Tag Archives: Attachment

The Threat of Silence

26 Feb

Since Caimbeul mentioned his 7 year silent retreat,  just the idea of S I L E N C E has been in my awareness.

What is silence?  Where is it found?  How does it change us and our experiences?

Even just the threat of silence has had life altering force for me.

The words thrown out here on this blog are just the reflection of my MIND making stories.  But the images from my own experiences and the experiences of others found in words gives to me at times illumination.   Our lives are played out before us like the colors of a kaleidoscope – mixing and blending, forming patterns of ever changing beauty.

kaleidoscope1

At the very least, we all watch a cool and mesmorizing show.

So as opposed to the monk’s life, which sounds like pure heaven, my life has been full of activity and people.  Once, while browsing in a New Age bookstore, I came across a book called The Birthday Book, in which horoscopes (of a sort) were cast for those born on each day of the year.  And the forecast for my birthday has stayed in my awareness for years, though I only glanced at the page briefly.  My memory tells me that my horoscope said that in my lifetime I would need to release the idea of order and learn to roll with chaos.

Did the prediction influence the reality?  Or did the prediction reflect a pattern?  Or does an idea overlay random events and make them seem to fit in a neat pattern?

Silence, of course, is powerful.  But learning to find the silence amidst much activity is my practice, pattern, journey, it seems.

Even the threat of true silence for an extended period of time turned my life upside down.  Here’s how.

When my kids were toddlers, I was invited to a talk about Vipasanna Meditation, by S. N. Goenka, who was opening these centers around the country with 10 day silent retreats for free.  Oh, how I wanted to go and experience silence for 10 days but it was not the time; I could not leave my children for 10 days, and couldn’t ever imagine a day when this would be possible.  But, this idea stayed in my mind, the someday idea, for years.

Two years ago, I found out that they had opened a center in Georgia, easy driving distance, and the summer retreat perfectly coincided with my daughter’s sleep away camp.  I signed up.  This commitment to silence and to my path opened my eyes, changed my life entirely, and I didn’t even get to go.

I arranged to leave my older daughter at home with my husband,  on the boat we were residing within in a transitory, unpredictable environment that made me suddenly see my life.  Though she was 15 and old enough to watch herself with minimal guidance, I saw that our lives had deteriorated to the point that she could not be left in his care.  My Eyes Opened to see what was there.  I was living in a situation that made no sense, but I couldn’t see what was so close.  I had been so busy putting out fires for so long, I hadn’t stopped to realize, I did not wish to be a firefighter.  Our created reality of home and family was in a spiral down that I could Stop and Reverse.

So began my journey away from the marriage and on to the hard work of recreating a healthy home environment…which is still ongoing!

As a bonus for signing up for the retreat, I was gifted a friend who made the amazing commitment  to sit with me for a bit every morning of that retreat so that I would know while I was alone, she was with me for that time from her corner wherever that may be.  Amazing, right?  And this friend was also the sort to offer the gentle yet firm aid in recognizing the shift in my path and offer a different kind of support, on the fly of the ever changing patterns.

My unfolding could begin when I answered yes to what the path was demanding of me, and the flow continues on.

But one particular thing has struck me about this WordPress experience of the past few months; I don’t know if I can articulate it, but I feel like I am walking the path of many.  I am walking the path of healers, I am walking the path of painters and photographers, I am walking the path of silence, I am walking a path of those without the soul contract of children, I am walking the path of those in partnership, I am walking the path of my friends on snowy walks, on other continents, in castles and shanties,  and you, perhaps in turn, walk a path with me.  All the naked sharing adds to our collective human experience (without boundaries) of what is most real in this realm.

