Wait

I've just finished Sharon Salzberg's text Faith.  I don't know any more if this was recommended to me by a friend or if I simply picked it up.  It was on my shelf, and had been started at some point in the past year.  And I spent some time moving through it in the past week.

Some lines I have to share:

"One of the most subtle ways fear can bind us, so quietly that we hardly know to call it fear, is what is known in Buddhist teachings as 'fixated hope.' Fixated hope, like hope itself, resembles faith in that both sparkle with a sense of possibility.  But fixated hope is conditional, circumscribing happiness to getting what we want"  (p. 81).

I hope we all have a sense of the world around us 'sparkling with a sense of possibility,' but also with the acknowledgement that happiness lies in a space that doesn't depend on an outcome.  

"Is it necessary to go through despair on a spiritual path, to endure a proverbial dark night of the soul in order to deepen our faith?  I don't know the answer to that--but I do know that it is necessary to strip away the entangling, unhealthy ways of relating to ourselves with dislike and diminishment that we are accustomed to.  And I know that we need to let go of many things, undergo loss, and unhook from the world's insistence that we cover up our pain in order for us to see what is really important to our lives" (p. 121).

I thought this was particularly salient as we move into the new year.  An artificial marker, yes, but a time when we are all looking to return to what's really important to our lives.  I'm hoping that's what our resolutions lead us to.

"If there is nothing we can do right now but wait, then, as T.S. Eliot wrote, 'the faith is in the waiting.' If we can but wait, we may yet emerge from despair with the same understanding that Zen master Suzuki Roshi expressed:  'Sometimes just to be alive is enough"  (p. 123).

Wait.

Sometimes just to be alive is enough.

I remind myself.

Re-Visioning

There are moments when I realize that it's time to stop and revise, remind myself of what the larger purpose is.  That time is now.  I was reading a blog earlier in the day and it said something to the effect of:  "Sure, take some time to visit with your bullshit, but keep it short."  I'm limiting my conversations with my bullshit as much as I can.

Yoga themes have been along this line lately:  "Let go" and "Manifest" were two of the latest.  I think we should all exhale.  I think we should all let go.  I think this will allow us to send out energies that will sustain the glory, the well-being, and the generosity of all around us.  I'm pretty sure I haven't been very good at this lately.  And I'm pretty sure I'd like to be better at it.

I am revising ideas I've been playing with for years as I put together thoughts for my dissertation.  I'm viewing and reviewing countless hours of video tape of my students working hard to become members of an academic community (and succeeding).  I am filled with pride at the work I do.  I am filled with longing to have this searching and researching mean something.  And I am reminding myself that there is a larger purpose.  There is.  And I exhale and continue.   I need reminders, as we all do, that there is so much more to this life than we can see.  There is so much more that we can offer to one another.  We just need to see.  And sometimes, "re-" is the answer.  If researching is really to search again, then we should all view this journey as a pretty big research project.  And we should recognize that we're all in it together.

Softening

Lately it seems that I am receiving the same messages from different sources.  The themes seem to build on each other.  I'm not saying it's a conspiracy or anything, but...
Yoga theme on Wednesday?  "Soften."  I was feeling pretty solid and clear, so the idea of softening to the world around me seemed like a nice bit of icing on my otherwise calm state.  I should know myself well enough to know that any state I'm in is subject to change multiple times over the course of days.  I'm convinced my core is just working through some "shit," and that eventually this will move out of my way if I'm conscious of it.  The stuff we work through not inherently bad, but it is inherently real if we are believing it.  I don't mind moving through.  I mind getting stuck on something.


