Lotusland

Enough. These few words are enough.

If not these words, this breath.

If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life

we have refused

again and again

until now.

Until now.

~David Whyte

After fits and starts of planning, buckets of bad weather (another way of saying November and December), nearly total loss of my perspective and sense of humor, we went to Thailand.

There was sunshine.

There was time.

There were peaceful, quiet, smiling people.

There we were, together, far from home.

We made our wishes, and sent them off into the unknown.

What a gift to arrive in our own wholehearted presence.

Life is Suffering...

In meditation class this week we talked about suffering. What a relief it is to let go of denial, start at the beginning with your arm around your suffering. It's kind of a bad news/good news thing, so you have to stay with it through the process.

So why are you suffering right now? (Don't forget to ask with compassion.) We listened to a recording of a poem:

Rest in natural great peace this exhausted mind,

Beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thoughts

Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves

in the infinite ocean of samsara.

Rest in natural great peace.

The poem is recited by one Sogyal Rinpoche, written by Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche. The Tibetan-accented english, the gathering force of the background music, the weight of the words sinking into the open sky of mind, the poem repeatedly repeated...rest, of course we want to rest! Why can't we rest? Yes, beaten, yes neurotic, yes relentless, yes pounding. And yes, peace. We can rest. You can rest! Wanted it to keep going, wanted it to stop. It stopped.

When I looked at the cardboard cover of this little 3" cd, there are the two rinpoche (what's plural for rinpoche?? is it like fish?) laughing faces, smiling eyes, inclined toward one another. Good marketing. (I've been schooled in the devil's deals of western-style advertising). I better listen to that again, so I can have what they have, right? I say that with all sincerity. I am totally open to a revelation in whatever wrapping.

So what is my suffering right now? Summer passed. I thought often about posting but made the choice to be with the moment instead of sitting writing about it.

Now everything is still passing, again. We are here, in the school routine, my kids like the superhero you only see when he stops running, the angled light meaning the end of the gardening season--I want to be creating...what am I creating? All I'm doing is watching things pass away, and feeling sadness, feeling lost.

Diagnosis: Clearly I'm feeling a foolish attachment to the time that is forever swiftly fleeting.

Remedy: A moment in the evening to savor.

A musician (favorite song: We three kings) and a scientist (Doppler effect demonstrated in your living room), just for an hour or less on a fall evening, exploring possibilities of tone, of frequency, of being.

We ended meditation class by following our teacher in yoga nidra. I felt aware of very specific parts of me. How nice to take notice of my throat when it is healthy, and not just when it starts to hurt. How fascinating to feel a vibrating energy all up and down my shoulders, arms, fingers--almost like I could regulate involuntary bodily systems. Boy if I could the first thing I'd do would be to make my hair behave.

What if I could always remember that feeling after yoga nidra--of space when I'm compressed, of time when I'm rushed? Can I be conscious, forgiving, a witness to self, expanding? Simply and only animated earth, without expectations, only awareness. So life is suffering... and awareness can be, unexpectedly, joy. That's the good news! Hope you stayed long enough to get the good news.

Welcome to Villa Arbole

Experiences of the last couple of weeks are percolating. Devastation in Haiti made thoughts heavy, the good health and safety of my family and myself more precious. When not busy with something completely consuming, would try to imagine everything around me being turned upside down so violently and would hold much sadness for those afflicted. What to do? Read about it. Couldn't watch any video. Send money. How much could ever be enough. Send some each day. Clicking the button along with thousands of others must make a difference.

Thanks reverberated in my head for those who make it their business to be there or go there, and I wondered at all the different paths our lives take when you consider the tangible outcome of a person who builds a dense skillset like doctoring or organizing in disasters like that. Is what I do really as valuable? Am I falling as short of some universal expectation as I am of a personal one to make life better. Inevitable questions.

And then our long-planned trip was upon us. Leaving Theo and Dora seemed impossible logistically and emotionally and so even as I crossed out each logistic and emotional task in preparation to leave I thought of myself in a weird alternative world in which I wouldn't actually leave. Then we went.

Yoga twice a day. Surfing if you dared. Early morning meditation, ears filled with the constant roar of the ocean. A group of 20 or so, every different kind of person, joining together for 6 days in Sayulita, Mexico. Patterns everywhere. At first we seized and appreciated the cultural, culinary, physical, environmental differences. Some had interesting bacteriological experiences. I think we all realized some pacing was required. When I was still home it was easy to imagine doing everything I wanted to do there in a day, it was a vacation from regular home duties and therefore I had boundless energy for it.

In practice my body got tired. Confused. Scared, even. I had a heady first day of surfing during which I caught many waves and vaulted like a tiger to stand solidly on my board as it swished effortlessly to shore. On a following day after ditching on the face of a wave I could barely keep from unraveling as the rest of the set seemed to try to pummel me endlessly into the rockiest place under the water on this otherwise unthreatening beach.

Yoga was good but required reassessing: being outside, being with new people, being with a body that doesn't seem to progress evenly or steadily in one direction--too much else going on. Yoga became something I was able to consider skipping, which here at home simply doesn't occur, if I am going, it's because I want to be there--being already there, I had to say at times: rest. I needed to rest and to guard my moments of appreciation. I needed to ask myself if I'm brave. If I'm strong.

Meditation was hit or miss, dominated by that floating feeling that eludes the simultaneous need for grounding and opening of space--if I'm not connected to anything; your words, my thoughts, this body--what is all of this about?

So lots of topsy turveying, and of course that is what travel is all about, that is as it should be. I didn't really get enough time to make sense of it while away, so I'm still doing that now.

Remarkably clear to the horizon

No, I'm not in Hawaii any more. I'm trying to hang on to the feeling though. Sorting the mail, settling back into school and volunteering routines, yoga (thank goodness for yoga), the simple act of getting food into the house and onto the table has filled each day up completely, and for the past two weeks I wonder at ever having had any time to sit, think, and write about thoughts.

I do think it was easier to come back from such a supremely relaxing time away because of the routine of yoga. The way I love being in my yoga community is at least equal to one wild and dangerous memory of a slowly untwisting deliciously yellow hibiscus flower. Waking up, moving through the preparations of school lunch-making and breakfast and getting the kids to school, and then miraculously, compellingly, finding myself on my mat in Jen's studio is a recipe for a day riding with the hum of contentment.

Really, I am amazed I get to say that when I think of the disputes I had with myself over the worth of moving from bed a year ago. This is a vivid time for me, all the more intensely fertile after a fallow, barren period. As Jen says, "recover, uncover, discover something new about yourself. Be in your own good company."

So I take time for myself in spite of the struggles of the world, I attend to self care in the ways that I can, along with all the lucky and not so lucky women of the world, remembering when I felt ragged and worn, and then I allow myself to remember walking through a warm green palm tunnel as material for the glue with which I hold my family together.

I don't know what will come of it all. Sometimes it seems I could make a difference, that I'm gathering myself for something momentous. Sometimes just a glimpse of building a safe, peaceful corner of existence seems important, and sometimes the world is too big to bring into focus and there is simply the enjoyment of the textures of my life, my daughter's terrycloth hoodie moving away through the lushness, my son's voice saying "mom, I think I'm finally relaxed enough to go back to school."

Here we are once again dispersing to the four corners every morning and it's only going to ramp up from right here through the holidays. I am so glad we had a chance to be together and rest.