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Video

Down Here Below

24 Feb

A Hint of Spring today bathes everything in a new light.   My ears (and more) were gifted a voice – Abbey Lincoln.  The lyrics…

Down here below…
The winds of change are blowing
Through the weary night.
I prayed my soul will find me
Shining in the morning light,
Down here below.
Down here below,
It’s not so easy
Just to be.
Sometimes I’m really all at sea.
You made me when the world was new
And skies were blue…
And I’m here because there’s you.
They say I’ll never see your face
And we’re out there from your grace,
The one you fashioned with your hand,
And scattered all across the land,
But I am happy just to know
That you must go
Where I must go
For there are winds and scars to show
Livin’ here down here below…
Down here below,
The setting sun is shining
On the melancholy mood.
I hear the distant thunder
And the crying of the blue
Down where below

I’m yours alone
The only one to call my own
The only one I’ve ever known
Sometimes I see you
Standing there
Sometimes I’m freer.
And you are here,
Down here with me,
You made me just the way a hear,
Or less feeling, eyes to see
A strange embrace, a simple hand,
A spirit free that says: “I can”,
And I’m happy just to know
That you will go
Where I must go,
For you send me this I know
Living here, down here below,
Living here, down here below,
Living here, down here below.

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The Path Will Meet You As You Step

22 Feb

overgrown path

This is a hard time, a place along the journey that will have a mark, a groove, some kind of evidence of a certain kind of heartache and turmoil that will probably be a demarcation of sorts.  And still…

I’m starting to realize I don’t have any feelings about the events in my life.

In some ways, that sounds just wrong – as if I’ve checked out, gone numb, given up.

But it isn’t that.

With the release of expectations or attachments to outcome, things are just happening.  I am here, I watch, I do things, and all is equal.  Strange, eh?

My life up to now has prepared me for the unfolding of now.  I stare this now in the face, my own denials, my own attempts to fix, and accept every part.

What seems a struggle is when I don’t know what to do, when I imagine I have to make a path or figure something out.   What I am learning is how to see the path as I take my step.

I step, the path steps up to meet me.  Or something like that.  The path often doesn’t become clear until I  step.

The confusion comes if I anticipate the path not meeting me.  Then the path looks like an overgrown jungle requiring a machete.

Now, that old Irish Blessing makes sense, May the Road Rise Up To Meet You.  Geez, so silly revisiting all these old sayings and realizing, now I see what that means!  I thought I knew, now I see more, and yet there is still more that opens.  Without stress, it opens up before me.

The Path Will Meet You As You Step.

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not so smart

20 Feb

What I thought was one thing, turns out to be another.

Turns out I’m not so smart. (grin)  I’m right in the middle of another toggle switch moment of realization and change, an oh no, not this! sort of light bulb moment.   I wonder why I’m always the last one to know what is going on right under my nose.

When I am ready to see, I do.

I have ambivalence about writing about this unfolding – in real time – in public.  But more and more,  the boundaries between me and other seem less and less and my story is yours and yours is mine.   So much so that I am not my story, I am not even this IDENTITY, really, though right now I do walk around in this body with the seemingly intense happenings of her now.

This now is a chapter that will be revisited in just the time traveling way I talked about yesterday.  In this storm of now, I often find myself sitting in the EYE and remaining still, but the force winds are off the charts and the weather forecasters look worried.

Water Twist Abstract

Even though my reactivity  has decreased exponentially, the scenes are still spiraling out of control.  I am an observer, a recipient, a rock, an instigator by just existing.  My breath, my face, my tapping toe, anything has been fuel for this fire.  I did not want to see that it was not normal teenage angst.

So here we stand on the cusp of a medical diagnosis – and medication that may help.  In some ways more scary than ever – in some ways relief – in some ways just watching the unfolding show.  I am trying to stay in the open spot that doesn’t forecast what this means any further than today.  I am trying to imagine that anything is possible; I am only responsible for each moment as it comes.

I am sort of a straightforward person.  Bad brain chemistry makes no sense to me.  The sheer illogic of the thoughts and the intelligence and energy of the one in the throws of what I see as incorrect thinking confuse me to no end.  I just keep thinking, just stop thinking this.

In my marriage I was caught in the snare of another’s thinking for years.  I played the role of:  THE ONE WHO RIGHTS THE BOAT.  It took me years to realize that the boat was being tipped on purpose.  The irrational thinking, to me, looks a choice, though I have the doctor’s note that says otherwise.   I know I am wrong in this perception, but from my angle, I feel like I see others get to that crazy-making point we all get to and they go right on in, head first.  Refusing to stop.  Just stop. STOP!

I hope the humor will return for all in this house again soon.

In many ways, I am continually taking a break to see the big picture.  Little me can zoom on out any ol’ time she wants and see that while this may be tough, it isn’t fatal, and even if it were, fatality is inevitable to all of us at some point.  So Okay to everything.   All is well, even in the storm.   Bootstraps pulled up!