Some messages headed my way this week from a variety of sources:
1.  "To use a metaphor from the Buddha, the unavoidable pains of life are its "first darts." But then we add insult to injury with our reactions to these darts...When you throw second darts, you are the person you hurt most. The suffering - mild to severe - in second darts is truly unnecessary. As the saying goes, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional." --Rick Hanson
2.  "If we can stop locating our sense of self in the relentless surge of the monkey mind's slapdash chatter, we can be fully attuned to the life that's right in front of us. Only then are we able to want what we actually have...Here's the logical conclusion: It's downright stupid and self-destructive to keep infecting our imaginations with pictures of loss and failure, doom and gloom, fear and loathing. The far more sensible approach is to expect blessings." 

--Rob Brezny

3.  "Without realizing it, we continually put up protective walls made of opinions, prejudices, and strategies, barriers that are built on a deep fear of being hurt. These walls are further fortified by emotions of all kinds: anger, craving, indifference, jealousy, and arrogance.

But fortunately for us, the soft spot—our innate ability to love and to care about things—is like a crack in these walls we erect. It’s a natural opening in the barriers we create when we’re afraid. With practice we can learn to find this opening." --Pema Chodron

My take aways?  

1.  Accept the pain, but don't exacerbate it by dwelling on it.

2.  You may as well expect good things to happen to you.  

3.  There isn't any room for walls in wide open spaces (paraphrasing Buddy Wakefield on this one).

4.  The moment we soften, invite the vulnerability and fear in, that is the moment we are real, and we can face what is in front of us without artifice or irrationality.

Sometimes, really, it just takes these reminders of shared humanity, of gentleness with ourselves and others to diffuse a situation, and provide a reminder of what we're all doing here together.

Attention

This month's funk began benignly enough, as they often do,  on the heels of some excitement, and then slowly became less and less benign.  I moved from what I thought was a fabulous purge of energy and emotion...to the slippery slope that is depression.  Crying, for me, is productive.  A need to curl up under a blanket without even the energy to read a good book?  Ambivalence about what I'm eating?  Not so much.  A much more interesting exploration of this phenomenon was illustrated beautifully on a blog recently (http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/).  Absolute brilliance and worth the read (and re-read) if you have a moment or two.

Anyway.  I'm not depressed (I was for a couple of days...a week?).  I'm now recognizing that I'm just in a bit of a lull, and I'm a little bit tired.  There's a lot of flux and uncertainty (You know that moment when you realize that you can do and be anything in your life?  Sounds great in theory, but the reality can throw one for a bit of a loop).  This is both a terribly exciting time and a terrifying one, alternately.  How I respond to this period of time is all about where I place my attention.  I found myself dwelling on things that had nothing to do with me or my reality in the last while.  I described what I'd like as my "ideal" life to a friend of mine recently, and she said, "I think you just described your life now."  Well, I'm a slow learner sometimes, and it took a few more references and allusions to bringing my attention back to what was/is real before I caught on to the fact (just today) that, indeed, I'm exactly where I need to be doing exactly what I need to be doing, and really, it's pretty lovely.  I don't plan on doing it much longer, but right now it's all I need to be doing.  Right now is a pretty nice space to live in.

Yoga, of course, three classes in a row was a reminder that where we place our attention is what we get more of.  (And, indeed, the dark thoughts, the monkey mind, the self-doubt was certainly feeding on itself and replicating itself exponentially).  I know this on a conscious level, but sometimes I let my mind just go where it wants.  Sometimes it works, but at others, it's simply ridiculous.  I do laugh at myself at these moments, but more often than not, click the tape right back on and keep listening.  Friday evening's yoga instructor said that as he was sitting down to meditate, he had a thought, then said, "It would be so nice never to have that thought again."  And, of course, it was the thought that swirled around in his mind for the entire session...and he said, "I realized I had no control of my own mind."  My therapist also mentioned that maybe I could consider that I don't need to figure out things that have nothing to do with me, or my "right now."  NOWNOWNOWNOWNOW.  Hmmmm....

A couple of weeks ago, two of my students asked me the meaning of "etc." as they had seen it written many times.  I spelled it out for them:  et cetera.  They looked at me and laughed, then told me they'd been reading it as an acronym for:  End of Thinking Capacity.  Now, when I find myself trapped in monkey mind, I simply say to myself:  et cetera.  etc.  Indeed.  No more capacity for those thoughts.

