Seriously

When I was a kid my family had a cottage in Maine on the beach, and the summer I turned eleven, one morning I was walking by myself on this beautiful beach, with the vast sky above me, and waves crashes and the seagulls swooping, and it was low tide, so I was far from people.  And I felt this massive huge connection to something, this vast energy, which as a 10 year old practicing Catholic, who had gone through all the rites of communion and confirmation and who went to mass every Sunday,  I understood as God. And I walked with it and felt it in every part being, and eventually it manifested in very clear vision of what I was going to do with my life.  I was going to become the first woman pope.

I didn't tell my family about this right away. I think I may have actually spent a couple of days planning it out, and visuallizing all the resistance I would face. I figured first I'd probably have to become a nun, but over time I would build a revolutionary army of nuns. 

But eventually I told my mother, and she laughed a withering laugh that cut to the core of my soul. 

I was so angry, because of course she was laughing at me. I didn't realize how she was laughing at the harshness of reality. 

This week Sinead O'Connor died. 56, only a few years younger than me. 

I remember how I felt when she tore up the picture of the Pope on SNL.  I wasn't a fan of the pope, and I'd long since given up my fantasy.  But it irritated me, because it felt immature and the wrong kind of danger. It was women taking themselves too seriously in a world where sometimes it's not really worth it. 

But she gave her heart. 

In the end that's what we need to remember about each other. 

Happy Losar

Today marks the Tibetan New Year, which I celebrated with an online recitation of The Nectar of The Path.

I'm a Tibetan Buddhist now. Not something I expected to say 10 years ago, when I first started my journey with Mingyur Rinpoche.  I'd had enough of ritual with Catholicism. The appeal of Mingyur Rinpoche was his secularism. 

But there is reward in being locked in. Just as I've been acculumating savings ever since I signed up for a paycheck withdrawal RRSP, I believe that my mind will clarify, peace and love in my heart will grow more effortlessly from my commitment to a belief system that has proven its merit to me over and over again in the last decade. 

Next week I officialy take my Bodhisatva vow.  

I took it in my heart a few months ago.  Before that even, when I read the dedication chapter of the Way of the Bodhisatva to my father a few hours before he died. 

In April I hope to take the first course in The Path of Liberation, and receive pointing out instructions from Mingyur Rinpoche. 

I've received an amazing taste of these instructions from Michael Taft.

Despite all the deep sadness of events in the world right now, as war rages on, I feel ready to accept whatever comes this year of the water tiger. 

May the peace of the water element, from which I take my name, combine with the power of the tiger element to accelerate love and ease to everyone who is suffering now. May we all be liberated. May we all one day soon know joy. 

Why I love hatred

In meditation yesterday I hit a vein of hatred in my heart that revealed just how attached to it I really am. All that punk rock energy, all that anger, all that jouissance that was the intense, but ultimately unfulfilling consolation prize of growing up with parents who despised themselves and each other.

All that cre-hate-ivity of the 90s. All that contempt for vulnerability. All that need to be cool. How I with I could go back and truly see how crippled I was by it.  And how vulnerable I was to people who were driven by hatred, not love.

The way out, however, is not to hate the love that I have for hatred.  The only way out is to accept it. and accept however long it will take for that hatred to dissolve, a day, a decade, a lifetime. Not nearly that long if I can learn how to rest in that sea of equanimity.

Absolute Love

A few years back I wrote a post about a pivotal moment in my practice, the night my depression died. This morning I write about another such moment. The morning my self-hatred healed.

The process started last night, in much the same way, with insomnia. To try to nudge myself asleep I listend to a Tergar meditation on essence love, a meditation where we forget about lovingkindness and compassion, and practice being, without concept, without cognition with whatever suffering we're feeling in its rawest, most present energy. Only there is transformation possible.

I followed that up with a Rob Bell podcast on grace and peace. Grace is that energy that allows us to receive the gifts of life, and its abundant rewards that are always available to us, whether we deserve them or not. I usually fall asleep half way through a Robcast, but not this night.

Finally, tired of every virtuous option available to me,  I watched the last episode of Downton Abbey on Netflix, until eventually I drifted off.

This morning I was too dull in my brain to read or think much, so I meditated during the hour that I've been trying to devote to tidying. During this meditation, the completion of the triad I started two weeks ago with Absolute Joy and Absolute Self emerged.  Absolute Love, the love that is always there, whether we see it or not, regardless of what we have done in our lives.

