Have you felt that line before? That line where nothing has changed, the exact same things are going on, but suddenly everything is different because it matters to you?
Backing up...I didn't intend to write this today. I have a whole long list of things to do and writing in my blog isn't on it. But I've been thinking so hard on this I just have to spit it out of my brain and onto paper, a piece of half-chewed gum, to get it out of my way for something else. Because I felt that line last week and now it's tripping me up. Something I thought I could step over, designating the difference between point a and point b somehow got bigger and bulkier and three-dimensional on me, not, apparently, a line at all.
You've felt it too, haven't you? There you are with someone or a group of someones, or maybe just by yourself, and you're doing something, or maybe you're not, and if you had a little soundtrack in your brain it would go something like this, "This is nice, I like this, I'm happy, this feels good." Then it's like something sits up and listens in, ears perked, "Ohhhh, you know what? I DO like this! This IS nice! Wow, I AM happy! And oh gosh this DOES feel really good. REALLY good..." And does that something then snuggle in all content and pleased with life? No it does not. It panics. "I want this to continue. What if it stops? What if it doesn't stop? What does this mean, that I like this? Is this okay that I feel like this? Hey, who gets to decide that anyway? Why wouldn't it be okay? But what does it mean? And what if it never happens again? It has to happen again. But what if I get hurt? And what if I get what I want? And what do I want? What does it mean that I want something I didn't know I wanted? What will this change? I don't want change."
This has been my soundtrack all weekend. I'm a little tired. The inner witness has been chiming in periodically as well, "Isn't that interesting that now that you care, now that it matters, you've become attached to outcome? I wonder if there would be a way to care deeply, to have it matter terribly, and still release attachment? Can you desire this and be clear about your desire, and truly feel just fine no matter how things turn out?" All of this internal conversation reminded me of a book I had read a couple of years ago called Open to Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life by Mark Epstein. He says in the beginning of chapter 3, "...desire forces us into a place where our usual modes of relating are upended, where success can only be found when...we risk making fools of ourselves. This seems to be one of desire's primary functions: to keep us off balance, in between, on the verge, or just out of reach." I want I want I want seems to go hand in hand with I'm scared I'm scared I'm scared.
It would be nice don't you think to let go of them both? Desire and fear right out the window; then we can all just be placid and satisfied. Unfortunately, it seems that I want I want I want and I'm scared I'm scared I'm scared also have a couple of important friends: I love I love I love and I live I live I live.
So I guess I'm just going to sit here on this line between point a and point b, off balance, in between, on the verge, and rest here a little. Because I DO love and I DO live and I DO want. And I AM scared. From Mark Epstein-"Touching desire, meeting and gratifying another's desire, lets us know God." God and me, we're just going to sit here a little. Get to know each other.
copyright 2008 J. Autumn Needles
Showing posts with label security. Show all posts
Showing posts with label security. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Letting go, Starting over
This weekend I was putting the finishing touches on a gift for the young son of a close friend who died about a year and a half ago. I thought my grieving for her was pretty much done, but, as I worked, I found myself weeping. And since I was hormonal and thus prone to excess, I allowed my grief to extend out and encompass EVERYONE I've ever lost. At first, I was focused on those I've lost to death, then I realized I was also grieving for people I've lost in other ways but who are still around, still breathing and living their lives, some of them in fairly close proximity to me. Letting go is clearly something I need to work on right now.
In recent months Buddha's Five Remembrances have been popping up in various ways for me, and after this weekend I thought, well, maybe I need to take a look at those. The Five Remembrances are basically: 1)Getting old is my nature and can't be escaped, 2)Getting sick is my nature and can't be escaped, 3)Dying is my nature and can't be escaped, 4)Change and loss in those I love and care for is the nature of things and can't be escaped, and 5)I have only my actions to stand on. So this morning I meditated on that for a while before moving on to my lovingkindness meditation. And the words of a teacher came to me in meditation, "If you find your mind wandering, bring it back lovingly and know that this is the heart of meditation–the practice of letting go and starting over."
I've heard that a hundred times (maybe more but my mind was wandering at the time so I don't remember) but this was the first time I really heard it, and realized that yoga and meditation are actually a way of consciously practicing being alive. Of course, we ARE being alive in every moment, but by rehearsing for it, we can get better at doing it in real life. In every breath we let go of the old air and start over with a new breath. With every step we let go of the earth beneath us and reach through the unknown to find it again.
It's almost impossible to stay that focused for very long on such tiny endings and beginnings, but we have them on a grander scale as well. From pre-school to my last year of high school, I attended 8 different schools and learned a lot about letting go and starting over, and got pretty good at it. My track record isn't so great when it comes to letting go of people and relationships; once you're in my life I want you there FOREVER. Sort of like the Hotel California... In running my own business, I've discovered that I have to be very nimble on my feet to be ready to let go of something that isn't working and start over with something else. My partner and I had one summer when we got to experience lots of letting go when raw sewage spewed over everything in our basement; suddenly, the question of whether to let something go became a lot clearer. Practice, practice, practice...
