the joys of insomnia...

It's official- have to chalk this night up as one of almost no sleep.  My day appears to have started at 1:40 a.m. 

I am serene and grateful- with or without sleep.

What was shrouded in fog comes clear- begins to shimmer.  

Indecision- morphs into mountainlike certainty.  

Center of stillness- now ripples moving out.

fearless... who? me?

I make no claims on always and forever but at least for this moment, no fear, here.

Hallelujah!!

reflections...

'from an article by Pico Iyer-  The Joy of Less - Happy Days Blog - NYTimes.com'

"The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet more peaceful, and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches...My [life] is one long sequence of inner miracles."   Written by the young Dutchwoman Etty Hillesum on her way to her death at Auschwitz. 

Lying in bed for over three hours, sleepless, I listened to a talk by Amita Schmidt, titled, "Tracing Back the Radiance.  Toward the very end she spoke of working with trauma surviors, herself included, and said that what arises in the healing process is an awareness of being held in love.  Knowing arises that the whole time, one is being held in love.  The quote above speaks to that directly.  How else could a young woman who is on a train which takes her to her death, be so deeply connected to herself, to life?  

I have spent the better part of my 50+ years believing that the trauma I suffered as a small child and later as a young woman should not have happened and that to be whole and free I needed to make it go away.  As a result of that childish belief, I have been frozen in the bodily experience and unable to fully embrace this life.  Stuck, as it were.  Understanding is dawning that the only way to be whole is to recognize the early trauma as an integral part of who I have been in this life and unless I can accept it fully, there is no moving on, moving deeper into the silence, the stillness, the love that I am.  

It seems impossible that there was love anywhere around when my father was an out of control, rage driven alcoholic.  When he heaped emotional and physical abuse upon his children and upon his wife, in front of his children. And yet... here I am, half a century later, recognizing that love as being the ground of my life, so how could it have been absent when I was a child?

This bears further inquiry and reflection.  The idea that love is a thing that comes and goes makes no sense to me- I am aware that I cannot hold in mind the fullness that is Love.  I can only surrender into it.  If I had been able to see it then- when I was dreaming a little girl being terrorized by her perceptions and interpretation of what was happening to and around her... But that isn't how life played out for me and it seems that only now is it possible for me to see that dream and realized that nothing ever happened that was outside of that cradle of love. Nothing ever could.

 

15 hours into...

...my 24 hours of water fasting.  Already detoxing so I feel pretty full of it, if you get my drift.   May not do anything much today due to lack of energy and motivation.  Rest in presence and let everything be as it is.

Listening to Francis Lucille and Rupert Spira speaking from stillness- from that which is my own home.

'Raw Divas'- detox

Just made a smoothie with blueberries, an orange, and a banana in new Blendtec blender.  I feel so uptown with this appliance in the kitchen.   Must find a suitable name for it. 

Normally I don't like blueberries in smoothies because my old and truly wonderful Oster blender couldn't make them smooth enough for my palate. This blender is awesome- love it!

This smoothie is the only food I will eat for the next 24 hours as I am embarking on a 7 day detox plan with those 'Raw Divas' as guides.  Another fruit smoothie in 24 hours but until then only water.  Sounds good...

Then for the next seven days, my diet will consist of raw fruits and vegetables with no fat or nuts or any of the other foods that rawmaniacs like to eat.  

Freedom from compulsive overeating is bringing joy and gratitude.  And then there is that serenity that comes from knowing that I didn't go over that cliff today.  Life is good.

$$$

Okay, so I am eating 100% raw foods, meditating, writing, riding my pre-WWII bicycle around town, have been to five meetings in 11 days, and have lost ten whole pounds!!  I feel like a million bucks and have no plans to stop my practice any time soon.  Life is good.  Life is better than good.

Awake in the wee hours of the morning but happy and grateful and all that good stuff.  Having a fantasy about starting a raw foods restaurant with some other crazed raw foodist in my Oregon town.  Ani Phyo is currently my hero and I dream of living in the raw food mecca of southern California.

A friend went to a Christian rock concert in Texas with her 16 year old son.  She's come a long way from our 80's new wave wild party days in Denver.  Me too- my idea of rocking out is to meditate or drink a Superfoods smoothie and  dance around in my kitchen listening to Larissa Stowe sing 'Amma' or a techno dance version of the Heart Sutra.  

My kitchen is becoming a raw food oasis in the midst of my formerly depressed life.  How absolutely radical is that.  I see photos of raw folks and they look ridiculously happy.  I am happy when I meditate and write and walk and eat raw food. Who could ask for more.

And... there is a gorgeous white vintage Thunderbird in mint condition that lives down on Amazon.  I think it's from the 1950's.  What a car!

confused...