This is just one little journey with its own set of challenges.  I send you love and strength and zoomed out views!  And I know you wish me the same.

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Joy Seems Not a Choice

17 Feb

drawing-joy-wojtek-kowalski

Drawing Joy – Wojek Kowalski

In these 46 years, some things get clearer.  One thing would be this – You can’t strong arm your way into happiness.

Joy appears to be a symptom of dwelling in the still point self before identification.

My path has taken me to many environments of learning and ignorance, wealth and poverty,  acceptance and rejection, just like most of us, after a while of being here on this planet!  And without a doubt, my joy did not correspond to the outward manifestation of house, body, income, mode of transportation, or social circles.  In fact, the inverse seemed to apply.  Some of my most suffering times were in the midst of worldly defined happiness.

Currently,  I walk without a partner, my daughters are a challenge daily, my future doesn’t require me to wear shades, I’m not as financial secure as I used to be, cough cough; I understate!  But my joy overflowth, often.

When that joy feels lost as often can happen, and the mind devises ways to get it back,  I can imagine myself trapped in those gears.  Enough times, I watch those spiked wheels spin so that, for me, the moments of feeling trapped in sorrow decrease.  Or so it seems.

Joy can flow so strangely in, where the world says it is wholly uncalled for – so inappropriately at times!   I have to contain myself from dancing and sit quietly accepting what is, open-armed waiting for others to join me.  While there is no joy in the suffering of others,  joy springs within the self, it does, when it will, without choice.

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God Dives Right In and Lands Behind Our Eyes

15 Feb

Alex Grey

Alex Grey – Transfigurations

The divine had had enough of just wondering about experience.  Upon diving in, she divided, fragmented, shattered into these infinite portals of views.   Landing behind our eyes is much more than a camera view; it is a breathing experience through many sets of eyes, the whole shebang of eyes – of each -and every – thing.  The eyes behind the eyes of the trees, the eyes of squirrels, the eyes of wind, rivers, humans…

I can only relate through my own eyes.   My goal is not to take a walk down memory lane for marga but to explore my memories because perhaps what I remember is much like all of our experiences with this…this…what?  What is a word?  Epiphany?  Realization?  Sensation?  The experience of knowing you are more than just you?

I was in 8th grade when I remember recognizing that odd outside perspective of something experiencing itself through me.  I was walking the long, weird hallways of my middle school, going to the bus at the end of the day when saw the world through my eyes as though I were someone else.

 I said to myself in that moment, “I am a Camera,”  (I didn’t know of the British Film from the 50’s) and I gave my eyes over to IT for a better view.   I showed the viewer, “This is how we wait in the cold, dark mornings for the bus to come at the top of the hill, this is how 8th grade girls talk in the bathroom, this is what they say in the lunch line”…I had a constant viewer with me for a while, observing my life and my mind.

My brother had been diagnosed with cancer and the ego could no longer claim its identity as the sister of the  popular, athletic, older brother, but now I was the sister of the kid with cancer.  By the next winter I was the sister of the kid who died.  Perhaps this explains the sudden shift in perspective.  The unfolding in front of me no longer made any sense in a traditional way.

And then on my wedding day, that same oddness; who sees through these eyes?   Who is watching me do this thing?

Back and forth in every moment, doing and watching the doing, me and not me.

Sometimes I imagined a whole planet of beings were experiencing our world though the portal in my head.  I tried to show them what it was like, objectively.  Perhaps I am responsible for the delay in Contact 🙂

This process is written about in past tense, as if the divine long ago at the creation of the world chose to dive in, but perhaps it is more like a continual process, an infinite interplay in EVERY moment between divinity and creation.

The ego with its serious thoughts continually seems to push aside these moment, but actually this interplay is always present, always right here.

We all share these experiences, don’t we?

Some begin to cultivate this observer perspective – openings can occur here.