The other thing that I realized is that you can't have much of a gap between letting go and starting over in meditation. When your mind wanders, you bring it back. If you spend time beating yourself up over wandering, guess what? You're wandering again and you have to bring it back and start over. If you start thinking about why your mind wandered in the first place, you're wandering again and you have to bring it back and start over. If you start thinking about how much better you're going to be at this tomorrow, you're wandering again and you have to bring it back and start over. Now this can sound like some kind of crazy-making version of hell, but the miracle part of this process is realizing that you actually have an infinite number of chances to start over. Nothing you've done before and nothing you're going to do later takes that away from you. Those opportunities are always there and they never go away. In life as in meditation. You know how to let go and start over; you've done it already so many times, if you're breathing, you're an expert. Every moment is your opportunity to do it again.
So, when I think of my dead friend, I breathe in, I breathe out, I miss her, I remember her, I let her go and I start over with my living in the next moment.
copyright 2007 J. Autumn Needles
In recent months Buddha's Five Remembrances have been popping up in various ways for me, and after this weekend I thought, well, maybe I need to take a look at those. The Five Remembrances are basically: 1)Getting old is my nature and can't be escaped, 2)Getting sick is my nature and can't be escaped, 3)Dying is my nature and can't be escaped, 4)Change and loss in those I love and care for is the nature of things and can't be escaped, and 5)I have only my actions to stand on. So this morning I meditated on that for a while before moving on to my lovingkindness meditation. And the words of a teacher came to me in meditation, "If you find your mind wandering, bring it back lovingly and know that this is the heart of meditation–the practice of letting go and starting over."
I've heard that a hundred times (maybe more but my mind was wandering at the time so I don't remember) but this was the first time I really heard it, and realized that yoga and meditation are actually a way of consciously practicing being alive. Of course, we ARE being alive in every moment, but by rehearsing for it, we can get better at doing it in real life. In every breath we let go of the old air and start over with a new breath. With every step we let go of the earth beneath us and reach through the unknown to find it again.
It's almost impossible to stay that focused for very long on such tiny endings and beginnings, but we have them on a grander scale as well. From pre-school to my last year of high school, I attended 8 different schools and learned a lot about letting go and starting over, and got pretty good at it. My track record isn't so great when it comes to letting go of people and relationships; once you're in my life I want you there FOREVER. Sort of like the Hotel California... In running my own business, I've discovered that I have to be very nimble on my feet to be ready to let go of something that isn't working and start over with something else. My partner and I had one summer when we got to experience lots of letting go when raw sewage spewed over everything in our basement; suddenly, the question of whether to let something go became a lot clearer. Practice, practice, practice...
The other thing that I realized is that you can't have much of a gap between letting go and starting over in meditation. When your mind wanders, you bring it back. If you spend time beating yourself up over wandering, guess what? You're wandering again and you have to bring it back and start over. If you start thinking about why your mind wandered in the first place, you're wandering again and you have to bring it back and start over. If you start thinking about how much better you're going to be at this tomorrow, you're wandering again and you have to bring it back and start over. Now this can sound like some kind of crazy-making version of hell, but the miracle part of this process is realizing that you actually have an infinite number of chances to start over. Nothing you've done before and nothing you're going to do later takes that away from you. Those opportunities are always there and they never go away. In life as in meditation. You know how to let go and start over; you've done it already so many times, if you're breathing, you're an expert. Every moment is your opportunity to do it again.
So, when I think of my dead friend, I breathe in, I breathe out, I miss her, I remember her, I let her go and I start over with my living in the next moment.
copyright 2007 J. Autumn Needles
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Finding Home
I was sitting on a train making its way from Paris to Geneva. This was the 2nd leg of my first journey ever by myself. I had just turned 21. Paris had felt triumphant to me. After all, I had put myself on a train in Edinburgh with only my backpack and had managed to arrive successfully in Paris. Not only had I made it to Paris, but I had survived for 3 days! I had found a youth hostel, peered at Paris from the lofty heights of Notre Dame, made an attempt to scale the Eiffel Tower (the elevator broke!), gorged myself on museums, eaten crepes sold by street vendors, rendezvoused with friends from the States for one lovely day of familiarity....and now for reasons that seemed unclear to me, I was throwing myself back into the unknown.