Just realized that the last two posts I made to this blog actually went to the first incarnation.  Ah...  how perfect!

a Rilke quote...

Read this quote on a blog that I have been following- it brings tears and a deep recognition of the failure to love that has been such a part of my life experience.

Think, dear Sir, of the world you carry inside you and call this thinking whatever you want to: a remembering of your own childhood or a yearning towards a future of you own- only be attentive to what is arising in you, and place that above everything you perceive around you. What is happening in your innermost self is worthy of your entire love; somehow you must find a way to work at it, and not lose too much time or too much courage in clarifying your attitude towards people.

Ken Mcleod teaches that what we experience is life.  The sensations, feelings, and thoughts that arise and pass away in our field of experience make up what we call life.  There is nothing else. Rilke phrases it as "what is happening in your innermost self" and claims that it "is worthy of my entire love".   For as long as I can remember, I have judged my experience and left

a Rilke quote

Think, dear Sir [writes the poet a hundred years ago], of the world you carry inside you, and call this thinking whatever you want to: a remembering of your own childhood or a yearning towards a future of your own–only be attentive to what is arising in you, and place that above everything you perceive around you. What is happening in your innermost self is worthy of your entire love; somehow you must find a way to work at it, and not lose too much time or too much courage in clarifying your attitude towards people.

thanks to middle-aged Italian chick...

"Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.  Just keep going.  No feeling is final." --Rilke

thought...

Everything stressful that ever happened was a thought.  I heard this sentence spoken in a dharma talk.

in the light of a new day

A friend sent this poem in an email and I am happy to post it here as it relates so directly to the post I made the other night, "can't sleep".  Thank you Margaret, for this.

Walker

Walker, your footsteps

are the road, and nothing more.

Walker, there is no road,

the road is made by walking.

Walking you make the road, 

and turning to look behind

you see the path you never

again will step upon.

Walker, there is no road,

only foam trails on the sea.

by Antonio Machado

 

if I could not fail...

Read this question somewhere recently and came to a full stop.  "What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?" 

I would write a book... go back to work- this time in hospice care... let myself fall in love again... move house... the list could go on and on but what I would most want to do is... be fully and completely alive and awake.  However that might look.  Whatever it might require of me.

early morning

Would rather be sleeping but since that isn't the reality at the moment, I found a poem to read and enter here;

Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks

I am the blossom pressed in a book,

found again after two hundred years...

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper...

When the young girl who starves 

sits down to a table

she will sit beside me...

I am the food on the prisoner's plate...

I am water rushing to the wellhead,

filling the pitcher until it spills...

I am the patient gardener 

of the dry and weedy garden...

I am the stone step,

the latch, and the working hinge...

I am the heart contracted by joy...

the longest hair, white

before the rest...

I am there in the basket of fruit

presented to the widow...

I am the musk rose opening

unattended, the fern on the boggy summit...

I am the one whose love

overcomes you, already with you

when you think to call my name...

Jane Kenyon

Found it soothing- to read such a poem and let the images float in the mind.

can't sleep...

In the night, while meandering around on the internet, checking out blogs with a buddhist flavor, I came upon this quote-

"There are no paths.  Paths are made by walking."  --Antonio Machado

I have worried many times over the years that I was not following my true path. Recognizing then that my life's path is made by the walking, I courageously ventured off into side paths- some glorious, others rather decadent and one day, to my eye,  the whole journey seemed more like a classic tragedy.  I kept walking. 

Suddenly there was no path at all!  Terror ensued, followed by despair. Finally I saw, with some amusement, that my path had only apparently disappeared.  I was still walking.

There is no path except the one that is made by walking.  Some small comfort comes with that recognition.  If I think I am following the path of Buddha, Christ, a living teacher, or even some friend of mine, in the end I must create the path that is my life by walking it- alone.  Which makes it my path- the right path- the only path I can authentically follow.

Sad to say, these sorts of random musings tend to arise when I am awake for too long in the wee hours of the morning.  Must be time to meditate.

sick day...

Had three friends (one is my daughter) over for lunch today.  We feasted on Indian food while one of the women expressed her woes regarding a class she is taking.  Another expressed her woes about a difficult exam she took to get into a medical training program.  I whined a bithere and there about being sick and joked that I had thought of fixing plates of food, handing them out at the door, saying, here is your food, now go away.  

I just wanted to let myself be sick, lay around, go back to bed, be pathetic.   At one point I commented to the one among us who was actually in a good mood and not complaining about anything, that I wished I felt better.  She heard me say that, I heard myself say that and we both cracked up laughing.  What a ridiculous thing it was. 

So now, some six hours later, they are back in the stream of their lives and I am alone and still feeling sick but not fighting it or making inane remarks about feeling better.  How wonderful to recognize that wanting things to change ensures that they never will.  So I can relax and breathe and bring this to a close.