Right now?  I have some work to do.  Right now?  I wish I could see the people I love more often.  Right now?  I know that everything will always be in flux.  And right now, that's just fine.

Safety to Feel

I spent the bulk of the day in the woods with my dog.  We retraced steps we've walked before.  And on the drive into the mountains, I put my i-pod on shuffle and listened to a soundtrack both old and new.  I was reminded of times in the past when I believed something different than I do now, and in the peace of the day, I was allowed to mourn and be joyous in the same moments.

I am struck by the amount of love that surrounds me.  I have an abundance of love in my life.  I have met people in my life who have the capacity for such goodness and unconditional love, and I am never ever "alone."  I've been enjoying time with myself of late--craving it, and also craving connection with the women in my life who have buoyed me through many difficult times.  I pride myself on self-sufficiency, but I also recognize that this self-sufficiency is borne out of the knowledge that I have so many cushions if I fall.

In this space and in this calm, I have been (finally) processing the level of cruelty that accompanied my divorce last year.  I lived through lies, hostility, outright hatred, and my resulting confusion.  I've been confused about what transpired during the course of the divorce process (the parts leading up to it were pretty obvious in retrospect...almost textbook :).   I also know that I can't ever understand what motivates someone to act as they do, nor do I need to in order to move on and let go.   Memories resurface in interesting ways:  snippets of conversation, emails and notes written to me, actions that were (to me) hugely disrespectful.  And I realize, and this is where the sadness lies, that someone I counted as my partner for a number of years, was capable of acting like this.  Oldest story in the book, and I know it plays out a million times over in a variety of ways, and I know there are many many scenarios that are so much worse.

What I keep realizing, as I slowly let things come back to the surface, is that it's all fine.  There are beautiful lessons.  This beauty, however, doesn't mean there isn't some residual pain, and some disbelief. It just means that I mourn not only the demise of a relationship that at one time I must have believed in, but that I mourn the loss of an illusion that I knew another human well, and that he had my best interest at heart, and that he was capable of things he wasn't.  And these realizations are disconcerting.

I think it's okay to celebrate the present, but it's also okay to recognize the past and what's been learned.
Thankfully, I live in a present that offers me the safety necessary to feel these things with no fear.  That, in itself, is a luxury I don't think everyone gets.  Gratitude.

Harmony and Discord

Okay, I'm struggling with vulnerability.  Yep.  So, I thought I'd lay some things out here, and just trust that it's okay to let people know that, indeed, there are many times when I'm just not feeling like a rock star.  Discord.

I'm launching into my dissertation year.  This, coupled with a change in season, some feelings of failure at work, and a slight fear of the future, and confusion about how to make my present what I want, have left me in a bit of a black place the past couple of weeks.

I have found that despite the fact that cerebrally I know my life is really gorgeous, and that there are so so many things to look forward to, I have been a little flat lately.  A lot of this stems from the fact that I'm nervous about resuming my status as a workaholic, and the other part of me is afraid I don't know how to put my head down and do the work I need to do any more.  Some of the blackness stems from the fact that I have been cleaning up some dangling details from divorce (how's that for alliteration surrounding a negative experience?).  I don't like that things are still needing cleaning up.  I'm frustrated with myself for feeling residual feelings of anger.  But, there they are.  I'm not at all angry at the outcome, but I am angry with myself for what I let occur in my life.  And I'm angry with myself for being angry.  These layers make it messy to untangle what the truth is.

One thing I do know as truth?  If I don't go ahead and feel what I feel, it's going to sneak out of me in really counterproductive ways.  So, in order to figure out what I'm feeling and what needs to occur in my life to remedy it, I have to sit with it, not ignore it.  So, this week, I invited the anger and frustration in.  I poured it a drink, made up the guest bed (as it seemed to be hanging out for a time), and I indulged its company until it made me:  1) laugh at myself, and 2) take action.