I felt sad and alone and very foreign on the train. It had become very clear to me that day that my triumph in Paris was an illusion and that I truly had no idea what I was doing and no business traveling as I was. I didn't understand kilometers yet, I couldn't read the train schedules, I couldn't speak the language and I was obviously too young and stupid to know better. I had presented myself at the train station that morning to buy a ticket to Geneva. Mysteriously, there was nothing anywhere that indicated that any trains ever went to Geneva, or, in fact, to anywhere at all but northern France, Holland or Belgium. After wandering for what felt like hours, I found an English speaker and asked. I was at the wrong station! It had never occurred to me that a city might have more than one train station. My day was shot; I had planned to buy the ticket, spend a leisurely day at the Louvre, then head out. Now I shot across town, bought the ticket, and tried to walk back to the Louvre. Unfortunately, my sense of scale was all off and, though I made it within viewing distance of the museum, I had to turn back or risk missing my train. I felt like everyone I passed on the street, everyone in the train station, everyone on the train, knew what an idiot I was. Everyone had a place to be or a place to go, a place to belong, but me. I was uprooted, a minor piece of driftwood floating through these well-anchored lives.
As the light faded and we trundled off into evening, these thoughts grew stronger. I was no longer the independent young woman who had learned to wiggle her thumb at the Metro ticket seller and yell out, "en simple." I was alone, I was afraid, I was going somewhere I had never been before.
The woman across from me asked did I speak English? was I an American? She asked a few more questions and must have seen the loneliness in me because she leaned down and dug through her bag. "Here. I have extra and now I find I don't need them." She handed me an apple and a pear. I bit into the apple. "You know, this train stops in Zurich for an hour. They have, em, Christmas lights? Very beautiful lights over the main street. You should go and see them." I thanked her and nodded and drifted back into my litany of self abuse. When the train pulled into Zurich, I had no intention of going to see those lights. But my feet picked me up and took me off the train before I could stop myself.
I drifted out of the station and into fairyland. It was dark and snowy. There were white lights strung like a fountain of pure, bright droplets cascading up and down the road. People were out shopping, bustling through the streets.
And here I was drifting, still with no place here, no roots, but I felt my spirit rise with the wonder of the unknown adventure. My fear and my loneliness nestled together into a core wrapped over with joy.
"Look," those lights said to me, "look at us. See what the people here have done. For you, this is the unknown. But these people live here, they've created comfort here. And you could choose this comfort, too, no matter where you go. Because it's only the first step that's unknown and then you're there and you belong. If you choose to you can stay and be comforted and comfortable, or you can continue into the next unknown and carry your comfort with you."
I went back to the train, ate my pear, and rode on to Geneva.
copyright 2006 J. Autumn Needles
I felt sad and alone and very foreign on the train. It had become very clear to me that day that my triumph in Paris was an illusion and that I truly had no idea what I was doing and no business traveling as I was. I didn't understand kilometers yet, I couldn't read the train schedules, I couldn't speak the language and I was obviously too young and stupid to know better. I had presented myself at the train station that morning to buy a ticket to Geneva. Mysteriously, there was nothing anywhere that indicated that any trains ever went to Geneva, or, in fact, to anywhere at all but northern France, Holland or Belgium. After wandering for what felt like hours, I found an English speaker and asked. I was at the wrong station! It had never occurred to me that a city might have more than one train station. My day was shot; I had planned to buy the ticket, spend a leisurely day at the Louvre, then head out. Now I shot across town, bought the ticket, and tried to walk back to the Louvre. Unfortunately, my sense of scale was all off and, though I made it within viewing distance of the museum, I had to turn back or risk missing my train. I felt like everyone I passed on the street, everyone in the train station, everyone on the train, knew what an idiot I was. Everyone had a place to be or a place to go, a place to belong, but me. I was uprooted, a minor piece of driftwood floating through these well-anchored lives.
As the light faded and we trundled off into evening, these thoughts grew stronger. I was no longer the independent young woman who had learned to wiggle her thumb at the Metro ticket seller and yell out, "en simple." I was alone, I was afraid, I was going somewhere I had never been before.
The woman across from me asked did I speak English? was I an American? She asked a few more questions and must have seen the loneliness in me because she leaned down and dug through her bag. "Here. I have extra and now I find I don't need them." She handed me an apple and a pear. I bit into the apple. "You know, this train stops in Zurich for an hour. They have, em, Christmas lights? Very beautiful lights over the main street. You should go and see them." I thanked her and nodded and drifted back into my litany of self abuse. When the train pulled into Zurich, I had no intention of going to see those lights. But my feet picked me up and took me off the train before I could stop myself.
I drifted out of the station and into fairyland. It was dark and snowy. There were white lights strung like a fountain of pure, bright droplets cascading up and down the road. People were out shopping, bustling through the streets.
And here I was drifting, still with no place here, no roots, but I felt my spirit rise with the wonder of the unknown adventure. My fear and my loneliness nestled together into a core wrapped over with joy.
"Look," those lights said to me, "look at us. See what the people here have done. For you, this is the unknown. But these people live here, they've created comfort here. And you could choose this comfort, too, no matter where you go. Because it's only the first step that's unknown and then you're there and you belong. If you choose to you can stay and be comforted and comfortable, or you can continue into the next unknown and carry your comfort with you."
I went back to the train, ate my pear, and rode on to Geneva.
copyright 2006 J. Autumn Needles
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