Good Morning Relatives
well I decided to do a little meditation last night before bed so I soaked in a hot bath of korean sea salt and epsom salt and rosemary and eucalyptis nice then I read a bit in Pema Chodrons book the places that scare you only reading from a held back meditative place which by that point was quite easy
it allowed me to observe and see something that I had not previously which is always interesting isn't it
Pema is big on meditation and on labeling her source of effort as bodhichitta which is a nice effort and all but there is way too much emphasis on levels and achievement if we are then we are and why not
I say go for it Pema and let yourself be an original and all encompassing source already don't hold yourself back out of some sort of respect for those who have and those who can't or won't its not worth it so forget the bodhichitta or becoming a bodhisattva be Pema she is grand don't settle for the prelim stage of enlightenment
anyhow that note aside I was enjoying the reading and not reading at the same time as the intense saltyness drew myself out of myself and allowed me to be me in a whole different way that is when something that Pema said or rather she wrote on the page that I was reading caught my ah ha moment
it is the idea that intensity let loose in side of me (usually in the dream time) triggers such deep and intense breathtaking feeling that before I know it in an attempt to get away from myself from that fire that is destroying me inside which I don't remember inviting in the door by the way I end up leaping onto a story board and running down the road riding what is often a very dead horse till the emotion or the fuel burns out of me or burns me up and hopefully in the midst of all that conflagration if I can hold on and not harm myself then I can phone a friend (though it seems no one gets up early any more do they at least not in my time zone) and if they answer and I havnt set myself or the house on fire I can ask them to help me please help me while I burn to death in my own cauldron of fear that has somehow caught on fire in the night and is out of control inside my very own self thank life for old childhood friends who do answer the phone and who know what a horrible and unremovable thing it was to have to live through my sister shooting herself and dying before I was done loving her or needing her to love me back thank life for friends who can just say I understand and I am holding you even from thousands of miles away steadfast and long enough and strong enough that I can die and be reborn again into my own reality thank life for the truly loving and selfless friend of mine
Pema said to let go of the story and have the intensity of the emotion and while having it sort of like the bath and the book and meditation all at once adding up to a fourth dimension let it flow and yet don't be consumed by it but take a look at it while I am in it that was an interesting thing that I as it so happens was doing while reading and soaking so the idea was already present (kind of like Pema being Pema without the boddi butting in)
so I thought about that
then she said that when we hold ourselves to a story or a action or non action while we are having this eruption of fuel if we are fearful which is the point of the book to learn not to be fearful then we are simply using the fuel and the fire (the story we are telling our selves) to avoid the underlying fear and so in a way we are harming ourselves which may not be overt but is definitely accumulative like steps on the treadmill or four or six too many m&m's or one more chip or one less hug eh?
so my project this week is to recognize when I am telling me a story and stop and take a face on look at the underlying fear I may not change avoiding going to the gym on sunday because the guy who mans the desk not only watches in the cameras everything I am doing but comments to me about what he thinks of me when I come by the desk which I must so what is the underlying fear? a creepy dude watching me makes me feel awful and I don't want to feel powerless and exposed so what is the story I tell me? that if I go to the gym I will be victimized brrrr ugh yuck yuck yuck since it is not socially acceptable to whack his head off either I go and ask for his schedule so that I can go when he is not there or I don't go at all and or I tell his super visor what he did and does and I recognized that I was avoiding going because I could feel myself holding myself back from going, I could feel the part of me that wants to go work out and wants to not keep eating or reading or sitting for hours on end but I would ignore it. I would push it aside. I would push me aside and not listen to me. thus the emotional cauldron fills with fire while I am looking away pretending that I am doing what I want to do when what I want to do is not what I am doing. Capisce?
all this from Pema imagine that anyhow I don't feel less creeped out or less vulnerable knowing what is behind the story of why I am not going and allowing myself to add one more day of blobness to my already unwelcome days of blobness due to my injuries but what I feel is that I am honest and clear and not carrying an extra layer of nasty crap just so that I don't have to think about facing the creepy dude at the gym because lets face it what girl knows how to deal with her fear of creepy dudes? I really don't understand how those girls who go about exposed do that knowing that there are creepy people out there oggling them not that I think I am ogable these days Im not but it makes it more creepy that someone would watch someone who is as out of shape as me urgh brrrr yuck anyhow I know as women we are supposed to take back the night and all of that but really it is exhausting having to deal with creepy people and in a small town there seems to be even more of them per capita than in the big city creepy! ok enough of that
so I went to bed thinking about how to use Pema's looking glass today which is now and I was happy about it a way to explore and reauthenticate my life may not change what I do but really who wants to be a self induced zombie? so i went to bed and thought about a friend of mine who is being reviewed by the IRS (by the way it seems despite the propaganda that they have cut back on staff and the audits are less than 1% that everyone is being audited except the rich and famous or the republicans or the Koch brothers) any how I was sending her a good night best of luck thought because I knew she was up late organizing old tax crap and I woke up at one in the morning with this poem :
Lay down your burden as well as your hed
Let us sleep together the sleep of the ded
For the ded think not on things that are fled
Or let things go round and round in their hed
Like poems or loves that cannot be hed
For the ded be not afraid of ser dred
Nor do they toss and take to their bed
Memories of lives that have long since fled
Narrie do Thoughts of food, wine or bed
Cross their sleep nor worried their hed
Sleep ye now with neither harm nor dred
The sweet sweet sleep that comforts the ded
ta da! nice eh so I texted it to her in the early morning
then I finally fell asleep and woke somewhere in Scotland with a bunch of old women who were trying to get their act together for a lament but none of them were quite through the barrier that was holding them back so I stood up and began to meditate out loud the song that Johnny Cash and Fiona Apple sang as a duet on one of his last albums Bridge over Troubled Water only they jumped right in on the first cue and took it off like a sunday school rhyme which was all wrong so I had to make them stop and begin again and over and over they bungled it with their fast pony sunday school mantra carry me away down the river singing
I could feel that they weren't feeling the song just singsonging it and that felt to me like so much less than what I could feel and wanted to bring to them and to the ded
I kept telling them NO NO NO it is a lament a LAMENT you feel it and that is what makes the words come out that is what makes the song only they weren't getting it that it is FEELING that brings the song and if we FEEL then the song shows up on our lips and we don't get lost down the river of denial
so Pema I feel ya
best mb
No comments:
Post a Comment