Category: Day-to-day
I Thought I was Present
This week I caught myself frequently not present. The author, Geneen Roth, quoted Pema Chodron in a recent talk saying, “The obsession will stop when the bolting stops. Just stay.”
That is my practice for the upcoming week. just stay.
I did not get That
I receive regular emails from the Zen Monastery Peace Center (Livingcompassion.org). This week it threw me for a loop:
Student: At a recent retreat, one of the facilitators mentione
d that
if I am not having fun, I am not practicing
awareness. So far my experience of practice is that it is hard… it’s not fun.
Teacher: For whom is it not fun?
“For whom is it not fun?”
What a profoundly simple question, and yet one that
has the power to confound us completely!
Read the entire post at http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=32140a0081e9c5c40c022ccb2&id=c5fbbb3fc5&e=cffd5c43c0
Fun? Huh. I did not get that, let alone who was the one not having fun.
This one might take a while.
Are we all connected even if I don’t believe it?
In a meeting last week someone commented on how her compulsive eating affected others. I have been stumbling around in an unknown and in a quandry. I would say I believe that all things are connected. Yet I’m finding a resist accepting that my behavior — all of it, any of it — affects others unless I intend for it to. Intention including both nice and mean.
Of course the universe thought it would be funny to send me a relevant email this week:
“We have to wake up to the fact that everything is connected to everything else. Our safety and well-being cannot be individual matters anymore. If “they” are not safe, there is no way that “we” can be safe. Taking care of other people’s safety is taking care of our own safety. To take care of their well-being is to take care of our own well-being. It is the mind of discrimination and separation that is at the foundation of all violence and hate.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh
The Flow
Who am I to expect my life to be completely smooth flowing?
Why do I think I am exempt from pirate attack?
Will I ever stop writing the same post over and over?
Yesterday was awful. The “in my head” theatre was playing the world’s worst play. Even though I was starring in the play, I hated it. In the moment I would have said I hate all of these people who are bugging me. But I remember today that they are not real.
The irony of this truly absurd theatre was that I attended American Players Theatre on Friday night and saw Stoppard’s Arcadia. If you know the playwright, Stoppard, at all, his language and settings require full-on concentration. I kept widening my view back to see the actors on stage, the lights, and the back-lit trees and dark sky above us. The bats swooped in and around catching dinner. I enjoyed being in the audience as much as the play.
That should really be my goal. Learn and practice widening back to see the “in my head” theatre for just what it is.
Loud Cars and Other Resentments
Zero days without pirate attack
One of my neighbors has a loud car. An on-purposely loud muffler. That’s an oxymoron for sure. I get irritated at his revving at each going and coming. I lay in bed at 11:30 thinking, “Turn it off you stupid, f—-r.” I assuage my resentment with the belief that his penis must be teeny-tiny, that’s he’s compensating. Then I remind myself that he has no idea I feel this resentment, irritation, and anger. It’s all “theatre in my head.”
A friend told me yesterday that when she does this kind of internal rant, she reminds herself that the irritant is her higher power (or maybe she said it was a reminder from her higher power…). If she can let go of the resentment, the person who bugs her always goes away or stops doing the irritating thing.
I know this to be true. I’ve done it in the past. I have a good story for proof. It’s just that it takes me claiming full ownership of the creation. It seems I’m just now willing to do that yet..
Comfort
I like hanging clothes on the line. 
I like watching them flap in the wind and spin around on my space-saver line. I like the magic of sunshine making my white t-shirts glow. I really like the smell after they’ve been on the line. Weather permitting, I always hang my pillow cases on the line.
I’ve started noticing things like this and taking a few moments to stay with the feeling. It reminds me of ban Breathnach’s book from the 80’s, Simple Abundance. Notice simple, comforting acts, grow them, and keep them in your life. Like a barefoot walk on the grass when there’s still dew in the morning. Take a nap on a warm summer day, have a root beer in a big mug.
Think about it: What has brought you comfort today?
Drug of Choice
In Whole Foods today I noticed this item at the impulse-buy section of the checkout. Interesting… There’re options for Energy, Calm, and Sleep according to their website. Personally, I used to use chocolate for any feeling.
Nice to see that a company has figured out how to leverage the cultural power chocolate has to use it overtly like a drug. Seeing the price, looks like some nice profits are in the offing, too.
It’s good product placement. I have my moments of impatience in the checkout lane. (That’s an understatement. I have totally lost it in the checkout lane quite a few times.) When I remember, and can avoid indulging myself, I do the Avatar Compassion Exercise. Now if that could be just as habit forming.
Letting Go
Wishing Tree – Waunakee
A couple of weeks ago, I stopped at the Waunakee Wishing Tree. (It has its own Facebook page, and the posts are better than most.) I hung a wish on the tree. It was a wish to stop doing something I have persisted in doing.
I truly do want to let go of that. Yet I hold on. AA has its aphorisms: Let go and let God, Let go or be dragged (I like this one.). I’ve felt like I asked the tree to handle it, but I won’t let go of it to let the tree handle it. Remember Dorothy and the apple trees in the Wizard of Oz?
How the (my?) Mind Works
I get a kick out of noticing how my mind leaps and connects and storify-zes. That’s its job. A lot of the time I can just observe it and be entertained by it. Some times it whips a bag over my head and hoists me on to a ship headed out to”here there be dragons” territory in just an instant. Maybe 60/40… maybe 70/30 on a good week.
This week on my walk and dropping off library books early in the morning, I noticed something shiny in the parking lot ahead of me.
When I got right up on it I thought:
looks like a wing
has venation like insect wings
maybe fairy wings
a fairy lost a wing
if a fairy’s wings get knocked off they plastify without the fairy magic
then the wing got driven over by a laughing teenager with the music too loud
fairy wings grow back, but they’re grounded until then
See? Very Entertaining. At some point I went back to breath meditation….
Like new UGG Boots
This has been a good week. Which makes me think, what makes a good week v. a bad one?
A few nights ago, while meditating, I actually felt the transition to a story in my mind starting and decided not to go into a story. I noticed it was a choice for my mind to go into a story or not. Not noticing after, but deciding before the story started. Amazing, and also not. The best way I can describe it is seeing something off on the horizon and turning away from it. It took no effort whatsoever. Oh! Another analogy would be feeling like I’m walking down a hallway, seeing a door, but choosing not to open it and go in.
Since that night it’s been relatively easy to stay present most of the time. Everything is easier when I’m present. There is a lot more beauty. A lot more cool things to appreciate. Like my socks today, the lilacs blooming, and awkward goslings tumbling around.
I remember a scene in a Rainbow Rowell novel (I’ll have to paraphrase or spend considerable time looking it up to get it perfect, and I don’t want to do that). In the scene, the characters had bonded over time in the college dining hall making cutting comments about the others there. After Christmas, one snarked about some girls wearing their newly gifted UGG boots. The other said that she wanted to live in a world where getting new UGG boots for Christmas was still awesome. (That’s the way I remember the scene.)
I’ve spent most of life working to sound cynical and worldly (cool?), but only achieving sarcastic and mean. The irony is being present is truly cool and when I’m present I’m beyond caring.
my cool socks today
Days Without Pirate Attack: 