This music is not everyone’s tastes, but here, is yet another window of eyes, experiencing:  complete, with a freaky video, too:

Parabola, Tool, Lyrics

So familiar and overwhelmingly warm
This one, this form I hold now
Embracing you, this reality here
This one, this form I hold now, so
Wide eyed and hopeful
Wide eyed and hopefully wild
We barely remember what came before this precious moment
Choosing to be here right now
Hold on, stay inside…
This body holding me, reminding me that I am not alone in…
This body makes me feel eternal
All this pain is an illusion

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Middle Path Dance

10 Feb

Everything I write here is a lie.

And everything I write is true, in the moment I write it.

My head gets stuck on this…but my heart understands the flow of capturing words that seem to represent the loose hold we all have on TRUTH.  I am just experiencing, relating these experiences and allowing the spin of the mind’s wheels to be observed until its rotation loses energy and momentum, and the spin slows.  Sometimes stillness is left.  There, there are no words, no thoughts, no lies.

While still in a body, there is a dance in the middle path.  Between motion and stillness, between silence and noise, between mud and clear water, between pain and joy.

I like peeking into bloggers lives like Caimbeul or seeingm, where my life in constrast seems so different.  We are all leaves dancing in the wind, some have created a gentle breeze in which to reflect for now, and some have chosen seeming stormy volitility within which to make their journey for now, and those roles will certainly shift and change,  but we are all just leaves still being played by the conditions of the weather between our release and landing.

The line in the sand the now moment seemed to call for yesterday was another play of consciousness that was so perfect for me in this middle Path dance.  The dancer doesn’t stop to think, how do I stay upright?  She dances, and in the now moment the movement that comes next flows within her.

The dance of life is no less graceful.  I’m going to tell a potty training story.   I feel like someone should step in and stop me from telling this, but for some reason it perfectly illustrates how this dance can be for me sometimes.

My oldest daughter was late to potty train, and the learning process ended up becoming a very confusing section of the dance.  My gentle manner was tender in her accidents, and supportive of her efforts, and we ended up in a place where I was carrying 10 outfits for her around in my bag, no hyperbole, for all the accidents daily.  And after a good, long while of my gentle support, one night she and I were watching a movie before bedtime together with her on my lap.  I was tired and  when she just chose to pee without trying to get to the bathroom,  the urine falling into my lap was cold and disgusting and it angered me.  I looked her firmly in the eyes and I said, “You will not do this.”  and I went on a verbal speech with quite a bit of angry tones and lines drawn.  Her eyes were wide watching and listening. This moment marked the end of this particular dance.  She was potty trained.  None of the parenting books would have said this was the way to dance this dance, but often my middle path requires marga to express some anger and backbone.

So I will say, there is a great relief in this house today, a new air, so to speak.  A dybbuk was sent packing.

I can see today that a line drawn in the sand allowed us to examine what really lay beneath.  There was a deadline set for solution that mattered for life and death, in my little one’s world.

In this dance,  this marga character is often full of great acceptance.  But I had a moment when I felt the pee in my lap again so to speak, and said, this will not be the air in my house for years on end.  Yesterday was a thrashy and angry dance, lasting 22 hours, with a break for sleeping, and no one knew how it was going to end.

I’ve never been much into Freudian theories, but I knew there was a heavy dose of displacement going on.  Knowing a theory does not bring a solution.  After the thrashing and crying, and anger and sympathy, a final deep buried wound was uncovered, and the flow of universal love seemed to enter in again.

I’m not Pollyanna, here.  This is not the end.  But I feel sure this is a truer turning point than I have seen in a while.  I see how the universe came in to play the music behind our dance, and pulled in players I didn’t even know were available.

On we go.

Heart full of gratitude for the journey that can be a dance, and that there are those whose dances overlap with mine.

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three wee epiphanies

9 Feb

1.  the now moment is such a pregnant place the air fairly sizzles

2.  consciousness does not always speak in a gentle voice.  sometimes, it flows with a firmness, sometimes it flows with a strong voice to say, these are my boundaries, this is what i will do, and it has to say it strongly, all the while the eyeballs are observing from the now, acting of the moment,  allowing what it needs, which may include lines in the sand on an imaginary beach without a horse in the race

3.  blessings on MY head.  sometimes in periods of challenge, i think i say to the universe “bring it on” in a sense, i can take it…but i also see, i  say to the universe, bring it on – let blessings flow;  i can take that too!