Forgiving ourselves doesn't happen overnight.  Shifting from "what the hell was I thinking?" to "what did I learn from the experience?" doesn't happen overnight either.  It's a constant process.  And it's one that takes a lot of patience and compassion.  I realized that because I was sick of the process, I assumed all of my friends were too, and I was refusing to tell anyone that I was struggling.  Because, really, I like timelines:  After three months, you should be _____________; After a year, you should be _________.  How arbitrary these deadlines are.  How ridiculous to try to apply linear thinking to something so circuitous and messy as emotion.  How fabulous it would be if we could simply have ego-botomies (I hope you know what I'm trying for there even if it doesn't make any sense as I've written it).  The fortunate part of a process is that we learn from it.  The tenth or one-hundredth time something surfaces, it's familiar, we know it, and we know why it's there.  It doesn't mean that we're cured from having to deal with it, but it's no longer scary or confusing...it's just what is.  Maybe I'm getting closer to letting go of the judgment I place on myself.  Maybe, one day, I'll be able to say, "it's neither good nor bad, it just is."

So, these feelings of discord will eventually lead to resumed harmony.  The nice part about faith is that I honestly believe this.  And if I can open myself up again, instead of shutting down, shutting people out and hiding when I'm not feeling like I wish I was, then harmony will be faster coming.  One would think this would be a lesson that I had learned already as well (see the judgment rearing its head again?).  My friends have never once said, "No, Lisa, I really don't want to hear what's going on with you.  I'd rather you were distant and strange for a while."  And I know I would feel the same way.  We want the shared humanity; we need it.  I forget how much love there is.  And how much patience.  And this is where I find harmony in the world.

Falling

I have hit the moment in Tucson where I breathe a sigh of relief and realize I've lived through another summer.  For some reason, though, this shift in season has been accompanied by unsettled feelings:  irritability, confusion, inability to focus on what exactly I'm doing in the now.

I spent last year really grounding myself in my space and place and making my life exactly what I needed it to be.  And now I recognize, as we all do, that at any given moment we need any number of things that will not be what we need at a later point.  A friend of mine reminded me that self-care is a moment to moment process.  And to be really honest with ourselves, we need to always acknowledge that change is part of the equation.  

Unfortunately, the past month has been one of ants in my pants...I want to move and I want to move on NOW.  I've had this before.  I'm accustomed to these feelings surfacing recurrently in my life.  I am.  I also know I need to finish what I started here.  I want to finish what I've started here.  And so, this next month is data collection for my dissertation.  I'm alternately excited and completely overwhelmed by the prospect of the next six months of my life.  The excitement wins and I launch.  (Not without some feet-dragging and procrastination in the process, however...and the Saturday of, "I know I'll be able to focus if I just ride up Mt. Lemmon a ways on my bike...I know I will...")

What I do know, though, is that when I leave the present, when I try to leap forward to a place I don't actually inhabit yet, I can't function fully.  And I realize how much work it takes to remain grounded in life.  I have been talking myself out of falling into the trap of believing that just because I lived through a rough time in my life, that everything from here on out will be couched in a blissed-out state of enlightenment.  If only.  The work in life, I think, is taking what we learn in the hardest times and not losing the insights gained as we slog through the minutiae that makes up a lot of our daily life.

My goals right now?  Another purge and clean.  Organization.  Clearing space for a new challenge.  Remembering that I am doing what I do because it's what I truly want, and not because I'm being told to.  And not one person is watching to see if I pull it off successfully but me.  I like that, but I also know I'm my toughest critic.  Maybe I'll learn a little more compassion through this process.  

And I let myself fall into this period of reflection, of time, of space, of movement and of stillness...and I try to shake the need to jump ahead before I have the opportunity to enjoy exactly what I'm doing.  Because even in stillness, there is a lot of forward movement.