Ahh... sleep... I'm on my way.

Akshobya Buddha

LOST POST- *@#%&#

I blog- 5 paragraphs- hit publish and get the message that it ain't gonna happen.  So I search for the post and it really has disappeared. Jeez.  Not a happy camper here because the post was about a snake in a friend's manbag. Too tired to rewrite so let this suffice.  Maybe tomorrow will be better although dinner at my daughter's was fabulous so if I sleep tonight then it was a good day after all.

cybertrash and beyond...

A few weeks ago I panicked at the thought of anyone reading my ramblings on this blog site.  I believed that somehow if my writing was perceived as being less than intelligent, lacking entertainment value and worst of all, just plain boring that I was then diminished as a person.  In one efficient move, I eliminated the possibility of judgment and cast my blog into the outer darkness of cybertrash. The regret followed almost immediately.  What could cause me to think so little of myself?  I love writing, even if it is often a torturous process and even if there are few moments of real freedom and breaking through.  

The sad truth is that I am the one judging my writing and finding it lacking. Whatever anyone else thinks of this blog is their business and has nothing to do with its actual value or with me.  I find value in the making of it and that is reason enough to do it.  No need to compare myself to other writers (and we are legion).  No reason to expect that I will produce something amazing and that through my efforts the world will be changed.  Only one reason to write and that is because I must.  To feel whole and true and at peace with what arises and passes away in this story of mine, writing must have it's place.  When I write these words I feel a quiet joy fluttering deep in my body like a tiny bird taking flight.  There is a rightness in saying all of this in front of the world- even if the world never knows that it has been said.

My daughter is an artist-  abstract painting is the way her artistry is currently manifesting.  I would never dream of thinking, much less saying the kinds of things to or about her that I routinely think and say about my own path of creative expression... rather, I am open and curious and supportive of her work.  I delight in her successes and feel compassion for her struggles.  Is it possible that I could be so loving with my own slow journey?  My own small achievements such as resuming this blog even after a moment of panic and reckless reactivity?

Yesterday I was reading about rigidity in meditation practice.  The advice given was to continue to do the practice and not to press directly on the resistance because that would just make it stronger.  So here in this blog I will just persevere, writing and not pushing too hard on the tension and resistance.  Not providing myself with more excuses to give up and run away, only to return some months or years from now, still frightened, uncertain, and ashamed but desperate to fill up the pages.  I don't have to try to measure up to the work of Natalie Goldberg, Gail Sher, Susan Piver or any of my other writing teacher/mentors.  I can just be here, writing this and knowing that it is enough.

more than twenty years ago...

... when I was writing on a daily basis after discovering Natalie Goldberg's book, 'Writing Down the Bones', I was on fire.  I would write and  feel overtaken as if I was involved in strenuous physical  exercise.  My handwriting got bigger and sprawled across the page.  My breath came from deep in my belly.  My body swayed as my arm moved back and forth across the page. Inspiration had taken hold and I knew that I was never going to give this up, not for anything. But sadly, I did stop writing and became ill for many years with depression and didn't know if I would ever feel that inspiration again. Grief became my companion through months and sometimes years of not writing.  The grief was as numbing and heart breaking as the loss of a loved one.  

From time to time over the next twenty years the inspiration would return and I would begin my daily writing practice again and then again, I would stop.  This happened more times than I can count but I always came back to it for reasons that I did not fully understand.  I felt haunted and often stalked by this writing self that couldn't find expression.  There were no writing projects in the works- no ideas for anything to embark upon.  Just that deep, wild desire to write.  

Recently I am feeling that old and familiar fire alive in me. Wonderful news, right? Yes, wonderful and wrong, terrifying.  Reading in Ken Mcleod's 'Wake Up to Your Life" I find this quote from James Thurber,  "All men should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why".  Seems I have my path clearly delineated before me.  It is 11:40 and I haven't done my basic writing practice.  That is as good a place as any to begin.

 

questions, answers...

My daughter sent me this poem by Ezra Pound in an email and encouraged me to write.  She added,  " Ti voglio bene." Don't know the exact meaning (she speaks Italian-  I do not) but maybe something like, to write is good.  I agree that writing is good and  I write every day.  I think that the poem is beautiful and evocative.   I may ask her why she chose this one.

A Girl

The tree has entered my hands,

The sap has ascended my arms,

The tree has grown in my breast-

Downward,

The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,

Moss you are,

You are violets with wind above them.

A child- so high- you are,

And all this is folly to the world.

I love my daughter.  She is beautiful.  She is an artist.  Her existence brings joy to my confused heart.  She loves me.  She struggles with having me as a mother.  She is human.  Sometimes she mothers me. Her name is Claire.

... and furthermore...