 

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There Are No Shoulds

4 Feb

Crater_Lake_Crater_Lake_National_Park

My mother and I are different in many surface ways, and if there were a Match.com for mother/daughter relationships, we might not even be paired.  But of course the wisdom of the universe understands a much deeper level than we even know of ourselves, and thus we are paired for reasons beyond simplistic, exterior match ups  – we are paired by our souls.

My mother is a deep, blue body of water.

I discovered this fact my freshman year in college when I was far away from home.  I was a Theatre major, and in theatre one does all sorts of in-class assignments most other majors could never imagine.  One stark and leafless Ohio day, I remember the feel of the cold wood floor under me as we were led through a long, guided mediation that had me fairly far outside my physical body into a realm I never imagined accessible before this day.  We were asked to connect with someone we were closest to in this life.

At that suggestion, I found myself swimming in the deepest, most calming blue waters of my mother – and I knew then and now looking back that I had found her essence.

We may disagree about most things people believe in, join, wear as a labels or identities, etc, but we hardly ever tromp into those places when we talk.

I think it was about 20 years ago, after I was chastizing myself about something,, my mother said to me,  “There are no Shoulds!”  She stopped me cold.  Really?  No Shoulds.  What freedom in those words!  What a gift she gave to me that day!

And since that time, we have said this phrase to each other as often as we needed to hear it.  Sometimes she would forget herself, get lost in the role of MOTHER, and tell me something that she thought I SHOULD do;  then, I would say to her, “There are no shoulds,”  and she would immediately drop the should and say, “You are right.”  The love and detachment in this instant transformation she can make after a daughter’s scolding are a beautiful gift and mirror to me.

From Neil Kramer’s The Unfoldment: The Organic Path to Clarity, Power, and Transformation:  “The outcome of making a wrong decision is often portrayed in the mainstream media as a life-shattering failure.  It is a very binary equation in the unreality of the distortion:  win or lose; black or white.  But reality is not like that.  There is no failure on the spiritual path, other than the temporary postponement of not walking it.

A conscious decision to not do something is as valid as choosing to do something.  One must consider the personal relevance of a thing from one’s own inner core before exercising will.  Contemplate removing should from the process.  There is doing, and there is not doing.  Should doesn’t come into it.  If I feel that it would be good to go and visit my elderly neighbor and help her chop firewood, then I do it.  If I don’t feel that, then I won’t do it.  No should is required.

Should compels people to act from imbalance – from outside their truth.  It is closely allied with public expectation and social standing, which are habitually flawed, as they are mired in the distortion” (95).

The gift we can give to ourselves and to others is releasing the expectations – releasing the shoulds.  That word should should just go away; shouldn’t it?

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The Punches Go Right Through

30 Jan

It is a magical, moody morning here.  My life blesses me with a ride to a central bus stop for my daughters on a road named Harbor View Drive, along which, we cross a marsh and see the sun coming up over the harbor.  Earlier this year, this ride was full of angry angst, but now, after all the learning and growing, this morning, we enjoy:  the clouds that hang just at the top of the trees, threatening rain at the same time the sun is rising,  reflecting water, exotic birds, and the plot line of a crazy show involving twins switched at birth, conveyed with dry wit followed by giggles.

Eyes cry, eyes dry, anger comes, anger goes, laughter builds, laughter fades…blessings to blow one away in every moment.

It is a very unsatisfying feeling to punch the air – I have seen that play out.  This morning I am enjoying the plateau in suffering and the view this stop along the mountain climb affords.

My sudden realization during Mooji’s brief talk was this:  the pain body of others is exactly the same as the ego/mind voice inside.    If there is nothing anywhere to be hit, nothing can land.  Boxing is no fun without an opponent 🙂 outside with the play of people or inside in the play of thoughts.

Who is listening to the outside voices?  Who is listening on the inside?

There can be no one home in my body and no one home in my mind!   Who is even talking now?  grin grin grin.

“Where is My Mind”

Oh – stopWith your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
But there’s nothing in it
And you’ll ask yourselfWhere is my mind [3x]Way out in the water
See it swimmin’

I was swimmin’ in the Caribbean
Animals were hiding behind the rocks
Except the little fish
But they told me, he swears
Tryin’ to talk to me, coy koi.

Where is my mind [3x]

Way out in the water
See it swimmin’ ?

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