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.

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.

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.