The way I see it today

The removal of routine caused by the holidays means I haven't been meditating much. When there's no plan and the movement of the family is determined by the moment, I guess the idea of sitting felt sort of outside of the flow. I did some yoga, and some staring into the fire, and some knitting though--activities that tolerate interruption--all very enjoyable. Still, it was not surprising to find a modicum of melancholy in myself. I wonder if that's just the way it is.

And here we are in a new year. Regardless of the exact moment of greeting (I am not attached to the clock's demarcation of the actual minute, and usually prefer to greet the new year with daylight), gradually the new year brings with it a sense of a clearing of the decks, doesn't it?

Part of my experience of being an introvert is a feeling that if I spend this time or this energy there won't be any more available, which results in an unfortunate behavioral by-product: hoarding. Too much guarding of self and space can be isolating, and maybe warping. It's one of the things I hope meditation is slowly changing in me. When I feel the full calm of it, somehow I generate an expansion of interior space and a solid feeling of time for my needs to be met.

In response to a suggestion by a friend, I have chosen a word to guide me through the year. The word is CONNECTION. I don't think the idea is to live by it, necessarily, but to come back to it occasionally, like we do with an intention at the beginning and during a single yoga class, and contemplate your reality through that filter, and see what you get. Could be a little bit of insight, a little bit of magic. A bit of surprise probably.

At a New Year's meditation gathering a few days ago I sat with maybe 25 or 30 other folks for an hour. We meditated on loving-kindness, and on forgiveness. I thought, as I sat there with all the built up and expended frenetic energy of the holidays over, that in the aftermath of Christmas spirit wreckage I might actually have a context for forgiveness. It started with forgiving myself for some of my many shortcomings. Now that was an expansive feeling--the edges of my personal envelope, for a moment, reached out to pioneer new territory. I wanted to laugh, cry, sew myself onto a star and hide myself underground all at the same time.

There is definitely something different and well, bigger, I guess, about meditating in a group. I'll have to think more before I can put words to it. Something about all of us tragically separate people sitting, breathing, forgiving together gave me permission to acknowledge my individual quirks. There is often an image in my mental perambulations--I often see images in my mind, and not timid or dainty ones, but ones that are strong and color saturated and exactly how they ought to be.

Due to the action-packed nature of our days, I don't see them clearly most of the time, or they are couched in the moment and forgotten because I move on to what I ought to be doing. But they come right out and sparkle, like Edward the vampire in a sunlit clearing (shriek! shriek!), when I meditate, and I have time to look at them. Which is not to say I'll be able to make them to suit my mind's picture, but it is a good place to start (note to self: remember to let beginner's mind take over!)

While sitting in that group with the fluidity and focus of forgiveness running throughout, the image I got was of a pair, perhaps more, of hands loosely holding a package. It was something like a christmas gift the size of a small pillow, with a wide ribbon, which instead of being solid was the incarnation, magnification, figuration of JOY, COMPASSION, FORGIVENESS. It wasn't glowing, but it was so rich in its presence that it made everything else seem dim. How to render this . . . how to give it . . . how to receive it?

Well here I go: this year I'm looking for connection with all the joy, compassion and forgiveness I can find. You with me? My first step, totally on impulse (hold on to your hats . . .) I joined Facebook! I don't get it at all and not sure how it figures in with my daily life if at all; I'm in the adding friends-frenzy and it seems a bit, um, artificial. But maybe later if I have something really important to say and I want to do it quickly, there it will be, the network of digitally-linked friends. See you here or there or somewhere, I'm sure.

Papaya for lunch

I'm chucking the current "ought to". I thought I ought to make an effort to make images I posted on this blog ones that I made. The black ink drawings that I'm making on this trip are fun to do, but they just don't convey the lusciousness and the color that is this experience. Thank goodness for cameras and modern technology, because there is but a moment between the decision and the sharing of these lovelies . . . Yes, I would eat papaya with lime for every meal. See those little lines of holes? Those are fork marks so that when you squeeze the lime over, it sinks into all the little holes. I remember my mother loving papaya when I was little and, having tried it, considered the possibility that she was crazy when there were such alternatives as tangerines and mangosteins. Now I get it. I get it, mom! Love it!

5 hours after rising and zipping straight to the beach we are back. Fresh food and a bit of shade. And a lettuce fan for her highness.

And here are my happy feet, slightly off balance in a one-armed downward dog while trying to take a picture with the other hand--you try it sometime!

One "ought to" down, how many more to go? Hard to say. My increasing sense is that often they are so internalized we don't have a smidge of an idea that we misguidedly live by them. Recently a friend told me that she had just discovered, in her forties and after struggling with pain and numbness in her fingers for years, that you shouldn't try to keep your shoulders way back. "I always thought that's the way you were supposed to stand!"

She's right--it's a natural mistake, and it seems a small thing, but look at the ripple effect. Forcing your shoulders back could be taken as a symbol of good posture, but not disconnected from the rest of you, right? Where is your weight carried over your feet? Where are your hips, your torso, and the gorgeous, essential, miraculous curve of your spine, not to mention all the muscles that hold your heavy head up . . . consider, and then it doesn't make sense to simply hold your shoulders back.

Everything's connected. So many things I do are "ought to's" I haven't seen clearly. Certainly there are oodles of duties that don't fall in this category, respnsibilities that must be attended to. It feels tremendously good, liberating, if that's not too obvious a word, to SEE them as choices, and then reevaluate. What a gift, hey? It's an overlooked category, this, small freedoms you can give yourself, occasional permission to do something other than you think you ought.