Then it came to me that before I assimilate this sense of Absolute Love, I need to deal with the deep block, such a strong part of me, so persistent a presence, I'm not even aware it's there.  Self hatred.  My legacy of years of rage, frustration, unkindness. That self hatred is like this lump of carbon in my heart.  But it  is also  in its way the gem like flame that Walter Pater writes about in his famous essay on the Renaissance. It is love gone hard. But it is love.

My parents successfully maintained their hatred for over 50 years. And I wonder if this has been a great gift to me in a way, because al I need to do is turn it into love.  I have the maintenance part down, I just need the antidote.

That night my depression died, did not mean the end of depression, but it did mean the end of depression having a death grip on me.  It still visits from time to time, but it's never been as strong in me again.  This has happened now with my hatred.  I don't expect it to leave me, but it will never rule me in the way it once did. And for that I am deeply grateful.

The Pond

This week I have the most perfect meditation spot I may ever have in my life. Peter Pond is outside my bedroom deck, where I have a view of the sunrise over both the ocean and a placid, mirror still pond.

I need it.  My family situation is as always unstable, drinking, fighting, the usual.  But I've made progress since last year. The fights are more like sudden storms, than bitter weeks of winter. This may be because I've given up the evening cocktails and wine with dinner. I'm running more, eating better, physical energy translates into emotional energy.  It may also be because my meditation is longer.  And I suspect it's been because I've been rooting myself in compassion meditation.

What would it be like to have lived my life with no insight into my emotional suffering? Or into the suffering that I cause others? I still spend much of my life blindly chasing after distractions that I think will bring me happiness, but at best bring me temporary relief from suffering.  But at least I know this. So many people go through their lives with no idea. Just following the recipe society gives them with no questions. And then at the end of their lives, they are physically and emotionally tired and confused, unable to communicate with the people whose love they desperately need. Unable to feel real compassion for themselves and others.

I don't just have this pond.  I have the capacity to see the astonishing gift that this pond is.  I have the ability to find joy in this pond. I have all I need to be happy, no matter whatever happens in my life. I'm good.

Transformation

This week when I hear that persistent question what do I want more than anything in the world the answer is automatic: love.
  Maybe as a result of this answer I've been re-establishing connections with old, and important friends. By mistake I ended up at Maggie's place on Friday, thinking she had a party.  Ended up going out for Indian dinner, and now I'm back in the loop. Invited to Taco Tuesdays, which I can't afford right now.  But it's nice to know that I can go.
  Then yesterday I went to my first Tergar mini-retreat since JOY3.  It was lovely.  I feel clearer, stronger, and Minjur re-affirmed something I've been feeling for a while. This energy that I'm feeling in my navel is an energy of transformation.
  All of these communities, for me, are supports for love.  People I can love.  People who will love me.  I can build stability around this love.
 It's not that love is dependent on externals.  It's that love is interdependent, the play between the internal and the external.

Interdependence of Thought

This week in my meditation practice I've been exploring interdependence of thought. I'm still not entirely sure sometimes what is meant by the term "interdependence."  But this week I took it to mean the way my thoughts depend on different aspects of being, the way they depend on my body, on how strongly attached I am to concepts like the present, the past, the future, the self.
  I paid special attention to strong, recurring, persistent thoughts, what these were dependent upon, and how I might be able to loosen them.
  The first path that I started to explore is how dependent the quality and tone of my thought is on how embodied I am.  If I'm having an anxious or negative though, it's almost guaranteed that my limbs are stiff, my hands tense, my neck out of alignment, my breath shallow. If my thoughts are wandering it is absolutely guaranteed that my eyes are not focused on anything.  Formal meditation is a way of correcting this. Informal meditation is a way of re calibrating throughout the day. A way of stopping my thoughts from their habitual chaos.
  My thoughts by the way are quite dependent on my environment, and that seems to be changing. I'm a better housekeeper this month, in large part because I'm practising some habits of commitment. Making sure my life is driven by decisions, not impulses. I've been keeping with my housekeeping rituals and everyday I'm feeling a different energy in this home. It's still messy, but deep down it's cleaner, more organized, less overwhelming. As a result of sticking to these commitments, I'm cultivating self-trust.
  The two persistent thoughts I've been meditating, is this recurring mantra of "I hate myself" and "What do I want more than anything in the world."  The super ego and the id.  One way I've been dealing with the first is with tonglen, and a Pema Chodron trick I discovered.  I breathe in that hatred, feel a space for it in my body and in my belly.  Let it expand, let that blocked, stiff energy flow.  I need to be patient.  I was raised in an environment of chronic and constant hatred and hostility between my parents. These memories are deep in my body, in my nervous system.  They aren't about to evaporate in one breath or six.  But I can say at the end of this week that I do feel a little better. As though the space I'm creating in acknowledging and accepting this hatred, will one day be filled more easily with love.
  Which brings me to the second thought.  This week I sat silently with this question and waited patiently for an answer, instead of my usual tendency to want to rush in with a whole bunch of answers.  Finally it came to me, so obvious, so inevitable.  Love.  I want love. There is an answer to this question, and that is it.
  My body, my life, my son's life, so much dependent on that answer, that thought.
  What kind of persistent thoughts could arise if I knew better how to love.

