is left that is me. I can't undo the past (although I would if I could, I'm sad to report) so I obliterate it with the biggest, fattest, blackest magic marker on the planet. Most of the time I find that he was written in some kind of ball point pen that I would only deign to use in a captive situation such as a bank and that despite my careful shading the scratches of our former story remain legible on the page.
I pound my feet black and blue with running, yoga, and a new pair of four inch heels but I refuse to let the bruises slow me down. Even when they hurt I appreciate them. Someday it will be the same with the heart where I'll stop trying to protect it and just let it hurt. I aspire to be grateful to that cancer on a daily basis. I long for day when I can say, silently of course, "Cancer, I love you. Thank you."
]]>Just watch a child playing a video game, obsessed with pushing buttons to kill enemies and win points, and you'll see how addictive such games can be. Then take a step back and see how the financial, romantic, or other "games you've been playing as an adult are just as addictive. The main difference between an adult and a child is that an adult has the experience and understanding to step away from the game. An adult can choose to look more objectively at his or her mind, and in doing so develop a sense of compassion for others who haven't been able to make that choice.—Mingyur Rinpoche]]>
I'm filled with an enormous sense of gratitude in so many areas of my life. In some regards I am so very blessed—doubly so, I suppose, given I'm able to recognize those blessings. Revel in them. Shape my life with them.
I've noticed, however, that there are certain situations I've yet to fully appreciate. It is in those situations that I wallow as if stuck in a festering muddy swamp. I have this dim memory of finding challenges invigorating, dancing in the freshness of phenomena in its impermanent state. I remember that feeling of open sky even in those moments in which I'm afraid to let go.
I hold on, hip deep in the mud, fighting the suction with such a voracity that I become more and more stuck and less and less aware of the fact that I'm free from the waist up. How dare I neglect the half of me that is awake and free and charmed by life to focus on the parts of me that are buried in a stagnant pond. Why not let myself reintegrate? Let them work together. So what if the clean half ends up a little dirty? Maybe if the muddy half didn't feel so alone it could relax a little, get friendly with the mud, and break free. Reunited, the two halves could move on and go get cleaned up together.
I'm lost without my demons. Without my demons all I have to pontificate upon is some trite bullshit. Of course this trite bullshit is helping me to appreciate my demons, so maybe it's all working out as it should.
]]>The rules of Buddhablog fight club are as follows...
Now the hard part. Who to tag? I don't really read blogs much anymore and TMcG already tagged some of my peeps. (Did I just say that? Who are 'you' and what have you done with 'me'?) Do they really have to be Buddhist-y weblogs? Is this like a chain letter? Would anyone out there like to volunteer and I'll just put the link in upon your request?
(Bonus bonus fact: Sometimes I want to put emoticons in entries, like right there after that rather pathetic request for volunteers, but I resist because I think that emoticons in weblogs are kind of tacky—as if they're hip and cool in other contexts. That noted, I use them all the time in email and texts. Oh, and while we're throwing out useful personal trivia let me just add that I like the traditional ones made up from punctuation much more than I enjoy the graphical ones, although the green 'barfy' Yahoo! smiley cracks me up every time.)
]]>I'm not altogether sure who you are, but I think that's okay since I wasn't ever really quite sure who any of the others were, either.
Perhaps you aren't even really a 'you' at all. Maybe you're just the part of me that needs to say I love you to someone. (How arbitrary, she sighs.)
Maybe that's all it's ever been. Ever was. (Ever will be?) Bloody ego tripping, love is. Or was. (Or will be?)
Does this mean that I never loved you, the only real person that I've ever loved? (Please note that the previous sentence does not say, "...the only person that I've ever really loved." That difference is intentional and in my mind, outrageously important.) Now I'm really confused.
Fuck you, then, whoever you are. Or were. Or will be. I'm too tired to deal with your bullshit anymore.
I love you, I don't love you, I want to love you, I can't love you, I will love you, whatever. Make up your fucking mind. And don't come crawling back to me when you've changed it, either. Commit to something. Commit to nothing. Just commit, already.
What's my commitment? I'm not sure. I don't even exist. However, the bitterness on my tongue that has passed through my fingertips by proxy suggests that if Mohammad can't go to the mountain (also known if the girl can't get to the retreat), the mountain must travel to Mohammad. Time for a 28 day in-house retreat, filled with voluminous amounts of meditation in action since all my normal life activities must continue. The retreat starts Saturday. Where to start? Meek and right speech. What the hell have I gotten myself into now? A simple stray 'I love you' and now I've rambled on like a crazy person and designed myself a retreat? Well, whatever. Must be divine intervention—straight from within.
I love you, too.
]]>At least she's not moving again (yet). She's now had four different homes in less than 24 months. Her precious jewel has turned into quite a tumbleweed, requesting that they move again because he's grown to love it. And of course the hungry ghost in her is tempted since she's never been quite satisfied with her latest home, but she also knows that moving again isn't answer (yet).
She's trying to convince herself to agree to stay put for 18 months. No more job moves. No more move moves. No more chasing rainbows. After years of committing to all the wrong people, however, she finds it quite difficult to commit to herself. Perhaps it's time to return to her pagan roots and consider herself more or less rooted for a year and a day? Perhaps it's time to forget the lease and all the other arbitrary dates and timelines that she adheres to as if they had some sort of intrinsic meaning. A year and a day…she knows it shouldn't seem like such a very long time, but to her it does.
No promises, she decides, but she'll leave it on the table for consideration.
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