That last post I wrote was sheer agony so I posted a photo of the Buddha, brushed my teeth, listened to excerpts of Pema Chodron teaching about tonglen practice and watched a video of a British woman singing a song from 'Les Miserables' that is making people cry. Seriously.  Watch it yourself if you don't believe me- or even if you do.

Life isn't so bad even if you have to walk around feeling like you have been shrink wrapped and can't get out.  What if I never do manage to get out?  That would truly suck... and there are no guarantees.

Time to floss.

Rainbow Buddha

How It Feels to Write One of These Things

Every time I begin a new post, I feel the fear come up and wrap itself around me so that it is virtually impossible for me to express in a natural way.  The grief of this interior blockage- of a frozen self that covers over a warm and generous woman who desperately wants to write and dance and sing and speak- to express openly- is huge and threatens to swallow me whole.  If it takes the rest of my life, I will free myself from these bonds and find my voice. I will accomplish this... whatever it takes.  Sounds dramatic but it's real and I am determined.

The block is physical, energetic- I can feel it at my throat, in my arms and hands, in my mid- section, my pelvis and legs. Feels sometimes like someone is standing behind me- holding me in a vise grip- forcing my head down and commanding me to stop- stop what?  Talking?  Living? I did stop- I stopped for decades, pushed it down and now it's all coming back- there is no choice.  My meditation practice is churning the depths, dredging my psyche and bringing up the unlived, the unresolved, the unexperienced material from my past.  I have no idea how to be fully present with these sensations and feelings but I know that I can't run, hide, hold them at bay any longer.  Being in this body right now is so exquisitely painful and there is nowhere to go to escape.  Even as I sit here writing, I feel frozen with fear and physically as solid as a statue made of marble or granite.  Not fully alive- as if someone cast a spell on me decades ago and finally there is some small movement. The mind says relax, but I can't relax.  I don't know how to relax this contraction.

The block is mental, too.  Many disparaging thoughts telling me not to write, I don't have anything of value to say, who do I think I am, anyway.  No talent, so why bother writing at all.

For months I've been aware that I have nothing to offer- no creative ideas, no brilliance or wit.  Nothing but this tension and a wild desire to open.  Into what?  I haven't a clue what might be possible so I have to keep going to find out.  I am writing every day- writing in circles- they lead nowhere but the need to write doesn't diminish so I keep at it.  God, I'm tired.

Freedom Sometimes Appears Wearing Rags

Since the ending of a brief but significant chapter in my life, (approximately two weeks ago), gifts, small and large have been showing up in unexpected ways and strange places.  I am filled with gratitude for answers to prayers I didn't realize I had made arriving in tattered  garments, arms outstretched, seeking acceptance and sanctuary from me.   Disparate parts of myself, my own past, finally able to come home and rest here.  The mystery at work- I needn't understand to receive these offerings.

How do I Rest in Midair?

A quote from Susan Piver's blog-

"... nothing can really protect you from the joy and sadness of being exactly who you are.  They're both equally uncomfortable..."

I don't do uncomfortable without at least some measure of fear.  It is so boring to be so afraid.

I would say that Ms. Piver is my hero.  A mentor who writes often about fear and who may never know that she is inspiring me to fearlessness.

Today has been about bouncing in (which seems like up) and out (which seems like down) of sadness and ... well, I wouldn't exactly call it joy but something resembling joy.  It occurs to me that if I find a place to rest in the middle I would simply be suspended-  for however long- in midair.  Not such a bad place to be when I consider the alternative- bouncing as thought lifts up and then comes crashing down- over and over.  I think it is time to do some resting in midair. Meditation sounds like an idea I can rest in- breathing out long and loose and the inbreath just flows in without stress or strain.  Minutes pass and there is no resistance to bouncing but gradually the up and down motion lessens- like a swinging pendulum that comes to rest, slowly, on it's own.  No effort required.  Even fear- in and out until there is just resting in what is already here.

How Did I Get Here?

Recently came across this prayer by Michael Leunig

...We struggle, we grow weary, we grow tired, we are exhausted, we are distressed, we despair.  We give up, we fall down, we let go, we cry.  We are empty we grow calm, we are ready.  We wait quietly.

A small shy truth arrives.  Arrives from without and within. Arrives and is born. Simple, steady, clear.  Like a bell.  Like flame.  Like rain in summer.  A precious truth arrives and is born within us.  Within our emptiness.

We accept it, we observe it, we absorb it.  We surrender to our bare truth.  We are nourished, we are changed.  We are blessed. We rise up.

For this we give thanks...

I don't know how I got here but for the moment I will accept the charge and let this blog exist.  No way to find out where it can go if I keep putting it into the virtual trash can.

...raising my glass to all the bloggers out there who don't shy away from writing the post and then hitting publish...