Two Hour Stand

This afternoon I did a two hour stand.

I'm not sure if I've ever done this before.  But I hope I'll have the stamina to do it again.  And to do it regularly.

The goal of this stand was not to experience any altered state of conscious, although I knew that would be inevitable.  It was really to be able to stand with this energy in an open and warm way and explore the fears and blocks that would arise as I did this.

I left with one profound insight.  That the erratic love I received from my mother, sometimes warm and deep and generous, sometimes cold and cruel and manipulative, is tightly wound and tangled and that many of the problems I'm having in my life have to do with my difficulty maintaining any natural, and consistent warmth and affection towards myself.

My father I remember as a mostly distant figure, sometimes gentle, often angry and hungover, and sometimes violently angry.  Later in life he underwent a period of remorse that led to him reducing his drinking, cutting off ties with his old drinking buddies. He became warmer and more loving towards me, but also isolated and dependent.

Nevertheless my parent stayed together, and my relationship with them is an exhausting and ongoing project. And probably won't be getting easier as they age.

Where does standing fit into this.

Standing gives me that stable nurturing that I have such hard time softening to. That's the stable nurturing I'm going to need if I'm going to be able to take care of myself and my son.

If I'm ever going to get rid of this fear of being loved, it's going to happen through this.

Today I could feel it happening. I could feel this gentle energy slowly softening my deepest pain. At one point, I cried like a baby, remembering the deepest, worst moments of loneliness when I was pregnant. Recognizing how alone and afraid I still feel sometimes. At other moments I could feel it playfully loosening me up and getting me ready, physically and emotionally for happiness.

Sometimes it felt sexual.  Sometimes it felt like a really nice, long lunch date.  I tried as much as possible to keep in simple and gentle.  That's what I need right now.

But two hours is the kind of deep, transformative commitment that I need right now.

May I care about myself enough to make that happen.

soft snow

There's a soft snow falling this morning. While I was shovelling it off the entrance I thought of it as all the pleasant numbness that can so easily build up, become ice and block the entrance of energy into my life.

I'm making healing metaphors out of all my housework recently. It's working wonders. My kitchen and bedroom are orderly. I managed to do some sweeping and dusting yesterday. Metaphors, I read in a poem recently, are god's directions.

I talk with my muse more regularly now. And last night while Ben was at piano, instead of reading or watching a movie on the ipod, I just sat. And sat and thought about how through most of my life I've felt really unwanted. Or maybe more acurately, I haven't often felt wanted. Really passionately wanted. In an erotic way, or in a loving way. Ben makes me feel wanted. But that's more needed. And it's not fair to burden him with that responsibility. I sat for a while and it struck me that the best way to be wanted it to actually want others.

I sat there for a long time and just wanted God. Really felt the strong desire for that in my heart.

It carried me through a difficult evening with Ben, who is becoming increasingly angry and rebellious. I took away his video game privileges. I decided that he needed an "evening of acceptance."

I'm worried about the effect of those games on his energy level. He seems to be driven by this rigid angry energy. Almost a rage. I need to find a way to help him unhook from that. But I need to unhook from it myself.

Last night I woke up in the middle of the nigth. I meditated. I read. I went back to sleep and made the mistake of bringing the ipod into the room with me. I slept in and had dreams about my mother. She and my father were sleeping in my room (I had moved to Ben's room in the middle of the night). She seemed sweet at first, but something put her into a rage. I responded in rage. And soon we were fighting with all the anger and despair we have always fought.

I don't want that in my life. I do not want to continue the tradition of that rage. I need to find peace.